The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2) (14 page)

Elijah must have known that trick, too. We stared at
each other in the dark like idiots for longer than I would care to admit.

“Very well.” He adjusted his crimson tie
unnecessarily, tugging gently at a perfect Windsor. Water was beaded lightly
across his beige overcoat, and speckled the lenses of his glasses. “I have
business of my own to attend to, Mr. Tauschen.”

“Hold on, Eli. You’re tutoring basically every girl at
the Estates, right?”

For some reason, I derived a petty joy from teasing
Elijah.

“Yes. With the exception of Sumire, who has already
graduated. And, Mr. Tauschen, I do prefer Elijah to Eli…”

His tone was flat, his posture rigid, almost as if he
was standing at attention.

“Of course you do. Who wouldn’t? Anyway, I won’t keep
you long,” I lied, with an unwholesome smile. “I have to ask, though – which
one of them is it?”

He gave me a confused look, but I wasn’t buying it.
Elijah was too smart to miss my jab. I decided another was in order.

“You know what I mean.” His expression suggested that
he did not – and he was, at least, mildly annoyed. “Which one of them do you
like, Eli? Who are you crushing on?”

“Crushing on?” He looked genuinely puzzled for a
moment, and then his face darkened. “Mr. Tauschen, what are you implying?”

“Imply? Nothing,” I scoffed. It may seem like I was
being a dick – and I probably was – but it was for the kid’s own good. “I said
it right out loud. You’re barely more than a teenager. There’s no reason for
you to volunteer to tutor a bunch of girl geniuses unless you have a thing for
one of them.”

His jaw worked from side to side.

“Are you making fun of me, Mr. Tauschen?”

“A bit. And call me Preston, please. There’s no need
to be so formal.”

“As you wish. In any case, my personal affairs are
none of your business.”

“Of course. I just think you might be a little over
your head with this particular crew of young ladies.”

“I am a tutor. The rest is simply your imagination.”

“Speaking of imagination…that story you told Yael and
I the other day. I wanted to ask you…”

“I apologize.” Elijah brushed past me with the
confidence of an older – or bigger – man. I had to give him a certain amount of
grudging respect, even if I was tempted to break him in half on general
principal. “I have an engagement, for which I am already late. Have a good night.”

“You too, Eli. We’ll catch up another time, okay?”

I watched him leave, just to make a point. Then he
turned the first of the many curves and disappeared from sight. The tapping of
his polished leather shoes on the stones took a little while longer to die out.

I shook my head, and turned to finish the long march
to the top of Prospect Hill, and the cul-de-sac which crowned it.

***

Prospect Hill was old. The observatory at the top was prehistoric.

There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s start from the beginning:

Two more curves, another dozen houses, and the street
petered out into a private gravel drive, raked smooth and circular. In the
center of the drive, a mossy stone well was capped with a near petrified wooden
lid. Scores in the stone and disturbances in the gravel around it told me that
this well saw regular use, like maybe the municipal water system didn’t make it
this far. I had no idea who could be drinking from it, but there was only one
building at the end of the road, surrounded by withered reeds and grasses,
dying elm trees and long-dead oaks.

An observatory, neutered.

A dome the equivalent of five lacquered stories atop a
stone pedestal, with a meter slit in the side of the dome where the telescope
would have slotted. There were grounds and signs of ancient tillage, likely
gardens meant to sustain the staff. Compared to the rest of the neighborhood,
it was in remarkably good repair, aside from the missing telescope.

The construction must have been a mammoth undertaking.
I climbed the stairs to up the pedestal warily, studying the strange carvings
and waiting for something to jump out at me. The swelled angle of the dome
reminded me vaguely of the awful moon overhead, white marble glowing with
reflected light.

At the top of the pedestal, there was a door leading
into the dome. The door was one massive piece of dark wood. It absorbed the
sound of my knock completely. There was no bell or knocker, so I beat upon the
door and called out until I lost my voice. There were no neighbors to disturb, fortunately,
but if there were any in residence within, then they had no inclination to open
the door.

I retreated and concealed myself in the shadows in a
nearby alcove. I waited the better part of an hour, but no one came, and no
light shown from the windowed top of the lighthouse. Moving quietly, I returned
to the door, and gave the knob a gentle try.

Nothing.

I gradually increased the force, but the brass fixture
didn’t budge. I put my shoulder to the door, and then leaned, but the bolt
held. From an inner pocket, I took a number of tools that are useful in the
absence of a key. I took a moment to assure that I was alone and unobserved,
and then set to work.

