“Grow up,” I said.
“Dakota!” Saffron said, raising her hands. “Please. I know I’ve been a petulant brat to you . . . well, since I became a vampire, and I’m sorry, but this time I didn’t do anything wrong. You couldn’t perceive it, but I was magically assaulted by that thing, right here at this table—”
“No, I felt it,” I said, sighing. “From you, the sensation was much more powerful, so I assumed you started it. I’m sorry, that was uncharitable—”
“Really,” the Warlock said, looking me over. “Sensing an aura is normally a vampire trait—or a wizard skill. Forgive my prying, Ms. Frost, but I didn’t see you use a wand, ring, or dowsing rod—and I didn’t think you had a magical bloodline.”
“I don’t, but have y’all actually looked at me?” I asked, pulling up my sleeves to show my tattoos. “I’m covered in two square meters of magical circuits. Of course I can sense magic. I’d be able to sense magnetic fields too, if I was this filled with iron filings.”
“Fascinating,” the Warlock said, peering at the tail of my Dragon as she slid up my arm. “Your clan inks really do produce quite extraordinary color, Ms. Frost. I know a professor at Stanford who’d love a closer look. He’s Carnes’s mentor, by the way—”
“Why didn’t you tell Carnes about us?” I said sharply. “About our vampires?”
“Carnes is not the head of the Wizarding Guild in San Francisco—I am,” the Warlock said, just as sharply, though his ire was clearly not directed at me. “He’s useful, and his faction is influential, but the details of your security arrangements are not his business.”
I drew in a breath. I hadn’t thought about it like that. Sharing the details of our party with others would have made us more vulnerable—and further complicated the already complicated politics out here. Rather than blindsiding us, the Warlock had tried to do us a favor.
“Thank you,” I said. “Sir, about the Guild, I have tried to give Alex a full report—”
“Alex may have been a no-show, but he’s kept us informed—and none of that ‘sir’ stuff. You do not report to me,” the Warlock said. “The Guild demanded a seat on the Council because the work you are doing is too important to proceed without oversight—but it’s your show.”
“Thanks again,” I said.
“And don’t be too hard on Carnes. His goals aren’t really that different from yours,” the Warlock said. “In fact, Ms. Frost, I had hoped to introduce you not just to Carnes but to several other magicians—but after that Oakland business, we should wait.”
“Really?” I said. “But I wasn’t even the target—”
“San Francisco’s public officials in charge of the regulation of magic are very straitlaced. If there’s another assault, the Commissioner might have you taken into protective custody until ‘all the commotion dies down.’ ” The Warlock grimaced. “I’d . . . keep a low profile.”
“We’ll . . . try to stay out of trouble,” I said. “As much as we can, with a meeting with the Vampire Court and two public talks already on our schedule.”
“I wish you the best of luck with that, Dakota Frost,” the Warlock said. Then he grinned at Cinnamon. “And congratulations, Cinnamon, on your award. You and your mother should be very proud of your accomplishments, and we are glad to have you visit San Francisco.”
Soon, as the doors of the mission closed behind us, I sighed in relief.
“That could have gone worse,” I said. “And we’re free until tonight, yes?”
“Old-school vampires,” Darkrose said, with a smile, “do have a constrained schedule.”
“Oh, you do so love your daylight,” Saffron said, smiling at her.
“Not as much as I love she who gave it back to me,” Darkrose said.
“Lovebirds, get a room,” I said, unexpectedly happy for them. Not so long ago, I had been consumed with jealousy and bitterness. It felt . . . good, not carrying that around anymore. “Well, an afternoon in San Francisco isn’t the worst thing in the world. Preferences?”
“First, we must feed,” Saffron said. “If I don’t get some Chinese food in me, I’m liable to sink my fangs into the nearest Chinese person. After that”—her smile grew very wicked—“Darkrose and I would like to go . . . shopping.”
I blinked. That so wasn’t my space. “All right,” I said. “Any preferences? Chinatown, two birds with one stone? Haight-Ashbury?” I glanced at Saffron’s outfit; she had turned her eye to fashion lately. “You aren’t suggesting we go shopping in Union Square?”
