Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,67

he was just the sort of monster who eats squirrels.

“After what you’ve seen, you still don’t comprehend,” Charlee said, speaking very softly, as if he was trying not to frighten the squirrel. “You’re still willing to hand over the Madonna to the twins.”

“Not that Pickman’s ever going to let that happen,” said B. “But we’ve been over all this, and I’ve never been one for repeating myself.”

The smoke from the smoldering tip of my cigarette coiled into an almost perfect question mark.

And I said, and, in that moment, I meant what I said, “I’m not your avenging angel, B, and I’m not a hero. I’m not Pickman’s ace in the hole. I’m not motherfucking Frodo Baggins willing to walk into the Land of Mordor to stop Sauron from covering all the world in shadow. I’m not Dorothy Gale, and I’m not here to get rid of anyone’s wicked witches.

“You say there’s a war coming? Well, ain’t there always? I’ll find Selwyn, and we’ll go to ground, and every one of these assholes can murder each other for all I care. They can burn this whole rotten world to the ground.”

I flicked ash into the grass and took a long drag.

“Well, well,” said B. “If I only still had me other hand, I’d applaud.”

The squirrel in the maple tree chittered angrily. Charlee told it to shut the hell up, and it did. For a few minutes, none of us said anything else at all, and there was nothing but the noise of traffic, the breeze in the branches, and the chirping birds.

Now, as you’ll see shortly, I did go to Boston. But here’s the weird thing: I cannot for the life of me remember exactly why, what argument swayed me. Or if there was some card B had yet to play that put me once more in his pocket, behind his damned eight ball. Way back at the beginning of Chapter Four, I mentioned how, writing all this down, lots of time I’m fully aware I’m just making shit up.

That might have annoyed a few of you.

Well, if someone’s telling you a story, and they claim to be a reliable narrator, as trustworthy as the length and girth of the night, they’re lying to you, sure as shit stinks. And it’s just as bad, you ask me, if they simply neglect to address the question and let their readers buy into some unspoken myth of total recall. So, yeah. Most of the time, I remember the broad strokes, whether I want to or not. But that’s about it. If this sort of confession rubs you the wrong way, then you’re not paying attention.

Every word I say is a lie. Fuckin’ A.

But I digress, and the time for digressions in this story has probably come and gone. As I was saying, whatever swayed me to throw in with B that afternoon, that’s a blank. Sometimes I suspect it was an ugly little smudge of magic on the part of B or his pomegranate-haired molly, because all I needed was a slight push out the door, right?

So, right here we have a perfect blank.

And then here we have Charlee talking to someone on his iPhone, and Mean Mister B’s standing hunched a few feet away. The Madonna was in my lap, and I’d smoked my cigarette almost down to the filter. B had his back to me, and he was peering through the trees towards the museum. Right then, the man looked a hundred years old if he looked a day, and he was gnarled as the roots of the cranky squirrel’s red maple. Whatever they’d done to him, it went deeper than amputating a hand.

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.

He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.

“It’s all set,” Charlee said, putting away his phone.

B nodded, and I dropped my butt to the ground and crushed it out under the pointy toe of my most recent meal’s cowboy boot. I left the bundle lying on the bench with Charlee and walked over to where B was standing.

“So, Mr. Barrett,” I said, “do you know any more than I do about this much coveted unholy of unholies?” And I nodded towards the bench.

“La Virgen negra de la Muerte?” he asked.

“I don’t mean the pretty boy in the go-go boots.”

“He’s a right wonder, is Charlee. I’ve never wanted to tell my boys the secrets. You know what I mean, Quinn. Those secrets keep us tossing and turning at