Wicked City

by Alaya Johnson

  She shuddered and for a moment I thought she might cry. Harry was very adult and reassuring, which spared me the task of being sympathetic.

  We left her in the parlor without much of an argument while Harry and I went out the back door to the small alleyway. Harry had secured the metal doors of the cellar with a blessed blade and a chain.

  “The sucker’s still alive?” I whispered.

  Harry pulled out the sword, handed it to me and tossed open the doors. “When I left him,” he said. “He swore he knew you, so I thought I’d check.”

  “Please tell me that you did not just threaten to kill a law-abiding vampire who happened to be coming by to pay me a visit? And that you definitely did not lock him in my landlady’s cellar!”

  He led the way down the steep stairs. “Well, I don’t know, Zeph,” he said, looking over his shoulder with a disconcertingly appraising look. “I’m the last one to tell you not to do whatever you like with yourself, but I thought it was possible you didn’t want a sucker with a gun in his pocket climbing up your fire escape to crawl through your window.”

  Nicholas, again? “That’s … ah…” I smiled awkwardly at my suddenly all grown up younger brother. “Thanks, Harry.”

  The cellar was crowded and dark, filled with enough canned food to last us a winter and piles of bric-a-brac it would take a miner to uncover. Harry had tied the sucker quite neatly in a far corner. He was gagged, which explained the eerie silence. I so expected to see Nicholas once again that I nearly yelped when Harry lit the oil lamp Mrs. Brodsky had given us.

  “Charlie!”

  Charlie met my eyes and then looked at the floor, so embarrassed even his muffled greeting sounded like a bleat.

  “It’s okay, Harry,” I said. I put down the sword and set about prying open Harry’s thorough knots.

  “Zephyr, I’m sorry, Nick said I could go through the window, I didn’t mean nothing by it!” I could have sworn he was blushing, except vampires didn’t really blush. Blood near the skin indicated a recent feeding.

  I knelt and untied his feet. “Nicholas shouldn’t have gone through the window, either,” I said. “You’re lucky that my brother has such forbearance.”

  Harry grinned and ruffled my dust-filled hair. “I’m my daddy’s son, but my sister’s brother.”

  I stood up. “You mean you didn’t buy all of Daddy’s tripe about me ruining the family name?”

  “Of course not, Zeph. Look at you! You’re living like a pauper just so you can do what you believe in. That’s really something. And I think you’re right, to a point. When they’re not evil, suckers can be all right.”

  Charlie sat up a little straighter. “Course we can,” he said.

  “Just like humans,” I said carefully.

  Harry shrugged. “A sucker’s a little more dangerous than your average person.”

  I thought about Archibald Warren and whoever had decided to start poisoning vampires. “Maybe,” I said. I stood up. “So, Charlie, what’s so important that you had to come crawling up my fire escape to tell me?”

  “Nick said you needed the bottle. I got it in my bag, but your … friend here took it.”

  Charlie looked at me hopefully. “Harry,” I said, “give him his stuff back. Charlie, Harry’s my brother.”

  “Glad to meet you, Harry.” He held out his hand and after a moment Harry shook it.

  “So what’s this bottle?” Harry asked, taking the dark glass from Charlie’s bag. Harry handed it to me, and even though the cork had been firmly replaced, Faust’s unmistakable stench leeched through.

  “You don’t recognize it?” I asked. “The scourge of New York’s undead?”

  Harry wrinkled his nose. “Don’t know how they can drink that stuff. Smells foul.”

  “S’not so bad,” Charlie said defensively. “But don’t let anyone drink that one. It’s got the poison, whatever it is.”

  I nodded. “Listen, I need you to deliver this for me. Take it to Lily Harding, at the New-Star Ledger offices in the Flatiron Building. In person, okay?”

  Charlie nodded. “They’re not always so friendly to suckers round there, Zephyr, but I’ll figure it out.”

  “Thanks, Charlie.” I scribbled a note telling Lily what was in the bottle and suggesting she find someone who could analyze it. Money and contacts could work miracles my goodwill couldn’t. I folded it in half and handed it to him. “Tell Nicholas I’ll see what I can do.”

