Have I mentioned how much I suck at chess? In fact, I manage to suck and blow at chess. Suddenly, this seemed very, very relevant, despite my deal with Magdalena Szabó and the flour-skinned girl.
“For starters,” I said, “we need a patsy. A fall guy.”
“And you have one of those?” he asked, and glared at me skeptically with those gray eyes of his.
“Two, actually. Though, technically, they’re fall gals. Well . . . I confess I’m still trying to suss out Amity’s gender, but—”
“You want to hand over Edgar Maidstone’s daughters?”
“Never said I want to. Said it’s what we have, and we’ve come to that place, B, where we gotta do what we can with what we have.”
“Caught between Scylla and Charybdis,” he sighed, and shook his head.
“That’s about the size of it. Maidstone might be all scary, scary, but he’s still just a mortal bastard, and we can deal with him later.”
“You can deal with him later.”
“What the fuck ever.”
“So,” said B, and it occurred to me right then he’d not given me his name of the day. Which I don’t think had ever happened once in all the time I’d known him. That realization sent a little chill up my back, which might seem silly, given everything I’d been through. But sometimes it really is the small stuff.
“So,” I echoed.
“Who gets the fall guys? I don’t see the angle.”
I so suck at chess. “We’ve got one dildo, two expendable sisters, and two pissed-off demons.”
“Math never was my speciality,” he said.
Mine, either. I suck at arithmetic almost as much as I suck (and blow) at chess. “We gotta try to make Szabó and Harpootlian both happy, or at least redirect their ire, right?”
He rolled his empty beer bottle to and fro between his hands, all thoughtful and shit. Waiting for me to tell him I’d come up with his get-out-of-jail-free card. After all, wasn’t I the son of a bitch’s fixer?
And I said, “Sorta robbing Peter to pay Paul. No, that’s not quite right. . . .”
“Not unless you’ve got a plan to simultaneously nick from Paul to pay Peter. Maybe turn that swindle Ellen Andrews pulls off in the magazine tale, and shit out a spare ivory rump-splitter.”
B, he’s got more synonyms for “penis” than KFC’s got chicken tits.
“Not exactly,” I replied. “We’re gonna have to choose a side, and after what went down at the whorehouse this morning, I think you’ll agree that should be Szabó. If Harpootlian was packing that sort of heat, she’d have burned us by now.”
He didn’t disagree.
“So, Szabó gets the unicorn,” I said.
“Assuming you can get it back from that troll git.”
“Yeah. Assuming that. We give her the dildo, and we give Harpootlian the sisters and convince her they’re the ones stole it in the first place. That they’ve had it all along.”
“You shot the bogle who filched it,” B said.
“Yeah, I know that,” I told him. “Didn’t know you knew it, though.”
“Hope you won’t hold it against me, thinking you’re daft, kitten. You thinking Harpootlian’s going to settle for that—or any—consolation prize and sod off.”
I took another swallow of my beer, which was getting warm. I wished there were a few Narragansetts in the cooler, because I fucking hate Bass.
“Look, B, you gave up the right to ask for guarantees when you got involved in this mess. So I don’t want to hear you whining about the one and only option I see open to us at this late date. Not unless you’ve got something better, which you don’t.”
“You’re growing balls,” he said, and straightened his tie. I remember it was the banana yellow one that had tiny red stars printed on it. Ugly as a monkfish, that tie.
“Fuck or be fucked,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for my own suicide.”
“Hope you won’t think any less of me if I just sit here on my arse and get pissed.”
“B, I couldn’t think any less of you if I tried.”
“Fair enough,” he said, and I stood up and left The Basement. When I was back out on the sidewalk, beneath the cloudy skies of that crappy winter day, I felt better, even if the cocksucker was probably right and I was likely marching off to my own doom. I took out my phone and called the Maidstone sisters. Berenice answered.
• • •
Yeah, so I took my leave of Mean Mr. B—he who on that day was ominously nameless. And then I was walking in a winter wonderland, just like the song says.
