Supernatural Vigilante series Box Set

by D. R. Perry

  I open the door and head out into the hall. Everything’s so loud out there it almost stops me undead in my tracks. It was half as loud outside the building, but practically silent in the room I just left. It makes no sense, but again, I came here for a murder mystery, not a magical one. Once I get some dirt on the Caprices, I can check The Weirdo Factory out if it still bothers me.

  But I can’t help myself. I can’t leave the room behind until I have a look at the door. There’s no sign on it, not a flyer or poster or anything to indicate that the tenant runs a business that they want to advertise to the bands in the other spaces here. But there’s something on a card pinned under the room number, just one word.

  “Solomon?” I scratch my head. “Whatever.”

  My curiosity on the matter curls up like a cat in my head. On the comfiest seat, of course. I can’t let my thoughts rest, but I can pick up my feet, so I do. Down the hall at the junction of three corners, the sounds blend to make an ear-numbing cacophony smoothie. I have to shut my eyes and try to tune some of it out, which takes magical vampire powers. I’ll be hungry later on, but it’ll be worth it.

  The band singing “murder death kill kill, Lord Satan gets his fill” gets damped down. So does the cover of I’m Not Okay by My Chemical Romance. Love the band, but now’s not the time to wax nostalgic for my emo listening days. I mute a handful of others before the noise gets intelligible to my vampy ears. Once that happens, I head down the stairs to the first floor.

  There’s a sick bassline coupled with a kicking drumbeat. It’s like an orgy in the rhythm section, and I don’t want to ignore that one. Whatever band is playing that has real talent. It pops and kicks along in the auric background because I can listen to the other stuff over it. And said stuff is exactly the kind of conversation I came here to hear. I look both ways to be sure there aren’t cameras or observers then do a vamp yard dash in the general direction the heavily accented voices come from.

  I stop between the doors to the restrooms, across from another door marked Office. It’s close enough for supernatural hearing to make out every word, and the door marked with a male stick-figure covers me if someone happens by.

  “I ain’t paying her.” That voice comes out of a mouth that must have smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. "She didn't do it."

  “We already gave her half.” This one sounds smoother than butter. “It’s dangerous to stiff the hitman.”

  “Hitwoman.” Cigarettes chuckles. “And I’d stiff her in more ways than one if you know what I mean.”

  “You’re crazy,” says Butter. “You ain’t even seen her without that mask on. She might have a horse-face or worse. Anyway, she’s got enough kills under her belt to make a Silver Anniversary. You’d have a hard time turning her into a stiff. I’m telling the Boss we ought to pay, anyway. I mean, she hit Crispo even if he’s still sucking wind.”

  They’re talking about Dad. I clench my fists and my jaw, trying to control myself. The last thing I want to do is go into a vengeance rage in a building this busy. And I want them to finish their conversation about stiffing a hired gun with over twenty-five kills.

  “No kill, no cash,” says Cigarettes. “And that’s what I tell the Boss.”

  “You’re going to get us all iced.”

  “She’ll kill the messenger, whoever it is. After that, she'll be dead meat for sure.”

  “And you’re sure that messenger won’t be you?”

  “Absotively.” His chuckle hides a cough. “I’ve got friends in low places.”

  “I wish I shared your confidence.”

  “You’ll die before you match it.”

  I hear a metallic sound, recognize it. Drawn pistol. I can’t blame Butter for drawing on Cigarettes. That sounds like a threat, even to me. I debate busting in fangs blazing, but someone comes out of the ladies' room. A chick, apparently normal, and definitely a little older than me. The only thing odd about her is the leather jacket she wears in the summery weather. I wonder whether this is their hitwoman, but it can’t be. No Silver Anniversary assassin would come in plainclothes if she wore a mask at her “interview.” She knocks on their door.

  “Put the piece away.” Cigarette’s voice is soft enough that the woman at the door won’t hear it. “We got company.”

  “Who the hell comes here at this hour?” I hear Butter holster his piece. “It’s after three in the morning.”

  “Rent money, probably.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “You’ve got no idea, pal.”

