The weeds and cracked bricks of Cambrit were quite a letdown after the quiet lanes and stately manors of the Hill. I arrived home well before Curfew, impressed my driver with a tip, and heard Darla’s laughter from behind Mama’s door before I reached my own.
I paused, smiled and adjusted my hat before knocking.
“Who’s there?” shouted Mama.
“The Regent sends his greetings, Madam Hog,” I intoned, in my best Lord of the Realm baritone. “Would you perhaps grant us an audience?”
Mama opened her door.
Darla stood beside Mama. Her eyes went wide. I doffed my new hat, made a bow that made my back pop.
“My lady.”
Darla stepped outside, extended her hand. I took it. Her eyes twinkled in the dying sun.
“Damn, boy,” said Mama, trundling out beside Darla. “What happened? You rob a haberdasher?”
I sighed. Darla laughed again. The spell was broken, and my feet began to ache.
“Not exactly.” Darla let go of my hand. “I’m glad you came to see me. But it’s late. You’ll never get home before Curfew.”
“Maybe I won’t go home at all,” she replied. She stepped so close I could smell bubble bath in her hair. “Maybe I’ll stay.” She let a pause linger. “With Mother Hog, of course.”
Mama snorted. “Don’t do that to him no more. Look at them ears. He’s about to blow a seam.”
Darla winked. “Hooga has the night off. He’s bringing his wagon around to collect me shortly. I’ll wrap myself up in a blanket and even the Watch will think I’m Hooga’s wife or his daughter.” She slipped her arm through mine, turned us toward my office, said goodbye to Mama Hog.
I walked.
“Come now, Markhat,” she said, as we neared my door. “You’ve kept me waiting all day. The least you can do is offer me a chair and some company.”
I fumbled for my key. The wind rustled her skirts, and she reached into my bag and pulled out last year’s grey hat.
“This one suits you better.” I turned the key as she took my new hat from my head, replaced it with the grey one, and eyed me critically. “The black makes you look like an undertaker.” She put the black hat on her own head, adopted a somber expression. “See?”
Mama Hog laughed and slammed her door. I opened mine, ushered Darla in, winced when the slanting light streaming past cast the breadcrumbs on my desk into sudden high relief.
Darla swept past, still wearing my black hat. She spun once, taking in my office, swirling her skirt up nearly to her knees.
I closed the door. “I see I need to fire another butler. Looks like Earles left me a mess.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Darla. “It’s not so bad.” She hung my black hat carefully up on my leaning coat rack, and then nodded toward the door at the back of my office. “Is that where you sleep?”
I put down my bag, hung up my coat and put the grey hat next to the black. “When I sleep, that’s where I sleep.”
“I see.” She gave me a grin. “Time for the tour later.” Then she looked down and past me, toward the floor next to the door I’d just closed. “What’s that?”
I turned. An envelope lay on the floor, after having been pushed beneath it from the street. I hadn’t seen it when we’d entered.
I stooped and picked it up. The envelope was brilliant white, more like cloth than paper, and it bore my name and address in a tall plain hand.
Darla glided to stand beside me. She touched the paper gently, made an oohing sound.
“My, what fancy friends you have, Mister Markhat. Aren’t you going to open it?”
She was so close we touched, at hips and shoulders, and again I smelled her hair. Which is probably why I opened the envelope without first letting Mama wave her bones over it to see if the paper was hexed.
It wasn’t. Inside was a single page of fine white paper, folded twice. I could see words on it, not hex signs, so I unfolded it.
Darla stepped suddenly away. “It isn’t polite to read someone else’s mail.” She pulled back my client’s chair and sat. “I’ll wait here until you’re done.”
The paper bore names. A dozen of them, in the same hand as the address, in a neat straight line down the page. The only one I recognized-the last-was Martha Hoobin.
Below the names were the words:
Talk at midnight. Your office. If you choose not to open the door I will of course not come in.
And below that were two characters I took to be initials-E.P.
Darla watched me read. I must have frowned.
“Bad news?”
I crossed to my side of the desk. Before I sat, I handed her the paper. “Probably. Do you know any of these names? Aside from Martha’s?”
She read, shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. They’re all women’s names, though, aren’t they?”
She handed me the letter, and I looked it over again. There was a Kit Ersen and a Banda Rup. Either of those could have been a man’s name or a woman’s. But all the rest were obviously female, all Usulas and Berets and Allies.
Twelve names. Twelve women, probably, with Martha Hoobin at the end of the list.
“Do you know E.P.?” asked Darla.
I shook my head. “Not at the moment,” I replied. “But I guess I will, come midnight.”
The humor went out of Darla’s eyes. “There’s only one kind of person who makes appointments after Curfew. They’re fond of expensive stationery too.”
I folded the list. “Not necessarily. Anyway, trouble usually just shows up. It doesn’t make appointments.”
She shivered. She put her hands in her lap and she tried to hide it, but she shivered.
“I’ve dealt with the Houses before. They don’t bite Markhats. We taste of strong bright sun and good clean living.”
She didn’t laugh. “They scare me,” she said, softly. “They ought to scare you too. Walking around after Curfew-are you trying to get killed?”
I leaned back. “You heard about last night.”
A bit of fire crept back into her voice. “Oh, I heard. Some of the cleaning girls are New People. You’re all they’ve talked about. The bold finder Markhat, whistling down the street. By tomorrow they’ll have you lighting your cigars with flaming vampire corpses and kicking down Troll strongholds with the heels of your dressing slippers.”
I frowned. “Dressing slippers don’t have heels, do they?”
Darla came forward, caught my hand across the desk, pulled it toward her. “Listen to me. I like you. I’d like to spend a year or two getting to know you. I’d like to teach you how to read and trim your hair and knit you a pair of earmuffs for Yule. But I won’t get to do any of that if you make midnight strolls down Arbuckle Avenue part of your exercise regimen.”
