Discount Armageddon: An Incryptid Novel (14 page)

“I will be reprimanded.”

“Harsh.”

Dominic shook his head. “You cannot imagine.”

I’ve read Grandpa Thomas’ journals. I had some idea.
Somehow, it didn’t seem like a good idea to tell him that. “Here’s the thing I don’t get,” I said, propping my chin up on the knuckles of one hand. “You’re here to kill the people I’m here to look after. Why are you worried about them going missing, if you know it’s not because I’m getting them out of town? Either they’re in somebody else’s territory, which is a problem for your superiors, or they’re dead, which is a problem for me, but either way, they’re not a problem for
you
anymore.”

“A plague may stop a war, but does it not bring down even more destruction on the land?” asked Dominic, in a lofty, philosophical tone.

I eyed him. “If you don’t stop quoting dogma at me, I’m leaving.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You trying to tell me you just came up with that? Just now? Off the top of your head?”

He hesitated. “Well, no.”

“So that was more of the party line.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want your party line. I want answers. Why are you worried about my missing cryptids? They’re not your problem. If you didn’t kill them, you’re not my problem. So what’s your angle here?”

“I—” He hesitated again, clearly unsure how he was supposed to continue the conversation. Finally, he fixed me with an aggravated stare and said, “You are without a doubt the most annoying woman I have ever met.”

“We breed for it. Were you planning to answer my question?”

Dominic sighed. “If I thought the monsters were fleeing, it wouldn’t be my problem. I’d notify my superiors and keep hunting the ones that remain. There haven’t been any signs of them appearing in neighboring territories, and at least some of them would have to be traveling on foot. Since you’re here, there was a chance your family was running some sort of ill-considered underground railroad.”

“Well, we’re definitely not. I’d know.”

“I’m
assuming you have local contacts who would have told you if they were running something like that, and that you wouldn’t have been lurking around on rooftops hoping to find me if they were.” I nodded, and he continued, “That’s my ‘angle,’ as you so charmingly put things. You can solve a mouse problem by developing a snake problem. But is it any better?”

I groaned. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that. You think we have a snake?”

Dominic nodded. “I do.”

There was really only one thing to say to that, and so I said it, with all the fervency I could muster:

“Fuck.”

Dominic nodded again, rubbing his forehead with one hand as he wearily said, “I agree.”

The Davidson-Morrissey Memorial Dance Hall, three days later, way too early in the morning

A
FTER TWO DAYS OF SCOURING THE CITY
for the metaphorical “snake problem,” I was no closer to knowing where the city’s cryptids were going, and I still had no idea where the hell I was supposed to look for Dominic De Luca, aka, “the asshole who thinks he’s Batman and doesn’t believe in giving out his contact information before disappearing while I’m in the bathroom.” (Look. I may spend more time running around on rooftops than the average girl on the street, but I don’t make a habit out of looming in the shadows being impossible to find. If anything, I’m easier to find than I ought to be. If he wanted to find me, he could ask any cryptid in Manhattan, and they’d point him at Dave’s in a heartbeat—assuming he let them live that long.)

One thing I did know: the population was continuing to drop, and it was dropping faster with each passing day. The harpies who’d been nesting near Dave’s were gone. They’d been there Monday night when I dropped by with the mail, and there hadn’t been any signs that they were planning to go anywhere. Tuesday night, they were gone.
The nest was a shambles, and I couldn’t tell, as I picked through the wreckage, whether they’d left intentionally or not.

There was no blood outside the kitchen area. Even there, it was confined to the cutting board and makeshift plastic bucket “sink,” and the spray patterns were consistent with what you’d get if you, say, beheaded a pigeon. I clung to that as proof that they weren’t dead, and Dominic hadn’t been lying to me. I didn’t like the man very much— I definitely didn’t like the people he worked for—but disliking someone and wanting to kill them are two different things. One of them involves a lot of glaring and hair flipping. The other requires quicklime, which is surprisingly hard to find in Manhattan.

I finished the second night at Sarah’s new hotel, crashing on the couch in her suite. It was the only way I could get up early enough to make it to my morning appointment. It was about the only thing important enough to take me off the streets for a day, and I wanted to be fresh. I needed to be ready.

The next morning was going to be hell on earth. Because two days previous, I had registered and auditioned for the New York State Argentine Tango Open, and if there’s one thing scarier than the Covenant, it’s ballroom dancing.

