Moonshine: A Novel

by Alaya Johnson

  Some of the strain left his eyes. "Good. We're getting closer. Of course, it's all moot if your father massacres the Turn Boys first, but still. What about Judah?"

  I sighed. "Manhattan has a lot of boats. No luck on South Ferry; all the big boats dock elsewhere. Chelsea?"

  "That's miles away from the Turn Boys. Didn't you say the neighbors heard them coming from farther south?"

  I bit my lip. "You're right. It doesn't make any sense. He must be from the neighborhood. Maybe Nicholas attacked him after an incident with his father? I never thought I'd feel sorry for a vicious murderer like that, but . . ."

  "Zephyr," he said, "you'd feel sorry for Jack the Ripper."

  He kissed me. I wasn't prepared for it, and the shock bubbled from my chest to my toes like a bottle of exploded soda pop. My fingers felt around the rough edges of his ears before lacing themselves in his hair. I might have moaned. I think I moaned.

  The hansom jerked to a stop and the cabbie rapped on the ceiling. "I won't have none of that, you hear?"

  I giggled. "You run a clean establishment," I muttered in my best Mrs. Brodsky impersonation. Amir paid the cabbie and we alighted onto St. Marks Place in a fashion significantly higher-class than I was accustomed to.

  Amir brushed back my hair and whispered in my ear, "You should hurry, don't you think?"

  The room was so crowded that at first I couldn't find Ysabel. I saw only a few humans--the rest were vampires, the signs of Faust withdrawal clear on most of their faces. After a night of Faust, they were desperate for real nutrition. But I doubted the Blood Bank had enough for all of them. Ysabel and a younger assistant were hauling a crate of blood bags from the storage room. The golem was patrolling the area between the desk and the far wall. I'd never seen it do more than shuffle aside before, and the sight of it in full motion was almost unnerving.

  When she saw me, Ysabel hollered my name and leapt over the golem to hug me. "I'm so glad to see you!" She looked around the room and shook her head. "Some day, eh? These times, I tell you. Saul says we're living like the Canaanites, and now the Faust has come to smite us. I just think it's a shame, and I don't mind saying so."

  Behind us, Amir coughed. Ysabel yanked on my shoulder until I was low enough for her to whisper in my ear. "Is that a Mohammedan, Zephyr?"

  I straightened abruptly. Amir wouldn't have even needed Other hearing for that. "Ysabel, meet Amir. I'm helping him with something."

  Amir gave a small bow, which I could have hit him for. He really did think he was the prince of Arabia, didn't he?

  "But I'm curious as to your opinion about Faust. Don't you agree that it can only benefit the city if its vampires have an outlet for personal enjoyment?"

  Ysabel's lip curled. "Oy vey, don't you have eyes? Look at these bruxa! They look like they're having fun, do they? Burning in the sun and then about to starve to death. Zephyr, where'd you find this me-shuggener?"

  I glared at Amir. "He found me," I said. "And he'll wait outside." Apparently the full force of my fury was enough to convince him to beat a hasty retreat. What the hell was he thinking? Defending Faust because it was fun? In the middle of a Blood Bank mobbed with desperate vampires? Before Ysabel could ask me more questions about Amir, I asked her about Lily and the vampire from this morning.

  Ysabel's angry demeanor vanished immediately. "Oh, of course, the poor bruxa. She was weak, you know, but you saved her life. We got that bullet out just in time." She clucked her tongue. "Silver bullets on an innocent bruxa. What's the city coming to? But that girl who was with her? You'd have thought she was in a garbage pit the way she held her nose. And then she insisted on asking everyone all these questions. You have some strange friends, bubbala."

  I restrained a smile. I could only imagine Lily's distaste at having to come to such a low-class slum. But she was a good reporter: she'd never let anything get in the way of a story. I thanked Ysabel and promised to come by tomorrow morning to do what I could to help. The feeling of a hundred hungry vampire eyes resting on my neck was enough to make even my skin crawl. I left as soon as I could.

  Amir was leaning against a lamppost, his hands in the pockets of his tweed sports jacket. He was watching the street boys cleaning horse manure and hawking a dozen different broadsheets. I could tell immediately that his buoyant mood had vanished. It made me feel guilty. He didn't look up when I stepped beside him.

