AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Got a nice set up, Lily does,” Zheng was saying, when I tore my attention away from my husband. “And she thought it up all by herself, I’m ashamed to say. Can’t believe I missed that one.”
“Lily?”
“The proprietor. She’ll be along eventually.”
“And what set up, exactly, does she have?” Louis-Cesare asked, because he seemed as confused as me.
“Exactly what it looks like.” Zheng took a drink from the heavy crystal glass in front of him, then waved it around. “A lot of people vacated the area after the big boom, including most of the girls. Lily, who is—or was—a working girl herself, soon had too much work to handle. So, she got this idea . . .”
“To make herself some help?” Louis-Cesare asked, checking out the completely unbelievable proportions on the cigarette girl who’d just wiggled by.
Zheng nodded. “It started with these cards she had made up, business type things. Used to put them in the phone booths around the city, in shops, anywhere they’d let her. For advertising, you know.”
I kicked my husband, who was still watching the cigarette girl. She had a black spangled, Playboy-Club-without-the-ears outfit that did tend to draw the eye, especially from the back. Which was no excuse, damn it!
“I didn’t think you were the jealous type,” Louis-Cesare murmured, as a waiter came by to take our order.
“I’m not. And I was, if wouldn’t be here. They’re not real.”
“Oh, they’re real enough,” Zheng said. “That’s the beauty of it.”
I eyed the figure on a voluptuous redhead in a glittery gold gown who was slinking our way. “No way in hell.”
He laughed. “Oh, I didn’t mean flesh and blood real. I meant personality wise. Well, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
He nodded. “Those business cards contained a photo of Lily in a provocative pose, to lure in customers. It was animated so it’d gyrate around and catch your eye. But the mage she got to enchant them was a friend, and wanted hers to stand out. When he did the spell for the ‘toon, he added a bit more oopmf than strictly necessary, and some of her personality got imbedded along with her looks.”
“Fascinating,” Louis-Cesare said, now also watching the redhead.
“Oh, that wasn’t the fascinating part. One of her cards was caught in the cross fire during the battle, and somehow got transferred to a mage as a temporary tattoo. He and I ended up joining forces—you remember him,” he added, looking at me, because I’d crossed paths with the man briefly.
“Typical war mage; completely nuts,” I told Louis-Cesare, which wasn’t entirely true—the typical part, not the crazy—but I didn’t want to get into all of that now.
“He was that,” Zheng agreed. “And—well, let’s just say that the tattooed version of Lily turned out to be a true asset. Enough that I decided to meet the real woman, and we joined forces.”
“Joined forces as in . . .”
He grinned. He seemed to be in a good mood today. “That, too. But mainly, the family needed a new line of work now that we’re legit, and she needed protection in these difficult times. And the magic to try out the idea she came up with after I told her how we ‘met’.”
“And the personalities?” I asked, as the redhead paused by a nearby table to light a man’s cigarette.
Zheng shrugged. “She talked a few of her friends into lending their characteristics to the new scheme, in return for a cut of the take. So far, it’s been very lucrative.”
“How?” Louis-C
esare asked, still watching the redhead.
I really couldn’t blame him, this time. The others we’d met had been well into uncanny valley territory, with even the more realistic having improbable curves and weird, glassy eyes. They looked like what they were: sex dolls that could walk around. But this one . . . could have fooled me.
That probably wasn’t true for Louis-Cesare, because there was no blood flowing in the veins she didn’t have and no heart beating in that ample chest, something that a vampire would detect immediately. But there was a dewy freshness to the skin and a glossiness to the hair, which wasn’t the flat, dyed red of several others in the room, but a rich flow with hints of brown and gold. And her eyes—her eyes were perfect.
“Would you like some company?” she asked me, smiling, and bending down enough that I was able to see the striations of yellow and a dot of brown in the otherwise clear blue of her iris. She had a tiny mole on her left temple, like a beauty mark. And thick, dark eyelashes that were a little uneven, like a real person’s.
And, suddenly, I wasn’t sure anymore.
“Is she?” I asked Louis-Cesare, who was looking at her with concern.