You don’t need to hear the step-by-step trek (again, again, again) across the city. But I was surprised the Maidstone sisters were still squatting in the room above the deli on Atwells. Seemed pretty goddamn dumb to me. Might as well both draw a bull’s-eye on their respective foreheads and be done with it. I’d like to say their carelessness was entirely beyond my giving half of two shits, but my plan—if I may be so bold as to actually call it that—sort of depended on the two of them staying alive long enough I could hand them over to Auntie H. I had a feeling she’d be even less happy getting nothing more than two dead bitches than getting nothing more than two live bitches.
I’m coming to the end of this tale, which should be pretty damn obvious, right? I mean, if for no other reason than there aren’t a whole lot of pages remaining in the book that you’re holding. And, no doubt, what’s to come will leave a lot of folks dissatisfied, because they like clever plots and whatnot. But life doesn’t come with plots, not even the lives of the dead and unnatural. Literary conventions spawn literary expectations, a sad fucking fact, I know. Someone has an incredibly fascinating life, and you read about it, and you want an ending that offers resolution, ties everything up all neat and tidy. But then that someone dies in a plane crash, or gets run over by a bus, or shot by some asshole robbing a 7-Eleven for twelve dollars and sixteen cents. This is how lives go. Yeah, even the lives of dead girls who are werewolves and are all caught up in demonic, necromantic intrigues.
But, see—and I’d think this should be clear by now—I’m here to say what happened that February, not to make anyone happy. Not to provide a “satisfying read.” So, you’ll like it or you’ll lump it.
Whichever. I don’t care.
So, here’s what happened.
I went to the sisters, and on the way, I had a long-distance chat with Harpootlian.
I found the Maidstones pretty much as last I’d seen them, setting around on their old-money asses, waiting for someone—who would be me—to do their dirty work. Amity was all decked out in claret velvet and enough antique jewelry to sink an ocean liner. Berenice apparently wasn’t quite up to putting on the ritz. Don’t remember exactly what she was wearing. Not that it matters.
“You killed Lenore,” Berenice said. She had her back to me, parked in front of one of the windows and peering down at the snowy street.
“Wait. You talking about when I killed her?” I paused and pointed at the bloody dent in the wall near the door. “Or about when I put down what you made of her after I killed her?”
“It wasn’t your place,” said Berenice Maidstone. “She was nothing of yours.”
“Put a sock in it. Right now my willingness to endure more of you and your sister’s bullshit is down to the thin edge of a wedge. No . . . it’s not thin. It’s gone.”
Amity was sitting on the old sofa. There she sat like maybe she was Señora de las Sombras herself, Queen of fucking Shadows, and who was I to have come to the end of my rope with her?
“Where’s the unicorn?” she asked. “We’re out of time, Twice-Damned.”
“That mean I don’t get so much as another uck-fay from you and the unexpected baloney pony?”
The handy euphemism, that came courtesy B. Like I said, he’s got a million of ’em.
“You’re crass,” Berenice said, and, Jesus, I had to laugh.
“Gotta admit, Big Sis, it’s a surprise to them what ain’t
in the know. None of my business, I know, but since our tumble, I do find myself wondering just how—”
“A summoning gone wrong,” Amity cut in, her voice gone sharp as the point end of a switchblade.
“Wow. That’s some wicked blowback.”
“Le godemiché maudit,” Amity said. “Where is it? You’ve had more than enough time to discover its whereabouts.”
I silently stared at her for a minute or so, and she stared right back with those murky Spanish-olive eyes of hers. Maybe she’d already gotten the drop on me, and all my problems would be over in a few more seconds, courtesy some snazzy dash of wizardry. Probably, I wished it’d go that way. Sure would have simplified my conundrum. You find all your electrons and protons getting suddenly scrambled and yanked apart as every atom in your body disintegrates, at least all life’s little inconveniences and the burden thereof tend to go away. Silver linings, right?
“I don’t have it,” I told her. “I don’t have it, I do not know where it is, and what’s more, I don’t want to know where it is.”
Amity didn’t look stunned. She just looked about a hundred shades of pissed off.
“Our agreement—” Berenice began, not turning away from her window.
