Wicked City (3 page)

“What happened in January?” I asked, as calmly as I could manage.

McConnell tilted his head and shrugged at Zuckerman as he tapped his cigarette in the ashtray. Inexplicably, Zuckerman smiled.

“A major felony,” the vampire officer said, in a tone dry as tinder.

“Felony?”

McConnell shook his head sadly. “Afraid so. We have reason to believe that you at one point harbored an underage vampire. A boy eleven years of age, according to our records. That's a class A felony.”

“Minimum fifteen years,” said Zuckerman, helpfully.

Harboring an underage vampire?
Of all my less-than-legal activities this past January, saving Judah's life had risked the largest consequences, but I had barely spent a minute in the past six months worrying about it. I had assumed—stupidly, it appeared—that no one would ever find out.

“Mind telling me where you heard this, ah, scurrilous rumor about me and this boy?”

McConnell stubbed out his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, liberally dusting the tabletop in the process. “Mort did. I don't have his contacts, of course. But he's sure.”

“Sure?” I repeated faintly.

Zuckerman crossed his arms over his chest. “Your face is well-known, Miss Hollis.”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“Your type almost never do,” Zuckerman said. “You didn't think about the stigma the rest of us suffer when an underage vampire gets loose. Now the only question we have is where you're keeping him now.”

I cringed inside, but attempted to make a good show of it. “I've never had anything to do with an underage vampire! In this neighborhood, child vampires aren't so rare, anyhow. Surely you've heard of the Turn Boys?”

I might have missed my calling as a stage actress.

“True, we have heard of the underage vampire gang,” said McConnell. “But Mort thinks this is a separate matter.”

“And Troy Kavanagh's Defenders popped those boys in January,” Zuckerman said.

“So maybe this boy died along with the others.”

“Miss Hollis,” McConnell said, “we dropped by to inform you that you are our primary suspect in this matter.”

I swallowed. “So, are you going to arrest me?”

“Right now, you're just a suspect,” McConnell said. “But we're going to be investigating extensively.”

“Brilliant,” I said.

Zuckerman made the sour-lemon face again, though he clasped his hands together in something like glee.

“We think so,” he said. He and McConnell stood at the same moment, again without the slightest apparent need for communication.

“Good day, Miss Hollis,” McConnell said, replacing his hat with that infuriatingly absent-minded, genial air. “We'll see ourselves out. Until next time.”

I wished with all my heart that there wouldn't be a next time. It occurred to me that I could also wish on a djinni. But even with a felony hanging over my head I didn't take the possibility seriously. My skin tingled at just the thought of Amir. That was more than enough reason to refuse to contemplate any wishes but my own.

*   *   *

A half-hour later, intending to clear my head with fresh air, I opened the door to find Amir waiting for me on the stoop. He held a letter and a bouquet of lilacs. I froze with my hand on the knob, and wondered for a fleeting moment if I could duck back into the hallway without him noticing me. My heart—already strained from my encounter with the detectives—seemed to stutter in my chest. Six months, and this fire-breathing, spendthrift, amoral djinni still had the power to do this to me.

And how he knew it.

Amir grinned and stood up. He held out the flowers. I caught my hands trembling and held them rigidly at my thighs.

“Are those…”

“For you,” Amir said, “from the mayor, of all people.”

I leaned against the doorjamb. My knees felt suspiciously weak. “The … what on earth, Amir?”

He shrugged, and his grin faded. “Far be it from me to question your choice of beaus. Though I must say, this doesn't read much like a love letter. In some trouble, Zephyr? You know, I could help—”

“Let me see that,” I said, snatching both the flowers and the small note. My fingers brushed his for a moment, sending my stomach somewhere in the vicinity of my feet.

I, of course, gave no outward sign of my discomfiture. I was quite as cool as Amir as I opened the folded note on the mayor's personal stationery.

Miss Hollis,

You seem to be in difficulties. Should you like to get out of them, stop by my office—I'm sure you know where it is—around four tomorrow afternoon?

