by C. E. Murphy
Cole closed his eyes and lifted his eyebrows, knowing he hardly wanted to know: "She had a moment with another gargoyle? Why do I not know this? Why do you know it? And what happened?"
"I don't even know as much as I want to," Cam said with a degree of petulance. "She gets all coy about things, like we don't already know they exist. But she went to the mat for him on something—"
"That's why she's being coy," Cole said, more to the street than Cameron. "Look how thrilled she was with the Luka Johnson case, but she talked about it like it was everybody else's effort, not hers, that got Johnson's clemency granted. If she helped Biali out with something you're never going to get the details from her."
Cam exhaled a raspberry. "Yeah, I guess so. Still, I want to know. Maybe Alban knows. Anyway, so even if he's a grump they're bros, or something. She can ask him, at least. Is six people enough to cater?"
"Not even close, but it'll have to do."
Cam leaned in to kiss his cheek. "I'll make it happen."
#
Poor Cole looked like he'd rather suck lemons than agree to her making it happen, but since he was at work and she had three hours until her next training session, Cameron bounced off down the street with a wave and a grin, then dialed Margrit and snorted when her voice mail picked up. "C'mon, it's seven thirty, I know even your workaholic self isn't at work yet, and you can't pretend you're sleeping, either, Ms 3-Hours-A-Night-Chick. Look, give me a call, will you? I want to go talk to Grace but I don't know how to find her. It's for Kaimana's party, so you have to help. I'm, oh hey, I know, maybe the speakeasy. I'm going to the speakeasy, I'll see you there, huh? Hurry up, I've got a client at ten." She ran down a set of subway stairs as she hung up, catching the next train downtown, and nearly had a heart attack when Margrit stepped in front of her at the top of the stairs going back up. "Holy crap, I didn't think you'd be that fast!"
"I was out for a run. I just changed directions to meet you here. Hi." Margrit flashed a bright smile, then gestured at Cam's workout clothes. "You want to run down there, or should we meander?"
"Run. I've only done six miles."
"'Only.'" But Cameron smiled and chased Margrit through the streets, aware that Grit, who was much shorter, could have outrun her six days of the week even before she got a metabolic boost from Eliseo Daisani's blood, and was now holding back so she didn't leave Cam in her dust. It only upped the challenge as far as Cam was concerned, and she was hot on Margrit's heels as they finally skidded down another set of subway stairs and burst through a small crowd of tourists who were gathering to see the speakeasy. Cam tipped her wrist up, checking her watch, then turned to Margrit and made a face. "We're way early. It's only ten after eight and it doesn't even open until nine. I didn't know that. "
"I don't think it's going to be a problem." Margrit nodded at the speakeasy doors, which were propped open and revealed a sliver of the space within.
Italian marble floors gleamed with art deco black and gold squares, half-hidden by thick, richly colored rugs that didn't look like they'd ever been crushed beneath the weight of bodies. Armchairs and chaise lounges had left their impressions on the rugs: Cameron had seen that in the brief time the speakeasy had been in disarray while all the items were cataloged and examined. A chess game that had sat unfinished for nearly a century still remained with its last plays set up, the pieces given a soft colorful glow from the abstract stained glass windows that had been set into the curved walls. There were lights behind those glasses, illuminating what sunlight couldn't, this deep underground. Even with only being able to see a fraction of the windows, Cam got a shiver. She was one of very few people who had seen them as they were meant to be: overlaid, so that their abstract colors built an actual image. Five Old Races were represented there, the five remaining magical people in a world that had long since dismissed magic as real. Dragons and djinn, vampires, selkies, and gargoyles. Cameron shivered again, then blinked as a woman came into view within the speakeasy, stepping over the heavy red velvet ropes that had been erected to keep tourists off the rugs and furniture.
She was nearly as tall as Cameron, though curvier and far more dramatically dressed: even in the heat of summer she wore leather. Black leather, even. Leather pants, a leather coat, heavy-duty boots and Cameron was pretty certain the 'shirt' beneath Grace's coat was a corset, though not a tight-laced one. Just enough to give her some extra va-va-voom shape, not that Cam thought she needed much help in that department. And Cameron, who was naturally blonde even as an adult, couldn't hold a candle to Grace's white-blonde hair, which she wore in a close-cropped pixie cut. The effect was striking, making her so pale that she could be a ghost.
