The Counterfeit City Read online

  She believed me.

  I had learned from the best.

  My ring now sits in its box at the bottom of my top dresser drawer. I can’t wear it while I work. I can’t wear it in front of Lilah. Attachment is a weakness. Attachment puts those you are attached to in grave danger.

  I refuse to put David in danger any longer. Refuse to lie to him any longer. Once I deliver this last package to Lilah, this part of my life is over. I started from scratch once, nine years ago when Lilah came into my life. I will do it again now, as I leave Lilah behind.

  I turn down the alley, careful to avoid the puddles of standing water and the rotting contents of tipped trash cans. Something skitters in the darkness, and I hear the click of tiny claws run past my boot.

  At the far end, a bare bulb glows red against a black wall. As I get closer, the shape of a door becomes visible in the weak crimson light. The copper knob is round, with a raised pattern in the center. The kind you’d find in a Victorian mansion rather than a speakeasy, but Lilah’s never been conventional.

  I open the door and red light spills out into the alley, sending whatever had been running around near my feet fleeing for darker corners.

  Stepping inside, I make my way down a short hallway strung with red lightbulbs, push past thick, black curtains, and enter Bedlam.

  The place is a love letter to the Grim Reaper. A bit on the nose for what we do, but Lilah has a hard aesthetic that bleeds through into every aspect of her life. Tables of rich, dark wood are adorned with tintype death photography and small animal skulls. Framed x-rays hang on walls papered in black brocade. At the bar, men in suspenders serve cocktails in black glasses to patrons dressed in their slinky, classic best.

  I search for Ciaran, the only colleague I have that’s also a friend, but it looks like I won’t be that lucky tonight. I haven’t told him I’m leaving, and regret slices through me that I won’t have a chance to say goodbye.

  Winding my way past the few remaining patrons, I head straight for the iron staircase in the corner, which spirals up to Lilah’s second-floor office.

  At the top, I pull a skeleton key from a zippered pocket in the thigh of my pants, fit it into the lock on the office door, and twist. The key pulls free of my fingers and disappears into the door.

  My confusion only lasts a moment as the door swings open with a whispered hiss and I’m faced with Kira, another of Lilah’s assassins.

  She is lean and hard, like me, like all of us, but whereas I’ve managed to avoid immediately visible disfiguration, Kira has a wicked scar that runs along her jaw from her right ear to her chin.

  We’ve never spoken more than a handful of words to each other. Hired killers make few friends. The way she looks at me now, though, taking a slow, smirking inventory of my bruises and ripped clothes… I get the distinct sense that she’s enjoying my pain.

  She moves past me, and I smell dead leaves and taste bitter copper in the back of my throat. Someone died in the woods tonight, and Kira probably delivered their heart to Lilah on a silver platter.

  I step into Lilah’s office. The door latches with a quiet snick behind me and the room goes quiet as the grave. I wait to be spoken to.

  The wall to my left is comprised entirely of bookshelves, and in another life, I could’ve lost years in here reading them all. They are worn, the covers tattered, and judging by the state of some, ancient.

  The wall to my right is made of one-way glass and looks down on Lilah’s patrons as they drink and dance. She sees all from up here on high, and they usually give her quite the show.

  The woman herself is seated in an ornate chair behind a heavy mahogany desk directly in front of me. The wall behind her is blank and black, aside from one centered shelf that holds a grinning glass skull.

  “I can give you that key back, you know. Change your mind and it’s yours again.” She sits back and levels her gaze at me. Most would crumble under that stare. Lilah is dangerous and she knows it. Eyes winged with liner and blood red lips, she is a darkly elegant Gothic queen, and we are her subjects.

  “Haven’t I given you a good life?” she asks, and though there is only one acceptable answer, I suppose she wants to hear me say it out loud.

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you can leave us so easily? Leave me so easily?”

  “Easy isn’t the word I’d use,” I respond, and it’s true. The decision to leave was the most difficult of my life. Lilah gave me a second chance. The fact that I’m now using it to leave her is a special kind of betrayal.

  Lilah stands. Smooth and languid in her movements, she is a cobra, and she is all sweet venom.

  “Are you sure you want to give all of this up, Gray?”

  I am certain that I betray no emotion. Years of working for Lilah have made me impenetrable. “Yes.”

  She has given me every opportunity here, and I have rejected them all. This last word is the final nail in the coffin.

  “Approach.”

  My last delivery. My last mission. My last time carrying out a routine that has become second nature to me. I approach the desk, pulling the black box I retrieved from the warehouse out from the inside of my jacket.

  I set the package on the desk and step back. Waiting.

  Lilah flips open the lid.

  Inside, resting on red velvet is a book bound in soft leather, the pages gilded with gold. It is old, perhaps centuries, and I have the urge to open it to see if the pages crumble when I touch them.

  Though it’s only for a moment, the briefest of sparks, I swear I see something like excitement in Lilah’s eyes.

  She snaps the lid closed. “One final payment, then.”

  As I’ve done countless times before, I turn to face the door, giving Lilah my back. I hear the scrape of something heavy being moved, a hiss of air, and four quiet beeps of what I assume is a code being punched into a safe.

