“Adam, call Rhea and have her check on Maisie.” He hesitated. Clearly he was thinking of going after her himself. But Maisie and Adam had their own issues, which made him almost as bad a choice as me. Finally, he nodded and went to grab the phone. Adam’s aunt was the only mage who knew how to handle Maisie’s… issues.
While Adam went to the kitchen to call his aunt, Giguhl murmured some vague excuse about getting something from his room. I shot him a grateful smile for allowing me a few minutes alone. The last thing I wanted right then was another postmortem about one of Maisie’s episodes.
I grabbed my discarded bag of blood and took it with me to find some solace in the view. One of the things I loved about our apartment was the full wall of old sash windows overlooking Central Park. Usually, gazing out at the park’s shadowed treetops with the sparkling city lights beyond calmed me. But that night, the blue lights demanded my attention. Tried to seduce me down dark serpentine paths.
But I’d seen enough darkness for one night. I turned my back and focused on ignoring the coagulant aftertaste of my meal. Thus far, my night was not amusing me. And frankly, despite my claims to Maisie that Pussy’s show would be fun, I was so not looking forward to going. But I didn’t have a choice. Pussy Willow was my friend and I wanted to support her. Besides, if I begged off, I knew I’d just sit around all night brooding about my twin.
“Rhea promised to check on her and give me an update,” Adam said, returning from the kitchen. I nodded and speared another bag with my fangs. I used my full mouth as an excuse to avoid talking about what had just happened.
“Red?” Adam’s tone was quiet, careful.
I swallowed the last few drops and lowered the empty bag. “Yeah?”
“You okay?”
My first instinct was to fire back with a caustic retort. But this was Adam. He’d see right through it. “I just never know what’s going to set her off.”
“She’s going to be okay. Eventually.”
I blew out a shaky breath. “Maybe I need to get Rhea to teach me a patience spell.”
The mancy chuckled and wrapped his arms around me. “Red, there are some things even magic can’t fix.”
I thought about my sister, the once vital, earthy female who used to paint her dreams and loved to laugh. “Tell me about it.”
3
Getting to Vein was something straight out of a spy movie. Adam flashed us to the alley behind a hole-in-the-wall Chinese joint in Hell’s Kitchen. To the dark races, this area was known as the Black Light District, where vampires, mages, werewolves, and faeries came to indulge their favorite vices. Vein served as headquarters for the BLD, and its owner, Slade “The Shade” Corbin, ran prostitutes, drugs, and the dark-races underworld out of the club.
As usual, I was thankful for Adam’s skills with interspatial travel that allowed me to avoid public transportation. I might not feed off humans anymore, but that didn’t mean I wanted to press up against them in a tin can hurtling through a dark tunnel. I kept asking Rhea to teach me how to travel magically, too, but she held me off, saying I needed more experience in basic magic.
Once we arrived, I hefted my large tote bag up on my shoulder. The ugly canvas thing didn’t go with my black ensemble at all, but it made lugging my hairless cat demon around town easier.
“We need to put you on a diet, Mr. Giggles,” I complained.
A blue knit cap and two batlike ears appeared over the top of the bag. “Bite me, magepire.”
I rolled my eyes. Giguhl was always so bitchy in his cat form. Probably because of the ridiculous sweaters and cat toboggans he was forced to wear to protect his hairless body from the frigid New York winter.
Adam crossed his arms. “Are you two done? We’re running late.”
I held a hand toward the entrance of Pu Pu Palace. “Lead the way.”
Adam shook his head as he passed me to the entrance. The place held maybe six tables out front. When we entered, the few mortal customers kept their heads bent over bowls of steaming noodles and General Tso’s chicken. Slade must have paid the owner of the restaurant well to not notice the parade of vampires, mages, and faeries who came through the restaurant on a nightly basis. Although, knowing Slade, he’d bought the original owner out and kept the restaurant running as a front for his more illicit businesses.
We went back through the swinging door to the kitchen. Peanut oil droplets and the scent of MSG and mystery meats hung heavy in the air. The cooks sweated over large woks and prattled in a steady stream of Cantonese.
I grabbed an egg roll off a plate and dropped it in the bag for Giguhl to make up for my comment about his weight. A muttered “thanks” reached my ears over the kitchen racket. Adam opened the door to the walk-in freezer and shooed me in. I closed it behind us and pulled the lever to open the hidden passage. Two minutes later, we’d made our way down the stairs and into the tunnel that led to the entrance of Vein.
The regular bouncer, a Mohawked vampire named Joe, sat on the stool. Word of PW’s show must have spread because the line to get in was ten beings deep. Since Adam and I were regulars, Joe waved us past the line. A few disgruntled mutters rose from those who had to wait. I ignored them and high-fived Joe as we passed.