Except ghosts didn't seem like they'd be inclined to stand leading with the hips, or to glower suspiciously at chess boards set up in an eternally paused game. She looked away from the board as Margrit called her name, then sauntered to the door as Margrit and Cam approached the guard who stood at the door. "They're with me, love, let 'em in."
The guard looked between the three women and sighed. "Ms. O'Malley, I know you found this place and you're supposed to have the run of it for coming in and out, but the Mayor didn't say anything about bringing friends in too."
"These aren't friends, this is Margrit bleeding Knight." Grace waited a breath, expecting the guard to recognize Margrit's name, then looked exasperated. "All right, then, call the Mayor, if you want."
The guard, looking put-upon, waved Margrit and Cameron past. Grace, satisfied, patted his cheek and minced away, her booted footsteps so light they couldn't be heard on the tiled floors. She stepped over one of the velvet rope barriers and gestured Cameron and Margrit to join her in one of the plush speakeasy chairs. Cam cast a guilty look at the guard, who looked even more put-upon, then shuffled outside and closed the door behind him.
Margrit's eyebrows shot up as she joined Grace. "How'd you manage that? This is a public facility now, ever since you took it away from Vanessa."
Grace smiled. "I tell the lads here that the Mayor's given me dispensation. None of 'em dares to call the private number I give 'em to verify it, so I get what I want."
"Would it actually go through to the Mayor?"
"That's for Grace to know. What's this about, Knight?"
Cameron stepped over the barriers, still feeling guilty, and couldn't quite make herself sit in one of the antique chairs. "It's actually me who wanted to talk to you. Cole sort of needs your help."
"Cole. The pretty one with the bad attitude?" Grace's smile turned bright and wicked as offense altered Cameron's expression. "He has, though. Neck deep in Old Races and hating it all. What's he want with the likes of Grace O'Malley?"
"He's catering a selkie party," Cameron blurted. "We need your help as, um, waitstaff."
Grace's pale eyebrows rose and she looked at Margrit. "You called me downtown for this?"
"I didn't know what she wanted!"
"Oh, come on." Cam sat down abruptly after all, right on the edge of an over-stuffed seat. "Please? We can pay you and everything—"
"Grace doesn't need cash, love." The vigilante pursed her lips. "Well, no, that's not true, but never mind that. I trade in favors. I do this for you, you owe me one."
It sounded straight out of a noir movie, which was as silly as it was exciting. Cameron swallowed a lump of suddenly nervous excitement and slid a glance at Margrit, who twitched one shoulder, saying it's up to you as clearly as if she'd spoken aloud. Cam arched an eyebrow back: would you? The corner of Margrit's mouth quirked before she dropped her chin in an almost-imperceptible nod. Cam nodded more visibly, then looked back at Grace and nodded again, though her heartbeat had sped up like she'd been working out. "Okay."
The others—the Old Races—they could hear heartbeats and caught breath. Grace was only human, even if she was as tangled up in the Old Races as Margrit was. At least, Cam thought Grace was only human, but the way she tilted her head and smiled a little suggested she heard Cam's crazy heartbeat just as well as Eliseo Daisani could. Cam sw
allowed hard again and gave Margrit another nervous look, but she didn't seem bothered. That was the thing, and Cam knew it: she thought the Old Races were amazing, romantic, magic, wonderful, a dream come true, but they'd become a lot more real than that, somehow, to Margrit. They'd become the shape of the world, not just for now but always. They made Cameron's heart beat faster, but they centered Margrit, calming her, giving her a focus for the rest of her life.
And it was going to be a long, long life, too, because she'd taken two sips of a vampire's blood, and she might be immortal now. She would be going to Cameron's funeral someday, and maybe to Cam's kids' funerals, too.
