CHAPTER SIX

“Zephyr,” said Harry, entering my room early the next morning without so much as a knock, “I found something in your cellar.”

Right on his heels came Mrs. Brodsky. “Miss Zephyr!” she said, shrill as a shrieking cat. “This is the last straw! How many times have I said, no males allowed? First those police, and now this! This is a clean establishment—”

I fumbled for a robe. “Mrs. Brodsky, I assure you—”

“No, Zeph, you should come look,” Harry said. He grabbed my elbow and Mrs. Brodsky actually smacked him.

“Off, off!”

Aileen groaned and put the pillow over her head. “Zephyr, if your life must be insane, does it always have to wake me up?”

I grimaced. “Harry, you couldn’t have waited downstairs?”

“The cellar, Zeph,” he said, tugging again. “You’ve got to look.”

“This man … your beau cannot just waltz—”

“He’s my brother,” I said, at the same time Harry rolled his eyes, turned around and said, “She’s my sister, you old prude.”

“You have a brother?” she said.

Harry took off his cap and bowed far too extravagantly. “Harold Hollis at your service, ma’am.”

Mrs. Brodsky looked between us, her expression a hilarious mixture of relief and annoyance. She pursed her lips. “This is very improper, Zephyr,” she said at a thankfully more tolerable pitch.

“Well I didn’t invite him. Harry, what is this?”

“Will you come downstairs already? The cellar—”

“What on earth is in the cellar!”

Mrs. Brodsky frowned. “Yes, what do you mean? I went to the cellar last night, there was nothing improper in it.”

“Maybe it’s rats, Mrs. Brodsky,” said Aileen, sepulchral tones muffled through her pillow.

“Rats!”

I put my hands over my ears. Harry, at least a head taller than Mrs.Brodsky, put a solicitous hand on her shoulder and stared directly at me. Sucker, he mouthed.

“Oh,” I said. “Let me get my slippers.”

“Rats!” Mrs. Brodsky said, shaking her head in something like despair. “How could this be? I keep everything so clean…”

I choked on a laugh. “I’m sure you do, ma’am,” Harry said soothingly. “It’s probably a stray one that got stuck down there. Zeph and I will have it out in a jiffy.”

“Zephyr knows how to kill rats?” Mrs. Brodsky asked, some suspicion returning.

I had found one slipper, but the other had lodged itself among the dust bunnies far under the bed. I sighed and knelt on the floor.

“Oh, she’s a natural, ma’am,” Harry said. “One of the best I’ve ever seen.”

“Are you an exterminator?”

I sneezed.

“Something like that,” Harry said.

“Got it!” I said, emerging from beneath my bed with the slipper triumphantly aloft. Aileen, having given up even the pretense of sleep, raised her eyebrows at me.

“You have dust in your hair,” she said.

I shrugged and shook out the slipper. “The better to hunt … ah, rats with,” I said. “Lead on, Harry.”

“You will tell me when you catch it?” Mrs. Brodsky was asking as we went back down the stairs. “If there are many of them…”

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 Charlie 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 knocked.

“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.

“I was at home all night,” I said softly.

Mrs. Brandon frowned. “Goodness, you can’t imagine that I suspect you, Miss Hollis. Though…” She trailed off. “You’re right, to an outsider the situation might place you under some slight suspicion. Best for you to make sure that someone can confirm your alibi, just in case.”

I was surprised I hadn’t seen McConnell already. The news of Zuckerman’s death made me feel physically ill—what would his partner do without the friend who seemed able to read his thoughts? And what would he do if his suspicions fall on me? But at least Mrs. Brandon had dismissed the notion out of hand. I could do worse than having her on my side.

“Did he pop?” I asked, after a moment.

Mrs. Brandon pursed her lips, considering her answer, then shook her head briefly. “I’m not authorized to discuss details, but…”

So he hadn’t, just like every other vampire killed this past week.

“He was murdered, too?”

“Officer Zuckerman was well known for his opposition to Faust,” she said.

“He’d hardly be the first person to privately practice what he publicly condemned.”

Mrs. Brandon laughed abruptly and then stopped. “No. Indeed not, Miss Hollis. I’m sure you have much experience with that.”

I did, but it surprised me that she would have guessed such a thing. “I imagine you see even more at City Hall.”

She smiled. “Speaking of which, do you have any news about that other matter for me to pass on to Jimmy?”

