Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,15

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