“Your question,” Mrs. Brandon asked. “It’s nothing inflammatory, right?”
I thought it was rather too late to be making sure of that, but I nodded. “I’m mostly curious. His rise to prominence has happened very fast.”
“In certain circles,” Mrs. Brandon said. “He’s very well-connected.”
“Ah,” I said, a neutral acknowledgment of the delicacy of her reply. I would have heard of him long ago if I had any access to power, she meant. I gratefully acknowledged that I remained, in my Ludlow Street boardinghouse, quite far from that world.
Except now I was sitting in the Safety Council’s inner sanctum, with the mayor’s special Other advisor beside me. A few books and leaflets had been arranged on the long wood coffee table. A Cleansed World was the title of one well-produced pamphlet written by Madison himself. His old-fashioned visage stared straight ahead from a photograph on the last page. A glance through revealed it to be a paean to the halcyon days when vampires were staked on sight and humans had “very nearly won the battle against the greatest evil, cloaked in human skin.” Then he called for righteous humans to recommence the battle, and destroy vampires once and for all.
“Charming,” I muttered, and after a moment of consideration, squashed the pamphlet into my pocket.
“I’m sorry for the delay, Mrs. Brandon,” said the lady at the front desk. “I believe his broker had just called about an urgent matter when you arrived.”
“Oh dear. I hope it’s nothing bad. The market has been so volatile this summer.”
The lady spread her lips in a patronizing smile. “Not at all. One of his more speculative investments has taken off, as I understand it.”
“How perspicacious of him,” Mrs. Brandon said. “I’m hopelessly conservative in my investments, I’m afraid. My late husband had a keen eye for stocks, but I must labor without his insight.”
If she was involved in the stock market, Mrs. Brandon was probably not doing badly for herself, conservative investments aside. The stock market was a rich man’s gambling hall. My mind was boggled at the vast sums wagered and lost on Wall Street. On the other hand, these days everyone seemed to be winning. I’d even caught Mrs. Brodsky putting a few calls into a broker last month, which had given Aileen and me no small amount of amusement.
At long last, Madison himself entered the parlor with the air of a man expecting a standing ovation. Mrs. Brandon gave him one, rising to offer her hand. He kissed it and then turned to me with a quizzical expression. Feeling the disadvantage of his towering height, I stood as well.
“Delightful to see you, as always, Mrs. Brandon,” he said. “And who is your companion?”
“Zephyr Hollis, Archibald Madison. Miss Hollis has been retained by the mayor in an advisory capacity.”
“Limited advisory capacity,” I said quickly. The last thing I wanted was for my association with the mayor to become public knowledge.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Hollis,” he said. “Shall we go to my office?”
Mrs. Brandon and I followed him past a series of open rooms, each of which looked more like a tea parlor than an office space. In the one closest to the entrance, two men discussed something from two plush armchairs. Otherwise the grand offices struck me as oddly empty. Why bother with so much space if you had nothing to do with it? Madison’s office was at the end of the hallway, with tall windows that overlooked the avenue. His room actually contained a desk, but we instead sat on more of his modern parlor furniture.
“Miss Hollis,” he said, “pardon my asking, but you look awfully familiar. Have you by any chance attended one of our Safety Council community meetings?”
I coughed. “I’m afraid I haven’t, Mr. Madison,” I said. “Though I’m very curious.”
“I see,” he said and stared at me for another moment before shrugging and turning to Mrs. Brandon. “I asked you here because I wanted to tell you, in person, how very much I appreciate your attention to me and my movement for the last several months. I feel like I have the mayor’s ear in some small way, which can be heartening for a man such as myself. I believe that Mayor Walker and I see eye to eye on many issues. And I look forward to working with him on those. But after much deliberation, I’m afraid I must decline your invitation to the dinner on Saturday.” He shook his head, the very picture of moral regret. “I simply cannot compromise my positions to such an extent. Even if I am only attending as an interested party, you know how these yellow journalists would cast it.”
Mrs. Brandon took this blow with grace, though I noticed her right hand spasm briefly, clutching the wood beneath the couch cushion.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear that, Mr. Madison,” she said, her voice so gentle it was almost melodic. “But I understand. You are a principled man—that’s why the mayor values your opinion so highly. Perhaps I might call on you again, if circumstances change…”
But Madison shook his head firmly. I could tell that beneath the pained regret, he was quite enjoying this exercise of power over the mayor, if only by proxy. I empathized with Mrs. Brandon; her position as mayoral punching bag could not be easy to bear.
“Well, then. I will not take up any more of your time. But Miss Hollis wished to ask you a question, I believe?”
“A question, Miss Hollis?” he said. “I am always delighted to see the interest of our youth,” he said. “I’d be happy to answer whatever it is.”
Ah, yes. I had considered many options on the ride up, and this seemed safest. “I had just wondered, Mr. Madison,” I said, “what you think about the recent deaths from Faust? Given your position on the matter of vampires in general, perhaps now you have cause to celebrate the drug?”
