Singh was inside, and at the bar, when they all came back, Roseblade setting their saviour down gently on the floor near his chair, which had simply been left in the same spot. The boy did not immediately sit down.
‘Hallo, Singh!’ Roseblade said cheerfully. ‘Drinks all round!’
‘What’s the occasion?’
‘Ding-dong, the bastard’s dead,’ Aix sang, grinning. Pippin seemed to recognise the tune, because she laughed delightedly, lighting up in all her colours and singing the tune, skipping around. More than a few people laughed. Aix danced with her a little, singing along with her wordless noises. ‘Which old witch! The wicked witch! Ding-dong the wicked witch is dead!’ Aix laughed, sitting back down in his chair, as Pippin skipped off to dance with others—the blonde Aix had first met was the most enthusiastic, but that wasn’t to say the others weren’t also willing to dance with a little clown—who wouldn’t, clowns were just like that—they had infectious joy, that’s why Aix liked them so much.
Pippin had met only a few of these people before, but she remembered them, because clowns never forgot a friend. She knew from how their thoughts looked that it had been a long time since they were happy, and that was her whole purpose in life. What a good Friend her Friend was to everybody! She Understood his magics now, yes indeed. He was a sort of Face that had never had a Name, but Pippin knew all the same. A lot of Dotties said Mean Things about that Face: “Danger Evil” and “Wicked Witch”—but it wasn’t those. It was Ascary Face but not a Bad Face, because Padrone and Dottore needed to be ascared sometimes, and even Dead sometimes, because of Fairness. Harlequin tricked everybody the same, and never thought to use Tricks to Help, he only helped by accident. But Aix was Tricksy on purpose, to Help other people. He was Consequences, and that was a very rare Mask, indeed.
Someone had put on some music, and the Magic Dotties passed around drinks, and started dancing with each other, and the big nice Magic Dottie with the big Hat and beard came around to dance with her too, and she was very excited to dance with him, she’d not seen somebody like him in a long time.
Aix got a drink handed to him, and there were a half dozen people talking and singing and laughing and dancing, and he knew, deep down, that they were all the vampires that worked here, that had worked here for centuries, some of them.
Lady Sitrinne came to sit next to him, holding a glass of red wine. She gestured at the untouched drink. ‘Is that your offering?’ she asked.
‘It is, yeah. I just don’t know how to tell folks I need some quiet.’
It was suddenly quiet, just like that, like a blanket had muffled everything, stilled the music and even dimmed the lights. Aix blinked at her.
Lady Sitrinne only smiled her mysterious little smile. Aix nearly got to his feet, before deciding, no, fuck it, why should he?
‘Y’all wanted to know where René was,’ he said, by way of introduction. ‘Do you still? I have a hook up with the Stationmaster.’
‘Saint Christopher?’ said the same voice that had asked if he controlled Cthulhu. Aix laughed, mostly for show, and so it was his Villainous one.
‘Oh, sweet summer child… after everything I did, you still think I’m part of Christianity?’ He gave the man a look. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘God isn’t real. But Hermes? Hermes is very real.’ He looked to the door, raising the glass of liquor. ‘Hermes, come have a drink with us.’
‘I’ll be your Huckleberry,’ said a voice, from the other side of the room, and a tall drag queen with tall red hair and a sparkling green dress was standing on the stage.
Aix held it out, grinning, and said, ‘Welcome to the party, Ambertongue. Everybody, Loki. Loki, everybody.’
‘Oooh, I love new epithets!’ Loki said, coming over and knocking back the drink.
‘Sounds more like a drag name, I should think,’ said the blond, flirtatious. ‘Amber Tongue.’
Loki laughed. ‘So it is. Well, why did you call, young buck?’ came the question for Aix.
‘We wanted to know what happened to René—none of us were there, you see.’
‘I was busy Supervillaining,’ Loki said, shifting her weight and her shape, now looking like the popular comic book depiction of himself. Pippin beeped censoriously, hopping down from where she’d been sitting on the bar and making her Mask into a big frown at him, folding her little arms and staring him down. He made great show of mirroring her, trying to resist her, and ultimately failing when he got the giggles and had to sit down on the edge of the stage.
‘Okay, little one, okay, you win!’ he gasped, wiping tears from his eyes. ‘I told him he had a chance to run, and to take it. And he did.’
‘That doesn’t sound like René,’ said the blond, with the confidence of a friend.
‘People do very uncharacteristic things when they’re desperately afraid,’ Aix said, his tone grim because he knew from experience. ‘I met him in the Dreamscape. He was terrified. I only hope he remembered what I told him.’
