A Time of Shadows (Out of Time #8) (12 page)

“Dr. Demir,” Tess said, coming to the edge of the desk. “We need your help.”

Before he could protest, she continued, “We think Skavo is in danger.”

Demir looked up briefly, sighed and nodded. “I am not surprised,” he said, tossing his glasses down onto his desk. “He has a penchant for finding trouble.”

“He came to see you the other day,” Jack said, hoping he was right. “Do you know where he is?”

Demir looked at him flatly.

“Please, Doctor,” Tess said. “It’s very important.”

Demir leaned back in his chair and put his hands on the edge of his desk. “And why should I trust you?”

“Because if we meant you any harm, the gun in my friend’s jacket would be in his hand,” Tess said.

Demir’s eyebrows shot up and wrinkled his forehead as he looked quickly at Jack, who, despite his own surprise, smiled back. Tess was a clever one. She’d not only noticed what he’d tried to conceal, but she’d managed to threaten the doctor by saying they were no threat.

Jack got up off the desk to give the doctor a little more breathing room. “We really are here to help.”

Demir eyed them suspiciously. “I suppose I have little choice.”

Tess leaned forward. “Do you know where he is?”

The doctor shook his head. “I do not.”

Tess frowned and the doctor held up a placating hand. “He did come to see me. Many years ago, we spent some time at university together. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in quite some time. Until the other day.”

“What did he want?” Jack asked.

The doctor laughed briefly, but there was little humor in it. “Orichalcum.”

Jack shook his head in confusion. “What’s that?”

“A fantasy.” Demir said and then sighed. “It is, supposedly, an alloy of several elements, metals, but it does not exist. It is the stuff of myth, not science.”

“What did he need it for? What does it do?” Tess asked.

Demir shook his head. “How would I know? Drasko was always a little strange, but the man I saw was a shadow of the one I knew.”
 

The corners of his mouth turned down and he shrugged. “He is quite mad, I’m afraid.”

Tess and Jack exchanged worried glances. That’s all they needed. Crazy people were unpredictable, and that made them very, very hard to find.

“Do you have any idea where he went? Where he lives?” Jack asked.

Demir shook his head. “I do not. But…”

“But,” Tess prompted.

Demir frowned deeply. “He mentioned something about Sihirbaz.”

“Where’s that?” Jack asked.

“Not where,” Demir corrected. “Who. He is a man, an alchemist,” he added with a sneer, “who would, despite the fact that it does not exist, most likely claim to be able to find what he was searching for.”

“And how do we find this man?” Jack asked.

Demir shrugged. “He runs a black market. Here and there, I have only heard rumors.”

“Rumors like…”

“That he holds court on the weekends—to fleece the wealthy tourists and the foolish—at the Meşale Cafe. I do not know if it is true.”

Jack felt a small spike of adrenaline. “What does he look like?”

“I have never seen him. His real name is Metin Baydar, but he goes by the nickname Sihirbaz.”

“What does that mean?”

