Shadows of New York Read online

  He only noticed this for a moment. Once he saw Cleo, he forgot the trashed room. She sat in her usual place, except that her desk was several feet from where it normally sat. The front of her blouse was splattered with what Aiden hoped wasn’t blood, and a large bandage covered her left shoulder. She smiled weakly when she saw him and warmly when she saw Larry just behind him.

  Behind her, Siegfried stood on one of the desks from the cubicles, whose walls had all been knocked down. Aiden couldn’t see his head or shoulders since they were stuck up through the gap left by a missing ceiling tile. A light shone suddenly in Aiden’s eyes as Siegfried emerged from the ceiling, pointing a flashlight at him. “Gauntlets!” he yelled. “Put your gauntlets on, you stupid boy.”

  Aiden mentally kicked himself as he reached into his pockets and pulled out the golden gloves, which would be on him at all times for the foreseeable future. But, as Siegfried would no doubt be telling him over and over soon enough, they did him no good in his pockets.

  “Whatcha doin’, Siggy?” Larry drawled. Aiden couldn’t believe that he was taunting the trainer at a time like this. Then again, this was Larry. Almost nothing was beyond the realm of possibility with him.

  Siegfried glared at him and then directed his attention back to Aiden. “Keep an eye on Cleo for a minute. I want to finish checking up here before we talk.”

  “Sure,” Aiden agreed. Larry’s question replayed itself in his mind. “But, uh, what are you checking for?”

  “I’m making sure the area is clear.”

  “Of wraiths?” Aiden asked in disbelief. “He never hangs around after an attack, does he?”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Siegfried said. His words caused Cleo to shiver.

  “You okay?” Aiden asked, turning to her.

  “Hmmm…that’s an interesting question.” Cleo’s voice was quiet, like a muted version of its usual brightness. Her eyes were dazed-looking. She was silent for a few moments before answering. “I’m hungry. I’m tired. I’m in a considerable amount of pain. I haven’t experienced these things in over two thousand years. But am I okay? Yes, I suppose in the grand scheme of things, I'm okay.”

  “Uh, that’s good,” Aiden said. “Can you tell me about it? About, you know, the attack?”

  “About the attack? Yes, I can tell you about the attack.” She took a deep breath and resumed talking in that unusual, lifeless tone. “I was at my desk, going over some paperwork—contracts and things, the sort of stuff no one else around here ever seems to be concerned about. While I was looking down at the papers, I could swear I saw something—some sort of movement—out of the corner of my eye. It was over there, near the ceiling.” She indicated the area to her left, just in front of Lindsay’s desk. “But when I turned to look, there was nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?” Aiden asked. He squinted as he stared at Cleo’s eyes, looking for that certain something that lit up every room she entered. It was gone, replaced by her glassy stare and dull, droning voice. She was now acting more like the conventional zombies from the movies.

  “Nothing at all. So I went back to my reading. Barely a second later, I thought I saw it on the other side. It was like a quick, jerky movement, so fast I couldn’t even be sure it was really there.” She stared at the ceiling to her right as if still trying to understand what she had seen.

  “And then?” Aiden prodded gently.

  “And then the lights went out and all heck broke loose, like there was a hurricane in here. I tried to get out, but I didn’t even make it out of my chair. It felt like something was binding me to it, holding me in place. I tried to fight it off, but I couldn’t really see anything in the dark. It was like trying to fight off a shadow.”

  Aiden nodded. “Is that when your shoulder got it?”

  “No, not yet. You see, here I sat, the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, stuck in a silly ergonomically correct desk chair. I couldn’t bear the thought of just sitting there and taking it, so I summoned all of my strength, willing myself to get on my feet and get out. I made it about halfway to the door when I felt claws sinking into my shoulder. I’d never felt such pain before. That’s when I realized that I was feeling pain again. That I was human again.” She shivered. “That…thing…disappeared up into the ceiling.”

  Aiden’s gaze drifted upward, where he could see only half of Siegfried.

  “How dreadful for you!” Larry exclaimed. “All that pain and anguish and humanly humanness.”

