Days 3 and 4: 3,899 words, 8,920 total

Part 2: Kittens and books and car accidents, oh my

Just in case, I kept on my guard when we drove into my neighborhood. Out of sheer paranoia - the Latin Quarter might not be as swanky as Radclyffe, not to mention places like Clearview Heights, but it's not Crime Central either, and any wannabe mobsters staking out my apartment would have to deal with threats like Mrs Cortez from across the road. The old biddy has nothing to do except stare out the window and conduct shouted conversations with everyone and anyone, including every stray dog and cat that happens to pass by. I have no idea if she ever sleeps, but I wouldn't bet on it: with her loud and detailed comments on Kirill's appearance and how I should watch myself, dallying with a heartbreaker like that after he saw me home at four in the morning a few years ago, she's the chief reason I usually end up going to his place instead.

Then again, she plays Louis and Ella every evening, and I can forgive a lot for that.

Anton, on the other hand, can be counted on to have the car filled with something that depraves the noble name of punk. I swear he has that playlist only to annoy me, because otherwise he listens to the same things as Kirill - anything Russian from Glinka to Tatu, and old-school blues.

On the other hand, the constant vigilance and the infuriating music managed to keep my attention from Anton's actual driving. Ever since he crashed the Lexus sixteen months earlier and left me with a broken arm and collarbone, I've been a little touchy on that subject.

"Watch the road!" I hissed.

"Hey, it's empty," he protested, but obediently downshifted before almost spinning the car in place to park it. I rolled my eyes. Some people never learn, and you could tell Anton got his license in Italy. At least he rarely confused miles with kilometers now; the last thing you want to hear when racing through downtown is 'relax, I'm only doing seventy'.

Mrs Cortez gave us a cheery wave and blushed like a schoolgirl when Anton blew her a kiss. There were the usual teenagers killing time by hanging out on the corner and comparing their iPods or whatever it is they do these days. I could see them do a double-take when Anton held the building door open for me with a courtly bow.

I grew suspicious, since while Kirill can be counted on to do such things unconsciously, Anton is usually keeping up with the times. "What did you do, kill my cat?"

"You're an ailing lady," he told me as he steered me towards the elevator. I considered hitting the stairs instead just to be contrary, but with all the bruises it was probably not a good idea. "Can't I be worried?"

I shook my head and gave up. It took me a while, but I've learned that most times it's not worth it to oppose a determined vampire.

Due to my dislike for carrying bags and propensity for coming home in different clothes than I left in, my apartment has an alphanumeric pad that's actually a disguised fingerprint scanner combined with the cipher, on top of all the wards that the security company would never recognize. I'd keyed Anton for the lock back when my arm was broken, so he set about opening the door while I leaned against a wall. I was feeling pretty beat. The library was probably a good idea, and then off to work to watch Anton tug on the auditor's strings, and maybe get some more of that potion from our resident alchemist. Merle might be reluctant to 'squander his brilliance', but I had blackmail material.

Thus, I had my eyes closed when the door on the other wall opened with a bang. The next thing I knew, Anton was in front of me, covering me from any possible danger. It seemed that Antosha was taking this seriously.

Then again, this was definitely not a danger. Not unless one of the big goons from last night managed to dress up as my five-foot-nothing neighbor, an avid fashionista and a source of constant amusement since she'd moved in three weeks ago.

"Ray-ray!" she called out.

I peered around the nonplussed Anton. "Hi, Mandii. How's it going?"

"Oh, just great-" she bounced up and closed her door without looking. "But I'm going to this party, and I promised to bring cookies, and I'm all out of cinnamon sticks, do you have any?"

"Sure." I led the way into my apartment. It might not be much, but then again my book collection would burst the seams of anything smaller than a castle. Or at least a townhouse. "By the way - Amanda Richfield, meet Anton Rossov. Anton, Mandii."

Mandii took a closer look at Anton and seemed to literally sparkle. Then again, that might have been stray glitter: she had more than enough in her pigtails. I would have thought that between them and the frilly short pink dress she was already dressed for the party, but I knew better: that was just her everyday wear. I'd seen Mandii in full party drag once, and my eyes had hurt for over three hours afterwards. Either way, she also blushed and squealed something about being delighted. Hook, line, sinker: too bad that, sweet as she was, I wouldn't have wished a girlfriend like Mandii on my worst enemy.

Anton elected to help me dig through my ingredient chest for the cinnamon rather than fall prey to Mandii's dewy eyes in the living room. "And I thought the drag queens were bad," he muttered in my ear as we laid out the upper layer of the more mundane substances on the kitchen counter. Cinnamon has a lot of reactive properties, so I keep it in one of the isolated containers near the bottom of the chest.

