Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,42
over the railing. I waited a full two minutes, counting off the seconds in my mind, before I lowered my gun. I waited another minute before I took my eyes off the window. My left arm hung limp at my side, and blood slicked my sweater and pooled on the floor at my feet. The silver shrapnel burned like white-hot embers buried in my flesh. I still have no idea how I’d managed to hurl that book.
“Selwyn, did informing me this son of a bitch uses fucking vamps for hired killers never cross your fucking mind?”
“I didn’t want to make you any jumpier than you already were,” she said, lowering the bundle.
“Oh, you did not just say that.”
She shrugged and set the bundle on the counter. Her hands were shaking.
“Quinn, if I’d told you, you might not have come. You might have stopped me from coming. Am I right?”
“You bet your skinny white tailless ass you’re right.”
“Well, then, there you go,” she said.
I was speechless. I do not deal well with being manipulated, though I’ve spent a great deal of my existence postmortem being manipulated. The undead make wicked good weapons, as Isaac Snow obviously understood. They also make good bodyguards, as Selwyn obviously understood. Being junkies, we’re easy marks. More often than not, we’ll do a lot of fucked-up humiliating shit and let people get away with using us to their ends if it means we don’t have to worry where the next fix is coming from.
I stared at Selwyn and very, very seriously considered smashing whatever was wrapped up inside that bundle of hers myself and all parties involved be damned. It’s a testament to my not inconsiderable shortcomings that I didn’t destroy it. If I’d known what was coming, I like to think I wouldn’t have pussied out, that I’d have acted on that impulse. Instead, I tucked the Glock back into the waistband of my pants, did my best to ignore the pain and blood, and went to the closet in the hallway. Selwyn had hung my duster there the afternoon before she’d poisoned me with wolfsbane. I was frankly a bit surprised it was still there. I yanked it off the hanger and draped it over my good arm.
“You don’t know what’s at stake,” she said.
“Then how about you enlightening me?”
Not that, right then, I especially gave two shits.
“It’s complicated,” she replied.
“Seems pretty simple to me. You have something there this cocksucker wants. Something he paid you to find. But after you found it, along with that other junk, you decided to double-cross him. I won’t speculate why you did it. I’m sure you had your reasons. Now, tell me, am I wrong?”
She didn’t answer, one way or another.
“Darling,” I said, “you do know what tends to become of stupid little girls who fuck over monsters?”
“I will not be condescended to,” she said angrily, as if she had some say in the matter.
“I don’t recall asking for permission,” I replied.
I went to the window and peered down at the alley, then up towards the roof. There was no sign of the vamp anywhere. I hadn’t expected there to be. By now she was holed up somewhere safe, licking her wounds and busy trying to decide exactly how she was going to explain having bungled the job.
I climbed out onto the fire escape. I could hear sirens. Maybe they had our names on them; maybe they didn’t.
“Wait!” Selwyn shouted, the anger gone, replaced by . . . well, not quite panic. Let’s say an attack of desperation. She quickly picked her way through the clutter to the window.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
And I said, “I’ve taken two bullets now because of your dumb ass, Annie Smithfield. I’m not sticking around for the third.”
The sirens were getting louder, so I assumed they were headed our way.
“Come on, Quinn. Please. I’ll explain everything.”
And then I said, “I might have told you this already, but whatever’s happening here is your mess. You got yourself into it, and you can sort it out on your own. Or not.”
She reached through the open window and grabbed my left elbow, the side with the shattered collarbone. I almost gave into reflex and punched her in the face. It probably would have broken her neck.
She’d tucked the bundle under one arm. I could see now that whatever she was carrying had been wrapped in a black Morrissey T-shirt.
Sirens.
“You hear that? The cops are on their way,” I said. “I’m leaving.”