Wicked City

by Alaya Johnson

  “Yes,” she said, seating herself at her desk. “Of options and exigencies. I imagine that you have worked this all out so I won’t bore you with a confession, which I don’t owe you in any case. What I want to make to you is an offer.”

  “And what would that consist of?”

  “That you agree to place yourself in my power, for the mayor and I to use as we see fit. Your blood is very valuable, Zephyr. I’m sure you can see why.”

  “It kills vampires,” I said.

  “It turns vampires human. The killing is more of an unfortunate side effect. And something that can turn vampires human would be an extremely effective bargaining chip in the political sphere.”

  I stared at her. Could she really have reduced the monstrous pile of bodies in that morgue down to this petty political calculus? All this time I had pitied her, locked away in this basement room, marginalized and belittled for her sex when she clearly had capabilities equal to any of the men in the mayor’s employ. But now any sympathy was washed away in a flood of contempt.

  “And if I refuse?” I asked.

  “You will be tried for murder. The evidence against you is solid, I have made sure of that.”

  “What if I tell the police the truth?”

  “They won’t believe you,” she said. “And besides, I have the mayor’s protection. Commissioner Warren is his close friend, and he’ll make sure to steer things in the proper direction.”

  But her eyebrows lifted unsteadily as she said this, and I knew well the manner of someone attempting to convince herself of the truth of a dubious proposition.

  “Even after your debacle with Madison at the supporters’ banquet? Are you so sure?”

  She drew herself up. “Madison should have agreed. But no matter, at this very moment, Faust is getting the required votes in the Board of Aldermen. I have pulled things from the brink, and Jimmy has seen that. In fact,” she said, “I should thank you. Your falling out with that djinni was just the impetus he needed to bring us samples of the original brew. As we suspected, the current formulation is far less potent.”

  “He … he gave it to the mayor?”

  Her smile was predatory. “Yes. Just yesterday. We got the results back less than an hour before the vote, but I believe we made it in time.”

  I felt the familiar wash of betrayal and anger, but a wiser feeling made me pause. Mrs. Brandon was probably telling the truth in her limited fashion, but I had no idea of the larger context. Amir might have told me had I been in any mood to listen. I wouldn’t repeat the same mistake in less than twenty-four hours.

  “Mrs. Brandon, I believe I can safely refuse your proposal.”

  She gave a breathy laugh. “Refuse? You’d rather go to jail? Have your hypocrisy exposed before the world?”

  “My hypocrisy?”

  “The vampire suffragette is a vampire killer! I didn’t intend for Madison to accuse you in front of all those people, of course, but I’ve decided it only helps my case. Have you enjoyed the past day, Zephyr? The truth I’ve always known has been revealed to the world. You have never been who you pretend to be.”

  “But I didn’t kill those vampires!”

  She leaned forward and rapped me on the head. “Yes. You did. You’ve known all your life you have this power. Your blood did the killing. If you refuse, I will make sure that officer who hates you so much will learn it.”

  “How?”

  “My mother will just have to confess.”

  “Ysabel wouldn’t…” But I couldn’t even finish the denial. I was here, wasn’t I? If Ysabel felt any fondness for me, it hadn’t trumped parental devotion.

  “You are quite alone, Zephyr. Your lover has rejected you, your brother and friends have abandoned you, and your father has run away from his crimes. If you refuse me, all of this will be exposed. If you agree, I’ll see to it that you are publicly exonerated.”

  I didn’t give two figs about her offer, but she had mentioned one thing that sounded important. “Did you do something to my daddy? How do you…” I gasped. “The rabbi. The golem. You sent them?”

  She leaned back in her chair, with an air of great satisfaction. “Rabbi Nussbaum has spent the last two decades wondering about his brother’s suicide. I’d heard of his tragedy years ago—he’s a friend of our local rabbi. When I learned Daniel had been a partner of your father’s, I spoke to him. He agreed to visit your father in Montana and learn what he could. And what he learned, Zephyr, is that there is a very dark grimoire in your father’s possession, one with a very dark ritual. A parent can give their first child immunity to vampires, but only through the blood of a brother. But then, you knew that.”

