Red Delicious

by Kathleen Tierney

  I squeezed the trigger.

  Click.

  Okay, that was starting to get old.

  Only, I was no longer on that narrow road with its grotesque not-buildings. I wasn’t even in my van. I was sitting in a simple wooden chair in a white room. And when I say that this room was white, let me be clear that the room was goddamn white. Walls, floor, ceiling, and all of it washed in stark-white fluorescent light. There wasn’t a door, and no windows, but I assumed if there had been, they’d have been white, too. I was no longer holding the Glock. And I wasn’t alone in the white room. A painfully skinny boy in a white satin evening gown, his skin the color of cocoa, was seated several yards in front of me in a chair identical to mine. He was barefoot, with a silver ring on every toe. His shoulder-length hair was at least as white as the room, and his sharp nails were polished to match. In his right hand he held a silver chalice. His eyes were red as rubies.

  Jesus, I thought. B would love to have a go at you.

  “Okay,” I said. “I give up. Who the fuck are you?”

  When he answered, I knew immediately I wasn’t hearing the voice that boy had been born with. Well, assuming he’d been born. It was the voice of a very, very ancient woman. Maybe the most ancient voice I’d ever heard. It sure as hell put the Bride of Quiet to shame. Maybe if the granite cliffs down in Conanicut Island could talk, they might sound like that voice.

  “Forgive me,” he said. Or she said. Whichever. “It was presumptuous of me to assume you’d know who I am.”

  “Yeah, it sorta was. I see a lot of albino transvestites in my line of work.”

  He took a sip from the silver cup, not taking those ruby eyes off me.

  “Harpootlian?” I asked.

  The incongruous voice replied, “Pleased to meet you, Siobhan Quinn. Your reputation precedes you.”

  I glanced around the white room. The least spot of dirt would have been a big goddamn relief right about then. A person could lose her mind, locked up with all that white.

  “Bet you say that to all the monsters you kidnap. But, then again, I’m wrong more than I’m right. So, here’s where you tactfully attempt to dissuade me from snooping about for your magical, mystical dildo. Well, unless I’m snooping about for you.”

  The boy smiled and his teeth were shiny and black.

  He raised his cup in a mock toast. “Well, miss, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.”

  I turned back to the pretty boy. God, how I wanted a cigarette.

  “Wonderful,” I said. “And if I don’t happen to take your advice?”

  “It’s rare anyone makes that . . . choice,” answered the old woman speaking through the boy. “It’s rare, indeed.”

  “Just so you know, for the record, you’re not the first demon I’ve ever met.”

  “And yet you are the very first of your kind I have ever set eyes on. A vampire who is also a werewolf. In two worlds, never have I seen anything the likes of you, Miss Quinn.” The boy leaned forward, still smiling.

  “I get that a lot. Now, can we get to the part where you threaten me, and I admit I’m being insanely, suicidally stupid not backing off, but refuse to back off anyway?”

  The boy sat back again and tapped a nail against the rim of the silver chalice. “I was warned you are not the sort of woman—assuming that word still applies—who stands on etiquette.”

  “Here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding,” I said, and refused to turn away from his gaze.

  “I was told, I was, that she picks the wrong time to say all the wrong things.”

  “Ah, now, please don’t start referring to her in the third person. She hates that.”

  Maybe I’d been startled when I’d first arrived in the room, and then maybe I’d been scared. But right about then, it was a simmering anger stepping to the forefront.

  “A slip of the tongue,” he said. “Old habits, you know. Shall we talk of the unicorn? You’ve read that silly woman’s silly story.”

  “Bet that got your goat . . . so to speak. Seeing all that shit in print.”

  “Miss Beaumont was summarily punished for her crimes against my court,” the boy, the old woman, the demon assured me. “Indeed, she will be punished for a long, long time to come, as will the half-breed she named Ellen Andrews. They earned their corners in the pit.”

  I stared at him. I admit, there was something I hadn’t exactly expected.

  “Natalie Beaumont, she was Mona Mars? And . . . she still crossed you, after killing Andrews to square things, and then she used a pseudonym, but didn’t even bother to change her name when she wrote the story? Jesus.”