I bit back a short reply. There was something in her voice, something making it shake, something tingeing it with fear.
Inspiration dawned.
“You’ve been talking to Mama. She pulled out her cards and turned down the lamps and convinced you she could see my untimely demise unless I mend my wicked ways.” She’d do that, too, I thought. Just her little way of getting things said that she knew I’d not bear coming from her.
Darla gripped my hand harder. “She was reading her cards when I came in. And she wouldn’t tell me what she saw. But I know people, Markhat. She saw something. And whatever it was scared her.” She realized how tight she held me, let loose, leaned back. “We both know what Mama is, most of the time.” She lifted her chin in defiance. “But you sit there and you tell me it’s all fake, all the time. Tell me it’s all put-on. Tell me, and I’ll forget all about it.”
“It’s all fake, all put-on, all the time.”
“Liar.” She found a smile. Not a big one, not a strong one. But maybe she knew she’d pushed too hard. “Just promise me one thing. Will you do that?”
“Ask, and we’ll see.”
“Just be careful. More than usual. Especially after dark. Can you do that, Markhat? Just for a while?”
I sighed. “I promise. And speaking of Curfew breaking-it’s getting pretty dark out there right now, and I’m not the one ten blocks from home.”
“What have I to fear, when the valiant finder Markhat is at my side?” She batted her eyes at me, gave me a sly grin. “You will keep an eye on me, won’t you?”
“I promise. You’re safe with me.”
“You mean it?”
“I do.” I must have looked suddenly puzzled. She’d lost her grin, lost the playful twinkle in her eyes. I realized something had happened, but couldn’t place it from the words we’d spoken.
She took a deep breath. “I asked around today,” she said, looking away. “About Martha.”
“And what did you hear?”
“Nothing,” she replied. “I asked the girls if they’d seen her with anyone. Asked if she’d gotten any messages, or sent any runners, or gotten any flowers on All Heart’s Day. She hadn’t, she didn’t, and she hadn’t.” Darla sighed. “I guess that isn’t much help.”
“It tells me where not to look. That’s something. Especially coming from people I couldn’t ask.”
She bit her lip. “There’s something else.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t really want to tell you.”
“Which means you certainly should tell me.”
She sighed again, brought up her hands, put them on the desk. Her knuckles were white. She took a breath and looked away.
“The day Martha disappeared, she had a bag. In the bag was eleven hundred crowns.”
I whistled. “Paper or coin?”
“Paper,” said Darla. She looked up at me. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” she added, quickly. “Martha didn’t steal the money. I gave it to her. It was mine. We’d been planning to open a dressmaker’s shop. The eleven hundred was my share.”
I fought the urge to rise. I wanted to reach out and take her hand, but I didn’t. I’ll always regret that.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
She shook her head, finally looked back at me. “Eleven hundred crowns? I was sure you’d quit looking. Sure you’d figure Martha just took the money and bought a stage ticket.”
“Do you think that’s what she did?”
I waited. Eleven hundred crowns-gods, you could buy your own stagecoach line for that, and have enough left over for a small house or two.
“Maybe I did, at first. Maybe I was angry. Maybe I was so shocked I couldn’t think straight. But I decided something, finder, after you came to see me. I decided Martha was my friend. Martha was no thief and I ought to be ashamed of myself for thinking such a thing.”
I opened my mouth to tell her she shouldn’t be ashamed, but she spoke again first.
“I know eleven hundred crowns is a lot of money. It was everything I had. But if you’re about to tell me that you think Martha ran away with it, then you’re not the man I think you are.”
“I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say that if Martha Hoobin wanted eleven hundred crowns she could have gotten twice that by raiding Ethel’s sock-drawer.” I recalled the ragged stuffed bear, tucked away in a chest with a pillow under its head. “Whatever this is about, it isn’t about your money. I’m not going to stop looking for Martha.”
“Good,” she said. She sighed, with relief this time, and for the first time she looked tired. “So we’re still friends?”
“We are. I don’t blame you for not telling me, first thing. You didn’t know me then, hadn’t had a chance to succumb to my mannish and worldly charms.”
She laughed. I rummaged in my pocket, brought out the silver comb. “This turned up last night,” I said. “Ever seen it before?”
She took it, eyed it critically. “Never. It’s a bit gaudy. Where did you find it?”
“Martha’s dresser,” I replied. “In a junk jar. Her brothers hadn’t seen it before.”
“It doesn’t look like anything Martha would buy.” She handed it back to me and frowned. “Where did she get it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she bought it herself. But no one knows who gave it to her, or when.”
Darla bit her lower lip. “The Park. It had to be the Park.”
I pricked up my ears. “Why the Park?”
She smiled an impish smile. “If you wanted to meet a girl, where would you go?”
I shrugged. “I just stand still and young ladies flock to me in doe-eyed droves. Why don’t you tell me how lesser men find hearts to break.”
“The Park.” She rolled her eyes, exasperated. “Strolls through the flower gardens? Benches beneath the whispering oaks? Lazy afternoons watching the sun?”
I frowned. “And?”
“It’s a good thing you met me when you did. Let me spell it out for you. Martha lived with four scowling behemoths in a Balptist neighborhood. She worked with women in a house guarded by the Hoogas. She went three places-work, home and the Park.”
I shook my head. “Interesting. Maybe I’ll hire you as an assistant. Mama can read her cards and you’ll do all the thinking and I’ll be able to sleep in, emerging only occasionally to collect fees and issue directives to the Watch.”
“Don’t you dare ignore me. I’m right. If Martha Hoobin met someone who gave her a tacky silver comb, she met him in the Park. Did I mention she stopped feeding the birds about two weeks ago?”