Pippin came over to Aix, patting his leg to ask to come up. He leaned back, patting his chest, and she leapt lightly up onto his lap, giving him a hug and babbling wordlessly in soothing shapes.
The room sobered a little, at that. The blond put down his drink, audibly.
‘Well!’ he said. ‘I, for one, am buying that replacement for my ship out of our late master’s coffers. I am owed that much. Are any willing to sail with me back to London?’
‘Aye!’ came several voices—but not all of them, Aix noted.
‘You’d abandon us?’ said a rather young voice, and Aix recognised—the man with long red hair, who had opened the car door for him.
‘I must go down to the sea again,’ said the blond, and he said it with flippancy that Aix knew couldn’t possibly be as flippant as it seemed. He picked up the verse,
‘To the lonely sea and the sky,’ he said, solemn and joyful as a prayer, ‘and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.’
The blond whirled to look at him. Aix, his heart tense, forced himself to look up into the blond’s eyes, and found out they were green, green like the sky before a tempest. He held that gaze, and to him it felt like holding a live wire, like holding a pan handle when it was too hot, like when the cherry from a cigarette fell onto your lap while you were flicking the ash away.
Those green eyes were wreathed in copper and violet that only made them look more green, white-painted face shaded expertly, the makeup not at all smudged, meaning it was theatrical, because only greasepaint could withstand what they’d all been through in the past few hours. With white as his base colour, the exaggerated contour work of drag atop it, he looked comfortingly clownish. One of those brows pencilled into a high arch raised, and showed where the real brow was beneath, while moving the pencil line.
‘You say that as though you know.’
‘I do know,’ Aix said, in what he hoped was an even voice.
‘Then those legs swim better than they walk?’
‘They used to, and they will again,’ Aix said, stubbornly. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but it’s my feet that don’t bear weight. Swimming doesn’t bear weight, or even need feet.’ He thought fondly of his mermaid tail, bought in a fit of optimism, and determined he’d ask Michaela and maybe Lady Sitrinne’s brother-in-law, Twice, about modifying the fin of it to fit his foot size. That was kind of what happened when he felt like someone didn’t care about him—he just cared harder about himself out of spite.
‘Rosie,’ said the young redhead that had helped Aix into his chair earlier, in a chiding tone. ‘You’re such a bitch when you’re hungry.’
The blond paused, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘You’re right. I apologise, sir, I should have chosen my words more carefully. I only meant… I didn’t expect to hear someone answer me, it was…’ he trailed off, frustrated.
‘Like meeting a fellow countryman in a foreign land?’ said a voice that was so sonorous, it sounded almost like it was being spoken from the bottom of a well, and so deep that it was almost a rumble you felt, rather than a sound.
They’d forgotten he was there, had stopped seeing him in the room, because he’d blended with the shadows, with the tables, with the very chair next to Lady Sitrinne that he had been sitting on—until he suddenly wasn’t. She didn’t jump, and several people present had learnt to suppress their shock….
‘Eek!’
…but, critically, there was, also, a clown in the room; Pippin jumped as high as she was tall, making a big gasp with her whole body, her Mask in wide-eyed surprise, little hands going to her cheeks, tail up and straight, flashing three times like in certain cartoons. Aix wasn’t the only laugh—but he was the only person who wasn’t fighting back a breakdown of tears.
Bonnet in particular couldn’t stop laughing, and Pippin danced foot to foot, unsure and sincerely distressed. That was Bad Laughing, and she didn’t know what to do—but Friend was getting up, and going over confidently, and getting some ice from behind the bar, and pulling up a chair near Bonnet, and gently closing Bonnet’s hand around the piece of ice, holding the fist gently with both his hands.
‘Hey,’ he said, low, and Pippin recognised that noise. She came over quietly just like he had, and tilted her head at the ice, not understanding, tilting her head the other way, puzzling, before she went over and just put her hands up as far as she could reach, patting Bonnet’s knee gently.
The Bad Laughing stopped, the man struggling to take slower, deeper breaths, on purpose, and Aix recognised someone who had been taught a coping technique.
‘Good, that’s it,’ Aix said, softly.
‘Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.’
‘Relief,’ Aix said, knowing. ‘You’ve all been abused for a very, very long time, and not allowed to express the huge volume of emotions that your abuser was causing, exaggerating, exacerbating, repressing. The adrenaline is starting to wear off, the realisation is going to start setting in, and the therapists call it Emotional Backdraft but I’m a witch, and I use plain words. It’s relief. It’s the first of the dam breaking.’
