Red Delicious(26)

"A fabrication on the part of Miss Beaumont."

I took a deep breath, exhaled very slowly, measuring my breath as carefully as I was measuring my words. Like my words, any one of those breaths might have been my last. I didn't have to be told that the slightest flick of one of the boy's index fingers would have been enough to obliterate even the memory of me.

"Then I have no idea what part of that story is true and what part of it's bull."

"I believe it's best you set the tale aside," the demon said. "Best we proceed on the most unequivocal facts."

"Which means I take your word for all of this. That I trust you're telling me the truth."

Again, not the most politic of responses.

"I do believe I have already exhibited the greatest patience, considering the circumstances, and considering we are discussing the theft of that which, I remind you again, is mine. You walk a fine line, Miss Quinn, expecting more from me, as I'm sure you're well aware."

"Yeah. Sorry," I said. "My mouth and me, we have sort of a Tourette's problem. Especially in stressful situations, when I have cause to expect complete annihilation any second."

The boy's red eyes regarded me with a blend of curiosity and contempt, kinda the way I might examine a two-headed cockroach just before I swatted it with a shoe.

"You're working with the Maidstone sisters, yes?" he-she-oh, fuck it-Harpootlian asked me. "And also your employer, and the bogle with whom he has aligned himself."

"Er . . . wait. What bogle?"

The boy blinked. Just once. Very, very slowly. "The one you heard muttering over the phone. The one whose brother you slaughtered."

I bit the tip of my tongue a moment, and then I said, "With all due respect, I don't recall ever having killed a bogle. Probably, that's the sort of thing I'd remember."

"He was known outside the Hollow Hills as Boston Harry. I'll not speak his true name, as the names of fairies lie like bile upon my tongue."

"Boston Harry," I said, pretty fucking much stunned.

Boston Harry had been a sort of black-market dealer in every manner of occult geegaw and whatnot under the sun and moon. During the Bride of Quiet fiasco, he'd supplied a man named Doyle with a bewitched blunderbuss that . . . okay, long story. Cut to the chase. I'd eaten Boston Harry. Well, the loup me had eaten Boston Harry. Him being a bogle was news to me, but then I hadn't known bogles looked like a cross between a sewer rat and a Munchkin.

"He took the smallest finger from your left hand," said Harpootlian, and the boy pointed. "He took the second toe from your left foot."

It had seemed like a fair enough trade at the time.

"I didn't mean to eat the ugly son of a bitch. It just . . . happened."

"His death is of no interest to me. I'm merely trying to establish your allegiances. And, as I said, these are the parties with whom you are working to acquire the unicorn, yes?"

"Maybe that depends. Appearances can be deceiving. Maybe I'm working for myself."

"Could that be?" asked Harpootlian. "I am unaware of your having ever before freelanced."

All that white was beginning to make my eyes throb. I wanted to shut them. I wanted to be anywhere but in that room with the demon's marionette.

"No one ordered me to hunt down the cunt who did this to me," I said. There was anger in my voice that I'd been better off hiding, but there you go. "B was hiding under some rock when I went after the Bride. So we could call that freelance, couldn't we?"

"I would call that a vendetta, Miss Quinn."

"I would say you're splitting hairs."

Like I said, Tourette's.

"If, my dear, that is the truth-and I am exceedingly hesitant to accept that it is-you have some fraction of my admiration. A woman who looks out for herself. Any other sort, I have always found it difficult to trust."

"A woman like Natalie Beaumont."

The boy sat up straight and scratched at his chin. "As I have said, that's complicated. But, assuming you are not lying, I must say that, no matter how I might admire your greed and lack of loyalty to those who believe you loyal to them, I cannot permit you to stand between me and the Horn of Malta."

"Naturally," I said. But what I was thinking was how I'd just talked myself out of the frying pan and into the fire, how I'd gone from being someone who worked for Harpootlian's competitors to being one of her competitors in her quest for the dildo. So, my having royally fucked myself over in an effort to save myself from being royally fucked over, the time had come to think royally fucking fast. Sometimes I can actually do that.

