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The impromptu parade had been by twice already, a crowd following the dancers like the tide and blocking the entrance to the small restaurant. It was making the owner scowl from his perch behind the cash register, but the waiters and patrons clearly loved their front row seats. The August Moon Festival was a big deal, and everyone was in good spirits.
Everyone but me. Geminus hadn’t called, and his phone went automatically to his mailbox. I drank my beer to wash the anxious heartburn back down and watched the spectacle with everyone else.
My chopsticks rattled on bamboo. I added the dead soldier to the tower across the table while my waiter watched with big eyes. He was clearly wondering where I was putting it all. “Metabolism,” I explained.
I was trying to decide between more buns and the Mongolian barbecue when a static charge ruffled the hair on the back of my neck. My head jerked up to stare at a vampire walking down the street, flickering in between the line of glossy duck butts in the window. He paused on the corner, the shadows around him ebbing and flowing along with the overhead neon light.
It wasn’t Geminus. I saw a pleasant face with generic features under a swath of dark hair, totally unremarkable except for the sense of power radiating off him like a small sun. I watched the figure brighten and fade, brighten and fade, until it seemed like the face itself was flowing instead of the light.
There weren’t too many vamps with a power signature that strong, and most of them were at the Challenge. The traffic stopped, and he headed across the street. And my eyes narrowed.
Despite the stereotypes, there are plenty of tall Chinese. There are also quite a few who fill out a pair of jeans in interesting ways. But there are few people of any race who move through a crowd as gracefully as a dancer across a ballroom. I knew those moves.
More unmistakably, I knew that butt.
I swallowed the last of my Kirin, shoved a fifty at my waiter and burst out into the brilliantly colored night.
The vamp was already almost a block ahead, moving fast through the mass of shopping-bag-carrying locals and camera-toting tourists. He hit a snag in the form of the crowd around the dragon dancers, and it let me get close enough to scent him—or it should have. I took a breath, but all I got was the acrid smell of gunpowder from teenagers setting off illegal fireworks. Then the wind shifted, blowing in my direction, and I fell back quickly.
And someone grabbed my arm.
I whirled, slamming my attacker back against the darkened window of a shop, a knife to his throat. “Y-your change?”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, as I recognized the startled black eyes of my waiter. He thrust some bills into my hands and fled.
The distraction had been brief, but that’s all it takes when chasing someone who can move like the wind. I ran across the street and into the alley, and found what I’d expected. The full moon hung low and fat and orange in the sky, glowing like a lantern through the crack between buildings. It lit up four- and five-story brick structures, garbage, and the ribbon of water down the center of the passageway. And nothing else.
Damn it!
I forged ahead anyway, pausing every few yards to sniff the air. I hadn’t managed to get a whiff of him, but it didn’t matter. That particular scent was already cemented in my brain. But all I smelled were dog droppings, gasoline and garbage, the latter redolent of the reek of rotting fish. That was probably because there was a fish market at the end of the alley, its bright electric lights piercing the dark like a beacon.
The vamp had come that way. I finally caught him on the air, a thin thread of scent interwoven with the cleaner the proprietors used, the chlorine in the water and the smell of fresher sea life. But he was nowhere in sight.
But someone else was.
I stepped back into shadow as a tall figure in a black coat and hood came down the alley. New York in August does not require outerwear unless you’re hiding something. In my case, that something was weapons. I didn’t think that was the reason here.
The asphalt under the coat was splashed with a delicate white light. The person wearing it was outlined by a narrow halo as well, as if the coat’s fibers weren’t thick enough to contain the radiance within. It probably hadn’t been obvious on a street washed with light and color of its own, but in the gloom of the alley, it glowed.
I felt Frick and Frack come up to bracket me on either side. “Fey,” one of them said unnecessarily.
A dark shape flickered into view up ahead, under a streetlight, then passed out of view around a corner. The vampire emerged from the night to follow, and the fey ghosted behind him. With us bringing up the rear, it was like a small parade. It would have been funny, if I hadn’t thought it was about to get a lot more crowded.
“Can you distract him?” I asked Frick.
“We have no orders to engage the fey.”
“I’m not asking you to engage him, just to distract him. Make sure he loses his target.” They didn’t bother to respond, and neither moved. “What exactly were your orders?”
“To assist and protect you.”
“God, Marlowe must be desperate.” Frick remained impassive, but Frack’s lips quirked slightly. I saw them. “Look, I don’t have time to explain. But if there’s one fey, there’s probably more—maybe a lot more. And they don’t have any problem with engaging.”
Frick still didn’t say anything, but Frack stirred slightly. “If they spot her tracking them, we will have no choice but to defend her. And if there are others, the odds in that event might not be favorable.”
Frick didn’t respond, but after a moment, he sighed. The next second, they melted into the night after the fey. I gave them a brief head start and did likewise.
Away from the market’s dazzling glare, the street was a half-perceived tangle of tumbled shapes and awkward angles. The coat was barely a glimmer, its radiance swallowed by the shadows crowding thick and suffocating on all sides, and the vampire was just a slightly different texture of night.