“You didn’t.”
“Well she did. Maybe she stopped going because she didn’t want to see her comb-gifting gentleman friend anymore.”
“I’ve heard crazier things,” I said. It did make a sort of sense.
Ice-pawed rats ran up and down my spine. Eleven names looked up at me from the paper on my desk.
That’s the thing about the Park. It’s handy for just about everywhere-and just about everyone.
Darla saw it on my face.
“I knew it,” she said. There was no triumph in her tone. “The Park. It had to be the Park.”
“Might have been.”
I stared at the list.
Twelve women. All gone, I imagined. Just like Martha.
Down on the Square, way past the dark, empty Park, the Brass Bell clanged out nine times, then paused, then rang once more. Curfew had fallen and the dark.
Darla shivered.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, rising. “You’ll be having company soon.”
A wagon rumbled up, stopped at my door. I rose too, beat Darla to the door, opened it enough to see that it was Hooga, his breath steaming in the chill.
“She’ll be right out,” I said. “And I thank you, for seeing her safe.”
Hooga snorted. His horses-two shaggy mad-eyed Percherons-stamped at the cobbles and sent up sparks with their hooves and chewed at their iron bits.
Darla came up beside me, took my arm. “You promised you’d be careful.” I put my hand on hers.
“I did,” I said. “I keep my promises.”
“You’d better. After all, you promised to watch over me too. I think I like that, Markhat. You watching over me.”
“I think I like that too.”
It had been a long time. Before the War. Before I’d gone away, and come back someone else. There were things I’d forgotten, things I never thought I’d remember.
But when she leaned closer, so did I, and we kissed. She was warm and her hair smelled of flowers and we held each other until Hooga grunted. She darted away and was gone.
I leaned on my doorframe and watched them go. Hooga flung a thick brown ogre blanket over her. She waved once and vanished beneath it.
She’d pressed something in my hand, just before she’d gone. It was a scrap of paper, and it bore her address.
“I’ll be seeing you,” she’d written, below it. “Bring the wine.”
I lit a pair of lamps and waited for midnight.
Darla had been right, of course. My caller, the mysterious E.P., would be of one of the halfdead Houses, if not halfdead himself. He’d all but announced this with the note.
I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of playing host to vampires after dark, much less inviting them in. But I’d had ample time to summon the Watch, show them the letter, even invite a half-dozen of them along for our midnight meeting. And while the Watch might wink at most crimes, a violation of Curfew law that said vampires couldn’t enter dayfolk dwellings uninvited would bring the city across the river and into the Heights as a torch-bearing mob. I doubted that mayhem was E.P.’s intention.
I thought about Ronnie Sacks and House Avalante. I’d decided that E.P. would probably be wearing Avalante’s crossed swords as the Big Bell clanged out midnight and someone knocked softly at my door.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“E.P.,” said a voice. He was speaking softly, loud enough for me to hear, but not so loud as to be forceful. He pronounced his words carefully, like a schoolmarm was listening. “Evis Prestley. I believe you are expecting me.”
I rose. “It isn’t locked.” Not much use locking doors against vampires who could haul them right out of their frames with two fingers. “Come on in.”
He did.
He was halfdead.
I fought to keep my smile. He glided inside, closed the door gently behind him, took a single step away from it, and then came to parade rest, his gloved hands clasped behind him at the small of his back.
I nodded toward the client’s chair. “Won’t you have a seat?” My voice didn’t shake. Much.
He nodded, moved and sat. He hadn’t spoken, and I gathered he was refraining from speaking largely to avoid showing me a jawful of fangs.
As I understand matters, that gesture passes for rare high regard among the halfdead. I made myself take a breath, and I sat as well.
We just looked at each other, engulfed in an awkward silence. I took him in as quickly as I could. He was short, a full head shorter than myself, and thinner. Neat short black hair combed up and back from a widow’s peak. Skin the color of new dough. Small thin nose, as white as a fresh-peeled potato. Eyes that had been blue while he lived and were still blue but obscured by a white glaze that made them look like dirty marbles.
He wore rich man’s black-black pants, black shirt, black vest, knee-length black coat, all tailor-made and custom cut. A pin shone on his lapel-the crossed swords, in silver, of House Avalante. His collar was high, black gloves covered his hands-he’d taken pains, I gathered, to conceal as much of his dead pale skin as possible.
“Evis Prestley,” I said. “You sent the list of names.”
“I did,” he replied. His mouth, when he opened it, was white, and his teeth were wet and sharp. “And in doing so I fear I caused you insult. Mr. Sacks was told to deliver it to your office and return to the House. He was not instructed to follow you. The House offers its apologies, as does Mr. Sacks.”
“Accepted. And by the way-if Ronnie is the best tail you’ve got, you’d better get out of the business.”
He smiled with his mouth firmly closed. “We at Avalante value initiative. Mr. Sacks was attempting to impress us. A pity he didn’t choose a venue more suited to his talents.”
I nodded. I was breathing a little easier. If he was going to bite, I figure he’d have done so by now. Maybe it was his voice, too-nothing weak about it, but I kept expecting him to start lecturing me in the finer points of antebellum architectural history.
I noticed him squinting, decided I could show off my manners too.
“I can turn down the lamps, if you want. I didn’t think of it earlier.”
Evis shook his head no, reached into his jacket and pulled a pair of dark-lensed spectacles out of his breast pocket. “No need.” He brought the glasses up to his nose, peeped over them with his dead man’s eyes. “If you don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” I said. He put his glasses on. I was glad his eyes were covered, and he probably knew it.
“I didn’t come here to talk about the bumbling antics of Mr. Sacks. We share a common goal, Mr. Markhat. We’re both looking for Martha Hoobin.”
