Chasing Midnight

“Lovely,” Cato said, lifting her hair in his hands and letting it sift through his fingers. “So much more than I had hoped.”

He gestured Alice back to the bed and sat down beside her. “There is still a great deal for you to learn, my dear, and I will be your teacher until you have passed beyond your infancy…shall we say.” He lifted her chin with his fingertips. “Do you remember what we discussed?”

Alice nodded. There was more than one price to pay for this miracle, and she had resolved to settle the debt without complaint. She began to remove her nightgown.

Cato laughed. “My dear, you misunderstood. It is quite true that we are now bound by blood…as you will learn should either of us find ourselves long separated or in a life-threatening predicament, unlikely as that may seem. But I am far too old to find the prospect of rolling about between the sheets in the least appealing.”

Alice released her breath. “Then how can I repay you for what you’ve done?”

He held her gaze, and she felt the power of his great age work its way into her mind. “You shall make a new life,” he said. “You will have all the money you could possibly require, all the freedom you have lacked since the coming of your illness. I ask only that you protect your secret, as our kind must, and come to me when I call you.”

Alice angrily scrubbed at her cheeks. “Why? Why have you helped me?”

“Your father and I were friends, brothers in science in spite of our obvious differences. He never learned of my true nature, but he would have appreciated my intervention in more ways than one. And I…I consider your Conversion one of the great achievements of my latter years.” He kissed her forehead and rose. “Rest now. It will be a few days before your instruction can begin. You mayspend the time composing a name for yourself. Until then, everything you need will be supplied by my servants.”

He left, closing the door behind him. Alice lay still, half-afraid that if she moved she might wake to find it had all been a dream. But the moments passed, and nothing changed. After a while she got up again and wandered about the room, stopping before the mirror once more.

Perhaps this was what she might have been like if the disease hadn’t claimed her at so young an age. Perhaps she might have attended parties and outings with other young people on Long Island, gone riding and sailing, even married.

Or perhaps they would have snubbed her anyway, knowing that all she and her mother had left was the decaying mansion and two servants to manage the entire estate. She couldn’t have afforded the expensive frocks or given the right kinds of soirées.

No, she would always have been an outcast among the fashionable set to which her mother had once belonged. Alice smiled at herself, imagining Lucy Shearer and Wilson Hinds, Johnnie Macklin and Oralie Gray, all the neighbors and former friends who had found even pity too taxing an emotion. Outcast they had declared her, and outcast she would remain. To hell with them all. She would learn to live in a way they couldn’t begin to imagine.

Tossing her hair over her shoulders, she turned toward the window. Cato had reminded her of one of the basic rules of her new existence: one must not walk in daylight without layers of protective clothing. A rule that must be obeyed. A law that meant survival.

Just another set of chains to choke and bind.

She walked slowly toward the window, her gaze fixed on the sliver of light at the edges of the shade. She passed her hand through the narrowband of illumination. There was no pain. With a swift jerk she drew back the dark, heavy curtains. The shade was triple thick, utterly safe. Alice raised it with a sharp tug on the cord.

Heat and light flooded into the room, bathing Alice’s face and hands, penetrating her thin gown as if it were tissue. She braced herself for the burning, the punishment she had risked by daring to defy the rules.

Strangely, nothing happened. Her skin remained smooth and unmarred, with no blisters or blackening, no agony as the world of humanity took its toll. Only the soft and gentle caress of warmth stroking her cheek like a long-absent lover.

She pressed her palms to the window and looked down into the street. Fewof those people passing on the sidewalks were aware that they shared their city with beings that looked very like them but were not human. None of them knew what had transpired in this room today. They had never heard the name Alice Emil Charles.

That would change. She would choose a new name, and New York would come to know it, rules or no rules. She would have fun. And she would laugh…laugh so long and loud that even the snooty debs and fancy chaps would hear her in their pricey mansions.

Alice turned her face up to the sun. Let them try and pity her now. Let them keep their rarified world of knowing the right people and wearing the right clothes. She wanted no part of it.

She would never go back again.