I interrupted her. “Is now null and void. I’ve had enough of both of you. I’m getting off this crazy train, right now, today.”
“Then get out of my sight,” Amity said, spitting the words from between her filed cannibal teeth the way I’ve read some cobras can spit venom. “Get out of my sight before I decide my desire to undo you outweighs my concerns of retaliation from your employer.”
“Did you just threaten me? Did you actually have the gall to sit there on your pampered, privileged, deluded ass and threaten me?”
She grinned, showing me all those pointy teeth. “I’ve slaughtered worse than you, Siobhan Quinn.”
“Wrong answer,” I said, and drew the Glock from my duster. Maybe she had a deep pocketful of carnage and annihilation, but I was fast. Thank you, Mercy Brown. I put a bullet in both Amity Maidstone’s pretty shoulders and two more in her kneecaps. Nothing she’d die of, or at least nothing she’d died of before she’d ceased to be of use to me.
As you can imagine, there was a lot a screaming.
It was all Amity’s, though. Berenice just turned and watched her sister curled fetal on the sofa and writhing in what I suppose was some excruciating fucking pain.
“What are you doing?” Berenice asked. The words came out small and bewildered. They came out breakable.
“The two of you put me and B in Dutch with Miss Harpootlian, and I’m about to square things by honoring her with a modest blood sacrifice. Well, actually, the blood part, that’ll be up to her.”
“No. I don’t believe it,” Berenice said with a few more of those breakable words. “You’ll never get away with this.”
“Don’t be too sure,” I told her, “I’m as stupid as I’m supposed to be.”
“My father—”
“The guy you and Morticia there have been trying to fuck over? The man you were out to stab in the back by getting your hands on this artifact that would unseat him as Grand Poobah of your whole crummy family? I don’t think he’s gonna shed too many tears when he gets the news. He made the two of you. I imagine he can make a couple more. Shit, I might even get a reward.”
“You’re insane,” she said.
“That’s the word on the street. Now shut up, or I’ll shoot you, too.”
Probably, Berenice had a lot more to say, but right then’s when the pretty dark-skinned, red-eyed boy in the blinding white gown showed up. He wasn’t there, and then he was, standing over the mess I’d made of Amity. I can’t say he seemed especially happy.
“Our agreement, Twice-Damned,” said Harpootlian, “was that they would be delivered unharmed.”
I put the Glock back in its holster.
“Well, she’s not too harmed,” I said. “Still plenty there for you to get creative and play around with. Hours of fun and all that.”
“I suppose,” she said through the boy’s mouth. “Though I cannot stop contemplating how much more fun I would have playing with you. You are far, far more durable than either of these women. And you did fail me, as regards the Horn of Malta.”
“True on all counts,” I said, hoping Harpootlian wasn’t hearing more than half how freaked out I was. “But you’re a businesswoman, right? Last thing you want is word to get out you welched on a deal. People talk.”
“Perhaps we’ll talk again one day, Twice-Damned.”
“You never can tell.”
The boy nodded, and he reached down and touched Amity’s forehead with a delicate index finger. The woman just . . . well, she wasn’t squirming around on the sofa anymore. She was just gone.
Berenice bolted for that window, clearly willing to take her chances with a broken neck. I drew my pistol, but by the time I’d aimed at her left knee, she’d vanished as well. Apparently, an actual laying on of hands wasn’t necessary for the Demon Madam of the Lower East Side to claim her pounds of flesh and soul.
“Walk in the light, Twice-Damned, Twice-Dead,” she said, “and do pray our paths never cross again.”
By the time I’d turned back towards where the boy had stood, Harpootlian was gone, and I made it to my knees before I vomited.
• • •
Out into the winter wonderland again, and watching the leaden sky shitting snow, and watching the people, and the cars, a snowplow rumbling along—all this time I’m thinking, That was too damn easy. No way, no way in hell it’s gonna be that easy.
The day had careened into late afternoon by the time I made it to the shelter of Aloysius’ underpass. I’d stopped along the way and picked up 3 Musketeers bars and a pint of Jacquin’s ginger-flavored brandy. Hobo booze, that’s the way I always think of it. Old man liquor. Vile stuff. But it’s what the troll likes to suck down with his chocolate, and who am I to judge another nasty’s tastes?
