Blood Oranges

by Kathleen Tierney

  Mr. Jack Doyle gave me a little help in that department. I found his address and phone number in the phone book (I had one AT&T had left on my doorstep, I’d been using it as a doorstop).

  I stepped out the front door, and there was my fucking Honda, sitting in the driveway. I stared at the boys a moment, then I stared at the boys again.

  “You guys happen to see who left this?” I asked.

  One of them—I think his name was Carlos, but they called him Popsicle, and don’t ask me why—said, “Yeah. Tall white dude. Didn’t say a word to nobody. Just parked it here about two hours ago. Was already dark. And I was like, ‘Yo. ¿Ves aquel hombre? Mira a ese bicho raro,’ but he didn’t say nothin’. Left the car and walked off.” Popsicle pointed north, then went back to the game.

  “Fistro, he acted like we wasn’t even sitting here,” Hector added, then laid down a domino.

  “Did you happen to see those three come in my place?” I asked. “Two guys, a girl. Probably weirder looking than whoever left the car?”

  “Oh, yeah. Figured they were friends. Had a key and all. Figured they were cool, la banda. They give you any shit, chica?”

  “No, no . . .” I told him. “It’s fine. Just wondered.”

  Hector shrugged.

  I found my keys tucked into the driver’s-side sun visor. My keys on my key ring.

  And, in the passenger seat, the rind of a blood orange. But things are not always what they seem. I know that. And I didn’t jump to the conclusion that my car coming home to me had anything to do with Mr. B, though, clearly, someone wanted me to think it had.

  Before I went to find Doyle, I needed to clear my head. Talk to someone familiar, someone at least remotely friendly, so I headed for Aloysius’ underpass. Sure, I felt strongly that time was not a luxury I had an overabundance of, but even us nasties get freaked out by late-night attempts on our lives, mysterious strangers returning our automobiles, and a cryptic citrus peel. Sure, I knew I was on the outs with the troll, and I didn’t have any goodies to try and mollify him, but I went, anyway.

  Under the highway, I shouted his name. It echoed, and for a moment I thought maybe I wasn’t gonna see those special shadows, that he’d simply written me off as too tainted to hang with. But then, then the shadows came. The shadows and something by the Beastie Boys blaring at full volume. The troll that shuffled out of the blackness wasn’t Aloysius. He wasn’t anyone I’d ever seen. He was fatter, had skin like one of those weird albino pumpkins, and only a few piercings in his drooping ears. He was carrying a pink and white Hello Kitty boom box. You think shit can’t get any stranger, but you’re always wrong.

  “Where’s Aloysius?” I asked. Sometimes, it’s best to get straight to the point.

  The troll scrunched up his warty face and gave me the hairy eyeball. “Ain’t his bridge anymore,” the white troll said, then set Hello Kitty on the dusty ground. “I’m Otis, and it’s my bridge. Don’t you think no other way.”

  “So where is he?”

  “Aloysius ain’t nowhere no more. Took three arrows in the head last night. Cold-iron bolts, from a crossbow.”

  I suppose you would say my heart sank. I suppose you might even say I was sad. I never cried for Aloysius, but I’ve felt bad about it ever since that night.

  “Fuck,” I whispered.

  “My bridge now. Finders keepers.”

  “No idea who killed him?”

  Otis blinked a few times. Then the troll said, “Was thinking about you on that account, Siobhan Twice-Damned. Heard you pack a crossbow. Heard you bargained with him for a dicey sort of riddle not so long ago.”

  “Well, I didn’t fucking kill him. He was my friend. Almost. Maybe.” I wanted to tell Otis to turn off the Beastie Boys, but I didn’t.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Maybe that’s true. Probably it ain’t. Either way, got orders from on high, direct from the Night Court.”

  “Orders,” I said, echoing Otis as the hollow space below the bridge had echoed me.

  “We don’t talk to you, all dead and wolfish. We don’t talk to Siobhan Quinn, who might have done murder against poor Aloysius of the Unseelie. Heard you did in Mr. Boston Harry, too.”

  “Harry was one of yours?”

  “Near enough. Anyway, talk of payback. You best keep a watch out for the Wild Hunt or worse.”

