CHAPTER SEVEN

“Aileen,” I said, “you look like you’re going to a funeral. In your own shroud.”

“The ladies expect a certain dignity.” Aileen secured the edge of her black headscarf with a pin. Though I stood right beside her vanity in the tiny dressing room, I felt as though she were not so much a person as a floating head. Every inch of skin besides her face was covered in a severe, shapeless black dress that resembled a nun’s habit. Though an evening rainstorm had finally brought the temperature back to something bearable, it was hardly cool enough outside or in to warrant such enthusiastic body covering. I fanned myself pointedly.

“They think you’ll be better able to contact the other side if you overheat on stage?”

“They trust me more if I look ethereal and otherworldly. Not like a flapper. Here, be useful and help me powder my face.”

I sighed, and knelt so I was eye level with her seated at the vanity. I had to admit that I was impressed by the sumptuousness of the Spiritualist Society headquarters. No wonder Aileen ran herself ragged for them. Tonight’s Thursday evening séance was, she claimed, her biggest event yet. They must be paying her handsomely. Not that I had seen much evidence of Aileen spending the money, but perhaps she was saving it for some big purchase.

Aileen closed her eyes and I dusted the brush lightly over her face. I stopped.

“What’s the matter?” Aileen said.

“You look hideous. What is this, flour?”

“Talcum powder,” she said, sighing. “For heaven’s sake, Zeph, I’m not trying to catch a beau. Hurry up.”

“You want to look like a ghost?” I said, whitening Aileen’s already pale face.

She smiled thinly. “Or like someone who could have a conversation with one.”

A sharp rap on the door startled me into dropping the brush. Aileen cursed. “Christ above, is it time already?” she muttered, and then, in a louder voice, “Come in!”

But the intruder wasn’t the young and portly woman who served as under-secretary of the Spiritualist Society who had greeted Aileen so warmly at the door a half hour earlier. It was Lily, red-faced and dripping wet.

“Goodness, did you run here from the Flatiron Building?” I asked. It was still raining outside. I couldn’t imagine what would have possessed Lily to ruin her clothes in this weather.

Lily slammed the door. “I just heard back from the chemist,” she said, ignoring my question. She slipped off her jacket and then her blouse. “Do you have anything dry lying around, Aileen?” she said. “Not that fearsome habit, though. I’d rather be wet.”

“There’s a dress in the closet,” Aileen said, picking up the brush and finishing the powder herself.

Lily pulled out the dress—well-cared-for, at least a few years old. She sighed. “Better than nothing, I suppose.”

Aileen shrugged. “Take me shopping if you want to borrow better clothes.”

“Just as soon as I solve the crime of the decade, darling.” She kicked her skirt to the corner of the room, nearly missing me.

“So you ran here because you heard from a chemist?” I asked, moving into what I hoped was a safe corner of the room.

“You wouldn’t believe the traffic on Broadway. Anyway, I admit I was a little put out by the vampire delivery boy—the doorman nearly had a fit—but the bottle was worth it, Zeph.”

I’d nearly forgotten I had told Charlie to give it to her a million years ago this morning. My pulse sped. “There’s something in the Faust?” I said. “Some vampire poison?”

“I don’t know about poison, but there’s something. He said he’d run more tests, but right now it looks like the Faust has been spiked.”

“Liquor?” I hadn’t expected that. The manner of the deaths hadn’t resembled alcohol poisoning.

She pulled the dress over her head. “No, no,” she said, her voice muffled by the fabric. “Why would a vampire spike Faust with liquor? They spike it with blood.”

“Of course!” I said. “So it’s tainted blood, then? Something bad enough to kill them?”

“That’s his best guess, though it turns out no one knows much about sucker body chemistry. It’s hard to say what a human would have to do to their own blood to kill a vampire.”

“Could it have been an accident?” If the blood came from mob sources, a bad taint didn’t much surprise me.

She shrugged and knelt next to Aileen in front of the vanity. “Once, maybe,” she said. “But it’s happened too many times, with different bottles. And now with that poor police officer … Aileen, what have you done to your face? It’s not 1920 anymore. You can afford a little color.”

“She wants to look like a ghost,” I said.

Aileen sighed. “It’s just talcum powder.”

“You look like a cadaver,” Lily said, “but I suppose if that’s what they want.”

“Thank you, Lily,” Aileen said, looking pointedly at me. “For displaying such an uncharacteristic empathy for the realities of earning one’s keep.”

“There’s earning your keep,” I said, “and practically whoring yourself for a bunch of old ladies who don’t know the first thing about the Sight.”