‘You speak as though you’ve been through something similar.’
‘I have,’ Aix said. ‘He’s not unique, just uniquely powerful in just the right spot, at just the right time. But he ain’t special, and he died screaming and afraid of a monster he had provoked. Pretty funny for a guy who controls bears to die from poking the proverbial bear.’
‘Stop, I’ll start laughing again.’
‘Sorry, sorry. But, speaking of… it’s only dangerous to laugh for a really long time because of what it does to your breathing; if you don’t need to breathe, it’s a really good idea to ride out the emotion.’
Bonnet sat with this thought a bit, and dropped the ice on the floor, wiping his wet hand on his jeans briefly before lifting Pippin up onto his lap. ‘Hallo, poppet,’ he said, and she hugged him, giving a big squeaky kiss to his cheek
‘It is funny,’ Bonnet said. ‘Poetic justice, I think, more than the japes of our small friend.’ He looked over at Cthulhu. ‘But you didn’t speak, until now. And this gentleman did not speak to you in this tongue, before.’
‘I have been observing.’
‘For ten minutes?’ the young redheaded man asked. ‘You grasped the concept of linear time, our language, our limited dimension, and how to articulate mouth-noises in ten minutes? Talk about being a fast learner, yeesh, even humans take a few years to grasp all of those, and we’re born with most of them.’
‘I also ate an entire brain.’
The giggling stopped abruptly—except for Aix, who exploded into a laugh so surprised it was no longer the villainous laugh he’d trained into himself, it was the scream that he’d worked so hard to cover up for years and only recently started letting free again.
‘Oh my god, oh—oh my god. Ahaha, fuck… that’s fuckin hot, dude, damn. What else did you pick up on that shape you’re inhabiting?’
‘Everything.’
Aix fanned himself, rolling his tongue in a purr. ‘Sexy.’
‘Explanation for the rest of us?’ the redhead said, perching on a barstool and cocking his head, tucking some of his long loose hair behind one ear.
‘Yes, I’m rather curious, myself,’ Bonnet said. Aix gestured elegantly without pointing at Cthluhu.
‘He’s in the form of a fictional creature based on himself. They’re called mind flayers, and they eat people’s minds—but because the canon is unclear on whether that’s literal or psionic, my own memory bank kind of meshed them.’
‘But it’s fiction, how could it be true?’
‘What is fiction?’
‘Stories,’ Aix said, projecting what he meant as he said it—there was Fact, materially provable things, and there was Fiction, purposely non-Factual things. He watched Cthulhu’s skin ripple, many patterns swirling on the surface. There was a very soft brush of Cthulhu’s mind, a non-understanding that Aix didn’t necessarily need in order to know that—the patterns in his skin were enough, they looked…
They looked like a clown’s, Aix realised. Cthulhu emoted like a clown, he understood Pantomime instantly even though human language was still a struggle. Aix looked down at Pippin.
‘Pippin,’ he said, miming as he spoke. ‘What is he?’ he indicated Cthulhu.
‘Cuz!’ Pippin said, cheerfully, and opened and closed her hands, before making the Pantomime sign for wanting to colour. Aix pulled out the sketchbook and small box of crayons he kept in the inside pocket of the wheelchair, opening both and putting them on the table. Pippin stood on Bonnet’s thigh, and he steadied her, as she looked through the crayons carefully, got the blue one (it was the smallest one now, with how much she liked blue) and started to draw in the odd way clowns did. They drew very detailed pictures of other clown faces, but only sometimes drew humans with faces at all—and when they did, humans usually only had a big mouth that took up their whole face, and nothing else unless they wore glasses.
Pippin drew Cthulhu similarly faceless, though the tentacles that were where a nose and mouth would be were there. She drew lots and lots of colourful eyes, carefully picking all different colours, and then drew her face, and Aix realised she was copying what she must understand a family tree to be—there was a big one in the library of the Averay house, and as Aix loved family trees, he’d spent a long while looking at it, Victoria telling him about everyone she knew on it. Pippin had been there, for that, but Aix didn’t know she’d been paying attention.
She drew a line connecting Cthulhu and Jocosa from the top of one to the top of the other. The usual way siblings were connected. She drew a straight line from the bottom of Jocosa to the top of herself.
‘Cuz!’
Aix looked at the drawing a while, as did Bonnet.
