A magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago’s divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life. This sapphic period piece will dazzle anyone looking for mystery, intrigue, romance, magic, or all of the above.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from C.L. Polk’s Even Though I Knew the End, which is out November 8th 2022.
An exiled augur who sold her soul to save her brother’s life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can’t resist―the chance to have a future where she grows old with the woman she loves.
To succeed, she is given three days to track down the White City Vampire, Chicago’s most notorious serial killer. If she fails, only hell and heartbreak await.
CHAPTER TWO
I made my way back to State and Washington without a single tear. The cold seeped through my coat to wrap around my heart, and I let it push my self far from the part of me that wanted to sink to my knees and weep my heartbreak over the brother who didn’t want anything to do with me, to rage at the irony of my brother coming back to my life three days before I was destined to leave it. The wind froze my eyelashes; I walked as fast as I dared with ice underfoot.
I didn’t have time to cry. Ted didn’t care one whit whether I shed a tear or not, and if I showed up to my date with my eyes all red and puffy, I’d ruin the evening. I breathed in the cold and wreathed it around my heart. Press on. Cry later. There’s work to be done, and not enough time to do it.
I shouldn’t have taken that consultation. But what’s done is done, and I had fifty dollars to earn. I shut myself in the darkroom and got to work. Eight negatives swam through a tub of developer, and I worked in the dark and kept those plates moving, just like Clyde had taught me. The Graflex perched safely on its shelf, thawing out after its time in the cold.
I needed a smoke so badly I was grinding my teeth. But it had to wait until all eight plates were done developing and hanging on the line. Then I needed a blouse that didn’t stink of having a gun pointed at me. The minutes ticked in my head, whispering you’re late, you’re late.
I shut the darkroom door behind me, but the markings on the negatives followed me out of the room. The White City Vampire was using ritual sacrifice to fuel high magic of a kind I didn’t recognize—not that I had ever claimed to know it all. Marlowe was interested, but why? Marlowe hired me for jobs suited to a detective and part-time diviner, but she’d never set me on a trail this dark.
And she had never sent me to anything that brushed so close to the affairs of the Brotherhood of the Compass. I did not want to tangle with my former order. Forget the Golden Dawn. Never mind the Eastern Order out west—they’re mostly an excuse for orgies, anyway. Forget the naked gasping of witches or the root and bone magic of the conjuring folk. All together, they barely held a sliver of the secrets the Brotherhood hoarded in their lodges, and even a fifty-dollar consultation fee wasn’t worth their ire. I’d assumed that Marlowe didn’t want to cross their eyeline any more than I did.
I didn’t have time for curiosity. I wet a cloth with water from my kettle and washed my armpits. I found a new blouse to wear and dabbed perfume on my wrists and throat. My unopened pack of Chesterfields hid under a pile of mail on my desk. Envelopes slid off the pile and landed on the hardwood, disturbing the dust gathered around the legs. I left the mail where it lay and lit up.
I needed my nerves steady. I had told Marlowe I couldn’t take on my usual investigation, that I would do a crime-scene augury, and that was it. And she had agreed to it, and we courteously ignored the fact that she knew well enough that I’d snap at the bait of an occult puzzle. But even if I had the time, the Brotherhood was hovering all over this. I had to step away, and I had to break it to Marlowe right now.
I picked up the telephone, wedging the receiver between my ear and shoulder. I spun the dial six times and waited for the line to click, to ring.
It sounded twice before Marlowe answered. “Hello, darling.”
“Hello, Marlowe. Were you expecting me?”
Her voice was a throaty warble, the kind that lingered in your ears. “Helen. Calling so soon?”
“So late,” I said. “I managed six photos before I was interrupted. There’s a seventh, but I think it’s a wash.”
The eighth wasn’t any of her business, and it was probably junk anyway.
“Six photos? In the dark?” A lighter clicked on Marlowe’s end. “One of your brilliant little spells, I imagine.”
“That’s right.”
“I could be generous if you shared that spell with me.”
“And lose my trademark? Doll, my weight in rubies wouldn’t be enough.”
All my secrets were in a book. The book was in a safe. The combination was written on the letter I meant to post on Sunday, telling Edith everything, and maybe she’d forgive me one day.
Marlowe’s chuckle blew smoke in my ear. “I could make it happen.”
She probably could. I wasn’t sure where Marlowe’s money came from, but she had plenty of it, and she paid handsomely for my work. But rubies couldn’t buy what I needed. Nothing could.
“It’s an occult case, all right, but it’s too hot. I can’t help you.”
“Oh, darling. Don’t be so defeatist. Give me a chance to change your mind. Bring the photos in the morning—”
“I have a date,” I repeated. “I won’t have them until dinnertime.”
“Bring yourself, then. I adore breakfast meetings. Or we could start tonight, over a drink.”
