Tag: banshee beach

We continue.

“Alan Smithee? Never heard of him.”

Bananas Foster was one of those guys who it takes only five minutes to know all your life. At least, if you were in the habit of hanging around short, kinda rat-looking, jittery chain-smokers who was clued-in about all the hinky deals out there, but didn’t have the scratch to get a piece in any of them. Which describes what the Old Americans would call my ‘working environment,’ right down to the cheap cologne Bananas wore. Weirdly, it didn’t even smell like bananas. More like burnt wood, old tobacco, and booze so raw, it practically bubbled.

Yeah, yeah, I know: I need a better class of business acquaintances. Who are you, my mother?

I shook my head. “Bananas. Look, I know I’m new around here, but you really gotta try to sell me on the lie. I ain’t just some tourist down from the City. See the hat?”

He peered at it. “What about it?” He sounded genuinely confused, too.

Truly, I was a pilgrim in an unholy land. “It’s a Shamus hat,” I explained, trying to ignore Lucas’s manful attempts not to snicker. “Tell me you’ve heard of Shamuses, Banana.”

I have blocked out all the chapters and will be assembling and adding from this point out. Hopefully this will speed things up.

So instead of gibbering, I went with polite conversation. “So, Betty. Here for the sun, the surf, or the sights?”

‘Betty’ dimpled at me, as the waiter set down our desserts. “Oh, the thought of doing the beach down here sounded divine, Mr. Vargas!” Damned if I know why I was expecting the Banshee to bobble her response. “Cinderella is so industrious, honestly. It’s all so full of commerce and enterprise, and while that is lovely, I could get all of that at home.”

She waited until we were alone again. “And that’s really the answer. Mostly.”

“Mostly?” I took a bite of my chocolate cake, and raised an eyebrow.

“Problem?” asked the Banshee as I took a healthy slug of water. At least, I hoped it was healthy. Better to find out now if it wasn’t.

“The cook added cayenne pepper,” I told her. “It ain’t bad, but my mouth wasn’t expecting to get bitten back.”

She looked at her own cake, shrugged, and speared herself a deliberate hunk of it. “Cayenne and cinnamon,” she noted after a deliberate bite. “No arsenic, though. Shame: it always adds a bit of piquancy to a dish.”

I surprised her then — by laughing. “Nice try. Arsenic doesn’t have a taste.”

Will need to make this a bit harder on Tom in the next pass-through.

I’d gotten instructed by Old Man McGavin himself. It sounds like more of an honor when you’ve never actually met the guy. He was one of the luckiest monster-hunters we’ve ever had, only he couldn’t ever explain why he was lucky because he just was, all right? Worse, he had a bad habit of oversimplifying. Like these buggers: all I could remember of the lecture right now was Don’t get hit.

Yeah, big help there, McGavin. Like, would it have hurt you to tell me that the yapokvil’s tail was all bendy?

I only figured that out when the freaking tail-barb smacked my impromptu club right out of my hands, dripping nasty crap on them for good measure. While I was still gaping at that, the tail came back for a swipe across my gut that sent me rolling into what suddenly became a stinking pile of hay. At first I was glad there wasn’t a pitchfork in there. Then I wished that there was, because a nice long pole with spikes on the end would’ve been handy.

The yapokvil should’ve come right after me, but it was one of those monsters that liked to play with its food. Well, I assume. I didn’t ask. All I know is, when I came out of that pile again, it was still scuttling about a little, like it wanted to find the perfect angle for gnawing on my intestines. It didn’t care like I might have my own views on the subject, either.

Fair enough. I felt just the same about its opinions.

Comeuppance!

“So those are your tourists?” Lucas asked Catty. He did try to keep the smirk out of his voice, but not very hard.

“Not as much as you, gramps,” Catty replied, in a voice sweet enough to make your teeth ache. Lucas’s smirk popped like a soap bubble — well, that’s a lie. Some of it decided to visit my face. “And they ain’t my tourists, neither. These aren’t the usual flounders, come slumming. They’re…” she broke off, frowning.

That got my attention. When a teenager starts giving off looks like that, a lot of times it’s because somebody hadn’t been friendly to her lately. Or they’d tried to be too friendly, too soon. Girls and boys grow up quick in New California, but not that quick.

Lucas must have picked up on that, too, because he choked out his incoming snit-fit and got his head on the job. If this was one. “These guys can’t take a hint, Catalina? Even when it’s swung at their heads?”