Skunk Ape frowned and sighed. He pointed at me. “Is that really the best disguise you could manage, Lady Nosferatu? Annie, is she at least housebroken?”
There was a stuffed black bear to my left, wearing a red fez and frozen forever rearing up on its hind legs. I reached out with my free right hand and knocked it over. When the fez bear hit the floor, its head came off in an impressive puff of sawdust.
What do you say when someone breaks your bear? You’d think the occasion would call for something imaginative and extra-pissy special, right? Well, the best Skunk Ape managed was a couple of vamp specific slurs and flipping me the Massachusetts state bird.
I kicked the fallen bear, raising another cloud of sawdust. “Think I won’t kill you, Sumo Boy?”
“Play nice, you two,” Selwyn said, then coughed and let go of my hand. She swatted the sawdust away from her face while Skunk Ape muttered and rearranged the junk on his desk until there was room for her to set the box down. He finally stopped staring at me and was watching her expectantly, one bushy eyebrow arched like a dying caterpillar.
“At least tell me that’s what I think it is,” he said to Selwyn.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said and coughed again. “There was some last-minute bullshit. That greedy bastard in Cambridge decided to jack the price on me, right at the last minute. You know how it is.”
“Don’t think that means I’m paying extra,” he replied. “Open the box. Let me see it.”
Fairly sure he was salivating.
Selwyn produced a rusty barrel key from a front pocket of her jeans and unlocked the box, lifted the lid, then stepped back from the desk. From Skunk Ape’s expression, you’d think he’d just found the world’s best girl-on-girl, faux lesbo porn. His mouth was a perfect O, framed by the wild tangle of his beard and mustache.
“You’ll pay me extra if you still want it,” Selwyn said firmly. “I have a buyer in Thailand who’ll gladly fucking take it off my hands.”
I’m not sure he even heard her.
“Skunk,” she said, “we’re friends and all. But I’m sick of greedy assholes trying to rip me off.”
The box was lined with dark blue velvet, and he reached inside and lifted out a very, very old skull, its lower jaw wired in place. It looked almost as old as some of the petrified bones I’d seen for sale upstairs. Right off, I knew what it was. Like the love child of a human being, a baboon, and a hyena. The bone had an orange-brown patina, and the teeth were the color of nicotine stains. There was a pentagram etched into the top of the skull, a different alchemical symbol placed at each of the five points.
“Oh, baby,” Skunk Ape cooed. “Look at you.”
“The fifteen we agreed on, plus my expenses, plus—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, interrupting Selwyn and waving a hand dismissively towards her as he gingerly set the Ghul skull down beside the wooden box.
I wasn’t shocked or surprised by any of this. I’d met collectors before. Whatever gets your rocks off, so long as it’s not my head in a box.
“Oh, Annie, you surely have outdone yourself this time. You, my friend, are the ghostess with the mostest.”
She smiled, obviously proud of whatever mad skills and machinations had been required to get Skunk Ape his prize and land her payday.
“Before Rupert Talbye got his hands on it,” she said, “it was one of Dick Pickman’s. You can see his mark burned into the zygomatic arch, just behind the sutura lacrimomaxillaris.”
Skunk Ape glanced skeptically at Selwyn; up went that caterpillar eyebrow again.
“You’ve got the documentation.”
“I do,” she said, and produced an envelope from the biker jacket. She handed it over to him. “Before Pickman, it was the property of a necromancer in Marblehead, woman named Cherish Doliber. And she’s almost certainly the one who got it from the ghouls. I’m not even gonna guess how that transaction came about, the way the hounds are about their dead.”
“Might’a stolen it,” said Skunk Ape.
“Or had a ghoul in her debt. Rumor has it she was a fairly formidable witch. So, there you go. The skull and proof of its pedigree, just like I promised.”
Skunk Ape was still busy examining the contents of the envelope. “You’re totally the cat’s bollocks, no doubt about it. But . . .”
Dramatic pause.
“But?” asked Selwyn.
“. . . I should at least be able to deduct the cost of the bear your leech friend there destroyed.”
