Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,54

the scowl.

“Why you gotta be such a hater? You don’t hear me running down bloodsuckers, do you?”

I stood up and looked about. The couple on the bench were gone; near as I could tell, it was just me and the bird. I leaned forward and wrung some of the water out of my hair. Then I held up my left foot, balancing on my right. I wiggled the four surviving toes.

“See, now, was that so damn hard?” asked the gull.

“If you only knew,” I said, and then I climbed out of the fountain, wishing I had a goddamn towel. I considered using the black T-shirt the Madonna was wrapped in, but that would have meant having to see the thing.

“Ballard sent me,” the seagull said.

I stared at it a moment. “Yeah, well, I don’t know anyone named Ballard. So maybe you’ve got the wrong nine-toed, nine-fingered vampire.”

“Nope, you’re her, all right. You’re Siobhan Quinn Twice-Damned, Twice-Dead. You’re that epic hard-core BAMF went all Chuck Norris on a whole goddamn busload of loups, and, oh, never mind the—”

I reached down and grabbed the gull’s hooked beak, squeezing it shut.

“You want me to break this off?”

The seagull’s eyes went wide with panic. It made a strangled noise, beat at me with its wings, and tried to pull free. So I squeezed just a little harder.

“I asked you a question. Is that what you want?”

The bird rolled its yellow eyes, stopped struggling, and shook its head. I turned it loose, and the seagull immediately hopped safely out of reach.

“So, who’s Ballard?” I asked it.

“The man who ain’t paying me enough to put up with this sort of abuse to my bodily person,” snapped the bird.

I retrieved my dinner’s panties and bra from the pile of clothes lying near the edge of the fountain. Both were decorated with My Little Pony characters—a matching fucking set, and I shit you not. I decided I could make do without underwear.

“You used to work for the guy,” the bird said. “He changes his name a lot, like every damn day, but it always starts with the letter B. Always, always, always. Frankly, he’s sort of a douche, but don’t tell him I said that, okay?”

I dropped the ridiculous bra and panties and sat staring at the seagull.

“B,” I said. “B sent you?”

“Ain’t that what I just said?”

If I’d been holding the Browning that Pickman had given me, I’d have shot the bird dead, right then and there, before it had a chance to say another goddamn word. Kill the messenger and the message and be done with both.

“He said you’d be glad to hear from him.”

“Of course he did.”

“Wants a face-to-face,” the seagull went on, “this morning, uptown at the Museum of Natural History. Says it’s important. Real important. Wants you there at ten thirty a.m., sharp and on the dot.”

“Yeah, and people in Hell want hemorrhoid cream, too. You fly back to that son of a bitch and tell him I said he can go fuck himself. I was done with him three years ago, and I’m ten times more done with him now.”

The bird made a sort of flustered, exasperated face, and I picked up the black turtleneck sweater my dinner had been wearing.

“He said tell you it’s about the Snow twins. What’s their names? Ishmael and Isis?”

Suddenly, I felt dizzy, and my mouth had gone dry. Clearly, the cosmos had no intention to stop fucking with me anytime soon, and clearly I had yet to see the bottom of this mess Selwyn Throckmorton had gotten me into.

“Isaac and Isobel,” I said, and I pulled the sweater on over my head. The wool smelled, not unpleasantly, of sweat, herbal shampoo, and vanilla oil. Then I sat, still naked from the waist down, staring south out across City Hall Park towards Broadway.

“Yeah, them’s the ones,” said the seagull. “Always been terrible with human names, I have. They all sound alike. Six of one, half dozen of the other. But you’ll meet with him, right? I can tell him that?”

“What does B have to do with the Snows?”

“How the heck would I know? You’ll have to ask him yourself. Now, how about you put your britches on. Not too long till sunrise, Sunshine.”

“Wait, what day is it?” I asked, but the seagull didn’t answer. It just giggled the obnoxious way that seagulls do, and then it flew away and left me sitting there.

Sitting there alone.

I pulled on my dinner’s jeans, and her socks, and her shoes—a scuffed