She had an outdoorswoman’s squint and silky brown hair that framed her long cheekbones in feathered wings; it made her look like a bright-eyed Afghan hound. She showed him her badge and handed him back the keys before he was fully in the door.
“The victim was an alcoholic,” Marion said, re-locking the door as Matthew put his chicken on the counter. It was in a cardboard animal carrier. Occasionally a glossy jet-black beak or a malevolent eye would appear in one of the holes along the top. It scuffed and kicked. He pushed it away from the counter edge and it grabbed at him, as he thought of a line from a Russian fairy tale: Listen, Crow, crow’s daughter! Serve me a certain service—
“The nun was a drunk?”
“To put it crudely. And we found another possible for the same bogey, about three days ago. Elderly man, never married, lived alone, drank like a fish. We’re continuing to check back for others.” She flipped pages in her report pad. “Here’s something interesting. He was castrated in a farming accident when he was in his teens.”
“Oh,” Matthew said. “It’s always virgins, isn’t it?”
“For dragons and unicorns, anyway,” Marion answered. “But I’d guess you’re correct. And more than that. Heavy drinkers. Possibly with some talent; a link my … secular … colleagues won’t come up with is that Promethean records show that we considered inviting both of these victims for apprenticeship when they were young.”
“So they saw things,” Matthew said, thinking of Henry, living on the monster’s doorstep. If the thing had a preference for sexually inexperienced prey, that would explain why it hadn’t eaten him yet. Well, if Matthew was prepared to make a few conjectures. “Do you think it wanted them because they drank, or they drank because they saw things?”
“We operate on the first assumption.” Marion picked her way around him, leaned down to peer into the animal carrier. She pulled back as a grabbing beak speared at her eye. “Vicious.”
“I sure hope so.”
“Jane said you had a possible ID on the bogey?”
He knelt down and began peeling the rug back, starting beside the inside wall of the living room. “The black cock isn’t enough of a hint?”
“Basilisk.”
“That’s a weasel. Cockatrice, I’m guessing. Though how it lured its victim into hurling herself from her window is beyond me. You’re describing very specialized prey.”
She straightened up and arched, cracking her spine. She picked a spoon off the breakfast bar and turned it, considering the way the light pooled in the bowl. “Call it one in ten thousand? Then the Greater New York metropolitan area has, what, two thousand more just like ’em?”
“Something like that,” Matthew said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. A dust bunny was stuck to the heel of his hand; he blew it off. When he opened his eyes, he found her staring at him, tongue-tip peeking between her lips.
“Want to make sure we’re safe?” she said, with a grin. The spoon glittered as she turned it beside her face. “I’m off duty. And your chicken won’t mind.” She held up her left hand and showed him a plain gold band. “No hassles.”
He bit his lower lip. Matthew had practice. And years of careful sublimation—which was, of course, the point: sacrifice made power. He also had a trick of flying under the gaydar, of making straight women think he was gay and gay men think he was straight. All just part of the camouflage.
He hated having to say no. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s a lovely offer. But I need a virgin for the cockatrice already, and it beats having to send out.”
She laughed, of course.
They never believed him.
“Come on,” he said. “Help me ensorcel this chicken.”
Doctor S. lived in Midtown West, on 60th near Columbus Ave. It was kind of a hike, but they got there before sunset. It wouldn’t get dark for an hour, but that was only because the afternoons were still long. By the time they paused down the block Katie’s stomach was rumbling. That milkshake was only good for so long.
The spot they picked to loiter had a clear view of the front door of Doctor S.’s brown brick apartment building. “Nice place for a junior professor,” Melissa said, and for ten seconds she sounded like she was from Boston, all right.
Katie looked at Gina and made big eyes and whimpering noises, but it was Melissa who went and got convenience store hot dogs, Diet Pepsi, and a bag of chips. They ate in the shade on the north side of the building, the heat soaking from the stones, their hair lank and grimy with the city air. Katie scratched her cheek and brought her fingernails away sporting black crescents. “Ew.”
“Welcome to New York,” Gina said, which was what she said every time Katie complained.
Katie had nearly stopped complaining already. She scratched her nails against her jeans until most of the black came out and finished her hot dog one-handed, then wiped the grime from her face with the napkin before drying her hands. It worked kind of halfway—good enough, anyway, that when Melissa splashed ice water from a sport bottle into everyone’s cupped hands and Katie in turn splashed it onto her face, she didn’t wind up feeling like she’d faceplanted into a mud puddle.
The second handful, she drank, and only realized she had been carrying a heat headache when the weight of it faded. “All right,” she said, and took the bottle from Melissa to squirt some on her hair. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Unfortunately, apparently Doctor S. isn’t,” Melissa said, reclaiming the bottle to drink. She tilted her head back, her throat working, and as she lowered it a droplet ran from the corner of her mouth. “No, wait, spoke too soon.”
Katie stepped behind the pole of a street lamp—silly, because Doctor S. wasn’t even looking in their direction—and caught sight of his stiff little blond ponytail zigzagging through the crowd. He was wearing another sort-of costume—Katie wondered what he wore when he wore what he liked, rather than what suited his role—a well-cut gray suit with a fabulous drape. A woman in a navy pantsuit, whose light flyaway hair escaped its pins around a long narrow face, walked alongside him. Her stride was familiar. She had a white cardboard pet carrier slung from her left hand; Katie could not see what was in it, but it swung as if something was moving slightly inside.
“Isn’t that the cop who showed up where the woman jumped?”
Katie glanced at Gina and back at the woman, a stuttering doubletake. It was. Not the same outfit, and her hair was clipped back aggressively now—though it wasn’t staying restrained—but the woman was conspicuous. “Well,” Katie said, feeling as if she watched the words emerge from a stranger’s mouth, “we could follow him and find out where they’re going.”
Neither Matthew nor Marion was particularly sanguine about attacking on a cockatrice in the dark. They had to take the subway across the island (at least the cockerel was quiet, huddled in the bottom of its carrier) but still ascended to the surface with light to spare. It roused the bird; Matthew heard it shift, and Marion kept her fingers well clear of the air holes. It was, as promised, aggressive.