Red Delicious Read online

“You give the bastard too much credit.”

  “I’m only reminding you of the risks in underestimating your adversaries, and in jumping to conclusions as to their motivations.”

  I slumped back against the seat, wishing I were just about anywhere but in the company of Mean Mr. B(osco) and the Filipino kid. Preferably taking a hot shower to wash away the night’s grime. I stared at the ceiling as we headed south down Hope Street.

  “Did I mention he started it?”

  “You did,” B replied, and lit a Nat Sherman.

  “I know I should have killed the fucker, okay? I know that. I just wasn’t—”

  “No, no, no,” he interrupted, waving his cigarette about dismissively. Smoke oozed from his nostrils. “Truth be told, dear, I’m impressed by your restraint. Can’t say, in your position, I’d have let the wanker off with nothing more than a kiss.”

  “Okay, Bosco, that’s a relief. So, if you’re not pissed at me for leaving Rizzo alive—”

  “There’s another matter.”

  Isn’t there always?

  I turned my head, staring at him instead of the ceiling. It was a pretty boring ceiling. He took a drag on his cigarette and blew a series of perfect smoke rings.

  “Look, I’m tired. I need a shower and I need some sleep. So, can we talk about it tonight?”

  “Afraid not, precious. The customers are rather insistent the matter in question be resolved quickly. I can’t say I blame them, given the particulars. Also, they’re hardly the sort we can afford to fob off because you need to freshen up and get some shut-eye. You’ve heard of the Maidstones, I trust?”

  I had. Of course I fucking had. Anyone whose business involves the nasties and their hangers-on knows about Edgar Isaac Maidstone and his clan. The three Mayston brothers had arrived in the Colonies sometime in the early 1800s, having ditched England to avoid prosecution for a variety of ghoulish crimes: grave robbing, witchcraft, kidnapping, cannibalism, murder, and . . . well, it’s a long list. At some point, they’d changed their names to Maidstone and prospered, which is a lot easier when you have the sort of otherworldly connections those three had. Some people, they might call themselves necromancers, and brag about once having made a cadaver twitch. Shit like that. But the Maidstones, they were the real goddamn deal. More than once, Maidstones had taken demon brides, and it showed, both in their prowess and their appearance. Edgar Maidstone had (still has) a big-ass house over in Newport, and from the outside it might be any stately Gilded Age mansion, but inside the place is rotten to the core.

  “One of their daughters has gone missing,” B continued. “Amity, the youngest.”

  “And . . . what?” I shook my head and went back to staring at the boring ceiling. “How’s Edgar Maidstone’s inability to keep tabs on his brats got anything to do with when I’m allowed to brush my fucking teeth?”

  B whistled between his teeth, the way he sometimes does when he’s impatient.

  “Edgar Maidstone,” he said, “isn’t yet aware that his sweet-sixteen Amity is missing.”

  “Which brings me back around to what the fuck this has to do with me.”

  “Two nights ago, Quinn, I was approached by the elder daughter, Berenice—”

  “I know her name,” I said, and thumped the ceiling. The driver glared at me from the mirror, so I thumped it again, twice as hard, and smirked.

  “—who, aside from her sisterly concern—”

  “Fuck that, B. I’ve heard those two hate each other like cats and dogs.”

  “—wishes, and not unreasonably so, that Amity Maidstone be located before their father discovers she’s missing. Ergo, Amity is forgoing the family’s usual, and I will admit, considerably more effective, resources in tracking down her sister’s whereabouts.”

  I thumped the ceiling again. When the driver ignored me, I considered kicking his seat.

  “So, put what’s his name—Shaker—put Shaker on it. I’m sure as hell no sort of detective.”

  “That’s exactly what I did,” B told me, “and now he’s vanished, as well.”

  “What a shame. Send flowers to his widow.”

  Mean Mr. B scowled and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Since when, kitten, have you acquired the privilege to pick and choose which assignments you will and will not accept from me?”

  “Not a detective,” I repeated.

  The car rolled through a stop sign and someone blew their horn. I don’t think B even noticed. Not like he had to give a shit about traffic laws. I’m pretty sure he was invisible so far as the Providence PD were concerned; too bad that invisibility has never rubbed off on me.

