Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,39
a car she kept in a garage somewhere nearby, and she drove us. Not like we could take a taxi or the subway in our styling secret-agent, ninja, cat-burglar getups. She pulled the car into an alley a couple of blocks from the building, and we walked the rest of the way. No sense in her getting hauled off to the pokey if we got ourselves caught.
Pause a moment to consider the fate of a vamp, who’s also a loup—or vice versa—who finds herself in lockup. Standing next to a box where a homeless dude was sleeping off a couple of bottles of Thunderbird, staring up at the fire escape, I asked Selwyn to ponder that very scenario.
“No one’s going to jail,” she said, pulling the ladder down with a loud clank. The homeless dude didn’t wake up.
“You bet your ass they’re not, because I’m not gonna let it come to that.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem, Grasshopper, is the mess I’d have to make so that it didn’t come to that.”
“We’re not going to get caught,” she sighed and started climbing. I hesitated a second or two, thought about leaving her to the pissy gods of fate and heading to Port Authority and buying a ticket on the first bus anywhere far from New York City. And then I followed her.
Because that’s what stupid people do. Even vamps.
Being dead has yet to boost anyone’s IQ.
I did my best not to make noise, but the rusty fire escape had other ideas. We creaked and squeaked our way to the fifth floor and the apartment’s single window. Which had, as noted earlier, been painted shut. But, super vampire strength, right? I tugged it open, which made, probably, only slightly less noise than breaking it would have made.
“Five minutes,” I told her. “That’s all. You ain’t done in five minutes, I’ll leave you here.”
She rolled her eyes and muttered and wandered away through the dark towards the bedroom. I sat on the windowsill, where I could keep my eyes on the door. The cops had tossed the place. At least, I assumed it was the cops. Someone had. The carefully ordered chaos had been reduced to simple, run-of-the-mill chaos.
I lit a cigarette and waited. Five minutes went by and I could hear Selwyn bumbling around in the dark. She had a Maglite, because even stupid people know better than to break into a crime scene and turn on the lights. I decided I’d give her a little extra time. So far, so good, after all. I told myself I’d been worrying over nothing. I smoked and listened to the night outside and the night inside and every other sound in the building.
And then the phone rang. Selwyn had this old avocado-green telephone that must have been new about 1970, and there in the dark, the ringer sounded at least as loud as a fire bell.
“Shit,” I heard her whisper. By the second ring, she’d emerged from the bedroom carrying a soccer-ball-sized bundle, but I couldn’t make out what it was. She shined the Maglite in the direction of the phone, perched on a stack of books, but nailed me square in the eyes instead.
“Jesus shitting Christ,” I hissed. “Get that thing out of my face.” She did, but the flashlight’s beam left a swarm of giant fireflies in my head.
“Should I answer it?” she asked.
“Why? Are you expecting a fucking phone call?”
Third ring.
“No,” she whispered. “Of course not. No one knows we’re here, and I don’t use the landline for business.”
Fourth ring.
“Don’t answer,” she said. “It’s no one.”
Which is probably why I answered it.
It’s precisely the sort of thing stupid people do.
I stood there, the handset against my ear, looking in Selwyn’s direction, but still seeing nothing except all those orange-white fireflies. I didn’t say a word. Well, not at first. Probably a whole minute went by, and I was just about to hang up, when the caller said, “Hello, Miss Quinn. I was so hoping it would be you who picked up.”
It was a smooth and utterly sexless voice. I mean utterly. A voice entirely devoid of gender. Could have been a man or a woman or anything in between. Also, and I say this as a nasty, it was a damn creepy voice. The sort of voice puts a fucking chill in you, right? And it was a jovial voice. If a voice could grin, that voice was grinning ear to ear.