Fic for Thalia!
Title: The Tales of Death and Doom
Prompt: Death takes a holiday --- she drives down the interstate, checks into a bed and breakfast, and goes antiquing for a weekend.
A/N: Dear Thalia, this is your birthday and your fest fic all rolled into one. You are a lovely, lovely person, and I am very happy that the great, wide internet has brought us together. Charlie (who also helped me whip this thing into shape) told me not to angst too much, which was a bit tricky given the list of prompts you collected. Alas: I think this will do. Love, LL
***
There comes a time in a woman’s life when the only thing she wants is a nice, hot bath, a good night’s sleep and perhaps the odd new lampshade or two. Death was no different. She had worked her perky little bottom off for the past three years, never saying no to a single assignment, and waving away all notions of a holiday.
But now her batteries were empty, and since she had recently come into the possession of a new house, she felt the need to book a flight, hire a car (not a driver though, drivers were too nosy) and hit the interstate. She had read somewhere that Connecticut was good for antiquing, and the house on the Bahamas was still scandalously empty. In the last year, her old place (an apartment in New York) hadn’t been any less empty, but that had to do with people and not with furniture. Furniture she could just buy. Right now, her new spacious white-painted mansion housed nothing but a few big chests of mysterious content and a number of grand and quirky paintings (all of whom looked like perfect replicas of Picasso’s works, but weren’t replicas at all). However, she currently did not count a single lampshade amongst her possessions. How to better rectify this than by spending an early autumn weekend in Connecticut?
With her long blonde hair tied into a French braid, and her slender body clothed in the muted beiges and greys of the rich, nobody bothered to give her a second glance. She was one of them; a woman, perhaps once or twice divorced, certainly not in a position that required her to work, and as suspicious as a fruit fly on a platter of overly ripe peaches. Death would never again underestimate the value of a good cashmere sweater: it was the perfect disguise.
Leaving Bradley International Airport behind, she drove until she reached Kent. Housing barely 3000 people, it was a village in the guise of a town. Plenty of bed & breakfasts awaited their next customer, but Death was picky. What she was looking for, she didn’t know. A place that called to her, something that could let her pretend that this was home, even if it was just for two days.
But none of the places were right, and there were many. She stopped her car in front of five, entered four, and booked into none. Only when she saw The Lazy Cat, a picturesque white-painted house sitting on a tidy front lawn, framed by oak trees and adorned with copious overgrown flower pots in front of beautiful stained glass windows, did she finally arrive. She parked her car on the other side of the street, her eyes never really leaving the building.
Exiting the car, she grabbed her light travel bag, crossed the street and walked up the steps of The Lazy Cat. True to its name, the first thing she spotted upon entering the B&B was a fat black cat snoring on the staircase leading to the upper floors. The owner, a thin blonde with a charming smile, welcomed Death and promptly began to talk about the weather. Whether she didn’t notice that Death wasn’t answering or whether she didn’t care, Death really couldn’t say. She just zoned the woman out, nodding and smiling as she signed the booking sheet (with a fake name, of course). When all the paperwork was taken care off, the proprietor took the travel bag out of Death’s hand and carried it upstairs for her. She showed her to her room, one facing the backyard, and then handed her a list of the town’s activities. Left her to her own devices, Death exhaled and began to unpack.
By now it was five in the afternoon, and Death ran herself a bath. There were plenty of colourful bath salts to chose from, and a wide array of herbal lotions to spoil her skin rotten. Death chose lavender bath salts, really hot water, and pulled the dog-eared paperback from her small traveller’s bag. Why she liked Jane Austen so much, she couldn’t say, but she never travelled without one of her novels. This time, she had brought Mansfield Park, which wasn’t her favourite, but she didn’t want to risk reading Sense and Sensibility the one crucial time too many. No, there needed to be some time between each re-read, to forget some things and look forward to others.
After her bath, Death once again donned her garb of inconspicuous cashmere and set out to take an early dinner. She followed the B&B owner’s advice and went to Thunder Strikes Twice, a family run restaurant three streets away. The place was packed, but Death always knew how to garner the right attention and eschew the wrong. The Maitre, a tall attractive man with unruly brown hair, guided her to a small table in the back, and made a move to hand her a menu.
