City of Corpses: The Dark Avenger's Sidekick Book Two (Moth & Cobweb 5) Read online

  Yumiko said, “I am new in the field.”

  Boggy scowled. “And Licho just up and hired you? Without checking you out?”

  “Well, no, I had taken off my blouse…”

  “I got the picture. Tell me no more! Iron nails! Where did I put it?” And she dug out a piece of paper. “The Magician keeps saying he is going to upgrade and computerize, but there is never enough money in the budget for it. Always funds for hiring another pretty face to smile for the marks though. What is your name?”

  “Yoshiko Kawashima.” It was the first name that sprang into her mind. It was the name of the Manchu princess who served as a spy for the Kwantung Army in World War II. The Eastern Mata Hari.

  Boggy scribbled the name down and passed a handful of papers to her. “This is the employment form, your withholding, health insurance, and waiver. Write down your bank deposit and routing number here because we don’t cut checks any more, and this is a nondisclosure agreement. You do not have to join the Actors Guild if you are appearing only in the chorus line. Well, technically you do, but the local bosses give us some leeway as long as you contribute dues. Any questions?”

  “I don’t have a bank account. In fact, I don’t have a place to stay, so I was hoping you would give me an advance on my wages.”

  Boggy laughed and then took a large swallow of scalding coffee. “So you come in here with no references, no past, no place to stay, and you expect to be hired as a girl in our world-famous chorus line of Peach Cobbler Girls because you can kick the ceiling?”

  Yumiko bowed. “I wish to create no trouble. If you wish to speak to Mr. Licho about the…”

  An electronic noise came suddenly from the desk, a bleak squawk. Boggy looked under one pile of papers, and then another, and then found an intercom box. Boggy worked a toggle beneath a flashing bulb.

  She said, “Yes, sir..?”

  A rich, rolling voice issued from the speaker. “Hire her. Never mind about the paperwork. Have the wardrobe mistress outfit her with a costume and send her to my office.”

  There was a click.

  Boggy stared at the intercom box for a moment, one eye larger than the other, baffled. Then, she took another burning swig of coffee. “Mine is not to reason why. You are in. Take this slip downstairs and go backstage. Leshenka is the name of the wardrobe mistress. Be nice to her. She is a little pixilated. She will set you up with a locker and such.”

  “A little… I beg your pardon?”

  “Pixilated. Afflicted. Bewildered. Touched. She spat on an unlucky day and must have angered the pixies. The Goodly Folk, you know? But she knows her way around a needle and thread.”

  3. Stage Magician

  When Yumiko stepped into the wardrobe room backstage, she saw the black ring on her finger in the reflections on the wall-to-wall mirrors there. Anyone helping her change clothes was sure to see it. She slipped the invisible ring in her pocket. Only then did she knock and ask for Leshenka.

  Not long after, Yumiko found herself dressed, or, rather, revealed, in a cute but skimpy outfit consisting of a top hat, a white bow tie, a tight black-and-white corset decorated to look like a tuxedo, shiny black hotpants, and fishnet stockings. False cuffs and cufflinks circling her wrists completed the outfit even though she wore no sleeves.

  Yumiko wondered if such a costume was designed as a type of subtle psychological warfare to rob serving girls of so much dignity that none would dare assassinate their superiors with pufferfish poison before committing ritual suicide. On the other hand, she was not sure how often Americans were killed with pufferfish poison. Maybe the Americans just liked pretty girls and lacked decorum.

  The shoes were arch-breaking three-inch closed-toed pumps.

  Leshenka the wardrobe mistress showed her the locker room and issued Yumiko a combination lock whose combination one could reset oneself. Yumiko left her expensive suit of clothing in the locker and put everything else into her sash, which she rolled up and hid in her top hat. The ring, still invisible, was hidden in the sash as well. She did not trust that the locker would stay locked.

  She piled her hair up atop her head to expose her dainty neck, and used several pins driven through the hat band to keep the top hat in place perched on top of the coiffure.