  Charlie beamed. “Okay, Zeph. I’ll … be seeing you around, then. Nick says you’re going to get us into the morgue? I want to see if Kevin really got turned back before he died. That’s what they’re saying, you know. Some of us are even trying to find the poison. You know, like it might not be so bad being dead, if you got to be human one last time.”

  He looked almost wistful, which scared me in a strange way. “Charlie, you’re not—”

  “Oh! No! Not me, Zephyr, no way. Nick needs me and besides, this isn’t so bad. But maybe I can just see the logic, that’s all.”

  He shrugged and pulled a heavy cloak from his bag. “Bye, Zephyr,” he said. I waved as he put the hood over his head and climbed carefully back into the sunlight.

  “That’s one way to start a morning,” I said, after he had left. “Want to share breakfast with me? Mrs. Brodsky probably won’t mind, given that you’ve saved her from uncleanliness. I must warn you, however, that the porridge is always lumpy.”

  Harry put his hand on my arm. “I think you should come back to headquarters with me.”

  “I’m wearing slippers!” I said, still laughing, though I saw something oddly serious behind Harry’s eyes.

  “I’ll wait for you to dress.”

  “What is this, Harry? Why are you here so early, anyway? And without a note?”

  He sighed. “It’s Mama,” he said. “She says that Daddy’s gone crazy.”

  * * *

  “What exactly constitutes crazy?” I asked, drinking surprisingly decent coffee in the Defenders parlor. “Because it’s not as though our daddy is some paragon of mental hygiene.”

  Harry took a tactful bite of toast. He was too loyal to agree with me, and too honest to argue. “She didn’t want me to tell you,” he said, after a moment.

  “Mama? Why not?”

  “Because she thinks it’s got something to do with you. Why he’s gone crazy.”

  I put down the cup, forcefully enough to splash my fingers. “Christ, Harry, what is he doing? Running naked down Main Street?”

  Harry swallowed. “Mama says … he burned down his shack, Zeph. Soaked it in kerosene and stayed to make sure the whole place had turned to a cinder.”

  “His weapons…”

  “Mama said he saved a few of those. But everything else. All his hunting notes, the trophies—”

  “Good riddance,” I said, recalling Daddy’s grisly collection of tokens from past hunts: strips of fur, taxidermied hands, teeth, and odd bits of jewelry.

  “He loves that collection.”

  Which was true. Even if it made me shudder to step through the door of what I had privately referred to as Daddy’s “lair,” that didn’t make him love it any less. I couldn’t imagine him allowing Mama to clean the place, let alone burning it to the ground.

  “Did he say why?”

  “He won’t talk about it. But Mama said he’s been acting more paranoid since this rabbi came to Yarrow a few weeks ago.”

  “A rabbi? Are there any Jews in Yarrow?”

  “I didn’t think so. But he wasn’t setting up shop. He was asking questions about some sort of grimoire, like Daddy has anything to do with those. Mama didn’t hear any more than that, but afterward Daddy started acting strange. He keeps asking if you’ve come to your senses.”

  I blinked. “He does? He’s not still hoping I’ll rejoin the Defenders?”

  “That too,” Harry said, and looked away.

  “Why,” I asked, taking too long to put this together, “were you underneath my window to catch Ch
arlie in the first place?”

  “To tell you about Mama—”

  “Knock on the door, then. You were skulking under my window!”

  Harry blushed red as his hair and twisted his empty coffee cup in his hands. “Daddy would kill me if anything happened to you. He made me promise when I came out here.”

  “He doesn’t think I can take care of myself?”

  “He doesn’t think you’ll bother,” Harry said, blush fading. He looked straight at me. “And, frankly, Zeph, I agree with him. Charlie—he was one of those Turn Boys, wasn’t he? Troy told me about them. The police were bad enough, but now you’re nosing around these murders—”

  “How do you know that?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Is it a secret? I swear half the Lower East Side has heard of you. It doesn’t take much effort to follow your tracks. For me, or anyone else interested.”