“I’ve talked to the former leader of the Turn Boys. He’s agreed to meet with the mayor.”

She dropped the letter in a pile on her desk and hurriedly flipped to a clean sheet in her blotter. “At what time?” she asked. “Does he have the original material?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and wondered when I had gotten so accomplished at lying. “And Nicholas isn’t the type to keep to a schedule. He said he would contact the mayor soon. Today, I hope.”

Mrs. Brandon looked affronted at the idea, but then shook her head and dashed off a note. “Once he contacts the mayor, I’ll make sure James puts in a call,” she said.

“Even if Nicholas doesn’t have the original?”

She frowned. “Do you have any reason to expect he won’t?”

“Oh, no. I just want to make sure I’ve fulfilled my side of the bargain.”

“As long as the mayor gets to talk to the original distributor, he will consider your obligation fulfilled.”

I shifted. But Jimmy Walker couldn’t possibly get to Amir. I would be safe. “Thank you,” I said.

It struck me that the mayor would be calling in a very big favor in exchange for my help. But for all I knew, such derailment of legitimate police investigations were de rigueur in this administration. I felt thankful to have Mrs. Brandon as an intermediary—at least she understood the political waters that seemed to be crashing far over my head.

“Mrs. Brandon,” I said, “it seems strange to me that you—and the mayor—are so concerned about these particular murders. Pardon my bluntness, but you haven’t evinced much concern for vampires before.”

“Vampires are a vital part of our city’s population,” she said, with surprising passion. A flush stained her cheekbones. I remembered how Jimmy Walker had once admonished me during a demonstration for vampire rights: “For heaven’s sake, they’re not people.

Perhaps being the mayor’s Other advisor was a more thankless task than I had previously appreciated. Certainly, looking around Mrs. Brandon’s cramped office, it was hard not to come to that conclusion.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you say so,” I said. “The mayor is lucky to have you on his side.”

She leaned forward. “You must understand that I would never work for this bill if I thought that Faust itself posed any threat to the well-being of any vampire who consumes it.”

Elspeth and the others would argue that Faust did, in fact, harm the well-being of vampires. Though it probably didn’t murder them. “But I wonder how a murderer would poison the drink?”

I hoped this might prompt her into giving me something specific to look for in Nicholas’s bottle, but she just put her hands flat on her desk and sighed. “We’re investigating several possibilities,” she said. “I can’t say more than that for now. With some luck, the mayor will be able to give many answers to the press this evening.”

This made me recall my original purpose in coming here, made even more urgent by the news of Zuckerman’s death. “Actually, I was hoping I might persuade you to let me see the bodies.”

“You mean visit the morgue? I’m sorry, Miss Hollis, but that would be quite impossible,” she said, with such regretful finality that I saw it would be fruitless to argue. I shrugged.

“I understand. I appreciate you telling me what you could.”

“It was the least I could do. Such a terrible situation … Miss Hollis, do remember to confirm your alibi. I would hate to see you mixed up in another investigation.”

I bit my lip at the thought. “I will, thank you.”

I stood, but with so little room to maneuver, I accidentally knocked the folding chair to the ground. As I knelt to pick it up, I caught sight of a tiny photograph of a young man nestled in an antique keepsake frame at the far corner of Mrs. Brandon’s desk. She’d arranged it so it was only clearly visible at eye level.

She caught me staring. “My late husband,” she said, before I could ask. “He used to be Mayor Walker’s Other advisor. He grew quite ill and had to resign. He died a few months after. James was kind enough to offer me the substance of Michael’s position.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, inadequately.

“Don’t be,” Mrs. Brandon said, reaching for a newspaper at the top of a pile. “It will all work out in the end. I’ve become quite indispensable to James over the years. I believe—”

Someone rapped sharply on the door and pushed it open. It was the mayor himself, his hair unaccountably mussed, sweat beading his forehead, and his cheeks flushed red. He gripped the edge of the door like he would rip it from its hinges.

“Judith,” he said, his raspy voice hinting at a quaver. “I need you to see something. In my office. Now, if you please.”

Mrs. Brandon’s eyes widened and she scrambled from behind her desk. “Of course, Jimmy,” she said. “What is it?”

He stared at her bleakly. I wondered if he was even aware of my presence. “It seems my father has come for a visit.”

