Delilah Dawson - Wicked After Midnight

He was one of the strangest men I’d ever met.

And despite Vale’s dire warnings, I was riveted.

Last night, I’d been anxiousto flee the giant elephant and hide in my room. But tonight the door was locked from the outside, and no amount of banging on the metal brought any sort of help. With my patron gone under his own odd auspices and no use for the sleeping powder in my pocket, I settled into the plush circular bed in a huff to flip through racy postcards, pornographic playing cards, and books about sensual bootblacks and burly firefighters who caught and ravished swooning women. I’d found an elegant hatbox brimming with such gems sitting on a tuffet, and it felt more than a little surreal, reclining in a metal pachyderm and staring at photos that were currently the height of vulgar pornography but showed less than a geriatric lap swimmer’s bathing suit from my own world. If these guys saw my triangle bikini, they’d probably have an apoplexy.

So that was one more thing I could “invent” in Sang.

I was grinning to myself and planning a cabaret-style version of Beach Blanket Bingo when the door opened far below and footsteps tapped up the circular stairs. I’d never moved as fast as I did then, tossing the photos and cards and books back into the hatbox and shoving it under the bed before the owner of the footsteps appeared. Even if it was just Auguste or one of the daimon girls, I didn’t want to be seen looking at porn.

“La Demitasse?”

I groaned silently. It wasn’t a familiar voice, but it carried the same apologetic ownership as the duke’s had. Charline must have double-booked me, the greedy bitch.

But wait.

I didn’t have to put out or even fend him off. Just play nice for a few minutes and feed, then use the sleeping powder. They’d sent up room service that paid for itself.

I grinned. “On the bed, monsieur ,” I cooed.

A red-faced elderly man appeared around the screen, cane in hand. I patted the bed.

“ Mon dieu , but you are even prettier up close, ma chérie . Can you believe I’ve never met a Bludman before? I’ve long waited to make your acquaintance.”

I stood and draped an arm around his neck. “And I yours,” I whispered into his ear.

It was too easy. Fartoo easy. One caress, and he had what he needed, while I earned a full belly. I sprinkled a few grains of sleeping powder over his head, and soon he was snoring softly on the bed, fully dressed and cheeks enflamed with imagined passion. With a grimace of distaste, I gave him a thorough pat-down but found nothing useful. A wallet, several nice handkerchiefs, a horribly creepy-looking condom that looked as if it had been used before stuffed in a small book of Saint Ermenegilda’s better quotes. There wasn’t a whiff of Bludman about him or the stench of magic and catacombs.

Before descending the stairs, I slipped a calling card from his wallet and used his handkerchief to dab the blood away from the little rip in his neck. I would add his name to the “Innocent” column of my spreadsheet. He said he’d never met a Bludman before, and oddly enough, I believed him. In six years among Crim, Tish, and the people of the caravan, I’d learned to read faces, and as far as I could tell, he hadn’t lied.

I slipped off my boots so I could take the metal stairs silently. Pebbles bit into my stockinged feet as I fled across the uneven cobbles to the back door of Paradis. With one ear against the door, I made certain that it was quiet inside. The only thing I wanted less than to further entertain the old man was to encounter the other girls doing the walk of shame and have to answer questions about why I was so quick at my work. The hallway seemed empty, and I turned the doorknob as slowly as I could, knowing after last night that it had an unfortunate tendency to squeak.

“You work fast, bébé .”

I bit back a scream and spun, hands curled into claws. Vale’s amused and skeptical calm made me even more likely to rake out his eyeballs.

“So—what, Vale? You’re following me now?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Stargazing in the courtyard of the—” He chuckled and rubbed the back of his head. “Yes, I’m following you. But only because I have something that I thought you’d want to see, as soon as you were done . . . entertaining the great artist.”

Rage shot up my spine, making me clench my teeth with a click that rang in the night. “First of all, entertainment is my job. Second, entertaining is not code for sex. Third, I just assumed you’d kissed half the daimons here, and I’ve never thrown that in your face. So how dare you judge me?”

He stepped closer, reaching for my hands. I jerked them back, feeling all too inhuman.

“Simmer down, bébé . I didn’t come here to start a fight.”

“Then keep your meaningful, judgmental pauses to yourself.” He tried to take my hand, and I smacked his wrist. “Keep your paws to yourself, too. I’ve had enough of being grabbed at.”

Hands in the air, he stepped backward, and I shook myself like a dog shedding water, feeling tightly wound and unpredictable in my anger. It was true, what I’d told him. Except when I was in my own bed, I spent a lot of time being touched against my will. Whether Charline was placing my hands on the hoop or Blue was dressing me or Mel and Bea were fixing my hair and makeup, I was sick to death of being touched like an object.

“Fair enough, bébé . I don’t want to make you unhappy. But look.”

The thing between his fingers was so small that I couldn’t see it without stepping close. Duh—he’d been trying to hand it to me.

It was a tooth. A fang, actually.

I took it with shaking fingers, holding it up to the meager orange glow of the gaslight.

“I know there is no way to know if it belongs to your Cherie, and I know it’s unsettling, but . . .”

“But if you’re using a Bludman as a slave or a concubine, she’d be less dangerous without her fangs.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

The fang matched mine, bright white and smooth, with a long, two-pronged root. I had a sudden curiosity regarding whether little Bludmen lost their fangs and hid them under their pillows for a creepy, blud-spattered Tooth Fairy.

“Where did you find it?”

I held it out to him reluctantly, but he shook his head and crossed his arms. It felt good in my hand, curled within my fingers. Macabre as it might be, he was right; this was actually a good sign. After all, it could have been a fanged skull.

“Well, you see . . .”

“Stop acting cagey, brigand.”

“Being a brigand involves a certain amount of smuggling and trading, and from time to time, unusual objects come into my possession. Dragon claws, unicorn hairs, mysterious valises covered with stamps—”

“The Freesian Tsarina’s bloodwine?”

“That, too. Francs and silvers aren’t the only form of payment, after all, and I know the sort of folk who need certain things and the sort of folk who pay with certain things, and I connect them.”

“All very legal, I’m sure. Totally aboveboard.”

He chuckled into his fist. “Believe whatever you wish, bébé . But it just so happens that tonight’s bounty included a handful of glittery little trinkets, and that was among them. I asked for some background—which is all part of the game—and the gentleman in question got very nervous and would only say again and again that it was very fresh and he’d won it at cards. Which means, if it’s hers, that she is in Paris.”

My hand stole to my own fangs, which felt foreign even after six years in Sang. I still remembered the strange, searing pain as the old canines had fallen out, the tips of the new fangs pushing through right behind them with a dull ache in my jaw. I’d been terrified. But back then, everything had been terrifying. Now I was mostly angry. When I found who had done this to my best friend, who had torn off part of her body just to make her weaker and more helpless, I would sink my claws into the bastard. And I would bleed him dry in some very choice, very painful spots, withholding the magic that gave the feeding any sort of pleasantness. I would teach him what a Bludman truly was.