Wicked City (36 page)

Just the sight of the teapot filled me with longing. I hadn't eaten since that meager meal back in my prison cell, and I hadn't had a drink in nearly that long. I thanked him so profusely that he laughed, a little bleakly. “Drink as much as you want.”

I sipped the bitter tea (too impolite to ask for milk and sugar) while Saul said something to Ysabel in soft Yiddish. She frowned but he shook his head and patted her on the shoulder before leaving the room again. I could only imagine how he was taking this situation. Had he known the poor vampire that I'd killed? Did he know—”

I set down my cup and looked at her.
“She?”
I said, only now understanding the implications. “You know who took the bag?”

That meant that Ysabel knew the letter-writer. I could tell the police and Nicholas and clear my name!

But Ysabel started to cry. “You have to understand,
bubbala,
I wanted to tell you. Oh, this whole horrible week, how Saul and I argued. But I couldn't! She is wrong, I understand that, but she's been hurt so much and I couldn't, I just couldn't turn in my own child…”

Resonances shook me again, and by now I'd learned to pay attention. I felt hazy with disbelief, shock, and a sad understanding. I found myself kneeling on the floor in front of her chair.

“Ysabel,” I whispered, taking her hand to steady myself. “Who did I kill? The first time, with my blood?”

“My son-in-law,” Ysabel said, just as quietly. “Michael Brandon.”

In the other room, Saul unlocked the door with a click. “Tateh,” I heard Judith Brandon say as she walked inside her parent's home. “Thank you.”

I looked up at Ysabel, though she slid in and out of focus. I'd been poisoned. Saul had seen to that, and maybe Ysabel had known.

“Her husband … was a vampire?”

“He became a
bruxa
when he worked for old Mayor Herod. They made him leave his job. Terrible business. And then…”

“I'm sorry,” I said, slipping on one elbow to the floor.

“No, Zephyr,” she said, crying again. “If someone goes to
Gehinnam
for this, it is me.”

The last thing I saw was Judith Brandon's shoes, wet from the rain.

*   *   *

I awoke alone, with my hands and feet bound and a gag in my mouth. This was a common predicament of heroines in the Mary Roberts Rinehart novels my sister Vera loved to read, but I had never imagined it to be quite this uncomfortable. Perhaps I could still count on an intrepid hero to find me before I suffered permanent damage to my shoulders?

Then I recalled how I had last left the only possible candidate for intrepid hero and allowed myself a sob. No, I could hardly count on Amir's help now.

I still felt groggy from the poison, but I forced my eyes open. So, she'd taken me to her office. It surprised me a little, but on the other hand, I could see why she would have deemed her isolated basement lair safe enough. Especially if she had expected me to remain insensate for longer. I propped myself up against a wall so as to get a better view of my latest prison. It was gloomier than I remembered, the only light coming from around the door and its opaque window.

I was a little surprised to be alive at all, and wondered if this unexpected gift could not be a sign that I was meant to have a chance to repent.

And to find my goddamned daddy.

I slid along the slightly dusty floor until I reached the door. I pushed the handle down awkwardly with my chin; locked, of course. I hadn't expected anything else, but I had to be sure. The sort of person who could plot a serial murder and frame someone else for the crime would tie knots securely and lock a door. I sat back down, the last of the effects of the poison waning. I was hungry, but my thirst felt even more painful than the ropes. A few more hours in here and I'd emulate Coleridge's ancient mariner.

I leaned back against the wall. The gag in my mouth effectively prevented screaming—indeed, it almost prevented breathing—and I tried to remember the way to her office from the main hall. Perhaps I could throw myself at the door in case someone happened to pass by? But my legs had been bound in such a way that when I tried to stand, I tipped over immediately. She had probably researched proper knot-tying of prisoners in the public library.