Aileen whirled around, so pale and colorless that the red of her unstained lips looked like blood. “And you do, Miss Vampire Suffragette? You said you’d help me find a way out of this, remember? Back when that sucker swayed me and my whole world went to hell? Well, it’s been six months, Zeph. Where’s the help? Where’s my way back to normal? Because if you don’t have that, then stop treating me like one of your bloody charity cases for the bloody Citizen’s Council! If I have to have the Sight, then this is how I’ll use it, and I’ll thank you for not always looking at me like I’m about to fall apart.”

She turned back to the vanity.

“Aileen … I…” I didn’t know what to say. I knew I had behaved badly, but felt put-upon and defensive all the same.

Lily had the look of a woman who hadn’t meant to step into a snake pit, but she gamely put a hand on Aileen’s shoulder. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that,” Lily said.

“I take it you haven’t been on the receiving end of Zephyr’s disapproval.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“I didn’t meant to disapprove of you, Aileen,” I said.

“What would you call it, then?”

I paused. “Concern,” I said.

“Of course.” She stood. “Well, this has been lovely, both of you, but I have a veil to part.”

Someone knocked on the door. Aileen opened it, moving with the grace of a true ghost.

“What are you doing here?” she said, sounding none too pleased.

I peered over her shoulder and was startled to see Amir. “Looking for Zephyr,” he said, and sighed.

“You too?” Aileen stepped back to let him in.

Lily checked herself in the vanity mirror, decided that she looked well enough and gave him a practiced smile. “Fancy seeing you again,” she said.

“Lovely as ever, Miss … Harding, was it?” he said.

I would have rolled my eyes, but Aileen was close enough to hit me.

“How did you get backstage?” I asked.

Amir leaned against the wall and his sleeve brushed my arm. I swear he meant to do it, but his face was bland as butter. “You’re pulling quite the crowd out there,” he said to Aileen. “I think I caught sight of the mayor’s Duesenberg outside. No one paid me much attention.”

“The mayor?” said Lily and Aileen in unison, one with excitement and the other with terror.

“What would the mayor want to do with me?” Aileen asked.

Amir’s smile wobbled. “I suspect he wants to contact a ghost,” he said.

I groaned. “His father?”

“Not exactly.” Amir glanced at Aileen.

“Who, then?” Aileen asked.

He looked away from both of us, unaccountably abashed. “It seems … I ran into Mrs. Brandon outside. He wants to contact the dead vampires.”

Lily dove for her bag and pulled out a slightly damp reporter’s notebook and a pen. “The mayor wants to contact vampire ghosts? Just to be clear.”

Aileen drilled her fingers against the doorframe. “Why would he want to do that?”

“To ask who killed them?” Lily hazarded. “But I didn’t think vampires could have ghosts. Is it possible, Aileen?”

“I didn’t think so. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to one, but that might not mean anything.”

Amir’s countenance had turned so dyspeptic I would have suspected him of a stomach upset if he were human. But I understood his expression very well—it mirrored my own, realizing how badly awry his scheme from this afternoon had gone.

“You just had to mention vampire ghosts!” I snarled. “So much for listening to Daddy’s advice!”

“This is amazing,” said Lily.

“Fuck,” said Aileen.

Someone else knocked on the door. I opened it.

“Harry!” I said. My brother stood in the doorway, and the under-secretary came into view right behind him. “Aileen,” she said. “Aileen dear, they’re calling for you.”

“Break a leg,” said Lily.

Aileen gasped. “What?”

“It’s theater slang,” Lily said airily. “It means good luck.”

“Zephyr,” said Harry, pulling me out of the dressing room and into the hallway, while the others went to the stage. “You have to be careful.”

“Have you been following me again? Wait until I tell Mama—”

“Listen,” he said, bending down until his mouth was by my ear. “Archibald Madison is here. And guess who’s with him? That other fellow, the one I’ve seen snooping around after you.”

“How did you know I’d be here?” I asked.

“I followed Madison’s guy. Which meant I followed you, I guess.”

“Christ,” I said.

“Do you have a gun?”

“Of course I don’t have a gun, Harry! When do I ever carry a gun?”

He nodded. “What I thought. Here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pocket pistol. “Keep it.”

I backed up. “Not a chance,” I said.

“Papa’ll kill me—”

“Papa’s too crazy to kill you! Just leave me alone. I’ve got too much—”

Lily waved frantically at me from down the hall. Aileen’s performance must be starting. “Just, talk to me after, okay? Nothing will happen here.”

