Hellbent

by Cherie Priest

  “The guy who owned them was poor?”

  “Compared with me. Anyway, because I’m so fucking clever”—he rolled his eyes a little, at himself, which kind of surprised me—“I told the guy they were worth a little money, yeah—but that he’d never be able to sell them on the open market because they were remains of endangered species. And that’s practically true!” he pointed out, almost poking the incoming waitress in the tit. She gave him his new drink, swiped the empty glass, and vanished. And I tell you what, that’s the kind of service I like to see. I don’t know how Horace inspires it, but he’s got a gift.

  “More true than you could’ve possibly conveyed without looking like a maniac.”

  “Right. So I can tell he’s wishy-washy about it, and I can tell that he doesn’t have the faintest idea what these things really are. So I add that they were probably used in Native American ceremonial … you know, whatevers … and that made them an even trickier pitch. They might be artifacts. He might need eighty different kinds of licenses to auction the things, but oh, hey—my auction house was imminently qualified and certified to manage that kind of sticky situation.”

  “It was his lucky day!” I suggested with sarcasm.

  “Damn straight! But he wasn’t having it. He decided he wanted a second opinion, because he’d inherited them from Grandpa Somebody-Or-Another and he wasn’t willing to part with them on my word alone. I told him he was welcome to the opinion of anyone in the auditorium—nobody knew what they were but me, and no one else would want them—but he got all stubborn, boxed them up, and took them home.”

  “And you didn’t follow him into the parking lot and jump him? You must be losing your edge.”

  He sighed. “He was a big fucker. Corn-fed redneck of the large and slow variety.”

  “Isn’t that what you took the coastal tours to avoid?”

  “Yes, but my cunning plan was not one hundred percent successful. It turns out there are rednecks in every corner of this continent, to my excessive chagrin.” He took a long draft of the new Manhattan, as if the very thought was so onerous that it caused him to require a drink.

  “So you couldn’t have taken him.”

  “Not without a firearm. And there were cameras in the parking lot. Believe me, I considered my options. And this is where you come in.”

  It was my turn to sigh, imagining the sheer embarrassment if I were to finally be caught by the feds, the feebs, or anybody else who’s been following my thieving career with intense interest over a box full of penis bones. Christ, I’d never live it down. “I don’t know, man.”

  “Look, I have the guy’s address and everything! He’s a mechanic, owns his own shop specializing in British cars, or something like that. Lives alone in the ’burbs. Name’s Joseph Harvey. I’ve got everything you need, right here. It’ll be the easiest case you’ve ever had.”

  See, that’s foreshadowing, is what that is—or tempting fate at the bare minimum. Saying such a thing out loud is asking for trouble. “If it’s so damn easy, why not give the gig to someone else? Someone who charges a lot less?”

  “Because anyone else would want to know why I want a box full of weird old bones, and get to wondering why they’re worth stealing, and so forth and so on. I trust you to bring me the goods and bring them discreetly, without a whole bunch of bargaining and demanding information.”

  “You trust me?” I was touched. Almost.

  “I trust you to do your job and bring me what I need. And I trust you enough to have told you everything about it, because I’ve learned the hard way that when you pay for an expensive service, you don’t want to leave out details. Success lives and dies by details, Raylene. You know that better than anybody,” he said, throwing in a glare that was just short of accusatory.

  He was talking obliquely about my personal … tics. Let’s just say I’m a little OCD, and let that be the end of it. Or if you must have a follow-up to that statement, let it be this: Fine, I’m a lot OCD, but it keeps me alive and I don’t care how weird it looks.

  “Yes, yes. The details. I hear the devil’s there. All right.” I sighed, letting him know he had me. “Fine. I’ll go get your calcified cock sticks.”

  “Bacula.”

  “Same diff. Let’s talk money.”

  We did, and I finagled my way to a 30 percent finder’s fee, up from my usual 25 percent due to the potential embarrassment factor. And also, Horace said it was worth it if I would promise to stop making dick jokes. I told him that’d be another 5 percent but he scowled me down and I took the offer. We shook hands.

