Read Online Cherry Bomb: A Siobhan Quinn Novel by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Kathleen Tierney - Free Book Online

in here,
I thought.
A person could go absolutely corn-fucking, ass-banging, cock-monkey out of her mind.
    I did not swat the bees. I endured the noise and the sensation of their prickly legs on my skin, several stings, and the honey stench. I walked in the direction Selwyn’s voice had come from, and between the bees and the bright light, I didn’t notice much about my surroundings. The parlor led into a much larger room.
    And . . .
    At least the lights were dimmer.
    “Thought you’d gotten lost,” Selwyn said. There wasn’t a bee anywhere on her. And I realized the buzzing had had faded to a dull roar.
    It had to be a goddamn Faerie.
    I hate Fae. Maybe even worse than I still hate Mean Mr. B. Which is saying a lot. Only Faerie I’ve ever been able to stand was a troll named Aloysius lived under a highway overpass back in Providence. I knew right off the pretty creature in front of me, stretched out on the cranberry recamier, was worse than any troll who ever squatted below any bridge. The recamier was upholstered, by the way, in some threadbare fabric about the same color as the red door and the front of the building.
    “Quinn, meet Aster. Aster, meet Quinn.”
    The only thing I hate more than Faeries are Faeries named after flowers. It’s just so . . . twee.
    “Quinn’s sort of along for the ride today,” said Selwyn.
    The Faerie made an expression that wasn’t quite a grin.
    “Why, Annie,” she said in that annoying, lilting Unseelie accent. “You have a new lover. I’m so glad. Quinn, it is my pleasure, certainly, I am sure.”
    The Faerie lifted one long, slender arm. I wasn’t sure whether I was meant to kiss her hand or shake it. I didn’t do either.
    “Charmed,” I said, trying to keep a bee from crawling up my left nostril. Selwyn frowned.
    The Faerie waved the hand I had neither kissed nor shaken, and all the bees on me flew away. I probably literally sighed a sigh of relief.
    I haven’t described her. Aster, I mean. I suppose I should. Well, I can’t say what she
really
looked like, because I’ve never been any good at seeing through glamours and shit like that. To my eyes, she could have been some runway model bitch, bulimic and thin as a rail. But still hot, right. Aster’s ash-blond hair was cut in a bob, and she had eyes almost the same shade of gray as B’s. The dress she was wearing was so sheer I’m not sure why she bothered wearing anything at all. By the way, I’m not sure the Faerie was actually female; these are pronouns of convenience. Beneath that glamour, Aster could have been anything at all. Besides, with Faeries, gender and sex and whatnot tends to be a pretty slippery affair.
    The Faerie named Aster studied me, and then she said to Selwyn, “I would caution you against taking one such as this into your bed, child, but you know your own affairs better than I.”
    “We have an arrangement. I trust her,” Selwyn said, and she winked at me. “Mostly.”
    “We must always be careful with whom we bargain and where we’ve placed our trust,” the Faerie said, “and especially when matters of the heart are concerned.”
    I ran my fingers through my hair, making sure all the bees were gone, still imagining I could feel them on me.
    “Lady, I don’t currently plan on eating her,” I told the Faerie, not much bothering to hide the indignation at having been dragged across town to be attacked by a swarm of bees and have my character called into question by this Tinkerbelle slut. “Which is not to say that might not change, of course. Being one such as this and all.”
    Selwyn pulled the shiny, shiny necklace from her jacket right about the same time I noticed the hives.
    “Oh,” crooned the Faerie. “Oh, it’s even more beautiful than the ballads would have us believe, isn’t it?”
    Hive
is the only word I can think of that even comes close to describing the misshapen things lining the walls of the room. Clearly, they’d once been human beings, and probably,