It was always warm in the subways, usually stifling hot in the summer, and the speakeasy's buried location gave it that same humid blowing heat, but that didn't stop a cold chill from springing up on Cameron's arms. Right up until that very moment she'd been thinking there were three human women sitting together in the protection of the quiet curved speakeasy walls, but that wasn't true at all. Maybe there was only one human girl here, and it was herself.
Grace O'Malley, who ran underground shelters for homeless kids, who got herself into trouble with the law regularly over it, who the whole city knew as a vigilante or a superhero, depending on how much they liked her, caught the faint change of expression Cameron felt slide over her own face. Margrit didn't: Margrit was looking at Grace. But Grace saw it, the little shock of realization and the follow-up blade of loneliness that stabbed Cameron, and Grace's own expression changed. Softened, when Grace wasn't someone Cam thought of as soft.
"It doesn't get easier, love," Grace said, "and you don't get used to it. You just live with it."
Cam pressed her lips together, then nodded. Margrit's eyebrows crinkled with curiosity, but neither Cam nor Grace explained. Grace, Cam thought, wouldn't, and she didn't feel she could. Margrit was on the other side of things now, on the side that was going to continue on and not get left behind. Or that would leave everything behind, depending on how you looked at it. And that was what Cam hadn't even been asking about, what Grace had instinctively understood: how do you live with everyone around you changing, dying, moving on, when you stayed the same, and how did you deal with being the one left behind. It only made sense that it didn't get easier and you couldn't get used to it. Living with it sounded hard too, but there was nothing else to do.
Except, it seemed, trade favors with strangers who lived beneath city streets, and cater parties for the rich and unusual. Cam's melancholy fell away into a quiet laugh and she nodded again. "So we'll owe you one. I'm good for it."
"You'd best be, love. Grace calls her favors in."
Cam's smile swallowed itself whole as a nervous gulp, and they left the speakeasy before it was even supposed to be open.
#
He should have known they would hold the party in the Daisani Building—no one had yet renamed it the Kaimana Building, and Cole wondered if they would. But he certainly should have known they would hold the party in the enormous, building-wide ballroom that had been used for the last gathering of the Old Races, at a ball hosted by Eliseo Daisani himself. The space could be broken up into smaller, more intimate rooms than had been displayed during Daisani's ball. There had been hundreds, maybe a thousand, people there; by comparison Kaimana's party was small and sedate. The largest room was enough to hold everyone, without giving up the visual dominance provided by two sweeping staircases and an overlooking balcony. Cole had retreated up there to see what kind of impression the long food tables made from above. Satisfying, he thought: the colors were beautiful, running through a rainbow hue that started with dark red Alaskan king salmon and ended with a purple Hawaiian sweet potato, all of it splashed along white platters held in place by long troughs of ice. Rapidly melting ice, because he'd used salt water to make it, as a nod to the selkies' home waters, so it would have to be replaced at least once and probably twice during the evening. But it worked as a visual presentation, and he already knew it tasted good. That was what mattered. As for the rest of it, the room and the people here, well, during Daisani's ball, the light had been artificially soft and gold, glittering through crystal shards and chandeliers.
Kaimana, though, was taking full advantage of the late summer sunsets, and had thrown back every cover or curtain that fell over the floor-to-ceiling windows. The effect was similar to Daisani's party: red and gold light pouring in, shattering rainbows from the dangling crystal, but there was a sense of openness and embracing the world that had not been part of Daisani's ball. That, Cole, thought, had been deliberately insular, whereas Kaimana was effectively announcing his people's presence to the world. Not quite literally, since it was a selkies-only gig, but pretty close.