‘That’s much like the Master said the first monster looked,’ Bonnet said, tapping the drawing of Jocosa.
‘That’s Jocosa,’ Aix said, half in thought, ‘that’s how they draw Jocosa. It influenced how humans drew angels, because a lot of early Jewish writers posited that Jocosa was an angel and clowns were nephilim… beeble, Jocosa and Cthulhu… brothers and sisters?’
‘Ye,’ she beeped, nodding, finishing her drawing of a very specific cat above her own head and drawing another line from the bottom of the cat to the top of her face. She made a very specific kitten noise, the big one that was calling for a parent. The one that, Aix realised as Pippin pointed to the drawing, probably translated to ‘Mommy!’.
‘That’s your…’ Aix paused. ‘Small Mommy?’
‘Ye!’
‘Well that explains a lot,’ Aix said, skritching her ruff, Pippin fluffing it up and purring, rubbing her face against Aix’s hand just like she always did—they’d always thought she was just mimicking their cat, but cats did adopt everybody’s babies very easily. They were very humanlike that way. ‘But if Cthulhu is Jocosa’s sibling, then that makes him an Uncle… or an Aunt,’ he said, thoughtful. ‘Cthulhu, are you… do your people have genders?’
‘I do not bear children.’
‘Well neither do I, but that doesn’t mean anything,’ Aix said, with a sardonic smile.
‘Gender is quite a complicated matter,’ Lady Sitrinne agreed, ‘Our Squidgy doesn’t have one, though we call him by “he” simply because Our Jessamine did, and he was her baby until her untimely death at the hands of Miskatonic University. Before you all troop out to hunt, perhaps, introduce ourselves? I know it isn’t done among Aix’s people; but at the very least I should like to connect you all with some sort of moniker.’
‘Ooh, yes, we forgot that step, in all the…’ Aix gesticulated. ‘Boss fight stuff.’ He was privately glowing at Lady Sitrinne so casually accepting his whole… thing… about being a changeling. Though according to her, and to Mike, apparently it might not just be something Aix had made up or perhaps adopted as a coping mechanism for his autism—he hadn’t directly asked yet, but from some of the comments Mike made especially, it might be factual, not just true…..
‘Stede Bonnet,’ Bonnet said, and added, with a bit of self-deprecating humour. ‘I wish I were half so charming as my fictional portrayal.’
The blond bowed theatrically and low. ‘Captain Roseblade,’ he said.
‘Cameron,’ said the redhead on the barstool.
‘Pickersail,’ said the redheaded woman from earlier. She had a crack in her voice, and had light brown skin that could have been tanned or could have been something else, given her hair was an unnatural cherry-red and her eyes were seal-like—large, and dark, and soft. She was plump with muscle—what might have been called ‘stout’ once.
‘Hassan-Michel,’ said a burly, pretty black man with a very quiet, shy sort of voice.
‘Merry Death,’ said a plump lady with golden-tan skin and dark almond-shaped eyes.
‘That’s so excellent,’ Aix commented. ‘Excellent pirate and drag name.’
‘It is,’ she agreed with a grin.
‘Hawk,’ said the other lady leaning on Merry Death’s shoulders. She was taller and thinner, possibly a little younger, from the sound of her voice. Both were some manner of south Asian, or maybe Pacific Islander, Aix didn’t really judge farther than they had almond-shaped eyes and golden-brown skin.
‘George,’ said a quiet Englishman, with a sort of voice and ramrod-straight posture Aix associated with servants. He was also wearing a neat black suit, which helped.
‘I’m Aix, as in the ducks.’
‘Duckie!’ Pippin said, throwing her arms up. Aix giggled.
‘I will remember all of you by voice and then clothing and hair,’ Aix warned them. ‘So it might take a while.’
‘Are you blind?’ Bonnet asked, surprised. Aix held out his hand and wobbled it.
‘No, but also yes. It’s complicated and I don’t feel like going into it yet, because I can’t trust any of you yet. Go, eat. I’ll be around when you get back, and if I’m not I’ll leave a note behind the bar.’
⁂
Xander Teague was walking his cat, Bert, and listening to music using his phone to drown out the city noise, when his phone rang with the instrumental theme of his favourite cartoon—which he, in a stroke of dream-luck, was now the voice of. Looking at the ID, he picked up quickly when he saw the who it was. ‘Captain! Hi!’
‘Hi there, kiddo. We’ve just made port in Coney Island. You free for ol’ Captain any time in the next week?’
‘Of course I am—I’ve got a show tonight, you want me to comp you some tickets?’
