Midnight Blue-Light Special (4 page)

Dancing for Kitty was a long way from the rarified heights of the World Tango Championships, but hell, it was dancing, and I was getting paid for it. That was close enough for me, especially where paying my rent was concerned.

Dominic frowned a little as he studied me, his expression barely visible through the dark. Finally, he asked, “Is there someplace we could go, for a brief while, where we wouldn’t be observed? I have matters I need to discuss with you.”

“Well, we can’t go to your place, because you’ve never let me see where you live. And we can’t go to the coffee shop, because you always get all weird when I want to ‘discuss’ things in public,” I said slowly. “You realize what that means.”

“Yes, unfortunately.” Dominic sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance that they’re currently involved in some religious observance involving total silence and secluded meditation?”

I laughed. Maybe it was cruel, but I couldn’t help myself. “You really don’t know Aeslin mice very well, do you?”

“It was an idle hope,” said Dominic. “Well. If the mice are not engaged in ritual silence, can I throw myself upon your mercy and request that we take a cab to your apartment, rather than indulging in your customary suicidal approach?”

“Nope.” I leaned up onto my toes, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. Dominic looked suitably flustered in response. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be as attracted to him if he weren’t so much fun to torment. That’s probably one of those things I shouldn’t think about too hard. “
You
can take a cab, if you want, but I’m going to be taking the overland route.”

Dominic sighed again, more deeply this time. “You’re going to plummet to your demise one day, and I’m going to have to beg your cousin to notify your family, as I’m reasonably sure they’d shoot me for having been in the city when you lost your unending battle against gravity.”

“And again, you say the sweetest things,” I said. “Bye, now. See you at the apartment.” I offered him a little wave before turning and sprinting for the edge of the roof. One step carried me onto the low retaining wall, and another step carried me over it, dropping down into the dark on the other side.

Manhattan is a city built almost entirely on the principle that you can never have too much straight up. This makes the city a free-runner’s paradise and a death trap at the same time, since one moment of carelessness can result in fifteen stories of free fall, concluding with a painful introduction to the street. I’ve managed to avoid doing anything quite that dramatic, but I’ve had more than a few close calls.

The thing to remember about free-running is that energy has to go somewhere. Your momentum can either be translated into going where you want to go, or it can be taken away from you and used to send you where
gravity
wants you to go . . . and you probably don’t want to go where gravity wants you to go. Continual motion reduces the chances of a fall, assuming you have the training and physical skill necessary to keep that motion under control.

I dropped like a stone for the first two stories, plummeting almost all the way back to the club before I grabbed hold of a ledge and used the energy from my fall to fling myself, hard, onto the nearby fire escape. From there, I slid down the ladder and dropped to the street below, landing with my weight balanced on my toes. The world seemed to stop for a moment, everything falling into the sweet, familiar pattern of the run. And then I was off, racing for the next building, where the dumpster would lead to the fire escape would lead to the roof would lead to the next step in my journey home . . .

Free-running in a city as vertical as Manhattan means a lot of going up just so I can go down again. It may look inefficient, but familiarity and speed make it the fastest way for me to get almost anywhere. There’s rarely traffic on the rooftops, and what there is consists almost entirely of cryptids and cryptid sympathizers, almost all of whom are happy to step aside and let me pass. I’m a Price girl, after all; I’m their defender, even if I am sleeping with the enemy. But when I’m running, that doesn’t matter. When I’m running, everything is simple, even the risk of a permanent fall.

I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Dominic was waiting outside the door to my semilegal sublet apartment when I came trotting up the stairs. He looked calm, cool, and collected, as always. I, on the other hand, was a sweaty mess, although the endorphins generated by my run had me flying high enough that I really didn’t care.

“How is it you can always get in here without me?” I asked, slowing to a walk. “I thought this building was supposed to have security.”

“I have my ways.”

“You stole somebody’s keys, didn’t you?” I used my own key to unlock the door.