  The chick holds up her right fist to knock again, but the door opens. The guy looks maybe ten years older than me. He slaps on a big old smile that reminds me of reptiles in sewers.

  “Hey, Esther.” I can tell by the voice, it’s Butter. “You got your rent this time or just an excuse?”

  “Fucking rent.” Esther thrusts an envelope into Butter’s hand. “Back and current.”

  “Nice. You staying another six months?”

  “What do you think, jerk-off?”

  “Pay on time from now on, or we start putting your stuff in the Lost and Found, we clear?”

  “Crystal.”

  He slams the door in her face. Esther doesn’t even flinch. Instead, she forks her fingers at the steel in an all-too-familiar gesture. It’s the ward against the evil eye, straight out of grandma territory. I blink. She turns on her heel and stalks toward me. Without looking up, she stops.

  “Nice fucking costume.” She raises an eyebrow. I notice a few lines on her face, which make me question my original guess at her age. I can’t decide whether she’s in her early thirties or even older.

  “Thanks.” I wring my hands. “I’m in a band,” I blurt.

  “Yeah, you and every other dick-owner in this crappy frigging place.” Esther continues down the hall, holding up her left hand in a gesture of farewell. There’s a glove on it. “Stay out of the fucking Mafia. They suck hairy donkey balls.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  As Esther takes her attitude away with her, I realize I now have the perfect excuse to get my eyes on the room the mobsters use for an office. I step over to the door and knock. I cross my fingers, hoping they don’t have any mirrors in there.

  This time, another guy opens the door. When he smiles, I know for sure it’s Cigarettes. Even if I hadn’t seen Butter already, the teeth, yellow and cracked like old tombstones, give him away before he says a word. I grin just in case my fangs are out from fine-tuning my hearing. Or, you know, the fact that these guys were involved in taking the hit out on Dad.

  “Hi. I’m looking to rent some practice space.”

  “Huh. Okay. We’ve got a few vacancies, but they’re all on the third floor.”

  “That’s cool.” I nod. “I want to see them.”

  “Fine.” Cigarettes steps out into the hall and closes the door behind him. All I see is the corner of a tan counter.

  It occurs to me I haven’t heard a peep out of Butter since he slammed the door on Esther. But maybe they take turns at that or something. I try putting my unease out of my mind, but it acts like a cat when you try to put it in the bathtub. It knows the water’s coming eventually. I follow Cigarettes up the stairs, keeping on guard.

  When we get to top of the third flight, Cigarettes turns around on the landing. I’m still a couple of steps down. He’s got one hand in his pocket and it has nothing to do with an old ‘90s song.

  “What kind of band are you in, anyway?”

  “Oh. We’re sort of like um, a theatrical mashup,” I fib. “Like GWAR but more Emo.” At least I know how to talk that talk even if I can’t play an instrument to save my life. My hands are in my pockets, too, fingers crossed.

  “You’ll fit right in on the third floor, then. There are a few um, theatrical acts up here.” His raspy chuckle carries no hint of good nature.

  He doesn't know the half of it.

  Chapter Nine

  For a moment, I think Cigarettes has seen right through my ruse a
nd will push me down the stairs, but he turns and opens the door to the third floor instead. He lets it fall instead of holding it open for me, which I’m okay with. Because he doesn’t have to be a gentleman, just show me the damn room for rent.

  It’s down at the end of the hall, on the same end as the Weirdo Lab that I used to break in. Some people call that kind of thing a coincidence or kismet or fate. But in my opinion, luck’s just as blind as justice and way less of a righteous babe.

  I let Cigarettes turn on the light before I go in. It’s just a room, maybe a half-foot too long on one side to be exactly square like the one below it. That sticks in my mind like broccoli used to in my front teeth. I can’t put my finger on what’s making it stick because my gut’s screaming at me like tweens at a boy band concert. Not the literal gut that wants blood, the kind that people associate with their psychic friends.

  “I’ll take it.” My gut settles down like a baby after a good burping.

  “Cool. It’s one Benjamin a month. We control the heat to keep it cheap, so don’t bitch at us if you get cold. No air conditioners allowed. What kind of amps do you guys have?”