His low chuckle filled me with disgust. But at least he was willing to answer. “You want to know what I think of it? I think it’s merely justice, long-delayed. I think using Faust as the means of retribution is God’s signal to all of us who toil on the righteous path. But I still cannot in good conscience celebrate the drink that makes the monsters more monstrous, even if it has proven to be their poison. Does that satisfy you, Miss?”
I nodded. “Quite.”
Mrs. Brandon stood a moment later, clearly eager to vacate the office after her rejection. Madison stood with us, but as we walked out of his office I paused and turned to him, as though embarrassed.
“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” I said, “but where is your washroom? Would you mind?”
He directed me to the one closed door next to his office. Mrs. Brandon frowned and told me she would wait downstairs, in a tone that suggested she wished my bladder had better manners. Madison was too puffed-up with his victory to notice much at all, and so I was soon left alone in the Safety Council headquarters. I ducked into the lavatory just in case someone was watching and then opened the door soundlessly. No one was there. Even the two men in the room down the hall seemed to have left. I heard Madison’s rumble and Mrs. Brandon’s softer echo from the parlor. Good, I had a little time left. I dashed into his office, which he had left open, and ran to his desk. I didn’t know what I hoped to find. A bottle of Faust marked “poison”? I snorted softly. The top drawer contained ten or so fountain pens, neatly arrayed in cases. I bit my lip—just one of these would be worth a mint, and he kept them in an unlocked drawer? The Safety Council must have some wealthy benefactors. The second drawer seemed to have drafts of correspondence—hastily scrawled notes on letterhead and stacks of what appeared to be essays written in longhand. But none of it looked particularly interesting at first glance. “Vampire scourge” this and “reclaim our heritage” that, nothing that indicated a specific plan to kill vampires, just a general desire to see them dead. Was that enough?
Of course not. He said as much in the pamphlet I had in my pocket. His ideas were hateful, but not proof of specific intent. The third drawer was locked, and the vein in my neck throbbed as I removed a pin from Aileen’s hat and stuck it carefully into the keyhole. I still heard Madison’s voice in the parlor, but it sou
nded as though his interlocutor was the receptionist, not Mrs. Brandon. He would be back soon. Luckily, the lock was simple, truly a rip for such an expensive desk. Books this time, a thick volume of the first half of the Oxford English Dictionary, with a magnifying glass on top. It was a handsome edition, but it struck me as an odd thing to lock in a drawer. So I pulled it out. The drawer was empty, but it didn’t take much effort for me to find a latch in back, which released the false bottom.
I stared at a photograph of a young flapper wearing an ostrich feather, fox-head stole, silk shoes … and nothing else. Behind her, a vampire bit the back of her knee, though she looked more ecstatic than alarmed. Years of Aileen’s erotic novels had not quite prepared me for the sight. I flipped through the others—more of the same, mostly young human girls and cruel, malevolent, darkly sexual vampires of either gender engaging in acts that would make my mother faint to hear about. I supposed I must be naïve for such a revelation to surprise me, but I was as appalled as a Victorian matron. How did these women keep from turning, if they regularly allowed themselves to be bitten by vampires? I had heard of scientists investigating prophylactic possibilities for vampirism transmission, but I doubted they had reached a stage where the practices depicted in these photographs could in any way be considered safe. I felt the old indignation rise up—if nothing laid bare the falsehood of Madison’s moral posturing, this would. To rail against vampirism while supporting the exploitation of women and vampires alike in the production of this kind of sick pornography?
Unfortunately, my moral indignation was so acute, I had quite forgotten the imminent threat of detection. At the last moment, I heard footsteps hurrying up the hall. I cursed silently and replaced the false bottom and then the dictionary. I certainly had no time to lock the drawer before I stood. I pushed it silently shut with my foot.
A man stood in the doorway. Not Madison, thankfully, but a balding, hunched man who looked older than the robust demagogue. He must have been one of the men in the other office, and he stared at me with something like horror.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I … I thought I left my compact here,” I said.
“Behind his desk?” the man said. “Mr. Madison is coming back now.” He said this with some urgency, as though it would harm him for me to be caught snooping in his employer’s office. Did he know about the pornography? Perhaps it was his duty to guard it.
“I’m leaving now,” I said, and hurried to the door. As I walked past him, he caught my wrist in a painfully strong grip.
“It’s not safe,” he said in a fierce whisper. His milky gray eyes, wide and intense, held me as firmly as his hand on my wrist. “You shouldn’t have come. Someone might see.” He spoke as though he knew me, but I had never seen him before in my life.
“I think you’ve mistaken me for someone, sir,” I said, struggling to keep calm. Did Madison employ madmen in his office?
But the man just stared at me for a moment longer and then nodded, releasing me. “Right,” he said, still whispering. “Good, Miss Hollis. But you must leave now.”
To emphasize his point, gave me a hard push just in time to catch Madison coming back. He inclined his head to me and I thanked him before hurrying out.
I did not want to be here when he discovered his drawer unlocked. Hopefully he would dismiss it as an oversight on his part, but I couldn’t be sure. Downstairs, Mrs. Brandon was seated in the backseat of the town car with barely concealed impatience.
“Where should I drop you off,” she asked brusquely, as I climbed back inside. “I must get back downtown.”