  Cleo nodded. “Yes. It is rather icky.”

  “Lynch!” Siegfried bellowed while hopping down from the desk. “Let’s find someplace quiet to talk.”

  “Are you sure we should leave Cleo right now?”

  After staring at Larry for a few seconds with an atypical indecisive look on his face, Siegfried said, “Fancypants can see her home safely.” Aiden wasn’t so sure about that.

  “Are you sure about that?” Aiden asked.

  “We’ll be fine,” Larry assured him. “Go have your heart-to-heart with Siggy.”

  “You okay with this, Cleo?” Aiden asked, still very much concerned for her safety.

  “I’ll be all right.” She stifled a yawn. “Larry will see to it. Won’t you, Larry?”

  “Indeed.” He helped her to her feet with extreme gentleness, guiding her through the smashed door and into his limo.

  After standing motionless, watching Larry lead Cleo away, Siegfried tipped one of the upended seats back upright. He replaced the cushion, which had ended up all the way across the room, and settled into it. Aiden remained standing, arms crossed, surveying the semi-destroyed room.

  Siegfried let out one long exhale and rubbed his eyes, drawing Aiden’s attention from the glittering shards of Britney’s shattered coffee mug.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” Siegfried asked.

  Aiden gave a shrug. He hadn’t really considered the question. “Uh, you thought he might still be around and wanted help catching him?”

  Siegfried shook his head. “Nope. I didn’t really think he’d stick around.”

  Without bothering to hazard another guess, Aiden shrugged again.

  “I wanted you to see what this Mr. Midnight does firsthand. You haven’t known any of the prior victims, right? You haven’t been to any of the attack scenes?”

  And with those words, the scene was that much more terrible. Looking around, Aiden thought of all the hours (was it hundreds or thousands?) that he had spent in this office, mostly in back training with Siegfried, but often sitting up front, chatting with Cleo. This had been as much his home as anywhere else over the past few years. He looked at her desk lying on its side and fought back tears that came from out of nowhere.

  “I wanted to make sure you understood how important this is. We can’t let it interfere with working for the Coopers, but catching Mr. Midnight comes in as a very, very close second.”

  Chapter Seven

  Oink

  It shouldn’t have been a big deal. Josh had been in limousines a few times before. But this was the first time he had been in a vampire’s limo, and he couldn’t help but feel a little excited. He kept opening up all the compartments and cabinets, expecting to find bags of chilled blood, maybe even a shrunken head or something creepy like that. All he found, however, were bottles of champagne, tall drinking glasses, and little boxes of chocolates. As far as vampires went, he was starting to find Larry a little boring. And then there was that smarmy way he acted toward any female he encountered. It was kinda weird, in Josh’s opinion. So, he supposed he was starting to think of Larry as a combination of boring and weird.

  Aiden had agreed to accompany Larry while he ran some errands on this particular Friday morning. In a move that surprised Josh, Aiden also invited him along, saving him the effort of trying to wrangle an invitation. Josh suspected that he was only brought along to give Larry someone to talk to, as Aiden elected to spend his time leaning his head back and sleeping.

  He had been doing a lot of that o
ver the past two weeks, ever since Cleo was attacked. Josh and Mrs. F-G knew the reason that Aiden spent so much time out of the apartment each night. His parents were starting to speculate about a secret girlfriend. Since they didn’t seem too upset, Josh and Mrs. F-G didn’t think it wise to set the record straight.

  Though he felt no need to let his parents in on the Imaginary World, Josh was having a hard time keeping it from his friends. So far this summer, both Ian and Ewan had come over to hang out. It had been pretty tough keeping his secret from them, but the real test would come when Nick got back from his family’s vacation. They were planning to get together for a sleepover, and Josh knew it would be difficult to keep all this information about a cool secret society from his best friend.

  “So,” Josh said to Larry as the limo crawled past Central Park. “How’s, um, Cleo doing?”

  “Haven’t you asked Aiden?”

  “Well, I tried, but he’s been kinda…” Josh gestured to his sleeping nanny.