I left Harry standing in the hall while I caught up with Lily and Amir, who were watching from the wings behind the stage. Directly in front of us, heavy black curtains blocked our view of the small stage. Further curtains remained bunched above, but if I moved carefully to the far right, I could see Aileen’s silhouette and the packed throng that had come to see her tonight.

“I’m the only reporter here!” Lily whispered. “Breslin will give me the front page for sure. And look over there—isn’t that the partner of that vampire officer who got killed this morning?”

I followed her finger automatically, but I should have known even without looking. Of course McConnell would be here. If he’d heard the rumor that Aileen—the darling of the New York Spiritualist Society—was going to attempt contact with the dead vampires, he would have had to come. But the sight of him turned my formless dread into something hard and difficult to digest.

Amir wasn’t looking at the audience. He was looking at Aileen, settling herself on the single chair in the middle of the stage. Perhaps he wouldn’t have appeared upset to anyone else, but I had spent the past several months in his company and I knew that face.

“Yes,” I whispered angrily. “This is your fault. Vampires don’t have ghosts! What’s going to happen when she can’t contact them in front of all these people!”

Lily looked at us intently, though I was fairly sure she couldn’t have heard me. Still, Amir pulled me into the hall. “How was I supposed to know he’d find a medium!”

“Maybe,” I snarled, “because you impersonated a ghost! Who was he supposed to ask, the electrician?”

“Aileen isn’t a dumb Dora,” he said, more worried than angry. “If she can’t contact a vampire, she’ll make something up, won’t she?”

“She can’t always,” I said. “When she gets deep into the Sight, sometimes she can’t control anything.” That, I thought, was why I’d so disapproved of her using it for money. The Sight was too dangerous. I ignored the voice that told me such danger was her decision, and surely she would understand it better than I, regardless.

Inside the auditorium, the audience clapped enthusiastically.

“Oh, God,” I said.

“I didn’t realize this would happen,” he said.

I sighed. “You never do.” I left him and walked back to the side stage, where Lily watched the proceedings with giddy fascination.

“I’m delighted to present, to such an illustrious audience, the woman who seems poised to become the greatest medium of our generation.” That was the head of the Society, I gathered, sounding far too pleased with herself. Aileen’s doing all the work, I thought crossly. Aileen glanced up at the ceiling, as though distracted by something beyond normal sight. At least she put on a good act. I felt terrible about our fight; I wished I’d had a chance to apologize before her performance.

“Please be aware that the mastery of a gift as prodigious as hers sometimes requires time. I request that you keep complete silence while she contacts the Other Side. And now, may I present the great Lady Cassandra.”

Lady Cassandra? I snorted, but thankfully another round of clapping covered the sound. Anticipation permeated the room like a low-lying fog.

Aileen lowered her gaze and spoke, her Irish accent measured and uncanny. “Who among you wishes to speak to the dead?” she asked.

*   *   *

In the end, McConnell made the request. I’d half expected Jimmy Walker himself to rise and make some irritatingly charming speech, but he sat in the far back, as though he wished to avoid notice. This did not deter everyone in the audience from periodically turning their heads, as though curious about a piece of lint on their shoulders. New York’s most flamboyant mayor ignored the attention. Mrs. Brandon had seated herself near the front, as close to Aileen as possible. She looked at the short stage with almost devotional intensity. I recalled the photograph of her late husband: he had earnest eyes, even in faded sepia. Determined and yet slightly ill-at-ease in an old-fashioned suit. I knew she must have loved him very much, to hope for a contact during every one of Aileen’s sessions.

When Aileen had asked her question, she was greeted with murmurs and silence. She didn’t seem perturbed by this, merely waited on her wooden chair, still as a nun contemplating God. Then McConnell rose to his feet. He wore an evening suit a few years out of date, clumsily patched by the shoulder. Though I had every reason to fear and loathe him, I could only muster an overwhelming pity. He seemed dazed, still reeling from Zuckerman’s death. I hoped that, despite Amir’s thoughtless prank, Aileen would be able to contact a vampire ghost. The whole city would benefit if we could actually catch the killer so quickly, even if it didn’t help swing the votes against Faust.

“Mort Zuckerman,” McConnell said clearly. “If you think you can find him, I’d be much obliged.”

Aileen nodded thoughtfully, as though the name meant nothing to her. I had to smile—she knew her audience. Even her unnaturally white face seemed appropriately haunted in the low glow from the surrounding gas lamps (the building was fully wired, of course, but I gathered the flickering orange light was better for ambiance).

“Do you have an object of importance to the deceased?” she asked.