  “We practice with headsets.”

  “Huh.” Cigarettes peers at me. “Well, whatever. We don’t handle noise complaints. Neither do the police in this neighborhood. Understand?” He means that if people think you’re too loud, they’ll bust in and take your amps. But I don’t have to worry about that because I’ll never actually be in a band. I think.

  “Yeah, I get it. Thanks.”

  “Come on down to the office, and I’ll give you the paperwork. You gotta pay cash for everything, every time. If you don’t have that much on you, bring it back tomorrow night or afternoon, like at three or something. We ain’t morning people here.”

  “Don’t worry, neither are we.” I’m checking the walls and the window. Is that circle by the window a dent from moving stuff or a bullet-hole?

  “What do they call you? Your band?”

  “Yup.” I’m only half-listening, so I answer like a moron. After that I fictionalize. “Uh. We’re still trying to agree on that.”

  “You coming or not?”

  “Sure.”

  I follow him, mentally kicking myself. Down on the first floor, Cigarettes goes into the office and shuts the door in my face. I stand there wondering why, so I go out of my way to sniff things out. There’s no scent of blood, but it smells like someone’s taken a leak in there, maybe in a bottle without a lid? Or huffed some super-stinky glue? I can’t make sense of what my nose picks up, so I quit on it.

  Cigarettes steps back out, waving a clipboard at me. I take it, and accidentally-on-purpose drop the pen that goes with it. I can’t see anything but an old sofa behind the manager/mobster. After straightening up, I look at the form. It’s got the room number scrawled on a line at the top, 319. I start filling it out, relieved that the space on the form for a name says “Business or Act” in front of it. They don’t keep records of real people here.

  In that blank, I write the acronym for the name I plan to use for my PI business. Hey, maybe I can write this expense off on my taxes next year. I pull my billfold from my right front pocket. There’s a couple hundred in there in various bills. I slap five twenties on the clipboard and hand it and the pen back to Cigarettes.

  “Here are your keys. No propping or holding the goddamn door out front. We don’t want riff-raff street people sleeping in the halls here.”

  “No problem.”

  Cigarettes drops the keys and shuts the door. I catch them with my crazy vampire reflexes before I’m technically out of his line of sight. He doesn’t give any sign that he notices. It’s not until I’m about to walk away that I realize there’s only one clear heartbeat behind the office door now. Butter could have left while we were upstairs. Or he could be dead, killed in a bloodless manner that my nose either can’t detect or identify.

  But the whole reason for renting a space in this place is to get information about the Caprices and this hitwoman they hired to bump off my dad. So I chalk it all up to a part of my investigation and head upstairs to the room leased out to SVS, also known as Shadow Vanguard Sleuthing. I think it’s a cool name.

  As I climb stairs, I wonder what Cigarettes would think if he knew he’d just leased space to a PI masquerading as an Emo act. Maybe I should order some business cards for the fake band from Vistaprint. I shrug and unlock my new door. I wonder whether the neighbors here are as nosy as the Fitzpatricks back by my parents’ house.

  Thinking of the old neighborhood puts me in mind that maybe attempting all this alone is a big mistake. I get the idea that maybe some help would be nice. Stephanie already made it clear that she’s worried about trouble for or with King Decapitate of the City of Hope. Now there’s more of an oxymoron for you than a D minus average High Schooler using anti-acne products.

  The thought of High Schoolers reminds me of Scott. I whip my phone out and call him.

  “Yo, Tino! “He answers awfully fast for someone up way past his curfew. I check the time. It’s four in the morning, which is actually early enough for him to legitimately be out for a morning jog.

  “Yo yourself.” I figure that’s a hip enough response.

  “What’s up, my dude?”

  “Um, I just rented us some practice space in a Caprice Family-owned building.”

  “Us?” I can practically hear his eyebrows gain altitude. “You mean we’re a thing? I can help?”

  “Yeah, sure, Scott. You can. But make it snappy because the sun coming up sucks for me.”