  “As I recall, you did a fair enough job last summer.”

  He was referring to how I’d managed to unravel the mystery of my part in the squabble between the Bride and Evangelista Penderghast.

  “That was stupid luck, and you know it,” I told him. “Plus, it cost me a goddamn finger.” I held up my left hand, minus its pinkie. I’d bartered the finger for information when I’d run out of leads in just who had set me up so it looked like I’d offed a vamp bitch named Cregan, which had put me on the Bride’s radar to start with. It hadn’t been much consolation when my inner wolf wound up eating the rat-bastard asshole who’d sold me the intel.

  “And a toe,” he reminded me. Because, you know, I might have forgotten.

  “And a fucking toe. And fuck you, because there’s enough on my plate without playing Nancy Drew.”

  “I’m not asking. You know that.”

  Yeah, I did. I knew that like I know the sun rises and sets. Like I know dead people get up and walk around if you ask ’em just right or pay off the right sort. Like I know loups have bad table manners.

  Like I know a lot of stuff.

  “So, no more fuss and nonsense,” he said. “Be a good girl and find Shaker for me. I’d prefer to have him back. And please have a talk with Berenice. She’s a student at Brown. Be polite. Wear clean clothes.”

  “I hate you.”

  “We all have our crosses to bear, precious.”

  The boy behind the wheel pulled over at the intersection with Wickenden.

  “Stay in touch, Quinn. And take care not to disappoint me. It isn’t necessary to stress how much is riding on this situation.”

  There was nothing left to say, and I didn’t waste my breath not saying it. For the time being, I was still firmly under B’s well-manicured thumb. The way things stood, if I dared walk, I wouldn’t last twenty-four hours on my own. He’d seen to that, making sure I ticked off all the wrong bad guys so I’d need his protection for a long, long time. Without another word, I got out of the Buick. I stood there a moment, staring at the blood caked under my nine fingernails, then turned for home again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE GIRL

  Most of what I knew about Berenice Maidstone and her wayward kid sister had been covered in the backseat of Mean Mr. B’s silver Buick. I’d be going into this affair just shy of blind. He hadn’t slipped me a hush-hush dossier filled with the deepest, darkest secrets of the two or a Mission: Impossible–style “this tape will self destruct in ten seconds” cassette. Yeah, I could undoubtedly have fished out a few more details if I’d had the presence of mind to speak up. But I didn’t, and I wasn’t about to call him back. “Oh, hey. I’m a dipshit and totally forgot to ask, but . . .”

  No. I’d had enough of his gloating for that particular day. So, could’a, should’a, would’a. Now move on.

  She’s a student at Brown. Her and about ten thousand other people. Thanks, dude. That’s a lot to go on. Still, over the months since my death, I had cultivated a couple of contacts who, in turn, had a couple of snitches. It was a hit-and-miss, ragtag string of confidential informants who had to be compensated for tips that rarely panned out, but it was slightly better than nothing at all. Back home I made a couple of calls, the second to a back-alley dealer in pilfered karma and memories who went by Cutter. He occasionally fed me the lowdown on someone, and, in return, I mostly left h
im and his operation the fuck alone. Anyway, he promised to call me back as soon as he had time to see what he could dig up, as regards the specifics of Berenice’s comings and goings at BU.

  “It’s important, Cutter.”

  “Gotta be delicate on this one,” he sort of whined. If ferrets could talk, they’d sound like Cutter. “Prying into the Maidstones, that’s some dangerous undertaking.”

  “No shit, but that’s the score.”

  “You don’t ask much, do you?”

  I kicked an empty Narragansett beer bottle at the door. It didn’t break. “Dude, you want me to go tellin’ B you’re being anything less than cooperative?”

  “Quinn, you know it ain’t like that. You know—”

  “Shoulder to the wheel,” I said. “That’s all I’m asking. Come up with something good, it’ll buy you a couple of months hassle free.”

  “Well, I know this hacker—”

  “I don’t care how you do it, just do it.”

  Jesus, I love talking shit to douche bags.