  The boy bent over and set his chalice on the floor, then sat up again and folded his hands primly in his lap.

  “It was a complicated affair,” he said. “Much more so than her tale would lead one to believe. To say she was biased would be the most prodigious of understatements.”

  “Fuck me,” I said incredulously, then sat back in that uncomfortable wooden chair and laughed. “Sure, let’s talk of the unicorn.”

  “By rights, you know that it’s mine, yes?”

  I didn’t answer Harpootlian immediately. When you’re speaking with demons, it’s wise to carefully consider your words, to handle them like sweaty antique dynamite, and I’d already pushed my luck, mouthing off with my usual disregard for diplomacy.

  “You know that this is true,” the boy added.

  “Listen. First off, if Mars’—I mean, Beaumont’s—story is half true, then it ain’t entirely clear who owns the thing. You might have ended up with it—”

  “Miss Quinn, excuse my interrupting you, but that which I acquire and hold is mine. These are the laws of my realm, and these laws are sacrosanct.”

  “Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” I said.

  “If you wish, yes.”

  “And what about Szabó, and the duplicate that Andrews created?”

  “A fabrication on the part of Miss Beaumont.”

  I took a deep breath, exhaled very slowly, measuring my breath as carefully as I was measuring my words. Like my words, any one of those breaths might have been my last. I didn’t have to be told that the slightest flick of one of the boy’s index fingers would have been enough to obliterate even the memory of me.

  “Then I have no idea what part of that story is true and what part of it’s bull.”

  “I believe it’s best you set the tale aside,” the demon said. “Best we proceed on the most unequivocal facts.”

  “Which means I take your word for all of this. That I trust you’re telling me the truth.”

  Again, not the most politic of responses.

  “I do believe I have already exhibited the greatest patience, considering the circumstances, and considering we are discussing the theft of that which, I remind you again, is mine. You walk a fine line, Miss Quinn, expecting more from me, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”

  “Yeah. Sorry,” I said. “My mouth and me, we have sort of a Tourette’s problem. Especially in stressful situations, when I have cause to expect complete annihilation any second.”

  The boy’s red eyes regarded me with a blend of curiosity and contempt, kinda the way I might examine a two-headed cockroach just before I swatted it with a shoe.

  “You’re working with the Maidstone sisters, yes?” he—she—oh, fuck it—Harpootlian asked me. “And also your employer, and the bogle with whom he has aligned himself.”

  “Er . . . wait. What bogle?”

  The boy blinked. Just once. Very, very slowly. “The one you heard muttering over the phone. The one whose brother you slaughtered.”

  I bit the tip of my tongue a moment, and then I said, “With all due respect, I don’t recall ever having killed a bogle. Probably, that’s the sort of thing I’d remember.”

  “He was known outside the Hollow Hills as Boston Harry. I’ll not speak his true name, as the names of fairies lie like bile upon my tongue.”

  “Boston Harry,” I sai
d, pretty fucking much stunned.

  Boston Harry had been a sort of black-market dealer in every manner of occult geegaw and whatnot under the sun and moon. During the Bride of Quiet fiasco, he’d supplied a man named Doyle with a bewitched blunderbuss that . . . okay, long story. Cut to the chase. I’d eaten Boston Harry. Well, the loup me had eaten Boston Harry. Him being a bogle was news to me, but then I hadn’t known bogles looked like a cross between a sewer rat and a Munchkin.

  “He took the smallest finger from your left hand,” said Harpootlian, and the boy pointed. “He took the second toe from your left foot.”

  It had seemed like a fair enough trade at the time.

  “I didn’t mean to eat the ugly son of a bitch. It just . . . happened.”

  “His death is of no interest to me. I’m merely trying to establish your allegiances. And, as I said, these are the parties with whom you are working to acquire the unicorn, yes?”

  “Maybe that depends. Appearances can be deceiving. Maybe I’m working for myself.”

  “Could that be?” asked Harpootlian. “I am unaware of your having ever before freelanced.”