  My scalp prickled. I finished the last of my coffee, lukewarm and bitter. “Has anyone else been interested?”

  Harry started to speak, paused, and put his cup firmly on the table. “Archibald Warren, I think.”

  “What?” That was the last name I had expected to hear.

  “I saw one of his acolytes at that blind pig in Little Italy. You know, the one on Broome Street.”

  “Why do you think he was after me?”

  “He was asking around the whole place. Trying to find out if you’d been there and what you might have known about the two dead suckers.”

  I sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “How do you know he was with Warren?”

  Harry blushed again, but more modestly—just in his cheeks, and there was something self-satisfied in his smile as he leaned back in his chair. “I, ah, have a passing acquaintance with another one of Warren’s associates.”

  “Passing acquaintance.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  With one of Archibald Warren’s inner circle! I could only imagine the reaction if that got out. “The monogrammed letter kind?” I asked, just to be sure.

  Harry nodded. I whistled. “And Daddy’s worried about me?” I said.

  My younger brother—who was most certainly, absolutely, no longer the child who had once put a beehive in my knickers—gave a delicate shrug. “What Daddy doesn’t know,” he said, “can’t hurt him.”

  * * *

  I loved my bicycle. Maybe the gears jammed, maybe the brakes caught, perhaps the front wheel had been bent ever so slightly to the left, but as soon as I pushed off from the curb, I felt like I’d come home. Two days of walking in this sticky heat had felt like an eternity. Now I glided past the teeming mess of my neighborhood streets with verve.

  Thursday was still young, so I mapped out who I most needed to see today before Aileen’s séance. If I was to keep my bargain with Nicholas and get into the morgue, Judith Brandon was my best chance. But before I could do that, I had to check in with Elspeth. She would want to know of my latest discoveries, particularly about events at the Beast’s Rum. I bought a paper from a newsboy on my way over and checked it for any news about the recent deaths. Thankfully, it looked like no one else had died but those two vampires at the Beast’s Rum on Tuesday night. An anonymous official in the mayor’s office offered sympathy for the most recent deaths and confirmed that they suspected a killer—not Faust itself. No less a personage than Police Commissioner Warren had vowed to “not rest until we’ve found who is responsible.”

  He might even mean it, I thought, but I still didn’t trust anyone associated with the mayor to give vampires a fair shake.

  I found Elspeth exactly where I expected—toiling without pause in the dark, stuffy upstairs room on First Avenue. She was alone, and seemed startled when I entered.

  “Have you found something?” she asked, putting down a pen with ink-smudged fingers.

  She looked tired, though it was a difficult thing to judge in a vampire. They didn’t sleep in any way I could recognize, though they could only go so long without resting. I’d seen vampires at rest upright against a wall with their eyes open. Most at least feigned the appearance of sleep, but it always disturbed me to see someone who looked human maintain that uncanny stillness. I imagined that Elspeth had not managed even a short rest for the last several days.

  “I have the bottle of Faust that might have killed the latest two vampires,” I said.

  “Really? That’s marvelous! I take it you’ve seen this morning’s paper? They’re vowing to catch the killer, now. Do you think they’re serious?” Elspeth asked.

  “They might be. I can ask my journalist friend what she thinks.” I picked up Elspeth’s copy of the New-Star Ledger and fruitlessly scanned the stories for Lily’s byline. She hadn’t managed to get any column space. I hoped that didn’t indicate anything too dire.

  “If you think the police can be trusted, you should give them that bottle. It’s vital that Faust’s role in this be clear to the public, one way or another.”

  “You wouldn’t rather use the ambiguity in our favor?” I said.

  She shook her head. “In the long run, Zephyr, the truth is always best.”

  As usual, Elspeth had made me feel very small-minded. “Mind if I ask my friend first? I don’t trust the police in this town to find Times Square with a Baedeker.”

  Elspeth nodded brusquely and retrieved her pen. She started writing, then paused and looked back up at me. “You came for something else?”

  “I have a question. About the … djinni matter.”

  “Have you changed your mind?”