I frowned. “I thought as much. Mind telling me why House Avalante cares what happened to the Velvet’s star seamstress?”
He sighed. “All I can tell you, Mr. Markhat, is that the House wants to see Martha Hoobin returned to her family, safe and sound and soon.”
I nodded. “Ah, yes. The renowned altruism of the Great Houses. What’s next, Mr. Prestley? Going to ask to buy my office so House Avalante can build an orphanage on this very spot?”
He laughed. I hadn’t expected that.
“Good one.” He tilted his head down, looked at me over the tops of his shaded spectacles. “What would you say if I told you that the House is motivated purely by self-interest-but that even in that light, we want to see Martha Hoobin returned to her home?”
“I’d say I might believe that. But I’m still curious, Mr. Prestley. What does a seamstress from the wrong side of the Brown have to do with your House?”
“Nothing at all,” he said. “Directly. But indirectly-before I say more, Mr. Markhat, I’ll need to hire you. And as part of that arrangement, I’ll need to bind you to secrecy.”
“I have a client. Ethel Hoobin.”
“Take a new client. House Avalante has deeper pockets.”
I pushed back my chair. “That won’t do. It’s time for you to go.”
“Wait a moment. Are you telling me you’re refusing my offer?”
“I’m telling you that. Now beat it.”
He didn’t rise. “You’re as stubborn as I’d heard,” he said. “I don’t suppose a fat bag of coin would change your mind.”
“I’m about to lose my temper,” I said.
He smiled, remembered who he was with, covered his mouth with his hand, like I’d do if I yawned before a lady.
“Sit back down. Please.”
“I asked you to leave.”
“And I shall,” he replied. “You may throw me out or hear me out. Which will it be?”
I pondered that, shrugged and sat. He looked on, bemused behind his glasses.
“My superiors have a somewhat simplistic view of mankind. They believe all men can be bought. They sent me here with twenty thousand crowns and instructions to enlist your services in our search for Martha Hoobin.” He leaned forward, elbows on my desk. “I know something of you, finder. I told them that you couldn’t be bought. They laughed. I shall be quite pleased to tell them they were wrong.”
“Twenty thousand crowns?”
“Twenty thousand,” he repeated. “All yours, if you would agree to accept it as a retainer with the agreement that we would obtain your services, and your secrecy, as a finder in the search for Martha Hoobin.”
“I’m going to ask this again, Mr. Prestley. Answer, or get out. What does House Avalante want with Martha Hoobin?”
Evis was silent. I felt his eyes upon me, felt a shiver go down my spine.
“We want nothing with Martha Hoobin. What we want are the people behind her disappearance.”
“And who are they?”
He shook his head. “If we knew that, Mr. Markhat, I assure you that members of the House gardening staff would be dumping their dismembered corpses in the River about now.”
“You think I know?”
He shrugged. “Not yet. That’s the problem, Mr. Markhat. We’re running out of time, you and I. If one of us hasn’t found Martha Hoobin in the next four days, stop looking. She’ll be dead. Just like all the others.”
I looked down at the list. “They’re dead.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“By whose hand?”
He shook his head. “I do not know.”
“Why four days? What happens then?”
The muscles around his jaw began to move beneath his cold pale skin. “I cannot say,” he said.
“What can you say?”
“I can tell you about the other names. Prostitutes, all. From houses less prestigious than the Velvet. One has vanished each month, for the last eleven months.”
“How-”
“I cannot say,” he said. “No one looked, when they vanished. They had no family. Few had close friends.”
“Then how do you know so much?”
“The House has many interests,” he said. “We’ve been following this one for some time. With, I fear, little success.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“We both want the same thing.” He sounded tired. “If anything I tell you helps you find Martha Hoobin, you’re welcome to it. Maybe you’ll remember that we did try to help.”
I wrestled with the concept of helpful vampires for a moment. Then I pulled open a drawer, found Martha’s silver comb, held it up.
“Ever seen this before?”
He lowered his shaded glasses, inspected the comb and handed it back to me. Then he reached back inside his coat-and withdrew an identical silver swan-comb.
He put it down on my desk, beside the one I’d found. They were twins, down to the carving of the feathers and the color of the bristles.
“I have three more. All found among the belongings of…” He pulled the list around, pointed to three names. “Her, and her, and her.”
“Notice anything strange about yours?”
He frowned. “No. Why?”
I hesitated. But he’d told me things, and I decided if I wanted him to keep talking I might have to open up myself.
“A friend of mine tried to do her witch-touch act to it. Dropped it like a hot brick. Said she couldn’t feel that it had ever belonged to anyone. She said that wasn’t right, that she thought someone had put some kind of black mojo on it.”
“We tried the same thing,” said the halfdead. “No one saw anything of significance through any of these-but they didn’t notice a lack of sight either.” He nudged my comb with a forefinger. “Odd. When did your friend try witch sight on it?”
“Yesterday.”
He nodded.
“Ours were not nearly so fresh,” he said. “Hmm. Perhaps if the spell were cast to fade away…”
“My friend said that was more than just street mojo. She said it was black hex. Sorcery.”
“That would be significant, if true,” said Evis. He looked up suddenly at me. “I don’t suppose you’d allow me to take this away for further study?”
“I don’t suppose you’d give me a receipt?”
He beamed. “Gladly.” And I swear he reached back into that coat, pulled out a small leather-bound notebook and a gold writing pen.
“Tell me something,” I said, as he scribbled away. “Were you maybe a lawyer, before?”
He looked up, lifted an eyebrow. “Before I died and became a blood-thirsty halfdead fiend?”
“I wasn’t going to say ‘fiend’.”
He laughed. “I was a lawyer, yes. Before the War. Nevertheless, I wound up in the infantry. I took a Troll arrow at Potter’s Hill.”