“Sorry, doll. She’s waiting for me.” And she might not be there if I didn’t step on it.
“Lucky creature, whoever she is,” Marlowe said. “Breakfast. Nine sharp.”
CHAPTER THREE
It was so late by then I was sure I’d missed out. I hurried to the Wink on the edge of the Near North Side. I walked into a dim saloon that smelled of spilled beer, and kept on through to the back, as if I were headed for the poker den that ran seven nights a week. But before anyone could spot me, I cut left into an alcove that held a mop closet and another door.
I knocked the right rhythm—not shave and a haircut but close. I stood still as the peephole opened and a light flashed in my eyes. The wall opened, and Sylvia let me onto the landing before a long flight of stairs leading down into the earth.
“Evening, beautiful. You’re late.”
I shook her hand in greeting, leaving a quarter in her palm. “I should have brought flowers. How’s Moira?”
She smiled with pride. “Moira’s got her suit on tonight. Playing horn up at WGN.”
“Good gig. Tell her hi, gorgeous, will you?”
“She’ll be here later, and you can tell her yourself.” She glanced at the bulge under my left arm. “Check your iron?”
“Will do.” I passed under the light of a pendant lamp to creak my way down the stars and through a damp, creosote-smelling tunnel.
I was late, but Edith was still here. Sylvia would have read me the riot act otherwise. Distant music echoed down the hallway, and I stopped at the coat check to smile at the new girl behind the counter, her hair shiny with brilliantine, her secondhand black-tie outfit just a touch too big. She held out her hands for my coat and hat. She packed up my persuader in a locker without batting an eyelash and gave me a chit. I didn’t bother taking off the holster; I feel strange without it.
I turned to meet the gentle press of fingertips on my shoulder, my flight-or-fight kicking up before I put my smile back on. Just the cigarette gal, silly. Who else would it be?
“You need cigarettes, Helen?” Mitzi (though that wasn’t really her name) flicked ringed fingers over the tray. I tipped a nickel and kissed her rouged cheek.
“You look gorgeous, doll.”
She fluttered her hands and shooed me away. “Go break some other girl’s heart, you wicked broad.”
I grinned and swept open the beaded curtain to the Wink.
Chicago had loved us once, and the straights had packed into the De Luxe Café and the old Twelve-Thirty Club to come scandalously close to the queer. But the cops cracked down on the pansy clubs in 1935, and these days, Chicago didn’t love our kind at all.
Somebody found this place at the end of the Great War and the beginning of the Great Experiment and put a bar in it. After Prohibition and the gallons of blood washing out the gutters of Chicago, this place draped itself in dust and waited for Betty Donahue and her wife Willie to discover it themselves. They had established the passwords two Halloweens ago, and we all planned to take its secret to our graves.
The Wink was long and narrow, its chipped brick walls lined with cozy horseshoe booths. Real crystal chandeliers—mismatched, bless every one of them—glittered through a fog of cigarette smoke. They hung down the center of the room, leading the way past the long, well-stocked bar to a round-edged stage, where Miss Francine swayed in a glittering blue gown and sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”.
The room was full of women; don’t let the double-breasted suits and slicked-back hair fool you. The Wink was a haven of women, gathered in clumps or cuddled around a special companion, whether they wore starched collar shirts or satin and sequins. The Friday-night women of the Wink could make free, drinking and laughing, eyeing each other the way they’d never dare on the street.
I wound through the standing crowd, headed for my usual place at the end of the bar. A highball sat fizzing next to my empty chair, and beside it sat Edith Jarosky, listening to the songbird up on stage. She’d waited for me. I glanced at my wristwatch. Forty-five minutes, and she’d waited.
She had her pinstripe jacket on, the shoulders sharp-angled and fashionable. Her scarf hung neatly on the back of her chair. She had one last sip of bourbon in her glass; that’s how close I cut it. Her neck was bare, the hair lopped off in a tumble of curls so artful I longed to mess it up.
Edith. I stopped just to look at her in profile, at the way she picked up the heavy-bottomed glass and looked in on her last sip, the one she’d lingered over, waiting for me. But I stayed where I was. I wanted this moment to see her, to fill my memories with her, to feel how it ached so sweet and bitter in my chest to see her one more time before I had to button all that up and put on a smile— S
he turned her head and looked right at me. Smile. Smile. But as I gazed at her and she at me, something fluttered in the shadow of her face. My heart jumped. In my mind, a metal door slammed shut. Smile. Smile.
Edith beckoned to me and I came, helpless as a fish on the hook but glad, so glad to be caught. She put her hand on the polished bar top and I laid mine over hers, twining our fingers together.
I love you, Edith. I love you so much. I thought it until it echoed inside my ears.
“You’re late.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” Forty-five more minutes I could have had with her, if I hadn’t been chasing this mess of a job. I didn’t need the fifty dollars. I had enough put away. It would keep Edith for a little while.
