Blood Oranges (9781101594858) (9 page)

“They done plugged you,” he moaned through his fingers. “Told you they would, now didn't I? Didn't I say ‘Quinn girl, you go tumbling to that bastard B's angles and contrivances, sooner or later, you'll get plugged good and proper'? I told you that, eh, didn't I?”

“Yeah, you did,” I admitted, wondering if trolls could eat people who were half vampire–half werewolf. “Sure, that's what you said, time and time again.”

A couple of fingers parted, and he peered out at me from the space between them. His eyes were glowing. “This is fair awful,” he said. “This is
worse
than awful. This is . . . odious. An odious crime, what this is.”

I waved my hands about, coughing and trying to clear some of the dust from the air. Mostly, though, I just managed to stir it around. Also, I wondered why I was coughing, when I wasn't breathing.

“Jesus, Aloysius, you think I don't know that?” I said, wondering exactly what he meant by
crime
, if he meant the same thing the Bride and Mr. B had meant. “You think I need
you
to tell me it's awful?”

“And you were such a fine lass and all.”

“I most certainly was not!” I all but shouted at him. Guess that takes some
cojones
, as Hugo (or Hector) might say, shouting at a bridge troll. “I was a goddamn junky so deluded I thought I could run around slaying nasties,
that's
what I was. Strung out and suicidally foolish, and I don't see how that makes a ‘fine lass'!”

“No cause to yell,” he said indignantly, still peering through his fingers.

“The hell it ain't. I came down here needing somebody to talk to about this mess, not to have you getting all up in my face with what I already know full well. Not to have you tell me how I brought it on myself.”

“I sure enough didn't mean it like that.”

I swatted at the dusty air again. “Well, that's
sure
enough
the way it sounded.”

“You bring me a pint?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

“No, Aloysius. I didn't bring you a pint. I've been sort of fucking preoccupied.”

“Killed anyone yet?” he asked, lowering his hand and pointing at my bloodstained clothes, now also coated with a fine layer of dust.

“No, I cut myself shaving.”

“No cause to be sarcastic,” he muttered.

I wanted to ask him how many human beings he'd snacked on in the last few months, but I didn't. Wouldn't have gotten me anywhere, but I wasn't about to have a
troll
get all high-and-mighty on me for eating any
one
or any
thing
.

“Just one,” I said instead.

“No one whose sudden adjournment gonna be noticed, I hope. No one with pals what might get—”

“Shut up,” I snapped, and he did. I'd already answered that question for Mr. B, and I didn't see the need to answer it again. I was not yet so keen on the idea that killing people and sucking them dry was okay, just so long as it was some pathetic soul who'd sunk so far down the social ladder no one was likely to miss them. And even if their disappearance was reported to the cops, what the fuck would they care. Just one more scrap of street trash the Providence PD wouldn't have to worry about. A drunk, a bum, a vet who'd been cold shouldered to the gutter by the VA, a runaway teen, a whore, a schizo off his or her meds, and who gives a shit. Or a junky living from score to score, fix to fix, just like I'd been before Mr. B showed up. Just like Lily had been.

Sure, I'm a blood-drinking freak and a loup, but I only prey on the dregs of society, so I'm really just doing a public service, right? Bullshit. I called it bullshit then, and, two years later, I still call it bullshit, that attitude or mind-set or whatever it is. That belief that great swaths of humanity are disposable, just so long as no one gets wise to the fact they're being disposed of. We'll come back to this.

“Gotta learn to clean up after yourself,” he said, and poked at my T-shirt. “Ain't nobody gonna buy that's from a nosebleed.”

I turned away from Aloysius and rattled off my entire repertoire of profanities. Which is saying something. The troll waited until I was done, and then he poked me in the back almost hard enough to knock me over. Sure, I know he hadn't
meant
to poke me that hard, but I wasn't much in the mood to cut him any slack.

“Stop that!” I barked, whirling on him. I think if I'd had a pool cue or a lead pipe or anything else handy, I'd have smacked him upside his craggy, pockmarked face.