Earl, Vein’s fanged barkeep, was busy filling drink orders for the large crowd who’d turned out for Pussy Willow’s New York debut. I waved to get his attention and held up three fingers. Earl wasn’t exactly the chatty type, but he did deign to nod vaguely in my direction. The move was both a greeting and an acknowledgment that he’d send our drinks over to the table. After the night I’d had so far, I briefly considered changing my regular beer for a double Bloody Magdalene, but knew the move would only earn me The Look from Adam. On the bright side, the beer would go a long way to help scrub the chemical taste of coagulant from my tongue, courtesy of the pint of bagged blood I’d chugged earlier.
Adam beelined for our usual spot—a booth along the back wall that gave us a perfect view of the stage. I scooted in and opened the canvas bag. Giguhl leapt out and onto the vinyl banquette, the move knocking his blue cap askew.
“Ahem?”
“What?”
“You don’t really expect me to hang out in this hairless carcass, do you?”
I removed a set of sweatpants from the bag and rose again with a sigh. “We’ll be right back.”
Carrying the cat under one arm, I made my way through the crowd toward the bathrooms. Ignoring the speculative glances from the females in line for the ladies’ room, I went to the men’s door. I pushed it open and tossed the cat and the pants inside. Leaning against the wall, I crossed my arms. “Giguhl change forms,” I called out loud enough to be heard inside to the john.
Two seconds later a pop sounded. Green smoke wafted under the door, bringing with it the scent of rotten eggs and urinal cakes.
“What the fuck!” a deep male voice shouted from inside. “Keep that thing away from me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Giguhl responded in a bored tone. “You couldn’t handle The Pitchfork.”
The door burst open and a very large, very pissed-off werewolf exited. As the door swung closed, I was treated to an unsavory view of naked demon ass as Giguhl pulled on his sweatpants. And here I was thinking I was clever for making him change forms in the bathroom. If I didn’t know better I’d think Giguhl enjoyed flashing me. Which was likely, considering he was a Mischief demon.
Two seconds later, the seven-foot-tall, green-scaled, black-horned demon emerged. He wore a pair of faded black sweatpants that ended a good six inches above his hooves. He looked ridiculous, but it was better than sitting next to a naked demon all night.
“Did you have to antagonize the werewolf?” I asked.
“That’s a rhetorical question, right?”
I rolled my eyes and pushed his shoulder. “C’mon, the show’s starting soon.”
As we walked back to the booth, I bumped shoulders with a familiar mage. He stopped when he recognized me. “Oh, sorry, Sabina.”
I waved away his apology. “Hey, Marty. No worries.”
“What up, homeslice?” Giguhl raised a claw to high-five the mage, who we knew casually from around Prytania Place. He was some sort of low-level administrator for the Council, but a nice enough guy.
Marty smiled and slapped Giguhl’s claw. “You up for another round of hoops, G? I want a chance to win back that twenty you took off me last time.”
“You’re welcome to try,” Giguhl said, and laughed.
We said our good-byes to Marty and headed back to our seats. Cinnamon, one of Slade’s nymph waitresses-slash-prostitutes, had delivered our drinks while we were gone. Giguhl dropped onto the bench and chugged down half his beer. When he paused for a breath, a loud belch escaped his black lips.
“Nice, G.” Adam raised his own drink to cover his smile.
“I can’t help it,” the demon said. “I’m so nervous for Pussy Willow.”
“Why?” I asked. “She performed all the time in New Orleans.”
Giguhl shot me a bitch-please look. “Yeah, but that was lip-synching. She’s been practicing her vocals but she’s still really nervous.”
“Wait,” I said. “You mean she’s actually going to sing?” I exchanged a worried look with Adam. He shook his head slightly. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought there might be a very good reason PW used to lip-synch during her drag shows.
The demon nodded and took a nervous sip of his beer.
“So how’s the Roller Derby stuff going, G?” Adam asked, deftly changing subjects before Giguhl could work himself up into a frenzy like an overprotective stage mother.
Giguhl sat forward, warming up to the new topic. “Pretty well. I’ve recruited six chicks so far.”
Up until a few weeks earlier, Giguhl had been the reigning champ of Demon Fight Club. The setup had been simple: Two demons faced off in a fight pit located in Vein’s basement. But an incident involving a Lust demon and a mage with attention deficit disorder brought that to a screaming halt. Luckily, I’d missed that ordeal, but according to Giguhl, the whole thing was quite upsetting. “Sabina, some things cannot be unseen,” he’d said. Apparently, several of Vein’s patrons agreed and Slade was forced to shut down DFC for good.