Dominic looked affronted. “I did nothing of the sort,” he said. “I bribed the building manager with a tale of woe concerning our lovers’ spat.”

“Uh-huh. Was this before or after we actually
had
one?”

“Oh, considerably before.”

“Why am I not in any way surprised? Come on. Time to face the inquisition.” I pocketed my keys as I pushed the door open, took a deep breath, and stepped into the apartment. Dominic followed quickly. He’d been over often enough to know what was coming, and that we needed to have the door closed before it got fully underway.

The latch had barely clicked into place when the mice filling the apartment’s short entrance hall began to cheer wildly, waving their tiny banners and ritual implements in the air. “HAIL! HAIL! HAIL THE HOMECOMING OF THE ARBOREAL PRIESTESS!”

“Yeah, guys,” I said, dropping my bag on the little table that was meant to hold the mail. “I’m home. Dominic’s here, too, so could you maybe chill out for a while?”

“HAIL!” shouted the mice, overcome with ecstasy at the idea of having
two
humans they could cheer at. “HAIL THE VISITATION OF THE GOD OF QUESTIONABLE MOTIVATIONS!”

Dominic raised his eyebrows. “Is that my divinity this week?”

“Apparently so.” My family has been living with Aeslin mice for generations. They’re tiny, furry religious fanatics, and they worship us as their gods. No, I’m not quite sure how it started, but it’s pretty standard for the Aeslin; every colony anyone has ever encountered has been deeply, religiously devoted to something . . . and there’s no law requiring that the “something” make any sense whatsoever. We put up with them because they’re cute, and because they’re useful. Aeslin mice turn everything they witness into religious ritual, and their oral history is impeccable.

According to the Aeslin, all the women in my family are priestesses, connecting them directly to the divine, and all the men are gods. Maybe that’s a little sexist of them, but hey, they’re talking mice. If they want to enforce their own weird ideas of human gender roles, we’re willing to let them, if only to avoid the necessity of answering their questions about human sexuality. Believe me, there are worse things in this world than being considered a priestess. Since Dominic’s been sleeping with me, the mice have been trying various labels on him, looking for the one that fits. My personal favorite was the week they spent calling him “the God of Absolutely Never Smiling, No, Not Ever.” They did it because they felt it was accurate. I enjoyed it because it annoyed the crap out of him.

The mice were still cheering, although it was less uniform than it had been when we first arrived. I hunkered down, scanning the throng until I spotted the pigeon-skull hat worn by the current leader of the colony. “Dominic and I need to talk, and we need to do it without interruptions,” I said. “What’s the price for an hour of privacy?”

“An Offering must be Made!” replied the mouse priest, without hesitation. I could actually hear the capital letters in the middle of the sentence.

I thought about what was in the fridge for a moment before saying, “Tomorrow’s grocery day. Will you accept a box of Hostess cupcakes and some sharp cheddar for now?”

This required a quick conference with the mice around him before he looked up and nodded, banging his kitten-bone staff against the floor to signal his acceptance. “It will suffice,” he intoned.

“Great. Dominic, I’ll meet you in the living room.”

“Naturally.” He was only shuddering a little as he turned and beat a hasty retreat away from the colony. That was a big improvement. Dominic might be tolerant of my cryptid-loving lifestyle, but the Aeslin mice still creeped him right the hell out, maybe because they insisted on staring at him constantly, waiting for him to prove his godhood. And this is why neither I nor my siblings ever brought home any dates during high school.

It took me about five minutes to get the mice sufficiently placated, and hence out of our hair for at least the next half hour. They were still doing their rapturous dance in celebration of the Coming of Cheese and Cake when I left the kitchen and walked down the short hall to the living room. Dominic was sitting on the side of the couch that wasn’t completely covered by my dance costumes.

“All done,” I said, moving to lean up against an open patch of wall. “So what did we need all this privacy for?”