“Stop what?” he asked. And never had a troll sounded so goddamn innocent.

“Stop shoving me around, that's what.”

“Weren't my intent.” He was silent for a few seconds, then asked, “You brought me a candy bar, eh?”

I scowled. I stared icily. I gave him the dirtiest look I was capable of. “I came here, Aloysius, because I'm freaked out, and Mr. B's worse than useless, and I thought maybe—just maybe—you might be able to answer at least one of the questions that seems awfully important at the moment.”

“Not even a dirty magazine?” he whispered hopefully, and I kicked him in the ankle. Hard. Hard as I could kick. He made a noise like . . . I don't know . . . a sheep caught in a wood chipper.

“I'm going home,” I said, and turned my back on him a second time. “I was an idiot, coming down here. I can get more answers from comic books and monster movies than I'm ever gonna get outta you.”

He reached out, seizing my left shoulder and yanking me roughly back. My feet got tangled up together, and I landed on my ass in the dirt. I just sat there, my tailbone aching like a motherfucker, sure I'd pushed my douche-bag luck (think I mentioned that early on, the nature of my luck, or lack thereof) all the way into the red. I was pondering how many mouthfuls I'd make when Aloysius lifted me easy as you'd lift a ragdoll and set me on my feet again.

“You gonna ask me a question, Quinn girl, and you ain't got no sort of offering on hand, like you don't know the rules. As if, of a sudden, the rules don't apply no more, 'cause you gone and got yourself twofold plugged.”

“I forgot, okay,” I said and rubbed at my bruised tailbone. “Believe it or not, sort of had a lot on my mind lately. Did I mention that?”

Aloysius frowned and furrowed his gray-green brow. He shrugged. “Were it just me, Quinn lass, were that all there is to it . . . well, you versed sufficient in the ways of the fair folk to know . . . no exceptions and such . . .”

“I was hoping for a freebie,” I told him. “Just this once. Maybe a favor for a friend.”

“Ain't the way of my vocation, and I know you cognize that perfectly fine without me havin' to spell it out.”

“I think you broke my ass,” I mumbled.

“Your coccyx,” he said.

“My what?”

“Your coccyx,” he said again, but this time taking care to pronounce the word very slowly, drawing out the two syllables—
cahk-six
. “Almost indescribably tasty, marrow what a fella can dig from a coccyx. A bone I hold in highest esteem, it is.”

“Well, I think you broke mine.”

“No freebies,” he said.

“I don't
have
anything on me, Aloysius. And I don't feel like petty theft today, all right?”

“No freebies,” he said a third time.

And that's when it occurred to me, something that a troll might count as a gift, and I said, “Okay. How about Mr. B's phone number? And I mean his top-secret, utterly confidential, private fucking cell phone number. Sure. That's gotta be worth at least one of your riddles.”

Aloysius made a sort of confused face. “Ain't never used no telephone,” he said.

“Doesn't mean you can't learn. Hell, next time I make it down this way, I'll bring you a fucking phone, okay?”

“Irregular,” he said and scratched his chin. “Prodigiously irregular, at that.”

“Come on, dude. You can have a blast with prank calls, right? Better than a whole stack of nudie mags. I know you hate the cocksucker, and this would piss him off on beyond royally.”

“Prank calls?”

“Yeah, you know. Call him up and . . . well, you'd think of something, I'm sure.” Right about here, I was starting to believe this was actually going to work. Aloysius was getting that gleam in his eye, the one he had whenever his curiosity got the better of him.

“Might be,” he said to himself. “Might be at that.”

“And look, let's say it doesn't work out for you, fine. I'll owe you a whole
box
of 3 Musketeers.”

Still scratching at his chin, the bridge troll narrowed his eyes at me again. “King size,” he said. “Big on Chocolate, not on Fat.”

“Right. Whole damn box.”

“How many is that?” he asked and cocked an eyebrow.

Hell if I knew, so I said the first thing popped into my mind. “Two dozen, twenty-four.”