  Yumiko thought again of her psychological warfare theory when she was next sent to the office of the owner. The door to his office was big, the walk was long, the carpet was red, the desk was high, and the man himself was both large and tall.

  The wall behind his desk was wider than the wall opposite, which meant the walls to her left and right receded the deeper in the room she walked.

  He was wide of girth, but on him the bulk looked imposing rather than comical. He was dressed, despite the early hour, in a tuxedo. His hair was dark, parted in the middle, and white at the temples. His face was square. A top hat was set jauntily upon the bust of Shakespeare next to his desk. He wore white kid gloves.

  He smiled and gestured her toward a three-legged barstool in the center of the red carpet. Yumiko sat. He flicked a toggle on his desk. The red and gold drapery to her left and right drew back, revealing two walls paneled in mirrors. She was rather acutely aware that he could now examine her from both sides, as well as from behind.

  Yumiko straightened her poise, crossed her legs, interlaced her fingers on her upper knee, and smiled her most charming smile. She thought darkly that no one who plays at being Mata Hari can object to attracting men’s stares.

  Her smile froze when she noticed his eye dart immediately to the image in the mirror where her hands were reflected, first in the mirrored wall to her left and then to her right. She continued to smile, hoping her expression betrayed nothing. But in her heart she blessed whatever paranoia told her to hide the Ring of Mists in her hat.

  But, like her, he continued to smile. “I am Wilcolac Cobweb. You’ve heard of me, I suppose? Here I am, the real thing, large as life!” He uttered a hearty laugh. “But you can call me Willy. And what exactly is your business here?”

  Yumiko said, “I need a job.”

  He leaned back in his wide, black leather chair and looked at the ceiling. “Of course, of course. No place to stay, as I understand it? Why not stay with relatives?”

  She said, “My people are in Japan.”

  “What part?”

  “All of them.”

  He looked surprised and then laughed. She put her hand to her mouth to hide a laugh, and once again his eyes darted to the mirrors left and right. Lifting up one hand had revealed the hand beneath.

  She said, “Sorry, I am from Akita Prefecture.”

  He smiled again. “Are you really? Do you come from a big family?”

  She said, “No. My mother is dead.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” he said and bounded to his feet. He walked with an excess of energy, like a young man, despite his girth.

  He crossed to the front of the desk, saying, “No, no! Do not get up!”

  And he stood and loomed over her, staring down at her in her skimpy little outfit with cold eyes and a genial smile.

  She suddenly realized that it was not a generic evening coat that her immodest showgirl outfit was meant to copy, but his tuxedo in particular.

  She wanted to stop smiling, to fidget, to wipe away the beads of nervous sweat she felt accumulating. But she glanced at the calmly smiling girl in the saucy outfit in the mirror, and her eyes gave her a warning as if to remind her that she was on a mission, and persons unknown were likely relying on her.

  He walked with his hands behind his back, circling her. The lights from the ceiling gleamed off his spats.

  Willy Cobweb said, “So why did you come here?”

  She had to crane back her head to look up at him. “Well, I have heard of you, of course. And the Peach Cobbler Girls are world famous.”

  He nodded, “Hmm. True enough.” His expression was puzzled, as if he were surprised at how reasonable that sounded. “How is the outfit?”

  She said, “I th
ink I can move in it.”

  “Hmm. We do a winter holiday revue, where you have to dress like one of Santa’s elfs. That means you work holidays at the base rate of pay. Are you fine with that? No Christmas break.”

  She said, “I am fine with that.”

  “You don’t, ah, celebrate Christmas?”

  “In Japan, it is treated more like a romance time. A boy might buy an expensive present for his girlfriend on that day… or make for her…” And suddenly, to her surprise, her voice choked up. Something that was more than a memory tickled her for a moment, but was gone before she could snare it.

  (What had her own beloved given her? The magic ring? Or something he had made?)

