Moonshine: A Novel (12 page)

I turned to Lily. She was gnawing on her bottom lip. I could do nothing to help Amir, but . . .

"Oh, Lily, rescue him!"

To my surprise, she obeyed. With determined grace she ran forward and kissed him on both cheeks like a long-lost friend. She gave a withering look to the baffled maitre d' before leading Amir back to our table. I could tell that Lily amused him, but his posture was stiff with fury. An embarrassed blush rose, nonsensically, to my cheeks.

"Amir--" I said, standing up and rushing into some incoherent apology.

He shook his head. "Never mind. I take it you know my savior?"

Lily looked between the two of us. "For someone who leaves the ghetto only on her bicycle, you sure know a lot of people, Zephyr."

I smiled. "The curious life of the vampire suffragette. Lily, Amir. Amir, Lily."

Lily's gaze was rapt as she allowed him to take her hand. I could almost watch her internal struggle as she weighed his handsome looks and apparent wealth against his cultural defects.

Beauty won. "Would you like to sit with us? Zephyr seems to have eaten all the food, but . . ."

Amir shook his head. He had brushed his hair back, but a glossy lock had fallen above his temple. "Much as I'd love to, I'm afraid I can't. I've only stopped by to deliver a message to Miss Hollis."

"A message?" I said.

His full, nonfiery gaze rested upon me and I wished I could be sitting down. "It's the boy."

Lily paid the bill and walked with us into the lobby, practically radiating curiosity.

"Is he human?" she whispered when we fell behind, but I knew Amir could hear her.

"What do you think?"

She put the tip of her pen to her red lips and sucked thoughtfully. "Those eyes . . . a demon?"

"You can't be interested. He's a lot more scandalous than a suffragette meeting."

She gave a dramatic sigh. "But what a scandal!"

We reached the revolving doors. Amir paused and looked at me impatiently.

I took the hint. "Lily," I said, "don't you have somewhere to . . ."

"Right. Your mysterious message. You'd better not let
The Sun
scoop me, what ever it is." She collected her fur coat from the concierge and jammed a shallow-brimmed cloche over her daringly bobbed hair. "But I'll see you soon, I hope?"

I nodded. "As soon as I learn anything."

She and Amir exchanged a loaded (annoying) farewell and then she kissed me firmly on the cheeks, as though she had forgotten I looked like a stray the maid brought in. I waved back as she dashed outside.

"She doesn't have any taste," I said.

The subtle tension still hadn't left Amir, and I wondered if it had more to do with what ever he had been through last night than the scuffle in the restaurant. He didn't look tired, but I sensed it anyway.

"No doubt. I am, as you pointed out, not a safe social decision."

I looked up at him, abruptly embarrassed by the ironic cast of his smile. "I didn't mean it like that. I mean, she's a silly girl. Smart, but silly."

"And beautiful."

Demon eyes, Lily had called them. Even their amusement was too powerful to ignore. "Are you trying to make me jealous?"

He shrugged. "Very crudely. Will you come with me? I think you'll want to see him."

I accepted the change in subject gratefully. "He's recovered?"

"He's . . . strange, but not mad. He doesn't remember much."

He went ahead of me through the revolving doors. I buttoned my jacket, replaced my hat and followed him. Outside, it had begun to snow again, an earnest dusting that was rapidly building on the inches left last night. I sighed. Bicycling in the snow could be fun, but I was tired of coming home covered in mud puddles. We were halfway down the stairs when Troy--caked with snow and without even a hat to cover him--called out to me.

"Oh, you're back?" I said. He glared at me. Amir moved a few steps closer, as though to protect me, but I rolled my eyes and waved him away. Honestly, Troy was a giant blond baby with a love of violent projectiles. I'd had a huge crush on him when I was sixteen. He had been my first kiss. I'd had some crazy notion of him asking Daddy for permission, but instead he made me promise not to tell. In retrospect, I could only be grateful that he'd been mature enough to realize neither of us wanted anything approaching "till death do us part." Daddy loves him.

"Did you get your money back?" I asked, when he didn't say anything.