  All that white was beginning to make my eyes throb. I wanted to shut them. I wanted to be anywhere but in that room with the demon’s marionette.

  “No one ordered me to hunt down the cunt who did this to me,” I said. There was anger in my voice that I’d been better off hiding, but there you go. “B was hiding under some rock when I went after the Bride. So we could call that freelance, couldn’t we?”

  “I would call that a vendetta, Miss Quinn.”

  “I would say you’re splitting hairs.”

  Like I said, Tourette’s.

  “If, my dear, that is the truth—and I am exceedingly hesitant to accept that it is—you have some fraction of my admiration. A woman who looks out for herself. Any other sort, I have always found it difficult to trust.”

  “A woman like Natalie Beaumont.”

  The boy sat up straight and scratched at his chin. “As I have said, that’s complicated. But, assuming you are not lying, I must say that, no matter how I might admire your greed and lack of loyalty to those who believe you loyal to them, I cannot permit you to stand between me and the Horn of Malta.”

  “Naturally,” I said. But what I was thinking was how I’d just talked myself out of the frying pan and into the fire, how I’d gone from being someone who worked for Harpootlian’s competitors to being one of her competitors in her quest for the dildo. So, my having royally fucked myself over in an effort to save myself from being royally fucked over, the time had come to think royally fucking fast. Sometimes I can actually do that.

  But before I could say the next stupid thing I was bound to say, there was a rustling noise behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and there was the goddamn seagull. He squinted angrily back at me. There were patches of feathers missing where the duct tape had been.

  “Oh, c’mon,” I said, turning back to Harpootlian. “You’re kidding me. The bird works for you?”

  “In this realm,” the boy replied, “my resources are limited. Your Hell is not my Hell. I must make do.”

  “But . . . do you even know how stupid this bird is? I just assumed a gull this dumb, it had to be working for the Maidstones.”

  Harpootlian . . . the boy flared his nostrils slightly.

  “I would offer you a bargain,” he and she said, “and seeing as how that will leave you with only one other option, one I am inclined to believe you’d prefer to avoid, it seems a generous proposition.”

  “I cast my lot with you,” I said, hoping—solely for the sake of buying time—I’d hit the nail on the head.

  “Then you accept?”

  I looked at the bird again. “Can you at least do me the courtesy of being a little more specific, what’s expect—”

  “Do you a courtesy?” Harpootlian . . . let’s say growled. I know I use that word a lot. But there truly is an awful damn lot of growling in my day-to-day. So, yeah, she growled. She growled indignantly, and the sound hurt my ears. Those relentless white walls actually seemed to bulge outward for an instant, as though they were made of rubber. The seagull winced, and a few more feathers dropped off its sorry carcass.

  “Tourette’s,” I reminded her, managing to remain calm, to preserve my bullshit cool-as-a-cucumber façade.

  “The only courtesy you will receive, Twice-Damned, is that I will not drag your soul back with me when I exit this world.” At least she didn’t growl that part.

  And right then . . . lightbulb.

  “Are you actually allowed to do that?” And here is me at my most idiotically, apocalyptically ballsy. Take note, kids. Don’t try this at home. “I mean, you said yourself, your Hell isn’t my Hell. And the way I understand the fine print, I am sort of twice over the property of my Hell, being, as you also said, Twice-Damned. Wouldn’t that be violating some sort of grand cosmic customs law?”

  I had actually managed to render a demon speechless, even if her silence didn’t last very long.

  “But I agree, Auntie H, that is a very generous offer. And it’s one I’m going to give some serious consideration. I’ve no love for . . . well, much of anyone. And certainly not for that lot of cocksuckers who have me chasing after your Steely Dan. Jesus, it’d be worth it just to see the look on B’s face.”

  In a whisper as terrible as that growl had been, Harpootlian used the boy’s tongue and vocal cords to whisper, “Be assured, dog, there are loopholes, and—”

  “Also,” I went on, because if you’re gonna play the fuck-you-and-the-horse-you-ride-in-on card, you gotta play it all the way, “keep that goddamn, mite-infested chicken away from me while I’m thinking this over.”