She waved it away. “I’ll have your house wine, red, a steak, rare, and some country fried potatoes. No salad, but some cooked vegetables would be nice. For dessert, I’ll take whatever you recommend.”
He blinked, nodded, and disappeared into the kitchens. Death leaned back into her chair. Men were all the same. You just needed a firm hand with them, and they would do exactly as told. If only Doom would understand that, but her friend had always been a bit on the soft side. It was why their business partnership was destined to fail, and failed it had. Epically. The two women had been friends even as little girls, both born to bored fathers and incapable mothers. Granted, Doom’s mother hadn’t been incapable as much as terminally sick, but in the end, it all amounted to the same, didn’t it? Doom and Death set up their business once they completed their college degrees (Criminology for Death, and Forensic Science for Doom). They spent six years making a hell of a lot of money, and then Doom, soft, silly Doom, fell in love with one of their marks.
As far as everyone else in their business was concerned, Death took out Doom and her lover in a tidy showdown that left no evidence whatsoever, but the truth was of course quite different. Doom and the former mark left the States and moved away - if the last e-card (or rather the IP-address of the sender) was to be believed (and Death was always a bit wary of that sort of thing), Doom had retired to Argentina, where she and her lover ran a small farm. Now, it was a bit difficult to imagine posh Doom picking up after a herd of cows, but then again, Death found imagining her anywhere but by her side tricky.
Death finished her contemplations on Doom’s current place of residence at the same time as her steak. A server took away her plate, and five minutes later, a woman whose enviable cleavage threatened to pop the buttons of her chef’s shirt served her a plate of steaming strawberry pie with pink ice cream melting on its side. Death smiled, showing all her pearly white teeth.
“This looks lovely, thank you.” The chef matched her smile and Death caught her grinning at the Maitre as she walked back to the kitchen. The tall man shrugged his shoulders as if to say “she wasn’t as nice to me”. Maybe she had been a bit silly; she should have let him bring her a menu and recite the recommendations. Now there was a chance that he might remember her. Death didn’t want to be remembered, not unless she made people do it. Finishing up her pie in record time, she pushed her chair back and left the money on the table (the tip was good enough for her not to appear mean, but not so big as to etch her into their memory even more).
She was paying for this little trip out of the expenses account she had set up for a new client of hers. She knew little of that customer, other than she was an angry woman who wanted to get rid of an old boyfriend. Not the sort of thing Death usually lowered herself to: she preferred politics to romance, always had. Now, that job with the Argentinian ambassador in Brussels, that had been fun. She almost stopped dead in her tracks: why was it that everything today came back to Argentina? The steak, Doom, the ambassador? If Death never had to hear a single word about Argentina ever again, then she would count herself a lucky woman.
Walking back to The Lazy Cat, she pondered what had led her to accept the new job. Well, tentatively accept it. Until she had done a lot of background checks on both mark and client, she would not fully commit to it. She was too professional for this sort of thing. The one big snafu with Doom and her lover boy had been enough, thank you very much.
Her newest mark was the owner of an antique’s shop in Redding, home of Mark Twain. He was thirty-seven years old, owned the house in which his store was located, and had inherited another one in California when an elderly aunt passed away. Death smirked. On paper, that was how she had obtained her own place on the Bahamas. Only amateurs left no paper trail whatsoever: the trick was to leave one that nobody would ever doubt because it was so perfectly ordinary. Trick of the trade.
When she entered the B&B, she found the proprietor by the small escritoire that served as a front desk. She was sorting through some brochures, her pale brows knitted in concentration.
“Excuse me,” Death began, most winning smile already on her lips, “I need a road map of Connecticut, could you help me with that?”
The other woman’s head snapped up. “Oh, hi, didn’t hear you come in! Yes, yes, of course, I’ll fetch one for you!” What felt like three seconds later, she returned, map in hand. “Here you go.”
“Thank you, Mrs. - I apologise, I must have forgotten your name.” Damn. That wasn’t like herself. Death prided herself on her memory. She really did need a holiday.
