Hellbent

by Cherie Priest

  And no. Not for one brief, sparkling moment did I honestly think I’d just witnessed some colossal coincidence.

  I went looking for magical items. The items weren’t there, and the owner had been freshly murdered. Mere minutes later, his house blew up. None of this—not in any arrangement whatsoever—added up to a coincidence. I wasn’t sure what it did add up to, but my gut told me it couldn’t be good.

  I took off at a brisk lope behind the neighbor’s house and in the general direction of my car, and it wasn’t until I was leaning against that car, fishing around for my keys, that I remembered I hadn’t escaped the Harvey household alone.

  The kitten, not being completely stupid, had crawled down inside the interior pocket of my jacket—a pocket I’d been only dimly aware the jacket possessed, presumably intended to stash a cell phone or a pack of cigarettes. Well, it stashed a four-footed hitchhiker almost as easily. The poor thing had curled itself up tighter than a snail. It made a whimpering noise when I poked at the lump of its rear end.

  “Still alive, huh?” I asked it, and my voice sounded funny to my stopped-up ears. “That’s good, I guess. Wouldn’t want to explain a mashed kitten to the dry cleaner, anyway.”

  It whimpered again.

  I let myself into my car and shut the doors, cracking the window just enough to listen for sirens. I wanted to know when they arrived so I could sneak out past them. Two fire trucks, a cop car, and an ambulance all went speeding by, scooting around the turnoff and trundling up the hill.

  I yawned to pop my ears, in case that would work.

  It did, but not very well.

  Satisfied that no more emergency vehicles were immediately forthcoming, I rolled up the window and reached into my pocket. I extracted the kitten and held it up so it was facing me. It was small enough to use my palm for a recliner, and its bloody paws hung over the edge of my thumbs.

  “Okay … you,” I said to it.

  It blinked slowly.

  I briefly and temporarily held it by one hand while I reached up with the other, turning on the car’s dome light. Then I upended the kitten, got a good look at its undercarriage, and finally had a pronoun.

  “You’re a boy,” I informed him. “Congratulations.”

  He squeaked a meow at me. It was a tired meow, and maybe a hungry one. Definitely a nervous one.

  I agreed with the sentiment, whatever it was. “You and me both, kid. Christ, you’re filthy. You smell … delicious. But don’t worry, we won’t go there. Instead,” I informed him, setting him down on the passenger’s seat and randomly trusting that he wouldn’t take off, “we’re going to go back to the hotel. And you’re going to get a bath. If you want to survive the night, you’re going to have to smell a little bit less like a snack.”

  He gave me the closest thing to a shrug I’ve ever seen an animal attempt, and curled up in a ball right there on the seat. But I noted that he dug his claws in, so as not to slide off during the car ride. Good kitty. Or at least, somewhat intelligent kitty.

  Back at the hotel, I made a point to let myself in via a rear entrance—away from any pesky reception desks, where employees might want to know why the hell I looked like I’d just survived a Patriot missile strike … and oh yeah, why I was carrying a bloody kitten. Sure, I could protest that the blood on the kitten belonged to someone else, but I doubted that’d do much to ease anybody’s mind.

  It wasn’t until I was halfway down the hall that I saw the blood on my boots, along with enough mud to build a hut. I removed the boots and held them with one hand, and the kitten with the other, and I made it back to my room with a giant sigh of relief—and the sudden realization that the kitten had peed inside my jacket.

  No good deed goes unpunished, et cetera.

  This also reminded me that I didn’t have anyplace within the hotel room that a kitten might use as a toilet, but since he’d already peed, I figured that a few kitten turds wouldn’t be the end of the world. They’d be more like the shit frosting on a crap cupcake of a day, really, and I couldn’t bring myself to care.

  I was tired, and my head hurt, and I wished I had some blood—human or otherwise—but there wasn’t any handy except a few drops floating around in a skinny kitten, and I didn’t actually need it. I don’t drink very often in my old age, but sometimes it’s comforting and it’s just what I want.

  But we can’t always get what we want.

