I sat back down on the bench, turning my back to her, wondering when the hell I'd grown a fan club. Siobhan Quinn has a motherfucking posse.
"Chill, okay?" she said. "Berenice sent me, all right? After her baby sister went missing, she's sort of keeping a low profile."
I rubbed my eyes; the contacts always bug me. "And you're the best she can do in the way of lackeys."
"I'm a messenger," the girl said, sounding supremely offended. Which, of course, had been my intent. "Part of her coterie. Berenice doesn't have lackeys."
"Right," I sighed. "And the pope doesn't wear a dress and a funny hat."
She sat down next to me, uninvited.
"You want to talk to her, you're gonna have to talk to me first." She took out a BlackBerry and started texting.
"You gotta name?" I asked.
"Lenore," she replied, without looking away from the BlackBerry.
"Bullshit. I meant an actual name-type name. Whatever's on your driver's license, your birth certificate."
"So, I tell you that, I can call you ‘Siobhan,'" she said, still pecking at her BlackBerry's tiny keys.
I changed the subject. "Who are you texting?"
"I'm letting Berenice know you showed up."
"How did she know I was coming? I didn't even know I was coming until a few hours ago."
Lenore looked at me then like I was the biggest idiot on earth.
"Right," I said. "She's a Maidstone. Never mind."
"Yeah, she's a Maidstone. She's special. She can do magic, and I mean real magic. Not that phony goddess worshipping, white-light Wicca crap."
"Well, la-di-fucking-da. And while you're talking to her, how about you ask where Shaker Lashly has gone?"
"Never heard of anyone called Shaker Lashly. You'll have to ask her that yourself. If she decides to see you."
"If? Hey, she's the one came to my employer for help finding this misplaced sister of hers. If she doesn't want to talk to me, I'll go back and tell B the client has had a change of heart. But she should know, whatever he asked for up front, he doesn't do refunds."
Lenore stared at the BlackBerry's screen a moment, typed in something else, then dropped that mobile handheld device back into the huge, shapeless chartreuse velvet bag she was carrying for a purse.
"You have to understand," she told me, "Berenice has good reason to be cautious. Besides, I expected a vampire to be more, I don't know. Like, patient? You are so not living up to your reputation."
I leaned close to her, wishing I wasn't wearing the hazel-green contacts. I did, however, reach into my mouth and pop out the molded porcelain grill hiding my real teeth. She drew back an inch or so and her eyes went wide.
At least she looked scared. Hence, I assumed she was.
"Girly," I said, "if I wipe that funeral paint off your face, swat some of that attitude out of you, I'm pretty sure I'd find nothing much hiding under there but another pampered white girl recovering from her high-school Justin Bieber fixation."
She pointed at my mouth. "Those are real," she said. It wasn't a question. "They're so sharp-"
"All the better to persuade you to stop jerking me around."
"-and they're wicked cool."
Which is when I socked her in the face. Not hard enough to do any real and lasting damage, mind you-just a firm poke-but plenty hard enough that her lower lip split open and her nose gushed. I won't lie. It felt good.
Lenore's head whipped back, and she sort of yelped.
I said, "Wanna play nice and try this one more time, Elvira? You won't get a third chance."
"Fuck you," she mumbled through the blood and the fingers hiding the bottom half of her face.
Just for effect, I licked her blood off my knuckles. You know, that kind of over the top, tough guy, unnerve your opponent shit. Most nasties would have laughed at me, but this malarkey does tend to make an impression on mundanes. I realized that my fake choppers were still lying on the bench between us, and with my free hand I slipped them back into my mouth.
I told her, "Seeing how we've moved past the ‘We can do this the easy way, or . . .' part of our conversation, I want to make it absolutely fucking crystal clear that I do not need you to find Berenice Maidstone."
"She's gonna kill you," Lenore replied, that warm red gravy dripping between her fingers onto her black jeans.
"Fine. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. Fact is, she'll probably be doing me a favor. Now, listen-"
"You think I'm joking?"
Every time she said something, her breath caused a fresh gout of that crimson junk surrogate to spurt towards me. The notion very briefly crossed my mind that I could probably do her, then and there, and most anybody passing by would just think we were a couple of lesbos making out. Wishful goddamn thinking.
