“Objects in motion remain in motion,” I said, pushing her aside and stepping into the shadows at the base of a steep flight of narrow stairs. “That is, until they hit concrete. That’s what happened to me.”
Shocked I know about Newton’s First Law, what with me dropping out of school at the age of twelve? Well, don’t be. It’s been a while since the Bride made me what I am, most of that while boring as hell, and when I’m bored I read. Yes, even books on physics. Also, screw your narrow-minded stereotypes. Lots of smart—hell, brilliant—kids leave school for one reason or another. Same with runaways. And . . .
Never mind.
Like I said, I pushed my way past Lenore. Then I pulled the door shut behind me, and, before she had a chance to ask any more stupid questions, I took the stairs two and three at a time. She followed me, one step at a time. The stairs ended in a short hallway, and she told me it was the second door on the left. She didn’t have to tell me it would be locked. She caught up and used her knuckles to tap out some sort of code on the wood.
Berenice Maidstone opened it. Unlike last time, her mousy hair wasn’t braided, but hung loose about her face and shoulders. There was impatience in her brown eyes.
“You’re late,” she said. “And you look like hell.”
“Jesus, nothing gets past you people.”
The dingy room behind her was washed with winter sunlight coming in through tattered blinds.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” she asked.
“Only when I breathe. Now, are you going to let me inside or what?”
“Your boss called,” she said, like that was any sort of an answer. “He sounded concerned.”
“Don’t let that fool you,” I replied, then pushed her aside, same as I’d done with Lenore. The room smelled of mildew, salami, and sauerkraut. Pink floral wallpaper was peeling off the walls in long strips. There were a couple of chairs and a sofa, all of which looked as if they suffered years at the claws of cats. Also, there was another girl inside, her back to me, facing one of the windows.
“Amity,” I said. “Nice to meet you, too.”
“Close the door,” the younger girl said, either to her sister or Lenore. “Why are you late, Quinn?”
I stared at the girl’s shoulders a moment or two. She had a certain uncanny splendor about her. Nothing a mundane would see, but plain as day to my eyes. Whatever brand of voodoo her sister could lay claim to, Amity possessed that tenfold or more. Here was power enough to be reckoned with, talent that completely eclipsed Berenice. And, of course, she was hungry for more. Because that’s how power works. Just another addiction. The powerful are only addicts. Always a little patience with the rich and mighty. Always a little patience with junkies.
“Why are you late?” she asked again.
“Yeksabet Harpootlian,” I answered, and Amity crossed her arms and looked at the dusty floorboards. Berenice sat down on the ruins of the sofa. Lenore took a few steps towards me, behind me, just off to my left. I stiffened a bit at the sound of her footsteps.
“Seems,” I continued, “this little business venture of yours is attracting a lot of attention from all the wrong sorts. Not the kind of people whose shit lists you wanna end up on. Or maybe that’s just me.”
“She came to you?” Amity asked, her voice, smooth as cream, cold as dry ice.
“Not exactly. More like she dragged me to her.”
“Yes, well . . . we’ll see that your employer is well compensated for his troubles, as soon as we have the unicorn.”
“Listen, child,” I said to her, trying not to lose it, quickly failing. “Fuck my employer. Fuck this wizardy sex toy has you all hot and bothered. I’m the one you need to be thinking about compensating for her troubles.”
“Ms. Quinn,” cut in Berenice, her voice soft as a bedbug’s fart. “Maybe—”
“I don’t recall saying a single motherfucking word to you,” I snarled back, not taking my eyes off her kid sister.
Which is when Amity finally turned to face me.
And I wished she hadn’t.
She had the sort of eyes that . . . well, like they say, if looks could kill. Hers probably had, on more than one occasion. I’d have bet Mean Mr. B’s life on it. The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but those eyes of hers seemed at least a century older. The irises were the muddy green of Spanish olives.
“Do not use that tone with my sister, mongrel. Hold your tongue, or I’ll gladly take the liberty myself.”
If my heart was still beating, it would have skipped a few beats right then. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, ol’ Edgar had spawned a monster. And I like to think if I hadn’t been careening through another stellar butt plug of a day, I’d have gotten myself under control then and there. Alas, this was very much not to be.
