Kiss Me Deadly Page 44

  Abner was already moving away, stumbling toward the green Dumpster. Afraid. Velvet and Nick stood their ground.

  Tentacles of white smoke spilled from the cracks around the door, spreading over the brick like a vine, curling and undulating and, worst of all, thickening to the size of tree trunks. They weren’t dealing with Colonel Mustard anymore.

  It wasn’t the first time they’d encountered a banshee—the more a ghost haunted, the more evil it exuded, the more it was deformed and ravaged by its own intent. But Amie didn’t look right. She had too many arms and legs, and they were really stinking big. When she pulled her head and torso through the door, though, Velvet could see that it was definitely Amie. But she was different. More voluminous.

  “Gee Amie, you look so much ... fatter earthside,” Velvet said without really thinking.

  The girl banshee hissed and flicked a tentacle out with a whip crack that cut a blood red line up Willa’s arm. Velvet was stunned. Her mother had always told her that her mouth would get her in trouble one day.

  Or on many days, concurrently, as she’d discovered.

  “Watch your mouth,” Amie shrieked, the sound echoing off the walls like the squelch of a poorly tuned guitar.

  “Hey,” Velvet hissed. “You’re the one in the wrong here. Beating up your ex-boyfriend.”

  “What else could I do? He was going to leave me!”

  “You’re dead!” Velvet shouted. “ You’r e the one that left.”

  Amie twisted and writhed, even as a banshee she was dramatic and irritating. “Yeah, but only temporarily,” she whined. “I was there for him. I came back.”

  “And I’m sure he appreciated that,” Velvet said sarcastically.

  Velvet clutched her bloody limb and backed away. She couldn’t let Amie hurt Willa’s body. Not again.

  She spun and dashed for the street end of the alley. Behind her, bricks clacked against concrete and Abner started shouting, “They’re onto you Amie!”

  Velvet dispossessed Willa mid-stride, and the girl continued to jog a few steps out onto the sidewalk, shaking her head a couple times before noticing her dripping arm and dashing toward the front of the restaurant.

  When Velvet twisted to peer back down the alley, she froze. Amie was orbiting Abner like a solar flare, her gaseous tendrils wafting in the breeze like toilet paper off a tree that had been pranked. Conroy wasn’t giving up any ground. Nick’s little girl was nowhere to be seen and though Velvet felt woefully unprepared considering the turn of events, she knew they couldn’t let anything happen to the child Nick had possessed.

  “Nick!” she screamed, expecting to see a tiny hand gesture from one of the piles of rubble littering the alley. But there was none. The door to the kitchen was slightly ajar. She hoped he’d gotten the girl out of there and to her safety, but as she approached, readying herself to launch at the banshee, the door slammed open. The little girl rushed out, pigtails slapping the sides of her head, a big empty saucepot in one hand and its lid in the other.

  Nick was thinking ahead. They’d need a metal container to hold her. But his timing, as usual, was a bit off. One smoky banshee tentacle shot out and flattened the little girl to the wall. The pot went clattering off the pavement, rocking back and forth to a standstill.

  Velvet rushed forward, all her thoughts focused on her hands, on making them a solid enough entity to connect with the banshee. Beside her, she saw Abner disconnect from Emile and crouch; the freed waiter ran in the direction of the door.

  Abner was older than she’d expected, in his ghostly wavering form. He looked like a college student really, in an argyle sweater, jeans, and penny loafers. His hair was short enough to have been shaved, and he wore glasses over eyes that were probably too large for his head, unless you were into Japanese anime.

  She and Abner both lunged, tackling Amie’s contorting form at chest height. Velvet wrapped herself around Amie, holding the banshee with her legs as though riding a horse, squeezing against her. Velvet stole a glance upward. Abner climbed higher up the banshee’s undulating frame and promptly head-butted her.

  Amie wailed dramatically, her tentacles beating them across their backs. “Let go! I’ll kill you!”

  Velvet thought she heard a thud, and when she peered down from the struggle, saw Nick’s little girl stealthily forcing one of Amie’s tentacles inside the metal pot.

  “Abner!” Velvet cried. “Pull!”

  The action was akin to wringing out a wet towel. The more they twisted and tightened on the banshee’s struggling form, the thinner she became until, high above, Abner was whipping about the evil witch as though he was a flag on a pole.

  “No!” Amie screamed. “Noooo!”

  They were making headway.

  They had to.

  Nick yanked at the smoky trunk of the banshee, scrolling her into the pot like a hose on a feeder. Amie shrieked with anger and tried to pull herself away. Unable to dislodge herself, she fell finally, the entirety of her smoky mass dropping straight into the pot. Nick slapped on the lid with a wet tomato saucey squish.

  “Nice choice going with a dirty pot,” Velvet admired.

