Red Delicious(25)

       
           



       

"Shove off," the herring gull told me, trying to sound tough, but only sounding dazed from having its head bonked against the pine.

"Fine," I said. "Let's go for a ride, Jonathan Livingston Fuckmuppet."

"Why, why . . . you can't do this!"

"Blow me."

Which is how I wound up driving to a deli on Atwells with a seagull in my van, its beak, wings, and legs securely bound with duct tape. Just when you think this shit can't get any weirder. . . .

• • •

...shit inevitably gets weirder. Shit gets weirder squared. My van had just puttered over I-95 and beneath the concrete arch where Atwells Avenue begins-that vaulted concrete gateway with its huge, dangling, welcoming bronze pinecone, La Pigna, that most people mistake for a pineapple. The gull was making noises you wouldn't think a bird could make, what with its beak taped shut and all. I was noticing how the sky was growing darker, the clouds lower, and that we'd probably have more snow before sundown when I was no longer driving on Atwells. I had no fucking idea where I was driving.

There was nothing even the least bit familiar about the narrow single-lane strip of blacktop stretching out before me. But I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Of that much I was absolutely goddamn certain. Very tall structures rose on either side of the road. I won't call them buildings, because I have no idea what they were. The architectural love child of H. R. Giger and M. C. Escher. That's as close as I can come to any sort of accurate description. Here and there lights seemed to burn from vaguely windowlike recesses. Every now and then, the not-buildings seemed to move, which I did my best not to notice.

All right, I thought, don't you freak. Not like this is the first time someone's pulled this sort of total skull fuck on you.

The seagull made a muffled sound that I'm fairly certain was a laugh. I told him to shut the hell up or I'd be selling his feathery ass to the owner of a Chinese restaurant I knew who wasn't too particular about where he got his "chicken" and "duck."

I stopped in the middle of the road. The sky no longer looked like snow. Looked more like . . . never mind.

Something seemed to detach itself from one of the not-buildings, sort of rolling from the structure, and it lay in the middle of the road-a few feet in front of the Econoline-for a minute or so. It looked sort of like an oyster-colored Volkswagen Bug, only covered with spiky bristles needle thin and long as my arm. I was about to shift into reverse. Maybe whatever portal I'd driven through was still open. Total bullshit, but a girl can hope. That's when the hairy Volkswagen unfolded itself, rising on ten or so stilts that I guessed were supposed to pass as legs. It just stood there, blocking my way.

I drew the 9mm and aimed at the windshield.

"I get the message, whoever you are," I said. "I'm impressed. So let's drop the theatrics."

I want to say that bristly thing in the road looked like a spider. Because it did. Only, somehow, it truly looked nothing at all like a spider. Nasties love paradoxes and tend to trot them out whenever the opportunity presents itself. Show-offs.

The creature sort of leaned forward, tilting a bit towards me. No sign of eyes, a mouth, nothing. Just those crazy granddaddy long legs and spiky hairs. Then there was a high keening noise, which I assumed it was making.

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?"