Salt and Iron (17 page)

He feels cold and sick.

I shall make Jerusalem a heap of ruins and a den of jackals. I will makes the cities desolate, with no one left alive.

The gun in the warehouse, the salt and the iron in the motel. The Bible in the drawer. The words bubble to the surface of his skin and then sink out of sight again.

“There are words on your skin,” he whispers.

Gabe shakes his head, laughs, high-pitched and hysterical. “Yeah. Yeah there sure are. Man, I tried.”

“You tried to read yourself in? To the Bible? Are you nuts?”

“New Testament. At first, anyway. Then anything. I thought… but I couldn’t do it.” He’s laughing again. Laughing and shivering, teeth chattering. “James, I’m going crazy and I should be dead, but I’m not and I tried to do the right thing. I had a gun but it didn’t work and I couldn’t get the salt, and tried to read-in and I couldn’t. You’ve gotta get away. Get out of here.”

It’s not an order, it’s a plea. It’s not because he is in danger, it’s because Gabe is. So he goes to the bed. The side Gabe slept on is a crusted, stinking mess. He strips the blankets off and throws them into a heap in the corner, then goes to the trunk and opens it. He finds a thick eiderdown quilt and brings it over. It’s not easy to wrap Gabe in it, to cover up all the wings, to see the joints of them jerk and spasm when touched. He wonders if it still hurts. If any of it hurts. If he feels things the way he used to, now. He tugs the blanket into place.

“There,” he whispers.

“What are you doing?” Gabe’s sobbing now, hands closed into fists. “You’re gonna end up dead. What the hell are you doing?”

“You were shivering,” James says. “Come on. You’re tired and… and Skinny Mary wants you to work for her. We should probably talk about that.”

“Work for her?”

“In exchange. For changing you back.”

“Changing me
back
?”

“She says she can make it so you can change. But it means a deal with the sidhe. And I don’t think it’ll be anything like as easy as she made it sound.”

“Back?” he whispers again. “Really?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” Gabe whispers, like the word is something precious.

“Come on,” James says quietly. “It’s late.” Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. He’s exhausted either way. His head’s too full. He can’t even think. “Come on. Let’s get some rest.”

THEY LIE
together uneasily on a bed too small for the two of them, Gabe twisting and sighing with the discomfort of all those wings, James thinking of Skinny Mary. Aunty Mary. Of his great-grandmother. Of the Firm, and his family, and the Thing that turned Gabe into this creature, the Thing that’s stalking the sidhe, dismantling the Firm.
Get away
, Gabe had told him. As if it was that easy.

Gabe lies quiet and tense beside him, and James doesn’t have to look to know he’s not asleep. He should probably say something. He should probably reassure him, make him a promise, offer him some kind of hope, something beyond
I won’t kill you
, and
I can stand to be around you
, because neither of those things is enough. But he’s as worn down as an old shoe and tired again, so tired. It’s dragging on him like mud. When he closes his eyes, they flicker and twitch under his eyelids, as if he’s already dreaming.

HE DOESN’T
have to wait long ’til James is out cold. It might be five minutes at most. He lies there watching him for a bit, the way his eyelids twitch, and listening to his slow and even breath. When he figures it’s safe, he turns it all over in his head.

At first he thought it was a dream, and later he thought it was a nightmare. But lately his brain’s been catching up, and now he knows it’s not either of those things. He tried the gun in a fit of horror and disgust, and he tried salt and scripture in a fit of desperation. Neither worked. But he only did those things because there might not have been another way out. And now maybe there is.

He moves. Slow at first, experimentally, but James doesn’t respond, his breathing doesn’t shift. Exhausted, probably. Gabe should probably be exhausted too. He’s not. He’s too afraid to feel it.

He slides out of bed and gropes forward. It’s a small room. He didn’t explore it much yesterday, though he did find the table and chair. He knows it’s a small room. He could hear the sound echoing off the walls, so he figures they’re bare, and the ceiling too. He finds a dresser, and then the wall against which it stands, and follows the wall a little, stepping as quietly as he can, until he finds the frame of the door, the handle at hip height, cold, ceramic or glass, and pushes it open.

It’s a café sort of noise outside his room, the sound of conversations, and sometimes the clatter of crockery. He pulls the door closed behind him and edges out.