Thirty minutes later, I abandoned the effort. It was
delicate work, as I wanted to avoid leaving any visible scratches, and the
mechanism rebuffed me casually.

I returned the tools my pocket, said some choice words
under my breath, and turned back down Carver Heights. I didn’t see any point in
hanging around and freezing my ass off and I needed to get home anyway, in case
April woke. Maybe Yael had better luck, down by the docks.

I suppose the walk down gave me time to think, but it
had started to rain again, so all I was concerned with was getting home, and
then warm and dry. The houses were even quieter than when I climbed up, as it
neared midnight. There was another hour until the last train, which gave me
plenty of time before I needed to be at the station, but I found myself
hurrying nonetheless. Carver Heights wasn’t the sort of place that encouraged
one to loiter.

I was tired, yawning as I came around the last bend.
The lingering headache that nagged at me all day was starting to become more
significant, and my feet were sore. The living room couch seemed to call out to
me from a neighborhood’s distance away. I shoved my hands in my pockets,
lowered my head, and picked up the pace, eager to be out of the intermittent
rain.

Fingers locked around my wrist, manipulating the
joint, demanding compliance. Before I could formulate a reaction, I was tugged into
a narrow alcove at the back entrance to a swanky apartment building, my back
slammed up against gilded marble paneling.

“Found you,” Jenny snarled, her skin was flushed and
shiny with sweat, her oddly shaped eyes hideously bloodshot, pupils shrunk to pinpricks.
“Happy to see me, fucker?”

The worst sort of
telepathy. Artificial cherry and simple syrup, body temperature warm, lipstick,
and damp cotton. Sleep populated by uncertain signs and the harsh music of the
crows. Waking to the crude manipulations of a stranger’s hands.

The stone wall was frigid, chilling me through the synthetic fabric of my
rain jacket, and the equally synthetic base layer beneath. Jenny’s breath was
shallow and uneven, and beneath the scent of unwashed clothing and dried sweat,
a faint odor reminiscent of paint thinner. She licked painfully chapped lips
and studied me with the savage concentration of a predator.

“Jenny, come on.” I slowly raised my hands in a show
of nonresistance. “Calm down, okay?”

A frown. Jenny looked away, and then shoved her hands
in the pockets of her threadbare sweatshirt.

“I wasn’t happy to see you, you know? Bad timing, you
showing up with Yael. You showing up at all.” She squinted at me, stumbling and
intoxicated. “Told you to stay away. Why are you such an asshole, Preston?”

“Look, Jenny, let’s not do this right now. You’re
wasted…”

“No shit.” Jenny sneered. “You think I’d like you any
better if I was sober?”

“I know you’re still pissed about that stuff a couple
years ago...”

“Just a little.” Jenny cocked her head to the side,
and considered me like a butcher eyeing a side of beef. “That seem
unreasonable?”

I considered trying to push past her, out into the
street, where I’d have a few more options if things got physical.

“No, I get you. It was a shitty thing to do, lying and
all. I had to find April, though. Had to. I would have done anything…”

“Ha!” Jenny’s cackle was manic and off-kilter. “Knight
in shining armor.”

“That’s me. Can we move past this?”

I watched her hands, not her face, waiting for the
inevitable moment when things went bad.

“Sure,” Jenny said indifferently. “Where’s Yael?”

“I left her with you, remember? What’s with you and
that girl, anyway?”

“Where is she, asshole?”

“I don’t know! You fucking saw her last, right?”

In a situation like that, your reaction was either
instantaneous or too late, leaving no room for considerations such as who
started it.

I thought I saw Jenny’s arm tense, and I immediately slammed
the palm of my hand into her jaw, slamming her teeth together with the sound of
mousetrap snapping shut. My left hand moved on its own, without any conscious
intervention on my part. Jenny stepped forward, breaking my hold, and I
responded.

She froze. We considered each other. My scalpel rested
comfortably on Jenny’s windpipe.

The wind tore through the alley, rattling the dented
metal door at the end, chilling me despite my escalating fever. The perpetually
underdressed Jenny shivered and spat blood on the asphalt.

“Fine, whatever.” Jenny shrugged and rubbed her jaw,
ignoring my blade to such a degree that I had to work pretty hard not to cut
her throat. “You’re a dick, Preston.”