“Macy’s? Bloomingdale’s?” Darkrose said archly. “I think not.”
———
“We were thinking,” Saffron said, “of a place we could find . . . something in leather.”
11. At Last, My Back Is Complete Again
SOMA is a blasted neighborhood “SOuth of MArket Street” in San Francisco that has some of the best leather shops and nightclubs in the entire world. Saffron and Darkrose had planned a tour of virtually all of SOMA’s kinkier shops, starting with the discount Leather Etcetera, heading down Eighth Street to the Mister and Madame S fetish superstore, and continuing on to a variety of boot shops and corsetieres I’d only heard of, looking not just for themselves, but for our mutual friend Jinx—who had given Saffron a list before she and her new husband Doug had left on that boat tour this morning.
Unfortunately, most of the leather shops our vampire friends planned to visit were also sex shops, filled with rare and delightful toys that Saffron and I had eagerly sought out—long ago. But she and I were split, and the very things that had drawn us to those shops were things I thought were not fit for a minor. So, right at the start, I had them drop Cinnamon and me off at their final destination, Stormy Leather, where I had one special purchase in mind.
Leaving Cinnamon outside, I went in, past rows of corsets and vinyl and leather and a woman behind the counter who, shockingly, remembered me after nearly a decade—apparently she didn’t get many deathhawked customers my height. I passed racks of buckles and straps—part of a former life. I squeezed down a narrow stair, discovering a steel bondage chair identical to the one Nyissa had used to imprison me when we had been enemies. It was in the clearance leather department, where the ceiling creaked as patrons browsed above, that I finally found what I wanted. When I emerged from the basement to pay, I enjoyed the saleswoman’s double take as she said, “Wait . . . isn’t that what you bought . . . last time?”
I stepped out into the street wearing a brand-new leather vestcoat—identical to the one that had been my signature before it had been ruined with paint and blood. It was long, barely brushing the ground, and straight, accentuating my height; sleeveless, exposing my arms, but buckled, so I could snap it closed if cold. I’d get interior pockets sewn in back home, but still, it was the best coat I’d ever worn, and cheaper than most, too. Under my arm I held a bag with a second one—the last one on the rack, and quite possibly, the last one like it in the world.
“At last,” I said, shimmying my shoulders, feeling the tails of the coat brush against the ramp as I stepped out onto the street, “my back is complete again.”
“Didn’t you wants to go to the stores with them?” Cinnamon asked, smiling, clicking off her iPod. “Or, I dunno, slip me in? Nothing in there’s gonna shock me. Back at the werehouse . . . I probably had more boys than you have.”
“That was a different life, for both of us,” I said, adjusting my vestcoat. Like a pair of leather wings. Cinnamon was right, but I was determined to give her a real childhood, as best I could—and after our little backstage experience watching Jewel get undressed, I was determined to be a little more careful what environments I took her to from now on. “Now, I have all I need right here: a new jacket, and a new daughter, who I’d very much like to spend time with.”
We walked up the street. SOMA was nowhere near a
s “blasted” as I remembered, and we stopped at Harvest Urban Market, a slick health food grocery wedged underneath apartments—a nice retrofitting of mixed-use onto an old office building. I bought an heirloom tomato from the well-stocked produce section and a slice of cheese and a croissant from the deli, Cinnamon got a few hunks of stew meat from the meat counter, and we found a cozy table beneath the plate glass windows on the Eighth Street side and had a little snack as the cars whizzed by.
I pulled a knife from my boot and cut the tomato, carefully slicing it along the grain of the sections so the juice wouldn’t spill everywhere. Then I salted the slices and ate them, one by one. Cinnamon watched with amusement, tearing chunks off the meat, wolfing them down, and occasionally grabbing the salt shaker to zing up some of the more chewy bits.
We talked about Cinnamon’s “Young Investigator” award. The actual award would be handed out Thursday night at Stanford, at the conference proper, but her sponsor, Professor ZQ, wanted her to give a practice talk at Berkeley first. The request didn’t help her nervousness.