  I tossed the ridiculous Hello Kitty iPhone onto my puke-colored sofa, undressed, and spent the next half hour or so standing under the showerhead, letting the hot, hot water hammer my back and shoulders, my face and chest. The morning’s encounter with Rizzo kept playing over and over in my head, and despite B’s insistence that all was cool and no damage had been done by leaving the son of a bitch alive, I was fairly certain it was only a matter of time before that act of “mercy” came back to take a chunk out of my ass. By the way, when the loup Jack Grumet bit me that July night out at the Scituate Reservoir, he’d bitten me in the ass, so there was a precedent. B had bigger fish to fry at present, and that’s the only reason he hadn’t reamed me for not putting Bert Rizzo down.

  By the time I finally got out of the shower and dressed in the cleanest clothes I could scrounge from the dirty assortment of T-shirts and jeans scattered about my bedroom, it was early afternoon. There was a Radiohead shirt that didn’t smell too bad. I sat down on the edge of my sagging mattress and stared longingly at the pillows. What possible difference did it make if I tracked down Ms. Maidstone today or tomorrow? As for Shaker, either he was dead or he wasn’t, and a few hours’ shut-eye wasn’t gonna change that, either.

  I lay down, blinking at the sunlight through the windowpane. The clouds had begun to break up. I’d just shut my eyes when the phone started ringing.

  No peace to the wicked, right?

  I rolled out of bed and made it back to the sofa by the fourth ring. It was Cutter, and the extra-ferrety tremble in his voice was enough to tell me he was none too happy to be making this call.

  “Senior year. Linguistics. I got her schedule and emailed it to you. Black hair, amber eyes—”

  “Amber.”

  “That’s what I said, ain’t it? Tall, too. Almost six feet, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble spotting her. Her address and phone number, they’re in the email. But you might want to try watching the Front Green, along Prospect Street. Seems she and some pals have a habit of congregating near Carrie Tower, round about sunset.”

  “Sunset. In February?”

  “Quinn, that’s what I heard. And that’s all I got for you. That and what’s in the email. And you didn’t hear none of this from me. I could go my whole life without so much as seeing one of the Maidstones, much less—”

  “Cutter, how about you take a Valium and try to calm the fuck down?”

  “Two months,” he said. “Two months, free and clear.”

  “That’s the deal, if this shit pans out.”

  He hung up first. So much for sleep and letting it all slide until the next day. If B found out I had a lead and didn’t act on it right off, he’d go on the warpath, which I definitely didn’t need. I went back to the bedroom and slid a heavy wool sweater on over the T-shirt. No, it’s not as if vamps get cold—as I have said—but I knew I should make an effort at blending in. Lurking about at night, that’s one thing; broad daylight at a crowded campus, that’s another. So, mortal drag—the hazel-green contacts, the dental prosthetics, the heavy makeup to hide my waxy pale skin—my camouflage against detection from all those people who have no idea the nasties walk among them. And who are best off never learning otherwise. I used the phone to check my Gmail account, and Cutter’s email was there, just like he’d said it would be. Pretty thorough, too. Probably a lot more than I needed.

  On my way out the front door, I jammed a knit cap with a Slytherin House patch on my head. Maybe that was overplaying my hand, yeah, but fuck it. B wants me to pass for a fucking muggle, might as well hit it full tilt boogie.

  • • •

  You want history? Well, Providence is just stinko with it. Carrie Tower, for instance, at the corner of Prospect and Waterman, a looming marble and redbrick monolith, complete with a bronze clock face and topped off with a bronze dome, both stained verdigris by more than a hundred years of New England winters. The thing was erected back in 1904, a gift from some Italian dude in memory of his dead wife, granddaughter of this other dude who the university had been named after. All the names escape me. Well, except for Brown, which is obvious. Look the other two up. The internet is the goddamn friend of the curious and lazy. But on the foundation, chiseled into the stone, an inscription reads LOVE IS STRONGER THAN DEATH.

  Well, maybe so. I’m gonna say I wouldn’t know.

