City of Fallen Angels

“I didn’t know.” Simon’s voice cracked. “I would have come if I’d known.”


Maureen flung her blond hair back over her shoulder in a gesture that reminded Simon suddenly and painfully of Camille. “It doesn’t matter,” she said in her girlish little voice. “When the sun went down, they told me I could die or I could choose to live like this. As a vampire.”

“So you chose this?”

“I didn’t want to die,” she breathed. “And now I’ll be pretty and young forever. I can stay out all night, and I never need to go home. And she takes care of me.”

“Who are you talking about? Who’s she? Do you mean Camille? Look, Maureen, she’s crazy. You shouldn’t listen to her.” Simon staggered to his feet. “I can get you help. Find you a place to stay. Teach you how to be a vampire—”

“Oh, Simon.” She smiled, and her little white teeth showed in a precise row. “I don’t think you know how to be a vampire either. You didn’t want to bite me, but you did. I remember. Your eyes went all black like a shark’s, and you bit me.”

“I’m so sorry. If you’ll let me help you—”

“You could come with me,” she said. “That would help me.”

“Come with you where?”

Maureen looked up and down the empty street. She looked like a ghost in her thin white dress. The wind blew it around her body, but she clearly didn’t feel the cold. “You have been chosen,” she said. “Because you are a Daylighter. Those who did this to me want you. But they know you bear the Mark now. They can’t get to you unless you choose to come to them. So they sent me as a messenger.” She cocked her head to the side, like a bird’s. “I might not be anyone who matters to you,” she said, “but the next time it will be. They will keep coming for the people you love until there is no one left, so you might as well come with me and find out what they want.”

“Do you know?” Simon asked. “Do you know what they want?”

She shook her head. She was so pale under the diffuse lamplight that she looked almost transparent, as if Simon could have looked right through her. The way, he supposed, he always had.

“Does it matter?” she said, and reached out her hand.

“No,” he said. “No, I guess it doesn’t.” And he took her hand.





16

NEW YORK CITY ANGELS


“We’re here,” Maureen said to Simon.

She had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and was looking up at a massive glass-and-stone building that rose above them. It was clearly designed to look like one of the luxury apartment complexes that had been built on Manhattan’s Upper East Side before the Second World War, but the modern touches gave it away—the high sheets of windows, the copper roof untouched by verdigris, the banner signs draping themselves down the front of the edifice, promising LUXURY CONDOS STARTING AT $750,000. Apparently the purchase of one would entitle you to the use of a roof garden, a fitness center, a heated pool, and twenty-four-hour doorman service, starting in December. At the moment the place was still under construction, and KEEP OUT: PRIVATE PROPERTY signs were tacked to the scaffolding that surrounded it.

Simon looked at Maureen. She seemed to be getting used to being a vampire pretty fast. They had run over the Queensboro Bridge and up Second Avenue to get here, and her white slippers were shredded. But she had never slowed, and had never seemed surprised not to have gotten tired. She was looking up at the building now with a beatific expression, her small face aglow with what Simon could only guess was anticipation.

“This place is closed,” he said, knowing he was stating the obvious. “Maureen—”

“Hush.” She reached out a small hand to pull at a placard attached to a corner of the scaffolding. It came away with a sound of tearing plasterboard and ripped-out nails. Some of them rattled to the ground at Simon’s feet. Maureen tossed the square of plasterboard aside and grinned at the hole she’d made.

An old man who’d been passing by, walking a small plaid-jacketed poodle on a leash, stopped and stared. “You ought to get a coat on your little sister there,” he said to Simon. “Skinny thing like that, she’ll freeze in this weather.”

Before Simon could reply, Maureen turned on the man with a ferocious grin, showing all her teeth, including her needle fangs. “I am not his sister,” she hissed.

The man blanched, picked up his dog, and hurried away.

Simon shook his head at Maureen. “You didn’t need to do that.”