  Willy was speaking. She had not heard the opening of his comment. “…started in the theater as a magician. Much better than shoemaking! But the more I studied, the more I found how truly odd some of the people in this line of work were. Did you know, for example, that Houdini once commissioned the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft to pen a treatise exposing the origins of superstition as being produced by the prehistoric ignorance of mankind? Both of them made their living from bewildering and frightening people, but both urged the public to be skeptical, to be disbelievers.”

  She answered, quite honestly, “I had not heard.”

  “Pure camouflage, as it turns out. Houdini knew that the ignorance was deliberate: a cloak thrown over the head of mankind to hoodwink and blindfold us all! It was his investigations into the causes of that ignorance which led to his murder. Yes, his death was not an accident, as is often told!”

  Since Yumiko had no idea who this Houdini was, she tried her best to contrive to look surprised. She was about to comment that perhaps the police should be told, but then she realized Willy might be talking about an historical character, dead for hundreds of years.

  So all she said was, “I am sure the truth will come out.”

  He frowned, looking even more puzzled, as if that were not the answer he expected. Willy stopped pacing, stood behind her, and rested his hands gently on her naked shoulders, which Yumiko found rather menacing.

  “So do you think magic is not real?” he said.

  She said, “You would know better than I. You are the magician.”

  Willy put his fingers into one of her ears, and before she could flinch or draw away, he pulled a pearl, white, shining, and solid, from her ear.

  He tossed it in the air, caught it, and pressed it in her palm. “Touch it! Stroke it! Scratch it with your tooth if you like. It is real: I just took it from your ear, where you had no idea it was hidden.”

  He was watching her carefully.

  Yumiko said, “Since it was found in my ear, may I have it?”

  He frowned thoughtfully, plucked the pearl out of her palm, and crossed around to behind his desk. With a theatrical flourish of his coattails, he sat. Then, he lay the pearl carefully on the blotter and put an empty shot glass mouth-downward atop it.

  He said, “Why do you want it?”

  He took out a handkerchief, waved it in the air, and draped it over the shot glass.

  She said, “I was hoping for an advance on my wages. I am low on funds…”

  “…and you want to be paid in pearls rather than banknotes?” he said, grunting.

  She was not sure how to answer that, so she said nothing.

  He said, “The first rule a magician learns is that the first rule is a trick and a distraction meant to take your eyes from the second rule.”

  Yumiko was not sure what to make of that. “I see. Ah. So what is the second rule?”

  “That everything is misdirection and deception. That nothing is as it seems. Even the rule that nothing is as it seems is not as it seems.”

  Yumiko was even less sure how to take that. “So what is it? The true second rule, I mean. If the second rule is not what it seems?”

  “The true rule is that the true rule is hidden. Stage magicians are allowed from time to time to glimpse beyond the veil, or even draw it aside for no longer than the time it takes to gasp in awe or in fear! Allowed, I say, tolerated, because no one believes our work is the work of true magic, deep magic, dark magic. Stage-tricks, they call it, illusions, done with mirrors. All that is stripes on a zebra and color on a chameleon.”

  “So is the pearl mine or not?”

  “What pearl?” He slapped his palm down atop the covered shotglass. His hand was wide and meaty, and his glove made an enormous noise when it struck the blotter. He yanked his hand up.

  “Here. Catch.” He tossed a small, glinting object at her face.

  Expecting it to be shards of a shattered shotglass, she flung herself backward, leaning so far back that her head was below the level of the stool seat on which she sat. She had hooked her toes through the rungs of the barstool so that she did not topple off the tiny, round seat. Her top hat was pinned firmly enough on her head that it did not fall off and give everything away.

  She saw the small metal thing he had thrown flying by overhead: It was a rough-hammered iron nail connected by a keyring to a doorkey. She snatched it out of the air with her left hand and straightened up.

  Willy was open mouthed.

  Yumiko tucked some stray hair back into her top hat, cleared her throat, and crossed her legs again. She held up the key on the nail and wiggled it to make it jingle. “Thank you. What is this?”

  He had recovered his composure. “The key to the stage door in the back. You have to come in for rehearsal at three, an hour before opening. We open at four. There is a show at seven and again at midnight. Between shows you wait tables. You are second chorus, which means you don’t need to do anything other than look pretty and do a simple step-kick in time, a shimmy, a shake, and a strut. I assume you have never waited tables before.”