I scraped up a bitter, amused laugh. Poke the scary girl with a pointy stick, Quinn.
“So you think you’re actually the spookiest thing I’ve seen today? Well, I got news for you.”
I heard Lenore’s footsteps. She stopped just behind me. Now, once you’ve had the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of your head—which, by then, I had—you kinda don’t ever forget the sensation. I didn’t even think. I spun around and seized Lenore by the throat. The little Sig Sauer pocket pistol slipped from her fingers and clattered against the floor.
“You wanna dance with me, little girl?”
Lenore made an alarmed, strangled sound. Her black-rimmed eyes bulged, and she clawed at my forearm.
“No, no,” I whispered. “I’ll lead. I insist.” And I hurled her across the room into the wall beside the door. There was a sickening meaty thud, then a wet snap and crunch of bone, and then she was just a limp heap below a dented plaster wall. She looked like a broken doll.
Can’t say I was sorry.
Berenice jumped up, but she sat right back down when I pointed an index finger at her. And, oh, fuck, but killing that silly bitch Lenore had felt fine, almost sweet as a mouthful of warm blood, sweeter than the cozy fog of smack had felt in the back before.
“Are we quite done with the theatrics?” Amity asked, her voice still smooth and icy. Still impatient. I turned back to face those wicked green eyes. They made me want to find a deep hole to crawl inside. I knew I had to do just the opposite.
“No one puts a fucking gun to my fucking head. I don’t care whose lackey they are.”
“Yes, and now she knows that,” said Amity, and I caught a glimpse of her teeth for the first time. They’d all been filed to points, and, gotta admit, that gave me pause. It also got me wet. Sorry, guys, but it’s the truth. In my defense, I hadn’t been laid since I’d died and turned loup. And a girl has needs.
“She’s no one who’ll be missed,” Amity said. “Besides, it’s nothing I can’t fix, if I so desire. Now, about Harpootlian—”
“I got the impression she wants you two way worse than dead,” I said, finding it hard not to stare at those teeth. “Plus, you’ve got Drusneth, of whom I’m sure you’ve heard, on your ass. Then there’s B, who’s not so happy about Shaker Lashly. By the way, was that really necessary?”
“You think we had him killed?”
“Sure do. B, he thinks it was Harpootlian. But I’m guessing what really happened is the poor son of a bitch got too close to figuring out your game, yours and your sister’s. That your being missing was just a cover story to suck us in. You were afraid Shaker would tattle, and B would decide to cut his losses and drop the case. Which shows how little you know about the bastard. By the way, I’m not a goddamn detective.”
Amity raised an eyebrow. “You solved the mystery of your colleague’s death easily enough.”
“I’m also not an idiot. Though the two of you—”
“We know what we’re up against, Siobhan.”
The way Amity said my first name, the way she spun it, like cotton candy, between her tongue and lips, those jagged teeth and her palate, well . . . I didn’t tell her how much I hate being called Siobhan. I sorta just wanted
to hear her say it again.
I swallowed. My mouth had gone dry. I somehow managed to work up enough spit to talk.
“Really, Amity? ’Cause I saw Harpootlian up close and personal, and you’re not dealing with some cut-rate succubus. We’re talking archfiend, hard-core mojo, eats the likes of me for breakfast.”
“You’re scared of her?”
“Lady, I’m scared of Drusneth, and let me tell you, even on her best days, Madam Calamity can’t lay claim to as much evil as this Harpootlian character has in her left kidney. If she has kidneys. Regardless, the two of you, by my reckoning, are shit out of luck. At best.”
Amity took a deep breath and glanced at her sister, then back at me. She exhaled, and her breath, it smelled like dead roses. Like something you’d find out back of a funeral parlor.
“If Yeksabet Harpootlian is everything you say she is, why’d she let you walk? If you’re right, why hasn’t she already simply killed us herself and eliminated the competition?”