"She's amusing in small doses," I whispered back as I unbuckled the cinnamon container and took out a few sticks. "Darklighter, get out of there!"

Darklighter, the big tabby tom that rules the neighborhood with an iron paw when not being whipped by Miss Daisy, a calico half his size and twice the evilness, looked at me insolently from the countertop. I picked him up and handed him to Anton. "Here, you two can commiserate in your fear of Mandii."

Their faces bore the exact same expression of disgust mixed with fear, and I was smiling when I returned to the living room.

"Here you go." I handed Mandii the cinnamon sticks. "I hope that'll be enough?"

"More than enough, thanks, Ray-Ray - uh..." She stole a look at the kitchen, where I could hear the fridge door opening as Darklighter railroaded Anton into feeding him. "Is he-you-I mean?"

"Not a chance." I grinned; the sheer idea was amusing. "Just a friend from work."

"He's cute!" she trilled. "And that hair! What does he do?"

"Accounting," I informed her. "And he's gay." Not exactly true, since after the first century or so just about everyone will try both sides of the fence, but Mandii didn't have to know that.

She drooped, then looked at me quizzically. "Are you all right?"

"Sure - oh, you mean this?" I touched the still-tender spot on my cheekbone. I made a mental note to put some make-up on before I ventured out again. "It's nothing. You should have seen the other guy."

"Right." She bit her lower lip. "You know - if you're looking for another work, we need a lot of people at the publisher's. And there's a lot of training courses, too."

"Thanks. But I wouldn't change my work for the world."

I saw her out of the door, still smiling. I had told the truth for once: working for Kirill was not only lurking in shady alleys and occasionally sleeping - among other things - with a vampire; it was work that was perfect for me. My hermetic skills might not be too good, since the snake burned out most of whatever other talent I had, but I love working with the theory, digging in the books and assembling whatever arcane ingredients are necessary. Enough of these, and even my crippled power suffices to create a lot of fireworks. And then there's the thing that with the variety of Kirill's business interests I'm rarely required to do the same thing twice. The brokerage is always acquiring and trading in mysterious artifacts, the wards in each of the all-night pubs have to be kept up with every advance in magical weaponry, the transporters need charms to see them safely on each route through thick and thin. And those are just the businesses based in New Granada; as the head of Kirill's magicians I get a lot of frequent-flier miles overseeing whatever he happens to own from Archangelsk to Montevideo, and I'm just thankful the media agency has their own magicians able to handle the day-to-day business, because otherwise I'd never get out of New York. Never a boring moment, that's for sure.

I stuck my head into the kitchen and saw that Darklighter and Miss Daisy had cornered Anton and forced him to scratch them behind the ears. "The coast is clear. And if you want to free yourself from the feline danger, the cattle prod's in the sink cupboard. I'll just go change."

"I prefer them to the pink harpy," Anton announced. "At least I know that if I feed them, they'll leave me alone."

"Mandii's not that bad."

"I have a low tolerance for high-pitched voices." He seemed to have helped himself to the brownies I'd baked the day before. Vampires and sugar, a match made in Stephen King's nightmares. "Where are we going next?"

"Library," I said before heading to the bedroom.

After a moment's thought I decided to keep on Kirill's pullover, securing the too-long sleeves with leather cuffs, switched from jeans to a pair of slacks that was easier on my bruised stomach muscles and topped the outfit off with a pair of pearl earrings. If my luck held, I'd end up fooling the IRS auditor into thinking I was a friendly mid-level office drone.

The only non-Ikea piece of furniture in my bedroom is a large Art Deco vanity table with a dozen small drawers that hold my cosmetics and a few extras. Fixing up my face took a few moments, since apart from covering up the bruise I limit myself to mascara and lip balm. Staring at what lay in the smallest, best-hidden drawer took a lot more.

No, I decided. The snake was the snake, and while I could use its assistance when absolutely necessary, I was a long way from desperate enough to set it loose. Not to mention the fact that there would be far too many explanations to make.

The snake stirred in the back of my mind. Go to sleep, I told it. We're safe now. If anyone tries to attack, Anton will eat him.

When I came back to the kitchen, Anton was still eating the brownies. I supposed they counted as a possible attack on my girlish figure.

In a fragrant disregard of proper securities procedures I left the kitchen window open when we left. I was pretty sure that anyone who could break the wards on it would also be able to open the front door, and apart from that, only the cats were keyed in to be able to pass through.

