Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,75

to fade into the gloom of twilight. I lit a cigarette and watched the speedometer; the needle hovered just below eighty miles an hour.

“We’re coming up on Waterbury,” Charlee said. “I know it’s probably not something you have to worry about anymore, but I’m about ready for good long pissaloo.”

“No, I don’t piss.” Well, I thought, not usually. I don’t think the vision piss counted.

“Lucky you.”

“Not especially.”

Yeah, okay, this is turning into a scene that could put a rock to sleep. Note to aspiring writers: Steer clear of long scenes in which your characters are stuck in automobiles. Anyway, as we sped along towards night and Boston, the twins and maybe worse things than the twins, I was beginning to find it difficult to think about much of anything but Selwyn. I knew that if I cut the crap and was honest with myself, I’d have to admit that the odds were she was dead or soon would be, and there probably wasn’t jack all I could do about it. Honesty was a goddamn rabid honey badger perched on my shoulder, whispering bitter nothings in my ear. Meanwhile, my old friend Denial was busy cowering beneath the seat with the Madonna.

“Also,” said Charlee, “I need more cigs.”

“I don’t have a plan,” I confessed.

“I know,” he replied. “Me, either.”

“Dude, we are so utterly screwed,” I said, and Charlee laughed. I shut my eyes, listening to the hum of the wheels against the road and the twang of the country music coming through the radio, and I tried to clear my head, focus, take stock of my situation, weigh my options (assuming I had any). On the one hand, from a certain angle, it almost seemed straightforward: I had the secret ingredient to Thing One and Thing Two’s nefarious plan for global domination, even if I had no idea whatsoever how they planned to use it to put the smackdown on the Djinn and usher in the endless fun and games of Babes in Ghuland. They had Selwyn, and apparently I was, fuck me sideways, in love with her lying, conniving, cute-as-fuck, one-quarter-ghoul ass. It could all come down to a simple exchange, the Madonna for Selwyn, and never mind Charlee and B’s hard-on for vengeance. Maybe there was a stingy speck of honor in the twins, and they’d take their loving cup and send us on our merry way. Then we could beat a hasty retreat and . . . what?

Wait out the end of the world as we knew it in a ghoul-proof fallout shelter somewhere?

Or, contrariwise, it wasn’t simple at all. To start with, what the fuck was Pickman playing at, and what did he have planned for me? You’d think that the one thing he had to want most of all would be to keep the Basalt Madonna out of the grubby paws of the Snows, and yet . . . when I’d proposed the swap, all he’d had to say is, “Someone will be in touch.” He let me walk, knowing perfectly well where I’d likely, probably, almost inevitably be walking to. He’d told me all about how I was the fly in the ointment of the twins’ plans, but he hadn’t bothered to elaborate.

I shut my eyes, struggling to tie it all together, as if the days and nights since I’d met Selwyn were nothing more than the plot of some ill-conceived paperback. Death had not severed me from that all-too-human need to see patterns and solutions. If I squinted at it long enough and hard enough, wouldn’t all the pieces finally fall into place, free of plot holes, unanswered questions, and inconvenient loose ends? Wasn’t I the clever, well-prepared author, a master of resolution and foresight?

No, I wasn’t.

I wasn’t any of that.

And the bloodthirsty, lunatic world around me was not a book written to entertain . . . well . . . anyone.

“Someone will be in touch,” I whispered.

“What’s that?” Charlee asked.

“Nothing,” I replied, not bothering to open my eyes. “Talking to myself, that’s all.”

“Maybe you should get some rest,” he said. “How long’s it been, anyway?”

“Since?”

“You slept, Quinn.”

I tried to remember, but that nugget of information was as elusive as everything else, a tangled strand of cheap plastic beads ready to snap between my fingers. Did however long I was unconscious after the ghouls jumped us on the train count as sleep? No, probably not. So, the night before the night Jodie had driven us both to Selwyn’s apartment, that was the last time