Wicked City (28 page)

Nicholas stared at her. “What do you mean?”

Lily's hands were shaking, but from excitement or terror I couldn't tell. “It says here: ‘subject's central cavity liquefied, gonadal region to third rib. Anterior and posterior, however, definition of organs remains. Heart present but badly damaged and nonfunctional. Portions of extremities also internally liquefied, all consistent with the normal presentation of exsanguinated vampires. No known cause, pending further investigation.”

Absolute silence. From outside came a distant crash of lightning from a summer storm. I understood what this meant. We all did, but perhaps someone had to say it.

“They were turning
back,
” I said. “And halfway to human, it killed them.”

*   *   *

Torrential sheets of rain sliced through the streets in merciless wave after wave. First Avenue was deserted as ever; which gave me ample opportunity to admire nature.

At least, as best as I could while being soaked in it. There had been one umbrella in the stand by the entrance door. Amir had given it to Lily, who promptly used it to dash into the street, hail what must have been the only on-duty taxi in a twenty-block radius, and sail off without so much as inquiring whether we needed a ride. Nicholas and Charlie had left soon after our grisly discovery. Nicholas had gone so silent and furious I wondered if he might be having another one of those strange dissociative attacks. I didn't ask—Nicholas wasn't particularly safe at his most genial and lucid, let alone moments after he had looked upon the dead body of his friend and vowed revenge.

Which left Amir and me, alone in a summer thunderstorm.

“You really can't teleport us back?” I asked. Water had overflowed the gutters, leaving it ankle-high at many points on the sidewalk. I sloshed through, refusing to think about the filth. Amir turned to me at the exact moment a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky. For that split second, I took in both his uncanny beauty and his harrowed, drawn expression. He seemed overworked and exhausted—an odd thing to think of a djinni, especially this one.

“Even I have my limits, Zephyr,” he said. “Though it's flattering that you think me indefatigable.”

“I just thought your djinni business was, well…” I snapped my fingers and fluttered my hands.

Amir gave a short laugh and shook his head. “More like running up a very steep hill for several hours. One's capacity does give out after a while. So if you'd like your brother back tomorrow, we have to walk.”

I shrugged waterlogged shoulders and forged ahead. I was bothered by Amir's frank admission of weakness, but I couldn't quite place why. Perhaps because he had exhausted himself on my behalf? But of course I couldn't know what other business he'd attended to all day. For all I knew, he'd spent the afternoon in a Shadukiam harem before flitting to Yarrow for the evening entertainment. Indeed, I had to be vigilant around Amir, exactly
because
his presence always seemed to disarm me. When I saw those coal-dark eyes with their thick lashes, when I heard that gently amused voice and smelled that particular banked-fire-and-oranges smell, I quite frankly lost the good sense God gave me. It was absurd: Amir had lied to me practically since we met. It was almost certain that he had lied in some manner about the fate of his older brother and there was no reason for me to believe that he wasn't lying now. Of course he
looked
tired, but there was no reason for me to believe it, or even if I did, to think that all of his travels today had been for my sake.

Yet, Amir had undeniably been attempting to atone for his actions in January. He had even haunted the mayor to help the anti-Faust cause, though the plan had backfired. I recalled how he had stated the exact number of casualties—
forty-two,
a grim figure so tellingly memorized, as though guilt had branded it on his thoughts. Could I forgive him? Could I at least look past his failings in light of his change of heart? It frightened me how much I wanted to. It frightened me, because in so many ways he hadn't changed.

“You look nearly as stormy as the weather, Zephyr,” Amir said.

“Merely taking stock of my situation, Amir.”

He wiped the water from his eyes, sober and watchful. “And have you reached a conclusion?” he asked.

He stood very close. Enough so that I became aware of the gentle cloud of steam rising from his exposed skin and wet suit. The smell of him, that very intoxicant against which I had just girded myself, seemed to radiate like a bodily object, filling my nose and throat and pores, sliding down my spine like the hand of a lover, long denied.

I shivered and nearly sobbed. Amir frowned and cocked his head—entirely unaware, it seemed, of his uncanny effect.