“Shields, Serena Shields. And never mind, you were so knackered when you came in, and I just prattled away at you. My husband always used to tell me that I talk too much, but you know, I really don’t think he minded. Anyway, there’s your map, Ms. Dee. If you need anything else, please let me know.”
Death nodded and smiled and started up the stairs. So the proprietor was a widow. Interesting. She didn’t look old enough for that. How old might she be, 26, 27? Doom had always been much better estimating people’s ages, as with many things, her instincts were almost always correct. Sometimes Death had teased her partner that she must be a psychic, but then the whole thing with this dastardly journalist had happened, who just wouldn’t have the decency to let himself be shot, and now Doom was in Argentina herding cattle and being in love, and Death had to make do by herself.
***
Over the years, Death had unlearnt to sleep in. It didn’t matter which time zone she was in (and due to her profession, she’d been in many), she always rose at six sharp. Her mother would have liked that, her useless daughter rising with the sun every day, but Death hadn’t spoken to the woman since she left for college years ago. So there was no one to pat her on the back when she found herself under the shower at 6.05, and blow-drying her hair ten minutes later. A little make-up, discreet lipstick, and a small diamond ring on her left middle finger, and Death was almost ready to go. Donning a light grey sweater (again, cashmere, of course) and a pair of jeans and ballet flats, she checked her reflection in the mirror before grabbing her purse and heading down at 6.35.
The front room was empty, the escritoire unattended, and there was no coffee to be found anywhere. Death sighed. She needed her morning coffee. When had the perky widow said breakfast would start? She racked her mind, but her memory failed her for the second time in as many days.
Luckily, the B&B’s brochure was in easy reach. Death flipped it open, and there it was: “The Lazy Cat will provide you with a rich breakfast to start your day! Come find it in the cozy breakfast room, starting 7.30.” Great. Unwilling to wait for another hour, Death made her exit. Somewhere in Kent, she would without a doubt find a diner willing to sell a pretty woman some coffee at 6.35 on a Saturday morning. And if not, she could either steal some or hit a gas station, whichever would be faster.
Turned out, there was no diner, but a gas station with a 7-Eleven right outside town. Death bought one coffee in a paper cup, then thought better of it and added a thermos mug (ON SALE! ONLY TODAY FOR $6.99) and had that one filled up too. After filling up her car and buying the morning paper, she cast a cursory glance on the map Mrs. Shields had provided and hit the road again.
Kent and Redding were only 35 miles apart, and this early in the day, the roads were empty. The rental car was nice enough, it had a radio and an AC, even though the latter wasn’t really a necessity in early autumn Connectictut. The weather was still nice, the leaves just about to change colour, and the temperature a solid 70°.
With the sun shining into her face, Death was actually happy to have brought some sunglasses. She’d picked them up as a birthday gift for Doom a while ago, but when she realised that they wouldn’t see each other again, as in ever, with Doom allegedly being dead and all, she begun to use them for herself. Not the model she would have picked out had she realised that they’d be sitting on her own nose, but they were nice enough. Chanel, they were. Doom loved Chanel. Doom loved all things expensive and classy, except for that journalist, who was neither.
Pressing her foot more heavily against the accelerator, Death kept her eyes on the road and her mind on her friend. The job should have been so easy. The journalist had been working on some ground-breaking story about the mafia, and the mafia wanted him to stop. Simple as that. They’d contacted D&D, and because December was always a busy month in their business and they had another job going at the same time, Death and Doom had decided to divide and conquer. Death chose the jewellery theft in Amsterdam, and Doom took on the little matter of the journalist in New York. Next thing Death knew was a text from Doom, saying: “I can’t do it, need you here, come ASAP.” So Death had sped the jewellery thing up a little and returned home on the next red-eye, fully expecting the journalist to be protected by the FBI and perhaps the CIA too. Always nasty when those two worked together, always. Luckily, it didn’t happen all too often.
Instead, she found the journalist in their flat, making Doom some breakfast. Fried bacon. She hadn’t been able to eat any since.
“I- what on earth is he doing here, D?”