  I give him the address, and he says he’ll meet me over here in less than fifteen minutes. I know that's true because that’s how long it takes to get somewhere in Rhode Island from anyplace else. We’re small on space but big on quirkiness here. Visit sometime, and you’ll see what I mean. What other place on Earth has coffee milk? Not that I can drink that anymore.

  Just as I get to the point where I think Tino, you're a moron because now you have to buy furniture that has to work for a band or a PI firm, my phone beeps. There's a message from Scott. I read it.

  Dude dragging something that smells like a body out of here. WTF do I do?

  "Shitballs." I open my window and stick my head out. Sure enough, Cigarettes has a dolly with a rolled-up carpet on it. Six feet tall and too stiff for something that just ties the room together, too. I open my nostrils and know Scott's right. I’m starting to hate that.

  And why am I so much more upset about teen wolf being right than I am about a dead body in the building? I make the disappointing realization that it’s hard to get busted up over a guy who helped hire someone to shoot my dad. And what am I going to do, call Maury? He doesn’t have a warrant and Cigarettes will get rid of blatant evidence before Detective Weintraub can get here.

  Nothing, I text back. Leaving the window, I head downstairs to let Scott in. He follows me up, and on the landing at the second floor, Esther almost knocks us over.

  She's coming through the hall door like a bat out of hell, so fast and angry I think she's a vampire too for a second. But her racing heart and the bile I smell in her throat assert her essential humanity.

  "Waffle-twatting ass-clowns!" Esther doesn't even notice we're there, let alone that she could have killed us. Well, Scott, anyway. Stairs don't kill vamps, even if we break our necks on them. Maybe they don't kill werewolves either unless they're made of silver, but what do I know? I’m new, remember?

  "You okay?" Scott calls after her.

  "Those shitfaced cock-masters broke into my space again!" She throws her hands in the air. “Uncle-fuckers!”

  Something green shimmers in the space over her hands, but when I blink, it's gone. Scott wrinkles his nose, so I scent the air. I smell something like the incense Mom and Dad burn when they're using their medical MJ. I wait until I hear the first-floor door slam shut behind Esther to say anything.

  "Did you see that?" I wave my hand like I’m at the end of a jazz dance routine.
/>   "I don't know, but I sure smelled it." He waves his like he wants to get rid of a bad smell.

  "Come on, let me show you the new digs before we talk about it."

  We get to 319. Scott chuckles at the door.

  "What?"

  "You don't listen to Prince, huh?"

  "Should I?"

  "Definitely. Or maybe not." Scott gestures at the room number. "That's one of his songs, 319. It's like the kind of cheesy Easter egg a pulp writer would leave lying around in their book."

  "Well, you can play it for me some time, I guess."

  "Okay."

  I open the door. Scott walks in and stops in the middle of the floor. Once I close the door, he's on the polished concrete, nose to the fake stone. I lean against the wall by the light switch, watching him until he stands up.

  "That woman from the stairs rents the space under ours."

  Well, crap. I realize the weird circle I'd stepped in earlier was Esther's. So much for being a good neighbor. How do you recover from that kind of faux pas against a potentially magical person, anyway? Bring cupcakes over? Or maybe beer? I had to hope she didn't know how to conjure fire or anything.

  "How do you know it’s hers, anyway?"

  "That smell from the stairs? It's coming from the floor."

  "What do you think it is?"

  "I don't know.” Scott shrugs. “Gotta ask Grandpa."

  "Maybe it's not such a good idea to tell him too much about this."

  "Why?" Scott scratches his head.

  "He's only a huge gossip."

  "Nah, it's a front." Scott shrugs. "He gabs about which neighbor lady drinks during the day and which ones tip the mailman so he can avoid talking about werewolf stuff."

  "He knows you're a werewolf?"

  "Yeah. He's one, too."

  "Seriously?"

  "He taught me everything I know about being one before the first time I changed."

  "You're lucky," I blurt. "Uh, forget I said that."

  "Um, okay." Scott paces to the window, peeks out, then turns back around. "That’s a pretty good vantage point. You can see the dumpster right under us and the parking lot on the diagonal."