Zero Sum Advanced Review Copy

by Shier, B. Justin

  “Nonsense. One does not glamour the help. It is considered most distasteful…like dancing nude in front of foliage.”

  Dante choked off a laugh.

  I looked at Jules. The Christmas tree. Back at Jules. “Wait, you mean witches’ Sabbaths are real too?”

  Jules’ cheeks flushed. “They’re not watcha think!” Jules jabbed an accusatory finger at Rei. “Stop fillin’ his head with such nonsense.”

  “Druid, did you not intend to invite him to the spring festival?”

  “I…I…” Jules stammered. “Ya saucy twat!”

  “One must use it or lose it, Druid.”

  Ears going ruby, Jules stormed over to the front desk.

  Rei covered her mouth to smile. “I am becoming most excellent with beater humor, am I not?”

  “You mean all the teasing?”

  “Indeed,” Rei replied, “I only recently discovered how the two can be achieved by the same verse.”

  Dante rubbed out his temples. “I can’t wait for Talmax to kill me.”

  Jules returned with the matches before I could go over the rules of preschool playtime with Rei. The grumpy Irishwoman handed one matchbook to Dante and the other one to me.

  “Strike a match and take in the fumes,” she instructed.

  The matches produced a purple flame that smelled a lot like apricots.

  Rei cleared her throat. She still had her hand out.

  “Oh, yer still here?” Jules asked. “I thought ya’d be out suckin’ somethin’ dry by now.”

  “Do not trouble yourself. I’m sure Dieter would be happy to share.”

  Taking me by the hands, she took in a deep draught of the fumes.

  “Delicious,” she cooed.

  “Dieter!” Jules blurted. “Those were for you!”

  I rubbed at my burning eyes. I’d always hated apricots. “Can we all grow up, please?”

  “Wouldn’t that be lovely,” Jules shot back. “I’m goin’ ta the loo.”

  “And I’m going to get us some rooms,” Dante said. “I’m guessing we’ll be needing three to four of them?”

  “They are both quite testy,” Rei observed.

  The lobby looked quite different after inhaling all that sugary smoke. No more moldy wallpaper. No more sewage stench. Heavy iron lamps connected by polished copper pipes adorned the lobby’s walls. They were only decorative now, but they’d probably once been used to light the room. An enormous mural occupied the space above the fireplace. It featured Lewis and Clark departing on their expedition. Next to it stood another handsome pine. This Christmas tree was wrapped round and round with glinting garland. Red and green balls the size of my head hung from the branches. A dozen children were playing hide-and-seek between the fake presents beneath it.

  Growing up in Las Vegas, I’d learned a lot about hotels. Each one caters to a particular segment of society. They’re built from the ground up to serve that single purpose. Back in the railroad days, the Buckingham was probably a pit stop for the powerful. I could imagine the robber barons of old cutting deals in a smoke-tinged drawing room or sipping bourbon with the buxom broads at the bar. Tonight, children in hand-me-downs ran this way and that. Grandparents rested their weary bones on the sofas. Lawyers commiserated with grease monkeys at the bar. Their shoulders were hunched, and their eyes were on their glasses. The booze was meant to numb tonight. This was the long tail of a retreat.

  “Just how bad is this war going?” I asked…only to realize Rei was no longer there. I found her standing in front of a boy seated in a chair. He was wearing a black visor and waving at the air in front of him. She was waving back.

  “Dieter,” she whispered. “What is wrong with this child…is he damaged?”

  “Na, that’s a Fuji-Optrix. It’s a portable video game system. Full virtual reality immersion.”

  “Like the AH-64E’s IHADSS? Can it do 360 degree targeting as well?”

  My brain nearly ‘sploded. “Huh?”

  Still it the middle of his game, the kid let out a sigh. “That’s an attack helicopter, dork.”

  “Indeed. Impressive for a child.”

  “Hey, I’m not a child.”

  “Oh?” Rei asked.

  Ready for a fight, the boy yanked off his Fuji-Optrix goggles. He had to be around fourteen. Unprepared for the sight of a supermodel in a tank top, he did a great impression of a carp.