The man put the pan down and grinned. “D? What does that stand for?” Death gave him a quick once-over. He was attractive enough with all those wild blonde curls and sharp blue eyes, but no man, no matter how attractive, was worth risking everything for. She eyed the heavy iron pan in his hand, and wondered if she could wrench it from his hand and get enough leverage to knock him out cold. Unless she was very much mistaken, and she seldom was, the chances were pretty damn good.
Sensing the danger, Doom shook her head, told him to shut up and reached for Death’s hand, tugging her out of the kitchen and into the safety of her bedroom.
“D, damn it, the only reason we take marks into our flat is because there is some problem disposing of the body, and even then, they have to be in a bloody body bag,” Death hissed under her breath as soon as the door was shut behind them.
Standing still and poised, her long black hair as glossy as always, Doom gave Death a long, apologetic look. “I love him,” she said, and Death sank down onto the bed. This was bad. This was really, really bad.
“You barely even know him,” she answered, but it sounded feeble even to herself. Counting through the many rules Doom had violated by bringing him here, she regained some of her composure. Her voice turned cold, analytical. “You don’t know who he is or how many people he’s told about you.” She shot Doom an accusatory look, but Doom didn’t even have the good grace to wince. Death continued in clipped tones. “And more importantly, you don’t know how many other people might be after him and are therefore already on their way to us because you brought him here.”
“Two months of observation, and two weeks in here, in person. I know him. I love him,” Doom answered and a sinking feeling of fear spread through Death’s belly. No word about the risks, the danger. No pleas to not tell him about Doom’s job, the way she’d found him.
The other shoe dropped. “Does he know what you are? What we are?”
She nodded.
“You told him?” Death was aghast. They were truly and utterly fucked, unless she thought of something. Quickly.
“He’s smart, he figured it out.”
“Good for him,” she answered and reached under the bed, almost on autopilot, retrieving a small semi-automatic. Now where was the silencer? Groping under the bed, her hands came up empty. Well, a pillow would do. Now she just needed Doom to shut up and stay in here for two to three minutes, tops.
“D, don’t! Didn’t you hear what I said?”
Meeting Doom’s pleading violet eyes, Death had to fight the urge to shoot her partner instead of their mark. How could Doom be so sentimental, so stupid? So blind? “You told him who we are, what we do. You brought him here. He could be the Holy Father himself and I would have to shoot him. You know that.”
“You’re not even Catholic,” Doom shot back, making Death smile.
Still, she didn’t put the gun away but unlatched the safety instead. “True.”
“You need to make us disappear.”
Death frowned. They were almost back on track. “I am planning on making him disappear. Into the Hudson, to be precise. Go get the car. I’m going to save my ass and yours, not that you deserve it.”
Doom didn’t move. It would be much harder with her in the flat, but Death would find a way to rid them of this problem. She just needed to be fast: he could be calling the police as they spoke. They were wasting time, valuable time.
Doom moved towards her and reached out for the gun. Her voice was sad. “You know what I mean.”
Death paled. “No.”
“Please. Please, as my friend. Make us disappear.”
And so Death had, and the mafia had been happy, and Doom had been happy, and bacon boy had been happy. The only person who was not happy was Death herself, who suddenly found herself without a partner and perhaps even more importantly, a friend. She had known Doom for such a long time; they’d known each other when they still went by their real names, Raye and Mina, two personalities they’d shed a long time ago. Well, Death had. As it turned out, Doom hadn’t and was know once again known as Raye. Raye, the cattle herder. Raye, the idiot.
Time flew by as Death drove towards Redding. Both coffees were long since gone, and when she passed the big road sign that cheerily welcomed her to Redding, the clock had just struck seven-thirty.
Knowing that no antique shop was likely to be open that early, Death parked her car in front of a friendly looking diner. It even had a little bell that chimed when she pushed the door open, and she found herself a seat by the window. After placing an order for more coffee and a cherry danish, she opened the paper she’d brought. She read through every single page, always looking for some sign of actions from one of her trade, but the world was more occupied with finance and stock markets and baseball these days than with people or paintings disappearing. This month was very quiet.