McConnell nodded. “His notebook.”

“Bring it to me.”

McConnell pushed his way to the aisle and handed a square object to one of the waiting attendants. Aileen handled it carefully, as though the soul of the deceased might reside in the object itself. I recognized that notebook from my encounters with Zuckerman—he had chosen odd times to write things down, as though his notes had remarkably little to do with our conversation.

Aileen rested it on her lap. “I will see if the spirits provide,” she said.

McConnell stared plaintively. The rest of the audience leaned forward with a rustle of clothes and indrawn breaths.

“The medium requires absolute silence,” said the head of the Society, quite unnecessarily. Lily tugged at my shirtsleeve, as though I were in any danger of looking away.

In the ensuing silence, Aileen began to sway, like a mother rocking a baby. Her eyes opened and closed at seemingly random intervals—too long for blinking and too short for sleep. She spoke on occasion, but the sounds were nonsense, or at least not any language I recognized.

“Think she’s on the level?” Lily whispered.

“I think so.” Just observing her slow sway raised goose bumps on my arms.

The gas lamps flickered, though the air in the room remained stiflingly still. Aileen’s voice grew louder and higher, though no more intelligible than before. The lights flickered again, almost guttering in an absent breeze. The few strands of Aileen’s hair not secured beneath the black scarf floated in a nimbus around her face. She seemed to glow with electricity instead of light.

“Mort,” she screamed, as though over a howling wind. “Will you come? Will you speak?”

It could have been a room full of vampires, so little of our breath moved the air. She rose, so fluidly it seemed she floated. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, but she held her hands before her as though moving through a thick gloom. “So far under,” she said, as though to herself. “Where have they hidden you?”

In the audience, someone whimpered. There was no way to know who; I think perhaps the same fear ran through all of us. What I was seeing here made the uncanny reading she had done for Lily the night they first met in our parlor seem like a child’s game. I might have spent the last six months avoiding my potential power, but Aileen had clearly embraced hers. I knew at once that the head of the Society had not exaggerated in her praise. It shocked me that she could have grown this powerful and I hadn’t even noticed.

“Mort,” she said, again. “Are you there? Can you hear me?” She paused and drew herself up. “He is between the veils. The one I can part, the one I cannot. But I can hear him. He has not gone too far beyond us.”

“Mort!” McConnell shouted, entirely out of order. “Who killed you? Who gave you that damned bottle, just tell me and I’ll—”

“Quiet in the hall!”

A few rows down from McConnell, Archibald Madison whispered to the man sitting beside him. With a start, I recognized the strange man who had caught me in Madison’s office and behaved so oddly—was he the one who had so worried my brother? The man nodded and left quickly through a side door. I looked behind me for Harry, but both he and Amir had vanished.

“Do you hear us, Mort?” Aileen said, ignoring the commotion entirely. Silence fell again, absolute. Aileen stayed frozen in a half crouch for nearly a minute. Then she jerked upright. The movement disturbed me, but I didn’t understand why until she spoke.

“McConnell?” she said, with a sharp laugh I had never heard her make. “This is something. Your voice sounds different in her ears. You know I’m dead?”

McConnell coughed and wiped his dripping forehead. “Sure I know,” he said. His voice shook perceptibly. “But I don’t know who killed you.”

That was not Aileen on the stage. It looked like her, even spoke with her voice, but she had been inhabited by someone else—a dead police officer who shouldn’t even have a soul, let alone conversational ability. But Aileen even mimicked some of Zuckerman’s mannerisms, like the way he scrunched in his lips as if he’d bitten a lemon. Lily kept scribbling, but her hand trembled so violently I doubted the script was legible.

“The informant gave me the bottle,” Aileen-Zuckerman said. The audience gasped—I did, too, though I had no idea who “the informant” might be.

“He forced you to drink, right?” McConnell said.

But Aileen-Zuckerman shook her head. “I tried Faust the second week it hit the streets. Everyone did. You never guessed. But McConnell, follow up with the Blood Bank—”

A commotion in the audience interrupted her. Judith Brandon, of all people, stood with a frantic expression. “Someone’s on stage!”

I caught a shadow at the edge of my vision. I turned, but it was too late: with a sharp crack, the backstage electric lights turned off, rendering me temporarily blind. Then a gunshot and a small cry and the unmistakable thump of a body hitting the floor. I ran without a thought for anyone but Aileen. The front stage curtains had fallen about halfway, so even the hazy gas lamps couldn’t illuminate the scene.