Demir snorted and then smiled. “The Wizard.”

~~~

New York had changed, Simon thought, and not for the better. The streets were dirty, crowded, and apparently, perpetually under construction. He didn’t think they’d passed a single block in their cab ride that wasn’t marred by cheap wooden boards and metal scaffolding. Not to mention the graffiti and posters peeling off makeshift fences emblazoned with “Post No Bills.” It was disappointing.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Elizabeth said, her head practically sticking out of the cab window.
 

Charlotte nodded eagerly in agreement and Simon laughed.

Elizabeth frowned at him and then said to Charlotte, “Don’t let him get to you. Secretly, he loves it.”

“It’s a secret I apparently keep even from myself.”

Elizabeth laughed and turned back to enjoy the view.
 

Although what she could possibly find to enjoy was beyond him. And not just because the street was nondescript, but because they hadn’t moved in at least three minutes.

“What—”

Simon’s question was interrupted by his taxi driver’s timely honk on the horn. He threw his hands up and slapped the wheel, mumbling something to himself in Armenian.

“Is there a problem?” Simon asked.

The driver turned around and shrugged with his mouth and shoulder. “New York,” the man said as though that explained everything.

In a way, Simon supposed it did. Knowing that, however, did little to ease his frustration. Normally, he would have been impatient at the delay but tolerated it. Today, with his nerves already on edge, he felt distinctly uncomfortable in this predicament.
 

He felt fairly confident they hadn’t been followed after their encounter with whoever that man was at the theater in Hollywood. But he couldn’t be sure. Not completely. He glanced over at Elizabeth and Charlotte, who chattered away delightedly about the little bit of the city they could see. If circumstances were different, if everything he loved weren’t sitting here trapped with him…

“Let’s walk,” he said, throwing open the cab door even before getting a response from Elizabeth.

She shrugged. “Okay.”

Simon paid the driver and helped Charlotte and then Elizabeth out of the cab. It wasn’t far to Charlie’s place or, at least, what Charlie’s place had become. According to the Internet, it was now something called Jitter Juice—a coffee shop by day and bar by night.
 

Charlotte skipped along next to Elizabeth. The two occasionally leaned toward each other and shared some secret. It warmed his heart. Which, today, was quite a feat.
 

“So this is where Charlie’s place was?” Charlotte asked and then bared her teeth. “And the vampire?”

Elizabeth looked down at her with a frown and stopped walking. “How do you know about that?”
 

“You told me,” Charlotte said.

Simon looked over at Elizabeth, who looked as concerned by the revelation as he was.

Charlotte looked over at him. “You told me all about it, all about everywhere you’ve been,” she said, and then frowned and shrugged. “Mostly. Left out the gross stuff.”

“We did?” Simon asked feeling distinctly uncomfortable at the thought. Why on Earth would they burden a child with such knowledge?

“You said I was too young, but Mom convinced you.”

Simon glared at Elizabeth who spread her arms in self-defense.

“I’m sure I had a very good reason. Probably.”

Simon sighed.
 

“She said that the past had a way of coming back and I should be prepared if it did.”

That made sense, Simon had to admit.
 

Charlotte stood up straighter. “Knowledge is power, I suppose,” she said in imitation of his lecturing voice.

Elizabeth laughed. “That’s pretty good.”
 

“Don’t be daft,” Elizabeth added with a scowl, comically aping his accent.

“Very droll,” Charlotte added, and the two of them walked on, exchanging bad imitations of him.

 
Simon watched them walk ahead and shook his head. They would be the end of him, he thought, and if he were being honest with himself, he couldn’t wait for it all to start.
 

After a few more ridiculously long blocks, they arrived at their destination. The nondescript door that had hidden Charlie’s speakeasy was gone, replaced by a glass door with sandwich boards on either side urging people to try the Brazilian Sitio Colinas coffee which was billed as a heady mixture of floral, papaya, cinnamon and honey. Just the thought of it made Simon want to gag.
 

Hoping the inside had changed far less than the outside, he held open the door for Charlotte and Elizabeth.

When he’d stepped across the threshold he’d half expected to see Charlie’s broad face and hear his gruff, but friendly, “How’s tricks, Professor?” Instead he got a tepid, “Welcome to Jitter Juice. Wifi’s free,” from the young girl who stood behind the bar. Her sullen face, what he could see of it, was half-hidden by the hood of her sweatshirt.

The dark, smoky, “just the wrong side of the law” ambiance was gone. In its place were bright lights, glass and polished brass. The dark wood paneling was gone and the bricks were clean and perfect. Cheery. It was…disappointing.

Simon shook his head. He hadn’t thought he’d be nostalgic about Charlie’s place, but as he stood in this pale imitation, he realized he was. And it wasn’t just the room that had changed, the clientele had changed as well.