Regards,

James Walker

“I need a drink,” I said.

“Before noon?”

“I'm sure it's midnight somewhere.”

Amir settled against the doorjamb and held out his hand. “In Shadukiam, perhaps?” he said, a casual invitation. The strange otherworld that Amir and his djinni brothers called home had a certain appeal.

I considered—which is to say, I fought strenuously against my better judgment. “The Faust evidentiary hearings are at four. Friends Against Faust actually has a speaking invitation, I can't possibly miss it. This is our best chance to derail the vote next week.”

“So we'll be back by four.”

“There are two officers with the Other vice squad who are trying to throw me in jail. I'm not sure it's a good idea for me to be seen with you.”

“Is that bigotry I smell, Miss Hollis?”

I twisted my lips. “No, it's prudence.

“You can't imagine the police would ever come after
me
.”

“If there is any justice in this world—”

“Zeph, you naïve little thing.”

I scowled. “You can't fight for justice unless you believe in it.”

“And I can think of no better way to advance the causes of truth and justice than by going back to my place for a little judicious lawbreaking.”

“Please tell me,” said Aileen, walking behind me in the doorway, “that this law includes the Eighteenth Amendment?”

“What else?” Amir said. “Like to come to Shadukiam with us?”

Aileen giggled beneath the force of his smile. “I've heard so much about it, how could I refuse—”

I turned on her. “‘No' would be a start.”

“Why would I want to say that?” she said, all innocence.

I groaned. “I hope you have very good liquor,” I said.

Amir brushed my fingertips with his. “Oh,
habibti,
” he said, not quite smiling, “I should have known you were a natural.”

I drew back so abruptly I nearly careened into Aileen. “A natural what? Drunk?”

He shook his head. “Lawbreaker. Now, shall we?”

Aileen was nodding and I was considering the very clear
not-goodness
of this idea even as he blinked and the world wobbled and faded and then I sank to my knees on a mosaic floor, with the smell of roses strong in my nostrils and fountains of water tinkling nearby.

A breeze blew over me, carrying with it the scent of oranges and olives and sun-kissed fields. I felt cool for the first time in a month and that, I decided, was worth the annoyance of spending an extended period of time with Amir.

“Zeph,” said Aileen from a few feet away. “I cannot
believe
you didn't take me here before.”

I grimaced and forced myself upright. Some trips were worse than others, but I'd developed a deep loathing for teleportation in the past six months. “I'll let you know when I open my other universe travel service, Aileen.”

Though as far as I knew this was the first time she had teleported, Aileen didn't appear at all troubled. Amir had deposited us in a courtyard centered around a golden fountain. On the marble flagstones were two low-lying divans and large brocade cushions for relaxation. She was smiling up at him and arranging herself on the divan closest to the fountain. This was Amir's brother's palace, the only part of Shadukiam that I'd had the privilege to see. It was fantastically ostentatious, with a series of fountains and gardens, honeycombed with arcaded corridors and towers. Redolent pink and orange roses climbed arches inlaid with mosaic of lapis lazuli and jade. I took a deep, heady breath—I could never deny that wealth had its pleasures.

“So what refreshment suits you?” Amir asked, removing his jacket and sitting on the intricately inlaid mosaic lip of the fountain.

Aileen kicked off her shoes. “Sidecar,” she said.

Amir turned to me, and I discovered that the sight of him stripped to a waistcoat and sharp-tailored pants had momentarily rendered me speechless.

“Same,” I finally managed.

I didn't know if he noticed; he tugged a little at his lapel and then shook his head before walking away. I sat on the divan next to Aileen, and had just begun to relax into the cushions when he returned with the drinks.

“Did you make them?” I asked, surprised, as he handed me a frosted tumbler.

He smiled and sat on the edge of the fountain. Water spray beaded his slicked-back hair, but he didn't seem to notice. I took a judicious sip.

“Goodness, I don't mix the drinks, Zephyr. What do you take me for?”

“A wastrel?” I said.

“As you so often accuse me. But surely you must make allowances for a prince.”