  Instead we get to turn the bathroom sink into a kitten spa, much to the indignation of the animal in question. When I was finished with him, the water looked like bloody tea, and I came this close to giving it a sip, but that would be pathetic—and I wasn’t quite desperate enough to be pathetic.

  I towel-dried the kitten, used one of the hotel coffee mugs as a water bowl for him, then I took a long, hot bath.

  Because I deserved it.

  I also deserved to turn in for the morning and sleep until I damn well felt like waking up, but that’s hard to do when something with four sets of very sharp claws is climbing all over you and yowling like it’s the end of the world. I picked up the kitten by the scruff and asked him, “Why did I bring you with me again? Why?”

  He meowed.

  “Not good enough,” I replied. “You should be doing cute kitten things, or at least sleeping quietly. That’s how you thank a nice lady for saving you from becoming a fritter. Not this bullshit.”

  But he wouldn’t shut up, and I knew he was hungry, and maybe scared, and certainly confused. I couldn’t do anything about the last two things, but there was a twenty-four-hour drugstore down the street and they had kitten food, God be praised. I snuck some back to the hotel just in time for the sun to start peeking up, and when I finally crashed for the day, leaving the DO NOT DISTURB sign firmly on the door knob, the last thing I remember hearing was the munch, munch, munch of the kitten burying his face in kibble.

  4

  The next night I awakened to a whiff of cat shit, and I was almost pissed about it—but then I realized the little bastard had done his business in the potted plant on the table beside the front door. The plant was fake, but the soil was close enough to sand, or gravel, or whatever, that the kitten had climbed in and made himself at home. Three cheers for instinctual behavior, eh? After all, it wasn’t his fault I hadn’t sprung for any kitty litter.

  I congratulated him with a head pat, then began my evening routine of readiness. What was I readying myself for?

  Frankly, I wasn’t sure.

  How should I proceed? I had an assignment and lots of directions, and oodles of bio information … all of it leading me back to a smoking crater a few miles outside Portland.

  Like the kitten, I had nothing to go on.

  So I did the only thing I could think of. I called Horace.

  “Darling!” he answered the phone before I could squeeze out a “hello.” “I’m so glad to hear from you. I was just now sitting here, wondering if a big box of penis bones was in my future—and wanting nothing more on this whole earth than a big box of penis bones, or rather, the money those penis bones will bring me—and here your number pops up in my phone like magic!”

  “Are you going to say ‘penis bones’ again? Because I think you could work it in another couple of times for good measure, if you really tried.”

  “Penis bones penis bones penis bones.”

  “You’re deranged,” I told him.

  “And rich. When can I expect a delivery? Should I come in person? Maybe we should do this exchange the old-fashioned way. This is probably the most expensive thing I’ve ever asked you to get. I’m not sure UPS can be trusted on this one.”

  “I’m not sure UPS can be trusted to scoop my litter box.”

  “Your … your what? Oh my. I’m not sure which joke to reach for,” he mused.

  I helped him out. “You could make a crack about the state of my bathroom, or you could simply be aware that I’ve picked up a kitten and find some pun to work into the situation.”

  “Why the fuck do you have
a kitten?”

  “Nightmares of charbroiled baby cat.”

  “Gross.”

  “Agreed.” The tiny monster climbed up beside me on the bed where I was sitting, and put in a yowl for good measure.

  “I heard that,” Horace said. “And you have a kitten. I’m having a hard time picturing it. What’s its name?”

  I had no idea. On the spot, I decided, “PITA.”

  “Pita? Like the tasty bread-type substance?”

  “PITA—like short for ‘pain in the ass.’ I don’t know what I’m going to do with him, I just couldn’t let him go up in smoke. Speaking of going up in smoke … um … I don’t have your penis bones.”

  Silence.

  “Horace? Did you hear me?”

  “Oh, I heard you,” he said. “I just don’t believe you.”

  “Well, believe it. And I’m starting to get the feeling you haven’t told me everything I need to know about those dick sticks.”

  “Dick sticks. That’s a new one.”