“Deal,” said Aloysius, so I told him Mr. B's phone number. I didn't have anything to write it on, but I figured Aloysius would remember. And if he didn't, well, I could worry about that later, when I came back to the underpass with a stolen cell phone and twenty-four candy bars (and yes, there's iron in chocolate, I know; don't ask). I looked at the troll's fingers, big around as sausages, and wondered how in hell he'd manage the buttons on a phone. Something else I could worry about later. Maybe I could snag a stylus somewhere. Or just a pencil. Maybe that would work for him. Anyway, Aloysius repeated the number back to me several times, and each time I told him, yep, that's precisely what I said. The seventh or eighth time through, I asked him if he was stalling, trying to welch. He looked hurt, and I apologized.

“Always so impatient, so hasty, always so hurry-me-up, Quinn girl. What's your question?”

I chewed my lip and drew circles in the dust with the toe of my tennis shoe. “Is there any way to control lycanthropy? I mean, to keep myself from changing?”

“Ahhhhhh, now that ain't no easy query. Riddle might take me a while, you know.”

“Just spit it out, Aloysius. You ever stop to think I might not have all day to stand around here shooting the shit with you?”

“Gets fair lonely here under my bridge,” he sighed, all but moping now. “Not even a proper bridge, at that. Now, if I had a proper bridge, ah. If I had a
proper
bridge—”

“The riddle, please,” I interrupted, and Aloysius sighed again. (Oh, that's the catch with trolls—and all fairies, for that matter—they'll only answer a question with a riddle. They swear it's the best they can do; I have my doubts.)

“You know the rules,” he said.

“Yeah, I know the goddamn rules. Just one riddle, that's all I get, and I can't ask for another for a fortnight, and blah blah fuckity blah. But, I
also
know you can't cheat. No riddles that don't have answers. No ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk' nonsense.”

“Ain't nonsense,” he said. “Has an answer, it does, so can't be nonsense. A raven is like a writing desk because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat. And it is
never
put with the wrong end in front.”

I stopped drawing circles in the dust and seriously considered kicking him in the ankle again.

“I gave you B's number, now I want my riddle. Pretty please. With whipped cream and sprinkles and a cherry on top.”

“Oh, and what's moreover,” he continued, “a raven's like a writing desk since they both come with quills.”

“Aloysius . . .”

“Likewise, Edgar Allan Poe wrote
on
both,” he said, and I was silent a moment, making sure he had nothing further whatsoever to add on the similarities of ravens and writing desks.

Then I said, “That's another thing. The riddle has to have a single answer, right? And it has to be the answer that I need, the answer to the question I ask. See? I know the rules. Now, ask me the goddamn riddle.”

He made a harrumphing sound and took a magnificently exasperated breath, a magnificently
deep
exasperated breath, and then let it out all at once. Standing there, it was briefly like being in a wind tunnel with something that had been decayed a long time. In fact, it might have smelled worse than my apartment.

“You ready?” he asked. “I only put forth the riddle once, and not twice, or thrice.”

“I know that, and I'm ready.”

“Fine,” he said, and I realized I was going to have to memorize this, because, as I mentioned already, I didn't have anything to write on.

“A child of woman newly forged,

The pump what drives the rosies.

Round about, round about,

So Bloody Breast flies home again.

Soldiers come in single file,

Aphrodite's child tills loam.”

When he was done, I don't think I stared. I think I gawked in utter indignation.

“What the hell sort of riddle is
that
? It doesn't even rhyme!”

“Rules don't say no-how that my riddles have to rhyme, now do they, Quinn lass?”

“No . . . but . . .” And then I reminded myself I needed to remember every single word. So, I stopped arguing with Aloysius and began repeating the six lines back to myself again and again and again. I've always been pretty good with rote memorization. In third grade, I was the first kid in my class who could recite the multiplication tables. For all the good it's ever done me.

“Okay . . . wait . . . so ‘A child of woman freshly forged,' that's easy. A baby. It's a baby, isn't it?”

“Perchance.”

“Oh, no. None of that
perchance
rubbish. You
have
to tell me if I'm right,” I reminded the troll.

“I prefer suckling, is all,” he said more than a little defensively.