‘I’d surely like that, can you do about two? Got a crewmate wants to see you and your young man. Cousin of that big family of his.’
‘Okay, well, curtain’s at eight, you wanna grab dinner before or after?’ Xander knew the Captain was as nocturnal as the rest of his family tended to be.
‘After.’
‘Okay, I’ll text you the address. Do you have somewhere to stay that isn’t the boat?’
‘And why shouldn’t I stay on the boat?’ The Captain said, and laughed. ‘Don’t you worry about me, son, no sleep like boat sleep.’
Xander smiled at the familiar saying. ‘Well, if you want to stay, Sean and I have a spare room now that Hugh has finally moved out.’
‘Oh did he! Good riddance to bad garbage!’
‘Captain,’ Xander said, too kind to ever voice something like that himself, even in private—as well, his career being in a field where what you said about other people affected whether you got your next job… his grandfather’s no nonsense bluntness was always a bit of a shock, especially if it had been a while since they’d spoken.
‘Well he was, wa’n’t he? Ain’t no sense mincin’ words about it. Well, we’ve got to do some visitin’ around Manhattan and get some provisions—say, you got the number for the big house up in Sleepy Hollow? Seems my crewmate misplaced it.’
‘Uh, yeah, I guess I can text that to you. Is… everything okay, Captain?’
‘Sure it is! Don’t you worry about me, I’ll see you tonight!’
Xander hung up, and texted his grandfather the phone number of the Averay Estate in Sleepy Hollow, as well as the address of the theatre, as he finished walking Bert, before heading back home.
Sean had stayed working from home, even after the official quarantine was lifted, getting more high quality equipment for himself and some of his regular clients, so video meetings went more smoothly and with less distracting technical issues. He and Xander told each other it was temporary, setting up the spare room as Sean’s office as well as the guest room… but it was nice, living without roommates.
Hugh had been one of the only forms of steady income Sean had, not that he charged Hugh very much, only enough to cover half of the utilities, really. And it hadn’t been the rent, it had been Hugh’s jealousy of Xander, that had made the roommate relationship fall apart. But Sean had chosen Xander and eventually Hugh had found a new place to live. They hadn’t kicked him to the street, but the interim where Hugh had been looking had dragged on for years, things being how they were after the housing bubble burst. After Hugh had moved out, money had been a little tight, since Xander’s job didn’t pay steadily and sometimes didn’t pay well at all—but they made it work.
In Manhattan, it was usually prohibitively expensive, living without roommates; but Sean’s family had connections rooted deep in the area, and that included a rent-controlled apartment in the Williams Building, which had been completely renovated, finishing just before Sean and Xander had met, and was now called Moongate Tower. It was a huge building, with parking, which was good because unlike most New Yorkers, Sean actually owned a car, a sleek Cadillac that had was modified so that he could drive it entirely with his hands, his wheelchair locking into the driver’s area instead of the seat, meaning only Sean could drive his car. The apartment itself was also completely renovated, rebuilt from the studs up for a wheelchair and Sean’s specific needs; and that had been something Xander had to get used to—not that he minded, Sean’s ability to live comfortably was a priority in their home. It was kind of amazing, even years after the fact, that the new management had done that for Sean.
He came into the lobby, with its forest green carpet with the small pattern of white flowers, the tiled area in the centre with the fountain, and nodded to the guard at the desk.
‘Mr 209,’ she said. ‘Bert,’ she said to the cat, whose big, black bottlebrush tail was already quivering with joy at being home. He put his paws up on the desk (he was a tall cat) and meowed back at her.
‘Alright?’ Xander asked.
‘Quiet today. Well, except for Floor Sixteen, but you know.’
Ah yes, floor sixteen. Xander had never been up there, but apparently it was a sort of commune, all the apartments being owned by people that knew each other, and were… well, Xander wasn’t sure. There was an affection to how everyone talked about the residents of the sixteenth floor, but there was an implication that they were, also, sort of loud, and rambunctious, and a little annoying, as a group. Sean had only said they were nudist and threw a lot of parties, and left it at that.
Xander got into one of the two elevators just as one of the little people in their building (there were a lot of them, Sean was no longer the only one in his building, and that was nice, too) was coming toward the bank of them; he held the door, smiling at her.
‘Hi, Ms Crystal.’
‘Hi, thanks,’ she said, sitting down on the low bench on one side of the elevator car, leaning her cane against her leg. Steve came over to also say hello, and she pet him. ‘Going the same place, I think; I’ve got an appointment with Sean. You have a show tonight?’
