Moonshine: A Novel (28 page)

We kept walking, though a cab occasionally drove past. "No one wants to deal with it," I said. "Newspapers are elite institutions. Well, yours is, anyway. Doing real reporting on Others exposes their failures like nothing else. There's so much corruption and neglect . . ." I looked at her, my breath fogging the air between us. She seemed oddly pensive, as though she were taking my words seriously for the first time. "Faust is their kind of story. But the other side? The suicides and staked children and crowded tenements? They won't want those. I'm giving you Faust and Rinaldo, Lily. But give me something for it, too. Write some stories you folks don't like to read."

Lily gripped her elbows and leaned back suddenly against the corner of a building. "That woman, that vampire with the silver bullet . . . my God, how does she live like that? That endless threat. I went to Exeter, you know. And they taught us that suckers were evil people who had given their immortal souls for eternal life on earth. They chose depravity and it was therefore our Christian duty to persecute them for it. But she didn't choose anything, did she?"

I didn't respond. For all her faults, Lily was an excellent reporter. She observed, instead of just grafting her own expectations onto events. She dug beneath the surface. Enough of that, and no matter what sort of drivel she'd been raised with, she would understand the living night-mare that gripped so many people in this city. It was happening already. In some ways, I felt sorry for her. It was hard knowledge to live with, and even harder to experience every day.

"Zeph . . . what do you know about Amir?"

I stumbled a little. "What, still interested?"

She shook her head slowly, for once not rising to my bait. "Oh, he's hit on all sixes, I won't argue that. It's just . . . we never really
know
Others, do we?"

"Lily, that sounds remarkably close to the prejudice you just got through telling me might be wrong."

She glared at me, which was an odd sort of relief. "Listen, I never said I thought he shouldn't be allowed in the Roosevelt tea room. And maybe you're right, and that Vampire woman should get a vote and decent wages. That still doesn't mean they aren't different, that you can understand them like we understand each other."

"Oh, so now
we
understand each other?"

She pushed herself off the wall. "Fine," she said. "Fine. Never mind. I knew you wouldn't listen."

I stared after her for a moment and then staggered to catch up.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Aileen and I ate breakfast in the parlor with a few other girls who were all hurrying out. I hardly tasted Mrs. Brodsky's infamously weak coffee and Katya's thick oat porridge. Mrs. Brodsky hovered like the proverbial hen, yelling with extra vigor at the latecomers running down the stairs.

"Go! Hurry! You think you keep your job if you don't show up! I expect my girls to pay. This is not a charitable establishment!"

Aileen widened her eyes. "I'm glad she cleared that one up."

"Oh, but don't forget Mr. Brodsky. She's the soul of giving to that man. I should know, since she gives it right above us."

We burst into laughter, earning me a sharp look from our proprietress. After we'd subsided back to our food and morning exhaustion, I wondered about the changes in Aileen. She looked so harried and tense. The night before she'd awoken in the middle of the night, screaming. A nightmare, she'd told me, but I wondered.

"How was work yesterday?" I asked to fill the silence. "Read any interesting tidbits in your novels?"

She put down her empty coffee cup and picked up the porridge. "I quit, actually."

"You . . ."

"Quit. I had a vision in the middle of the floor. Fell off my chair and started yelling and screaming. Thought I saw a whole army of suckers marching through the factory. Boss told me to go home and rest, but I just quit. No sense in working there anymore. Not after this."

"What are you going to do? Mrs. Brodsky might kick you out, Aileen, and I barely scrape up the rent each month myself."

She shook her head. "Oh, Zeph, of course I'd never ask you to put me up. Don't worry. I already made a bit of lettuce." She reached into her pocket and dumped a pile of change onto the table. "Four dollars," she said quietly. "Just from four hours telling fortunes on Skid Row. If I'd known penny bangles and gypsy earrings would get me so much, I'd've quit ages ago."

I held her hand impulsively. "Fortunes? Did you tell real ones?"

"You know, that's the funny thing. I didn't mean to, but when I started I found that I would sometimes get real glimpses. I saw a woman die, but I didn't tell her. I didn't tell most of them. But now the visions feel more . . . controlled. Like if I focus the power, there's less chance of it sneaking up on me. That's something, isn't it?"

I'll help you, I wanted to say, I'll make this better somehow, I'll give you back your old ersatz vamp life, your twopenny romances, your casual flings, I won't let this ruin everything. But instead, what came out was, "Why can't you just go dancing like the rest of us?"

