Bloody Fabulous by Ekaterina Sedia Read Free Book Online Page A

yo-yos orbited around one another as he said, “Here’s a related investment opportunity we might look at.”
    Reliquary was jumping, if that word could be used to describe the cold, covert way Nightwalkers shop for clothes and stalk each other for blood. In the crowded store each one stared and got stared at from behind dark glasses.
    Two cash registers were working. At one Scarlet Jones wore a blood red scarf from Maison Herrault around her neck. Her face immobile, her skin dead white, fang tips visible though her mouth was closed, she racked up sales without seeming aware she was doing so. Bret more or less bagged the purchases.
    Just as attractions the two were worth far more than they were paid and even a good deal more than they stole. Lilia calculated that around the start of the summer this would no longer be true.
    By then Reliquary and the Vampire Revival would be edging their way into the limbo reserved for old fads and she’d have accumulated a nest egg.
    Already the store’s customers were largely from New Jersey and outer boroughs. Complaints from the neighbors about the crowds were making her landlord nervous. Building and fire inspectors had put in their appearances and an unmarked car with plainclothes cops sometimes parked across the street.
    Lilia sat on a stool and watched it all through a mild haze. The trick she told herself was to keep the nips and bites small and the haze manageable. She remembered the bone-wracking horrors of withdrawal too well to want a repeat.
    Just then Larry came in the door looking sloppy and vulnerable. He scanned the customers, all of whom ignored him.
    Lilia and he had begun hanging around, talking over old times at CBGB’s and the Mudd Club. She’d bitten him once or twice—playfully, with a bit of vengeance thrown in. Her teeth were hardly fangs.
    She wanted to make sure he didn’t blow the money he got in the divorce settlement. While the Kindly Ones had said their good-bys to Marguerite that last time at Savage Design, Lilia had managed to get a couple of glimpses of the investment proposal on their table.
    They were involved in the development of a Betty Ford style clinic for vampires on an estate up the Hudson. Kids like Scarlet, Bret, and many others had families able to pay for their recoveries.
    Lilia intended to invest Larry’s money. If that worked out she might invest some of her own savings. He crossed the shop towards her and she watched his throat.

Bespoke
Genevieve Valentine
    Disease Control had sprayed while Petra was asleep, and her boots kicked up little puffs of pigment as she crunched across the butterfly wings to the shop.
    Chronomode ( Fine Bespoke Clothing of the Past, the sign read underneath) was the most exclusive Vagabonder boutique in the northern hemisphere. The floors were real date-verified oak, the velvet curtains shipped from Paris in a Chinese junk during the six weeks in ’58 when one of the Vagabonder boys slept with a Wright brother and planes hadn’t been invented.
    Simone was already behind the counter arranging buttons by era of origin. Petra hadn’t figured out until her fourth year working there that Simone didn’t live upstairs, and Petra still wasn’t convinced.
    As Petra crossed the floor, an oak beam creaked.
    Simone looked up and sighed. “Petra, wipe your feet on the mat. That’s what it’s for.”
    Petra glanced over her shoulder; behind her was a line of her footprints, mottled purple and blue and gold.
    The first client of the day was the heiress to the O’Rourke fortune. Chronomode had a history with the family; the first one was the boy, James, who’d slept with Orville Wright and ruined Simone’s drape delivery par avion. The O’Rourkes had generously paid for shipment by junk, and one of the plugs they sent back with James was able to fix things so that the historic flight was only two weeks late. Some stamps became very collectible, and the O’Rourkes became loyal clients of Simone’s.
    They gave