“Verity . . .” Dominic hesitated. Then he stood, looking at me solemnly. “I must ask—no, I must
beg
—that you not become upset until you have heard everything I need to say. It is very important that you understand everything I have come here to tell you, and why this discussion needed to happen both immediately and in secret. May I have your assurance that you will remain calm?”

“Dominic, what’s going on?” I straightened, unconsciously trying to match the seriousness in his stance. “Is everything okay?”

“Please. Your assurance.”

“Yeah, sure. I’m a pretty calm person, you know that.”

It was a sign of how concerned he was that he didn’t even roll his eyes at such a blatant lie. Instead, he continued, “I have become fond of you, frustrating and impossible as you are, and I have learned a great deal about the unnatural races with which we share this planet through our association. It’s difficult to view them all as monsters when so many of them seem to be genuinely decent individuals, damned solely by the accident of their birth.”

“I’ll be sure to tell Sarah you said so,” I said dryly.

Dominic ignored me. “I do not wish any harm to you, or to the people—and yes, I admit now that they
are
people—to whom you have introduced me. Please understand that.”

“Dominic?” I bit my lip, looking at him warily. “You’re starting to freak me out a little bit here.”

“Good,” he said, with surprising fervency. “You
should
be ‘freaked out.’ You need to leave, Verity. You need to take your mice, and your cousin, and anything and anyone else you care about in this city, and
leave
.”

My eyes widened. “What?”

“Get out of here. Please, while you still can.”

“What the
hell
are you talking about?” I took a step forward, shock fading into anger as I scowled at him. “Stop talking like Covenant and start speaking English, or I swear to God, I will start introducing you to my knives.”

“I’ve already met most of them,” said Dominic, and sighed, shoulders slumping. He reached out one hand, pressing his fingers against my cheek. “Verity, the Covenant is coming. They’re coming here. They want to check my work. They want to verify my reports.”

“What . . . ?” I breathed.

Dominic nodded very slightly, like the gesture pained him. “They’re coming to see how close I am to beginning the purge. Run, Verity. Run now, while you still can. If you’re here when they arrive, they’ll kill you.”

Four

“The question you have to ask yourself before you run away is this: am I running because I have no choice, or am I running because I’m afraid? And if I’m running because I’m afraid, will I actually escape, or will I just delay the inevitable?”

—Evelyn Baker

A semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village, about thirty seconds later

“
W
HAT?”
I REPEATED,
loudly enough that the mice actually stopped celebrating for a few seconds. They’ve lived with my family long enough to learn that, sometimes, shouting means it’s time to scramble for the nearest hidey-hole.

Their exultations resumed when my question wasn’t followed by gunfire. The mice may have learned some self-preservation, but there’s nothing in this world or any other that can interrupt Aeslin religious rites for very long.

Dominic, on the other hand, looked genuinely upset. “This wasn’t my idea, Verity, you have to believe me. I tried to convince them that there was no reason for them to send a team to check up on me, but my superiors feel that this is too large a territory for me to control on my own. They want to see for themselves that things are going as well as I’ve claimed.”

“And are they? Going as well as you claimed? How many cryptids do they think you’ve killed?” I couldn’t quite keep the edge out of my tone. It wasn’t his fault, and I knew it—if Dominic had wanted to sell me out to the Covenant, he would never have warned me that they were on their way. That didn’t stop all the old demons from rearing their heads, the ones that said this was always going to be the way things ended. That Covenant boys don’t change what they are just because Price girls are occasionally stupid enough to fall into bed with them, and I’d been a fool for trying to tell myself otherwise.

“That’s not fair,” he said quietly.

“When are they going to get here?”

“Soon.”

“Could you be a little more precise? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Should I even bother to run?”

“Goddammit, Verity, can you stop being angry with me for one second and just
think?
I’m not telling you this because I want to gloat! I’m trying to help. I’m trying to give you a chance—”

“You can’t.” My anger was suddenly gone, replaced by a resignation so deep it felt like it ran all the way down to my bones. “There’s no way I can evacuate the entire cryptid population of Manhattan. Even if I wanted to try, they’d have nowhere to go. It would be chaos. And if I can’t get them all out, I can’t go.”