Chapter One

New York City, 1926

GRIFFIN DURANT STEPPED out of the elevator, strode across the polished lobby floor and slipped through the revolving doors, fortifying himself for the assault of smell and sound that crouched on Broad Street like an attentive predator awaiting its next victim. He pushed his hat lower on his head, wrinkling his nose against the acrid blend of gasoline, fermenting refuse and human sweat. His ears buzzed with the grinding of engines and the wildly varying pitch of human voices…but, as always, it was only a matter of moments before he was able to bring his senses under control and face the world with reasonable calm.

“Mr. Durant?”

A hand tugged at his coat, and he looked down at the smudged, familiar face of the corner newsboy.

“Paper, Mr. Durant?”

Griffin reached inside his pocket and pulled out a coin. “Here you are, Bobby,” he said, tucking the paper under his arm.

Bobby stared at the coin and gave a joyful whoop. “Gee, thanks, Mr. Durant!”

Griffin sighed. It took so little to make a difference in this boy’s life, yet he was only one of millions who called this city their home…teeming multitudes cast up on the shores of the biggest city in America. A metropolis that was rapidly becoming a place of corruption, violence and sudden death.

You could have chosen another city, he thought.

A city without such a thriving bootleg trade, for instance—though one couldn’t escape the traffic in illicit drink anywhere in the United States. New York’s business was simply bigger and more notorious than in any other municipality except Chicago.

You could have stayed in England. But then Gemma might never have come to know her native country. And he would never have escaped the reminders of the Great War that haunted him every time he read the latest news from Europe.

Griffin shook off the crawling sensation that raised the hairs on the back of his neck, took a firm grip on his briefcase and flagged down a taxi to take him to East Forty-second Street near Grand Central Station. The cabbie let him off a few blocks from the dressmaker’s shop. As he walked, Griffin dispassionately examined the women with whom he shared the sidewalk: soberly dressed dowagers with small dogs clutched in their arms; working girls in conservative suits; tycoons’ daughters in afternoon frocks from Worth or Chanel…and the flappers in their brazenly short dresses, daring anything male to gawk at their rolled stockings and rouged lips.

Frowning in disapproval, Griffin averted his gaze. Thank God Gemma had only left her English boarding school a few months ago and hadn’t yet been exposed to what passed for fashion among the fast set. The gown he’d ordered for her birthday was elegant, expensive and eminently tasteful. He had meant to commission a frock from Molyneux, but there simply hadn’t been time to have anything made overseas. With any luck, Gemma wouldn’t notice the difference.

A short walk brought him to the couturière’s. He summoned up a smile for the salesgirl who hurried to meet him.

“Mr. Durant,” she said, “you’ve come for the gown?”

“I have, Miss Jones. Is Madame Aimery available?”

“Of course, Mr. Durant. If you will excuse me…” She vanished through the back door, leaving Griffin alone with the shop’s other customer.

The young woman was slim and pretty, her warm brown skin a pleasant contrast to the pale green of her frock. Griffin tipped his hat to her, and she smiled in return.

“A very pleasant day, Mr. Durant,” she said.

Griffin started. “I beg your pardon…have we met before?”

She laughed, a soft, rich chuckle. “I heard Miss Jones speak your name…and who hasn’t heard of Mr. Griffin Durant?”

“Am I as notorious as all that, Miss…”

“Moreau. Louise Moreau.” She offered her hand, and he took it. Her grip was firm. “Your notoriety is of the salutary variety, Mr. Durant. I—”

She broke off as Madame Aimery emerged from the back room with Miss Jones and another assistant, both assistants laden with ribbon-tied boxes.

“I beg your pardon for the wait, Monsieur Durant,” Madame Aimery said in her light French accent.

“No trouble at all,” Griffin said. He glanced at Miss Moreau. “Please attend to this young lady first. I’m in no hurry.”

Madame Aimery gestured to her assistant, who approached Miss Moreau with three wide boxes. “Good afternoon, Miss Moreau,” she said briskly. “Would you care to examine the dresses?”

Miss Moreau smiled slightly, matching Madame Aimery’s almost imperceptible coolness. “That will not be necessary. I’m certain that Miss Chase will find the dresses very much to her liking.”