  "Why aren't they in school?" he asked. "Isn't that what boys do, now?"

  "Not if their families can't afford it. Or if they don't have any families." I thought about the tenements filled with orphaned or stolen children, with the landlords who forced them into virtual slavery. But something stopped me from mentioning it to Amir.

  "It's not so different from before, is it? I thought . . ." He shook his head. "I practically live in your world. Kardal's always complaining that I'm more human than Djinni. And Kashkash knows I often can't stand Shadukiam. But sometimes, I swear, it's like I don't know humans at all."

  I considered how hard it was for some of the immigrants I taught to acclimatize to life in this country. A djinn with the same troubles?

  "Why did you say that back there? About Faust. Can't you see what it's done already to these people?"

  Amir didn't respond. He seemed very tense--he radiated enough heat now that I'd begun to sweat beneath my coat. Then he gripped my hand very tightly. What was wrong with him? Was he having another attack? But no, it didn't look quite like that.

  "Will you come back with me, habibti? Forget about all this for a while?"

  Something I'd said bothered him. It didn't take much to deduce that. But I didn't care, at least for now. He was staring in my eyes, his skin was touching mine, and I was melting like the puddle of snow at his feet. I nodded. We flew through nothing at all, and when we arrived I was the first to open my eyes, the first to see the macabre present waiting for him in his front hall.

  A revenant tomcat--larger and mangier than the one that greeted me the day before--stood in a lake of blood. Not its own--several gallons of blood had been liberally splattered all over the room, but where it had come from was unclear. The cat launched itself toward us as soon as we arrived, screeching like its voice box was broken. The smell made me gag as I fumbled for my knife. Amir was faster. He grabbed the cat while shoving me aside, and then snapped its neck with such force that he nearly decapitated it. He tossed the still creature back on the floor, his lip curled in disgust. A horrible aftertaste of rot and hot tar almost overpowered the normally salty, metallic musk of blood.

  "Goodness," I said, trying to control my breathing. "No need to be so overenthusiastic."

  Amir whirled on me. "Bloody hell, Zephyr. Go home."

  I walked into the emergency meeting of the Manhattan Temperance Union fifteen minutes late, my hands scrubbed so clean my skin cracked. My hair was damp and dripping down the nape of my neck. I was attempting not to think about the red stains on the sleeves of my blouse. Really, I was attempting not to think about much at all. Iris was holding forth in the front of the room, detailing the horrors she'd witnessed walking through the streets that morning. Lily leaned against the wall by the door in back, scribbling furiously. She nodded to me and then cocked her head toward the front of the room. I followed her gaze and saw an older man in the second row calmly writing in a reporter's notebook. A photographer stood nearby, and snapped a few blinding shots of the crowd and Iris. I sidled up to Lily.

  "Competition?" I whispered.

  "The Sun, those bastards. My story about the riot at the precinct made the front page of the evening edition, and now everyone wants to cover the Faustian Nightmare. They trotted out Bill Oliver for these old bags, if you'd believe it. Don't you dare talk to him, Zephyr! This is my story."

  "Don't tell me he's tracking your big Faust expose?"

  She closed her eyes and crossed herself. "Good Lord, I hope not. He'll make a hash of it and take the credit."

  A woman in the back row turned to us angrily and put her fin
ger over her lips. "Shh!"

  Lily rolled her eyes and lowered her voice. "Anyway, I think my dear god-aunt's going to call you up in a second."

  I caught a sob in my throat and massaged my aching temples. I was sure they hurt a good deal less than Amir's, but that wasn't much comfort. I hadn't wanted to leave him there, alone. He hadn't let me stay.

  "Zeph . . . are you okay? Are those bloodstains--"

  I caught her eye and shook my head. "It's been a long day," I said. "We'll talk later."