*   *   *

The mayor’s office was dark as twilight. At first I thought storm clouds had gathered outside, but the sun was clearly visible through the windows. It was just dark, like the light existed but couldn’t pass through an invisible barrier. Mrs. Brandon and I had entered the room, but the mayor hovered on its threshold. He grimaced as though he couldn’t quite bear to approach and was furious at himself for his weakness.

He had my sympathy. Billy Walker had been our mayor’s role model and a consummate Tammany politician to the end, but anyone dead for eleven years had no business paying his son a visit.

“Where did the spirit show himself, James?” Mrs. Brandon asked.

Mayor Walker took a shaking breath and stepped into his office. “The Boss spoke to me from the fireplace.”

Mrs. Brandon fearlessly approached, while I forced myself to remember everything Daddy had ever taught me about hauntings. Not much, as it turned out—there hadn’t been much opportunity for personal experience in Yarrow.

“You built a fire in this heat?” Mrs. Brandon asked.

Jimmy Walker shook his head in frustration. “Heavens, Judith, of course not! The thing just lit up, and the rest of the lights went down.”

Even now, however, the strange gloom was receding. Light streamed through the window, dissipating the haunting that had prompted the mayor’s mad dash to the subterranean office of his Other advisor.

“The grate is cold,” Mrs. Brandon said, running a finger through the ash in front of it.

“I assure you, I didn’t imagine this.”

“I would never dream of suggesting such a thing, Jimmy. The spirits work mysteriously, though I must say it’s rare to hear of one so … forcefully entering our world.”

The fireplace had been as immaculate as the rest of his office when I’d last visited. The fine layer of ash that seemed to have settled in a perfect radius around the grate struck me as unnatural.

I knelt beside Mrs. Brandon and ran my own finger through the muck. Sulphur and scorched earth. The aroma of hell? I wondered. But there was a hint of something else, something less like brimstone and more like the inside of a cathedral, a censer swung by a priest, trailing a fog of myrrh and frankincense and burnt oranges—

I knew that smell. Bloody stakes, but I knew it too damn well.

I sneezed. Mrs. Brandon and the mayor, thankfully, were too focused on the mystery of the apparition to note my discomfiture.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?” The mayor sank into the nearest chair and buried his face in his thin, pale hands. He looked so unguarded and lost at that moment I looked away in embarrassment. Now that it appeared the danger had passed—dubious though I suspected it to be—I wondered if I could make a discreet exit. Mrs. Brandon had invited me to come along because of my “history with such matters,” though I wondered if that referred to the affair with Rinaldo or my unusual upbringing.

But the only way out was past the mayor, and indecision kept me in place.

“Whatever spirit was here has departed, James,” Mrs. Brandon said, walking over to him. “Did he say his reason for contacting you? Even with the aid of a medium experienced in such matters, it can be quite difficult for a spirit to contact someone among the living. For your father to have found a means of haunting you himself…”

Mrs. Brandon looked down with a jerk of her head and bunched her skirt in her hands. Aileen had said Mrs. Brandon always tried to contact her husband but never succeeded. That explained the grief and frustration that flashed across her face.

“He wanted to talk about Faust, Judith. He said I’d been making a hash of things, that there are these poor souls of the dead vampires there with him … ‘down here,’ he said. Oh God—”

The mayor’s hands trembled; his Adam’s apple bobbed, but he couldn’t seem to force out another word. Mrs. Brandon hesitated, then rested her hand on his shoulder.

“I wouldn’t read too deeply into it, Jimmy,” she said, softly. “I believe our conceptions of heaven and hell to be misleading descriptions of the spirit world. Perhaps he meant ‘down’ just as you would say you went down to Washington, D.C.”

Jimmy Walker sat up straighter in his chair, palpably relieved to hear her sensible, matter-of-fact explanation. “The Boss didn’t sound tortured,” he said slowly. “Though he did sound rather far away, like I was talking to him through a subway tunnel.”

Mrs. Brandon turned back to look at the fireplace, with me frozen beside it. “Just stunning, Jimmy. The Society has been keeping records of visitations and hauntings, but I have never heard of such a strong event before—”

“I don’t want this public, Judith,” the mayor said, sharply.

Mrs. Brandon blushed. “Of course not, Jimmy.”

“The ghost … your father was telling you about Faust?” I asked, because if I was going to be the third party to this uncomfortably intimate conversation, I might as well learn something for myself.