  Way up tippy top of the tower, there’s a bell, though it doesn’t chime anymore, just like the clock no longer tells the time. Shit gets old. Shit breaks. No one bothers to fix it. Indifference. Budget concerns. Government cutbacks. Whatever. Regardless, must have been a big deal when that tower went up, but, really—who can be bothered to give a rat’s ass these days? The last person who’d have gotten all sentimental over that dead granddaughter of the school’s founder has probably been a corpse for half a century, stuck in some local boneyard, partying with the ghouls.

  Still, there’s an amusing anecdote about Carrie Tower, a bit of secret history only us nasties and our fellow travelers are privy to, that sort of anecdote. In 1950, see, the clock began to lose time, then speed up, then lose time again. At one point, it actually ran backwards. Whoever investigates such things—let’s say a few maintenance guys—they investigated, and the official story was that some doodad or another inside the clock’s innards had been tampered with by frat boys, but the truth of the matter, that secret truth, involved a Masonic Lodge over on Federal Hill and a demoness went by the name of Sulfurous Sal . . .

  You know what? It’s not nearly as amusing an anecdote as I remember, so forget it. Fuck it.

  That afternoon, when I got to the tower, there was no sign of Berenice Maidstone. Just college students coming and going between those stately Ivy League buildings, along with the usual retinue of pigeons and sparrows hanging out in the snow. Of course, it was still a few hours until sunset, and Cutter had told me Maidstone tended to show up there around dusk. I sat down on a bench, chain-smoked (not like dead girls have to worry about the Big C), and stared out at the traffic beyond the tall black wrought-iron fence facing Prospect Street. I just sort of spaced out for a while, which I actually do quite a bit.

  Don’t think being me is all playing demon slayer when some uppity mope gets out of line, or doing Mean Mr. B’s bidding, or finding myself in the crosshairs of nut jobs like ex-Father Rizzo. Mostly, it’s boredom. Monotony. The same tedium set on endless repeat. Beer and TV Land, masturbation and video games. Waiting on my rumbling belly to remind me it’s time for the next murder, the next fix—blood ain’t nothing but heroin misspelled, after all—and waiting, too, for my “time of the month” to roll around, when I’d black out and wake up wondering what sort of trouble the Beast had landed me in. Why do you think so few vamps stick around for more than a couple of centuries? Why immortals aren’t? Because immortality is damn dull, that’s why, and you can damn well ignore all the pop-culture mumbo jumbo that would have you think anything to the contrary. Hell, the way our naughty parts at
rophy after only a few decades and eventually wither away (I’m pretty sure I mentioned that in the last book), even masturbation ceases to be an option before too long, which will probably be the final nail in my coffin.

  What joy remains in all this godsforsaken world when a lady can’t even get off to Miss August or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue or that glorious, all-you-can-eat buffet of freakish Japanese porn on the internet?

  So, that afternoon in February, I was sitting there, these pointless, depressing-ass thoughts going round and round in my head, when someone came up behind me and said, “I’d have taken you for a Hufflepuff myself.”

  I was up off the bench in an instant, startled from my reverie, a hand reaching inside my parka for the Glock because better safe than sorry. Shoot first, interrogate later, yada yada yada. I didn’t actually draw the gun, but I had a firm grip on the pistol in its shoulder holster before I realized there was no one behind the bench but some goth chick, all done up in leather, pointy boots, big hair, obligatory facial piercings, and the excessive cosmetics of a counterfeit stiff.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Jesus, fuck me sideways.”

  “What’s your problem?” the goth girl wanted to know. She glowered at me, and, in return, I wanted to smack her.

  “Don’t fucking sneak up on people, that’s what my problem is.”

  She just stood there, staring at me.

  “What?” I asked her (my turn), taking my hand off the butt of the gun and out of my coat.

  “You’re really her, aren’t you?”

  “Her who?”

  “Her . . . Quinn. Siobhan Quinn. The vampire who put down Mercy Brown and—”

  I wasn’t exactly stunned she’d recognized me. Word gets out. There are those among our ranks who don’t know when to shut up, whose tongues do waggle. They’re often the sort it falls to me to deal with. Still, I’d been clocked by the mortal girl. Not good.

  “Who the fuck told you that?” Then I added, “And no one calls me Siobhan. Do that again, and I’ll—”

  “But you are her. You’re missing a pinkie.”