‘Yes—oh, thanks for the reminder, shit, gotta comp some tickets for my grandpa and his friend.’ He got busy texting the box office manager, Linda, who replied he had come in just in time—it was another full house, and there had only been two tickets left in the section they left held back for the cast and crew’s guests—good seats, but the last ones.
‘Your grandfather? I’ve never heard you mention him.’
‘Yeah he’s just come into port—he’s a sailor, like my dad, though he was in the Navy and dad is… well, not.’
‘He just sails around the world all the time?’
‘Well, not so much anymore; not since my grandma died. But he’s found a new sailing partner maybe? Or maybe just a new crewmate for this journey, it’s hard to say with the Captain.’
She chuckled, as the elevator doors opened and she got up, walking out. Xander waited for her, holding the doors again, before making sure Bert was clear of them to and following them. Bert knew where they were, and had progressed to pulling at the leash again, tail up and shaking as he chirped and chattered up a storm, getting up on his hind legs and putting his front paws on the door as Xander got his keys and had to fend off the cat sniffing at the lock and pawing at the door handle while unlocking the door.
‘Yes, Bert, we’re home and it’s very exciting!’ he said, finally getting the door open and just letting go of the leash entirely, letting Bert trot in and start calling out for Sean. Xander held the door for Ms Crystal, locking it behind her. ‘Sean, Ms Crystal to see you!’ Xander called.
Sean came down the hallway in his wheelchair, smiling at Ms Crystal. ‘Ah, hi! Come on in, I have good news!’
Once the door closed, Xander went into their bathroom to take his Before Show shower and start warming up his voice.
While he was doing that, he wondered who this friend of Captain’s was, exactly, and why he needed to call the Averays. He ended up making himself a sandwich and eating it on the early train to the theatre, he was so curious to find out.
⁂
Once in port, René knew he had to make contact with the Wolf King of Brooklyn, as was polite for any vampire coming into a new territory. As soon as the sun was past the horizon, he woke and came on deck to see Mr Silver with a note and some money tucked into his vest.
Got tickets to my boy’s show, here’s the address. Curtain’s at 8pm, tickets under name of Teague. I’ll meet you there at 7:30. Number you were asking for is below. Cash should cover a train pass for the night and a little extra. Be safe my friend, the old girl’s waiting when you get back.
P.S. Don’t worry about Mr Silver, he knows he’s on duty.
‘Thank you, Mr Silver,’ René said, and the cat shoved his head against René companionably.
Crewmate.
René felt a warm glow, at that—but too, all the companionship on this journey sometimes made him miss his own companions all the more. Being in the Cage, being starved, made a person desperate, and desperate people did not make brave decisions. They needed food in their bellies, and rest, and safety, before they could do that; now that René had acquired all three, he could think, again.
Clutching the piece of paper, he folded the cash (it was far more than a little extra, even accounting for how expensive the city was) and tucked it carefully away where a pickpocket couldn’t get to it. First, he thought, locking up the boat and making sure the ropes were secure before leaving, first, he’d talk to the Wolf King, as was proper protocol for a new vampire coming into his territory; and then, he would borrow a phone, or find a pay phone, and call the Averays….
There were no trains this close to the shore, but a walk along a beach, the sea air and the roar of the city, the lights… it was nice.
Coney Island’s midway was smaller now, and less shabby—and The Worlds Longest-Running Continuously-Operated Performer-Owned All-Union Freakshow was easy to find.
René saw that tonight was a slate of classes and lectures, before he went inside the lobby of the small theatre to speak to the box office clerk, who was wearing a brass nametag that said ‘Liam’ in neat sans-serif block letters and then, underneath, in smaller text: ‘he/him’.
‘Hello, I’m Mr Bones. I need to speak to Mr Hext for a moment, I have a cheque for him.’
The code-phrase had been in use for decades, and Liam knew cheques were never left with the box office, no matter how much Mr Hext trusted you; cheques were always delivered personally. He picked up the old phone and dialled two numbers. ‘Mr Hext, a cheque for you from a Mr Bones.’ He paused, and looked at René. ‘He wants to know from where.’
‘Baltimore.’
‘Baltimore,’ Liam said into the receiver, listening at the response. ‘He says wait right there, he’ll come down,’ he said, hanging up and gesturing to an old faded three-person tête-a-tête of red velvet.
It was only minutes before a very unusually tall, grandly-dressed black man with long locked hair covered in charms and decorations, walking with a purple cane, came into the lobby.