The St Germain branch of the New Granada municipal library is a more than imposing building. Various accounts attribute its founding and subsequent choice of architecture to either the Freemasons, the Illuminati or the United Church of Aten. My own digging in the archives unearthed a mid-nineteenth century debate in the newspapers that indicated the columns-and-pyramid combination was chosen as a compromise between the brothers Jacquel, one of whom was a Classicist and the other an Egyptologist. Like all buildings designed by committee, it's utterly impractical, full of nooks and crannies and blind corridors, and seems larger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Mostly because it is.

Nathaniel Gibson was on circulation desk duty when we came in. The setting sun painted the brown carpet in the main library hall in shades of red, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Anton fidgeting. Nightfall is always the most difficult time, when the demons wake.

There was an irate patron in front of Norton's desk, definitely not observing the 'no talking' rule. Some kind of yuppie from the business end of St Germain - the library is in the middle of New Granada's main thoroughfare, where the business district flows into the entertainment blocks before freeing up one side for the warehouses that host NG's multitude of logistics companies. Even from across the room, we could hear snatches of a rant about backrooms and evil librarians, as well as personal attacks on the length of Nathaniel's hair and the number of his piercings. Nathaniel on the other hand looked pale and utterly calm, which probably meant that Mr Irate was about to be turned into frog purée.

I shared a look with Anton. It never hurt to get on the good side of a librarian, because you never know when you'll need that inter-library loan, pronto.

"Hello, Nathaniel," I said in my best sultry and dangerous voice as I perched on the circulation desk. "That dude bothering ya?"

"Because if he is..." Anton mirrored my movements and didn't quite flash his teeth, but for the effect he might just as well have done it.

The yuppie jumped. "He's helping ME," he insisted.

I plucked his library card out of his hand and made it vanish. Pure vanilla card trick, but effective - he was distracted enough by the elaborate flourishes of my left hand not to pay attention to my right. "Not any more."

"You-" the yuppie spluttered.

The card appeared in Anton's hand, and he tucked it into the yuppie's breast pocket before tugging on the guy's tie. "Run home, little sheep," he suggested in a voice that brought to mind the fact that darkness was about to fall, and it wouldn't be a safe place.

The guy yelped and bolted. Anton and I high-fived each other.

"I should tell you off for scaring the patrons," Nathaniel mused. "But damn, the motherfucker deserved it."

I avoided pointing out that he was the one who passed the library card from me to Anton, aiding and abetting our trick. "Does this mean you'll let us into the back room?"

"You, yes. Him, if he promises no mysterious blood stains anywhere."

"Mommy, he's being meee-aaan to me." Anton pouted, then dodged as I mimed staking him. "Cross my heart and hope to die. Again."

"You will, if I find any corpses in the stacks." Nathaniel was being mean - the most trouble Anton ever got up to in the library was overturning a table when he threw a werewolf across the room. "Or you make any reference to Ralph Green."

"Was that what that idiot wanted?" I was curious. The name reminded me of three hours of my life that I wasted on a particularly pungent variety of conspiracy drivel.

"Sure. As if the bozos asking for 'The Buonarotti Cypher' in paperback weren't enough, now he has 'The Marlowe Tract' out and the waiting list is three months long. Ever since he moved to New Granada, the fans have been going crazy - they actually wanted him to hold a signing in here, but fortunately the boss chucked them out on their ear."

"The books any good?" Anton asked

"They're crap. Two dozen old theories, a lot of conspiracy mystery, the main character a glamourized version of himself, and all packaged as hidden truths."

"Not to mention the fact-checking." I shuddered. "The moron had France as a country where you have to be Catholic to advance in public service, for Lucian's sake! If he insists on that signing, I can come here and curse his nose to fall off."

Nathaniel just laughed and called over another librarian to hold the fort while he led us into the back. As usual, I lost my sense of direction three turns in and well before the doors marked "Top Secret" "Lascivi Speranza" and "Beware of the Leopard". I heard the enchantments had taken months and three virgin sacrifices. I don't even want to think about the political maneuvering required for permissions to spill that much human blood, but then even in the early nineteenth century New Granada had been the first magical city on the continent. San Francisco might be aspiring to catch up, NYC getting a major boost from all the souls, and New Orleans in the running as always, hurricanes notwithstanding, but NG has always been the hub of all that's worth knowing.

And the New Granada Library Magical was worth it.