“Hey,” someone says. He turns toward the voice. It’s familiar, but he can’t place it.

“Who?” he asks.

“Brett.”

“Gory Locks Brett?” he asks.

“That’s me.” Her voice is light, but there’s something false in it.

“You’re sidhe?” he asks, then shakes his head. “Right. I forgot. I guess you must be. I want to see Skinny Mary,” he says. “Please.”

A long silence. Then, “She’s downstairs.”

He nods. He’s aware that the susurrus of voices has gone very quiet. All he can hear now is Brett’s voice and a steady drumbeat, soft and low, as if it’s in the distance. Her heart beating, a little too fast.

“Scared?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

He smiles. “Me too. How do I get downstairs?”

“Take the stairs.”

“I can’t
see
,” he snaps.

Another long pause. The pulsing heartbeat speeding up. “Try opening your eyes.”

“They’re open.”

“The other ones,” she says. Her voice is very, very quiet.

He remembers, with a jolt, the luridly bright bedclothes in the motel room. He opens the eyes that are in his back. They split apart as if they’re crusted and gummed, and he can see the door to the room he and James are keeping. He can see the white-painted door set in the arsenic-green wainscoted wall. He can see the beaten, red carpet, worn thin in the middle where people tend to walk, and he can see Brett, standing four feet away from him, watching him like he’s a snake she can’t identify.

“She’s downstairs,” Brett says again. She keeps her distance. The tattoos on her bare arms squirm. “You, uh, you still eat? Like, food, I mean?”

He realizes he hasn’t been hungry for days. He wants something, but the craving is small and vague and he doesn’t know what it is that he wants. A small change lost among all the big ones. “No,” he says.

She nods. She inclines her head to the stairs that go spilling down to the foyer. The place must have been full before. There are signs of habitation. Books open on tables. Laptops. Dishes. But there’s nobody there anymore. The place is empty. He has to go backward down the stairs, so he goes carefully, gripping the banister rail as he does.

He only notices when he gets to the bottom of the stairs the way the carpet pulled apart and stained under his feet. The way paint peeled where he touched it, and mushrooms sprouted at the joints of the spindles. The way destruction follows in his wake.

AT THE
door he can hear music. Someone playing a five-string banjo at a pace that strongly implies stimulant use. He’s never been a fan of folk music. He turns the door handle and pushes through the door. The porcelain handle crumbles under his hand; the door sighs and warps.

Beyond, it’s a dining room. A table in the middle of the room is stripped and bare polished wood, a deep, rich coffee color. It’s heavy with candles and fruit and partially eaten loaves of bread, and there’s something moving between the piled food that he can’t quite track. A snake maybe. Maybe a mouse.

If there are windows here, he can’t tell. Maybe they’ve been blocked up, or maybe these eyes only show some things. The air is heavy with the chocolate scent of cigarillos and the richer scent of good tobacco, of expensive men’s cologne, and under it, the citrus tang of furniture polish. There’s a woman there, and she must be Skinny Mary.

Skinny Mary glows like a torch, like a Madonna. She is sitting in one of the dining room chairs, one leg thrown over one arm, the other bouncing to the time of the music, foot tapping on the floor, cigarillo in her hand. Sitting near to her, chair drawn up close, grinning like a skull, is a man Gabe has never seen before, but God, he knows about him. He glows too, and where Skinny Mary glows golden, the Baron glows a pale green, like fungus phosphorescing.

Beyond the glow, Gabe can’t see much except that the Baron is skull-faced and gaunt, his teeth large and white, his eyes yellow and glowing, the great cigar that he holds in a gold-ring-heavy hand looks like something you’d smack a bad dog’s nose with, and Gabe, who’s never smoked cigars, he knows that the smell that cigar is giving off is the smell of money burning. The Baron’s got a mason jar of something rich and amber and heavily sedimented in one gold-encrusted hand. When he moves it, the banjo player sings.

The Baron stops moving his hand, and the music stops like it never was. Heads turn. The banjo player and the guy who was singing, they start toward him.

The player is good-looking, with the beard of King Leonidas, and the grin of Hugh Hefner, and a golden pin of a horse head on his suit lapel. The man beside him, slimmer, younger-looking, unbearded, shares the gold pin but lacks any instrument at all. They’ve both got clenched fists.