Charlie found me in the cramped back offices of the Citizen's Council, where I was poring over the financial records in anticipation of our tax filing. Since they kept me on retainer, I had to do any odd jobs they asked of me. I was not precisely a genius with figures, but apparently a significant improvement over anyone else available on such a small salary.

"Heya, Zephyr," he said, almost shyly. I hadn't heard him come in, and had to cover my shriek with a cough. The presence of such a young vampire, with such an ugly reputation, in such a small room was less than reassuring.

"Charlie! What . . ."

"It's Nick," he said, scraping his shoe listlessly in a pocket of cracked marble. "Said he wants you early."

Well, damn. I'd been planning to see Amir before tutoring Nicholas, in the hope that he'd found any clues in those maps, or learned anymore from Judah. Daddy and Troy weren't going to give me much more time, and I needed to be armed with information before I spied on Nicholas again.

"I'm busy, Charlie," I said. "I agreed to tutor Nicholas, not be his servant."

Charlie frowned. He looked genuinely worried for me, and so boyishly cute I tried not to wonder if the flush along his fingertips and ears had been legally gained. "I think you gotta come. Nick's in one of his moods. Didn't even drink Faust last night, and it's like he's going nuts." He froze and looked up at me. "Don't tell him I said that. Hates it when we use that word."

I could imagine. "Of course not, Charlie," I said. "Can he wait a few minutes?"

"Oh, sure," he said, relieved. "Just don't come down to the Rum. It's a mess, you know. The Faust dried up around midnight 'cause the new shipment we was supposed to get never showed. Word is the Boss is pissed to hell 'cause this nigger or whoever he's buying from just vanished, and the German guy ain't takin' his tele grams." He snapped his fingers. "Town's gone as dry as a desert. Just between you and me, it's not so bad. Faust . . . never thought I'd say it, but you can have too much of a good thing. Still, I got a name to make for myself, Zephyr. Nick was pissed when I lost that booze to the Westies, but I'm going to do one better. I'm going to find Dore's killer. The Boss has put a bounty on the head of whoever popped him."

I kept my face carefully neutral, attempting to digest this torrent of information that had improbably fallen out of Charlie's lips. Perhaps I'd been pumping the wrong Turn Boy all this time. A bounty on the head of Dore's killer, the "nigger" supplier suddenly cutting off all business (I'd have to tell Lily), and something I'd forgotten: the escalating rivalry between Rinaldo's gang and the Westies.

"Nicholas can't get too mad," I said, carefully. "The Westies have stolen a few shipments in the last few weeks, haven't they?"

Charlie frowned and shook his head. "I don't think so. If they'd done it more'n once, I think Nick might have declared war! Nick doesn't like poaching."

"But . . . I'd heard it was one of Rinaldo's runners, not Nick's," I said. This was strange.

He shrugged. "Hey, maybe. We don't got much contact with the Boss. Specially not now that Dore's been popped. I didn't hear nothing about it, though."

I didn't think it would be safe for Giuseppe if I pressed further, so I shrugged and put the tax papers into a more or less orderly pile.

"I'm ready then. Where does Nicholas expect me to tutor him, if not the Rum?" And despite my curiosity at this new turn of events, I wished I'd explored that back room more when I had the chance.

"Broad Street station," he said.

"But it's still under construction."

"That's all right. Nick's got a place. He'll see you when you go, but . . ." He scuffled his feet in the marble again and looked up at me. "Mind if I take you there, Zephyr?"

I stared at Charlie, my mouth open. "How old are you, Charlie?"

"Got turned last year, up in Boston." And he couldn't have been a day older than fifteen when he turned. Sixteen. Well, goodness me, the boy had a crush. I smiled and let him take my arm.

Nick's "place" was little more than a large man-made cave filled with piles of rocks and discarded construction equipment from the work site. He led me into it from the main entrance while the workers conspicuously ignored us. He'd brought a few gas lamps to light the room, but otherwise it was entirely devoid of signs of habitation. I wondered why he'd chosen to take me here. Maybe it reminded him of the strange, dark place with water rushing past and roaring boat horns and some sort of flat? But why would he want to remember the site of his horrific turning? I could tell immediately that Charlie had been right about Nicholas's "mood." The head Turn Boy was pale, like he'd forgotten to feed, or deliberately denied himself. He'd managed to lead me here without speaking at all, limiting himself to grunts and gestures. I'd worry for my safety, if not for the fact that he seemed so internally focused, as though he only noticed me as a physical object in the room. Admittedly, I wasn't an expert on mob hits, but this didn't seem like the proper attitude for a murder, even from someone as strange and depraved as Nicholas.