  Then he took off and I did the same, before the busker could inflict any more damage to my sanity or my eardrums. The aforementioned eardrums were ringing as I stumbled out into the street—swearing softly at Horace for leaving me with the tab.

  “Bastard,” I groused as I stuffed the receipt into my pocket.

  If that little jerk thought I wouldn’t tack on $51.98 to an invoice with six zeros he had another thing coming.

  2

  I checked my phone and saw that it was fairly early for a weekend evening. If I picked up the pace I could swing by the gay bar on my way home. Rose was working the show, or at least I thought she was. I could crash it.

  The pronouns were coming easier to me, with time. I never knew precisely what the etiquette was when dealing with a burly straight man who earns a living embracing his inner goddess. So the rule of thumb is that when she’s all dolled up for work, looking like a woman by design … she gets the feminine. When he’s hanging out in my loft in full-on dude-wear glory, well then. He’s a he.

  It isn’t perfect, and I slip up occasionally, but it seems to work for now.

  “Neighbors” was only a few blocks away, and I had to cross a loud section of the neighborhood to find it. The hill is what we like to call the “gayborhood,” but that’s not why it’s so damn swinging; it’s also the most densely occupied part of the city. The population is young, hip, queer, and moneyed … or made up of people trying to approximate three out of four. It’s crawling with bars and clubs (gay, straight, and other), mom-and-pop restaurants that stink of grease, street-cart vendors offering vegan fare or baby seal sandwiches, high-end indie watering holes laced with neon lights, and overpriced condos towering over the lot of it.

  Most of the intersections are two-way stops, which is to say, each one has four lines of pedestrian crosswalks and only two stop signs, and this leads to hilarity—especially since the pedestrians tend to wear black and the drivers tend to speed, and everyone’s on a cell phone. It blows my mind that more people don’t end up as road pizza around here.

  It was coming up on eleven o’clock and Neighbors was ahead on the right. I followed the music, the spangles, and the long-legged ladies with the clear Lucite heels, up around a small sidewalk enclosure with a metal gate. The bouncer took my ID and stamped my hand, and the guy standing next to him took five bucks. I was glad to hand it over. Slow nights mean no cover. Busy nights mean good business and good tips for my Cuban American princess/Navy SEAL.

  I’d given Rose some money about six months ago—seed money, you know. Dough to get her on her feet in the wake of me kind of completely destroying her life in Atlanta. And I didn’t know what her spending habits were like, but I figured the stash must be running low by now. Seattle rents are ridiculous.

  But money has a way of finding hot people, and Rose is one of those people—both under her stage name and as Adrian. He has those Latin cheekbones and thick, dark, luscious, finger-luring hair, and he also has a body to die for, regardless of which way you swing. So call it prurient interest, or call it checking up on a friend, but I was more than happy to fork over five bucks for the pleasure of seeing him prance about in a thong.

  I have no idea how he does his tuck. One of these days, I’m going to get him liquored up and drag it out of him. The secret, I mean. Not the … um … tuck.

  My guess at the cover was correct. The place was packed, and jumpin’. Madonna rule
d the night, a remix of something that isn’t one of her usual singles, but it was catchy and I could wiggle to it. I wormed my way inside and up closer to the stage, and did a little of the white-girl shuffle while waiting for the show to start.

  Finally, after what felt like a forever of sweaty, unwanted pickup attempts, the DJ came on the loudspeaker and announced the evening’s planned entertainment.

  First up was a gorgeous queen with chocolate skin and eyes that were utter proof that if there’s a God he’s cruel, because those belonged on me. She wore a gold costume that could best be described as “slutty Pocahontas,” and she got down to a dance-hall shake-up of Cher’s “Half-Breed.” The next queen was Asian and punk to excess, with blue-and-pink hair and a gothic Lolita thing going on. She did her routine to a song I didn’t recognize, but it was entertainingly nasty, I’ll tell you that much.