I wish I had more.
She leaned over and let me taste the bourbon on her lips. “You smell like pictures. You get a job?”
“A consultation.”
“Yeah?” Her eyes were bright, excited. “Object or people?”
“It’s too hot, baby. I’m turning it down.” I tossed bourbon and Coke over my tonsils, leaving an empty glass next to hers. The bourbon sat warm and fuzzy in my middle as I slid off the seat. “Ain’t this our song?”
Edith smiled at me through her sand-brown curls. “You say that about all the love songs.”
“That’s because they’re ours. Come on; dance with me.”
She let me pull her to the tiny patch of floor in front of the stage. I blew Miss Francine a kiss she caught in her hand without missing a note, and then I folded into Edith’s arms.
We’d danced the first night we met, when Edith was still stumbling to lead. But she wanted to dance the next night we met, and every night we spent at the Wink after that. She eased me into an inside turn and I came back to her arms, easy as breathing.
“I have something to tell you.” Edith brimmed up with news and it spilled forth in a grin that showed her gums. “There’s an opening at KSAN. The station manager called me.”
Edith’s life was a series of call signs and station identifiers I could hardly keep straight, but I knew that one. “All the way from San Francisco?”
Her smile sparkled brighter than the chandeliers. “Just like we wanted. If I take the job, it’ll start in a month.”
A month. Oh, but it hurt. I’d wanted to go west years before, but there wasn’t enough money. Edith had a good job at WMAQ as a sound engineer—she was the only woman sound engineer in the whole state. And she wouldn’t move away to take a lesser job as a switchboard operator or a coffee-fetching typist, and I’d never ask her to. San Francisco was the stuff of dreams, but we stayed in Chicago, where we could afford the rent.
But now the stars aligned. Now she could go.
Edith’s smile faltered. She bit her lip and hunched her shoulders. “I thought you’d be happy.”
I chucked her chin and kissed it, lips against the dimple that I adored. “Just like we always dreamed, baby. That’s great. Do you want the job?”
“Of course I do. But . . . you have some put away, don’t you?”
I had five thousand dollars in the safe. “I’ve been saving for a foggy day.”
She licked her lips and went on. “I thought you could work with an insurance firm out there, maybe. Get square and steady.”
“We could get a house.” I fought to make my smile something she would understand. “Our house on a hill.”
It was a lie, but it was a wish, too. A house in the city where people like us carved out home for themselves, a city that didn’t mind us much. She was ready for everything we’d talked about in the dark.
She’d get every cent I’d squirreled away in the safe. Every cent. And my grimoire, as sharp-bladed a gift as that was. But if anyone could make good of it, it was Edith.
“You’re trying to be happy. For me.” The cautious corners of a smile tugged at her mouth, but her worried eyebrows stayed high. “Don’t you want to go?”
“There’s no place I’d rather be.”
We danced through the dream. Our house, steep-roofed and narrow, holding its balance against the slanted street. Our cars tucked side by side, every night asleep in our bed, every morning coffee and orange juice and my turn to burn the sausage.
I held the image of the house in my mind. “It’s exactly what we wanted.”
Edith looked at me again, words on the tip of her tongue.
I traced my fingers over the tension in her shoulder. We turned in each other’s arms, all the universe right there. “You ready to leave Chicago? It’s a long way from your family.”
She didn’t answer for so long I’d gotten my mouth open to take it back. But then she answered, and her soft tone had me on alert.
“Last month, Lila asked her father if she could help Aunt Edith find a husband. Luka just looked at the ceiling. Mother asked me if I’d met any nice men at that job of mine while we were eating Sunday dinner. On Wednesday, Sara dragged me across Saint Stanislaus to meet a man after mass.”
I stroked her cheek. “Oh, Edith.”
Her expression threatened to shatter into a thousand tears. “They’ll never stop, Helen. They’re my family. But I can’t do it anymore.”
She didn’t need to say anything more. I would give her this. I would give her the world. Anything she wanted. “Take the job, baby. Take it. This town will weep the day you leave.”
She sniffled. Her eyes shone. “We’ll go to San Francisco?”
“There’s no place I’d rather be.”
She danced closer, resting her cheek against mine. “I’ll miss this place.”
I’ll miss it too.
The music stopped. We applauded. Moira stepped up to the front of the stage, the bell of her horn gleaming in the smoky light. She played three long notes before the piano and bass picked up the melody. Miss Francine swayed down the stairs, a gin and tonic in one sapphire-ringed hand. She winked at me before letting her latest belle guide her to the booth where the performers held court, dazzling in paste gems and pot rouge, boiled shirts and brilliantine.
“Helen.” Edith stepped backward, tugging on my hand. “Let’s get out of here. Take me home.”
“You don’t want another dance?”
“Put on a record when we get in,” she said. “I want to talk.”