  The little girl nodded and wiped her marinara covered hands on the yoke of her dress. “Now for you, Abner. Are you going to go quietly?”

  “Hey, guys,” Abner said. “You got me all wrong. Every time I tried to sneak back out to tell people about what she was doing, I’d bounce right back. It’s like I’m trapped here or something.”

  “You’re locked in,” Velvet said. The vision of Amie with the shiny bronze key scrolled through her head.

  “What?” Abner cocked an eyebrow.

  “She’s right, the crack is covered up by this metal door. Amie had the key. She was reluctant to even have us slip through.”

  Velvet nodded. “Definitely reluctant. But it’s open now or she wouldn’t have been able to get through herself. You can go on back and explain what’s been happening.” She jabbed a thumb in the direction of the pot. “We’ve got some work to do to get this one off to the Station cellar where she belongs.”

  Abner smiled and reached out his ethereal hand. Velvet made the effort to touch it, despite being exhausted. The show of effort was the thing. People shake hands all the time—it’s easy and familiar—but when a ghost does it you know it really means something because they have to focus all their intentions on the action.

  Nick stepped out of the girl and offered his own hand. The little girl wandered around for a moment, not sure what was happening. After he shook Abner’s hand, Nick glanced at Velvet—more of a gaze, really—a sad smile curled on his lips. He lingered a moment, and then repossessed the girl, to walk her back to her parents, presumably.

  “I really thought he’d cheated on me with Amie,” Velvet said, but Conroy just shook his head.

  “Why would he when he’s got you?”

  Velvet cringed, who was this guy, a relationship counselor? “How do you know?”

  “Jesus, did you see the way he looked at you? He’s so into you, it’s scary.”

  “You think? Like serial killer scary?” she asked. The conversation was getting a little too serious with this stranger.

  But then he said, “Yep,” and started to walk toward the door.

  “Hey,” Velvet called after him, chuckling. “Where’s the closest morgue, or cemetery?”

  Abner grimaced, holding his stomach, sympathetically. “County Coroner is on Fourth. Two blocks that way.” He pointed.

  “I know what you mean, disposing of these things...” she gestured toward the pot. “It isn’t my favorite thing either, but this one I don’t think I’ll mind too much.”

  He nodded and waved as he disappeared through the door.

  It’s true what they say. Anyone can thieve a body, but it takes a real specialist to be an undertaker. There are the worms and flies to deal with, obviously, and the smells. She didn’t begrudge Nick a single thing.

  ***

  Later, after the flies Nick had a
ccelerated from the Jane Doe at the morgue had carried Amie to her prison under the pagoda—in tiny, incredibly gross, bite-sized portions, no less—Nick and Velvet held hands and took a long walk on the nearby beach.

  “You know I’d never do that to you, right?” Nick said, pulling her close and pressing his lips against hers.

  “Chase me into the world of the living with your tentacles?” she kidded.

  “I got your tentacles, right here.” He smiled and held out his arms, then chased her up to the boardwalk and back toward the restaurant.

  Back in Vermillion, the compound was in an uproar, people chattered back and forth about the events of the day, about Amie’s deception and treachery and the stranglehold she’d had the community under with the shadowquakes.

  Howard waved them into his quarters and held his hands out. “Please accept my most genuine apologies,” he said. “Manny and I debated letting you in on the plan, but couldn’t risk Amie catching wind of it, lest she elope and evade capture. Which, by the way, was brilliant salvage work. Simply brilliant.”

  He handed Velvet the pink envelope from the robe of his pocket. Inside folded twice was the letter from Manny.

  Dear Howard,

  You’re quite right. This girl is a master of manipulation. In our short time together she has attempted, on no less than two occasions to determine the whereabouts of our keys. No doubt to unleash her fellow banshees in our cellar. A most heinous criminal, who I have no doubt in my mind, Velvet and Nyx—as Nick is sometimes called—will be able to find out and dispatch. I pray for the safekeeping of your salvage team and your missing undertaker. Let’s hope that all shall come to their just rewards in a timely fashion.

  Sincerely,

  Jayne

  Velvet slipped the note back into its envelope. “You know, I thought this was a love letter.”

  Howard chuckled briefly and then waved a quick good-bye.

  “You know what?” Nick whispered in her ear. “He didn’t deny it.”

  And he hadn’t.

  The Hounds of Ulster

  BY MAGGIE STIEFVATER

  This is not my story.

  My name is Bryant Black. I’m nineteen years old, I worship Paddy Keenan (you don’t know who he is, and I’m okay with that) and I don’t embarrass myself on the guitar. I lift weights, I like to think I am moderately talented with my tongue (if you take my meaning), and around my left bicep I have a tattoo of the Ouroborous—a snake eating its own tail. I consider myself pretty interesting, although I’m a bit on the biased side of the department.

  But this story still isn’t about me. Nobody’s interested in the ones that got away.