  “Jesus, I didn’t fucking kill Aloysius. I liked the son of a bitch. Boston Harry, sure. That one’s mine and I’ll own up, but I’m pretty sure he had it coming.”

  “Maybe that’s true. Probably it ain’t,” Otis said again, so there’s another echo for the list.

  “Fine. Whatever. Let your Court think what they want. Right now, truth be told, I might welcome that hunt with open arms. Get in line.” That wasn’t a lie. This whole situation—having become what I was, Mr. B leaving me to fend for myself, killing Bobby, eating the nasty-ass rat thing (and probably a seagull), then the assassination attempt by parties as yet unknown—I’ve been a whole lot more interested in staying alive (undead, dead, whatever adjective applies) than I was that night.

  The white troll snorted. “Don’t you go calling ’em out. Not the Wild Hunt. Ain’t too many worse ways to go. Wouldn’t be quick. Wouldn’t be clean.”

  “Fuck yourself, Otis. He was my friend.”

  “So you said.”

  I didn’t argue. I didn’t wait for Otis the Troll to do his disappearing act. I got back in the car, turned around, and headed back up Gano. If the fay blamed me for Aloysius and truly had it in for me, I was determined to settle a few more scores before I went.

  * * *

  Quick interlude.

  When all this was over and done, the metric shit-ton that the Bride had dropped on me, the next year I went back to the underpass, just after sunset on Beltane, and made a little shrine in memory of Aloysius. Yeah, I know. The sentimental monster, that’s me. I left a bouquet of yellow roses, the sort with red around the edges of the petals. I doubt he could have cared less about flowers, but I did it, anyway. I also left a bunch of 3 Musketeers bars, two bottles of ginger brandy, and a stack of nudie mags. It’s the thought that counts, right? And I figure I made some homeless person very happy with all that junk.

  I fashioned my shrine (if you can call it that), and sat in the dirt and cried. I don’t think I’ve cried a single, solitary tear since that evening.

  * * *

  Anyway, easy as pie finding Mr. Jack Doyle. It was a redbrick apartment building on East Angell Street, off Wayland Square. Probably built back in the thirties or forties. Fire escapes for easy access. I figured I could be in and out of the place before dawn, quick as a bunny. Did I forget to mention the thing about Bobby Ng’s ring (Class of ’85, by the way)? What I did with it, I mean? Well, if perchance I did—right next to the place where Doyle lived there’s a little basement junk/thrift/antique store. It’s called What Cheer (if you live in Providence, no need to explain that phrase; if you don’t, use Google). I had a rosary—black wooden beads, little plastic Jesus—I’d shoplifted there back in my street-kid days. I strung Bobby’s ring on the rosary, and I wear it every now and again. Don’t know if it counts as a souvenir of my first kill as a loup, or as more sentimentality. Either way, I was wearing it the night I went to find Mr. Doyle.

  I parked out in front of a used bookstore and walked to the apartment building. Nice place, but I’d expected nicer. Maybe a pricey loft in some refurbished warehouse that had gone condo. That sort of thing. Nope. Anyway, by the time I got to the building, must have been about two ayem, possibly later. But I guessed I had a couple or three hours before sunrise, regardless. I scaled the fire escape, which was more rickety than it had looked from the ground; I actually almost fell once, when a rusty handrail gave way. Wouldn’t have hurt me, but still.

  Here’s the thing about humans—mortal humans—who go and get themselves mixed up in the affairs of the nasties. They might be book smart. They might even have some sort of mystical talent—telepathy, precognition, clair
audience, all that sixth sense stuff. Maybe they can see ghosts or the fair folk. Might just be they’re good with a pack of tarot cards. Doesn’t matter. Inevitably, they’re not awfully good at protecting themselves, and when you’re messing with things that go bump in the night—even if you’re “in league” with them, you best have that self-preservation shit down to a science. Virtually none ever do. Makes them easy marks. Some necromancer might be able to make a corpse talk, or maybe there’s a witch who can curdle milk. But prudence and caution have an uncanny way of completely eluding these folks. What you have to understand is that a) these are very superstitious people, and b) the nasties have a vested interest in keeping them that way. If they were otherwise, one or two, now and then, might pose an actual threat. Sometimes they prove useful, but you can’t risk one of the wannabes, servants, lackeys, and Bobby Ngs of the world, those liminal hangers-on, getting the upper hand. And, despite their inherent limitations, many undertake that exact, fatal, idiotic hustle. Hell, Bad Mr. B’s the only one of them I ever met who seems to know the ropes and mind the boundaries, but I half suspect there’s a splash of demonic blood in him a generation or two back. Which would make him not an exception to the rule.