  “Holy—um, Alex.” He blinked. “That’s my name.”

  “I gathered,” Rei said with a smirk. “My name is Drusilla. I am a witch of humble background.”

  “Of humble what?” Alex asked.

  I facepalmed.

  “My family lacked capital,“ Rei explained. “I dwelt in some sort of hovel.”

  Alex frowned. “That must have sucked.”

  Rei smirked.

  Not happy with the direction of this conversation, I decided to intervene.

  “Where’s everyone coming from?”

  “Arizona mostly.”

  “Is it that bad out there?”

  Alex frowned.” I don’t know, mister, is hell hot?”

  “Wanna find out?” Okay. Yes. I was arguing with a fourteen year old…but I didn’t like how the pimply bastard kept staring at Rei’s tank top.

  “And so you fled?” Rei asked. “You abandoned your city to marauders?”

  Alex looked at the ground. “We barely got out. The wards were never that good to begin with. They didn’t hold for long. And the Weres were everywhere. I mean everywhere. They’re pullin’ people out of their cars on I-40. It’s not like the newspapers say.”

  Alex gestured for us to come closer.

  “I even saw a vamp.”

  “A Nostophoros in Phoenix?” Rei chuckled. “Really, child. Are you certain you were not wearing this fantasy toy at the time?”

  Alex stiffened. “I know a vamp when I see one.” He patted at a lump in his jacket. “We do drills and everything.”

  I groaned. Alex was packing wood.

  “You do drills?” Rei leaned forward and introduced him to the major leagues. It really wasn’t really fair. Rei wasn’t even wearing a bra. “Tell me, have these drills prepared you to face a real one?”

  Alex gulped. The poor kid was going down in the flames of puberty.

  I glanced around the room. None of the hundred or so mages were paying us much heed…but that could all change in an instant.

  “Rei, take it easy. We don’t need to hash this out right now.”

  “Hush, Dieter. The boy claims to be more than a child. Let him speak for himself.”

  “I don’t want no fights with the vamps,” he replied. “That would be stupid.”

  “It most certainly would.” Rei tilted her head in the direction of a blond girl playing with a dozen toy ducklings. She looked six years old at the most. “But what if that little one was in their clutches? Would you abandon her as you did your city?”

  Alex stiffened. “That’s my sister. I’d kill anything that touched her.”

  Rei bared her fangs in a broad smile. Alex didn’t scream. Alex didn’t struggle. He froze like a pane of glass. Not a single muscle budged. Tilting her head to the side, Rei ran a hand through his tangled hair.

  “Such a reasonable little boy…it would be a pity to lose such a rarity. Let me add this important lesson to your training: do try and avoid the eyes.”

  Alex’s barely managed a nod.

  “I do wish to continue our conversation—but is it not past your bedding time?”

  “Yea,” Alex agreed. “Yea, it is past my bedding time.”

  “And should you not be nodding off to sleep, young Alex?”

  “Yea, I should be noddin’ off to sleep.”

  “Good, boy.” Rei drew his scent to her nostrils and let out a little sigh. “May you dream of many triumphs.”

  The boy slumped back into his chair. His lids had already closed.

  “Dieter, were you ever this pleasant?”

  “Huh?” I was still lookin
g at Alex. I had no idea glamour could be that effective. Rei had just shut the kid off with a single thought. I found myself agreeing with Albright. Placing Rei in a squad of glamour resistant mages was the least he could have done. Stars above, she was dangerous.

  “That was so wrong,” Jules chided. Her arms were crossed, and she was wearing her schoolmarm frown.

  “Seriously, Rei. An armchair is no place for a wet dream.”

  “But I did not compel him to wet…” Rei frowned. “Dieter, are you employing a euphemism?”

  “Guys, bad news,” Dante said. “They’re booked solid.

  “Darn,” I replied. “Now what?”

  “Well, we could…hey are those Fuji-Optrix goggles?”

  Jules rolled her eyes. “How about the alumni club? We all qualify, right?”

  “The alumni club?” Dante snapped out of his nerd drooling session. “Oh, yea. That’s what I was going to suggest.” He gestured at a quiet corner of the lobby where an antique mirror hung from a wall. “The front desk said the alumni club had a few more rooms…but we’d have to use our real IDs.”