When I got down to the last few slices of tomato, I slipped them and the cheese into the croissant, and chowed down. A little tomato splurted out, and Cinnamon laughed a little too loudly, head kinking aside—some Tourette’s tic bubbling up. Neither of us paid it any mind. Fighting it wouldn’t help Cinnamon keep it under control; only medication would, and it didn’t work too well on the werekindred. She giggled as I took another bite and lost more juice.
“That Chinese lunch didn’t do it for you?”
“Noff so muff,” I replied, wiping my chin again. She giggled, and I sighed, just staring at her: the kinky orange hair, the curvy tiger-tattooed cheeks, the kohl hiding the tattoos around her eyes—my daughter. “Ah, Cinnamon. Didn’t know what I was missing, not being a mother.”
Cinnamon laughed again, looking away, a bit embarrassed. Then she got serious. “Mom, why are we doin’ this? I knows—fah!—I knows you. You’d do anything for me, even tellin’ me I couldn’t come here if it wasn’t safe. But when the wizards gave you flak, you didn’t back off. What gives? It’s like you wanted to take on the whole city.”
I stared into the distance. In a way, I did.
In that plague of magic graffiti, I’d lost more than just friends—I’d lost my lover, killed by magic right before my eyes. Cinnamon lost a childhood friend, burned alive when their home went up in flames. The MSC was more than just a Hail Mary play—it was a full-on crusade.
And it put my old friend Alex Nicholson right in my crosshairs. The Wizarding Guild had forced me to accept Alex as their representative on the MSC, and he’d served well at first . . . but became surprisingly scarce once the Valentine Foundation’s payments had dried up.
That made my blood boil. I wanted to grab Alex Nicholson by the collar and shake him until my money came out. It wasn’t just the mortgage or the Prius. It was Cinnamon’s school, her college fund, the flexibility to slack off at the shop to spend time with her. Damn it.
I set my impromptu sandwich down.
“OK,” I said. I was about to lie to my child about my motives. I was a cad. Or . . . was I? There was more to the crusade than just avenging Calaphase and Revy, and more to this trip than shaking down Alex. “You deserve to know. But this stays between us. Sir Leopold—”
“That evil old lich,” she said, staring straight at me, her ears folded back. That “evil old lich” was Sir Leopold, the leader of the Gentry, an evil-looking vampire who had served as Sherman’s lich during the burning of Atlanta. “He was gonna have me killed, wasn’t he?”
I stared straight back at her. The lich had reacted badly to her Tourette’s; I never had found out exactly what she’d said to him to put her on his shit list. But the lich wasn’t the problem; he’d actually started the Vampire Consulates. The problem was his protégé.
“Sir Leopold knew you were involved. But no, the threat was Scara, his enforcer. She goes off the chain, like she did when she staked Nyissa in the throat.” Cinnamon squirmed, and I said, “She was ready to go after not just you, but all the werekin; the lich let me do ‘this little Security Council thing’ to defuse the situation. But some of the stuff we’ve seen in Council . . . you can’t unsee. It’s like that story about Lincoln and the squirrel. You don’t want to learn the tree in front of your house is rotten, but once you do, you have to cut it down.”
“Sure, but . . .” Cinnamon looked away. “Won’t things eventually blow over with Scara?”
I let out a breath. “When bad shit used to go down in Atlanta, Scara had to track it down personally,” I said. “If I just quit, before real procedures are in place that satisfy Scara . . . I’m afraid six months down the road, she’s going to take matters back into her own hands.”
“So you’re stuck with—fuck!—stuck with this . . . forever.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “This can’t be a one-woman crusade, or eventually it will all fall apart. Maybe it isn’t like the tree and Lincoln after all. I’m not trying to cut something down, I’m trying to build something up. But I can’t quit until the structure is standing—”
“Well, thank God you haven’t been shot in the street,” Vickman called through the glass, and we both jumped. He was standing on the Eighth Street sidewalk, making “pshoom, pshoom” motions with his fingers like he was firing six shooters. He cupped his hands and cried, “You’d think that little emotional experience with Jewel would have made you more cautious!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, finishing my sandwich. Saffron stood behind him in a new corset over a frilly spray of a dress, but Darkrose was so bundled in her traveling cloak that whatever she had bought was hidden, assuming she was even wearing it. “We’re coming.”