I bumped into a body with my shins and dropped to the floor. When I looked down, I could barely make out Aileen’s white powdered face.

I called her name, but she didn’t respond. I put my finger to her cloth-enshrouded neck, and was unspeakably relieved to find her pulse steady, if weak. Unfortunately, given Aileen’s taste in performance clothing, it would be difficult for me to find evidence of a wound even in good lighting. And I had not forgotten the shadowy figure from just before the lights went out.

“Zephyr!” Lily screamed. Just that, but it was enough for me to throw myself over Aileen’s body. A blow that would have hit my head connected instead with the floor beneath me. I couldn’t see my attacker very well even now—just that he seemed stocky and strong and bent on harming either me or Aileen. Neither was acceptable. I dove for his legs, hoping surprise could overcome his superior strength. He toppled to the floor like a carnival dummy, with a crash and a curse. This satisfied me even as I pressed my advantage, giving him a solid blow to the stomach. I wondered if my knife was sharp enough to do much damage to a human assailant. But I didn’t have time to hunt for it beneath my skirt. With a grunt, the man wrenched out of my one-handed grip and walloped me on the side of my head. I fell to the floor, barely retaining consciousness. From my position beside Aileen, I saw the hazy figure of a man lurch to his feet and spit perilously close to my face.

“I had to,” he whispered, and I finally recognized him as the man from Madison’s office. “She would have said everything. Didn’t mean to hit you.” I stared, baffled, and attempted to get my arms underneath me. I flopped uselessly to the ground a moment later, but thankfully my assailant refrained from further violence. He just turned around and loped away. My third attempt to rise succeeded. Almost immediately, I wished it hadn’t.

My head ached and my vision wobbled like a jelly mold. “Catch him!” I rasped.

I wouldn’t have thought anyone had heard me—especially over the screaming, shouting racket coming from the auditorium behind the half-fallen curtains. But another shadow detached itself from the wall and set off after my assailant at a dead run with a whoop.

I definitely knew that voice. I smiled. Lily, apparently having decided she was in no immediate danger, ran over.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“I think you have a scoop,” I said, gingerly touching the swelling at my temple. It didn’t feel as bad as I’d feared, though Lily was still in danger of getting vomit all over her haute couture. I decided it was best not to tell her.

“Ha!” Lily said, her voice shaking a little. “I think I have twenty. Is Aileen…”

We both looked over. “Aileen,” I called gently. She was breathing and her pulse was steady, but she didn’t respond to us at all. Deep in the hallway backstage, someone shouted.

“Who in the blazes was that?” Lily asked, gripping my elbow.

My smile widened. “I think we’re about to find out.”

The Society under-secretary poked her head beneath the curtain, her cheeks flushed apple-red. “Are you … Has it…”

“We seem fine,” I said, hoping my assertion made it true. “I heard a shot, but as far as I can tell, Aileen wasn’t hit.”

The woman raised her eyes heavenward and put a doughy hand over her chest. “Thank the lord,” she said. “The police are on their way. I’m sure they’ll catch whoever—”

The backstage lights as well as those in the auditorium flickered and then came back on with a high-pitched whine. I had never been so grateful for illumination: Aileen still hadn’t regained consciousness, but at least I could be sure she wasn’t quietly bleeding to death. A few seconds later, Harry came bounding back through the hall, a man slung across his broad shoulders.

Lily’s eyes went wide as she saw him: a picture of youthful vigor and beauty, a dashing curl across his forehead.

“Got him, Zeph!” Harry proclaimed, tossing the man to the floor with somewhat vindictive force. He groaned, which reassured me—I didn’t want Harry locked up for murder, even in self-defense. Daddy would cover the legal fees, but how he would complain.

The curtain was still half-fallen, but from my vantage point I could see quite a few waists drifting closer to the stage. I contemplated standing, but decided it was far more comfortable down here. The room still rocked in a manner that might have been pleasant had I been drunk.

The mayor poked his head beneath the curtain, a mere foot away from me. “Miss Hollis,” he said, a little breathlessly. “I always find you in the most fascinating situations. Is that man…”

“The culprit,” Harry said, nudging the man in the ribs with the toe of his leather boot. I wondered, idly, how Harry had managed to afford such well-tooled shoes. They were probably a present from some monogrammed letterhead or another, I decided.

The man rolled over, allowing me to see his face clearly for the first time. I had never seen him before that day in Madison’s office, and yet both times he had behaved as though he knew me. I wondered why, but the faint, shimmering haze that seemed to have settled over my vision made it difficult to concentrate.

“How hard did that bastard hit me?” I muttered.