I looked around for something else to break and settled on a winged rabbit with baby alligator feet. I held it out over the decapitated black bear.
“Quinn, please don’t,” Selwyn said to me, and then to Skunk Ape, “Fair enough. What I’m owed, minus the cost of the bear.”
I set the rabbit back down on the shelf where I’d found it, and Skunk Ape breathed an audible sigh of relief. I’d seen the price tags upstairs, so I was well aware his man-made freaks didn’t come cheap, and I felt a tiny bit of guilt that Selwyn had to pay for the busted bear.
Selwyn shut her eyes and did that tapping at the end of her nose thing. When she opened them again, she told Skunk Ape he owed her seventeen thousand and twelve dollars and seventy-four cents. “But you can knock off the spare change,” she said. “I’m feeling generous.” She took another envelope from her pocket and handed it to him. “You’ll find my receipts and an itemized list of all my expenses right here.”
“Like I don’t trust her,” he mumbled, then opened a desk drawer, took out a metal cash box, unlocked it, and pulled out a sizable wad of cash. Of course he’d be paying in cash. Who writes a check for a Ghul skull?
Skunk Ape counted out the bills, licking his thumb and slapping them down, nothing larger than a hundred.
“You’re actually gonna walk around carrying that sort of cash?” I asked her. She shrugged and said we’d catch a taxi to the bank where she had a safe-deposit box.
“By the way, Annie,” said Skunk Ape, passing the stack of bills to Selwyn, who proceeded to count them for herself. “One of Snow’s creeps came by a couple of days back, sniffing around. You know how I don’t like getting involved in your other transactions, especially not with characters like Isaac fucking Snow.”
“Sorry about that,” she said, still counting. “I’m taking care of it. He won’t bother you again.”
Skunk Ape put the money box away and leaned back in his chair; it creaked loudly.
“Don’t know why you do business with that guy,” he said and shook his head.
“Maybe cause he’s rich as Croesus? One day, Skunk, I’m gonna retire—for good and forever—and you’ll have to find someone else to root about for your goodies.”
“When I see it, I’ll believe it,” he scoffed. “You’ve got the golden touch. You’re a goddamn bloodhound, and—”
“Annie,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the stairs. “Are we just about done here?”
“Just about,” she replied, pocketing her payday.
Skunk Ape chuckled, and, because some motherfuckers are too stupid for their own good, he asked, “You got someplace to be, Vampirella?”
She’d been paid. I could kill him now.
But Selwyn put a hand on my chest and said, calmly, “Shitbird’s not worth the trouble. Besides, he’s a valuable shitbird.”
Skunk Ape smirked.
But we left. He didn’t escort us to the door. Out of the sidewalk, Selwyn hailed a cab that ferried us to 42nd Street and the great silver spire of the Bank of America building. The second-tallest building in the Big Rotten Apple. I waited outside and smoked while she was inside. Didn’t ask what else she kept squirreled away inside that tower of glass and steel, or if she had other safe-deposit boxes, maybe scattered all around the five boroughs. Wasn’t none of my beeswax, right? Right. She did say boxes were getting scarcer,
what with fewer people using them and the feds having gotten more inquisitive about suspicious financial activity since 9/11. “One day,” she said, “I’ll have to start stuffing the mattress.”
Afterwards, she dragged me to Shake Shack, because she said she was starving.
“It’s something about being around Skunk,” she said. “I always leave that place hungry enough to eat a billy goat if you slapped some mustard and pickles on it.”
From time to time, Selwyn said inexplicable shit like that. Eventually, I got used to it. Frankly, just the smell of the man was almost enough to put me off my feed for a month or so. But go figure. She ate two cheeseburgers with ranch dressing and bacon and whatever else, plus fries, and I had a grape Fanta. I will admit, no matter how delightful the red delicious is, I do miss the taste of a good burger.
“You ever gonna spill the beans about Isaac Snow?”
She looked up from her fries, which she’d doused in ketchup, and she said, “After you left Providence, did you come straight to New York? I mean, if you did, I’m sort of amazed I haven’t seen you before now.”