But before I could say the next stupid thing I was bound to say, there was a rustling noise behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and there was the goddamn seagull. He squinted angrily back at me. There were patches of feathers missing where the duct tape had been.

"Oh, c'mon," I said, turning back to Harpootlian. "You're kidding me. The bird works for you?"

"In this realm," the boy replied, "my resources are limited. Your Hell is not my Hell. I must make do."

"But . . . do you even know how stupid this bird is? I just assumed a gull this dumb, it had to be working for the Maidstones."

Harpootlian . . . the boy flared his nostrils slightly.

"I would offer you a bargain," he and she said, "and seeing as how that will leave you with only one other option, one I am inclined to believe you'd prefer to avoid, it seems a generous proposition."                       
       
           



       

"I cast my lot with you," I said, hoping-solely for the sake of buying time-I'd hit the nail on the head.

"Then you accept?"

I looked at the bird again. "Can you at least do me the courtesy of being a little more specific, what's expect-"

"Do you a courtesy?" Harpootlian . . . let's say growled. I know I use that word a lot. But there truly is an awful damn lot of growling in my day-to-day. So, yeah, she growled. She growled indignantly, and the sound hurt my ears. Those relentless white walls actually seemed to bulge outward for an instant, as though they were made of rubber. The seagull winced, and a few more feathers dropped off its sorry carcass.

"Tourette's," I reminded her, managing to remain calm, to preserve my bullshit cool-as-a-cucumber façade.

"The only courtesy you will receive, Twice-Damned, is that I will not drag your soul back with me when I exit this world." At least she didn't growl that part.

And right then . . . lightbulb.

"Are you actually allowed to do that?" And here is me at my most idiotically, apocalyptically ballsy. Take note, kids. Don't try this at home. "I mean, you said yourself, your Hell isn't my Hell. And the way I understand the fine print, I am sort of twice over the property of my Hell, being, as you also said, Twice-Damned. Wouldn't that be violating some sort of grand cosmic customs law?"

I had actually managed to render a demon speechless, even if her silence didn't last very long.

"But I agree, Auntie H, that is a very generous offer. And it's one I'm going to give some serious consideration. I've no love for . . . well, much of anyone. And certainly not for that lot of cocksuckers who have me chasing after your Steely Dan. Jesus, it'd be worth it just to see the look on B's face."

In a whisper as terrible as that growl had been, Harpootlian used the boy's tongue and vocal cords to whisper, "Be assured, dog, there are loopholes, and-"

"Also," I went on, because if you're gonna play the fuck-you-and-the-horse-you-ride-in-on card, you gotta play it all the way, "keep that goddamn, mite-infested chicken away from me while I'm thinking this over."

"-make no mistake, I shall destroy-"

"No, I'm not joking. I'll kill him. I don't like him. He makes me nervous. I swear on Mercy Brown's ashes, I'll kill him the next time I catch him following me around."

Ever happened to see a seagull seemed like it was about to explode?

"Enough!" Harpootlian howled. Yeah, that was more of a howl than a growl. The walls bulged again and my chair actually scooted an inch or two back from the boy's. A tiny rivulet of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and he hoarsely whispered, "There are loopholes in all laws, Miss Quinn, and should you cross me, by all Hells that are and ever have been, I promise I shall not fail to exploit them to my fullest advantage."

The boy quickly raised his left hand then, and the air around me crackled and hummed. The white room dissolved. I might have breathed the proverbial sigh of relief, except . . .

• • •

...a split second later, I was right back where I'd been when Harpootlian had spirited me away to the surrealist city with the bristly Volkswagen monster. No more than three or four seconds had passed, just long enough for me to lose control of the van, and there I was, barreling towards the sidewalk. A couple of pedestrians saw me coming and had just enough time to get out of the way. I stomped the brake, and the pads shrieked, but it was too late. I hit a streetlight doing thirty or forty miles an hour. And since I'd never had much use for seat belts, and the Econoline dated back before airbags, I went over the steering wheel and dashboard and through the windshield at thirty or forty miles an hour. Which means I struck the icy cement out front of Joe Marzilli's at just under thirty or forty miles an hour.