Given Vancouver’s recent ban on cell-phone use in cars without a hands-free headset device, I didn’t want to get caught texting and driving. Plus, she should have been in bed. Weren’t respectable mothers asleep by midnight, or at the very least reading a Rosemary Rogers book under the covers? They certainly weren’t supposed to be having knife fights with their daughters.
By the time I got to Yaletown, Lucian was waiting outside. It was a mild night, even by West Coast standards, so he was wearing a black vinyl jacket over a chocolate brown shirt that matched his eyes. He grinned as I pulled up to the curb. He’d even shaved, and his face had a healthy glow to it. I couldn’t remember what that felt like. If my face resembled anything these days, it was a mug shot.
He slipped into the passenger seat. “Good evening.”
“Uh-huh.” I started to pull away before he’d buckled his seat belt.
“Are you in a hurry?”
“Kind of. I don’t want to spend the rest of my night entertaining a monster. I’d like to get in, get out, and be back home in time for cartoons.”
“Ah. A stimulating night with Derrick, then?”
“You got it.”
He was silent for a few seconds. Then he said: “You know, I like cartoons.”
It took a lot of effort not to laugh. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Are you jealous?”
“No. But it would be nice to be invited.”
“I assumed that you might have more exciting things to do.”
“But you’re my favorite thing to do. And you’re exciting.”
“Not tonight. I’m putting on the bad jammies as soon as I get home. The ones with the baggy ass and the broken elastic.”
“I like those ones.”
“You’re lying.”
“Okay. They’re not the best. But you love them, and the broken elastic does add a touch of class.”
I chuckled. “That’s me. Always a class act. You can stay the night if you want, but I can’t promise anything exciting’s going to happen. There’s a good chance I’ll fall asleep next to you while eating potato chips, though.”
“Hot.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“How’s Derrick feeling?”
“Still kind of beat-up. He’s improving, though, which also means that he’s becoming annoying. He pretends that he can’t do anything for himself, but when I’m not looking, he’s making Bailey’s milk shakes in the kitchen.”
“Should he really be mixing alcohol with his pain medication?”
“He likes to live on the edge. Miles is a good nurse, though. He takes care of him without submitting to his bullshit.”
“Yeah. They seem good together. How long’s it been now? They’ve been together almost as long as we have, right?”
“That depends on how long you think we’ve been together.”
He gave me an amused look. “How long do
you
think we’ve been together?”
“Well, if you count the time you showed up unannounced in my bedroom, it’s been three years. But I did stab you, so it wasn’t an ideal first date.”
“I remember it being quite ideal, actually.” He grinned. “I kissed you. Then you punched me in the face. Really hard.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “Good times.”
“I remember when I first saw you.” He was still smiling. “You came to interview me at the club. You were scared, but you held your own. You looked me right in the eyes the whole time. I thought it was sexy.”
“It was mostly adrenaline. I really was terrified.”
“But you barely showed it.”
“And you liked that.”
“Yes. I did.”
“Remember when I shot you?”
“Of course. I told you to.”
I shook my head. “Occult relationships should come with a warning.
May cause sharp-force trauma.
”
“That’s what makes them fun.” He put his hand on my knee. “Right?”
“I don’t know about fun. But I’m not bored; I’ll give you that.”
We drove in silence like that for a while, his hand on my knee, my hand on the wheel. Eventually, my left hand found its way on top of his. It felt like closing a circuit. His touch was familiar, but it still made my insides hum. Even now, I was starting to think about things that had little to do with Mr. Corvid, or potato chips, or cartoons. Things you could only do after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep. Things that would possibly make you late for work in the morning.
“What was your favorite toy?” I asked as we turned onto Pacific.
“What? You mean, like—sexually?”
“No. Jesus. I mean when you were a little kid.”
“Oh.” He thought about it for a second. “Well, I did have a bear named Mr. Oso. My mom says that I took him everywhere, and I wouldn’t let her wash him. I can’t imagine how bad he must have smelled.”
