Wicked City (19 page)

“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.