  Another hiss. The thunk of a latch. Recognizing the sounds, realizing it’s safe to do so, I turn back to face Lilah.

  She holds a thick stack of bills, and I get the distinct sense that she’s debating whether or not to give them to me. Perhaps she wants to draw this out a bit longer. Make me sweat. Or maybe she thinks I’ll seize this opportunity to take it all back. Say that I’ll stay here with her and her band of assassins and thieves. Say that I’m sorry.

  I’m sad, and scared, and exhilarated, but the one thing I am not is sorry. So I keep my mouth shut and wait.

  After a long, appraising moment, Lilah sets the money on the desk and slides it toward me.

  “Goodbye, Gray.”

  ***

  Seconds later I am making my way back down the staircase and into the main floor of Bedlam. Despite the late hour, there seem to be more people here, but I’m too distracted by the feeling in my gut to pay them much attention.

  Lilah shouldn’t have let me go that easily. In the years that I’ve worked for her, I’ve never seen anyone leave. Some have been killed on missions, but to quit? It hasn’t happened, until now.

  I push past the black curtains and into the hallway, but the feeling of unease grows stronger, and I stop.

  Turn.

  Slide a finger through the gap in the curtains, pulling them aside a fraction of an inch, and look back into Bedlam.

  It’s the same pretty people drinking the same expensive alcohol, but what’s different tonight? I scan the room, and… there. In my haste to leave, I didn’t see Kira sitting at the bar.

  Kira is a ghost who comes and goes. A shadow in the corner of your vision. She does not sit and sip from a highball glass.

  There’s movement from above, and I watch Lilah descend the spiral staircase. Her patrons know she’s there. There is a magnetism to her. They do their best not to stare, to focus on their drinks and their dates, but they feel her in the room. It’s impossible not to.

  She saunters to Kira, putting her hand over Kira’s glass to stop her from drinking, and leans close to whisper something in her ear.

  Kira
sits back and smiles.

  Another mission, perhaps. It’s nothing to do with me. This is a lifetime of paranoia rearing its ugly head, and if I’m going to be… normal, I guess is the best word, then I have to stop believing that every glance is nefarious and every whisper is deadly. Lilah’s let me go, if not with her blessing, then at least with a grudging acceptance.

  I tamp down on the cold churning worry in my core and walk away.

  ***

  I swear the red bulb above Bedlam’s door pulses brightly for a moment as I leave.

  3

  Nico’s never closes, not really. His bookshop sits in midtown, straddling the line between the uptown glitz and the downtown grit. He is neutral, he is welcoming, and he is universally loved.

  Nicodemus. No last name, he told me once. I’d scoff at that from anyone else, but I accepted it without a second thought from him. To think of him as simply a kindly old man would be a mistake. Nico has secrets best left unsaid and stories best left untold.

  The sodium lamps on the street throw muddy orange light on the worn facade of his store, and it’s just enough illumination to make out the Sorry, We’re Closed sign he’s hung on the front door.

  I pull a loose brick from the wall next to the latch, reach in, and punch three keys on a small keypad. The door unlocks with a soft click, and I replace the brick and slip inside.

  Nico’s is stuffed to bursting with books. Stacks litter the floor, tables, and the two tattered armchairs in the corner. Picking my way around a particularly precarious pile, I head toward the faint glow that emanates from the back room.

  I find him hunched over a drafting table, peering down at a small journal or ledger of some sort. A magnifying glass is attached to the table by a thin mechanical arm, and he raises a gnarled hand to position it over the pages.

  After a long moment, he sits back. “Bah,” he huffs, and slides the glass away.

  “Not what you were hoping for?” I ask.

  He snaps the book shut, sets it on a small shelf to the side of his table, and straightens. As he turns, the scowl on his face melts into joy, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiles wide.

  “No, but half of the fun is in the search. You know that better than just about anyone, don’t you, Gray?”

  “You know me,” I say. “I live for adventure.”

  “I wasn’t expecting you tonight, but what a pleasant surprise it is. Lilah must be working you all to death…”

  He trails off as the dark truth of that statement hits us both.

  “You’ve seen others tonight?” I ask.

  “You’re my third. It seems she’s only getting busier, eh?”

  I don’t know the full extent of Lilah’s enterprise. None of us do. We traffic in stolen objects and lives cut short, and in that type of business, secrets keep you alive. At least for a little while.

  Either way, it’s not my problem anymore.

  Nico slides off of his stool. He is half my height, and his ratty cardigan hangs on his thin frame. He comes around the small bookshelf and I blink as I realize he’s wearing bunny slippers.

  “After hours is for slippers and scotch, Lady Gray.” It’s then that I notice a glass half-filled with brown liquid next to the drafting table.

  “I couldn’t agree more, Nico. You’re my last stop.”

  “Excellent! Let’s get you home quickly, shall we? No need to waste any more of your night with an old man like me.”

  “Time spent with you is never wasted, Nico.”

  He claps with delight. “Are you picking up or dropping off?”

  I pull out every bloody blade I used tonight except for one from the zippered pocket on my pants.