The mayor raised his eyebrows. “Such language, Miss Hollis.”

“Such prudery, Mr. Walker,” I said.

Judith Brandon’s head joined that of her well-placed employer. “Isn’t that Madison’s man? What’s his name…”

Jimmy Walker’s sudden smile held more than a touch of schadenfreude. “Why, aren’t you right, Judith? It’s one of his foundling puppies. And it seems he assaulted a famous medium in public just as she would have divulged the identity of the vampire killer.”

I swear Walker was about to lick his well-formed lips. He raised his eyes heavenward. “My thanks, Boss,” he said, quietly.

“Mayor,” I said, aware my words were slurring and not entirely inclined to care, “you seem to like your ghosts.”

“I confess to being a convert,” said the mayor, his eyebrows raised in arch innocence. “What information the dead possess! And I have a suspicion, you see.” He ducked his head back under the curtain. “Madison!” he called, his stentorian politician voice booming like a foghorn through the continued din. “The proceedings on stage might be of interest to you.”

I looked back at Madison’s assistant, now groaning his way back to consciousness beneath Harry’s expensive shoes. I did not worry that he posed a further danger to me or Aileen. Harry was a Hollis, after all, and could do our daddy proud without my assistance.

By the time Madison himself poked his head under the curtain, the mayor was clearly not the only one wondering about his relationship with the man on the floor. But only my favorite deb reporter had the guts to say so.

“Mr. Madison,” Lily said, flipping to a fresh page in her notebook, “did your associate kill officer Zuckerman and the other vampires?”

Madison’s ruddy face turned the shade of pickled beets. I giggled.

“How dare you imply such a thing, young lady!” His voice was very loud, and a few drops of foam-flecked spittle sprayed my cheek.

Lily wiped her forehead. “Well, he did assault the medium just as she was about to reveal the identity of the killer.”

“It’s all fraud and nonsense,” Madison said, with quite unnecessary vigor.

I turned to him. “You spat in my ear.”

He stared at me like I was a statue that had inexplicably begun to talk. “I beg your pardon?” he managed.

“It wasn’t very pleasant.”

“Why … I’m quite sorry.”

From deep inside the hallway, I heard the sound of several booted feet running toward the stage. I looked between Lily and the mayor.

“Who do you suppose that is?” I asked.

“The police, I hope,” said the under-secretary.

“I’m sure they’ll sort this all out in a jiffy,” said the mayor. He pulled out a gray pocket square and dabbed at a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “I’m afraid, however, that I must depart. I have a prior engagement—”

“At the Ziegfeld, I’m sure,” I said. Judith Brandon glared at me, but the mayor just blinked in surprise and laughed.

“Everybody stay right where you are!” That was McConnell—to my surprise, I’d quite forgotten about him in the confusion. But he was at the head of a dozen of New York’s finest, crowding the stage and pointing their firearms quite indiscriminately.

“Who fired the shot?” McConnell asked no one in particular.

My brother, who has always been lacking in common sense, stepped forward. “I did, sir,” he said.

McConnell trained his gun on Harry, who didn’t look nearly as perturbed as he ought. A few feet away, the man groaned and his eyes fluttered.

“Which of them did you shoot?” McConnell asked.

At this, Harry bristled. “Neither, of course. He attacked the medium and I fired into the ceiling to scare him off.”

“Will Lady Cassandra be all right?” McConnell asked.

I checked Aileen hopefully for signs of consciousness, but she remained prone and insensate. Worry clamped my chest, and I wondered how much of her pallor could be attributed to cosmetics.

“I don’t know. I think perhaps she needs a doctor,” I said, and swayed.

Lily caught me. “Zephyr, what’s wrong with you?” she whispered.

“Just a … head thing,” I said. “Used to happen all the time in Montana. It’ll go away in a day or so.”

McConnell put away his gun and walked closer to Aileen. “Perhaps she’ll remember what Zuckerman was going to say?”

“I certainly hope so,” said Jimmy Walker. “I’m afraid the city can’t stand much more of this. But perhaps, officer, your culprit has already revealed himself?”

The mayor nodded toward Madison’s man, who blinked in the manner of one unwillingly roused from a deep sleep just as a police officer cuffed him.

“Yes, Mr. Madison,” Lily said, a hound with blood in her nose. “What about the crimes of your associate? Did you encourage him to kill unsuspecting vampires, including Officer Zuckerman?”

“I deny it completely!” he said, and wriggled awkwardly under the curtain from the theater floor until he was able to get his legs beneath him on stage. “If he committed any crimes in this matter, they are his own.”