  I grimaced. “That’s the trouble. I’ve, ah, been informed that it’s possible that, ah, breaking from my djinni like this might hurt him. That he might be exiled from Shadukiam for the rest of his life. Which is, let me tell you, a very, very long time.”

  Elspeth frowned. “Why do you care if the djinni is exiled? Surely that’s one less to worry about.”

  I might have to worry about this one anyway, I thought. “I just want us to be separate from each other. But I don’t want to ruin his life.”

  “Zephyr, just how well do you know your djinni?”

  “He is mine,” I said, with an awkward laugh. “It would be hard not to know him a little.” I had a sudden flash of Amir’s hot hands popping the buttons from my blouse, tipping me over the balcony of his brother’s palace in Shadukiam … kissing me.…

  “I really don’t know,” Elspeth said. “I can ask Sofia, if you like. I don’t think there’s been many attempts to do this sort of thing before.”

  “Thank you!” I said, backing away quickly. “You can send me a note, if you like. Or I can stop by later. In any case, I must run. I might have a lead on the murders.”

  Elspeth didn’t even acknowledge me. Sighing as though she had better things to attend to, she picked up her pen and resumed writing.

  * * *

  City Hall was bustling again, some sort of legislative session having just released for lunch. I pushed through the throng to reach the hallway I remembered from my first visit. The secretary at the entrance to the back offices frowned up at me when I asked to see Judith Brandon. However, she agreed to see if Mrs. Brandon could speak to me, though “we’re all terribly busy today, as you can see.”

  She returned a few minutes later and indicated that I should follow her. I hurried behind, through the hallway that I recognized, around several corners that I didn’t, and then down two flights of stairs.

  “You’re not taking me to the dungeon, are you?” I said, attempting a smile.

  “Not quite,” she said.

  There were no windows, just a few sparse lights that gave off a hazy orange glow. Most of the rooms appeared to be storage spaces, but two offices capped the end of the hallway. One looked empty and the woman stopped by the second: a plain door with a green beveled glass window and a placard reading: BRANDON.

  The woman nodded at the knob and left, as though she thought something unpleasant might happen if she lingered. I hesitated, looked up and down the deserted hallway, and kn
ocked.

  “Come in,” said a voice.

  I entered. Mrs. Brandon was seated behind a small desk that took up most of the room. She had organized her space carefully: books lined the walls, paper sat in neat, if overlarge, piles on her desk. She was perusing one now—a short paper with a rough scrawl that I couldn’t hope to read upside-down.

  “You’ve heard already?” she said.

  “Well…”

  She sighed. “Jimmy will have to speak to the press. It’s gone too far for anything less.”

  “Another death,” I hazarded, and Judith nodded grimly.

  “Stranger this time,” she said. “Whose interests could this possibly serve? I don’t suppose you have any theories, Miss Hollis?”

  “I just heard a rumor,” I said, putting my best face on it. “I’m a little hazy on the details.”

  Mrs. Brandon gestured to a wooden folding chair, the only other seat.

  “An officer,” she said. “A specialist on the Other vice squad.”

  “A vampire officer?” I didn’t need the clarification, but I asked regardless.

  “An unusual situation,” Mrs. Brandon said. “He was turned in the course of duty. He didn’t wish to leave the service, and his partner fought for him to stay on.”

  “But,” I said, “I just saw him last evening.”

  She looked up sharply from the scribbled missive. “You knew Officer Zuckerman?”

  “He was investigating me. For the other matter. The child vampire. He and his partner. He’s really dead?”

  She pursed her lips and stared at me long enough for a bead of sweat to migrate from my temple to my chin. I didn’t dare reach up to wipe it away. A small electric fan whirred away in one corner, but it didn’t dissipate the stale, muggy air so much as move it around. Better conditions than my room at Mrs. Brodsky’s, perhaps, but that didn’t seem appropriate for one of the mayor’s special advisors.

  “His partner found Officer Zuckerman early this morning in his apartment. He was dead, with a bottle of Faust beside him.”

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead. I could hardly feel my fingertips, but I was aware of every sticky inch of my shirt collar.