He laughed humorlessly. "Funny you should ask that, Zephyr. The fellow that sold the sword to me swore it was blessed."

I squinted against a frigid gust of wind. "Well, I'm sure he did."

"Oh, he proved it. He keeps a pet ghoul. The damn beast
sizzled
, Zeph. Like a fried egg."

I grimaced. "To call you a Neanderthal, Troy, is an insult to hairy protohumans."

"Do you have it?" Amir asked, surprising both of us.

Troy looked at him for a moment and then shrugged. He removed the short sword from the holster under his jacket. Amir held it gingerly, as though it were some fragile object . . . or it burned him.

"It's blessed," he said shortly, handing it to me. I unsheathed it and stared at the slightly curved blade.

"But, he held it less than a foot away from a fairie!"

Troy looked smug enough to burst. "I guess she wasn't a fairie, Zeph."

"She was," I said, emphasizing the words with a few experimental swipes. The air whistled past the dangerously sharp blade. "I'm a hundred times better at recognizing Others than you are."

"It wouldn't affect a fairie," Amir said. "It's strongly blessed, but not Christian."

"Not Christian?" Troy repeated, stupidly, as though the thought of other religions had never once crossed his tiny Defender mind. "What good is it, then?"

Amir glanced at me for a moment, his mouth quirking with delicious, shared mockery. "Not much, in this country," he said.

Troy stamped his foot, leaving an angry print on the snow. "Oh, bloody Christ."

"Could I buy it off of you?"

"Why the hell not. Who are you, anyway? Nice of you to introduce us, Zephyr."

I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him. "Amir, meet Troy; he knows my daddy. Troy, meet Amir, he's . . . a temporary employer."

Troy looked surprised. "Employer? You're not getting into the business again, are you?"

I shook my head vehemently, as this was a little uncomfortably close to the truth.

Amir handed Troy fifty dollars. "I think that should satisfy?" he said.

Troy pouted. "I paid eighty for the damn thing."

"I imagine that's more than anyone else will give you for a pagan blade," Amir said, allowing a measure of his disdain to show.

Troy considered for a moment and then pocketed the money. "Right. Jesus, it's cold out here. I'll see you around, Zephyr. If you're looking for more work, you know where to find me."

"Under a damn rock, I hope,"

I muttered as he ran up the steps. Amir laughed. "Old friend?"

"Slim pickings in Montana."

We were in a palace. I hadn't had time to notice our surroundings--just some vague impressions of marble arches and trickling water. As far as I could tell, Amir had taken us here by closing his eyes and snapping his fingers. After a mercifully brief instant of pure, stomach-inverting vertigo, I staggered against Amir and realized that we were certainly not in Manhattan anymore. We stood in an arcaded courtyard, facing a pillar of smoke that was apparently Amir's brother Kardal.

The smoke resolved itself into something vaguely human after Amir frowned at him with literal fire in his eyes. "You are that human my brother has made so much of?"

If molten rock had a voice, I imagine it would sound much like Kardal--deeper than a tuba and rough and warm. And at the moment, the earth disapproved. I felt myself shaking and tried to stop.

"Yes, the very same, Kardal," Amir said impatiently. "Could you stop that?"

"Stop what?" Kardal asked, all too innocently. Ah, definitely siblings. I had too many of my own not to recognize the signs.

"You're older, right?" I said to the smoky djinn.

He smiled and grew a little more solid. "Of course."

Amir rolled his eyes. "It's just three centuries, Kardal. You'd think you're as old as Kashkash, the way you go on."

"Three
centuries
?"

Both brothers stared at me, as though they only now remembered my human lifespan.

"You'll find that Amir tends to behave like a human one-tenth his age," Kardal said, almost apologetically. "It's because he's still young and reckless."

I had to smile. "Well, that at least explains the hot dogs."

Amir gave me a startled glance, both guilty and pleased. "I'm taking her to the boy."

Kardal's figure billowed, and what I could make of his expression seemed quizzical. "Strange. Now you even collect humans," he said. "You ought to spend more time with your own kind."