I fell over a second time and stayed on the floor, struggling to catch my breath. As I did so, I realized that I was staring at Judith Brandon's desk. And if I couldn't get out, perhaps I could get
in
. I wormed my way closer. The stacks of paper on top of the desk might be interesting, but were beyond me at the moment. However, to my delight she had not locked her drawers. I used my chin to pull out the topmost one and then knelt to peer inside. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough light to read well. I could only make out the large font of newspaper headlines, carefully clipped and stacked inside. “
VAMPIRE
KILLER
STRIKES
AGAIN
!” read one from the
New York World
. I nosed the topmost ones aside: yes, every one was recently clipped, carefully documenting her murder spree of the past week. She'd also kept any mention of me. I had wondered how the letter-writer knew so much about me. Between what Ysabel must have told her and the newspapers, Mrs. Brandon had learned enough to be convincing. I turned around and used what little dexterity my bound hands possessed to dig deeper into the pile. At the very bottom, my fingers encountered a sheet of much heavier stock than newsprint. I bent awkwardly and pulled it out. I dropped it to the floor and turned around. An old photograph. I could hardly see it in the shadows behind the desk, and so I nosed it closer to the door.

I recognized my daddy first, though I'd never seen him so young. He was balancing a massive shotgun on his knee, which was perched on a stone. Four other men—two older, two about his age—had posed for the portrait. They stood tall and stern, each one carrying a gun or a stake. A hunting party sometime in the nineties, judging by their clothes and my daddy's youth. Daddy loved telling stories of his old hunting days, but this didn't look like anything I'd heard before. The rocks and trees behind them looked like Montana, for one, and I'd thought Daddy did most of his early hunting down south, in Georgia and Tennessee. I recognized one of the older men: Charles Simpson, a strange fixture of my early childhood who would come to town with the intention of drinking with Daddy, fighting, and then storming off for another year. I remember one year he and Daddy had a fistfight over the fact that I couldn't shoot straight. He died a few years after that, something wrong with his liver.

But there were three other men in this picture. A young man Daddy's age, to his left, with thunderous black eyebrows and a stake in one hand. Another older fellow, looking off to the side like he couldn't wait to get away. And, on the far right, a negro man, shorter than the others, with a sheathed sword on his back. Together, they looked like a seasoned hunting band, not some group tossed together for the sake of a photo.

I leaned down and saw that someone had inscribed the photograph in faint ink at the very bottom.

Gould hunt, 1897
,
it read.
Eric Simoley, Charles Simpson, Daniel Nussbaum, John Hollis, Benjamin Taylor
.

My heart clenched. I recognized another name, but not from my childhood. Zuckerman had told Aileen to investigate “the Nussbaum case,” that it had something to do with the murders. Lily had said it was a dead end: a man who had killed his infant child and then taken his own life.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway. I picked the photograph up with my teeth and dropped it in the drawer just before Mrs. Brandon turned her key in the lock.

“I hadn't expected you to wake up yet,” she said, closing the door behind her. “I would have come sooner.”

As I couldn't speak, I contented myself with a grunt.

“I'll take off the gag, Zephyr, and give you water if you promise not to scream. No one will hear you in any case, but I'd rather not have the trouble.”

I wondered if I shouldn't ignore her and try anyway, but she would just gag me again. I nodded and she untied and removed the cloth.

“There,” she said. “Now, drink this. And then I believe it's time that you and I had a discussion.”

She held the glass of water to my lips. I stared at it, and then decided she was unlikely to poison me again. “A discussion?” I said, after I had gulped it down, with just a little spilled down my shirt. I felt considerably revived, enough so that I started wondering if I could perhaps overpower her and escape.

“Yes,” she said, seating herself at her desk. “Of options and exigencies. I imagine that you have worked this all out so I won't bore you with a confession, which I don't owe you in any case. What I want to make to you is an offer.”

“And what would that consist of?”

“That you agree to place yourself in my power, for the mayor and I to use as we see fit. Your blood is very valuable, Zephyr. I'm sure you can see why.”

“It
kills
vampires,” I said.

“It turns vampires human. The killing is more of an unfortunate side effect. And something that can turn vampires human would be an extremely effective bargaining chip in the political sphere.”