“Verity. They’re not—” He stopped speaking so abruptly that for a moment, I thought he might have actually bitten his tongue. Somehow, that just made me feel even more resigned.

“You were about to say that they weren’t worth staying here and maybe getting myself killed over, weren’t you?” He didn’t answer me. “Come on, Dominic. Tell me that I’m wrong. All I’m asking you to do is look me in the eye and tell me that I’m wrong.”

“I can’t,” he said, very quietly.

I nodded. “I sort of figured that was what you were going to say. Did you really think I could run and leave them all here to die? Did you think I was that much of a coward?”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The look on his face was all the answer that I needed from him, and it broke my heart a little bit to see it.

“I see.” I took a breath, drawing myself as upright as I could. It helped if I told myself that this was another form of Paso Doble, the only form of Latin dance whose competitive form was as much a battle as anything else. “Thank you for the warning. I’ll take it from here.”

Dominic’s eyes widened in visible alarm. “Verity, please. Don’t do anything rash.”

“I’m a Price girl, remember? We specialize in rash, with the occasional side order of outright stupid.” I straightened a little. “I think you’d better go.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be like this.”

“If wishes were horses, we’d have a way easier time feeding the chupacabras. Now please. Go.”

The mice were still celebrating in the kitchen, but that sound seemed to drop away, leaving nothing but Dominic, and me, and the sudden silence stretching out between us. I’d always known that we came from different worlds, and that we’d have to go back to them someday. I’d just been telling myself that we’d have longer than this. And I’d been wrong.

“Very well,” he said finally. He walked back to the door, shoulders ramrod-straight beneath that damn pretentious duster he was so fond of. The mice cheered louder as he approached them, and he nodded genially in their direction—a small kindness, but one that showed how much he’d grown. How much I
thought
he’d grown. I was starting to realize I’d never known him at all.

He only looked back once, dark brown eyes pained above a mouth that was set as firmly as his shoulders. Then he opened the apartment door, and he was gone, leaving me alone.

The sound of a door swinging shut had never seemed so final.

It felt like I was moving in slow motion as I walked across the living room to where I’d dropped my bag. My cell phone was tucked safely into the front pocket. It took me three tries to make the zipper work, and another five tries before I could successfully access my contact list and call the one number that had a prayer of helping: Home.

Covenant “purges” are legendary in most cryptid circles, including the ones my family moves in. The Covenant of Saint George sends in a team of their best men, and when the dust clears and the blood has been hosed off the streets, nothing inhuman remains standing. When Dominic had first arrived in Manhattan, I’d asked my father to look up any historical records relating to purges in the New York area. The things he’d been able to find were bad enough to give me nightmares for weeks, and that was saying something, given all the other nightmare fodder that particular summer had offered me.

Some people call the Covenant “monster hunters,” and if there’s anything that demonstrates how wrong that label really is, it’s the way they purge a city. True hunters spare the children and the pregnant females, allowing the population to remain stable. That’s how they ensure that they’ll always have something to hunt. The Covenant has no such concerns. They don’t
want
to ensure that they’ll always have something to hunt. They want to wipe every breathing cryptid off the face of the planet. I don’t
know
that they give out merit badges for confirmed extinctions, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

The members of the Covenant aren’t monster hunters. They’re exterminators.

The phone rang for what seemed like forever but was probably only a few seconds. Then my father’s voice was in my ear, asking in that warm, familiar tone, “Why shouldn’t I hang up on you? You have five seconds.”

My family has been answering the home phone as rudely as possible for as long as I can remember. It’s a mechanism for screening calls without raising suspicion from the wrong quarters. As far as we’re concerned, that’s pretty much everyone who isn’t a relative or on the extremely short list labeled “allies.”

“Dad, it’s me,” I said.