  “Yes. Unlike myself, Aiden needs actual sleep. Just one of the many ways that vampires are superior to werewolves.” Larry grinned.

  “So, uh, Cleo? Is she okay?”

  “Oh, she’s fine. That is, as long as she doesn’t mind being human again after a very, very long time. It’s been a bit of an adjustment.”

  “Oh,” Josh answered with a vague nod, still not understanding if Cleo was okay or not.

  Just as Josh was starting to frame the next question in his mind, the car came to a stop, and Larry announced in Aiden’s ear, “We’re here! Wakey, wakey!”

  Josh expected Aiden to leap out of his seat with someone yelling so close to him like that. All he did, though, was half open his eyes and ask, “Five more minutes?”

  “Come on, sleepyhead,” said Larry, “we’ll prop you up in a chair inside and you can go back to chasing cats or whatever it is you dream about.”

  With obvious reluctance, Aiden shook his head, which did the trick. There was not a trace of fatigue in his eyes.

  The three stepped out onto the sidewalk. Josh frowned at the building in front of him. “Isn’t this one of those art museums? Your errand is at an art museum? Are you buying a painting or something?”

  Larry chuckled as he closed the car door. He gave a glance over each shoulder, as if checking to see that no one was close enough to overhear, and said, “This isn’t just any museum. This is the Guggenheim. And we’re not buying paintings, we’re going to oink.”

  Aiden and Larry took a few steps toward the building, but Josh remained in place. When they stopped and looked back at him, he asked, “What do you mean we’re going to oink? Are there pigs in there?”

  “Not ‘oink’ with a k,” said Aiden, who resumed walking once Josh caught up to them. “O-I-N-C. The Office of Identification and Name Conversion.”

  This didn’t clear things up very much for Josh, which must have shown on his face, because Aiden explained further. “You see, Larry is hundreds of years old. He can’t live as the same person for that long. Every so often, he has to renew his identity. When OINC decides that he’s been Larry Fancypants for too long, they’ll create a new identity for him. Kind of like witness protection.”

  “Oh, okay. That makes sense.” Josh nodded.

  “I just hope they give me something better than Fancypants next time. I should ask for something like Jack Rockcastle,” said Larry with a sigh as he guided them past the admissions line and over to the membership desk.

  “He’s a patron here,” Aiden told Josh. “He likes to tell people it’s because he’s a philanthropist, but really it’s so he gets to skip the line.”

  “Oh,” Josh answered, his mind stuck on OINC. “Is your name really Aiden Lynch?” It never occurred to him that, given Aiden’s background, he might be in hiding.

  Aiden nodded. “Yup. As long as I don’t draw too much attention to myself, I get to stay Aiden Lynch.”

  “And if you draw too much attention?” asked Josh, not wanting to hear the answer.

  There was a slight pause. “Then they give me a new name and move me to Albuquerque or some place like that.”

  Larry ushered Aiden and Josh into the main gallery. Josh walked with his head craned back, eyes sweeping the spiral walkway that ran all the way up to the skylight. He didn’t notice that Larry and Aiden had stopped and ended up crashing right into Larry. “Sorry,” he muttered, “this place is just so cool. I’ve never been in it before.”

  The sound of an opening elevator brought Josh’s attention back to his more immediate surroundings. When they were in the elevator with the doors closed, Larry held down the button marked B and announced, “Larry Fancypants. Appointment with OINC.” The elevator began moving down.

  The doors slid open, revealing a normal hallway with a cement floor and dingy white walls, a lot like the basement in Josh’s building. This first impression, the one where he felt like he was back home, was eliminated the next second, when a man, large and bumpy like a toad and undeniably green, walked past the elevator and grunted, “Morning, Larry.”

  “Good morning, Dave.”

  Larry and Aiden left the elevator and went in the same direction as the Dave thing. Josh followed right behind, his eyes moving constantly, looking for more Imaginary people. Other than Larry, Aiden, and Dave (who wore what looked like an expensive suit, only made from something that looked like fox fur), he saw no one.