Looking at the grand hall was like staring at an Escher painting: not something you want to do for a long time unless you happen to like headaches. And then there was the risk of a full-body ache, since if you gave them too much attention, some books on the more improbably placed shelves could decide that it was time to give up and let gravity take hold. The scattered statues depicted mages of ages past, and the one overlooking the entrance from the daylight world was of Marcian, gaunt and defiant, one of the first magical martyrs and the first to realize the approach of the age of Daylight. I knew that if I'd chosen to come through Alhambra, the mages' underground palace, I would have seen the companion statue of Lucian kindly smiling down at us.

Nathaniel turned back for his duty in the laymen's part of the library, and there was no other librarian in sight, but the filing system at NGLM is based on the Kabbalah. I never got proper Kabbalistic training due to incidents of gender, birth and family, but like any decent Hermetic mage I have the basics down, enough to get by on. I turned into the corridor between Chesed and Geburath.

I used Anton as free labor as I collected the books I wanted from the shelves, then let him settle on a window sill overlooking the Third Circle with his Blackberry while I browsed. I assumed the occasional noises of distress were related to the impending IRS visitation, and wondered how exactly he would justify the nocturnal operating hours to a layman auditor.

The second book from the Islamic section rendered an alternate solution to my initial counter-curse problem, one that did not require a black-market artifact such as a Hand of Fatima. After Olson's demise and with a volunteer vampire babysitter in my hair, I didn't feel up to ferreting out another source. The new way would require me to twist Merle's arm into making up a concoction, but he actually liked challenges and could probably even help me decipher ancient Moor rhyming recipes to boot. Not like he does much with his time but mix pain potions and healing draughts, anyway.

The other matter was more complicated. Something about the black guys from last night was nagging at me. The Dallas-imports were logical, since between Kirill's general reputation and role in the recent vampire political whirlwind anyone in-state would flip the bird to any fool trying to hire them to rough up his main mage, but they didn't look like the kind to have wannabe East Coast rap types on their speed dials. And then there were the guys themselves - I hadn't been in a position for methodological observation, but I remembered the feeling of steel rather than flesh encircling my wrists as they held me. It had just been a flash, but adding up the ethnicity, strength and body temperature left me with decidedly uncomfortable conclusions.

I ruled the West Indies option first go. Not because of a lack of opportunity to do mischief with human corpses - after hurricane Katrina this August the Big Easy magical structures, never the epitome of strictness, were in tatters and no-one was keeping track of anything short of trying to bring about the end of the world - but because any houngan worth his salt would have been right there, keeping an eye on any inconvenient flashes of lucidity. Since I managed to escape without running into one, that meant voodoo was out.

This meant that I had to go deeper. I hadn't delved into any African religions since Katanga, and I would have been happy not running into them again for as long as I lived, but there was no choice. I decided to start with the four-volume anthology of Dark Continent beliefs and make my way from there.

An hour later all I'd found out was that apart from the two Congo ones I'd known about before, at least two dozen other cults ranging from an offshoot of the Panther People to a sect of Ethiopian Kopts were known to produce effects in believers or victims that could account for my attackers. There were fifteen minutes until we had to be at work and it looked like I wouldn't get any further without more clues as to what exactly I was looking for, so I prodded Anton and we made our way outside, stopping to check out the Moor book on Kirill's corporate library card.

Twilight on St Germain Avenue is almost as bright as day, with arc lights and gas lamps and halogens, because every generation of street lighting is bound with bequests and occasional curses that are supposed to prevent vandalism and end up ensuring that no removal is ever possible. The throng of people was already thick enough to look like a rave, and experience told me we had half an hour before road traffic would get even more impossible. Even now it was enough of a crawl that we might have been better off walking.

Our car was parked in a small bay not far from the library itself. Anton walked forward, checking his pockets for the keys, and I stayed a little behind. I stretched discreetly, flexing my arms to get rid of the stiffness from turning so many pages. I closed my eyes, so I didn't see the last sunset redness leech from the sky, or the faces in the crowd suddenly change with fear.

There was no warning. Just a roar of an engine suddenly spurred, hitting my ears too late for my body to react.

If I'd been alone, I'd have been a smear on the pavement. Bone shards and brain matter, like Olson, because death doesn't care whether you're a rat or a snake, and one skeleton looks just like any other.

But I wasn't, and in the moment I heard the engine Anton was on top of me, knocking me down and managing to roll so that his body cushioned mine when we hit the ground.

The night had fallen.

I was stunned and he wasted valuable seconds pushing me gently away, so when we sat up the driver was long gone, not even the sound of his running feet left behind.

Anton's arm was around my shoulder.

Someone was trying to kill me.