“I do like the details,” the art dealer said, coming back out. “There’s something special in the contradiction between the formal style of the classic six, the stained-glass windows and the wood paneling, and the raw brutality of the insect swarm.”
“Oh?” Tom said. “That is—yes, absolutely. The clients are very negotiable,” he added, with a faint stirring of hope.
The art dealer stood looking around the apartment a little more, and then shook his head. “It’s a really tough call, but I don’t think so. The apartment is great, but, you know, Tudor City. It’s so … stuffy. I just can’t see it. It would be almost like living on the Upper East Side. But tell the sellers I love their style,” he added.
“Why is the maintenance so high?” the vampire said suspiciously, reading the offering sheet for the Battery Park apartment.
“Well,” the selling broker said, and then he admitted that it was a land-lease, meaning the co-op didn’t actually own the ground underneath the building, and also the lease was running out in fifteen years and no one had any idea what the term renewal was going to be. “But we’ve got a brownie super, and there’s a fantastic sundeck on the—” He stopped at the look Jennifer shot him.
Waiting in the lobby as the vampire dispiritedly bundled himself up again, Jennifer said, “I’ve got a few condos lined up that we could take a look at this weekend.”
“I don’t want to live in a condo,” the vampire said, muffled, as he wrapped a scarf around his head. “Those places let anyone in.”
Jennifer opened and shut her mouth. “Okay,” she said, after a moment. “Okay, a co-op it is. You know what —could I maybe get you to send me your last board application?”
“I’ve got the money!” the vampire said, offended, his eyes glowing briefly red from behind the scarf.
“No, I’m sure you do!” Jennifer said, not fumbling for the little crucifix she’d worn under her blouse. “I don’t even really need the financials; I’m just thinking maybe there’s something we could do to … polish it up a little extra for a board. It might be worth getting an early start on it.”
“Oh,” the vampire said, mollified. “All right; I’ll have my last broker send it to you. I guess it couldn’t hurt.”
Oh, but it could. One of his three personal reference letters was from his
“I thought it was sweet,” the vampire protested. “Shows I haven’t lost touch with my mortal life.”
“She’s ninety-six and lives in Arizona,” Jennifer said. “When was the last time you saw her?”
The vampire looked guilty. “I call every day,” he muttered.
The other two letters were from a pooka—just the kind of guest everyone wanted visiting their neighbor, especially in horse form and snorting flames—and a necromancer.
“But she’s in-house at Goldman Sachs, with the lost-wealth research division,” the vampire said.
“Okay, see, that’s excellent,” Jennifer said. “Let’s maybe ask her to revise this letter to focus on that, and let’s just skip mentioning the necromancer part. Now, about the pooka—”
“He’s a biotech entrepreneur!” the vampire said.
“Let’s see if there’s someone else we can get, okay?” Jennifer said.
The goblin doorman let Doug up without any hassle this time, even doing a good goblin impression of beaming. It took some effort not to glare at him. No wonder he was so happy Kell and his partner were looking for a new place, if the other guy was some kind of nut.
Kell was in the apartment alone, looking even smaller and hunched in a large shapeless sweater, and he twisted his hands anxiously as he let Doug in. “I suppose,” he said, “I suppose there’s no way to reopen the deal? I’d be willing to pay more—”
“Not a chance,” Doug said. “Mr. Kell, I don’t think you get it. If you or your partner does something, uh,
“Oh,” Kell said, dismally.
“Honestly, the solution here is to find a place that your partner will be happy with, too,” Doug said. “Is he here? I really do need to meet him.”
Kell sighed and said, “Just a moment.” He went to a cabinet and opened it and took out a bottle of whiskey and a glass. He brought them over to the table and poured a glass.
Doug had seen a lot weirder things than a client needing a drink, but it did take him by surprise when Kell slid the glass over to him instead of downing it. “Thanks, but—”
“No,” Kell said. “You’ll want it in a moment.”
Doug started to ask, except Kell wasn’t talking anymore. He’d fallen back onto the couch, and he was doubled over with his face in his hands, and something weird was happening to him. He seemed to be … growing.
“Uh,” Doug said, and then Kell lifted his face out of his hands, and it wasn’t Kell anymore. The eyes were the same color but bloodshot and wider apart in a broader face, with a flattened nose and a jaw that looked like it had been carved out of rock. His neck was thickening even while Doug watched.
“Well, fucking finally,” not-Kell said, straightening up even more. The couch creaked under him. “So you’re the broker who took him to that shithole?”
Doug paused and said, “And you’re…?”
Not-Kell was coughing a little bit, thumping himself on the chest as he finished growing. He would have made about two of Kell with some leftovers. He belched loudly and bared his teeth in what you could’ve called a grin, if by grin you meant a mouth full of more shining white teeth than anybody should’ve had. “Call me Hyde.”
“Okay,” Doug said, after a second. “So that would make him…”
Hyde snorted. “I know. He changed the name when he moved here. Fucking pathetic.” He pointed to the drink. “Are you going to have that?”
Doug looked at the glass, then slid it back across the table. “So, Mr. Hyde,” he said, “can you tell me what you’re looking for in an apartment?”
The eradicator stepped back from the wall of bugs and shook his head slowly and lugubriously.
“Really? Nothing?” Tom said, heart sinking.
“Sorry,” the eradicator said. “These people, they lived here like twenty years or something. They put down roots. This,” he waved a hand at the bugs, “this goes way, way down. I could charge you ten grand and strip off the top layers of the curse, wipe the bugs out, but they’d be back in two months. Might be even worse—millipedes or something. I hate those things.” The eradicator shuddered his shoulders up and down expressively. “Anyway, you’re not getting this out for good until you rip down the whole building.”
He stopped and thought about it, and after a moment added, “Or you could get the two sellers back in and get them to make up. That can clear stuff like this up sometimes.”
Tom looked at him. “The sellers’ divorce took two years to finish, and they’re still in court on some issues.”
The eradicator shrugged. “Do they want to sell their apartment or not?”
Tom sighed. Then he paused and said, “So, wait, if you tried to take off the whole curse, the bugs might get worse?”
“Right,” the eradicator said.
“If you
“What did you have in mind?” the eradicator asked.
The vampire’s application was still pretty disheartening, especially when Jennifer compared it to the one she was putting the final touches on that afternoon. She didn’t like to jinx things, but kitsune or not, it was pretty much guaranteed Mei Shinagawa would be a shoo-in at the no-dogs-allowed Berkeley. Six letters of reference, terrific financials, and she’d even tucked in tiny origami cranes to be included with the copies of the application, one for