“You came out of nowhere. I don’t even know what you
are freaking out over. What is it about Yael that rattles you so badly?”

I braced for hostility, but Jenny just sighed and
kicked a discarded plastic water bottle from the pile of trash beside her feet.

“Long story.” She shook her head, and then blinked for
the first time during our encounter. She gnawed industriously on her thumbnail,
giving me a speculative look. “Hey. I know something you wanna know. Trade?”

***

“This…is someone’s house.”

Jenny rolled her eyes.

“Nothing gets past you.”

“Who’s house is this?”

Jenny blew a pink bubble, and then popped it.

“Stop asking questions.”

“What the hell? You dragged me along because you had
something to tell me, and now I can’t ask questions?” I hesitated on the stoop
of the grungy Georgian, existing in a haze of cigarette smoke and accumulated
filth. “I have better places to be, Jenny.”

Jenny popped her gum, and shrugged.

“Your call, asshole.”

She knocked on the door. I didn’t go anywhere.

Jenny had dragged me to one of the motley houses built
along the first broad curve of Carver Heights, near the base of Prospect Hill.
The community was gated, but the gate was unguarded and ajar, and the
neighborhood behind it had seen better days.

“Real quiet. You sure your friends are here, Jenny?”

Jenny gave me side-eye.

“I don’t have any friends, Preston.”

She knocked again, this time really laying into the
door. Her hands were a mess of bruised and abraded knuckles, with Band-Aids on
several fingers. Her clothes were stained and dirty, and her hair was beginning
to mat.

“Now you’re hurting my feelings. What’s that make
Yael, then?”

Jenny stared straight ahead, chewing furiously, saying
nothing. Footsteps from inside were followed by a racking cough and the clamor
of bolt and chain. The door opened slightly, allowing a sallow punk rocker with
a prematurely aged face to peer out at Jenny in obvious dismay.

“Hey, Neil.” Jenny snapped her gum. “Open up.”

“I don’t know, Jenny.” He wiped enflamed nostrils and
squinted. “You got money?”

That cackle again, a joke that only Jenny got. The kid
with the old face didn’t like it any more than I did.

“You know I don’t,” Jenny said gleefully, hooking a
thumb in my direction. “Preston does, though.”

I muttered something unkind and stepped into the dim
radius of the inadequate porch light. Neil didn’t appear to like me very much,
either.

“I don’t know you.”

“That’s right.” Neil had a real issue with cold sores,
I was noticing. There were a dozen of them scattered across his face, among the
scars of many more. “You don’t.”

Neil looked me over, and it was obvious he didn’t care
for what he saw. Given the circumstances, it was hard to hold that against him.

“I don’t need trouble.” This was a peculiar sentiment
for anyone involved with Jenny Frost to express, in my opinion. “The two of you
gonna be a problem?”

I smiled, despite myself.

“I’m no trouble at all. Not compared to her.”

Jenny leaned on the door impatiently.

“C’mon, Neil,” she cajoled. “Let us in. Cold out here,
ya know?”

Neil pondered the issue, scratching at the pre-established
sores on his neck.

“Come
on
, asshole,” Jenny said, leaning close.
“You wanna make me mad?”

For some reason, he looked to me for help.

“She’s right, Neil,” I advised. “I’d do it.”

“See?” Jenny blew a bubble, and then popped it in
front of Neil’s face. “Everyone agrees, Neil. Open the damn door.”

He nodded reluctantly. The door closed, and another
chain rattled, and then the door opened for real. Jenny strode in before it was
even halfway open, shoving the door and forcing Neil to scramble aside. I
followed after with an apologetic nod.

The place was dump. The wallpaper peeled off in
strands, stained from water damage. The floorboards were warped and mangled,
the slats uneven and creaking. The air was moist and dense with mildew, body
odor, cannabis, and cheap tobacco. I wrinkled my nose, but didn’t say anything.
If Jenny noticed, she made no remark.

“This way.” Neil locked the door behind us, and then
motioning for us to follow him down the hall. “Be quiet, okay? People are
trying to sleep.”

Jenny laughed.

“Not likely.”

We passed two rooms throbbing with synthesized bass. Organic
scents of unwashed bodies and moldy carpet cut with something reminiscent of
bleach or gasoline. I shared Jenny’s suspicion that no one in this house held
aspirations for a good night’s sleep.

Neil’s room was at the end of the hall. He had to
unlock and unbolt it, which said something about his housemates. I followed
Jenny inside and closed the door quietly behind us.