  This story is about my best friend, Patrick Sullivan.

  (I miss him, still.)

  ***

  This is the scene: we are seventeen and we are going to change the world. Sullivan—no one who knows him worth a damn calls him Patrick, which is his father’s name and his grandfather’s name and, if he is nothing else, he is not his father nor his grandfather—has his fiddle and I have my guitar named Cú Chulainn and we are punk Irish gods in our D.C. suburb.

  I should tell you about Cú Chulainn because, like most things that are cool, you probably haven’t heard of him. Cú Chulainn means “the hound of Culain” but most people called him “The Hound of Ulster”—not that you care, but that’s okay. In Irish legend, he was a mighty warrior who was famous for, among other things, his warp spasms (these are fits of rage). During a warp spasm, Cú Chulainn’d grow so agitated that his body parts would move all around by themselves. He’d get an arm coming out his chest or his eyes wandering down to his neck, his legs all changing sizes and shapes, his skin boiling, and then he would go out and kill his enemies.

  Must’ve been some pretty freaky shit to behold. Can you imagine pissing off some massive Irishman, and right before he kills you, you can literally see his balls in his eyes?

  Some days, being an Irish punk god in D.C. is not the easiest thing in the world, and on those days, I wish that a warp spasm was in my future.

  Okay, see, that. This is the sort of thing I used to say casually. That I’d like a warp spasm or a lucky charm or a bolt of lightning to strike mine enemy to the ground. The usual turns of the phrase. But now, I’m more careful. You never know when you might get what you wish for. But back then, when it was me and Sullivan against the world, I hadn’t learned that yet. Seventeen is criminally younger than nineteen, and I knew everything I needed and nothing about using what I knew.

  But like I said, we are seventeen, we are gods, and we are slowly taking over the hearts and minds of D.C. with wickedly fast reels and power chords. Oh, I know you are doubtful, but that is because you haven’t heard Sullivan on his fiddle. When Sullivan plays a sweet set of jigs, girls’ clothing literally melts off. It’s pretty fantastic. There is no one that can bend a tune like him in fifty miles. A hundred. Nobody this side of Baltimore, anyway, and definitely no one down all the way to Richmond. I think it’s a fact that his has the fiddling crown pretty much sewn up for the tri-state area, and it’s not just me that thinks so. To hear Sullivan play is to have a story to take home and tell your friends.

  I know no one sees me when we are playing together, even if I did use a Sharpie to draw a gnome blowing fire on my guitar, but I’m okay with this. I am utterly confident in my Irish punk guitarist status, and a good guitarist knows when to hot dog and when to just stand back and support the wickedness that is your best friend’s musical wizardry. And let me tell you, there is nothing sweeter in this world than the moment when it is the two of us on some greasy stage of some open mic night, him leaning toward me and me leaning toward him, and we are riffing off each other, Cú Chulainn howling with electric fury and Sullivan’s unnamed fiddle singing high above it. Together we are so much more than either one of us is alone.

  I never thought the music was dangerous.

  ***

  Should I back up and tell you about us, or should I tell you about Them? I don’t know how long they were listening to us. Months before we earned our place at Mullen’s, I think. Way before Sullivan applied to Julliard, that’s for sure.

  Ha, look at me, even now. I still can’t bring myself to say what They are—just this word, so coy: Them. I can’t name Them. Not out loud. I know that They hate the word we use, that hearing it spoken infuriates them. And fury is a terrible thing when They have it. But I should be able to say it, now, with impunity. They have no interest in me. Not any more.

  So here it is. This was all because of the—

  I still can’t bring myself to say it.

  ***

  Let me tell you about Sullivan’s dad, the one Sullivan was so sure he wouldn’t be. Patrick John Sullivan II, or P.J. as he was known. Sullivan’s mom told me once—oh, she was a good one for talking, ’specially with one or two drinks in her, she was hilarious, if platinum blond, fifty-year-old women saying stuff they shouldn’t is your idea of a good time—that Sullivan’s dad grew up so poor that his house back in Ireland didn’t even have a real floor, just a dirt one. I Googled that shit, because I didn’t think that people still had dirt floors in this century. Because even though Sullivan’s father looks old as a block of rock (they’d had Sullivan really late), he was definitely born sometime in the twentieth century. Dirt floors seem pretty feudal (now there is an adjective you don’t get to use very much). And Ireland is not exactly the African bush. But Google supported Sullivan’s mom’s story, so dirt it was. Sullivan’s dad, had officially been dirt-poor.

  Sullivan’s mother told me that back then, they were superstitious. They put out bowls of milk for luck and tucked iron nails in their pockets when they had to walk out on Midsummer’s night. And there was all this stuff about things you threw over the threshold on the New Year’s Eve and places you just didn’t go because it was not done. I always thought all the superstitions were sort of cool. I mean, what did they think was going to happen?