“He has a point,” said Aileen.

I scowled at her, but without much conviction. Having gotten drunk for the first time not six months before, I was hardly what anyone would call an expert on spirits (well, not those kind of spirits). The only liquors I could identify by taste were cheap whiskey and bathtub gin, neither of which would dare offend the inside of such fine crystal. This smelled like the breeze from the orange fields outside his brother Kardal's palace; it tasted even better, with surprisingly pleasant hints of bitter and sweet. It hardly burned at all, which I had not known was possible.

“Well, your houris mix excellent drinks,” I said, raising the glass to him.

He just smiled and waved his hand. A shot glass filled with deep amber liquid and a single cube of ice dropped with a slight clink on the mosaic tiles beside him.

“A toast,” he said, taking his drink.

“To unearned luxury?” I said.

Aileen sighed. “Give it a rest, will you? Not
everything
has to be a suffragette rally.”

“I was going to propose,” said Amir, with such mildness that I felt, for a moment, quite churlish, “to pleasantly boring days. May we have many more of them.”

“Amen,” said Aileen fervently, and drained half her glass.

I licked some of the sugar off the rim. “We're too late for today,” I said. “But perhaps it's not too much to hope for.” I paused. “Providing Beau Jimmy can actually get the police off my back.”

“Not to claim undue familiarity with the mayor of your fine city,” he said, “but do you really imagine that his offer won't come with strings?”

“More like Promethean chains,” I said dejectedly, “but I don't see many other options. How could they have learned about Judah! Six months too late, at that.”

“I told you,” said Aileen, “that was a bad idea.”

“I told myself,” I said to my nearly empty glass. “Several times. It didn't seem to stick.”

Six months before, I had saved an underage vampire named Judah from being duly apprehended by the authorities and staked for the “good of the community.” Underage vampires can be deadly when freshly turned—something about their brains can't handle the process. That one decision had led me into a criminal mess, which Amir and the notorious vampire mob boss Rinaldo had made between them. A mess from which I still had not fully extricated myself. I now seemed to be permanently bound to Amir—a side effect of saving his life with my vampire-immune blood. Judah had recovered (mostly) and was now living with my mama, siblings, and demon-hunting daddy in Yarrow, Montana. I'd had my doubts about this living arrangement, but according to my oldest brother, Harry, everyone got along just fine. Or about as well as they ever had.

“You could always make a wish,” Amir said, setting down his drink.

I looked up at him and then away. He leaned forward, his eyebrows drawn together in a look so earnest and caring I could hardly stand it. I hated it when I could peek behind his mask—it was so much harder to view him with the necessary distance.

Aileen opened her mouth like she would say something, thought better of it, and took a long sip of her drink.

“Zephyr,” Amir said softly, “you've seen what happens when a vessel takes too long between wishes. You've waited six months. It's getting … difficult.”

Anxiety tightened, vise-like, around my middle. I
knew
we couldn't keep this up. I'd known it for months. But I'd persisted in my hope that some magical solution would reveal itself—some method by which I could break the bond between us and leave all notions of mutual obligations and
wishes
safely in the past. I didn't think Amir relished the idea of being bound to me for life either, but he bore the obligation gracefully. Perhaps he saw it as recompense for saving his life. Or even his role in bringing Faust to the city. I didn't know, but the reasons I had given Aileen were as true now as they had been in January. Whatever Amir and I might have would never survive the pressure of a wish. Because a wish meant I owned his powers.

And yet I considered how easy it would be to wish my way out of my problems.
I wish for the police to never have suspected me of saving Judah
. That seemed safe enough. No rumors of an underage vampire, no vice squad catching me in a borrowed teddy on the rooftop. And maybe I could even have an extra:
I wish for the Faust vote to fail.
The Board of Aldermen was set to have their final vote on the full legalization next Monday, a week from today. I'd be a hero forever with Friends Against Faust and Elspeth. But the moment I made those wishes I knew that I would lose whatever chance I had to sever the bond between Amir and me.