“I’ll bet you were a cute kid.”
“No. Lorenzo was the cute one. I had elephant ears.”
Lucian almost never talked about his brother. I kept my eyes on the road, trying to appear as if I had no stake in the conversation.
In reality, I was dying to know more about him. Even after three years, I’d barely managed to assemble a skeleton of his life, and that was through piecing together random threads and mumbled anecdotes. I didn’t know how old he was, where he’d been born, what his sign was. I didn’t even know if he was a Canadian citizen.
“Lorenzo—was he born deaf? Or was it something that happened when he was young? I think Miles had rubella, or some kind of virus.”
Lucian stared out the window. “Otosclerosis,” he said. “It’s a bone deformation. It’s probably linked to rubella, though. He started to get terrible headaches when he was four or five. By the time he was seven, he had profound hearing loss.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It didn’t keep us from communicating. I helped him learn sign language. He resisted it at first. He was angry and stubborn. But then I convinced him that we could have a secret language, just for us. It took our parents a lot longer to learn it, and they weren’t nearly as fast.”
Lucian chuckled. “Lorenzito and I would make fun of them, right to their faces, and they’d keep yelling at us with their hands,
Slower, slower
”—he made the sign for
slow
, putting one hand on top of the other and moving it slowly up his wrist, as if pulling up a shirtsleeve—“and we’d just laugh. They couldn’t keep up with us.”
“How did you learn ASL? Did you go to a special school?”
He made a face. “There weren’t really a lot of schools like that around then, at least where we lived. We had a tutor. Her name was Pilar, but we called her
la vaca
. The cow. Because she was fat and mean.”
“I’ll bet she loved both of you.”
“Yeah. We were little bastards. But in the end, she taught us pretty well.” He shook his head. “Man. I haven’t thought of
la vaca
in so long. She wore these hideous floral dresses. Each one was worse than the last. She wasn’t deaf, but her sister was.” He smiled. “Jalida. What a knockout. She was thirteen, and she used to come to our house to see Lorenzo. I caught them kissing in the backyard once. She taught him all the curse words in sign, and then he taught me.”
We were almost at Corvid’s building. I didn’t want Lucian to stop talking, but I was worried that he’d notice if I suddenly took a detour. The light ahead of us turned yellow, and instead of running it, I slowed down like an obedient driver. We came to a stop at an empty intersection. The corporate superstructures and bank towers of the downtown core surrounded us, like planes of quartz, gleaming in the dark. The city was hibernating, but still very much alive.
“How long has it been?” I asked quietly.
Lucian looked at me, still leaning against the passenger-side window, one hand pressed against his temple. “Since when?”
“Since you saw
la vaca
, and Jalida, and Lorenzo?”
“Are you trying to ask me how old I am?”
“Yes. Is it such a difficult question?”
“Difficult? No.” He looked away. “Just complicated.”
“I’m a big girl, Lucian. And it’s just a number. I can handle it.”
He didn’t say anything. He just breathed.
The light turned green.
Lucian gave me an expectant look.
“Street’s empty,” I said. “There’s nobody listening. It’s just you and me, and I’m not moving this car until you tell me.”
“Tess.”
I leaned back in the driver’s seat. “I’m serious. It’s been three years, and I’ve never pushed. But I think I deserve to know. It’s not like I’m asking you to divulge all of your scary necromancer secrets. I just want to know your birthday.”
He was silent for a while. The light turned yellow again, then red. The intersection remained empty. I could feel the steering wheel vibrating slightly under my hands. I sympathized with it. All that pent-up energy, and it was stuck here, in the dark, waiting. I often felt the same.
“June twenty-fourth,” he said finally. “Nineteen twenty.”
I didn’t know what to say. I kept staring at the traffic light. Finally, a car appeared behind us. I pressed the accelerator, and we were moving again. I couldn’t quite look at him. I wasn’t sure why. It was only a number, right?