  “It just now came to me. You should be proud of me, keeping my sense of humor intact, even though I nearly got blasted into the Great Beyond.”

  I filled him in on what had happened, how it’d gone down, and the depths of my surprise—with the added bonus of explaining how I’d ended up with Pita sitting beside my knee, chewing on his toenails.

  Horace was silent again, which made twice in one phone call—and surely a personal best. He’s hard to shut up.

  I prompted him. “All right, now it’s your turn to talk. There’s more to the case than a corn-fed redneck with a box of valuable baubles, and if you want those baubles, you’re going to have to tell me something useful.”

  “I have to admit,” he finally said, “I’m not one hundred percent shocked to hear of your difficulty. I’m surprised,” he added quickly, lest I start yelling at him, “but not shocked. I swear to you, Ray—I thought you were way ahead of the competition on this one. I had no idea anyone would beat you to the score.”

  “You might’ve informed me that I was in a race,” I grumbled. “I would’ve made it more of a hurry.”

  “This kind of money wasn’t enough to spur you on? Jesus, woman. I don’t understand you at all.”

  I rubbed at my eyes with one hand, then almost set it down by accident atop Pita, who gave me the ol’ stink-eye. “It’s not like I paused to do a sudoku before taking the gig. It’s barely been seventy-two hours since you told me about it, and in that time I’ve made it all the way to Portland, scoped the location, found a corpse, almost got struck by lightning—twice—and adopted a kitten. So it’s been an eventful couple of nights, utterly free of dillydallying. Regardless, if you’d told me that someone else was looking for the stash, I would’ve made an effort to speed it up—but no such mention was made. And now, if you still want your cock blocks, you’re going to have to give me a hint.”

  “You want a hint?”

  “I want a hint. Tell me who else knew about them, and who else wanted them.”

  He sighed, and for once it wasn’t the dramatic kind. It was the kind of sigh people make when they aren’t sure how to answer. “Shit, honey. For starters, everyone else at the curiosities table saw the bones and knew I was interested. I might not have been as completely discreet as I should’ve been, but rest assured, I didn’t tell a goddamn soul what they really were.”

  “But?” I knew there was a but. There’s always a but.

  “A couple of years ago, I got a phone call—the quiet kind—from someone looking for, shall we say, ‘endangered’ bacula. I think the caller wanted something from a werewolf, but she made it clear that other offerings might well be considered. Anyway, I didn’t have anything at the time—and I didn’t know where to go and grab any, either. It’s not the sort of thing that comes up for sale very often.”

  “Hard to believe,” I muttered. Pita had moved on to cleaning his crotch, which I watched with grossed-out fascination.

  “Yeah, well. I forgot about the conversation until I was at that stupid road show, and then it all came rushing back to me, covered in dollar signs … and I was just wondering if I’d saved that phone number when things got weird.”

  “Dude, you’re dealing in penis bones. It begins weird, and it can only get weirder from there.”

  He pretended he hadn’t heard me. “It didn’t take me long to chase down the number; I never forget a wallet, and this was a potential customer with some pretty specific needs. But when I called her back last night, implying rather strongly that I’d gotten a lead on some objects she might want … she turned up her nose at me. Said she didn’t need my services, because she’d gotten a lead on some bones herself.”

  “I find it hard to believe she would’ve come across such things without any outside assistance.”

  “Yeah, me either. Then she said the magic words that made me hang up on her. She said she couldn’t afford to pay me anyway.”

  “No wonder you hung up.”

  “Well, I mean, come on. She had a lot of nerve, asking me for a product and then telling me she didn’t plan to buy it. That’s just sneaky—and not in a good way. It’s practically fraud, is what it is.”

  “Or shopping,” I noted. “Do you think this woman went after your bones? Do you think she jumped them?”

  “Now is not the time for jokes!” he practically yelled at me.

  I pulled the phone away from my ear, and even Pita stopped his craw-gnawing to look up and wonder what the fuss was about. “Geez, sorry. Get a grip, would you?”