  There were hardly any lights on in the building, and the fire escape was set back a good distance from the nearest streetlight. Doyle’s place was on the top floor, the fourth floor. It was nice and dark in there, and I was not the least bit surprised to find his window wasn’t even locked. The window that opened onto his bedroom. Utter fucking genius, I know. Not that it would have mattered. Glass breaks lots easier than that vamp bitch’s neck had snapped. But here is the funny part: there was a pentagram painted on the window, along with a host of alchemical and voodoo symbols, and a cross. I’m pretty sure the crusty reddish “paint” was dried blood. Probably from a chicken. Or some unfortunate goat. Trust in magic, why bother with locks?

  I eased the window open, hoping he was home, and hoping this guy was a light sleeper. I was tired. The last thing I wanted was him putting up a futile and inconvenient struggle. I’d had plenty enough crap for one night, please and thank you very much. There was a dusting of dried herbs on the sill. I leaned over and sniffed, and it was just the usual potpourri of apotropaics. Mistletoe, thyme, mandrake shavings, sawdust from a mountain ash, a dried wild rose, blah, blah, blah. He’d probably soaked the wood in holy water. I brushed the mess away and quietly climbed inside, leaving the window open, because one must never underestimate the value of quick exits.

  I stood there by the not so protective window, and it took me about five seconds to realize the bed was empty. The comforter and the sheets were a mess, so I reasoned someone had been in it recently. Unless Jack Doyle never bothered making his bed.

  And then someone switched on a lamp.

  He might as well have flashed me with a camera an inch from my eyeballs. Then a knife sliced into my right shoulder. I couldn’t see shit, just orange-red blobs swimming in the air, but I knew it was a knife. I also knew he aimed for the left, and a little lower down than that soft spot above my clavicle. I ducked and rolled. I hit my head on a bedpost hard enough that a bunch of white stars were added to the swirl of afterimages from the lamp. I sat up, leaned against the wall, and blindly yanked the knife from my shoulder.

  “You stop right there,” he said. Mr. Doyle’s voice quavered like a schoolgirl’s.

  “You asshole,” I growled through clenched teeth, assuming by this time he’d only had the one knife, or I’d be dead already. Deader. Done for. History. You know what I mean. “That fucking hurt.”

  “Don’t move an inch,” he warned me, and I could tell he was a couple of feet closer than before. I blinked my eyes, and my vision began to clear.

  “It still fucking hurts.” Turned out, it was a huge-ass pigsticker of a knife, something Jim Bowie might have wielded against Santa Anna’s troops at the Alamo. And I’d have bet Boston Harry another toe it had been blessed by a priest or smeared with some supposedly magical goop that was supposed to take out nasties.

  “What did you expect, sneaking in here like that?”

  It was a fair question. Still, the pain had me thinking maybe I should just bury the knife in his skull and look for information elsewhere. Surely there were other breadcrumbs, other trails not quite grown cold.

  “I wasn’t even planning to kill you, you dumb son of a bitch. Now, I’m seriously rethinking that strategy.”

  “I’ve got high friends in low places,” he said (truly, he said those very words). “So, maybe you’d better climb out the way you came in and scuttle back to whatever cemetery you call home.”

  “Maybe you should go fuck yourself, Mr. Doyle.”

  “I’m not messing around here, Miss Quinn.”

  He knew my name. Of course, he knew my name.

  “Second thought, maybe I’ll do it for you. Fuck you, I mean. Maybe I’ll use this big damn knife of yours. How about that? That work for you, Jack?”

  He was quiet for a few seconds. I stabbed the hardwood floor with the knife, sinking the blade in almost to the hilt. Then I covered the bloody slit in my T-shirt and the gash underneath with my left hand. Sure, vamps heal fast. But not fast enough.