The front lobby of the hall rented for the New York State Argentine Tango Open was packed to the point of comedy with men in skintight matador pants and women whose dresses seemed to consist entirely of fringe, sequins, strategically-placed strips of lace, and even more strategically-placed pieces of double-sided tape. Anyone who doesn’t believe that dance can be a form of combat should spend some time watching the more well-endowed dancers trying to contain their cleavage with nothing more than adhesive and attitude. There are days when I’m
truly grateful to Grandma Alice for taking potshots at the Boob Fairy and keeping her from heaping too much attention on the family.

(People always think I’m kidding when I say things like that. They used to think I was kidding when I said the same things about the Tooth Fairy, but I can provide proof of that one, thanks to Great-Great-Grandpa’s fondness for taxidermy and the family policy against throwing away anything that might prove useful. It’s amazing how quickly a stuffed and mounted specimen can shut a person up.)

According to the clock on the wall, it was approaching nine-thirty in the morning, which meant we’d been in the hall for somewhere around two and a half hours. According to the goose bumps on my arms, it was about two and a half hours past time to turn up the damn heat. It was possible that they had the stage lights turned so high that it made sense to turn the rest of the hall into an icebox, but if that was the case, they needed to get me on the stage before I froze solid.

It didn’t help that my dress was the sort of thing Grandma Baker called “more rumor than reality.” It consisted mostly of beaded fringe attached to a layer of cotton broadcloth to give the whole thing structure. The laces up the back were entirely for show, and to create the illusion of the dress being more complicated than it actually was. The real fasteners ran up the front, hidden under layers of fringe. I’d had it specially made. Most dancers do—having a costume that fits right can mean the difference between first and second place when the scores are close enough—but most dancers aren’t trying to fit weaponry under an outfit that would make a hooker blush. I had a pistol strapped on at the small of my back, and a knife so high on my left thigh that drawing it would require an act of indecent exposure. My genuine human-hair wig was pulled into a chignon and pinned with “decorative” hair sticks carved from blessed cherrywood,
soaked in holy water for three months, and tipped in silver. There’s no such thing as being too careful.

“Hey, Valerie,” said a man I vaguely recognized as part of the local dance crowd. He was pushing his way through the crowd to get to the men’s room. From the number pinned to his jacket, I guessed that his group was the one just vacating the stage.

“Hey,” I said, trusting his haste to keep him from noticing that I hadn’t said his name.

He didn’t notice. “Later,” he said, and shoved past me, vanishing through the men’s room door. I pushed away from the wall, heading for the other side of the lobby. The last thing I needed was to get cornered and grilled on why I didn’t remember a piece of prime local beefcake like the one that just passed me. That’s one of the unanticipated dangers of trying to live a double life: I don’t have the mental storage space to keep track of every cryptid in the Greater Manhattan Metro Area
and
remember every member of the New York dance community. Maybe if I had Sarah’s particular set of skills, but maybe not even then.

The fact that I have to keep the two identities as separate as possible doesn’t help. Verity Price has never won a dance competition. She’s never even entered one. Valerie Pryor, on the other hand, has done very well for herself, thank you very much. According to her credentials, she placed respectably in several local dance events, studied under some excellent teachers, and caught the nation’s attention when she appeared on
Dance or Die
, spending most of the season as a legitimate front-runner for the grand prize.

I’d probably hate her if she wasn’t my secret identity. As it is, I’m just plain jealous.

And if I ever prove I can make it in the world of competitive dance, I’m going to have to become her all the time. There’s no way a Price can risk herself on the public
stage. It would be an invitation to assassination. So for right now, I can use that as a justification for never bothering to remember the names of most of the dancers I deal with: they don’t remember mine. The fact that they’ve never had the chance to learn it is academic.

“Now calling group seventeen to the main stage,” boomed the intercom, sounding surprisingly free of static. The hall might be cold, but it was better-maintained than most of the places willing to host entry-level competitions. “First dance will commence in five minutes.”

I straightened, reaching up to check my wig in a gesture designed to look like I was just checking my hair. All the pins were still in place. “Let’s dance,” I said quietly to myself, and started for the doors to the main stage.

Explaining the rules of professional ballroom dancing would take the better part of a week, and probably wouldn’t help once I got to the difference between professional and amateur dancing, the way steps are ranked, and who pays what fees to enter a competition. Here’s what you really need to know:

There are two major schools of competitive ballroom dance. International is the standard for most of the world, and focuses on crispness, precision, and the formality of the steps. There are International dancers from the United States, but they aren’t regarded very highly by the rest of the world, largely due to the existence of American ballroom. American is looser, showier, and a lot more fun to watch on television. Most of what you’ll see in movies and on reality-based dance shows is American ballroom. International is gorgeous if you know what’s going into those tight, precise steps and twirls. American, on the other hand, doesn’t require you
to have any actual understanding of ballroom dance. It just wants you to stay awake.