Jimmy Walker blinked several times, like he had mistaken me for a chair. “He said I shouldn’t go through with the vote. And I asked why not, and he said the ghosts with him, the dead vampires, had died in agony and it was too dangerous for the city.”

“He said all that?” I asked.

The mayor managed a shade of a smile. “He was very specific, Miss Hollis. I daresay you agree with him.”

But Mrs. Brandon looked all the more worried. “The spirit said the Faust itself had killed the vampires?”

“I’m not sure. He wasn’t terribly clear at that point. He just kept repeating it was dangerous, that the ghosts had told him so … then his voice faded and I went to find you.”

Mrs. Brandon smoothed out the wrinkles her hands had bunched into her skirt.

“This is just so strange,” Mrs. Brandon said, as though part of her longed to use a more pungent adjective.

“Perhaps the dead vampires begged him to intercede,” the mayor said, gloomily. “Just what I need right now—the Boss reprising the role of my conscience.”

Someone ought to do it, I thought, but just barely refrained from saying aloud.

“Anyhow,” the mayor continued, “I can’t just ignore him. If the vampires died because of the Faust…”

Mrs. Brandon shot a look at me. “You know that’s unlikely,” she said, widening her eyes at the mayor. Hinting about the autopsy reports?

“But the ghosts said—”

“Ghosts aren’t always accurate!” She clapped her hands together and stalked to the slightly ajar door. She slammed it home. “It’s the nature of their distance from us. We can’t just change policy based on…”

“A visitation?” the mayor said, and gave Mrs. Brandon a strange smile.

“I’ve never heard of vampires having ghosts,” I said. “I thought that was part of what turns.”

This observation made both Mrs. Brandon and the mayor stare at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. “I’m hardly an expert, of course,” I said, just to cut the silence.

But the mayor was shaking his head, the sunlight and conversation apparently dispelling his terror. “No, you’re quite right, Miss Hollis. Now that I think of it, the idea of vampire ghosts is quite odd. But intriguing. Do you think it’s possible, Judith?”

Mrs. Brandon gasped. She stared at the mayor and then gave one jerky nod. “I do.”

The mayor grinned now and clapped his hands. “Well, then. Thank you, Boss,” he said, nodding his head at the ash-filled grate. “I believe I know what we will do.”

“Jimmy, what?” Mrs. Brandon looked a little terrified at the gleam in his eyes, and I didn’t blame her.

“You always worry so, Judith. Don’t—it ages you prematurely. Would you mind showing Miss Hollis out? I’m afraid I’ve neglected a bit more work than usual this afternoon.”

Mrs. Brandon and I shared a long, worried glance, but there was nothing either of us could do but comply.

*   *   *

“Amir!” I called from the fountain in City Hall Park. A few dozen pigeons fluttered away from me and an old man feeding them stale bread fixed me with a baleful glare. “Amir,” I said, “if you don’t show up right now, I’ll—”

“Refuse to make a wish? Lecture me on moral laxity?”

He had somehow come up behind me, startling me so much I yelped and stumbled. I would have fallen into the fountain if not for his arm gently putting me upright.

“Oh!” I said, breathlessly. “You’re here!”

He drew his lips in, like he was puckering for a kiss or suppressing laughter. “You were screaming my name to the pigeons a moment ago.”

“You heard me?”

He sighed. “I was just on the other side of the building. As I assume you knew.”

“I guessed.” I had hoped I was wrong. My conjecture of what had really taken place in the mayor’s office didn’t say anything good about a certain djinni’s continued penchant for practical jokes.

“You guessed,” he said in that deadpan way of his, at once self-mocking and despairing. “Because you happened to choose this exact moment to visit Beau James.”

“The ghost of his daddy, Amir? Who knew your taste in pranks ran so literary.”

He took my elbow and steered me away from the fountain and the curious old man. “I thought it would be effective,” he said.

“I’m surprised you left out the rattling chains.”

He laughed bitterly. “You know me,” he said. “I abhor excess.”

He looked so miserable that my frustration and anger stopped short, like I had prepared myself for a plunge in an icy lake and ended up in a wading pool. He had played a practical joke on the mayor, true, but he didn’t appear particularly happy about it. And the joke itself had been strange, to say the least.

“Amir,” I said slowly, “are you conning the mayor into throwing the vote on Monday?”

“An attempt. Hardly a con. A con ought to work, after all.”