  “Dropping off, then,” he says and moves to the far wall where a dozen silver trays are stacked on a counter next to a large porcelain sink.

  The cold prickle of nerves washes over me and my heart beats harder as I say, “For the last time, actually.”

  It takes a moment for what I’ve said to register, and he only hesitates for a brief moment, just a tiny hitch, before plucking a tray from the top of the stack.

  He returns to stand in front of me, and the whimsy of the slippers is a sharp contrast to the trembling of his hands as he holds the tray out. This is not his usual small tremors. This is fear. “How?”

  “I asked.”

  He frowns, as if I’ve spoken in a language he doesn’t know and he’s trying to decipher my meaning. “In all my years with Lilah, I don’t believe I’ve seen anyone leave. At least not voluntarily.”

  Nico’s words stoke the dull alarm I’ve felt in my gut since leaving Bedlam. I set the blades on the tray, leaving red smears on the shiny metal. “It doesn’t make sense to me, either.”

  I do my best to push back on my unease. To immerse myself in it is to borrow trouble. She’s let me go. That’s all that matters.

  “You are one of her best.”

  I nod. To deny it would be false humility.

  He is working it through in his head, and I can practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he plays out and discards various scenarios.

  “Though…”

  Hope springs up in me, and I will the next words out of his mouth to be the ones that settle my worry and help me believe that I’m out from under Lilah’s thumb free and clear.

  “She does have a special affection for you. I know of no one else that she saved as she did with you. Is it possible she is putting another ahead of herself? For once?”

  My thoughts flash briefly to the night she came for me. Amid the dead space and pain, I remember bits of the chaos, the sense of certainty that my short life was over, and then the small respite I found when Ciaran carried me, nearly unconscious, from my burning prison and delivered me into Lilah’s service. She had seen something valuable in me, and Lilah never lets valuable things slip from her grasp.

  “It seems so,” I say, and I want so badly for it to be true.

  I hate that I want reassurance from him, that Lilah has truly let me go, free and clear, and that I won’t have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I hate even more that he’s not giving it to me. Instead, he says, “I’m sure you want to get yourself cleaned up before you go.”

  “Is it free?”

  “It is indeed,” he says, sweeping his hand toward the door next to the sink. “Been empty for hours.”

  Muscles starting to ache, I gingerly make my way toward the door.

  “And Gray?” I turn to find him watching me with an unnerving intensity. “Have you kept any weapons?”

  I pat the pocket on the outside of my right thigh. “The blade she gave me my first night at the estate.”

  That seems to relax him, if only a fraction. “Good. Let’s hope it spends the rest of its time with you gathering dust rather than blood.”

  ***

  A string of bare bulbs flares to life as I descend the stairs to the basement. It’s not dank and damp, as one would expect, but clean and compartmentalized, with a massive row of locked cabinets along one wall and a small sink, mirror, and counter in the far corner.

  Punching in a code, I open my cabinet. The others belong to the rest of Lilah’s assassins. Only one may use this room at a time, and the contents of each cabinet are known only to the owner.

  I grab a brown paper bag off of one of the shelves, pull my hoodie up and over my head, and drop it inside. Tiny bits of bone fall from the fabric, clicking as they hit the floor. Trench Coat’s skull.

  I have become accustomed to the gore.

  I’m looking forward to becoming unaccustomed to it.

  My fitted shirt joins the hoodie. Then my ruined pants, which crack and bend when I peel them off, the dried blood having soaked through and stuck to me.

  When I am left naked, with the cool air of the underground raising goosebumps on my skin, I can finally see the damage that was done.

  The left side of my ribcage is beginning to turn a deep purple. I run my tongue along inside of my jaw.
It’s sore where I was backhanded, and my cheek is almost certainly turning the same shade as my ribs. Cuts both shallow and deep slice across my thighs and shins. Some will heal into nothingness. Others will become new scars. Permanent reminders of the life I chose, and the life I choose to leave behind.

  I grab a matchbook from a clear glass vase on the shelf.

  Open the front grate on the old iron furnace in the back corner of the room.

  Place the bag of clothes inside and toss a lit match on top.

  I watch it burn.

  ***

  I close the door of the compartment and step under the hot spray of the shower.

  The water is tiny razor blades on my skin, and I relish it.

  Blood and dirt swirl down the drain.

  ***

  Antiseptic, gauze, and tape are scattered on the counter. I am dry and clothed, with my wounds dressed. Leggings cover the bandages and bruises well enough. The tank top and half a bottle of concealer hide the darkening on my side.

  Leaning over the sink to get close to the mirror, I dab thick foundation along the tender mark on my cheek. That goon got me good.

  A light dusting of powder goes over the makeup, and I turn my face to the side to check out my handiwork. I’ve gotten good at this part over the years.

  David will never know.

  ***

  It was nearly dawn when I left the shop.

  I had cleaned out my cabinet, throwing the entire contents into the fire along with my ruined clothes. There is no trace of me left at Nico’s. I did not see him again before I left, and though sadness followed me for blocks after I walked out the door, a deep feeling of gratitude, for him and what he’d done for me over the years, gradually replaced it.