"Charlie told me it was urgent," I said, finally, when he'd been pacing the length of the cave silently for a full minute. My voice echoed like a disobliging guest.

"Charlie's a pest," he said. He kept pacing.

Brilliant. I run away from my paid job and now Nicholas won't even talk to me. "Hey," I said, just to get his attention. "I heard your Negro supplier cut off your line to Faust."

As I hoped, he looked at me. "You have your ears in strange places, Charity. But I can tell you that thief ain't quite a nigger. The Boss wouldn't stand for it."

And is "the Boss" a skinwalker, in addition to a bigot, I wanted to ask? Nicholas had led me to believe that his father had turned Nicholas himself, but wasn't it possible that Rinaldo had enlisted someone else to do the job? Dore, perhaps? Which would explain Nicholas's obvious antipathy to his father's late second-in-command. On the other hand, maybe Amir had a particularly good reason for thinking that Rinaldo was a vampire. I needed to talk to him.

Thankfully, Nicholas stopped his pacing and pulled some sort of letter from his pocket.

"Want you to read this," he muttered, handing it to me. The creases were worn and the edges frayed from worrying hands. And yet the paper felt curiously dry for something so well-handled. Vampires, after all, didn't sweat. Carefully, I unfolded the papers and looked. One closely typewritten page with a law firm letterhead--clearly some kind of legal document.

"What is--"

"Just read it from the top!" he shouted. The words echoed for several seconds after he fell silent. I shrugged and began.

"Hereby begins the Last Will and Testament of RINALDO SANGUINETTI of the area known as Little Italy in Manhattan, well-known businessman. I revoke all wills and testamentary writings by me at any time heretofore made and declare this to be my Last Will and Testament. I appoint my business partner Dore, no surname, Executor of this will. I give and bequeath control of my business holdings and interests to the aforesaid Dore, to maintain and expand our areas of operation at his full discretion, until such time that Giudo, my son, reaches his majority at eighteen years. I hereby consign Giudo into the care of his mother, Katerina, until this time. He is to receive an allowance of two thousand dollars per annum toward his rearing and education. Katerina is to receive one thousand dollars per annum, until her death, provided she refrains from carnal contact with other men and remains faithful to my memory.

"Pending Dore's approval of the following as regards specific, unforeseen circumstances, I hereby divide management of my business holdings as follows--"

Nicholas jumped to his feet and smashed his hand against the cave wall. Stone shattered and fell in a puff of dust. He'd cut his hand, but the ragged edges of skin didn't bleed at all.

"I knew it!" he yelled.

I held myself very still and made sure my face betrayed no emotion. Nicholas was unstable in the best of circumstances, but now I was afraid that he was angry enough to hurt me without even realizing it.

"Giudo!" he said, his voice tangled with an unvoiced sob. "Giudo. Does it mention me, Zephyr? You can read it to yourself, right? Does it mention me?"

I was aware of a tight pain in my chest, the source of which I could hardly credit. Could Nicholas's father care for him so little? Nicholas was a monster--I couldn't forget that, or I'd never be able to live with what Daddy and Troy were about to do to him--but beneath it he was still a thirteen-year-old boy, locked in a dark room while vampire poison ravaged his brain. I looked away from his needy, open face and back at the letter. For several paragraphs Rinaldo detailed which streets and contacts would go to various members of his gang. Finally, I saw Nicholas's name mentioned at the bottom of the page.

"To my son Nicholas," I read, "I bequeath my musical collection, comprising of recordings, playback devices and instruments. Nicholas may also, should he so choose, retain control of his division of my business, though I encourage him to pursue his talents elsewhere."

I kept my eyes on my lap. "That's it," I said. "The rest is just legal jargon. Nicholas . . . how did you get this?"

He walked so close to me that I could see the scuffed leather of his expensive boy's shoes, but I couldn't look up. "Lawyer came and found me after Dore got popped. Said Papa had to change the will, so I Swayed him and took it. Wanted to see how much the
bastardo
really loves me, after all. I'm going," he said, plucking the paper from my stiff fingers. "Go back to your charity, Zephyr Hollis."