I sat upright. “Potter’s Hill? Summer of seventy-four? I was there.”
The halfdead finished writing, signed the page with a flourish, tore the paper out of the book and slid it across the desk toward me. “There was a halfdead in our regiment. We’d spoken, become friends, of a sort. He saw I was dying, asked me if I wanted to-to take a chance.” He shrugged. “I do not recall my reply. But I woke up dead two nights later. Funny old thing, life.”
I took the receipt. It was all there, neat and legal, one silver comb, on temporary loan for sorcerous inspection, blah blah blah.
Potter’s Hill. Hell, he’d died right under my nose.
“All right,” I said, tapping his comb. “One veteran to another. Mind if I keep this one to show around?”
“With my compliments.” He slipped his notebook back in his pocket, and his golden pen. “One more thing, Mr. Markhat.”
“And what is that?”
“We are aware of you and your efforts. Others may be aware of these things too. Persons not as well disposed toward you as I and my House.”
“I get that a lot,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll put two strings on my screen-door tonight.”
He shook his head.
“You need not waste time at the Velvet. We’ve done that already. Martha’s abductors were never on the grounds, nor were they in association with anyone employed there.” He raised a gloved hand when I started to speak. “Please, Mr. Markhat, accept this as truth. It cost us-dearly-and I am convinced it is accurate.”
“So forget the Velvet,” I said. “That doesn’t leave me with much. Because the only other thing in her life was her home, and her brothers-and you can accept this as truth-they had nothing to do with this. Nothing at all.”
He nodded. “We reached the same surmise.”
I shook my head. “I still don’t understand any of this.” I sensed our conversation was nearly over. “But thanks, all the same.”
He made a little dip with his head. “And thank you.” He rose, stopped, looked up at me like he’d just thought of something. “I have an idea.”
“Do tell.”
“I am forbidden to divulge the details of certain delicate matters to you. I am bound, by honor and oath, to obey this stricture.”
“I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do otherwise.”
He grinned, put his hand quickly over his lips. “Still. I have several errands to run this evening, finder. I am hardly to be blamed if you follow me and perhaps draw your own conclusions as to the nature of my actions.”
I rose too. “Forgive me, but trotting along behind you strikes me as a good way to wind up on the dead wagon in the morning. What if one of your friends mistook me for a common thief or a light snack?” I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
“That is a problem. But happily, I have a coach. My driver is discrete. If you have a dark coat, you could come along, and I assure you no one would be the wiser.”
“What about your oath?”
He shrugged. “The House, as I said, values initiative. If I’m asked if I was followed, I can honestly say I was not. And if they ask if I invited you to ride along with me, well, I should have to confess, but I doubt that I’ll be asked that particular question.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“Miss Hoobin has, at best, four days. My efforts to locate her have proved fruitless, as have yours. You lack the time to learn what I have learned. I lack your ability to move about unnoticed, and move about in the daylight. I give you my word you will not be harmed. I give you my word you will be returned here safely well before sunrise.”
He took off his glasses, looked me eye-to-eye. “I am halfdead, Mr. Markhat. That may well deny me a place among the saints, but does it truly guarantee me a throne beside the devil?”
I looked him in the eye. No saint ever had such a face, or such a stare.
“I’ll get my coat. And call me Markhat. Mister is for old folks.”
Evis smiled a pointy smile behind his hand. “Call me Evis. Shall we go?”
We went, the devil and I, out into the night.
Curfew, quoth the Regent, is Rannit’s greatest achievement since the War.
That statement is usually followed by a lot of prattle about peaceful co-existence with our halfdead brethren and statistics twisted to prove that the only groups preyed upon by said brethren are burglars and street gangs. Honest folk, we are assured, folk tired from a day’s honest work, folk at home and in their beds, these folk have nothing to fear from the halfdead.
I sat alone across from Evis. Beside him, on either side, sat two more halfdead, both taller and wider than he. They too wore gloves, and black, high-collared shirts that nearly covered their skin. They smelled of strong fire-flower cologne and new leather boots. Their hats were worn low, their faces were turned down and their chests never rose, never fell.
The driver, surprisingly, was human, as was the man seated beside him. Occasionally they’d exchange a muffled laugh or curse as the carriage lurched over a pothole. Hearing their voices was comforting to me, the sole human passenger in a carriage full of halfdead.
I watched the dark streets roll by through the glass over Evis’s shoulder. Streetlamps guttered and sparked. There was still light in a few windows, and more than once I saw it extinguished as we passed.
We left Cambrit, followed Stewart to the crossing of the Edge Street sewer canal, then veered off down an alley and turned south.
Evis peeped over my shoulder, watched the streets roll by through the window at my back. He’d put his glasses away, and his dead eyes shone now and then in the passing light of streetlamps.
“Do you miss it?” he asked, looking out at the dark. “You cannot appreciate it, under the Curfew.”
The carriage rolled on. I caught sight of a drunk, who saw the halfdead carriage, worked out who it bore and dived clumsily into the sewer canal.
“Miss what? The night?”
Evis nodded.
“It looks so different now. So…bright. There are shadows, to be sure, but light too. Silver light.” He shrugged. “I merely wondered if you ever missed just walking down a street, beneath a half-full moon.”
The turgid water closed over the drunk. If he ever surfaced, I never saw it.
“Oh, not much.” I felt it best not to advertise my recent spate of Curfew-breaking, lest his silent friends prick up their ears. “How about the sun? You ever miss that?”
A streetlamp splashed faint light into the carriage, and I looked away from those eyes before I could stop myself.
“Hardly at all.”
The driver pulled back his reins and spoke, and the carriage slowed, pulled to a halt.
“First stop,” said Evis. His companions stirred, exiting the carriage with all the sound and fuss of a dropped silk handkerchief. “Wait here with the driver, won’t you? My friends and I will see that the site is safe. We’ll call for you, when that is established.”