  “Right now I’d like to grip that bitch’s neck!”

  “So you think she beat me to it? But how would she have known about the stash?”

  He grumbled. “She dropped a name. She said somebody named ‘Bill’ had hooked her up.”

  “Awesome. I’ll just start with all the Bills in Washington State, and we’ll see if we get anywhere.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” He lowered his voice, suddenly all craftiness and vengeance. “I think I know which Bill gave her the tip-off. I think it was one of the road-show guys, one of the grunts who hefts the furniture around so us civilized chaps don’t get our suits all sweat-stained.”

  “You’re such a fucking snob.”

  “A clean fucking snob, with a dry-cleaning bill that’s exorbitant enough as it is.”

  I shook my head. “But why would a furniture-hefting grunt know a box of penis bones when he sees it?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest. Maybe he’s a secret cock enthusiast, maybe he’s got a relative with a fetish, or maybe he’s an amateur magician himself. All I’m saying is, he showed an inordinate degree of interest in that box. He tried to argue with me while I was doing my assessment—”

  “You mean, trying to pass off your bullshit?”

  “Yes, yes, bullshit was being deployed. It’s like I told you, I was trying to push it as Indian artifacts or endangered species parts, but Harvey wasn’t having it. And while I was talking, this fucker Bill leans over and starts in like he has a differing opinion.”

  “I assume you shot him down.”

  He sniffed. “You can assume I got him fired, and you can bet your sweet ass I had him booted out of the building. Still, it would’ve been easy for him to see Harvey’s contact information—and share it, if anyone wanted it.”

  I gave this some consideration, and for about half a minute neither of us spoke. I broke the meditation by saying the obvious out loud. “That’s a stretch, man. One annoying man named Bill, and one annoying non-client who has a friend named Bill. It’s thin.”

  “It’s a hunch. A strong one.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not enough. I’m sorry, but if that’s all you’ve got, I’m cutting my losses now. And since you’re already so pissy about losing the bones, I won’t even bill you for my time or travel expenses.”

  “Oh, you’re a real peach,” he told me, in a voice that could’ve blistered the paint on a Porsche. “Do you just … do you simply fai
l to understand how much money we’re talking about?”

  Off the top of my head, I guessed, “A few million? Something like that? But I don’t need it, and honestly, neither do you. You only want it.”

  “A few million apiece on some of those things! And who the hell doesn’t want a few million extra dollars? You say that like I’m some kind of lunatic!”

  “You are a lunatic, but it’s not your greed. That’s normal. What’s not normal, and what is lunacy, is expecting me to track down this semi-fictitious Bill and chase him down for your penis bones. It’s impossible, Horace, and I won’t waste my time trying to prove otherwise.”

  “What if I up your finder’s fee?” All the way from New York City, I smelled his desperation.

  “Baby, you could up it to thirty or forty million and I still wouldn’t do it. Because unlike whoever wants those bones, I’m not a magician. I don’t have the power to spontaneously know the identity and address of one miscellaneous Bill or one mysterious—and as yet unnamed—potential client, and I’m not going to waste my time or yours over this.”

  “But Raylene—”

  “But nothing, Horace.” Then, out of the kindness of my kitten-softened heart, or something, I threw him a bone. “Look, if you can find out anything else—anything useful—I’ll take another stab at it. But it’ll have to be more than ‘some woman’ and ‘some guy, allegedly named Bill.’ Bring me more to work with, and I’ll give it another shot.”

  “You promise?”

  Ooh. Promising things to Horace was like signing a contract with Rumpelstiltskin. However, I won’t lie—it was an awful lot of money to walk away from, and all my relocation in the previous six months had left me less flush than usual. Therefore, against my better judgment I said, “I promise. And I’m not asking you to draw me a map with an X on it. I’m asking for a solid lead. A name, or an address. Or a building. Something.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I heard you.” He swore, but his mouth was away from the receiver and I didn’t quite catch the full spectrum of nuance, though I heard “bitch” and “cunt” feature prominently. “I’m on it,” he declared, then the connection went dead.