  She said, “Why? I mean, I haven’t, but what gave it away?”

  Willy drew a breath and let it out, and his genial smile vanished as if it had never been. He said, “It would be rare and strange to find a half-fairy serving spirits to mortals.”

  4. Peach Cobbler Girl

  Yumiko recrossed her legs, drew a deep breath, and straightened her spine. She raised her chin and looked him boldly in the eye, “It cannot be so very rare. Here you are doing just that.”

  He said, “Am I?”

  “You spoke of deception and misdirection,” she said. “You are no magician: you are merely disguised as one. If you make a slip, and someone sees something he shouldn’t, you explain it as a human doing magic, dabbling in dark forces he does not understand. But you do understand. For you are a Twilighter. A Halfalfar. A Demi.”

  He leaned back and smiled thinly. “As are you. What gave me away?”

  She said, “You were so curious about me that you hired me before Boggy even finished the paperwork, and no one asked me whether or not I can dance. You tossed a pearl at me. It did not grow brighter, so you know I am not a mermaid. You threw a cold iron nail at me. I caught it, so you know I am not an elf. I said the name of Christ, so you know I am not a devil. You did a magic trick and waited to see whether the mist would darken my heart to disbelief when you said magic was real. So you know I am not a Daughter of Eve. And you put me in this costume first thing, before even hiring me, so you could walk around and inspect me for suckling marks. I am not a witch. Or do you want me to go into the kitchen and cut raw onions to prove my tear ducts work?”

  He said, “Actually, that costume covers too much. I had Leshenka look you over for witch marks. If she had found them, you would not have made it out of the wardrobe room alive.”

  Yumiko gave a small nod of the head, “And also your whole carpet is red, so I assume at least one red thread in it circles the spot where I am sitting.”

  He said, “You are also not a vampiress because you have a reflection.”

  Yumiko nodded. The man was clever. He provided an explanation for the mirrors without giving away that he was searching for the Ring of Mists. That seemed to indicate he still did not suspect she was the
one he sought.

  She spread her hands. “If you were a man of the Day, the mist would darken your heart to disbelieve in all these things. If you were an elf of the Night, you would be more nervous about cold iron and such. That means you are Twilight. Also, your name is Cobweb. As you say, it is a famous name in the Twilight world.”

  He said, “But what are you? If you were a Moth, you would go to one of your endless supply of relatives. If you were a Peaseblossom, you would smell of sweet pea, and I would have scented it when I stood behind you just now. And no Peaseblossom would dare slip through the blockade between here and the Third Hemisphere. Are you a Mustardseed?”

  She was about to open her mouth and say yes, but she held her peace, for he was not done talking.

  “If you were a Mustardseed, then Alberec sent you, for I have never heard of one who has left his service. But what has he to do with us? Alberec’s spies would not come unprepared. Dr. McGuire is famous for her care! There was no wallet in your clothing with an exquisitely well-counterfeited driver’s license, no passport, no letters from home or ticket stubs, nothing.”

  So they had gone through her clothing in the locker. But, if so, why had not some werewolf scented it and recognized it as the package they recovered from the elevator in the hospital yesterday? On the other hand, the only two wolves Yumiko knew for sure who had scented those garments were dead, and their corpses were in this building. On yet another hand, they had a behemoth who could raise the dead, so those two might yet talk. On the fourth hand, that behemoth had last been seen just before dawn being chased down the Hudson River by the knight.

  He said, “That leaves two possibilities: you might be one of the lesser clans, like the Smithwicks, Rogers, Gordons, Waynes, MacPhees, Lamplighters, or Browns. But all lesser clans are allied with a larger clan, so this merely opens up the same problem again. The other possibility is that you are a Cobweb playing some game.”

  Yumiko decided on a bold honesty combined with a bold lie. She said, “I am a Moth. But I am not welcome among my own any longer.”