We were ambling down a side street, but at this I stopped short. “Why would you even bother?” I asked.

“Forty-two reasons,” he said, and didn’t look at me.

“What?”

He laughed. “The vampire suffragette doesn’t know? Forty-two. The number of vampires killed in Faust-related incidents since January.”

“Oh.” My hand flew to my mouth, but something about my reaction terrified me even more than Amir’s bleak memorization of that number. I gripped my elbows instead.

“Could you actually care?” I said, half to myself. “After what you did in January?”

“For a charity worker, you seem to have a remarkably thin belief in repentance.”

“I believe in human—well, person nature. Did you get a Ming vase in the bargain?”

He gave me a look that I could only describe as withering and continued walking without a response. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I had behaved badly, which was never pleasant, but trebly so because it necessitated an unflattering comparison between myself and the amoral djinni who had inflicted Faust on New York City.

I hurried after him, though I suppose I could have let him walk away. But we hadn’t seen each other for a few days and his absence had begun to gnaw at me. I had wondered what he was doing—plotting a practical joke, as it turned out—but even now something made me want to prolong our encounter. His long legs moved deceptively quickly. By the time I decided to jog after him, he was a block away.

“I wanted to ask you something,” I said, panting a little.

Amir stopped and turned around. For a moment his eyes flashed the orange and umber of dying coals. I wondered if he was still angry, but he just smiled and brushed a sweaty curl from my forehead. “Yes?” he said.

“Do you know what happened to your brother two before Kardal?” This question had lingered in my thoughts since Kardal’s visit, and it seemed safer than exploring the extent of Amir’s Faustian regret. Or, perhaps, just safer than what I felt when he spoke of it.

Amir stared at me like I’d asked him to fly to the moon. “Aban?” he said. “What would you know about him?”

“Was he exiled?” I asked.

“That’s the story. It happened before I was born. Kashkash desired a woman in the world, but Aban took her instead. So he was exiled. I think it expires in another hundred years or so. I might meet him, then.”

“A woman?” I said, dumbfounded. “It had nothing to do with his vessel cutting the bond between them?”

“Zephyr, it’s practically impossible to cut the bond between a djinni and his vessel.”

“Practically? You mean except through death.”

His eyes flared, briefly. A few dark flakes of ash drifted to the ground like dirty snow. “Yes. So tell me, how would you like to die, since you seem to be so keen on breaking free of me? Fire? I can make it painless.”

I winced. “But what if it is possible, Amir? What no one has ever tried?”

This made him laugh. “People have tried. My brothers aren’t all very nice. Odious as you find me, you’d find some of them much worse.”

I forced myself to breathe. And yet, looking at his dark skin under light dappled by a nearby tree, I couldn’t help but wonder what might happen without this artificial obligation between us. If it were possible, shouldn’t we know? “But let’s say that it did work. And I didn’t die. Would you be in trouble? Would the djinn council exile you?”

Amir ran his hand up the bark of the tree, each touch of his fingertips leaving a small black singe. But he seemed abstracted from his agitation, a man torn between different sides of himself.

“I can’t imagine why,” he said, finally.

I sighed in deep relief. “Your brother,” I said, “is almost as rank a liar as you.”

“Runs in the family, dear.”

I started walking again, but I didn’t make it very far. Amir pulled me back, very gently, by the wrist. I faced him with about as much conscious thought as a leaf falling to the ground. He lifted my chin with one hand and twined his hand in mine with the other. My lips burned. I nearly closed my eyes. But he didn’t kiss me.

“If you’re planning to kill yourself,” he said, “could you at least give me a few hours notice?”

“I’m not planning to kill myself.”

“Or break free, however you’re planning to try. Will you tell me?”

I wanted to say no. I fully intended to say no. “If you want,” I said. “But you can’t stop me.”

“Could I ever?” He laughed. “Do you promise?”

“Okay,” I said.

He let me go. I stumbled on the sidewalk. I wondered if he would reach down to catch me and then touch my bare skin and perhaps raise my chin again—

But he let me pick myself up. Left alone, I recalled the other request that Mrs. Brandon had refused, but I had to manage somehow. “I need a favor,” I said. “I need your help getting in somewhere.”

“If it’s the moon, I can’t help you.”

“Almost,” I said. “The morgue.”

“You’re never boring,” he said, and took my hand.