“City Hall should be fine,” I said. “That’s where I left my bicycle.”
She wrinkled her nose, as though even the word carried a faint odor of poverty, but I didn’t mind. Without the instant command of a hackney whenever one wished, a bicycle was as good a mode of transportation as any.
“Thank you very much for bringing me, Mrs. Brandon,” I said, when the driver pulled up in front of the main post office across the street from City Hall.
“Then at least one of us got something out of this,” she said. “I hope the next time we meet you will have good news for the mayor, Miss Hollis.”
She drove away and I wondered to what extent her fortunes in this matter depended on my own.
CHAPTER FOUR
My bicycle had vanished.
I stared at the unencumbered gate for a very long time. I could almost imagine that I’d forgotten where I locked it, if not for the neatly printed note an officer had left on the fence where my bicycle had once rested.
Bicycle, color rust and black, confiscated by the New York Police Department. For retrieval, please come to Headquarters (240 Centre Street).
“Goddamnit!” I said, and as that seemed entirely too mild for the occasion, concluded with the solid, venerable, “Fuck.”
“I always know life is about to get interesting when Zephyr starts to curse,” said a voice behind me.
My heart stuttered. I had wondered if he would find me today. “Did you come to gloat, o prince?”
Amir put his hand on my shoulder; I let it linger longer than I should. “Never,” he said, with uncharacteristic solemnity. “You know I’d help if you would let me.”
“How about I wish for a new bicycle?”
“Really?” He seemed torn between horror and amusement.
I snorted. “Not really. Something tells me that I’d end up crushed under a mountain of them if I wished now.”
And I still have to find a way to break our bond, I thought.
“Entirely possible,” he said. “I take it that’s what the friendly officers were doing here a few minutes ago?”
Indignation made me draw myself up to my full height—still only about par with his shoulder blades, but I hoped my glare made up the difference. “You saw them and didn’t stop it?”
Amir gave that throaty, low laugh that I so loathed (or, at least, it did things to me that I loathed) and leaned against the bars of the fence. “How was I supposed to know what they were doing, Zeph? I thought I’d catch you after your meeting with Mr. Walker, so I’ve been waiting for quite a while. I thought they were absconding with some other miscreant’s broken-down bicycle. You’re well rid of the thing, you know.”
I scowled at him. “I have no funds to purchase another. It works well enough.”
He ignored this obvious falsehood. “And that sorry little bicycle warranted officers from headquarters? I thought they seemed too energetic for traffic cops.”
I closed my eyes against the obvious conclusion. “Oh, damn the vice squad.”
“Is that a wish?”
I leaned against the fence, just beside him but not touching. “I am not making a wish, Amir.”
“I know.”
“I still have a week.”
“For what, I wonder.”
I couldn’t tell him, so I changed the subject. “What did you want me for, anyway?”
“I need a reason?”
“Most likely.”
He sighed and pulled a coin from the pocket of his impeccably tailored suit. If he and Jimmy Walker ever met, they could have quite the conversation about men’s fashion.
“I thought I could feed you. Dinner at the Ritz? The chef there makes this incredible cold soup he calls a vichyssoise. No meat, he swears up and down.”
“Really?” I said, stunned to sincerity.
“My word as a prince.”
I needed to make a late-night delivery for Ysabel’s Blood Bank, but I had an hour to spare, and with Amir transportation was never much trouble. I agreed.
* * *
The vichyssoise was delicious as promised; Amir ordered a second bowl and an extra loaf of bread and butter without my asking. He ate himself, but daintily, picking at his food as though he could hardly bother.
“Do you need to eat?” I asked, considering the question for the first time.
He looked up from his plate with a delicately arc
hed eyebrow. “How gauche of you, Zephyr. I’ve been playing human for months now.”
Of course, Amir had two strikes against his full participation in our bigoted society: his status as an Other and his dark skin. Passing as human was, for him, a simple enough matter. But that still left the other, trickier question. I had wondered how a man I had once seen scorned for tea at the Roosevelt had landed the suites at the Ritz. But I now realized it was a matter of presentation and money: a wealthy Arab prince of impeccable education was an interesting social object, even if his peers called him “nigger” behind his back. I considered how money could warp otherwise straightforward prejudice. As long as he masked his Otherness, he could swim in some very rarefied social waters.
“Answer the rube, then.”
He shrugged. “Of course. In Shadukiam the definition of food gets a tad wider, but I need some form of sustenance.”
“Maybe we should get you some frankfurters on the street corner.”
He grinned at me, and I couldn’t help but grin back. Ten-cent hot dogs: Amir’s secret weakness. We shared that moment—happiness, with the promise of something more—until someone approached our table. I recognized Mrs. Brandon with a shock, one compounded by the friendliness with which she greeted Amir.
“I’m just on my way out,” she said. “I wondered if I might see you here.”
“Official duties?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Personal, thankfully. I’m on my way to the Society. That young friend of yours is doing another reading—speaking of which, I see you know Miss Hollis as well?”
“Small world,” Amir said, with a certain tone in his voice that made me suspect this acquaintance was not mere chance.
“Nice to see you again, Mrs. Brandon,” I said. “You said you were going to a society?”
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