“I asked you first . . . for the third time.”
“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
“Annie, after last night, I suspect you haven’t got much left to show me I ain’t already seen.”
“Haven’t,” she said.
“Haven’t what?”
“Haven’t already seen. And don’t call me Annie.”
She chewed a French fry, and I marveled at her chutzpah, which was something about her I never got used to.
“By the way, is that Annie Smithfield? Or is it Annie Somethingoranotherelse?” I asked.
She swallowed and said, “Smithfield. Annie Smithfield was my paternal grandmother’s maiden name. I’m just wondering, if you didn’t come to New York right off, and if you made a habit of hanging out in—”
“I didn’t come to New York first,” I said.
“Aha!” She jabbed a greasy finger at me and winked. “I didn’t think so. Then where did you go first, after you told Mr. B to go fuck himself?”
I actually hadn’t told him to go fuck himself. Not in so many words. Our parting was slightly more civil than that, a fact I’ve sometimes regretted.
“I went to Florida,” I told her.
“Florida? Jesus, Quinn. Why the fuck did you go to Florida?”
“For my health. Listen, you know, if I stick around, sooner or later either you’re going tell me who he is or I’m gonna find out all on my own.”
Selwyn sighed and stared at what was left of her second cheeseburger.
“He’s just this dude from Boston, okay? Old money. Brahmin accent. The whole nine yards. A few years back, his mother died—or disappeared—I’m unclear on that. But he and his twin sister, they inherited everything. Those two, like a bag full of spiders. Total New England Gothic cliché. The whole family—the Snows, the Endicotts, and the Cabots, this little clan all tied up by marriage going back all the way to the Massachusetts Bay colonies and Plymouth. After Isaac Snow’s mother died, or whatever she did, and he came into the family fortune, he started buying up a whole bunch of artifacts, and sometimes he comes to me.”
I finished my Fanta and set the cup aside.
“Frankly,” she continued, “if he wasn’t willing to pay twice what I can get from just about anywhere and anyone else, I wouldn’t have anything to do with him. They give me the willies, him and his sister.”
“Wait. You’re having lunch with the vampire you fucked last night, but this guy gives you the willies? He must have some serious hoodoo going for him.”
“Look, Quinn. I don’t like talking about Isaac Snow, and I especially don’t like talking about him in public.” She picked up her burger and took a big bite. Nice defense mechanism; hard to answer questions with your mouth full of lightly charred Angus beef and crispy strips of this little piggy.
“Fine,” I said, “then once we’re not in public we’re going to continue this conversation. No more changing the subject or evading the question.”
She shrugged.
I was pretty sure whoever this “dude from Boston” was, he wasn’t anyone I couldn’t handle, if push ever came to shove. Which I had a feeling it probably would. Because no way I was buying that at least half of Selwyn Throckmorton’s motive for cozying up to me hadn’t been the need for a bodyguard. Still, I’d been through enough shit to know it’s good to be clear exactly what you’re up against, even if you only might be up against it.
When she’d finished lunch, turns out we had another stop to make. Which meant another taxi ride. I don’t like taxis—an aversion to wasting money harking back to my spare-changing, life-on-the-streets days. I had legs. And the subway was a hell of a lot cheaper. Then again, I rarely needed to be anywhere in a hurry. On the way to wherever we were going (she didn’t bother to tell me, I didn’t ask), Selwyn produced a necklace from the jacket pocket that had Skunk Ape’s documents of authenticity. All, like, “Hey, Rocky. Watch me pull a rabbit out of this hat.” Fuck me, but back in the day that thing would have kept me and every other homeless junkie around Providence in heroin and donuts for years, probably. Dozens of tiny diamonds, with a ruby pendant dangling like a big, bloody teardrop. She held it low so the driver couldn’t see, like, what? He was gonna pull over and rob us at gunpoint? Okay, maybe that’s not so unlikely a scenario.
“Fuck me senseless,” I whispered. “Did you rob Tiffany’s or something?”