Being a slow reader, it took Death almost two hours to finish the paper. When she did, she paid for her food, and made her way to the antique shop whose address she had memorised. It was a fifteen minute walk, and with each step, Death felt herself relax. It was pretty here. She liked Connecticut, all the warm colours and the harmless, little people. Perhaps she ought to sell the house on the Bahamas and buy one with a white picket fence somewhere around here. Of course, it was unrealistic. In small towns such as Kent and even in bigger ones as Redding, people would pay attention to her comings and goings, would ask questions once they’d gotten used to her and saw past the shield of cashmere.
No, if she really wanted to live in a place like this, live a life like this, she’d have to give up her job. A small, niggly voice in the back of her head told her to do just that, that it wasn’t the same without Doom anyway, and there was a point in life when she should go antiquing to go antiquing, and not to scout potential marks, but Death had always been good at ignoring the voices, even her own. The only one she could never ignore was Doom’s, but tough luck, Doom was gone and would never return. Happy cattle branding, she thought with derision and new-found tension in her shoulders.
The antique shop was open when Death finally walked up its steps. Again, there was a chirpy bell, announcing her arrival to whoever was inside. What was it with small towns and this need to know when someone arrived? What about the element of surprise? Coming to think if it, it was a small wonder that The Lazy Cat didn’t have one of those annoying bells. Maybe it was broken.
The small entrance room of the antique shop was lined with bookshelves, so Death’s first impression was having stepped into the wrong place. It looked like a library, an old library. All the books’ spines were brown or yellow or musty green, and Death found herself reaching out to them almost involuntarily. Her eyes flew over the spines, taking in titles printed in faded golden letters. On the third shelf to her right, she found Sense & Sensibility. It looked nothing like her own flashy paperback edition; instead, it was solemn and serious and her fingers closed around it and pulled it off the shelf. All thoughts of lampshades and marks forgotten, she began to search for other editions and titles. Persuasion was two shelves down, and another edition of Sense and Sensibility pressed right next to it. She pulled both books out and added them to the one she was holding in her left hand.
Another hand suddenly came into her line of vision, reaching for the shelf above her head. She turned around and came face to face with a tall man. He smelled of soap and detergent and just a hint of cologne.
“I believe you would like this one as well,” he said formally, and handed her the book he’d pulled off the shelf. Pride and Prejudice, she read as she took it from his hand. He had long, graceful fingers. No wedding band.
“Thank you, I do,” she answered and gave him a little smile. He didn’t smile back, but his green eyes were friendly behind the wireless glasses he wore. Dressed in brown corduroy paints and a soft and worn-looking blue jumper with leather patches on the elbows, the collar of a blue-checked shirt peeking out underneath, he didn’t look anything like he had in the picture the client had sent her. In the picture, he’d worn a suit and looked cold and unfriendly. In the picture, he’d looked like he didn’t give a damn about the red-haired woman clinging to his arm. In the picture, he’d looked like her next paycheck.
In his shop, he looked like the stained glass windows of The Lazy Cat, the Sunday morning smell of fried bacon, the pleasant feeling of turning the pages of an old book. She swallowed.
“I’m thinking of buying a house in Kent,” she found herself saying and not lying, “and I need a lampshade or two.”
*** The End ***
Prompt: Death takes a holiday --- she drives down the interstate, checks into a bed and breakfast, and goes antiquing for a weekend.
A/N: Dear Thalia, this is your birthday and your fest fic all rolled into one. You are a lovely, lovely person, and I am very happy that the great, wide internet has brought us together. Charlie (who also helped me whip this thing into shape) told me not to angst too much, which was a bit tricky given the list of prompts you collected. Alas: I think this will do. Love, LL
***
There comes a time in a woman’s life when the only thing she wants is a nice, hot bath, a good night’s sleep and perhaps the odd new lampshade or two. Death was no different. She had worked her perky little bottom off for the past three years, never saying no to a single assignment, and waving away all notions of a holiday.