“I was born in Málaga,” he continued. “Spain. I was sixteen years old when the civil war broke out. My parents moved us to Canada. We had an uncle who worked in Toronto, in a clothing store. I remember playing with Lorenzo in the back room, with all the piles of ugly shirts and slacks wrapped in plastic.”
“I thought you said—” My hands tightened around the wheel. “I mean, once, you told me that all necromancers were stillborn babies. That they were taken to the hidden city right away. But you and Lorenzo grew up together.”
He nodded. “Yes. I did say it was complicated, didn’t I?”
“Come on. You’re doing great so far. Don’t stop now.”
“But we’ve arrived.”
He was right. Corvid’s building was in view. I swore beneath my breath.
“We don’t have to go in right away,” I said.
He smiled. “Tess. You can’t read the book of my life in one night. You have to be patient. It’s not like we’re on a deadline.”
I sighed. “At least now I can buy you a proper birthday card.”
“See? There you go.” He kissed my cheek.
We locked the doors and crossed the parking lot. Corvid’s building was one of the shining prefab towers that had gone up a few years ago, seemingly overnight. He owned the penthouse, and possibly several floors beneath it.
“Maybe I chose the wrong job,” Lucian said. “I could be living here.”
“You live in a Yaletown loft. You’re doing fine.”
“Sure. But I also pay a mortgage. I doubt he does.”
“Purebloods must get a rate below prime,” I said.
I was about to buzz his suite when someone exited the building. She was a normate, dressed in sweats and a jacket, possibly even going on a midnight snack run. I wondered if she knew that she was sharing her building with a monster. Probably not. You never really knew who your neighbors were.
She held the door open for us.
“Thanks,” Lucian said.
She eyed him up and down. “My pleasure.”
We stepped past her into the lobby. Lucian whistled softly.
“Yeah. I definitely chose the wrong profession. My apartment doesn’t have marble pillars. Or a fountain.”
“There’s a sauna downstairs,” I said. “He mentioned it once. God only knows what he does there.”
“Maybe he just goes to relax.”
“Purebloods relax by feeding on mortals. Or by hunting demons that are lower on the food chain. They don’t need to go to the gym.”
“Maybe he’s just social that way.”
“Trust me. He’s got other things on his mind. Like how to keep the magical drug trade flowing across the city.”
We stepped into the elevator. I pressed the button marked PH.
“How was it?” Lucian asked.
“How was what?”
“The Hex.”
I stared at the LCD screen on the wall. The numbers leapt upward. I felt as if we might fly into the stratosphere at any moment.
“It was intense,” I said. “I don’t plan on doing it again.”
“Never again?”
“Never.”
“I’ve heard it makes your powers more accessible. That you can do things on Hex that you’d never be able to do normally.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“But you saw things, right? You dreamt. You saw your father.”
I see my father practically every night. Whenever I close my eyes. That dream was no different from the hundreds of others I’ve had since I was a child.
“Yes,” I said. “My mother, too. And the Iblis. It was a party.”
The elevator stopped. The doors opened, and I stepped into the hallway. The air-conditioning made me shiver.
“Sorry,” Lucian said. “I’ve done other drugs, but never Hex. I’ve often wondered what it would be like.”
“Ask Corvid. He can hook you up, and the first bump’s always free.”
“Look at you. Talking street.”
“That’s me. The essence of hard-core.”
The hallway ended in a single door, since Corvid’s suite took up the entire top floor of the building. It was ajar. That wasn’t odd, since he usually left it open when he was expecting visitors. What did he have to be afraid of?
We stepped inside. Lucian surveyed the living room, taking in the antiques and strange objets d’art in glass cabinets.
“How old did you say he was again?”
“I’m not sure. He scares the shit out of me, though.”
I walked down the hallway that led to Corvid’s study. Last time I was here, he’d told me about something that he was working on. Some kind of technology. I think he owned a few different companies operating in Silicon Valley. He was always trying to streamline the distribution and delivery of his products. In a perfect world, I imagined, he could deal drugs that were purely made of energy. Little capsules of light that went straight to your soul when you swallowed them.