"-we're going to stand up and walk to my car, which is parked about a block away. You'll lead, and if you go rabbit on me, I don't think your boss lady will approve."
"You're good as dead!" she said with enough force that blood actually spattered my T-shirt. Whee.
"No, honey, I'm way worse than dead." (Gotta admit, that cornball line was pure Hollywood gold. Or at least TV fool's gold. True Blood, eat your dippy, white-trash heart out.)
Lenore glared at me, but it was plain-whatever assurances Berenice Maidstone had offered-I'd sown some serious doubt as to Lenore's safety.
"Now, pretty please, get your poseur ass up and head for the gates. And, like I already said, do not run, little girl. I don't feel like chasing you." I motioned towards the tall iron gates, and she got up and did exactly as I'd instructed.
• • •
Turns out, the missing Ms. Maidstone was holed up in a deserted warehouse on Kinsley Avenue, other side of I-95, just across from the scrubby banks of the Woonasquatucket River. It was a part of Providence I knew all too well. The dirty green water flowing through a man-made desolation of concrete, the rusting heaps of scrap, and boarded up or broken windows. A few strip clubs, some buildings that have been converted into pricey lofts for trustafarians, train tracks, the occasional warehouse that hasn't yet been abandoned. You get the picture. Of course, there will undoubtedly be those who complain that this is a decidedly unfair portrayal of a neighborhood busy being all spruced up by urban renewal. Those people, they'll point to the newish strip mall less than a quarter mile to the west.
This is me totally not giving a shit.
See, back in my homeless days, before the patronage of Mean Mr. B, when I still drew breath, I'd been made all too familiar with those unforgiving streets. Me and my ever-changing cast-off compatriots-runaways, addicts, runaway addicts, the good, the bad, the ugly, the schizophrenics and panhandlers and petty thieves. All those disreputable ragtag nomads going nowhere except maybe farther down the laundry list of ne'er do wells society tries hard to ignore so it doesn't have to feel guilty about full bellies, warm homes, and plasma-screen televisions.
Once someone who'd called herself Lily and was just about the only person I'd ever come halfway near to being in love with, she'd died in a squat hardly a stone's throw from the industrial ruins Lenore led me to that evening. Lily was killed by that aforementioned ghoul motherfucker who'd been my first and, as I have already pointed out, accidental kill. She'd been the domino set all the rest to tumbling over. Needless to say, afterwards, I did my best to steer clear of that section of town. I only went there when ordered to do so. There was plenty of present-tense lousiness without going out of my way to dredge up bad memories and regret.
Lenore-who I'd made drive-parked in front of that warehouse and cut the engine. I peered out at it through the windshield. The shadows were getting long as twilight came on. The sun had turned the sky pink and indigo.
"Well," she said (pouting around a wad of Kleenex she'd found in her bag), "this is it."
"Cool beans," I said. "Lifestyles of the swank and infamous."
"Think your zookeeper would be pleased with how you've handled this?"
"Let me worry about him."
I took out my gun, checked and double-checked the Glock to be sure it was shipshape. Yeah, I'm paranoid by both nature and experience, and I was beginning to get a weird vibe about this rendezvous. Sure, the goth chick in the car with me was a bad joke dressed up for all tomorrow's Halloweens, but fuck only knew what sort of unsightly surprises a well-heeled bitch from the Maidstone clan might have waiting in there to be sure Mean Mr. B's pit bull didn't get out of line. Plenty enough paranormal mercenary types plenty dumb enough to be swayed by someone offering them whatever the hell satisfies their appetites in return for a little protection.
"Any surprises waiting for me in there?"
"I'll let you worry about that," Lenore replied, and got out, slamming the door behind her.
I cursed and followed suit.
When we got to the reinforced steel door, Lenore rang a buzzer three times in quick succession. My vamp ears heard heavy footsteps approaching from the other side, and I gave myself the silent stay-the-fuck-cool speech I reserve for these occasions. Locks turned, tumblers tumbled, and the door creaked slowly open.