A rolling thunderclap shocked me to my senses. I stepped away from him and shook my head, suddenly relishing the cold, clear rain.

“To beware of dangerous things,” I said, to which Amir made no response at all.

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“You can't possibly mean to go back there!”

Aileen scowled at me over her toast. We were taking our Saturday-morning breakfast in Mrs. Brodsky's kitchen. “Not this again, Zeph.”

“You nearly died the last time,” I said. “Of course I'm concerned.”

“You shouldn't be,” she said, “because I did not nearly die. I was firmly on this side of the veil, Zeph, and surely you can grant that I ought to know.”

I took a deep breath and a long drink of milk. “I bow to your expertise,” I said. “But it
was
hard on you this Thursday. Perhaps it's time you finally changed your situation? Found a steadier method of utilizing your talents?”

Aileen gave a bitter laugh and bit off her crust with too much ferocity. “Steadier?” she said, while chewing. “Like what, Zephyr? Please, tell me, what
other
gainful employment might your average Irish girl with a bit of Sight find in this town? Because as I see it, either I read on Skid Row or I tell fortunes for rich ladies with lettuce to spare.”

I wanted to tell her to give it up entirely, but I knew that the consequences of her ignoring her Sight were even more debilitating than those of her using it. The last time she tried, she had passed out on the factory floor after being accosted by an unwanted vision.

“You don't have to
try
so hard,” I said. Aileen raised her eyebrows, but she didn't interrupt. “Couldn't you fake them most of the time? Tell a real one now and then to keep the hounds at bay? What difference will it make to the biddies anyway?”

Aileen looked down at the stale crust in her hand, shook her head, and tossed it unceremoniously on her plate. “The difference,” she said, with more weariness than anger, “is the ten clairvoyants who read for the Society on other nights. It's the hundred other charlatans on Skid Row. It's that the occupation of a Seer is one with a great deal of competition, and if I don't try, then others will. Those ‘old biddies' know their way around the Other Side.”

“At least you could tender your regrets for
this
appointment? Just relax for a week to recover?”

Aileen slid her plate over the counter to Katya and pulled a defiant cigarette from her case. “I'm perfectly recovered,” she said, standing to demonstrate the point. “And this client pays well enough not to accept regrets.”

I knew I should just leave well enough alone. Aileen was as stubborn as myself—it was perhaps a reason why we made such good friends. But she looked so worn, lighting her cigarette with a jerky motion. She was nearly pale enough to not need talcum powder. “This isn't smart,” I said.

“Then you'll just have to let me be dumb.”

“At least tell me you won't contact Zuckerman.”

She hesitated, then shrugged. “I won't contact Zuckerman.”

“You don't sound very sure of that.”

“I'm—what right do you have to know everything I do?”

“Friendship?”

“Nosiness?”

I sighed. “Nosy friendship?
Please
, Aileen?”

Aileen ashed her cigarette in my cold coffee, but she gave me a rueful smile. “I should have known that one day you'd go do-gooding on me. If you must know, I'm reading for Judith Brandon. While it's
possible
she'll ask after the officer, something tells me she will want me to do the same thing I've done for her the past ten times.”

“Contact her husband?” I asked.

“Or try, anyway.”

Mrs. Brodsky poked her head into the kitchen. “The phone is for you, Zephyr,” she said.

I started. I hadn't even heard it ring. “Who is it?” I asked.

Mrs. Brodsky frowned and waved her hand. “How do I know? Some woman. Come, you pay for the extra minutes.”

I sighed. Aileen waggled her fingers at me. “Ta-ta, darling,” she said, in a slightly hysterical imitation of Lily's posh New England accent.

I snorted. “I'll say hello for you,” I said, and followed Mrs. Brodsky into the parlor.

But much to my surprise, it wasn't Lily calling.

“Zephyr?” she said.

“Mama? Did something happen to Harry?”

“No, no, he's fine, sweetie. Everyone's fine except your daddy. That's why I called.”

Somehow, I'd managed to not think about the mess at home all morning. Mama's voice brought back all the stomach-churning anxiety that I'd felt last night after seeing Judah. “I don't know what's happened to him, Mama,” I said.