  Then, oh wonder of wonders, Sister Rose was up. I’d been wondering what she’d be wearing; it was a game of mine, trying to predict the evening’s shtick, but she always stays one step ahead of me.

  Rose strolled onto the stage and grabbed the nearest pole, and I didn’t even notice I had a big, stupid grin on my face until she saw me and winked. I was two seconds shy of screaming for her panties when the music got grinding and she got dancing. Tonight she was wearing a flamenco outfit, bright red. A Lady Gaga song kicked up—“Alejandro”—and she was off, this one-woman show letting it all hang out.

  I mean, not all of it. Obviously. Just that she gave it her all, you know. Professionally. Not from a flashing standpoint. More’s the pity.

  Just as I was wondering how on earth a woman (who was really a man) could get her legs that far apart, the routine came to an end and she flung herself off the stage, into the audience, toward the bar. My kind of girl, right there.

  I stood on tiptoe trying to see her, trying to track and follow her; she raised one hand and used it to gesture with the curled finger of “come hither.”

  Sometimes I wish I were taller. This was one of those times. When I was young and alive, I was considered quite tall for a woman. (I’m about five-foot-seven, maybe -eight in shoes.) These days I’m about average, and the average is slinking away from me every generation. I have some honest and deep-seated fears that in two hundred years I’m going to look like a very conspicuous midget.

  Perhaps this isn’t as common a piece of knowledge as I think it is, but people are getting taller.

  Hey, don’t laugh. I know of some old-timers in the vampire world who are looking more out of place every year. There’s this one guy, Matthew Harding is his name, I think; he’s at least three hundred years old, and the guy looks like a toddler in a business suit. Oh, not literally, no. He’s absolutely covered in body hair. But he’s not even five feet tall, and it’s starting to look weird. Give him another hundred years and he’ll spark rumors about urban hobbits.

  I jostled, shoved, and shimmied my way up to the bar and a non-spot beside Rose that became a spot when I wedged my ass into it. “Hey there, gorgeous,” I greeted her.

  “Hey there, yourself. Beverage?” she offered.

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve had plenty already,” I said. We were both shouting. The next performer was up and things were loud again, though at least they were loud and focused. Everyone was watching a nimble redhead in a circus costume doing the funky chicken to Britney Spears.

  “Oh really? Went and partied without me?”

  “Just this once,” I assured her. Then I said, “Naw, not really. It was a business meeting.”

  “Sounds joyous.”

  “Oh, it was. And weird, too. When do you get off, anyway?”

  “Anytime after now. You feel like company?”

  I said, “Yeah, yours. Mostly because you’re the only person on earth who’ll find this as hilarious as I do.”

  She replied, “Oh God,” and had a brief exchange in Spanish with the bartender. When she was done, she turned to me and said, “All right, we’re done here—I only did the one number to buy a bathroom coke-up for Pocahontas over there. I’m finished with my bar shift. Let’s hit the road.”

  We escaped the club together and I guess we looked peculiar, side by side. Me, small and dark, and darkly dressed; her, tall and vibrant, and likewise attired, even though she’d grabbed a knee-length brown coat on her way out the door and had slung it over the costume with a scarf.

  “So, dish,” she ordered, though her voice was down half an octave and it was somewhat less, shall we say, dramatic. I hate it when she does that. I’d rather she stays in character, so my pronouns stay easy. Why the world won’t accommodate my every whim, I just don’t know.

  “I will. Hey, where are we headed?”

  “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

  “You want to go back to the flat? The usual suspects may or may not be hanging around, but there’s free booze.”

  “Free booze? Shit, honey. That’s all you had to say.”

  I knew that, so I smiled. “Okay. Now for the dishing.”

  I filled her in on everything from Horace’s wardrobe to the magical penis bones, and I was right—she found it precisely as hilarious as I did. Together we wandered down until we caught a bus—which is usually not my thing, but I didn’t want to go rooftop-to-rooftop with Rose while she was in stripper heels. When she was a he, and in his old special-ops outfits, it was a different story entirely. I’m not saying he can keep up with me—I mean, shit, I know other vampires who can’t keep up with me—but he’s no slouch. Underneath that feather dress and bumpit hides one hardcore, badass dude.