It was a small space, likely a guest bedroom, one big
window hidden behind a cut section of flannel. A bare lightbulb hung from the
remains of ceiling light fixture and provided the sole illumination. A
paint-splattered desk, one side resting on a squat antique safe, occupied
nearly half the room, while a bed with rumpled, fusty sheets took up the rest.
A girl curled in the blankets on the far end of the bed, watching us with wide,
glassy eyes, but she remained eerily still as we walked in, and no one else acknowledged
her presence, so I went along with that. We sat down on the other end of the
bed, a low glass table, and a generic printed rug separating us from Neil.

“So?” Neil raised one heavily plucked eyebrow. His greased
hair was bleached at the ends and thinning. “What do you want?”

Jenny tutted and shook her head.

“Customer service isn’t your strong point, Neil.” She
grinned, and he blanched. Should never have opened the door. “Set me up, okay?”

Neil looked at us warily.

“You
do
have money, right?”

“He does.” Jenny leaned over, searching through the
mess of empty cans and crowded ashtrays piled on the ground beside the bed.
“C’mon, asshole.”

He gave me a pleading look, but I didn’t really feel
bad for Neil much, so I didn’t respond one way or the other. To be fair, I did
not intend to pay.

Neil sighed, like a man only midway through a day of
personal impositions, then bent and spun the wheel on his old safe. I got two
out of the three numbers, but missed the final digits when Jenny found whatever
she was looking for on the floor, yelling out in triumph. She placed a slightly
scorched glass tube on the table in front of her. I cast an uneasy eye on the
girl wedged behind us on the bed; she continued to stare at nothing. I wondered
if maybe she was dead.

The safe had two shelves. The top had two regular
sandwich bags cinched with twist-ties, and a whole sheaf of tiny plastic bags
in bundles of ten. Neil took one of these from the safe and extracted a small
bag from the bundle, Jenny’s greedy eyes tracking every movement while she tied
her hair back with a glittering silver cord.

“C’mon,” Jenny chided, nudging Neil’s bony knee.
“Don’t fuck around with me.”

Neil winced and took a second baggie from the bundle.
He made sure to put the remainder back in the safe and spin the dial before he
did anything else, so I had to give him that much. His hands shook as he
attempted to tease open the tiny bags, skin sallow and jaundiced from
malnutrition. I knew ghouls who looked healthier than Neil. Really.

Jenny fiddled with a small butane torch, adjusting the
finger of blue flame it produced until she was satisfied, and then applied the
torch to one end of the glass tube. Neil spilled small, pinkish-white crystals
on the glass table. The contents of the two baggies made a small pile, which
Neil attacked with an encrusted safety razor. Jenny grinned absently while the
end of the glass pipe heated a dull red. With surprising deftness, Neil chopped
the crystals into a single fat line. Jenny watched with undisguised avarice,
licking her lips. Neil straightened and nodded at her wearily, his hands
trembling from accumulated nerve damage.

Jenny placed the unheated end of the glass tube in her
nostril, plugged the other with a finger, and bent over the line, her
sweatshirt riding up to expose the damp skin of her lower back. She dipped her
head like a bird intent on feeding. I watched in macabre fascination, the
heated tube hovering just above the line of the crystal as Jenny inhaled. The
majority of the powder was vaporized immediately, but some of the solids must
have survived the temperatures and were inhaled, because Jenny reeled,
clutching the top of her nose and sputtering as she fought a potentially
catastrophic coughing fit.

“That was…what the fuck was that?”

Jenny exploded into a red-faced, spit-flying coughing
fit, exhaling foul smelling chemical smoke with each cough. Neil gave me a
wane, barely-there smile, exposing irregular teeth beneath a thin brown crust
of gunk. I leaned way the hell back and did my best not to retch.

“Hot rail,” he said, as if that explained anything. “Some
of the crystal is vaporized by the hot glass, the rest…you know. Right up the
nose.”

“I’m very sorry that I asked.”

“Shut up, Preston,” Jenny croaked, shaking her head
and spitting on the carpet. “Don’t be an idiot.” Jenny gave me an exaggerated, frenzied
smile, and wiped her leaking nose on the arm of her hoodie. “Fucks you right
up, though.”

“You are such a bitch,” I said, burying my head in my
hands. “I can’t believe you dragged me here.”

Neil looked aghast at my reaction, and then gave Jenny
a suspicious glare.