Usually I have to call him out, but this time he was sitting way back from the road, nibbling on the carcass of a run-over skunk. Smelled just about like what you’d imagine it smelled like. Only worse. I made my way over the guardrail, through the dry brown weeds and gravel. He stopped eating the roadkill and frowned at my approach.
“What you got there?” he asked, dropping the skunk and jabbing a finger at the plastic bag I was carrying. “Might it be for me?”
“It certainly isn’t for me,” I replied, and set the bag down at his enormous feet, not far from the dead skunk. He snatched it up and peered inside.
“Well, it’s hoora good, you thinkin’ a’ me like that, Quinn lass.”
“Sure,” I said, kicking at the gravel. “Sure, but I don’t have much time, Aloysius. That thing I gave you, I need it back now.”
He sighed, exhaling the comingled reek of skunk rot and troll breath. His frown became frownier. He scratched at that warty chin. “Be a toaty spot of trouble there. Fear I cannae do so easy a thing as—”
“You lost it?” I probably sounded a whole lot more surprised than I should have. After all, hadn’t I, just a few hours earlier, admitted to Mean Mr. B there was a chance I might not be able to get the dingus back from Aloysius, that you can’t exactly consider trolls the same as safe-deposit boxes?
“Naw,” he grunted. “Weren’t like that. But the Court got wind I was roamin’ ’bout with your doddle-case French-tickler, an’ when Lady Mab Underhill decides ‘’Ah’m gantin’ my paws on it.’ Don’t say no to the Queen of the Daoine Sidhe, oh, no, Quinn lass.”
Next stupid question:
“What the fuck does the Queen of the Faeries want with a damn dildo? Don’t you people have unicorns practically falling out your asses?”
“Not no yooycarns, nay. Not in the Hollow Hills.”
“But what the fuck does she want with it?”
Because, see, maybe if you ask a stupid question twice, it stops being stupid. I don’t know. Words were just coming out
of my mouth.
“The Tithe, be on her heels, an’ Mab, she got to fancyin’, ’stead of givin’ over her mortal loves this round, why, she’ll gan geez Hell that fine, fine wang you gan me.”
And then he belted out a few lines of “Tam Lin,” so astoundingly off-key it’s a miracle the interstate didn’t come toppling down on us:
At the end of seven years,
She pays a tithe to Hell.
I so fair and full of flesh,
I fear it be myself.
“Jesus, I know the fucking song,” I growled, and smacked him in the belly, which is about as high up as I could reach. “The dildo wasn’t yours to give away!”
“Ahyacunt!” he howled, like I’d dropped a damn Acme cartoon anvil on his head. “Gonnae no dae that!”
“Can you at least speak English? You didn’t used to talk like that!”
“Weren’t my fault! She’d’a seen me chibbed me good and then some, had me malkied, ya mumpty boot! I was feert she’d’a counted me amongst the Tithe had I said no! Now gan, bolt, Quinn gone wolfish and dead fud!”
I thought about pulling out the Glock and putting a few rounds in his skull. But I had no idea if you can shoot a fairy. Well, sure, you can shoot a goddamn fairy, but I had no idea if it would even hurt the asshole. Then again, blaming Aloysius for turning over the unicorn when Mab had ordered him to, that was sort of like getting pissed at a dog for barking. So I just slapped his belly again, instead. This time he didn’t protest. He only looked sort of disgusted and hurt. Not “in pain” hurt. More like, “your BFF just told you you’re worthless” hurt.
“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” I sighed, and turned my back on him. It truly had been far too easy, handing over the Maidstone sisters and thinking the worst was over, and all I had left to do was slip Szabó the loving cup to send her happily packing back to her dimension.
“No call you skelpin’ me like that,” Aloysius huffed. “No cause in all the worlds.”
“No, there wasn’t. Sorry.” In the back of my mind, I hoped I meant it, that it was a sincere apology. Aloysius had always given me a fair shake—well, more often than not—and he deserved better. “Just, dude, I am so screwed.”
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