  "And now I'd like to introduce someone I think you all know," said Iris, utterly oblivious and in her element. "Zephyr Hollis. Though perhaps you'd know her better as the vampire--"

  "Thank you, Iris!" I shouted from the back of the room. I wasn't sure if I could stop myself from screaming if I heard that moniker one more time. But once I made it to the Sunday-school podium and the eyes of every woman in that room focused their curious, severe stares upon me, I wondered what on earth I was doing. I mean, I hated the Temperance Union. I'd certainly never been shy with my opinion of their activities. I was half the age of their average member. I'd been able to vote since I turned twenty-one. To me, they were dinosaurs. To them, I was a know-nothing communist upstart, trying to take over their movement. And I expected them to listen to me about Faust? Iris thought my notoriety would give me more credibility. She didn't seem to understand that most of these women hated me for it.

  "For every life alcohol destroys," I said, "Faust will destroy a dozen. I saw it today. Unless we act now, Faust could tear apart this city." I tried to be persuasive, but my mind felt numb from the grisly scene at Amir's--all that blood, the dead stray cat, the secret I kept about Rinaldo's "gift" the night before. I discussed all the immediate effects of Faust: blood-madness, severe burns, street vigilantes, public panic. Perhaps Prohibition was the wrong tactic, I said, but we needed to organize immediate public health measures in order to curtail the disasters already rippling through the community. "I've worked my whole life to improve human-Other relations. This threatens to destroy all of our progress in just a few weeks."

  It wasn't much of an ending, but it was all I had to say. I left the podium to a few scattered, halfhearted claps. The local chapter president then opened up the floor for comment. A woman in the front row stood up so quickly she rocked her chair backward. She wore a tight cap pinned to her graying bun and a dress so hopelessly Victorian it actually featured a hint of a bustle.

  "While I concede the potential dangers of Faust," she began, turning to look pointedly at Iris, "I don't understand the need for immediate action. After all, we had hundreds of years of evidence of alcohol's great societal harm. Evidence which some of you still don't feel is suffcient, despite our successes." And the gimlet stare turned toward me, of course. I leaned against the wall and gave a small shrug of indifference. She turned back toward the president. "Frankly, Grace, I'm shocked you called this meeting at all. If anything, we should be helping the women protect themselves from the monsters in their midst. I know I never feel safe walking the streets alone at night."

  The murmurs of approval and applause (significantly more enthusiastic than for my presentation) told me all I needed to know about this evening's work. They would bicker and discuss the issue for the next several hours, at which point the vote would be called and, in due course, the issue of Faust would be neatly swept under their Progressive rug. I started to walk wearily for the door, but the lady had not quite finished.

  "This might cause some harm now, but the comparison to alcohol is . . . well, misguided at best, Miss Hollis. I know you have some peculiar affection for their plight, but they're just vampires, after all."

  My head snapped up. "And you're just past your time," I said, quite loudly. I left, then, and slammed the door shut on the shocked murmurs behind me. God smite me if I ever set foot among that gaggle of complacent puritans again in my life. The hallway outside the meeting room smelled like wet mold and rotting wood, but it was warmer here than outside. I sat down on the staircase leading out of the basement and wrapped my arms around my shoulders. I was exhausted unto death, but I still had a class to teach in an hour. Did that leave me time to check on Amir? Of course not, and I doubted he would want to see me anyway.

  I closed my eyes and a dozen images flashed in painful staccato across my mind: Giuseppe's eyes as he begged me for help; the vampire woman nearly torn to pieces by a desperate mob; a revenant cat, its bones so easily snapped beneath my calm hands; vampire blood fouling an alley; the revenant marks branded into the skin of two stray cats.

  I had refused to go home when he asked me to. And good thing, because one of his attacks found him minutes later, and someone had to clean up the mess. I wanted to throw out the cat, but Amir insisted I leave it.

  "I'll take it to Kardal. Might be able to trace it. Rinaldo," he explained through gritted teeth, from the floor beside his sofa.

  So I attempted to avoid looking at it. The ragged edges of broken skin, tendon and bones--all denuded of blood--would have made me feel queasy, even without the hot tar and rot smell of the blood.

  "What do you think this is?" I asked. "That smell . . ."

  "How should I know?" he snapped. "Maybe the Blood Bank kept a few bags past the expiration date." I refrained from pointing out the flaws in his suggestion, as he seemed to be in danger of setting his furniture on fire.

  "I don't suppose you still insist upon your right to risk your safety?" he said, when I'd mopped up the last of the foul-smelling blood. "Perhaps I could buy it off you?"