I shrugged. “Sure. Bon appetite.”
He smiled, moved and was gone.
I slid over, peeped out the window. The halfdead were gone. Evis had left the carriage door open, so I climbed slowly out.
We were parked at the corner of Gentry and Low. The stench of the canal, a block behind us, rode the night, thick and choking. Weathered brick buildings, two and three stories tall, formed a canyon that blotted out most of the sky.
Rannit is packed with once thriving commercial districts that, for one reason or another, fell into decay. The streets zigzagging off Gentry are some of the oldest. What were once breweries and foundries are now warehouses, hulks and shells, home to rodents and pigeons and failing businesses making a doomed last stand against oblivion. No lights shone in the broken windows, no smoke rose from chimneys, no shapes moved behind the doors. Before the Truce and the Curfew, you’d also have found squatters lounging in the alleys and making their beds in the empty stoops. Now, though, the buildings are empty and still.
“Cheerful, ain’t it?” asked the driver, in a whisper, from his perch atop the carriage.
He held a glossy black crossbow, as did his grinning human companion. Crossbows are illegal inside the city limits. I eschewed to point this out.
“Rent’s cheap, though,” I whispered back.
“Shut up,” hissed the driver’s friend. “Boss said keep it quiet.”
“You boys know what the Boss is up to?” I asked.
They both chuckled. “Yeah, right,” said the driver’s friend, so faint I could barely hear. “We’re in on all the House policy meetings.”
I shrugged, expecting as much.
“They ain’t so bad,” said the driver. “Best job I ever had.”
They fell silent, after that. After a few moments, the driver’s friend jerked and started, fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulled out something that looked like a pocket watch, fiddled with it briefly.
“The boss says you can go and have a look,” said the driver, to me. “That way. You’ll be met.” He hooked a thumb in the direction the halfdead had vanished.
I sauntered off as if it were noon, and I was going for lunch at Eddie’s.
I’d gone maybe twenty feet when one of Evis’s halfdead companions glided out of the shadows and fell into step with me. “This way,” he said, in a voice that sent literal shivers down my spine. “It is not far.”
I followed his lead. His face was cloaked in shadow, and I was heartily glad of it.
Faint light flared ahead, outlining a door and the gaps between the planks of a boarded-up window. “There,” said my pale guide, halting. “I shall keep watch here.”
I thanked him and went.
The door was open. Someone had simply grasped the knob and pushed until door and frame tore free from the wall. I stepped past it, into a small room lit by a guttering candle standing in the middle of the floor.
The room stank of rot and rat. I shut my mouth and looked around-bare cracked plaster walls, a single window and the wood floor curling and warped and stained from the leaks that had ravaged the ceiling.
A single door was set in the far side. It, too, had been forced open, struck with such force that most of the doorframe was hanging splintered beside the wall.
Evis stepped through the opening. “There is more. We are too late-but there is more to see.”
He donned his dark glasses, nodded at the candle, turned and vanished back through the broken door.
I picked up the candle and followed.
The door wound down a long dark hall. Walls, floors and ceiling all bore water damage, but the warped pine wood floor had been repaired in two places. Recently, too, the nail-heads shone of new-beaten iron in the light, which meant they hadn’t had time to rust.
The hall abruptly ended. I stepped down, nearly stumbled, onto a cobble-brick floor, and my candlelight lost sight of any ceiling, and all the walls. It did illuminate the backs of four black-clad halfdead, who stood in a small circle a dozen steps away.
Evis and his dark glasses turned to face me.
“They are friends. They do not see you.”
“Wonderful.” My mouth was so dry I spoke in a ragged whisper. My new friends didn’t turn, didn’t leap, so I licked my lips and took a step toward them. “What is it we’re seeing?”
I wasn’t seeing a thing, aside from vampires and a flickering ring of shadows and floor-bricks.
“Blood was spilled here. Spilled in such quantity that it rushed onto the floor.” He indicated the area, which the halfdead surrounded. They pulled back a few steps, and Evis motioned me forward. I took my guttering candle and went.
All I saw were bricks, just like all the others-black and smooth and rounded over with age and wear. Half the old buildings in Rannit were built over even older roads, just like this one. The builders merely scraped the dirt off the cobbles and called it a floor.
I knelt down, put my nose near the cold baked clay. If there was any blood there, it was too old and too faint for human eyes and a stub of a candle to see.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, rising.
“Do,” said Evis. “You see no trace because soon after the blood was spilled, the floor was cleaned. I suspect they used a mop and tanner’s bleach. My associates and I can still smell the traces though. Some must have run between the cobbles.”
“Rannit’s got more blood-stains than pot holes,” I said. “What makes this one special? What does it have to do with Martha Hoobin?”
Evis sighed.
Then he frowned.
“Mavis. Torno, Glee, come here.”
Three new vampires appeared and glided near, their ghost-white faces turned down, their dirty marble eyes turned away from my light.
“What the-”
Evis raised a hand and the halfdead stopped still, faces down, beside me. I shut up.
A moment passed. I strained my ears, since my eyes were proving useless. I heard nothing at first-then, faintly, I made out scratching, like a mouse in a wall, chewing away. I held my breath but couldn’t locate the source.
Evis put his dark glasses away. “Dear God,” he said, in a whisper. “Dear God.”
A fourth vampire appeared at my right elbow. Evis nodded at it.
“Go now, Mr. Markhat. Sara will take you to safety.”
I opened my mouth. The scratching grew louder. Was it coming from the floor?
“Sara!”
Sara reached out, put both cold hands on my waist and hefted me a foot off the floor.
She’d taken a single gliding step toward the door when the brick floor at our feet exploded and a long bubbling scream broke the silence.