  But I hadn’t. I had tried to stop myself from wondering this entire week, when the subject of my immunity had taken on such grotesque importance. Had my mother known? Had she even colluded with my daddy to produce his one perfect heir?

  But I couldn’t believe it. I’d seen his grief the one time I’d asked him about my dead brother. He hadn’t done it callously or lightly. But why had he done it at all?

  “And Daniel Nussbaum?” I said. “Why did he do it?”

  Mrs. Brandon shrugged, apparently put out that I hadn’t risen to her bait. “I don’t know,” she snapped. “I expect for the same reason. But the ritual didn’t work for him. He killed his son and then the other child died as well.”

  And then he took his own life. I remembered Lily’s hurried recitation of the facts: 1899, a murder in the Bronx. Two years after the Gould hunt, whatever that was. Four years before my own birth. My silence must have been especially irritating, because Mrs. Brandon stood up and nudged my legs.

  “Well? The vote should be done by now, so we can just go up to Jimmy together. He’s expecting me; I told him I have some big news. You’ll let me do the talking.”

  I frowned. “I already told you no,” I said.

  “Don’t be irrational! What other option do you have?”

  “Sitting here?”

  “You can’t really—”

  “No, Judith,” I said, enjoying her momentary flash of indignation when I used her given name. “I really can. Tell anyone whatever you wish. I’ll deal with the consequences, but I won’t subject myself to the whims of a monster like you.”

  Her self-control—up to this point as rigid as her posture—snapped like a dry twig.

  “You killed my beshert!” she screamed, as though she truly had no care for who might happen down the hallway. “You gave the blood that killed him, and I watched, I watched, you little bitch, as he choked on it, as the light left his eyes and his heart started to beat. It pumped the blood all over the floor. I was covered in it. He couldn’t speak. He could only hold my hand. And that’s how he died. Blind and dumb, with your blood on his face.”

  She leaned very close to me, so I could smell the musk of clove cigarettes on her jacket collar. Her face twisted like she was crying, but her eyes were dry.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s my fault he died. I wish—”

  I shouldn’t have spoken. She screamed again with frightening, inarticulate rage and struck me hard against my cheek. My head snapped to the side, and before I could recover she hit me again, in my rib cage.

  “Mrs. Brandon!” I gasped. “Judith, stop!”

  But she didn’t seem to hear me at all. I tried to move away, but there wasn’t much I could do, bound as I was. A berserker fury had gripped Mrs. Brandon, and I was its object. “My Michael,” she said. “My beshert, and you won’t even pay me what you owe!” She punched me in the ribs again, nearly the same place. I groaned and struggled to throw myself against her. She shoved me back against the wall. “Jimmy will listen to me. He will, now that I have you. You’ll just have to agree. You owe it to me!”

  She stood suddenly and kicked me in the stomach. I grunted and fell over. I vomited bile and water, and nearly choked on it before I could catch my breath. Mrs. Brandon stopped suddenly, her head tilted as though she heard something. She looked at me a
s though she hardly knew who I was. I didn’t bother to remind her. I wormed my way to the door, shoving all other considerations aside.

  “Jimmy trusts me,” she said, almost to herself. I turned around. She hadn’t moved. She was staring at the door. I didn’t understand what had happened—perhaps she had simply lost the last threads of her sanity. At the moment, I didn’t much care. I made it to the door and used my chin to turn the unlocked knob. I collapsed into the hallway. The sudden brightness of the electric lights made me squint. Was someone else down here? I felt as hazy as I had after drinking the poisoned tea. I turned my head and saw Mrs. Brandon silhouetted in the doorway. She was looking down the hall.

  “Judith? What is this?”

  The mayor approached us. She must have heard him coming down the stairs. There was a man behind him. He called my name and ran toward me.

  “Zeph!” Harry said. “Christ, Zeph, you look terrible.”

  He helped me sit up and started untying the knots. “So you didn’t abandon me!” I found myself grinning. Why had I believed Mrs. Brandon for even one minute?

  “Judith, tell me the truth,” the mayor was saying. “You wrote those letters.”