  I smiled, though I knew he couldn't see. "Yes and no, respectively."

  When he sighed, the light on his side of the room grew momentarily brighter. "I had to try."

  I stood up and walked over to him. "Tell me," I said, running my fingers along his jaw and nearly burning them, "what will happen to you if you don't find Rinaldo?"

  Quick as a snap, flames darted from deep in side his eyes. He blinked, then groaned. "Nothing, Zephyr. Just some emotional distress."

  But he was lying. I had no reason to think that, but I knew. If Amir didn't find Rinaldo, what ever was happening to him would get much, much worse. I hated that he didn't trust me enough to tell me the truth. I hated that he had something to hide, because it made me start to question what, precisely, that might be.

  "Zephyr?"

  The hand on my knee was much cooler than his ever were. I opened my eyes and stared into Lily's worried face.

  "Sorry," I said. "I must have dozed off."

  "You're getting massacred in there," she said. "Don't you want to--"

  I shook my head. "I don't fight every hopeless battle. Anyway, I have to get to class."

  Lily nodded and then, after a moment's hesitation, sat down beside me. "Is it Nicholas?" she whispered. "Did he hurt you?"

  "Concern? Goodness, Lily, don't move too fast, you might pull a muscle."

  She rolled her eyes and elbowed me congenially in the ribs. "Fine, suit yourself. Just so long as you aren't withholding my proprietary source information."

  I smiled and told her what I'd learned about the Faust shipments and Nicholas's plans for them. She clapped her hands in delight, and then looked around as though she might have summoned another reporter from the rotting plaster. "Another scoop!" she whispered. "Zephyr, you are the bat's pajamas!"

  "So let's have some reciprocation, hmm? I don't suppose Scott and Zelda are having another bash in Long Island anytime soon?"

  Lily's eyebrows were a fair way to her hairline. "If I managed to snag an invitation, do you really imagine I'd destroy my social standing by bringing a dowdy, bluenose, singing vampire suffragette?"

  "You never know, I might charm them with my wit. In any case, you don't have a choice. I need to find Rinaldo, you need more juicy scoops."

  Lily pursed her lips and gave me a hard stare. "Then you wear what I give you, and let me do the talking." She paused. "There's a party tomorrow night."

  "Monday?"

  "Oh, ev
eryone's doing it. Friday night has gone passe. Anyway, it's some German viceroy or what ever, but I hear he's flown in a band and the booze. If you think Rinaldo is putting on the ritz, then it's a good place to look."

  "There, was that so hard?"

  Lily just narrowed her eyes. "Whatever I tell you to wear, you understand? None of these schoolmarm blouses and sad carpet skirts. I'm going to make you fashionable if it kills me."

  "What ever you say, Pygmalion."

  With my bicycle at the boarding house, it took nearly forty minutes to walk from the church to Chrystie Elementary. Sunday was my favorite--and least popular--class: Immigration and Labor Law. It was my idea, and the Citizen's Council had let me do it out of pity, I suspect. After the barbarous Johnson-Reed Act had passed two years ago, with its harsh immigration quotas, their lives here had grown far more complicated. An immigrant's greatest armor would be knowledge of the law and of their rights, and I was determined to give it to them.

  I longed for my bicycle, but Amir hadn't been in any condition to teleport by the time we had finished clearing up the worst of the mess. He wanted to try, but as I was unfamiliar with the finer points of teleportation safety (I'd never met a djinn before and fairies don't share their business secrets), I told him to bugger off. We did not exactly part on cordial terms. In fact, just thinking about it was enough to make my headache strain against my temples. I suspected that he was getting cold feet about my help. Chivalrous feet, to be precise. And a fine time for it, too.

  "Well, fuck him," I said aloud, to the evident surprise of a hobbled draft horse shivering on a street corner. "I'm going to find Rinaldo, no matter what he says."

  The draft horse coughed and shook its head. "Oh, shut up," I snapped. "He's rich and Manhattan's indigent need funds."

  The owner of the horse and the vegetable cart it was attached to spat in the general direction of the gutter and squinted at me. "Need a ride, ma'am?"

  He looked trustworthy enough beneath his frayed corduroy cap, and Lord, but I was tired of walking.