The connection wasn't the best, with crackles and pops and a distant echo, but I was still sure that I heard my mother sobbing on the phone. I had seen Mama cry before, but not very often. Not in years. “You have to help us, Zephyr. I think your daddy…” She sniffed and hardened her voice. “Listen, dear, I know this won't sit well with you, but you've got to do it for the sake of your family. We need your daddy. I don't know where he is, I don't know how much trouble he's in. But no matter what he did, we have to do something to get him back.”

“You want
me
to do something to get him back? Mama, I'm no Leatherstocking. I can't track him across Montana.” Not to mention that I had plenty of my own problems right here in New York.

“It's not that kind of help,” Mama said, a little faintly.

“I'm sure he'll be back,” I said. “He's always come back before, hasn't he?” I said it to reassure her, but in truth I believed it. My daddy is John Hollis, most famous demon hunter in Montana, and I suppose a part of me has always thought him invincible.

Mama stared to cry again. “This time is different. We need your help.”

My diffuse anxiety turned sharp as a knife. I had never heard my mother this upset. Something had gone very, very wrong.

“But what do you want me to do?” I asked.

She took a deep, shaky breath. “Honey,” she said, “I need you to make a wish.”

*   *   *

Amir had told my mother.

Not everything, perhaps, but enough for her to realize the potential of my unused wish. Enough to have reasoned her way to the perfect solution to her problems, never mind that they might be the ruination of mine. I could kill him. Indeed, after hanging up the phone, I stormed incoherently around the parlor until Mrs. Brodsky announced that I either use more ladylike language or take myself outside. I went outside, though not very far. To the end of the block and around, past children playing in the standing pools from last night's rainstorm and old women watching the day from their stoops. It felt like home, and I was possessed of a painful, wistful longing—as though someone had already taken it from me. But who would finally do so? The mayor? The police? My family?

Amir?

How
could he have used my own mother, clearly at her wit's end with my father's antics, to manipulate me into making a wish?

“Of all the crass, manipulative, selfish—” I paused and gave a bitter laugh. This was Amir, after all. Had I really expected him to perform courier service for my family—fight a
golem
off of a goddamned
roof
—without any personal benefit? I had, perhaps, but then I was a naive fool who deserved what she got. Perhaps next week I'd learn that he'd helped me get into the morgue to help cover up some other crime he'd committed.

I wanted to give him a good piece of my mind, preferably with invective of which Mrs. Brodsky would wholeheartedly disapprove. I marched back down the street to retrieve my bicycle. I wouldn't let him get away with this, and I was less inclined by the minute to give two figs about the consequences of performing the ceremony with Sofia.

The temperature seemed to climb a degree for every block I traversed, and my entire back was damp by the time I reached the Ritz. I sighed. Perhaps I should have taken the subway, but I hated to waste a fare just to avoid the heat. I shook myself out after locking the bicycle, hoping that the damp patches wouldn't show too easily on the burgundy blouse (itself perhaps a mistake in this heat, but everything else needed laundering). The doormen paid me no mind, however, and I studiously avoided eye contact with the concierge. I directed the elevator operator to the fourteenth-floor apartments.

“You'll be seeing the prince, ma'am?” he asked, hesitating with one hand on the grate.

I nodded.
The Perfidious Prince,
I thought, and stifled a dark laugh.

We went up smoothly, but upon arrival we were assaulted with the unmistakable sounds of two men in loud argument. I looked down the hallway, but I needn't have bothered: I recognized Amir's voice, even muffled through a wall.

The elevator operator looked around uncomfortably. “Perhaps miss would rather wait in the parlor while the concierge rings up?” he said.

In other circumstances, I might have given Amir the courtesy. Instead I waved my hand. “Oh, it's quite all right,” I said, smiling. “He's expecting me. I imagine that he's going on again about the Yankees game. Baseball overexcites him,” I said. The man nodded vaguely, as though this didn't seem quite right, though he couldn't remember why. I did not wait for him to figure it out; I waved again and set off firmly down the hall.