“Or something,” she replied, then put the necklace back in her pocket. “This one, wasn’t about to keep it in the apartment.”
“The safe-deposit box.”
“Bingo.”
“That’s your next drop?”
She nodded. “It’s not all dry and dusty bones.”
Not that the ghoul skull in its velvet cradle had been dusty, not as far as I could tell.
The taxi took us to the East Village, a tall, narrow four-story Victorian pile of bricks, looked almost like it would topple over in a strong wind. Looked malnourished and sort of stranded there on East 4th Street. The front had been painted the red of a cardinal’s cassock. Selwyn paid the driver, then asked him to stick around. When he told her he couldn’t do that, she slipped him a couple hundred dollars and he changed his mind. All that money, gotta tell you, it was seriously starting to freak me out.
“Here we are,” she said, turning to face the tall red building. “This is the place.” She smiled and leaned against me. I already mentioned how her place smelled of vanilla; well, so did she. The vanilla oil she dabbed on didn’t quite hide the actual smell of her, but it was probably enough to confuse the nostrils of nasties with noses not so keen as mine. I’m not saying that’s why she wore it. I’m just saying, that’s all.
The ground floor was a dive with a green neon sign that read simply IRISH BAR. There was a GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU sign in the window, along with a framed and faded photograph of James Joyce. Inside, past the entrance to the bar, there were stairs, and Selwyn took them two at a time, all the way to the third floor. I trailed behind, wondering if this customer would be more or less annoying than Skunk Ape. Or just about the same. There was a short hallway with a tiny landing and a door painted exactly the same shade of red as the front of the building.
She knocked on the door.
“Selwyn, what’s waiting for us in there?”
“And spoil the surprise?”
“Yeah, and spoil the motherfucking surprise.”
Before she could say anything else, the door opened. No one opened it. It just opened. Immediately, the odor of honey was so strong I thought for a moment I was actually gonna gag. I covered the lower half of my face, but it really didn’t help all that much.
“You’ll get used to it,” she whispered.
“I seriously doubt that,” I muttered from behind my f
ingers. “What the shit?”
“You don’t even breathe, Quinn.”
“Yeah, but I can fucking smell, okay? A whole bunch better than you.”
“Well, I’m not gonna stand out here listening to you complain. We’re running late as it is.” And with that she stepped inside. I hesitated a few seconds. I didn’t have to follow her. I could always go back and wait in the taxi. Sure I could. But I didn’t.
I crossed the threshold, and the door swung shut behind me. I heard it latch. Click. Which is how long it took me to regret not having headed back down the stairs to the street, the space of a lock clicking. It wouldn’t stop me from leaving, unless there was some sort of ward or whatever, but I doubted it had been installed to stop vamps who were also loups (and vice versa).
The place was filled with bees.
I shit you not.
I resisted the urge to swat at them.
There was a brightly lit foyer, which led into a parlor that was just as bright. I squinted and dug a pair of sunglasses from my duster. I glanced about me, looking for Selwyn, but half blinded by all that light and seeing nothing much at all. The cloying sweet honey stink was even stronger now.
“Hey!” I shouted.
“In here,” Selwyn shouted back from somewhere, and it’s a wonder I could hear her over all that goddamn buzzing. Bees had begun lighting on my arms, in my hair, crawling over my face. And the bastards were loud. Like a hurricane wind made out of bees. A person could go insane in here, I thought. A person could go absolutely corn-fucking, ass-banging, cock-monkey out of her mind.
I did not swat the bees. I endured the noise and the sensation of their prickly legs on my skin, several stings, and the honey stench. I walked in the direction Selwyn’s voice had come from, and between the bees and the bright light, I didn’t notice much about my surroundings. The parlor led into a much larger room.
And . . .
At least the lights were dimmer.
“Thought you’d gotten lost,” Selwyn said. There wasn’t a bee anywhere on her. And I realized the buzzing had had faded to a dull roar.
It had to be a goddamn Faerie.
Cherry Bomb: A Siobhan Quinn Novel Page 5
