Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,36

had stopped for us. Between the bruises and scrapes, the dried blood on my chin and cheeks and forehead, and the wet, dark splotch on the blanket from the seeping bullet hole that hadn’t yet begun to heal.

“I need a shower,” I said.

And Selwyn said, “You need three or four.”

“The bathroom’s just past the kitchen,” Jodie told me, and she pointed down the surprisingly long hallway. “You’ll find everything you need. Soap, clean towels, shampoo. If you need it, there’s disinfectant and a needle and silk thread in linen closet. And gauze bandages.”

I thanked her and said I could use the gauze, yeah, but there was no need for the rest of it.

Undead girls don’t tend to get infections. It’s one of the perks. No matter how much it hurt—and hurt it did—if I could get some sleep, by sunrise my body would spit out the slug, and there wouldn’t even be a scar.

I stood under the hot spray of this Jodie woman’s showerhead, letting the water hammer my chest, shoulders, my buttocks and face. I didn’t want to be remembering anything at all. But I couldn’t stop remembering the forest and the field, the blonde girl and her black wolf. I knew full well who they were. The loup was me, and they were also me. Me knock, knocking, knocking on my so often slow-on-the-uptake conscious mind. Do you get the gist now, Quinn? Yeah, I got it. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with the knowledge, but I got it.

While I dried, I took stock of my reflection in the mirror above the sink. My shark-black eyes, my waxy skin, my piranha mouth, me more naked than any absence of clothes could make me. Me without the makeup, contacts, the grille that hid my teeth. All that shit was something else trapped back at Selwyn’s cordoned-off apartment, unless they’d also been confiscated as evidence. I’d have to find replacements, but I could worry about that later. After sleep. I could also worry about who the fuck Jodie was and whether there was any chance the cops could get any leads on Selwyn. I knew I was likely safe from any investigation, but she had a paper trail—her lease, just for starters. Shit knows how much else—identifying documents and shit. Truth be told, I’d been inconvenienced; she’d been screwed over good and proper.

There was a time I wouldn’t have given her situation a second thought. There was a time my attitude would have boiled down to, What’s any of that got to do with me? But she’d changed me. In less than a week, she’d changed me.

Which scared me bad, more than I was willing to admit.

I’d figured out long ago how dangerous it was allowing anyone to get close to you, forming emotional ties to the living. Or much of anyone else. Vamps aren’t pack animals. Doesn’t matter how lonely the isolation might be, it was a lot safer than the alternative. For me and for whoever found themselves the object of my affections. Maybe you’ve read shit about vamps and werewolves as guardian fucking angels. That’s wishful thinking, ignorant fantasies. You may as well snuggle up to a leaky nuke.

We slept in the guest room, me and Selwyn. I don’t know if I’d ever in all my life slept in a bed that comfortable. The room smelled like lavender and citrus, aging fabric woven before my grandmother had been born, old wood and Murphy’s Oil Soap. My clean body and Selwyn’s clean body, and the blood in her veins. Before I nodded off, she offered herself, and I almost refused. It was dangerous, drinking from her in the state I was in.

“You need it,” she said. “I can see how much you need it, Quinn.”

What else can this pale child see?

She didn’t have to twist my arm. But I managed to take only a couple of mouthfuls. And then we slept. I had no dreams, not of the girl by the field, not of the loup. Nothing, just the bliss of oblivion.

Jodie didn’t wake us until after three in the afternoon. She knocked lightly on the door. I lay blinking at the ceiling, but Selwyn told her the door was unlocked, to come in. Then she kissed me on the forehead. She smiled sleepily, looking way more refreshed than I felt. She looked . . . what? Relieved? Certainly not much like someone who’d lost all her worldly possessions the night before and had