  Jules shrugged. “Should be fine. All we need ta do is keep ta ourselves. There’s no way that—“

  “There is a safer installment nearby,” Rei offered.

  “Not a chance. I’m not sleepin’ in some drainer crypt.”

  Jules adjusted her puppies-and-rainbows scarf and stormed off toward the mirror.

  “That was racist. Was that not racist?” Rei huffed. “May I kill her just a little?”

  I scratched my head. “Rei, I don’t think you can do just a little of that.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. For instance, a colleague of mine once—”

  “Alumni club it is,” Dante said.

  By the time Rei tried to object, Dante was already halfway there.

  The giant pane of glass was as tall as two men. A green copper frame surrounded it, and a golden pyramid was etched into the top. I recognized the symbol immediately. It was the same creepy eyeball pyramid that was on the back of US dollar bills.

  Rei arched her head and frowned. “How does this function?”

  “Well, it be a pepper ghost,” Jules explained.

  “And that is?” I asked.

  “A hidden opening to an adjacent room,” Dante answered. “Watch and learn.” He placed his palm on the mirror and pushed in a bit of mana. The pyramid’s eye gave out a green glow in reply. At first I thought nothing was happening, but then I noticed some subtle changes. In the reflection, the wall lanterns were lit with gas. The boring carpet was now an expensive silk rug. Ladies lounged in oversized chairs. Two played chess in the corner. The bar inside was made of glowing yellow onyx, and there was an enormous appetizer buffet right beside it. My mouth started to water. Dante walked through the mirror as if it was made of air. As he crossed the threshold, our drab reflections returned.

  “Did ya see them cookies?” Jules asked.

  “Chocolate and oatmeal.”

  “Ya missed the sugars. I saw three different colors of sugars. Oh, and Dieter, there’s no spell ta be cast. All ya have ta do is push in a wee bit of mana.” Jules released some of her own into the mirror. The cookies reappeared.

  “Exclusive magic cookies…” I muttered. “Must eat exclusive magic cookies…”

  “Not before me ya don’t.” Giant guidebook in hand, Jules hopped through the ghost.

  Rei crossed her arms and frowned. “Why you beaters bake is beyond me. Doesn’t burning your foodstuffs like that destroy the flavor?”

  “Cookies aren’t burnt, they’re browned.”

  “They smell like a fireplace.”

  “Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “They don’t smell burnt to me.” I shrugged. “But I don’t have super nose powers either.”

  “Indeed. We are never granted more than one.” Rei gestured to the peppers ghost. “Well, go enjoy some of your vittles then. I shall rejoin the three of you later.”

  “What, you’re not coming?”

  “I have matters to attend to.”

  I frowned. She was lying. “Are you not allowed inside?”

  “It is a public establishment, Dieter.”

  “So what’s the hang up?”

  Rei’s jaw tightened. “I simply do not wish to visit such an insipid place.”

  I frowned. That had felt like a lie. And besides, the alumni club had cookies, and little crackers with cheese, and piles of cold cuts on crusty bread, and mounds of delicious stuffed things. It didn’t look insipid at all. It looked exciting. And there were mages to talk to. Lots of mages. I had about a million and one questions to ask, and then there were the books I’d spotted lining all the walls…but none of that excited me anymore.

  “I saw another place across the street,” I offered. “We could get a room over there.”

  Rei blinked. “My most aggressive counterpart, are you offering to spend the night with me?”

  “Sofa.” I near choked on the word. “You take the bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  “But it’s the middle of the night…and I rarely take my meals to bed.”

  I blanched.

  “Relax, my buta fiú. My clan has a townhouse just across the park. Go spend some time with your fellows. I shall pay respects to my own. We can rejoin later.” Rei covered her mouth and yawned. “Besides, while your skull’s marrow was most delicious, I do require a proper meal. I’ve hardly dined properly since our little soiree in October.”

  “You mean you’re going to…”

  “Subsist on more than air?” Rei laughed it off as if it were another joke. “Yes, Dieter, as long as it does not upset your fine sensibilities, I do wish to keep living.” She went to straighten my collar. “Now tuck this shirt in at its bottom. You remind me of Dwight Frye.”