“Frankly, I’ve kind of been wondering the same thing myself,” I told her, and I was trying hard to concentrate through the lingering rush of murder and the siren song of Amity’s voice. Because here I was, having made a deal with this Auntie H, while conspiring with Mean Mr. B and—fuck me sideways, Boston Harry’s goddamn brother—to double-cross the Maidstone sisters, all the while pretending I was still in their employ. Also, B had entirely neglected to explain how he intended to keep Drusneth from discovering what he was up to, or how he planned to make nice if she did find out. Maybe Amity thought I was asking her if she fully comprehended who and what she was up against, but I was really, truly asking myself.
“Berenice, would you please leave Siobhan and me alone for a bit?”
“Amity—” Berenice began.
“Please,” Amity said again, and I heard Berenice Maidstone promptly stand and walk quickly to the door. I heard her open it and slam it shut again. So, there we were, alone in that musty, garlic-scented room above the deli on Atwells, just me and this mortal teenager who’d probably make Jeffrey Dahmer shit his tidy whities. I should have followed Berenice, but that’s precisely what I didn’t do.
I don’t think I need to explain why.
“If we work together, you and I,” said Amity, “we can find the unicorn. And when we do, there will be no one we need fear, not ever again. I have faith in you.”
Liar.
She kissed me, and her mouth tasted the same as her breath. Dead roses. Which actually didn’t seem so bad up close, not sliding up my nostrils and down my throat. She slipped her right hand into my jeans and . . . let’s just say I’d descended to that level of stupid where my clit had seized control of all my cognitive functions. Let’s just say that and tastefully fade to black. The sordid details are sorta hazy anyhow.
Actually, no. Quite a few of the sordid details aren’t all that hazy. And some of the “plot” to come hinges on one particular revelation—let’s say a rude awakening—I gleaned from the right and proper fucking I got that afternoon from Amity Maidstone. But I don’t want to bring the “story” to a grinding halt with a protracted scene of heaving bosoms and crazed supernatural monkey sex. So I’ll get back to that shortly.
But first.
It was dark by the time I pulled myself together, left Amity sleeping on that trashed sofa, and left the room above the delicatessen. The afternoon had faded past twilight to dark. When I took my leave, there was no sign of Berenice, and I did wonder what had become of her after her sister had not so subtly told her to take a powder. Lenore still lay crumpled against the wall, and maybe some small sliver of me wished I hadn’t done that. Maybe. Out in the cold, the very almost full moon was almost bright as a spotlight, and I couldn’t bear to look directly at it. I’d officially reached that part of the month where all of my concentration was required to avoid going loup and sinking into the blackout oblivion that accompanied those murderous transformations. I was too busy and everything had gotten way too complicated to risk the Beast screwing the pooch with an indiscreet rampage.
So I kept my eyes on the icy sidewalk and asphalt and the litter. I kept my eyes off the moon, and I didn’t meet anyone’s gaze. The loup was hammering at my senses, and getting banged for the first time in months hadn’t helped. Sex, death, the animal in us all. Only in some of us more than others. Way more.
The Econoline was dead, you’ll recall, because Harpootlian had seen fit to kill it. Which meant I was on foot, and I’d just crossed the interstate back to College Hill and decided to take a shortcut across the Brown University quad when I blundered into the next bullshit misadventure in a week of bullshit misadventures.
I wasn’t far from the spot where Lenore and I had sat on the park bench three days before, not far from the redbrick monolith of Carrie Tower. Not much light—the streetlights back the way I’d come, and the white pools from the lamps spaced out along the quad. Well, and the moon. Not that I needed electric lights, not with these eyes of mine, which loup season had made even more sensitive than usual. So I had a perfectly clear view of the big-ass hat who stepped out from behind a tree, clearly intent upon blocking my progress. It was one of the Drusneth’s se’irim bouncers. Skin black as the night to mortal eyes, porcupine quills, tall impala horns, and eyes like glowing crimson Christmas lights. The fucker was at least seven feet, hooves to the tips of those horns, if it was an inch. Its matted fur gleamed, vaguely iridescent.
“Twice-Damned,” it grunted, “Twice-Dead, where you bound on a winter’s eve?”
I stood there staring at it a few seconds. “What’s it to you, goat?”