McConnell stood his ground before Madison’s bluster. “I seem to recall you telling your followers that it’s God’s calling to do anything to beat back the vampire scourge,” he said. “And now someone in your employ appears to have killed them. That’s a remarkable coincidence, Mr. Madison.”

“I encourage no one to break the law,” Madison said angrily, but he looked at the crowd around him like I imagined a fox might watch the approaching hounds. “I merely advocate that we do all we can to keep our city safe from them.”

“In that case, I’m sure you’ll have no objection to us searching your offices for any evidence relating to the crime?”

“You may search Brad’s desk, of course. But much of my work is of a sensitive and confidential nature, and nothing of mine would be of use in your investigation.”

Remembering what I had found in the false bottom drawer of his office desk, I could well understand his discomfort with the idea.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” McConnell said, and turned around. The man, Brad, had sat up, staring like he was more or less awake. “And what do you have to say for yourself?”

Brad blinked slowly. He surveyed the attentive crowd with a deliberate, burning hatred that made me shudder. I suddenly had no doubt that he had killed those vampires. “I don’t say anything.”

“Did you kill Mort, you—” McConnell choked back what promised to be an epithet too colorful for polite company.

Brad’s eyes darted around the room—landing on me, the mayor, Judith Brandon, and Madison before finally settling on his accuser.

“I won’t talk,” he said.

McConnell sighed. “Take this one back to the station. Get her a doctor,” he said, gesturing to Aileen. “The rest of you are free to go. We might need to speak to you for questioning later. I haven’t forgotten about you, Miss Hollis.”

I groaned, just a little. “I never thought otherwise, officer.”

The crowd dispersed as soon as the officers hauled Brad away. I stayed by Aileen with Lily.

“We should get her back home,” I said, though the thought of managing such a complicated matter was exacerbating the nausea caused by the blow to my head.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll call a doctor. I’ll need someone to get her into the taxi, though.”

“That’s a good idea,” I agreed, and surged to my knees.

“Will you … Zephyr, what is a head thing?”

“You should move your shoes,” I said.

Lily jumped back like I had shown her a snake. And good thing, as I proceeded to vomit all over the stage.

*   *   *

Harry took me out back. We determined that further evacuation of my stomach was best conducted away from the Society head, whose shrieks still echoed behind us.

“Remember that time in the Black Hills? Those revenants?”

I groaned and laughed at the same time. “Barely. I couldn’t see straight for a week. Daddy said it served me right for not hitting soon enough.”

“Never made that mistake again though, did you?” Harry said.

I gulped the relatively cool night air and gratefully rested against my brother’s side. “Guess not,” I said. “I should have seen that blow coming.”

“You’re out of practice,” Harry said. “How often do you train?”

I attempted a glower, but it ended in a second, less violent, purging. “I’m attempting a higher good,” I said, wiping my mouth with a shaking hand. Harry handed me his handkerchief.

“You still oughtta train,” he said. “What would Daddy say if he saw you back there?”

I smiled in the face of his concern. “I don’t know, Harry. Rumor has it he’s gone crazy.” We were silent for a moment, listening to the cars trundling past the alley that now reeked of vomit in addition to garbage and piss.

“You should have been born first,” I said, suddenly. “You’d give him less grief.”

Harry drew himself up and cocked his head. “I doubt that, Zephyr,” he said, and I recalled the not quite secret about the nature of his love life.

“Let’s go out front,” I said. “It stinks in here.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Harry said, and kept a firm grip on my elbow. A few people milled about outside, but I noticed one immediately.

“Amir!” I said, yanking my arm from Harry’s grip and stumbling toward him. “Where on earth have you been! You missed all the excitement!”

He looked angry as he turned, though that didn’t worry me because I was always doing something or other to annoy him. It was part of the charm, really. But then his eyes widened and his face took on a rather disturbing greenish tinge.

“Zephyr, what—”

Harry caught me before I fell. “Sorry,” he said, blushing. “She’s a little…”

“Splifficated?”

The two people with whom Amir had been conversing with turned to me. I gasped. “Elspeth! Sofia! What are you—it’s not Sunday, is it?”

Sofia smiled. “Thursday,” she said.

“Zephyr Hollis,” said Elspeth, “have you been drinking?”

“I have not!” I said. “Though it sounds like a swell idea.”

“I don’t think so, Zeph,” Harry said.

Amir leaned down to look in my eyes. “Did you hit your head?”

I giggled. “We have a winner! But it wasn’t my fault. Madison’s man hit me.”