‘Mr Bones!’ he said in his booming voice, smile lighting up the room. ‘Been a minute, old man! Come up to my office!’
With that, he led René to the gold elevator, which was mirrored inside, and put a key into a lock on the elevator panel, turning it before pushing the button marked 3. After the doors closed, and the old elevator started upward, he spoke in a lower, less showy voice.
‘Did he send you, or did you escape on your own?’
‘I ran,’ René said, though not as wracked with guilt as he had been a few days ago. Being at sea, and talking with many others who knew of survivor’s guilt, had helped. ‘But I plan to go back, I just want to talk to the Averays first, get their counsel. And yours too, if you’d be so kind as to give me any in exchange for the information.’
‘Information? Ha! I’ve got some for you, lad, from Van Helsing herself: Your master’s dead.’
With that earth-shattering news, the elevator opened, and Hext led René through a purple doorway with a small mezuzah in the shape of a howling wolf on it, down a hallway lined in framed posters from previous acts and shows, stretching back to the beginning of the theatre. Hext keyed into a wide door and motioned René go in before him, before shutting the door, going to sit behind the large desk in the office decorated with more posters, strange fantastical taxidermy gaffes, and photographs of old Coney Island.
‘Have a seat.’ Hext pulled a cigarette case out of the inside pocket of his shimmering orange suit jacket, and offered it. ‘Celebratory coffin nail? They’re cloves, get ‘em straight off the boat from Indonesia.’
‘Thank you,’ René said, smiling faintly at the pun, taking the offered black cigarette and using the matches in the holder on Hext’s desk to light it. The clove smoke swirled, sweet and lightly numbing, into his lungs, and he let the news sink in.
His Master was dead.
His Master was dead.
His Master was dead!
Hext took a long drag of his cigarette, blowing it out slowly, as he watched René think it all over. The Prince of a city being offed was a lot of power shifting around; and he knew it was to his advantage that he knew it first, however far Brooklyn was from Baltimore, it wasn’t too far to feel the ripples of the power shifting hands. It left him time to think on his own next moves—chief of which was contacting the Selkie Queen of New England….
‘You asked for my counsel, so here it is: you should speak to Mistress, it’s her town,’ Hext said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘I’m aware Diedrich drove her out of Baltimore, before my time,’ René said, cautiously. ‘But is it not truly the land of the Susquehannock?’
‘Yes, but they stayed well clear of becoming vampires, same as my people did. Mistress is the oldest vampire of Baltimore—that’s still around, anyway. Diedrich 86’d the first Prince of Baltimore, not that he was anybody I’d want wearing a pointy hat.’
René thought, and was glad to be given space to think; he hadn’t always been blind with terror of his master; there had been long stretches of time, in fact until very recently, that his master had left him and the older boys alone. He liked that Diedrich thought so little of whores that he would use a whorehouse to discard people he was tired of, wanted to forget. Being forgotten was a kind of freedom, and René reflected that hadn’t been idle these long centuries. Being beneath Diedrich’s notice had meant René could build the once-nameless block of brothels into something that had done favours and earned a good reputation among both the many and varied weredeor, had meant he had the ability to learn many things, and make allies.
Allies like Hext, he thought; but then, he had to think about who was going to take power. He likely wouldn’t be able to get back fast enough to challenge them, even if he turned around and started back on the next train, which he didn’t really want to do. He wanted to see the show, and spend time with new friends, and speak to the many nightfolk that lived in this city, many of them very old—or, in the case of the weredeor, who weren’t immortal, from old families—and therefore full of wisdom that René might have a little of, if he charmed them enough.
Mistress was the Vampire Queen of the Capitol, which wasn’t exactly a step down from Baltimore; oh, the Council and the Treaty stated that all of them weren’t to interfere in daylight politics, but everyone did, at least a little—you couldn’t help it if you were a whore in the vicinity of the Capitol, politicians being how they were, particularly in Puritanical America.
Mistress was, unlike René, black and a woman. And that mattered, René had learned that early on, especially living in a city as black as Baltimore was. He’d come to America during the beginning of the bloody prosperity that treating whole peoples like chattel had brought the white settlers to the Caribbean, and had been disabused of the notion it was right by Black William Avery, the captain of the first pirate ship that had captured René’s father’s vessel not a week from René’s first bout as captain, running valuable perfume absolutes from their plantation in Grasse across the Atlantic to New France.