Simon thought he knew what a hipster was; his classes at university were filled with them. However, judging from this crowd, he’d finally witnessed the real thing. Skinny jeans, pork pie hats and black glasses seemed to be the dress code du jour. Beards, “vintage” jackets and earrings everywhere but their ears rounded out the look. The hipsters, he was told once, were so aloof they even ignored themselves. That, perhaps, might be their most redeeming feature, he thought as he moved toward the bar.

The long wooden bar was one of the few things that felt the same. Simon’s traditional heart made a small nod of approval. The bar was cleaner and didn’t smell of the fusel oil they used in the old days to flavor the liquor, but it was the original. He’d watched Charlie sling countless drinks across it and could still picture Dix leaning against it, yelling out her order.
 

 
That was at least a little comforting. Somewhere, hopefully in this room, Teddy had hidden his next clue. Simon looked around. Wherever it was, the place was crowded and it would be difficult to pry something out of the wall or floor without garnering too much attention. Perhaps Teddy had made it even more difficult for them and placed it somewhere behind the bar. Simon turned to look. Not only couldn’t he fathom a way to sneak behind it to search, the day’s offerings of absurd coffee blends at even more absurd prices that were scrawled in colored chalk on boards behind the bar soured his mood that much more.

Elizabeth must have sensed his displeasure and came to his side. “Don’t see anything you like?”

He frowned down at her. “Coffee should be simple. This,” he said, waving toward the menu, “is not.”

“Simple like tea? One flavor will do?”

“Tea is completely different.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Spoken like a true Englishman.”

“I should hope so,” Simon muttered before leaning down to whisper. “How are we going to find anything in this place?”

She shrugged. “Looking?”

He rolled his eyes in reply, but she was right. And the sooner they found what they were looking for the better. Making a show of looking at the overpriced pastries and studying the menu repeatedly, Simon edged his way along the bar. Running his fingers over the wood brought back memories of the last time he’d been here—desperate and half out of his mind with worry. Without thinking about it, he turned and looked for Elizabeth on the other side of the room as he had so many times before. She smiled at him and then continued her own search.

He’d been over the top of the bar twice now and didn’t see any sign of the tell-tale moon. Stepping back, he looked around the base and the brass foot rail. He nearly laughed when he saw it. The cap to the end of the foot rail, clear as day, had their moon on it.
Well done, Teddy.

But, once again, he couldn’t exactly unscrew the end of the railing without drawing undue attention. He’d need a cover. And once again, Charlotte could help provide it. One of her sneakers was untied.

He called her over and she smiled up at him. It was the most guileless, honest and beautiful smile he’d ever seen and for a moment he completely forgot what he was doing.

“Yeah?”

“Your shoe is untied,” he said, and then added in a whisper. “It’s in the end of the foot rail.”

Charlotte looked confused for a moment and then realized what he meant.

Elizabeth came over to them. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Simon said as he positioned her next to him to shield anyone’s view of Charlotte.

Simon nodded to her and Charlotte knelt down. She re-tied her shoe and then quickly unscrewed the cap on the end of the brass foot rail, slipped the canister out and put the cap back on.

She stood and surreptitiously handed Simon the canister.

“You two,” Elizabeth said with a grin.

Simon put his hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. “Well done,” he said.

She beamed up at him.
 

“Well,” Elizabeth said, “now that that’s out of the way. How about some of the guest beans?”
 

She turned to the chalkboard menu. “Huckleberry and violet. Who can pass that up?”

Simon smiled and put his hand on her shoulder. “We can.”

“G
OOD
?” E
LIZABETH
ASKED
AS
Charlotte took another bite of her biscotti.

She nodded, but Elizabeth could tell she wasn’t thrilled. “It’s no cannoli?”

Charlotte smiled and nodded.
 

Elizabeth sighed. “Little is.”

After very little convincing, she and Charlotte had managed to get Simon to agree to a few small purchases at the coffee shop before heading back uptown. The area of the Lower East Side where both Charlie’s place and their rooms at the Manchester Arms had been was now called the East Village. To her mind though, other than the name, not that much had changed.
 

And looking at the way Simon hovered and hurried them along, his view of it hadn’t changed. He always felt better in anything upper than anything lower. To her, it had always been the opposite. Although now, after spending a fair amount of time with blue bloods, she was pretty sure they all bled the same way.

Not that she blamed Simon. He was, despite his occasional snobbishness, the best and fairest man she’d ever met. It was definitely more fun to move up in the world than down in it.