  “Look,” he said. No, he was pretty much whimpering by this point. “They promised none of this could be traced back to me.”

  “They,” I said. “Well, looks like they lied. Ain’t that odd.”

  “I was assured . . .” Doyle began, but I interrupted him. We’ll get to what I wanted him to say very shortly, but at the moment he was just pissing me off. And the last thing I wanted was the beast hiding inside me getting triggered before I was done with him.

  “Where’d you learn to throw a knife, anyway? The Boy Scouts? You throw like a goddamned girl.”

  “Who are you?” He’d actually taken a step or two towards me, and I grimaced, raised my head, and he took a step backwards, towards the bedroom door.

  “I’m the one whose life you fucked up with your little role in the murder of Alice Cregan,” I said.

  “You killed her.”

  “Let’s table that minor fucking detail just for the moment, why don’t we. Now, you sit down, shut up, and don’t you even think about flinging anything else at me.”

  He did as I told him, sitting on the foot of the bed farthest from me. Good boy. Maybe he had a few ounces of survival instinct bubbling around in him after all. I took my hand away from the wound in my shoulder and stared at the blood there; it was black, and almost as sticky as hot tar. It was also cold as ice.

  “I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to answer them to the best of your ability. Elsewise, Mr. Doyle, violence will ensue, and you will be on the losing end of it. You understand what I’m saying?”

  He nodded his head, and that’s when I realized he was wearing mint-green silk pajamas, which, for some reason, struck me as funny. I put my hand over the wound again, and tried not to think about the frigid goop leaking out of me. I also tried not to think about the pain. There was no space or time here for distractions.

  “You bought a gun from Boston Harry, didn’t you? An enchanted blunderbuss?”

  “I only . . .”

  “Answer the question, yes or fucking no. It’s just that simple. I don’t want to hear any ‘yeah buts’ out of you. I don’t want to hear any qualifiers whatsoever. Did you buy the gun from Boston Harry?”

  “You’re the one who killed him, aren’t you?”

  Okay. So maybe he wasn’t such a smart boy, after all. I yanked the knife from the floor, and it came free with an awful squealing sound. I held it up, so the lamplight could glint off the blade.

  “I ask the questions. You answer them.”

  “Sure,” he muttered, then glanced at the dark doorway leading out to the hallway.

  “Look at me, Mr. Doyle. Ain’t nothing out there you need to be thinking about just now.” And he turned his head back to me. “You bought the gun?” I asked for the third time. He nodded.


  “I want words. Say it. Say, ‘I bought the blunderbuss from Boston Harry.’”

  “Fine. I bought the blunderbuss from Boston Harry.” And he stared at his feet instead of at the hallway.

  “Must have cost you a pretty penny. That right, Mr. Doyle?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “And you’re doing okay, sure. But you’re not the sort of man who can afford to pay that kind of money . . . or whatever he asked . . . for an old gun, are you?”

  “No,” he all but whispered. “I’m not.”

  “This suggests someone gave you the money, or whatever the rat’s asking price was, or am I wrong?”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  I took my hand away from the wound again. It had stopped bleeding, and the ache was starting to subside.

  “The next question, then, forms part of a logical progression. I’m thinking you could probably even ask it yourself. Wanna try?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Try anyway,” I smiled, showing off my piranha teeth, and I pointed the knife at him.

  “Where did I get the asking price?” he whispered.

  “Exactly. Hole in one. Where did you get the scratch, Mister Doyle?”

  He shut his eyes again, then opened them. The guy was crying.

  “Need a hanky, Mister Doyle? You’re getting me all choked up over here.”

  “I was promised anonymity and protection. I was promised both. Nobody was supposed to find out. Nothing like you was supposed to come creeping in my window in the middle of the night.”

  I watched him. If I were someone else, in another life—or another undeath—I might even have felt sorry for this poor, deluded feeb, who clearly had more greed than functional gray matter.

  “Or maybe you owed someone on high a debt? Was that the way it went?”

  “I was promised. I was given a guarantee.”

  Probably, I actually rolled my eyes.