“The boss is, ummm - indisposed just now, doll, but if you try back another night, I’m sure he’ll give you the chance to entertain him.”

That the no-neck Italian in the cheap pinstripes didn’t bother to disguise his leering as he spoke to her didn’t surprise Josephine. Neither her dark dress nor the violet headscarf she’d chosen to compliment her dusky skin was the least bit indecent, but some men would stare at anything with a pulse.

Normally she’d mark him down for a tiny little curse or two for a slight like that. It would be the easiest thing in the world to put a wet blanket all over his love life for a week or three, but with everything else going on, disrespect ranked at the bottom of her list for once. With the floozies he and his kind hung out with, she was sure he’d seen plenty of women who liked to show off more than their knees.

Josephine opened her mouth to give the lug a piece of her mind but was cut off by the other man smoking on the far end of the stoop.

“Whoa, ease off there, Tony, this one ain’t no Dora,” he said, looking up far enough that she could finally see past his dark gray fedora to the speaker’s angular face before taking a long drag off his lucky. “This one here’s the real deal. Some kind of spooky shit. If she wants to see the boss, I say we let her in.”

“Oh? This one’s the Gypsy you all talked about?” Tony asked, practically ignoring her presence. “I thought she was supposed to be a real looker.”

In a single moment, Josephine went from mollified to outraged. She stormed past the disrespectful man with the bulge in his jacket where he kept his Colt 45. For a moment, he moved to stop her. However, as soon, she gave him an icy glare and hissed, “Romani. Gypsy is a slur comparable with… well, you know. They’ve got plenty of words like that for Italians in this city, don’t they.” he opened the door instead of holding it shut.

“Okay, sister. Your funeral,” he laughed. “The big cheese is in his library with a couple guests. I assume you know the way.”

Josephine didn’t answer as she strode by him. Instead, she gave the man the cold shoulder and made a mental note to give Tony a seriously bad day with her deck once everything with Pastor Ezekiel was resolved.

Though the outside of the house seemed to be nothing but a well-appointed brownstone in a quiet neighborhood, the inside of it looked more like a mansion. Art Deco bookshelves dominated the walls, stained-glass Tiffany lamps were present throughout the well-appointed rooms, and crimson dominated the color scheme everywhere she looked.

As she walked by the parlor, another man with a bulging jacket looked up from his folded paper at her before he went back to reading it, which struck her as ironic. It had made no sense to her that the Gambinos would put so much effort into protecting the one man in this whole stinking city that no one was likely to be able to kill until she realized that it was the other way around.

They weren’t his guards but his jailers or perhaps his zookeeper. That made more sense to her, but she doubted very much that all of these thugs and their guns could do much to keep their monster in his cage if he decided he wanted to stretch his legs.

She didn’t know where the library was, but it was easy to follow the laughter and make her way there. After all, there was only one reason for women to be in this house: to entertain Hugo.

She found him huddled together with two flappers around a phonograph, deciding which of the records in his small collection to try next. The redhead wore a mauve blouse that was low cut enough to show a hint of cleavage and was well past indecent in Josephine’s eyes. In contrast, the blond wore a slightly more restrained taupe dress that shifted suggestively along with her loops of pearl necklaces wherever she moved. In a way that somehow seemed even more sexual, though.

“It’s true, darling. Let’s Misbehave is a wonderful song. You really can’t beat it with a stick, but some of the magic just disappears when you can’t dance to it,” the blonde woman said, not yet noticing Josephine’s presence.

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“No one has forbidden you from dancing, my little morsel,” the man she came to see said with a faint French accent as he put the record on the player and began to wind it up.

“Oh, will you finally dance with me, darling?” she asked, but he responded with a shake of his head.

“No, you two will dance with each other while I study every detail about your strange American ways and speak to my good friend Josephine,” he answered as he put the needle down. Then he stood as the first strains of warbling jazz echoed out from his fancy contraption and turned to look at Josephine.

She wasn’t surprised. He’d probably smelled her before she’d walked in the front door. The other women looked up at once too, first at her and then at each other, but she ignored them.

“Monsignor Monmoreant, we need to talk,” she said respectfully. No matter how much the handsome man might make her skin crawl, she needed his help, but even if she didn’t, she had no desire for him to rip her head off in a fit of pique. She didn’t have to be psychic to know that every cushion and carpet in the place was red to hide the stains that his very existence left in its wake.

No matter how much she tried to ignore it, neither his perfectly tailored outfit nor his genteel, welcoming expression could disguise the miasma of death radiating off him like a fog. The man still wore a light gray summer suit with white shoes even though it was already well past Labor Day. It was a common faux pas for him since days and weeks mattered so little to his kind. Still, she wondered just how many suits like that he had to throw away because of stains that could never be removed.

The other women couldn’t see past the fine tailoring, of course. They just thought he was another rich John, or maybe if they’d visited him before and survived the experience, and were into this sort of thing. Some people were. After so many readings she knew more about those strange picadilloes than she’d ever want to admit.

Josephine knew a lot of girls with a morphine or laudanum habit that would do just about anything for their next fix. Still, she hoped that anything would never have to include a night at Château Monmoreant for any of them.

“Of course, Mademoiselle, as I told you when last we met, you are welcome in my home at any time,” he said with a smile almost as strong as his accent. “What is it I can do for you this night?”

“I was hoping we could talk alone,” she said, cocking her head toward the two girls that had started to do a little fox trot together while they pretended not to be paying attention to a conversation that most definitely did not concern them. As she spoke, she looked for his fangs and again noted how they were practically invisible, which was always a trip for her. “I need a favor, well, Ezekiel needs the favor, but I’m the one doing the asking.”

“Oh, ma chérie, but I was not expecting you, so I invited these beauties to while away the evening hours with. As you know, I get so bored when my American friends have no work for me,” he answered, shaking his head, “So I’m afraid unless it is life and death, it will have to wait until Thursday, perhaps.”

“But it is,” she said, waiting for him to finish speaking before she responded with only a shade of the urgency she felt in her heart so as not to appear rude. “Three lives hang in the balance, and you are the only one I know that can do something about it.”

“Am I?” he asked, more than a little flattered. For such an ancient creature, he had never lost the love of flattery that he’d grown used to as a young Marquess. “Well then, perhaps I will hear you out, and if it is as urgent as you say, then perhaps Daisy and Ruth will have to come back and tempt me to dance another night.”

“And if not…” he smiled thinly as his words trailed off. Josephine was the last person that needed an explanation about what would happen to her if she burst in uninvited to waste an immortal’s time and swallowed hard at the unspoken threat. “Well. Ladies, if you would be so kind as to wait in the parlor with Franklin for a moment while I help my good friend Josephine get to the bottom of her little dilemma, I would be ever so grateful.”

“Aw, but Money, the party’s just getting started,” the busty redhead whined, earning a sympathetic smile and a kiss on her forehead from her strangely sophisticated customer before both women were shooed out of the room. The sliding door was then closed behind them.

“Now, what is it I can do for you,” Hugo asked, suddenly appearing in the seat across from her, pouring her a glass of brandy from a crystal decanter. She hadn’t even blinked, but she’d still missed the motion. One moment he’d been across the room by the door, and the next, he was seated not five feet from her. “You’ll forgive me, but I do get cranky when my dinner is late, and even on slow nights like tonight, there are so many demands upon my time.”