“Verity!” he said, delighted. “That’s an excellent reason not to hang up on you. Hello, sweetheart. What’s going on? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“Yes. Normally, I would be. Daddy, there’s a problem.”

His tone sobered in an instant. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Honey, you don’t
sound
fine. Is it Sarah?”

“Not yet.” Any purge of Manhattan would naturally affect her . . . assuming the Covenant could find her. There’s nothing in this world or any other that hides as well as a cuckoo that doesn’t want to be found, and that includes the hidebehinds.

“Then what’s going on?”

“It’s the Covenant, Daddy.” I walked back to the couch and sat down, covering my face with my free hand. That helped, a little. Maybe if I stuck my head under something and waited patiently, the Covenant would go away. “Dominic says they’re coming to check his work. They want to see how far along he is in preparing the city for a purge. Which means the next step is either them figuring out that he isn’t prepared at all, or the Covenant starting the purge.”

There was a long pause before my father asked, “Did he tell you this?”

“Yes.”

“Is he there with you now?”

“No. I asked him to leave.”

There was another, longer pause. Finally, my father said, “I don’t think you should have done that.”

“What?” I straightened, pulling my hand away from my face. “Who are you, and what have you done with my father?”

“If he was willing to tell you that the team was coming—”

“—but not willing to stand up to the Covenant! Not willing to stop them from—”

“—then he may be willing to work with you to minimize the damage to the population.” My father’s tone was firm, and left little room for argument. He’s been in charge of our branch of the family since before I was born, and that means he’s had time to get very, very good at giving orders to people who aren’t very good at taking them. “I know it’s hard. I can tell that you feel betrayed right now.”

“Um, just a little. Why are you on his side?” I stood, pacing across the living room to the hallway door. The mice were finishing up their celebration. I stopped there, leaning against the wall and watching them. At least the mice could still find things to be happy about. “I thought we hated the Covenant.”

“I also thought you’d decided that Dominic deserved to be judged as an individual.”

I didn’t say anything.

Dad sighed. “Verity. Please. I’m glad you called me. That was the right thing to do, and I’ll do my best to get you some backup. But that doesn’t mean you can neglect the resources that you already have at hand. I’m not telling you to trust him. I’m telling you to use him, for as long as you possibly can.”

“Hold on a second,” I said, my stomach sinking. “Are you telling me that you
might
be able to send me backup, and that until then, I have to work with the man who may or may not be in the process of selling me out to the people we’ve been hiding from since before I was born?” I paused. “I lost track of that sentence somewhere in the middle. Dad, you
can’t
. You can’t expect me to work with him. Not now.”

“You have to.”

“I won’t.”

“Are you saying that because you think it’s the right thing to do, or because he hurt your feelings by not cutting ties with everything he’s ever known as soon as it came into conflict with what you wanted?” I didn’t have an answer for that, so I didn’t even try. Dad kept talking: “I know this is hard. I will do everything I can to get you the help you need. But Dominic is right there, Very, and he wouldn’t have told you if he didn’t want to help, at least a little.”

My voice was very small as I asked, “What if he doesn’t want to help me anymore? I turned him down hard.”

“Then we’ll figure something else out.”

“Okay.” I pushed away from the wall, turning my back on the mice. “What do I tell Sarah?”

“Tell her that she should come home. She has no business staying in that city while a purge is going on.”

I wanted to make a snarky comment about how he’d leave me to die while he evacuated my adopted cousin for her own good. I couldn’t do it because he was right. I was raised fighting, whether I wanted to or not. Sarah was raised doing her homework, obeying curfew, and trying to pass for human without constantly rearranging the brains of the people around her. She could keep herself out of sight better than damn near anyone else in the world, but she wouldn’t be any help if things got really bad.

“I’ll tell her,” I said, quietly. “I can’t promise that she’ll listen.”

“Of course not,” he said, and laughed. “She’s a member of this family, isn’t she?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “She is.”