Amir said something in that other language--the annoyance, if not the meaning, came through--and dragged me by the hand like a child's pulltoy through a series of arcaded corridors.

"So," I said, doing my best to sound unfazed, "where are we?"

On the far side of an enclosed garden redolent with honeysuckle and a hundred tiny blooming roses, a door led to a spiral staircase. Amir went up ahead of me.

"My brother's home," he said.

I couldn't see his face so it was hard to tell if he was being deliberately evasive. "Of course. Where would I address a letter? Thirteen and a half Mad Hatter Lane, Wonderland? That dusty lamp in the corner of the pawn shop?"

Amir didn't pause his ascent, but he did laugh. I stumbled. "Shadukiam, the fabled city of roses."

I had heard the name before--or at least read it years ago, when Daddy had brought home an abridged version of
Arabian Nights
as an apology present to Mama.

"Do all the djinn live here?" I asked, panting.

"I don't." His tone was icy. I wished I hadn't asked. Still, I thought of his palatial, isolated apartment and wondered why he would live there when
this
was an option. Troy had given me a clue as to why he hadn't used his powers with the vampire last night, but that didn't explain much else. His bouts of horrible pain, his mysterious vendetta against Rinaldo . . . his interest in me. Did it all fit into one picture? Amir had taken off his suit jacket and loosened his tie, which combined to emphasize an unaffected, casual beauty. I would have sighed, but I was already taking large gulps of air just to stagger up the neverending staircase.

How much was he hiding from me? I already knew he was dangerous, but did I have anything to fear? His eyes said no, but Daddy says you don't trust Other eyes. Not if you want to stay alive . . . or human.

We reached the top of the stairs. Amir drew out a key and unlocked the door while I leaned against the wall with my head between my knees.

"Your brother . . ." I gasped, between breaths, "should really . . . look into some elevators!"

Amir put his hand on my shoulder and offered me a glass of water with his other. I had not the slightest clue where it came from, but I guzzled it gratefully.

"Elevators," Amir said, when I straightened up, "are not very useful to a creature made of smoke."

"And the stairs are what, decoration?"

"Of course."

Amir opened the door. We emerged onto a large, shaded verandah that overlooked vast olive and fig groves bounded by a river perhaps two miles away. The air was thick and redolent with earth and fruit. And to imagine in New York it was a snowy twenty degrees! Kardal's palace felt like Eden. I pulled off my hat and my jacket and set my water on the balcony.

"Where's the boy?" I asked.

Feet shuffled behind me. "Say hello to Miss Hollis, Judah."

I whirled around.

"Hello, Miss Hollis," the boy said, quietly but unmistakably.

He'd come back. I wiped--surreptitiously, I hoped--my eyes with the back of my hand and knelt before him in the shadows of a screened room just off of the balcony. "Why, hello, Judah. Do you remember me?"

His wide brown eyes glowed dangerously, brighter than any vampire I had seen apart from Nicholas of the Turn Boys. He shook his head slowly. The puncture wounds had healed without a scar. His skin was pallid, but his cheeks blushed telltale rose and I wondered where Amir had been getting the blood to feed him. Could he conjure it here like a glass of water?

"Do you remember your full name, Judah? Your parents? Do you remember where you live?" He shook his head silently to each of my questions.

I looked up at Amir. His eyebrows were furrowed and his lips compressed to a thin, pale line.

"Do you think he'll remember anything else?" I asked, hesitantly.

I felt a sudden blast of heat from him and the boy dashed behind the screen door to the inner chamber. Ten feet in less than a second. I shivered.

"Judah," I called in a singsong voice, like trying to coax a frightened cat from up a tree. I followed his path through the screen door. "It's okay. We won't--"

"Mama?" he said. He spun on his heel to face me in the center of a room strewn with cushions. Suddenly, his eyes rolled back and he collapsed to the floor. Amir and I ran forward. Judah's eyes were still open, though I could only see the glowing whites. He trembled slightly, but not like a human having a seizure. He was speaking with a distant calm that disturbed me far more than his most feral growling.