But now her batteries were empty, and since she had recently come into the possession of a new house, she felt the need to book a flight, hire a car (not a driver though, drivers were too nosy) and hit the interstate. She had read somewhere that Connecticut was good for antiquing, and the house on the Bahamas was still scandalously empty. In the last year, her old place (an apartment in New York) hadn’t been any less empty, but that had to do with people and not with furniture. Furniture she could just buy. Right now, her new spacious white-painted mansion housed nothing but a few big chests of mysterious content and a number of grand and quirky paintings (all of whom looked like perfect replicas of Picasso’s works, but weren’t replicas at all). However, she currently did not count a single lampshade amongst her possessions. How to better rectify this than by spending an early autumn weekend in Connecticut?
With her long blonde hair tied into a French braid, and her slender body clothed in the muted beiges and greys of the rich, nobody bothered to give her a second glance. She was one of them; a woman, perhaps once or twice divorced, certainly not in a position that required her to work, and as suspicious as a fruit fly on a platter of overly ripe peaches. Death would never again underestimate the value of a good cashmere sweater: it was the perfect disguise.
Leaving Bradley International Airport behind, she drove until she reached Kent. Housing barely 3000 people, it was a village in the guise of a town. Plenty of bed & breakfasts awaited their next customer, but Death was picky. What she was looking for, she didn’t know. A place that called to her, something that could let her pretend that this was home, even if it was just for two days.
But none of the places were right, and there were many. She stopped her car in front of five, entered four, and booked into none. Only when she saw The Lazy Cat, a picturesque white-painted house sitting on a tidy front lawn, framed by oak trees and adorned with copious overgrown flower pots in front of beautiful stained glass windows, did she finally arrive. She parked her car on the other side of the street, her eyes never really leaving the building.
Exiting the car, she grabbed her light travel bag, crossed the street and walked up the steps of The Lazy Cat. True to its name, the first thing she spotted upon entering the B&B was a fat black cat snoring on the staircase leading to the upper floors. The owner, a thin blonde with a charming smile, welcomed Death and promptly began to talk about the weather. Whether she didn’t notice that Death wasn’t answering or whether she didn’t care, Death really couldn’t say. She just zoned the woman out, nodding and smiling as she signed the booking sheet (with a fake name, of course). When all the paperwork was taken care off, the proprietor took the travel bag out of Death’s hand and carried it upstairs for her. She showed her to her room, one facing the backyard, and then handed her a list of the town’s activities. Left her to her own devices, Death exhaled and began to unpack.
By now it was five in the afternoon, and Death ran herself a bath. There were plenty of colourful bath salts to chose from, and a wide array of herbal lotions to spoil her skin rotten. Death chose lavender bath salts, really hot water, and pulled the dog-eared paperback from her small traveller’s bag. Why she liked Jane Austen so much, she couldn’t say, but she never travelled without one of her novels. This time, she had brought Mansfield Park, which wasn’t her favourite, but she didn’t want to risk reading Sense and Sensibility the one crucial time too many. No, there needed to be some time between each re-read, to forget some things and look forward to others.
After her bath, Death once again donned her garb of inconspicuous cashmere and set out to take an early dinner. She followed the B&B owner’s advice and went to Thunder Strikes Twice, a family run restaurant three streets away. The place was packed, but Death always knew how to garner the right attention and eschew the wrong. The Maitre, a tall attractive man with unruly brown hair, guided her to a small table in the back, and made a move to hand her a menu.
She waved it away. “I’ll have your house wine, red, a steak, rare, and some country fried potatoes. No salad, but some cooked vegetables would be nice. For dessert, I’ll take whatever you recommend.”
He blinked, nodded, and disappeared into the kitchens. Death leaned back into her chair. Men were all the same. You just needed a firm hand with them, and they would do exactly as told. If only Doom would understand that, but her friend had always been a bit on the soft side. It was why their business partnership was destined to fail, and failed it had. Epically. The two women had been friends even as little girls, both born to bored fathers and incapable mothers. Granted, Doom’s mother hadn’t been incapable as much as terminally sick, but in the end, it all amounted to the same, didn’t it? Doom and Death set up their business once they completed their college degrees (Criminology for Death, and Forensic Science for Doom). They spent six years making a hell of a lot of money, and then Doom, soft, silly Doom, fell in love with one of their marks.