  Once I’d wrapped up the bulk of the story, she asked, “Are you going to take the case?”

  “Sure, I’m going to take the case. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because it sounds too easy.”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes things sound easy because they are easy.”

  “And sometimes things that sound easy only sound that way because you’re completely fucking delusional,” she retorted. “Didn’t you say the same thing about—” She stopped herself. “You know.”

  “Of course I know.” And I knew why she didn’t want to say anything. We were on a bus, surrounded by hipsters in headphones with earpads the size of coffee mugs, muttering crazies, and a couple of bitches hollering into their cell phones.

  Some topics aren’t meant for public consumption, and the story of our first meeting is one of them. But we both knew I took that case because it looked easy as pie … and maybe also because I liked the look of Ian Stott, my eldest boarder.

  We reached Pioneer Square via the number ten (or is it twelve? It changes at some point during the route) and walked the rest of the way to my digs, about eight blocks off the last stop, in the oldest part of town. Seattle burned down to its foundations in 1889, and I live in the stuff that was built right after the smoke cleared. But if you’re hunting for ancient history or even antebellum lore, you should probably look elsewhere.

  I think my building was originally put up in 1899; I remember that loose fact from the Realtor who sold it to me, because that date—that one span of less-than-twelve-months before the turn of the century—meant that the building was “worth” more than it would’ve been otherwise. I thought this was completely preposterous, considering the condition of the thing, but something about the façade warmed the burly cockles of my heart (if they are still warmable) and I bought the place anyway. It’s not like I didn’t have the money.

  Without going into enough detail for random interested strangers to find me, my home turf is a four-story stone-and-brick jobbie with some scrollwork down by the main entrance, and some bizarre little gargoyle-y things hanging around on the roof corners. It also has owls all-freaking-over it. I am told that the owls (mostly made of stone or concrete) are intended to scare off pigeons, but I’ve seen pigeon nests mounted on the heads of those owls, so I’m thinking it’s possibly the dumbest affectation on earth. At this point, I think we can safely quit calling them “pigeon
prevention devices” and move on to “decorative superstition.”

  We arrived home by one AM and there were lights on upstairs, though all the blinds and curtains were drawn—so all was as it should be. The bottom three floors are pretty much dedicated to my stash of stuff, and by God I did not want to see anybody poking around in there.

  Yes, I still have a stash of stuff. During the raid that prompted my initial relocation, I nearly lost it all—but I’ve been gradually stealing it back or replacing it. It’s mostly left over from cases that went all wonky. Sometimes I get left holding the bag after a client goes to jail, sometimes a client can’t pay up, and every now and again a client dies before the final transaction can be made. I’m not going to say I work for dangerous people, but every single person who’s kicked the bucket mid-assignment has been murdered, so make of that what you will.

  And, okay, I won’t lie. Every blue moon I spy something I want for myself. Even—and don’t tell anybody—sometimes I see something I want and I (*gasp*) buy it.

  Just think of the building as a house with an enormous attic in reverse. We live on the top floor, and all the cool stuff is stuck in the big space underneath us.

  For a while I tried to con Rose/Adrian into moving into the top floor, too, out of some sense of … I don’t know. He was integral to me solving my last assignment-slash-case, and so was Ian Stott—and even, in their own strange little ways, the two formerly homeless children who live there, too. Maybe I was just trying to collect the whole set.

  Irrational, yes. But if you stick around awhile, you’ll learn that irrational is my specialty. I ought to teach a master class.

  I keyed the code into the security pad downstairs and then unlocked the dead bolts because yes, I really am that paranoid. And then some. If you had a household half as valuable as mine, you’d keep a close eye on it, too. Or that’s what I like to tell myself, in order to feel less crazy … even though the fact is that I’d probably behave similarly if I lived in a cardboard box and didn’t own enough stuff to fill a sock.