The blond waitstaff—Alban, Cameron, Grace, and a sullen, short gargoyle named Biali—stood out among the dark-haired selkies. Margrit and her parents blended in better, though her father's hair was steely grey these days instead of black, and even though they, like the other four, were wearing white at what was otherwise a black-tie affair. Cole preferred it that way, marking out the staff from the guests in as visible a manner as possible, but normally he didn't have to find white tuxedos for such a range of body shapes. Margrit and Biali were the shortest, but Margrit was petite and curvy and Biali was built like a brick. His shoulders were nearly as wide as Cole's arm was long. On the other end of the spectrum were Alban, and Margrit's father, Thomas, a big man dwarfed by Alban's two-plus meters of height. The women in between were all tall for their respective generations. Even in New York, the catering supply shop he usually rented his staff's formal wear from had given him an odd look when he'd brought in the measurements. And then, even knowing who he was clothing hadn't prepared him for the sheer visual shock of the four blonds in their white tuxes. There was absolutely no doubt that every single guest at the party had noticed their waitstaff and knew half of them were Old Races, and half were extraordinary humans.
At least the food was normal.
"On the contrary, I'd say it's superlative."
A deep jovial voice rumbled from a few feet behind Cole, making him startle. He glanced back, then rubbed a hand over his forehead as Kaimana Kaaiai joined him on the balcony. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize I'd said that out loud. I'm glad you like it."
"It's excellent. Clever, too." Kaimana spoke with a faint Hawaiian accent, a lilt that made him instantly approachable, likeable: the politician next door. "I was unsure, as Margrit had indicated you're a baker by preference."
"I specialized in baking once I left chef school," Cole agreed, "but everybody learns all the basics. And even if I prefer baking, the challenge of a making a seafood spread this size was…fun," he admitted reluctantly. For a moment they both studied the long tables of food again, watching men and women stop to select tidbits as the waitstaff circulated with platters of champagne and treats.
"It didn't have to be seafood," Kaimana said eventually. "We eat all sorts of things, just like anyone else."
"I know. Or at least I assumed. But this way presented a challenge, and I could be fairly certain of having something that would suit everyone this way. Thank you for hiring me." The words didn't quite stick in his throat, not with the check having already cleared, but Cole felt awkward anyway.
"You're quite welcome. I suspect you could have an entire career catering to our rather select groups, if you were inclined."
"Yeah." Cole leaned on the railing, looking at the crowd below and trying not to let his voice or expression pull too far out of politeness. "I imagine I could."
Kaimana chuckled, a deep rolling sound that all but wobbled the air. "But you won't, because you don't like us."
Cole gave him a sideways glance, a little surprised at the blatant honesty. "I don't, but I'm stuck with you anyway, so maybe I should profit from it."
"We're not so bad, you know."
If he had hackles, Cole was certain they would rise. "I know. I get it, I do get it. Mostly you're just people. It's just that several of you are people who
have specifically tried to kill my friends, and the rest of you make me…"
"Wish to defend your territory," Kaimana said when Cole faltered. "You perceive us as threats on an instinctive level, and you are rightfully afraid that we are stronger and more dangerous than you are. Your impulse is to challenge us, particularly the males, and that is at war with your intellect, which tells you that in unarmed combat you would be easily defeated."
"Thank you," Cole said dryly. "That makes me feel a lot better."
"Your people's lack of physical capability in comparison to ours has hardly stopped you from becoming the dominant species," Kaimana said just as dryly, and then less dryly, "and the savior of ours. We will not continue to exist without the tacit, and perhaps eventual outright, support of people like the Negotiator and her friends. I would not ask you to like us, Cole Grierson, but I will thank you for the honor you do us by keeping our secrets when you understand that it may be against your best personal interests to do so."
"It's not, really." Cole gripped the railing like doing so would make speaking easier. "Mostly it's not. We're not competing for the same resources, not generally. And I'm not deep enough into your world for Cameron or myself to be endangered from it. In some ways it's in my best personal interests to get along with you." He released the railing enough to gesture at the catered tables below. "You hire me at outrageous prices to feed your party, for example. So it's not really against my interests to be…friendly."
"Except for when it is. Except for when my kind—all of us in general, not necessarily the selkies in particular—move against your friends, because they are that deep in my world. Except for when you become collateral damage or an inviting target because of those friends and their connections. So your willingness to try—forgive me for reading too much into it, but it gives me hope for all of our futures."
Cole took a breath to laugh, and another voice snarled, "You read far too much into it," before the world fell apart into pain and dissolution.