A scream and a smell. A stench, really, louder in its way than any noise-rotting flesh, warm and wet, thrust suddenly up out of the earth.
A brick struck Sara in the side of her head, and she faltered, tripped and went down, and me with her.
I heard Evis shout something and felt whips of motion around me and in that instant before my dropped candle flicked out I caught sight of the thing that we’d raised. It leaped toward me, a thing of loose and rotted flesh, slapping Evis casually aside when he grasped its right arm. There was no face upon that head, which was itself only a dark, swollen mass that sent sprays of thick black fluid flying with every movement. It had no eyes, no ears, no lower jaw-but it saw me, somehow, and it raced toward me, arms outstretched, ruined belly burst open and trailing shriveled entrails as it came.
The candle went dark. I scrambled up, and I ran. Behind me, I heard a thud and a gurgle as Sara rose and grappled with the dead thing. Evis shouted again and a pair of crossbows threw, thunk-whee, thunk-whee.
I charged across the cobbles. I couldn’t see the door. I couldn’t see the wall. I couldn’t see the thing behind me, but I could hear it, hear Evis and his halfdead as they grappled, leaped and struck.
The ruined thing screamed again, so close I smelled its foul exhalation, felt cold spittle on my back.
I slammed face-first into a wall that might have needed new plaster and new paint but hadn’t suffered much loss in the way of structural integrity. The room spun. Blood spewed out of my nose.
It shrieked at the scent, maybe a dozen steps behind. I put the wall on my left and charged, arms groping for a door, any door.
More crossbows threw. A bolt buried itself in the wall a hand’s breadth from my head. I ducked and kept moving-had I turned the wrong way? Was the door behind me now?
Something hissed. Something cold and wet laid itself on the back of my neck. I bellowed for Evis, lashed out with a back kick that sank into something soft. The smell hit me anew. I whirled and kicked again and it screamed, wet and triumphant, nearly in my bloodied face.
I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see at all, but I felt the air rush past me, heard the pair of grunts and thuds as a pair of vampires dived into the creature and pinned it to the wall. A thick, foul spray of fluid caught me square in the face when the halfdead hit, and I retched and stumbled away, pawing and spitting.
A cold hand gripped my shoulder. “This way,” said Evis, shoving me forward. “Go. Find the carriage. Tell Bertram and Floyd to wait with you.”
Behind me, I heard shrieks and blows-short wet shrieks punctuated with fast, hard blows. I assumed they had the dead thing pinned and when Evis let go, I moved.
I wasn’t followed. The gurgling shrieks behind me grew fainter and shorter. I heard the faint sound of steel slicing the air and, suddenly, all was silent.
I found the ruined door, cut my hand on the splintered doorframe, darted through it and was down the hall at a run. My footfalls were loud in the dark, and all the way out to the street my mind played tricks on me, hearing the sounds of pursuit behind me, hearing a faint growl that crept from a bloated, gurgling throat.
But I made it. I stumbled whole into the street, mopped blood from my nose, tried to pick out my rights and my lefts from the shadows and the warehouse fronts. That way, I decided. Right. Right for Evis’s carriage. Left to just skirt the whole mess and head for the country and raise a crop of sheep or do whatever it is they do out there.
I’d taken a single step that way when hands-gentle hands-fell on my shoulder. “That way,” said a voice, and I was turned around, and a clean white linen handkerchief was placed in my hand. “The carriage awaits.”
I mopped blood and blinked.
The street was full of halfdead.
Ten or more glided past, quiet as ghosts. My giver of handkerchiefs joined them, gliding toward the warehouse like a black-clad puff of wind.
I shuddered, but I held the cloth tight to my nose and marched toward the carriage. More halfdead popped out of the shadows. Each and all ignored me, though I tottered and stank and dripped their favorite beverage liberally out onto the street.
There’s a metaphor there, somewhere. Something about bleeding profusely at a vampire parade. One day I’ll finish it and tell Mama it’s a Troll saying. But that night I just clamped the cloth to my nose and headed for Evis’s carriage.
I found it easily enough, though the coachmen had lit their lanterns. They were both on the street, and both bore crossbows and nervous frowns.
They backed up and wrinkled their noses at my approach.
“We’ll never get the smell out,” said one to the other.
“Just be glad you aren’t wearing it,” I said. The driver, bless him, produced a clean handkerchief and stepped close enough to hand it to me.
“The boss said you found a bad one,” he said, quietly.
I mopped and nodded, not asking how the Boss had communicated this to the driver. I figured House Avalante could afford the finest sorcerous long-talkers.
The driver’s friend opened the door. “Best get in. We’ll be leaving soon, and in a hurry.” He squinted at me in the lantern light. “It didn’t scratch you, did it?”
Hell. Had it?
I shook off my old Army jacket, kicked it into the gutter when I saw the thick black stain all down the back. I rolled up my sleeves, checked my arms and waist and legs.
All the fresh blood was from my nose or my right hand. All the other-well, it wasn’t mine.
“No,” I said. My voice shook, and I was getting weak at the knees, so I climbed into Evis’s fine carriage, leaving black stains as I went.
Bertram and Floyd-I never learned which was which-watched me go, then turned their frowns and their crossbows back out toward the night.
I sat and I panted and even with the door and window open I gagged at my smell. My heart still rushed, and memories of the thing’s bloated, eyeless face, I knew, would haunt my dreams for years.
“The boss said you found a bad one.”
That’s what the driver had said. A bad one. The flip side of Evis and his well-groomed friends. Halfdead in the raw-a hungry corpse, rotted and foul, still driven to a grim parody of life by a hunger that drove it from the grave.
I shuddered, couldn’t stop, did what I’d done when that happened during the war-shut my eyes, clasped my hands and counted my breaths. One, two, three, four. Over and over, until it was past.