As far as everyone else in their business was concerned, Death took out Doom and her lover in a tidy showdown that left no evidence whatsoever, but the truth was of course quite different. Doom and the former mark left the States and moved away - if the last e-card (or rather the IP-address of the sender) was to be believed (and Death was always a bit wary of that sort of thing), Doom had retired to Argentina, where she and her lover ran a small farm. Now, it was a bit difficult to imagine posh Doom picking up after a herd of cows, but then again, Death found imagining her anywhere but by her side tricky.
Death finished her contemplations on Doom’s current place of residence at the same time as her steak. A server took away her plate, and five minutes later, a woman whose enviable cleavage threatened to pop the buttons of her chef’s shirt served her a plate of steaming strawberry pie with pink ice cream melting on its side. Death smiled, showing all her pearly white teeth.
“This looks lovely, thank you.” The chef matched her smile and Death caught her grinning at the Maitre as she walked back to the kitchen. The tall man shrugged his shoulders as if to say “she wasn’t as nice to me”. Maybe she had been a bit silly; she should have let him bring her a menu and recite the recommendations. Now there was a chance that he might remember her. Death didn’t want to be remembered, not unless she made people do it. Finishing up her pie in record time, she pushed her chair back and left the money on the table (the tip was good enough for her not to appear mean, but not so big as to etch her into their memory even more).
She was paying for this little trip out of the expenses account she had set up for a new client of hers. She knew little of that customer, other than she was an angry woman who wanted to get rid of an old boyfriend. Not the sort of thing Death usually lowered herself to: she preferred politics to romance, always had. Now, that job with the Argentinian ambassador in Brussels, that had been fun. She almost stopped dead in her tracks: why was it that everything today came back to Argentina? The steak, Doom, the ambassador? If Death never had to hear a single word about Argentina ever again, then she would count herself a lucky woman.
Walking back to The Lazy Cat, she pondered what had led her to accept the new job. Well, tentatively accept it. Until she had done a lot of background checks on both mark and client, she would not fully commit to it. She was too professional for this sort of thing. The one big snafu with Doom and her lover boy had been enough, thank you very much.
Her newest mark was the owner of an antique’s shop in Redding, home of Mark Twain. He was thirty-seven years old, owned the house in which his store was located, and had inherited another one in California when an elderly aunt passed away. Death smirked. On paper, that was how she had obtained her own place on the Bahamas. Only amateurs left no paper trail whatsoever: the trick was to leave one that nobody would ever doubt because it was so perfectly ordinary. Trick of the trade.
When she entered the B&B, she found the proprietor by the small escritoire that served as a front desk. She was sorting through some brochures, her pale brows knitted in concentration.
“Excuse me,” Death began, most winning smile already on her lips, “I need a road map of Connecticut, could you help me with that?”
The other woman’s head snapped up. “Oh, hi, didn’t hear you come in! Yes, yes, of course, I’ll fetch one for you!” What felt like three seconds later, she returned, map in hand. “Here you go.”
“Thank you, Mrs. - I apologise, I must have forgotten your name.” Damn. That wasn’t like herself. Death prided herself on her memory. She really did need a holiday.
“Shields, Serena Shields. And never mind, you were so knackered when you came in, and I just prattled away at you. My husband always used to tell me that I talk too much, but you know, I really don’t think he minded. Anyway, there’s your map, Ms. Dee. If you need anything else, please let me know.”
Death nodded and smiled and started up the stairs. So the proprietor was a widow. Interesting. She didn’t look old enough for that. How old might she be, 26, 27? Doom had always been much better estimating people’s ages, as with many things, her instincts were almost always correct. Sometimes Death had teased her partner that she must be a psychic, but then the whole thing with this dastardly journalist had happened, who just wouldn’t have the decency to let himself be shot, and now Doom was in Argentina herding cattle and being in love, and Death had to make do by herself.