“Now, now,” the Baron says.

“No, no,” Skinny Mary says. She sits up a little straighter and looks at Gabe. Her eyes are enormous, beetle-black and piercing. The Baron sits forward, both hands clasping a black, wooden stick topped with a grinning, golden skull.

“Well, well,” he says. “Well, well,” he says again.

“Is this some kind of ritual I should know about?” Gabe asks. “Do I have to say everything twice?”

The Baron turns to Skinny Mary. “Mouth on that boy.”

“He’s upset,” she answers.

“No call for rudeness.”

“Didn’t mean to be rude,” Gabe says. “It’s just…. Everyone’s afraid of me. And I’m pretty scared myself.”

“And how you like that?” the Baron asks.

He’s not sure what he expected from the Baron and Skinny Mary. He never really gave it any thought before. This is not the sort of situation he ever imagined himself getting into—half-turned and seeking refuge in Shadow. He laughs softly. “I don’t like it at all.”

The Baron smiles. He has two gold teeth on the left side. “Good boy, knows what’s right for him.” He gestures with his cane. “Have some brandy, son. Brandy and gunpowder like me. That’ll wake you up.”

Gabe smiles, or tries to. He is still groggy, and he’s got the strong suspicion that he’s supposed to stay that way. “Thanks, I… is it okay if I wake up? I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Skinny Mary smiles at him, and it’s hard to tell, but he thinks the expression might be, maybe, just a little bit fond. She turns to the Baron.

“A good kid,” she says.

“A good kid,” he says right back.

She looks at him again. “Maybe it’d be better if you didn’t. What do we have that you might like, hmm?” She looks at the spread on the table.

The Baron passes his tongue over his teeth. “There’s the donuts from Belle’s.” He looks at Gabe. “You’ll like them. Powdered-sugar kind. Get a coffee and have a seat.”

“Yes, sir,” Gabe says. There’s something about obeying that’s making him feel better. The constant pressure of horror in his chest is ebbing just a little.

He goes to the urn on the sideboard and pours a coffee and then comes back to the table. The Baron pushes out a chair with the tip of his cane. Gabe sits backward on the chair, so that he’ll be able to see the other two and won’t squash the wings that ache like they’ve been bruised. The Baron pushes a box of donuts toward him. He takes one. It’s not easy to reach the table. He’s facing the wrong way, and his arms were never meant to bend the way they’re bending now. He eats, but the donut tastes like cardboard.

“Well?” Skinny Mary asks. “Nobody comes to see Skinny Mary without a request to make. That’s the way it goes.”

He nods. “Yeah,” he says softly. “I heard from James there’s something you want from me.”

She laughs. The Baron laughs. They share a look, and then the Baron sighs and shakes his head and pulls a leather billfold out of his suit jacket. He thumbs a crisp, new twenty-dollar bill out and passes it to Mary.

“Thank you,” she says, folding it into half and then half again and one more time and then popping it in her mouth.

“Thought he’d just tell you what to do,” the Baron says by way of explanation, although that’s not the question Gabe would have asked, given the opportunity. “What with being a van Helsing and all.”

“I don’t think you guys understand him even a little,” Gabe says.

Skinny Mary smiles at him faintly. “You in love with that boy?”

Gabe sighs again. He puts his head down in his hands and stares at Skinny Mary. “Does it matter? Now? With me like this? With people knowing about him, and what he can do? What he is?” He scrubs his face with his hands. “We’re fucked. We’re both fucked.”

She looks at him, tips her jaw up and exhales smoke. “But here you are,” she says. “Got a body scarred up from salt and covered in scripture, but here you are, walking around and breathing.”

Gabe nods. “He said you might be able to change me back. Can you? Can you fix me?”

Skinny Mary laughs. “Fix you? No. Change you back to human? No. You’re changed, and there’s always gonna be scars now.”

“I don’t care about that. I just don’t want to be unseelie. He said you could do it. Three favors and then I get that. So tell me what I have to do.”

She smiles at him. “Don’t be so quick to take that way out. We’re talking salt and iron, Gabriel Marquez. Salt and iron. And blood. And you have to do it yourself, but at the end, when things hurt so bad you want to die, then you can have a second.”

He swallows the last bite of the donut. It’s not easy. His mouth is totally dry.