  “There are significant political advantages to keeping the girl for our own purposes,” Judith said mechanically, as though she didn’t know what else to say now that her plans had been ruined.

  The mayor shook his head. “A police officer, Judith,” he said. “I can’t overlook that. Commissioner Warren certainly can’t. You’ll have to turn yourself in.”

  Harry finished untying my legs. I moved gingerly, attempting to avoid jarring my bruises while letting the blood flow back into my sleeping limbs.

  “We should get you out of here,” he said.

  “We?” I said.

  “Your djinni is guarding the stairs.”

  My pulse surged. I looked down the hallway as though I could see him through the wall. “He’s not mine anymore,” I said.

  Harry rubbed my shoulders. “He said something about that.”

  “You can’t do this,” Mrs. Brandon was saying. Jimmy Walker looked physically pained, his eyes shifting as though he longed to be anywhere else in the world. “Think of the political advantage,” she said. “It’s not too late.”

  “Judith, I appreciate all you’ve done for me, but this … this…”

  He seemed at a loss for words. For the first time, I thought.

  Harry helped me up, and then kept his arm around my waist. “Lady,” he said, “it’s too late. Your mother is at the police station right now, talking to Officer McConnell.”

  “She would never.” She leaned against the doorjamb. “Oh God. You know who my mother is.” She looked between Harry and Mayor Walker. “You both do.”

  Jimmy Walker put a pitying hand on her shoulder. “I’ll make sure they treat you properly,” he said. “I blame myself as much as anyone, Judith. I should have known how much stress you were under. I wanted to help you after that horrible business with Michael, of course. I thought I was doing the right thing to bring you here. But I see now … how could you have coped?”

  Judith Brandon stared at him, wide-eyed and betrayed. Then she wrenched herself away and walked a few steps back into her office.

  “Just give me an hour, Jimmy,” she said. “Give me that much time. Then I’ll do what I have to.”

  “Thank you, Judith,” he said, relieved. “Come, let’s leave her.”

  I waved off Harry’s concerned arm and followed the mayor up the stairs. “A Jew,” he muttered to himself. “Michael never mentioned that!”

  Amir was waiting on the landing. He peered at me anxiously.

  “This is getting to be a habit,” I said.

  “I believe we’ve reached the part where you tell me you’re all right.”

  “I love you.”

  He snorted. “Or that.”

  The mayor shook his head. “You make me feel old, Miss Hollis.”

  “How so?”

  He smiled. “I haven’t the energy to love my dog at the moment. But I expect the feeling will pass with a highball or two. It always does.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Judith Brandon is dead.”

  Lily sat down dramatically in our booth at Horace’s speakeasy and tossed a paper on the table. It was the Tuesday edition of the New Star-Ledger. “Fire in City Hall kills aide, destroys evidence,” she said, reading the headline aloud. I stared at her.

  “How?” I asked. Aileen patted my hand awkwardly.

  “In the fire, according to LeRoy. He mentions the investigation in the last graf. Fine reporter.”

  “How did she really die?” Aileen asked.

  “Set fire to her files, then slit her wrists. Efficient.”

  I felt hollow. I had admired Mrs. Brandon, and even when I learned the truth, I hadn’t wanted her to die.

  Lily continued. “It looks like she destroyed any evidence about you, Zephyr. If she can’t use you, no one can, I suppose.”

  The photograph! Gould hunt, 1897. I could picture it perfectly in my imagination, but I knew the image would degrade over time. And I still had no idea what it meant. Despite our best attempts, no one had been able to find Daddy. I had been relying on getting Mrs. Brandon’s files when the furor settled down. Now I never would.

  “Damn,” I said, shifting a little to ease my bruised ribs. I took another sip of Horace’s firewater.

  Harry, seated across from Lily, stared at the paper again. “New-Star Ledger? Didn’t Zeph tell me you worked here? Why not write the story, if you knew more about the fire?”

  Aileen and I shared a quick, worried glance. Trust Harry to blunder into the minefield with such male obliviousness.