  “—make no mistake, I shall destroy—”

  “No, I’m not joking. I’ll kill him. I don’t like him. He makes me nervous. I swear on Mercy Brown’s ashes, I’ll kill him the next time I catch him following me around.”

  Ever happened to see a seagull seemed like it was about to explode?

  “Enough!” Harpootlian howled. Yeah, that was more of a howl than a growl. The walls bulged again and my chair actually scooted an inch or two back from the boy’s. A tiny rivulet of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and he hoarsely whispered, “There are loopholes in all laws, Miss Quinn, and should you cross me, by all Hells that are and ever have been, I promise I shall not fail to exploit them to my fullest advantage.”

  The boy quickly raised his left hand then, and the air around me crackled and hummed. The white room dissolved. I might have breathed the proverbial sigh of relief, except . . .

  • • •

  ...a split second later, I was right back where I’d been when Harpootlian had spirited me away to the surrealist city with the bristly Volkswagen monster. No more than three or four seconds had passed, just long enough for me to lose control of the van, and there I was, barreling towards the sidewalk. A couple of pedestrians saw me coming and had just enough time to get out of the way. I stomped the brake, and the pads shrieked, but it was too late. I hit a streetlight doing thirty or forty miles an hour. And since I’d never had much use for seat belts, and the Econoline dated back before airbags, I went over the steering wheel and dashboard and through the windshield at thirty or forty miles an hour. Which means I struck the icy cement out front of Joe Marzilli’s at just under thirty or forty miles an hour.

  It’s almost a cliché, but I’ve found that time really does seem to slow down to a syrupy crawl during shit like this, so everything went nice and slow mo just for me. Someone screamed. Flying through the air, I heard glass breaking, and I heard the crash, which is weird, since both had to have preceded my takeoff. I heard other cars squeal to a stop. Then I heard the dull thud as I plowed into the sidewalk. I rolled through dirty snow and ended up in the shrubbery out front of the restaurant.

  Yeah, a mortal human probably would have been so much potted meat after that. Me, I got some pretty bad scrapes and bruises, a few cracked ribs,
all of which would heal in a few hours. I lay there a moment, waiting for my head to clear, and then I staggered to my feet. The hood of the van was literally wrapped around the silver post. Steam hissed from the ruptured radiator and a blue-green stream of antifreeze was draining out into the gutter.

  A woman asked if I was okay. She sounded incredulous. Because how had anyone been able to get up after that, right? I ignored her, shook my head, because it was still foggy with pain and the shock of the impact. I heard a siren, which might have been the strangest part of all. Since when are the police that goddamn on the ball? Just my luck there must have been a squad car very close by.

  So I started running. Well, more like limping. But it was a fast limp. There were enough pedestrians to be inconvenient, what with lunchtime and all. I shoved the ones who got in my way aside and paid their curses and shouts no mind. The deli wasn’t far. I ducked north into an alley, found a dumpster, broke the lock, lifted the heavy lid, and slipped inside. The lid clanged down, and I sat in the darkness for the better part of an hour. Until I figured the police had decided they weren’t going to find the driver of the dead Econoline, until anyone they might have bothered to question had moved on. I was lucky, and there wasn’t much in the dumpster but flattened cardboard boxes, so I didn’t crawl out stinking of garbage.

  Maybe Harpootlian had meant to kill me, flinging me back the way she did. And maybe she hadn’t. Right then, it hardly mattered.

  I was about an hour and a half late for my meeting with the Maidstones, and that was mostly because of the time I’d spent tailing the seagull that had been tailing me and then lying low until the ruckus over the crash came and went. The whole infernal abduction thing, that had taken hardly more than a blink of the eye.

  I went around back of the deli, like I’d been instructed to do. There was a buzzer, and I rang it. I’d expected one of the shuffling zombies to answer the door, but, instead, I got the goth kid who called herself Lenore. She looked me up and down, then scrunched up her face in a look of disgust.

  “What the fuck happened to you?” she asked.