Red Delicious (A Siobhan Quinn Novel, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kathleen Tierney is the pseudonym for Caitlin R. Kiernan, the author of nine novels, including Daughter of Hounds, The Red Tree, and The Drowning Girl. She is a four-time nominee for the World Fantasy Award, a three-time nominee for the Shirley Jackson Award, and a nominee for the Nebula Award. Trained as a vertebrate paleontologist, she currently lives in Rhode Island.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Girl

Most of what I knew about Berenice Maidstone and her wayward kid sister had been covered in the backseat of Mean Mr. B’s silver Buick. I’d be going into this affair just shy of blind. He hadn’t slipped me a hush-hush dossier filled with the deepest, darkest secrets of the two or a Mission: Impossible–style “this tape will self destruct in ten seconds” cassette. Yeah, I could undoubtedly have fished out a few more details if I’d had the presence of mind to speak up. But I didn’t, and I wasn’t about to call him back. “Oh, hey. I’m a dipshit and totally forgot to ask, but . . .”

No. I’d had enough of his gloating for that particular day. So, could’a, should’a, would’a. Now move on.

She’s a student at Brown. Her and about ten thousand other people. Thanks, dude. That’s a lot to go on. Still, over the months since my death, I had cultivated a couple of contacts who, in turn, had a couple of snitches. It was a hit-and- miss, ragtag string of confidential informants who had to be compensated for tips that rarely panned out, but it was slightly better than nothing at all. Back home I made a couple of calls, the second to a back-alley dealer in pilfered karma and memories who went by Cutter. He occasionally fed me the lowdown on someone, and, in return, I mostly left him and his operation the fuck alone. Anyway, he promised to call me back as soon as he had time to see what he could dig up, as regards the specifics of Berenice’s comings and goings at BU.

“It’s important, Cutter.”

“Gotta be delicate on this one,” he sort of whined. If ferrets could talk, they’d sound like Cutter. “Prying into the Maidstones, that’s some dangerous undertaking.”

“No shit, but that’s the score.”

“You don’t ask much, do you?”

I kicked an empty Narragansett beer bottle at the door. It didn’t break. “Dude, you want me to go tellin’ B you’re being anything less than cooperative?”

“Quinn, you know it ain’t like that. You know—”

“Shoulder to the wheel,” I said. “That’s all I’m asking. Come up with something good, it’ll buy you a couple of months hassle free.”

“Well, I know this hacker—”

“I don’t care how you do it, just do it.”

Jesus, I love talking shit to douche bags.

I tossed the ridiculous Hello Kitty iPhone onto my puke-colored sofa, undressed, and spent the next half hour or so standing under the showerhead, letting the hot, hot water hammer my back and shoulders, my face and chest. The morning’s encounter with Rizzo kept playing over and over in my head, and despite B’s insistence that all was cool and no damage had been done by leaving the son of a bitch alive, I was fairly certain it was only a matter of time before that act of “mercy” came back to take a chunk out of my ass. By the way, when the loup Jack Grumet bit me that July night out at the Scituate Reservoir, he’d bitten me in the ass, so there was a precedent. B had bigger fish to fry at present, and that’s the only reason he hadn’t reamed me for not putting Bert Rizzo down.

By the time I finally got out of the shower and dressed in the cleanest clothes I could scrounge from the dirty assortment of T-shirts and jeans scattered about my bedroom, it was early afternoon. There was a Radiohead shirt that didn’t smell too bad. I sat down on the edge of my sagging mattress and stared longingly at the pillows. What possible difference did it make if I tracked down Ms. Maidstone today or tomorrow? As for Shaker, either he was dead or he wasn’t, and a few hours’ shut-eye wasn’t gonna change that, either.

I lay down, blinking at the sunlight through the windowpane. The clouds had begun to break up. I’d just shut my eyes when the phone started ringing.

No peace to the wicked, right?

I rolled out of bed and made it back to the sofa by the fourth ring. It was Cutter, and the extra-ferrety tremble in his voice was enough to tell me he was none too happy to be making this call.

“Senior year. Linguistics. I got her schedule and emailed it to you. Black hair, amber eyes—”

“Amber.”

“That’s what I said, ain’t it? Tall, too. Almost six feet, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble spotting her. Her address and phone number, they’re in the email. But you might want to try watching the Front Green, along Prospect Street. Seems she and some pals have a habit of congregating near Carrie Tower, round about sunset.”

“Sunset. In February?”

“Quinn, that’s what I heard. And that’s all I got for you. That and what’s in the email. And you didn’t hear none of this from me. I could go my whole life without so much as seeing one of the Maidstones, much less—”

“Cutter, how about you take a Valium and try to calm the fuck down? ”

“Two months,” he said. “Two months, free and clear.”

“That’s the deal, if this shit pans out.”

He hung up first. So much for sleep and letting it all slide until the next day. If B found out I had a lead and didn’t act on it right off, he’d go on the warpath, which I definitely didn’t need. I went back to the bedroom and slid a heavy wool sweater on over the T-shirt. No, it’s not as if vamps get cold—as I have said—but I knew I should make an effort at blending in. Lurking about at night, that’s one thing; broad daylight at a crowded campus, that’s another. So, mortal drag—the hazel-green contacts, the dental prosthetics, the heavy makeup to hide my waxy pale skin—my camouflage against detection from all those people who have no idea the nasties walk among them. And who are best off never learning otherwise. I used the phone to check my Gmail account, and Cutter’s email was there, just like he’d said it would be. Pretty thorough, too. Probably a lot more than I needed.

On my way out the front door, I jammed a knit cap with a Slytherin House patch on my head. Maybe that was overplaying my hand, yeah, but fuck it. B wants me to pass for a fucking muggle, might as well hit it full tilt boogie.

You want history? Well, Providence is just stinko with it. Carrie Tower, for instance, at the corner of Prospect and Waterman, a looming marble and redbrick monolith, complete with a bronze clock face and topped off with a bronze dome, both stained verdigris by more than a hundred years of New England winters. The thing was erected back in 1904, a gift from some Italian dude in memory of his dead wife, granddaughter of this other dude who the university had been named after. All the names escape me. Well, except for Brown, which is obvious. Look the other two up. The internet is the goddamn friend of the curious and lazy. But on the foundation, chiseled into the stone, an inscription reads love is stronger than death.

Well, maybe so. I’m gonna say I wouldn’t know.

Way up tippy top of the tower, there’s a bell, though it doesn’t chime anymore, just like the clock no longer tells the time. Shit gets old. Shit breaks. No one bothers to fix it. Indifference. Budget concerns. Government cutbacks. Whatever. Regardless, must have been a big deal when that tower went up, but, really—who can be bothered to give a rat’s ass these days? The last person who’d have gotten all sentimental over that dead granddaughter of the school’s founder has probably been a corpse for half...