  Lily laughed and took a long gulp of her drink. I didn’t know what it was, but I could smell the spirits from across the table. “Why didn’t I write the story?” she said. “Very good question, young Mr. Hollis. And do you know, being a reporter, I went to my editor and I asked him. ‘Breslin,’ said I, ‘why give that story to a two-bit hack like LeRoy when you have someone on staff who’s been reporting on it from the beginning? He didn’t even find out how the lady killed herself!’”

  “Oh Lily!” Aileen said. “What happened then?”

  Lily picked up her drink again. “He told me that he gave LeRoy the piece because the mayor’s office called and said they wanted Mrs. Brandon’s name kept out of the papers as much as possible, in the interest of the ongoing investigation. And he said he knew LeRoy was a safe pair of hands. Can you believe that?” Lily finished her drink and slammed the teacup on the table. “A safe pair of hands! I said, ‘Breslin, what are we, journalists or public relations managers?’ And Breslin said, ‘That’s the trouble with you, Lily, because you can’t get it through your head that sometimes we’re both. You think vampires are people, but sometimes they’re just little bastards out to get your blood.’”

  I gasped. “He didn’t!”

  Lily smiled. “He did.”

  “So what did you do?” Aileen asked.

  “As of, ah, forty-five minutes ago, I am no longer an employee of the New-Star Ledger. No need to apologize. I’m intent on feeling very good about it for at least the next five hours. Now, who’s with me?”

  “I quit the Spiritualist Society,” Aileen offered.

  “Elspeth suggested that perhaps someone who regularly attends speakeasies shouldn’t be a member of Friends Against Faust.”

  “And I had a very interesting conversation with Troy,” Harry said. “I think I have to find a new apartment.”

  I shook my head, but smiled when I raised my glass with the others.

  “To making your own way,” Lily said.

  Each of us had something entirely different on our minds when we echoed her, and each of us meant it equally.

  * * *

  Four hours later, Harry and I were doing a laughing, drunken foxtrot, while Lily and Aileen changed partners like cigarettes. Horace’s band played like the Devil made th
em do it, and Horace himself made sure the drinks came strong. It had been so long since I had just let go like this. I felt like I had forgotten to have fun. Even my singing hobby had fallen by the wayside as the stress of the last few months piled upon me. In a way, I was grateful to Judith. Her actions had forced so many things out into the open. Perhaps now I could just be happy. Harry had promised to help me investigate Nussbaum and the Gould hunt. He’d been as shocked as I was to learn what Daddy had done to my twin brother, but he didn’t try to deny it. He agreed that there had to have been some greater reason than just giving me immunity.

  I’d learned the story yesterday of how Amir and Harry had come to rescue me in the bowels of City Hall. Amir had long suspected my blood was responsible for the deaths around the city, but he didn’t have any reason to connect it to Judith Brandon. But when I was in jail, Mrs. Brandon had gone back to Aileen for one last séance with her dead husband. Aileen, desperate and tired of looking in vain for one lost spirit, thought to try going back to that same strange place where she’d successfully contacted Zuckerman. And she found him—Michael Brandon’s shade had been roused by his wife’s desire. Aileen wasn’t entirely sure what they’d spoken of, but Judith Brandon had seemed confused and upset when she left. Aileen mentioned it to Lily, and they wondered if her husband had been a vampire killed in the same strange way as the others. When I disappeared, Amir contacted them both to ask if they’d seen me. Together, they began to wonder if there was something connecting Mrs. Brandon to the St. Marks Blood Bank where the killer must have gotten my blood. Lily searched through old newspapers. Michael Brandon’s death notice mentioned nothing, but then she found a marriage notice: Judith Cohen, daughter of Saul and Ysabel Cohen, married to Michael Brandon. The rest had unraveled as I’d witnessed.

  The band finished “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” and paused for a brief water break. Harry and I took the opportunity to refresh our drinks.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I said, after ordering a sidecar. “I got the strangest telegram from McConnell today. He said he wouldn’t be investigating me anymore. That he’d seen my family’s ‘young charge’ and had been convinced. Was he talking about Judah? What on earth did he mean?”