Harry shrugged helplessly. “It was a mess in there.”

“Is she all right?” Amir asked.

“I’m fine!”

“I’m a little worried,” Harry said.

I leaned toward Amir and caught myself on his waistcoat. “He’s just afraid of Daddy,” I whispered.

Amir set me back upright with careful, warm hands. “I’m afraid of your daddy,” he said. “I take it this is your brother?”

“Harry Hollis,” Harry said, extending his hand. “And you are?”

Amir’s mouth twisted a little. “Amir al-Natar ibn Kashkash, youngest prince of Shadukiam, the great city of roses, at your service.” He executed an ostentatiously formal bow, mostly directed at Sofia and Elspeth.

“You never told me you knew a prince, Zeph,” Harry said.

“He’s just showing off,” I said. “Amir is my genie.”

Amir sighed. “And Zephyr is my cross,” he said. “Though apparently she means to be rid of me on Sunday.”

Elspeth shifted uncomfortably. “You told him?” I said. Indignation didn’t agree with my stomach. I swallowed back bile.

“He seemed to know already,” Elspeth said. “We were trying to find you, but—”

Sofia said something in her language, to which Amir responded with a shrug.

“Sofia says she understands now why you want to be rid of him.”

For some reason, this made my nausea even more acute. The world deepened its greenish hue. “She does?”

Sofia interrupted Elspeth’s dutiful translation with a wave of her hand. They argued for a brief moment and then Elspeth shook her head.

“This one,” said Sofia, in her perfectly intelligible, if limited, English. “Too hot. No control. You,” she said, pressing one finger against my chest for emphasis, “need control.”

I opened my mouth, sure some suitable protest would emerge. “That’s…”

Amir’s laugh did not sound very mirthful. “Entirely accurate?”

He said something to Sofia, who beamed at him like a proud mother. I scowled. I should have guessed Amir would charm her. Control, Sofia had said. Well, perhaps she was right. Was it such a sin to desire to steer the boat of one’s own life? And how could I, with Amir burning and observing and aggravating me every day? How could I, if I always had to care about him?

“Why did you want to talk?” I asked Elspeth.

“Sofia did,” she said. “I asked her about the story you told me—the djinni whose vessel broke free.”

“And?” I asked.

“Zephyr,” Amir said, “I already told you—”

“It’s true. The last djinni whose vessel broke free was exiled for life.”

It was true? I hadn’t expected this. It felt like more of a blow than it ought, like Brad had hit me with a billy club instead of his fist.

I whirled on Amir, squinting against the glare of electric lamps flickering greenly behind him. “You are a rank, shameless, unprincipled liar!”

Harry put a tentative hand on my shoulder, as though to steady me, but I wrenched free. “How dare you! Especially about something so important?”

Amir had looked vaguely guilty, but now he drew himself up, every inch a prince. “Why? So I could use guilt to make you remain in a situation so clearly untenable to you? Perhaps I’m shameless as you say, but I have more pride than that.”

The lights flickered greener. My body felt light, as though it might come up off the sidewalk itself, but if I kept my gaze straight on Amir’s dark eyes, I could keep myself from swaying. “You’ve been trying to convince me to make a wish for months,” I said. “Why stop now?”

“It’s my greatest desire, darling,” Amir said angrily, but with an undercurrent of something like tenderness. He took my elbow and led me a few feet away from the others. “But Kardal crossed a line in telling you that story—yes, of course, I guessed from the moment you asked. It reeks of Kardal. He didn’t tell you the full tale, you know. Just enough to manipulate you.”

“Then tell me now. I should at least know the truth before I decide.”

Amir smiled. “No,” he said.

“I have the right to make my own decisions, Amir!”

“Of course you do,” he said. “But you don’t have the right to all the details of my life.”

“Shouldn’t I know if this will hurt you?” I hadn’t meant to sound so plaintive, but it was all I could do to keep the unspoken again from damning the end of the sentence.

“You’ve already decided,” he said. “I just hope you pick your payment wisely.”

“Payment?”

“Whatever power ends up taking your bargain,” he said, “will demand a great deal in return.”

The demon’s price. I had avoided thinking of that all week. Now the reality of the choice weighed on my shoulders like a lead mantle. Or an albatross. Amir thought I had already decided, but I didn’t feel very sure anymore. The world glowed green and Amir smelled of roses and Sofia’s pastries. Magic, I thought.

“Amir,” I said, “you’ll still get me into the morgue, won’t you?”

“Of course, habibti,” he said, and caught me when I floated to the ground.