Authors: Jeff Somers

Trickster (38 page)

We turned one corner and the car stopped with a jerk. I sat forward. The three of us stared at a dozen
dead bodies in the middle of the street, the blood cold and useless and everywhere. Fallon idled there for a moment and then silently backed up.

By the time he’d wormed his way to the burned-out husk of Hiram’s apartment, we’d begun to see some people. Dazed. Coming out of their homes for the first time in hours. Most of the city seemed untouched, but you saw it in everyone’s faces. For a few hours, the whole population had gone crazy. And might again, at any moment.

Mags helped me from the car. Fallon rolled down the passenger’s-side front window.

“I will be in touch, yes?”

I turned my head limply and looked at him. “Why?”

He shrugged, putting the car into gear. “To make amends.”

We watched the car drive off. Stood for a moment listening to the endless wail of sirens, distant, dopplered.

“You Vonnegan?”

Mags spun, crouching into a defensive, snarling posture. I turned like a balloon in the wind, helped along by the stiff breeze Mags caused.

Sitting on the front steps of Hiram Bosch’s former home was a tall woman, skin a deep tan, hair a bright, unnatural red I could see with a glance was magically maintained. She was wearing what looked like a man’s suit, blue and pin-striped. Her hair was pulled back in a fiery tail that reached down to her ass.
She was sitting there like it was perfectly comfortable, legs stretched out, one arm draped along the cracking stone of a step.

Her hands were covered in familiar scars, most of them white and old, long healed.

“Who are you?”

She smiled. She was quite pretty, somewhat older than me. She unfolded her long frame and stood up, leaning forward in a stiff, formal kind of bow and extending a hand. Mags looked at it like it might be made of death.

“Melanie Billington. Call me Mel.”

I reached out and took her hand for a second. I wanted nothing more than a bed and several days of silence. “Good to meet you, Mel. But, listen, just a few hours ago I was dead, and this is where my
gasam
died a few days ago, so can we do whatever this is another time?”

I realized, as I spoke, that this wasn’t home anymore. I’d made Fallon take me to the wrong place. Hiram’s had been home for years when I hadn’t been allowed to stay there. Now I could go in if I wanted, but it was just a wreck. There was nothing in it for me anymore.

I had to go make my own place.

She smiled, straightening up. “I know, boyo. It’s in the air. On the grapevine. Your name, what you’ve done. And that dried-up old bitch is still alive, and plenty of the other
ustari
are still willing to work with her, to try again.” She shrugged. “Live
forever, kill the rest of us. I am here, like a lot of other
idimustari
soon will be,” she said, spreading her arms, “to help.”

I blinked. “To help with
what
?”

Her face shifted to quizzical. “The war, Mr. Vonnegan. To help you with the
war
.”

Acknowledgments

E
very novel has a team of people behind it. First of all, and most important, there is the author, the person who actually wrote it, that is to say, me. I’d like to start off by thanking myself for all those poor decisions in life that have conspired in complex and unknowable ways to bring me to this junction in my life.

Behind every author is a person who whispers encouragement and dire threats in his ear as he writes, and for me that person is and has been my lovely wife, Danette, to whom I owe everything and who knew I would sell this book, this book you are now holding in your hands, even before I had actually written it—such are the powers my wife possesses.

—Let’s see how many commas I can squeeze in here, want to? Commas are fun, and underappreciated, much like writers.—

Every author, the guy who actually writes the book, that is, me, has someone in a windowless room somewhere collecting the pennies that cascade in from our crime syndicates and book sales, and also who buys the author drinks, and that person is my redoubtable literary agent, Janet Reid.

Every author, that is, the guy who actually writes the book, which is to say, me again, needs hooligans who tempt him from serious work and encourage him to consume adult beverages in lieu of pious labor, and my hooligans—aside from my aforementioned literary agent, who on many occasions incapacitated me with drink when I should have been home tapping words into a hard disk—were fellow authors Sean Ferrell and Dan Krokos, who so often suggested I spend my time drinking curated whiskeys while viewing Internet celebrity gossip sites, supposedly in an ironic manner, although I suspect the irony was a pose, as I really do enjoy celebrity gossip.

Above and beyond all of these, of course, Olympian and leviathan-like, stands the man who actually signs the contract that sends those pennies cascading to be collected in unused mason jars by my aforementioned literary agent on behalf of me, the author, the guy who actually writes the book, and that person is, of course, my editor, Adam Wilson, whose suggestions and ideas for this book were disturbingly intelligent and interesting, and I thank him for it while simultaneously becoming enraged that anyone might contribute
something to my story that I myself did not think of. Whenever I express these feelings of rage to my aforementioned literary agent she pours two glasses of good Scotch, and at first I think she’s going to have a belt with me but then I slowly realize these are medicinally intended for me. And she’s right, I feel lots better.

JEFF SOMERS
knows quite a lot about the art of wandering aimlessly, and he did just that for several years after graduating college. Eventually, the peculiar siren call of New Jersey brought him back to his homeland. He is the author of five noir science fiction thrillers in the critically acclaimed Avery Cates series, as well as the novel
Lifers
and a number of shorter works of fiction. He is also the editor of the zine
The Inner Swine
. Visit him on the Web at
jeffreysomers.com
and follow him on Twitter
@JeffreySomers.

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