  Rei’s cool fingers were oh-so gentle, but all I could think about was the next poor sap who was about to make their acquaintance. Would he get the same treatment?

  “Rei, what is a proper meal?”

  Rei’s hand paused on the button. She didn’t raise her head.

  “I am curious, Dieter. What do you think it means?”

  I took in an unsteady breath. I’d been dancing around this one a bit.

  “I think that we’ve gotten past the guessing stage. I think that you should spell it out.”

  Rei glanced at our reflections in the mirror. “I fail to see what purpose that would serve.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Rei pushed off me and turned her head to the side. She looked so small standing there alone on the cold marble floor. More delicate than I’d allowed her to be. More breakable.

  “Dieter,” she asked, “do I disgust you?”

  I stood there in silence for what felt like a long time. The truth was that Rei had a way of making my skin crawl. The truth was that she was a murderer. But the way she was looking at me…it made me want to ignore all that. It made me want to keep her safe. It made me want to do all the hurting so that she wouldn’t have to. And so I decided to do something much stupider. I decided to lie to a vampire.

  “Stars above, Rei. Of course not.”

  The pain crackled across her features. Her very presence seemed to fade away. I felt the wrenching in my guts. I could sense the harm I’d done. When she looked up, she looked straight past me. It was the cruelest thing she’d ever done.

  “I can understand disgust. I can understand contempt. But lying to me is another matter. Another matter entirely.”

  “Can we just let this go?”

  “That you find my very existence revolting?” Rei’s jaw went taught with rage. Her anger struck me like a hammer. “Tell me, Dieter. How does one let such a thing go?”

  “You could start by being grateful.” I could hardly believe I’d said it…but I found I was getting angry too. Unreasonably so. The way she had looked past me. I didn’t want to forgive her for that. I wasn’t the one in the wrong here. I wasn’t the one crushing windpipes. “This whole murdering peopl
e for sustenance thing is a little hard to handle. You know, them being people and all.”

  Rei clenched her fists, and her voice slid out on a lethal whisper. “Dieter, only a fool judges what he does not understand. And you are being quite foolish right now.”

  “Foolish?” I laughed right in her condescending face. “But isn’t foolish the way you like me?”

  “Excuse me?” she snarled.

  “You know exactly what I mean.” Rei was always hiding the truth, always yelling at me for not knowing, but I was starting to pick up on a pattern. Whether it was with me, or with Jules, or with Monique, or even with that poor kid Alex, Rei plain loved rubbing someone’s nostrils in their errors. Power and control, that was what it was all about. Rei relished her own dominance, and yet she had the gall to scold me on my manners? I wasn’t the one snacking on people nightly…or was it more than nightly? I’d never really pondered it. Exactly how many people did it take to keep a full-grown Nostophoros humming? One man a week…two…enough to fill a morgue? Did the pretentious bitch crack open a kid or two for starters and then kick back on the couch with a nice virgin? And speaking of which, I was still technically a virgin. So could Rei maybe like smell that? Rei had sniffed her hand after rubbing Alex’s hair…may she got off on that virgin mojo…old Liz Bathory sure seemed to, and apples didn’t tend to fall to far from the—

  “Fascinating,” Rei whispered.

  “Huh?” I was still kinda caught up in my internal tirade.

  “So this is what I am to you.” It occurred to me that I’d been staring into Rei’s eyes this entire time. It occurred to me that’s how the weft-link worked best. It occurred to me that Rei was standing like a brittle piece of ice. It occurred to me that she might be crying.

  “Rei, I’m—“

  “Do you have any idea the concessions I make? The struggles I must endure?” She took a step towards me, pure murder in her eyes. “And feeding off your young…this is all your feeble mind could dredge up?” Rei’s face tightened, and I found myself against the wall. My Sight had flared—but after she had moved. “I’m not like her, you feckless pig. I shall never be like her. I am my own will to command. I live by my own rules, my own wishes, and I shall not stand to have you smear excrement all over what you know nothing about!”