Free The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty Page A

you open?”
    The woman looked up and narrowed her eyes briefly. After she gave Zoë the once-over, her face broke into a petite, toothy smile and she stretched her hands out. “Of course! Grand opening! Please, come in, sit where you like!”
    Zoë smiled back at her and took a seat at the back of the restaurant, where she could people-watch. Or monster-watch. (
Coterie
, she had to remind herself.)
    The woman brought her a menu and a glass of water. The restaurant was different from other Chinese restaurants in that it didn’t have the classic bamboo, lucky cats, or scrolls on the wall. Instead the walls were blood-red, making the room dark even in the sunny midday, and decorations were nonexistent. Zoë was the only person in the restaurant.
    The woman came to take her order. Zoë ordered some soup and some fried rice. The woman nodded and jotted down the order on a pad. Zoë noticed there was a large scar on her wrist, a burn that looked like a symbol, but she didn’t get a good look. Two Asian women came in, laughing. The hostess bowed briefly to Zoë and ran to attend to them.
    While she had been friendly and welcoming to Zoë, she practically groveled before these women. She bowed low several times and spoke in Chinese to them. They were older, one with a bun on top of her head, the other with a graying bob cut. Both were slightly overweight and dressed like upper-middle-class ladies who looked, honestly, out of place in this dirty restaurant. Zoë watched them carefully.
    There. A red piece of paper switched from one of the women to the hostess, and she brightened and became, if possible, even more obsequious.
A hell note
, Zoë thought.
    The hostess sat them in the middle of the dining room and called a young man from the back room to wait on them, whispering swiftly in low, tense Chinese. His eyes widened and he nodded.
    Through all of this, Zoë was dying to find out who, or what, these very important women were. But the dining room began filling up for lunch, and Zoë became busy watching other people, trying to identify the men and women as human or not. The coterie began standing out once she knew what clues to look for. Ways of moving, ways of dressing, and the biggest clue: how the hostess treated them. She welcomed humans, but worshiped the coterie.
    After that, the only question was whether they were vampire, zombie, fae, demon, or something else Zoë hadn’t learned about yet.
    She pulled out her book and read it discreetly as the food came. She jumped when the empty chair at her table scraped across the floor. In an instant, she was looking into the wide eyes of the homeless woman from the café, who had sat down across from her without an invitation. What had Carl called her? Granny something?
    “How did you hear about this restaurant?” the woman asked.
    Zoë swallowed her mouthful of rice. “I saw an ad for it at Bakery Under Starlight,” she said. “I was craving Chinese, wanted to check it out.”
    The woman nodded and looked pointedly at Zoë’s book, a manual for the Wraith role-playing game. “And the books?”
    Zoë bit her lip. She glanced at the woman, then the other patrons, who had to be 75 percent coterie, and then back at the woman. “I’m doing research for my new job. I’m editing a travel book.”
    The woman’s eyes widened. “And this travel book is focused on New York City?”
    Zoë nodded.
    “And the travel book is for…?”
    Zoë looked at the patrons and swallowed. She couldn’t be obvious yet, she would sound ridiculous. She finally said, “I’m betting you know the answer to that.”
    “Are you a zoëtist?” the woman asked, voice even lower.
    “No, just an editor,” Zoë said.
    The woman reached over and snagged the edge of Zoë’s hot-and-sour-soup bowl and dragged it across the table. She took a bite and chewed on a mushroom. “She said you weren’t a zoëtist. If that’s true, you should have a talisman. Where is it?”
    Zoë was too shocked at the