“We desperately need to, as you would put it, ‘crash,’ ” Darkrose said. Saffron opened her mouth in protest, but Darkrose overrode her. “Including you, my Lady Saffron. I insist. I have no intention of going to dinner with the Vampire Court with us all on the brink of exhaustion.”
“All right,” I said, checking my watch. It was almost three. For a vampire, that had to be like staying up until five in the morning, or worse. Abruptly, I squeezed Cinnamon in a big sideways hug, and she squeezed back. “We can go back to the hotel and plan our next—”
My smartphone rang and, with my free hand, I dug it out—it was Jewel. At first, I cheered up; then I recalled I hadn’t felt that way about getting a phone call since Calaphase, and the feeling drained away. I sighed. I hadn’t expected that nerve to be so raw.
“Mom, are you all right?” Cinnamon said.
“Yeah,” I said, clearing my throat, then hitting the button. “I’m fine. Hello?”
“Hello?” Jewel said uncertainly. “I’m sorry, is . . . is this Dakota Frost?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to perk up. “Yes, this is Dakota. Sorry. Your call . . . reminded me of something. Never mind—it’s good to hear from you. What a nice surprise, Jewel!”
Cinnamon sneezed and cussed, and Saffron put her hand to her mouth.
“Hey,” Jewel said, then paused. “This is again last minute, but I, uh . . . oh, hell.”
“Yes,” I asked, smiling. Maybe smirking. Everyone was grinning at me. “Go on?”
“There’s an art show tonight,” she said. “Monkton Teriano, the guy who welded the spinning fire pillars at the Crucible, he’s having a showing at Liquid, and a whole bunch of fireweavers are going. Afterward, we’re going to do a performance at Union Square.”
“Wow, firespinning in Union Square!” I said, raising an eyebrow at Cinnamon. “That sounds spectacular. How did you even get a permit for that?”
“We didn’t,” Jewel responded.
Both my eyebrows shot up. “Breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law,” I said. “I’d love to see you spin again, but we’re booked for dinner tonight—”
&
nbsp; “That’s all right, Liquid is a nightclub,” Jewel said. “Artist reception is from seven till ten, and then we’ll walk over to the Square and spin until they chase us away.”
The phone was abruptly taken from my hand. “This is the Lady Saffron,” Saffron said, ducking as I tried to take it back, “Dakota’s friend with the goggles. We would love to see you spin fire, and we plan to be there unless hostile vampires drag us away.”
There was a squawk on the phone, simultaneous with one from me as Saffron spun away, listening. She nodded and smiled. “At Liquid, then. All right, I’m going to take Dakota away from you now for some important business, but I will let you say goodbye.”
The phone was thrust back into my hand, and I fumbled with it. “Uh, so, I guess I’ll see you tonight, then?”
“I hope so, Dakota Frost,” Jewel said, and I swore she licked her lips on the phone. “See you tonight, skindancer.”
“See you, fireweaver,” I replied.
“That beats ‘Granola and Mohawk’ any day,” Cinnamon said.
“What the hell?” Vickman said. “What are you playing at, Saffron?”
“Yes, my Lady,” Darkrose said. “You know we cannot ditch the Vampire Court—”
“I’m not ‘ditching’ anyone,” Saffron said crossly, adjusting her bomber goggles. “First, I want an excuse, however slim, to bail on this little ‘dinner’ if things turn nasty. And second . . . my ultimate goal here is not ‘ditching’ . . . it’s more of ‘hitching.’ ”
And she smiled straight at me, pulling her bomber goggles up so I could see her wink.
“Oh, hell,” I said. “All right, all right, I know I’m licked. I’ll go, I’ll go—”
“But first things first,” Darkrose said. “We vampires must ‘crash’—”
———
“And then,” Vickman said, “we all try to survive dinner with the Vampire Court.”
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