It snorted, and twin jets of steam billowed from its nostrils. “Better to ask yourself how it concerns Madam Calamity. Better to ask yourself that, Twice-Damned.”
“I’m going home,” I replied. “And you’d better get out of my way, and run back home to tell Drusneth to go fuck herself. From what I hear, she’s very good at that.”
I should have heard the second se’irim coming up behind me. But I was tired, fighting back the loup, and still, admittedly, stupid from the sex. First thing I knew, a razor-sharp claw was pressed against my jugular.
“How about I take her your head, instead?” asked Thing Number One. “Would you prefer that?”
“Would she? Is this a dead-or-alive job, or are you trying to improvise with that shriveled cranberry you call a brain?”
The claw of Thing Number Two applied just enough pressure to break the skin and draw a few drops of blood. I knew the se’irim knew better than to stop at slitting my throat. I knew, if it came to that, they’d take my head off, clean as a whistle, just like Thing Number One had suggested.
“What does Drusneth want?”
The se’irim snorted again. “She wants the unicorn.”
“And she thinks I have it?”
By the way, it occurred to me right then that no one mixed up in this game of button, button, who’s got the button had any idea where the dildo was. Or even could be. Or had last been seen. Presumably, someone had stolen it from Yeksabet and smuggled it from one universe to another, but then what? Why did they seem to think it was in Providence? What did they know that no one had bothered to share with me? Now, yeah, odd time to be asking myself these questions, but I was getting accustomed to impending doom, and don’t our sudden realizations always come when we least expect them? Whatever.
“That’s between you and her, Twice-Damned, Twice-Cursed,” Thing Number Two grunted. His breath stank like a rotting skunk. “Nothing for us to know.”
“Well, I don’t have it, and I don’t have the foggiest where it is. I don’t even want to know where it is. And you two can tell her that just as well as I can. Now, get outta my way and get lost.”
“We have not come to bargain with you,” said Thing Number One. “Nor have we come to accept no for an answer. Your compliance is not optional.”
Which is when the cramps hit, pretty much in every muscle I have, all at once. When my control slipped. W
hen these two idiotic shitbirds distracted me just enough the Beast snapped the lock and came bounding out of its cage. I had, at best, a minute before my mind was no longer mine. Probably less.
Two se’irim against one starving, pissed-off loup bitch? How would that round of psycho kaiju throw-down turn out? Damned if I knew. But I had a feeling I’d drawn the short straw.
The pain doubled, redoubled, washing the whole world in a kaleidoscope of reds, oranges, and yellows.
“Guys, this really isn’t a good time. Take my word—”
“Not for you to say, half-breed,” Thing Number Two snarled into my left ear. “You’ll come with us, and you’ll do it now and without any further argument.”
The curtain came down hard and impenetrable as a million pounds of midnight. I didn’t fight it. It wasn’t a battle I could have won, anyway.
CHAPTER SIX
A FINE LOT OF LOLLIPOPS
You know, sometimes it’s easier to set up the next part of the story you’re telling by recourse to another story. Yeah, like I did back there with “The Maltese Unicorn” (even if Harpootlian did end up telling me it wasn’t all gospel). And what came next, after the two se’irim squared off with me that night and me going loup and blacking out, frankly it’ll be easier to move on to what came next if I tell you another little tale first.
Those of you who find this annoying, go read another book, instead. I won’t mind.
One October, a few years after all this business with the unicorn cluster fuck had blown over and was resigned to history’s trash heap—Oh, wait. Don’t you dare whine or kvetch about my having just “spoiled” this story, because if I hadn’t lived through it, I wouldn’t be writing this, now, would I? Seriously. Get a clue. Anyway, once upon a time I was up in New Hampshire, bored as hell—because, hello, it was goddamn New Hampshire. I was tooling along I-202 somewhere between Peterborough and Antrim, which is to say the corner of “no” and “where.” Round about twilight, I drove by one of the innumerable fruit stands that pepper New England roadsides. Only it wasn’t just another fruit stand. There was a sign out front that declared in huge red letters FREAKS! NATURE’S MISTAKES! FIENDS OF HELL! Like I said, New Hampshire, boredom, so I turned around and went back to have a look-see.
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