  This changed when they turned left through a pair of doors labeled “Office of Id. and Name Con.” Josh had been with his mother to the Department of Motor Vehicles before. This had the same vibe to it. All sorts of things (at first glance, Josh would have identified a goblin, a troll, and possibly a ghost) sat in chairs arranged along the walls, all facing in toward a table offering magazines to read. Everyone looked bored.

  While Larry went to get a number, Aiden guided Josh over to the seats, where they sat next to a lady with two heads.

  Her left head nodded and smiled at them. The right one scowled and muttered, “They look gross. I bet the little one sneezes all over us.” The left head looked shocked at this, and the lady stood up and hurried away. As they departed through the doors to the hallway, the right one shouted something about losing their place in line. When the sound of their argument filtered into the waiting area, Josh couldn’t help but chuckle.

  Larry rejoined them, taking the two-headed lady’s seat and holding up a paper with the number fourteen on it. “Okay, all checked in. Now…we wait.”

  Josh looked up and saw the “now serving” sign. “Oh, we probably won’t be here long. They’re on number twelve right now.”

  “Oh, Josh,” said Larry with insincere sweetness, “you’re so refreshingly naïve. Watch the sign.”

  Sure enough, as soon as Larry said this, the sign switched to number seventy-three. “Number seventy-three,” came a voice from an overhead speaker. “Blooby, Jim.”

  “First-come-first-serve doesn’t work here. They pick numbers at random,” explained Larry.

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Josh.

  “Now you’re starting to understand,” mumbled Aiden, who had decided to use the time for some power napping. His head, like in the car, was tilted backward and his eyes were closed.

  Josh looked around at the rest of the office. There were rows of desks and at each desk sat something inhuman. Trolls, ogres, cyclopes, they all sat wearing business casual outfits and working on old typewriters.

  “Number thirty-eight,” said the speaker. “Toothpaste, Diabolical.”

  Larry leaned over and explained, “A lot of the guys that can’t blend into human society end up with civil service jobs, where they only have to deal with us.”

  “Okay,” Josh replied.

  “And,” continued Larry, a touch of bitterness starting to creep into his voice, “they keep all the good names for themselves. Let’s see who we have working here today…Bob Anderson. John Jones. Richard Smith. That was David Wallace we saw out in the hall. It's their pas
sive-aggressive way of lashing out at those who can pass as human. We get names like Fancypants and Lickerman.” He sighed dramatically and pulled out his phone, starting to text at lightning speed.

  To pass the time, Josh read one of the old magazines lying around. He picked up a Time. Looking at the cover, he saw that it wasn’t Time, but Hammer Time. The front page showed a large, muscular man wearing a Viking helmet and a plaid golf shirt with the sleeves ripped off. Below him it read, “Can Thor Adapt? Asgardians in the Modern Age.” Leafing through it, he learned of Odin, chief of the Norse Gods, and his struggle to create a social media empire. He read about Freya’s recipe for pan-fried spring rolls. Just as he began reading about the upcoming release of The Valkyries’ fourth album, Larry distracted him by saying, “Hey, how’s it going?”

  Josh looked over the top of the magazine to find Larry talking to himself. “Yeah, something like that… I don’t know. I don’t usually plan so far ahead. I guess it depends on how fast I get out of here.”

  Larry looked over at Josh. “Hey, Josh. Have you met Mab yet?” Before Josh could answer, Larry rolled his eyes and said, “Sorry. I mean Her Royal Highness, Queen Mab, Monarch and Exalted Ruler of All Fairies. Is that better?”

  Josh didn’t know how to answer.

  A small object left Larry’s shoulder and flew through the air, landing on the arm of Josh’s chair. As it landed, Josh recognized it as a hazelnut, cracked in half. Inside the shell was a small woman dressed in as royal an outfit as he had ever seen, complete with crown and glittering with tiny diamonds. Sitting in front of her, driving the little nut carriage, was an insect.

  “Greetings, friend of Larry,” she said in a microscopic voice. That was why Josh thought Larry was talking to himself. Her tiny voice didn’t carry far.

  “Um, hi,” said Josh.

  “To which royal house do you belong?”

  “Um, the Cooper house?”

  “I know not of this house.”