I’d only gotten through it twice when I heard the driver mutter a curse and the carriage rocked as his friend scrambled up onto his seat. The ponies shuffled their hooves when he caught up the reins.
Evis and a pair of halfdead were just entering the yellow ring of lantern light. Evis’s clothes were torn and stained and ragged. His hat was gone, and his jacket hung in tatters. His pale skin, like that of his companions, was stained and spotted with the dark black blood of the thing from under the floor.
Evis and another halfdead supported a third between them. I squinted, recognized the limp, injured vampire as Sara, the one who’d tried to take me outside.
It was only in that light, with her jacket gone, that I realized Sara had once been a woman. She’d been halfdead so long it was hard to tell, since they all wear their hair short, and she’d perhaps been tall and thin before she changed. Now her head lolled, and her arms twitched spasmodically, and though she moved her feet she did little more than shuffle them across the cobbles while Evis and the other halfdead hauled her toward the carriage. Evis and his upright companion looked grim. Sara, too, was slathered in old black blood-but a wound in her chest, right over her heart, oozed and glistened with blood of her own.
I pushed myself back out of the way. Evis said something to the driver, and suddenly Sara and the other vampire scrambled inside.
Evis popped his head in the door.
“Bertram will take you home, Mr. Markhat,” he said. “You and I must speak tomorrow, the sooner the better.” He lifted his hand, cutting off my reply. “There is no time. You must not be seen here, and I must stay. Go. We talk tomorrow.”
He shut the door, and the carriage rolled on.
An awkward silence fell. Sara shifted and mumbled and pawed the air with her hands, as if caught in a deep and troubled sleep. Her companion held her close and tried to hold her hands and stroke her face and keep her from leaping out of her seat. He didn’t have enough hands, and even vampire-quick was nearly not quick enough, but he managed, somehow.
She cried out, high and airy, and he began to speak to her, soothing and soft. And only then did it dawn on me-Sara and her companion were married.
Had to be. Mister and Missus Halfdead. Death had done them, but they had yet to part. I’d missed the mannerisms before because I never imagined such pale cold creatures would bother with wives or sires.
She cried out again, flailed the air with her hands. Three of the fingers on her right hand were broken, bent back double, touching the back of her palm.
“Will she heal?”
Sara’s husband-had to be-turned his eyes briefly upon me.
He spoke. His accent wasn’t Rannish, and it was so thick it took me a moment to work out his words.
“What do you care?”
Sara’s broken fingers began to move, drawing themselves slowly back into their normal places. I could hear, faint over the rattle and clack of the carriage, the faint scraping and popping of small bones.
“She saved my life. She fought for me.” I shrugged. “So did you. It matters.”
He held her good hand while the broken fingers twitched and jerked.
“She will recover,” he said, when it was done. Sara sagged like a rag doll, and her husband looked back toward her. “We fought for the House. Not for you.”
“Then I thank the House,” I said.
Sara expelled a final whimper, doubled her hands over the wound in her breast and nestled close to her mate.
Light from a rare lit streetlamp washed through the open windows of the carriage. I saw a wetness in the male vampire’s yellow eyes, and I looked quickly away.
After a while, Sara began to mumble again. She shared her husband’s accent, and she wasn’t speaking Kingdom, but the older tongue of the Church. I know maybe a dozen words of Church, so I wasn’t keeping up too well. But I didn’t need a priest-book to know halfdead Sara was mumbling ragged prayers.
“Mercy, mercy, spare me, mercy.” Over and over again. And while she prayed, her fingers moved, reflexively rubbing a prayer coin that wasn’t there, wouldn’t ever be there again.
Mercy, mercy. I wondered what old Father Molo would say, on hearing vampire prayers. I could almost see his red mask shaking, hear the fury and outrage in his tremulous old voice. Blasphemy, he’d shout. Blasphemy, and damnation quick to follow.
Still, Sara prayed. She’d grappled fully with the thing we’d disturbed. She touched its flesh, perhaps tasted its blood. Was that the mercy for which she prayed? Was that the fate from which she begged to be spared?
Life ends in death-perhaps half-life ends with the thing from the floor.
So she prayed. I lowered my head and closed my eyes. For the first time since before the War, I mouthed Sara’s name and prayed for her too, all the long way back to Cambrit.
I shucked my clothes right there in the street. I managed to salvage my socks and my shoes, but everything else went into a trash bin-even my old Army dress pants, which had withstood assaults of time and moths and weather and war, but wasn’t ever going to recover from a couple quarts of old dead blood and smeared-on bits of rot.
Naked at my door. If the neighbors were watching I’d never hear the end of it. But I wasn’t done yet. Inside, I gathered my just filled washing urn, a cake of Mama’s flesh-eating lye soap and a rag destined to keep my britches company in the bin.
Then, still nude, I stepped back outside and lathered up Mama’s soap and took the longest, most disgusting bath of my long and sordid life.
I got lye soap in one eye and provided high amusement for a pair of passing ogres. I’ll probably go bald any day now from the caustic soap, but when I was done I was shivering and shaking and absolutely squeaky clean.
Only then did I dress. Only then did I lock the door, open a warm bottle of Bottit’s and sit down to see if I’d shake.
I didn’t. I didn’t sleep, not until nearly sunrise, but I didn’t have the shakes again.
I even did some thinking. Came to some conclusions. Conclusions about Evis and Houses and why Avalante wanted Martha Hoobin home and safe and sound before anyone but finder Markhat discovered a mad, rotted halfdead napping in a shallow grave downtown.
Three-leg Cat poked his head in the office but refused to come near me. I finally dozed off, still at my desk, to the sound of half a dozen dogs outside snarling and tearing at my blood-fouled clothes.