He’d always been on good terms with her, once he was able to get a message out to her in the form of a gift basket with a message in Chinese hidden on the gift tag—a message Hawk and Merry Death had helped him with, Chinese being a foolproof cipher their Master wouldn’t suspect or accidentally recognise a word from, the way he might with French. Since then, they’d found various ways to keep up communication with one another, expanding the length of the messages they could send after the advent of the internet, placing them out of Diedrich’s eye—though they’d had to still speak in code to keep the Mummery intact, particularly after the increase in government surveillance of the internet at the turn of the millenium. She had mentored him in how to lead, how to spy, how to deal in secrets and how to use a woman’s arsenal against Diedrich’s control. In turn, he had helped with harbouring her girls when they needed hiding, and passing messages to various players on her chessboard, not questioning anything she asked him to do. It had meant that, after centuries of this, he had a strong friendship with someone he’d never even seen—and he had grown into the leader of Diedrich’s discarded doves, which were the bulk of his vampires after he’d stopped turning new ones.
Bonnet had no real interest in the seat of Prince, and the recent fictionalised portrayal of him would have damaged his ability to maintain control. Hawk and Merry Death missed the sea as much as Roseblade, they might leave with him—because he would leave, René was sure of that. He wanted nothing else more than to leave Baltimore, and take to the sea again—and barring that, go back to London, which had been his home. George would stay, he enjoyed his position with René, who appreciated his skills and sensibility; Pickersail would stay because she was from Baltimore, the youngest of them and the only one that had lived in Baltimore before becoming a vampire.
René would stay, too. Where else would he go? He had been the only son of a distiller of absolutes, a flower farmer, and lost to piracy. Ironically, that had meant that now, he was the last survivor of his line, though that meant very little, his family’s lands had probably changed hands hundreds of times by now. No, Baltimore was his home now, and the people there were his people, now. He was French-American.
And it seemed likely, he realised, that this mysterious being that had killed his Master had also made him Prince. He should thank them, if they understood thanks… he looked back at Hext, realising as the cigarette’s cherry nearly burned his hands that he’d been sitting in his own thoughts for some time. He stubbed out the cigarette in the charmingly tacky gold ashtray.
‘Apologies for my silence. I was thinking it all over.’
‘It’s a lot to take in, I understand,’ Hext waved the apology aside, and pulled a business card that shone with rainbow foil out of the air with a flick of his large, well-manicured hand. ‘Here,’ he said, his arm long enough to reach across the entire desk easily. ‘Call me—but don’t use one of the new kiosks. There’s a payphone backstage in most of the theatres in Manhattan. Use one of those, they’re still secure. Run by our Knockers.’
René took the card, nodding and tucking it inside his jacket. He’d managed to get a new one, Captain Teague helping him with how sailors dressed in this day and age, since the clothes he’d escaped in had been more suited to the stage than the sea.
‘I do not know if Mistress will wish to leave the Capitol—I have been in touch with her for these long years,’ he said, feeling Hext was owed the conclusions he’d reached. ‘As the Capitol and Baltimore are so close, however, it would be advantageous to treat them as many of the mundanes do—as a conjoined territory.’ He paused. ‘It may be a good opportunity to try having a council, rather than a single Prince at odds with every other in the Mummery.’
Hext didn’t show surprise—first rule of working with Human Marvels was not to show surprise at anything—but he did feel it. He hadn’t known the cut of this vampire—he didn’t know what any of Diedrich’s vampires were like, he kept them on such tight leashes—and he’d come to expect the worst from them, as a group.
‘I am the most likely to become the prince,’ René said. ‘I know my fellows, many will simply leave, now that they can.’
‘Where will they go?’
‘To sea,’ René said with a smile, getting up. ‘We are all of us pirates, Monsieur Hext, and our Master burned our ships, kept us on land when we are not of the land. I know Roseblade will find a boat and set to sea immediately, and take whomever wills to follow with him. I would not be surprised if he were gone by the time I returned.’
‘And you’ll stay?’
‘I will stay,’ René said. ‘I have come to realise my purpose in life is to take care of those entrusted to me, of those who entrust themselves to me. A dominant, is the modern parlance.’
‘Ah,’ Hext said, nodding. ‘In the same profession as her, are you?’
‘The power behind all thrones,’ René said, ‘to quote her. Bonsoir, Monsieur Hext.’
‘Be seein ya,’ Hext said, and René left. Hext picked up the old green bakelite phone, dialling.
‘Mr Katz! Yes, I have heard the news! Mazel tov! I was wondering if you knew anything about a vampire, name of René….’