I stared at her. Could she really have reduced the monstrous pile of bodies in that morgue down to this petty political calculus? All this time I had pitied her, locked away in this basement room, marginalized and belittled for her sex when she clearly had capabilities equal to any of the men in the mayor's employ. But now any sympathy was washed away in a flood of contempt.

“And if I refuse?” I asked.

“You will be tried for murder. The evidence against you is solid, I have made sure of that.”

“What if I tell the police the truth?”

“They won't believe you,” she said. “And besides, I have the mayor's protection. Commissioner Warren is his close friend, and he'll make sure to steer things in the proper direction.”

But her eyebrows lifted unsteadily as she said this, and I knew well the manner of someone attempting to convince herself of the truth of a dubious proposition.

“Even after your debacle with Madison at the supporters' banquet? Are you so sure?”

She drew herself up. “Madison
should
have agreed. But no matter, at this very moment, Faust is getting the required votes in the Board of Aldermen. I have pulled things from the brink, and Jimmy has seen that. In fact,” she said, “I should thank you. Your falling out with that djinni was just the impetus he needed to bring us samples of the original brew. As we suspected, the current formulation is far less potent.”

“He … he gave it to the mayor?”

Her smile was predatory. “Yes. Just yesterday. We got the results back less than an hour before the vote, but I believe we made it in time.”

I felt the familiar wash of betrayal and anger, but a wiser feeling made me pause. Mrs. Brandon was probably telling the truth in her limited fashion, but I had no idea of the larger context. Amir might have told me had I been in any mood to listen. I wouldn't repeat the same mistake in less than twenty-four hours.

“Mrs. Brandon, I believe I can safely refuse your proposal.”

She gave a breathy laugh. “Refuse? You'd rather go to jail? Have your hypocrisy exposed before the world?”

“My
hypocrisy
?”

“The vampire suffragette is a vampire killer! I didn't intend for Madison to accuse you in front of all those people, of course, but I've decided it only helps my case. Have you enjoyed the past day, Zephyr? The truth I've always known has been revealed to the world. You have never been who you pretend to be.”

“But
I
didn't kill those vampires!”

She leaned forward and rapped me on the head. “Yes. You did. You've known all your life you have this power. Your blood did the killing. If you refuse, I will make sure that officer who hates you so much will learn it.”

“How?”

“My mother will just have to confess.”

“Ysabel wouldn't…” But I couldn't even finish the denial. I was here, wasn't I? If Ysabel felt any fondness for me, it hadn't trumped parental devotion.

“You are quite alone, Zephyr. Your lover has rejected you, your brother and friends have abandoned you, and your father has run away from his crimes. If you refuse me, all of this will be exposed. If you agree, I'll see to it that you are publicly exonerated.”

I didn't give two figs about her offer, but she had mentioned one thing that sounded important. “Did you do something to my daddy? How do you…” I gasped. “The rabbi. The golem. You sent them?”

She leaned back in her chair, with an air of great satisfaction. “Rabbi Nussbaum has spent the last two decades wondering about his brother's suicide. I'd heard of his tragedy years ago—he's a friend of our local rabbi. When I learned Daniel had been a partner of your father's, I spoke to him. He agreed to visit your father in Montana and learn what he could. And what he learned, Zephyr, is that there is a very dark grimoire in your father's possession, one with a very dark ritual. A parent can give their first child immunity to vampires, but only through the blood of a brother. But then, you knew that.”

But I hadn't. I had tried to stop myself from wondering this entire week, when the subject of my immunity had taken on such grotesque importance. Had my mother known? Had she even colluded with my daddy to produce his one perfect heir?

But I couldn't believe it. I'd seen his grief the one time I'd asked him about my dead brother. He hadn't done it callously or lightly. But why had he done it at all?

“And Daniel Nussbaum?” I said. “Why did he do it?”

Mrs. Brandon shrugged, apparently put out that I hadn't risen to her bait. “I don't know,” she snapped. “I expect for the same reason. But the ritual didn't work for him. He killed his son and then the other child died as well.”