***
Over the years, Death had unlearnt to sleep in. It didn’t matter which time zone she was in (and due to her profession, she’d been in many), she always rose at six sharp. Her mother would have liked that, her useless daughter rising with the sun every day, but Death hadn’t spoken to the woman since she left for college years ago. So there was no one to pat her on the back when she found herself under the shower at 6.05, and blow-drying her hair ten minutes later. A little make-up, discreet lipstick, and a small diamond ring on her left middle finger, and Death was almost ready to go. Donning a light grey sweater (again, cashmere, of course) and a pair of jeans and ballet flats, she checked her reflection in the mirror before grabbing her purse and heading down at 6.35.
The front room was empty, the escritoire unattended, and there was no coffee to be found anywhere. Death sighed. She needed her morning coffee. When had the perky widow said breakfast would start? She racked her mind, but her memory failed her for the second time in as many days.
Luckily, the B&B’s brochure was in easy reach. Death flipped it open, and there it was: “The Lazy Cat will provide you with a rich breakfast to start your day! Come find it in the cozy breakfast room, starting 7.30.” Great. Unwilling to wait for another hour, Death made her exit. Somewhere in Kent, she would without a doubt find a diner willing to sell a pretty woman some coffee at 6.35 on a Saturday morning. And if not, she could either steal some or hit a gas station, whichever would be faster.
Turned out, there was no diner, but a gas station with a 7-Eleven right outside town. Death bought one coffee in a paper cup, then thought better of it and added a thermos mug (ON SALE! ONLY TODAY FOR $6.99) and had that one filled up too. After filling up her car and buying the morning paper, she cast a cursory glance on the map Mrs. Shields had provided and hit the road again.
Kent and Redding were only 35 miles apart, and this early in the day, the roads were empty. The rental car was nice enough, it had a radio and an AC, even though the latter wasn’t really a necessity in early autumn Connectictut. The weather was still nice, the leaves just about to change colour, and the temperature a solid 70°.
With the sun shining into her face, Death was actually happy to have brought some sunglasses. She’d picked them up as a birthday gift for Doom a while ago, but when she realised that they wouldn’t see each other again, as in ever, with Doom allegedly being dead and all, she begun to use them for herself. Not the model she would have picked out had she realised that they’d be sitting on her own nose, but they were nice enough. Chanel, they were. Doom loved Chanel. Doom loved all things expensive and classy, except for that journalist, who was neither.
Pressing her foot more heavily against the accelerator, Death kept her eyes on the road and her mind on her friend. The job should have been so easy. The journalist had been working on some ground-breaking story about the mafia, and the mafia wanted him to stop. Simple as that. They’d contacted D&D, and because December was always a busy month in their business and they had another job going at the same time, Death and Doom had decided to divide and conquer. Death chose the jewellery theft in Amsterdam, and Doom took on the little matter of the journalist in New York. Next thing Death knew was a text from Doom, saying: “I can’t do it, need you here, come ASAP.” So Death had sped the jewellery thing up a little and returned home on the next red-eye, fully expecting the journalist to be protected by the FBI and perhaps the CIA too. Always nasty when those two worked together, always. Luckily, it didn’t happen all too often.
Instead, she found the journalist in their flat, making Doom some breakfast. Fried bacon. She hadn’t been able to eat any since.
“I- what on earth is he doing here, D?”
The man put the pan down and grinned. “D? What does that stand for?” Death gave him a quick once-over. He was attractive enough with all those wild blonde curls and sharp blue eyes, but no man, no matter how attractive, was worth risking everything for. She eyed the heavy iron pan in his hand, and wondered if she could wrench it from his hand and get enough leverage to knock him out cold. Unless she was very much mistaken, and she seldom was, the chances were pretty damn good.
Sensing the danger, Doom shook her head, told him to shut up and reached for Death’s hand, tugging her out of the kitchen and into the safety of her bedroom.
“D, damn it, the only reason we take marks into our flat is because there is some problem disposing of the body, and even then, they have to be in a bloody body bag,” Death hissed under her breath as soon as the door was shut behind them.
Standing still and poised, her long black hair as glossy as always, Doom gave Death a long, apologetic look. “I love him,” she said, and Death sank down onto the bed. This was bad. This was really, really bad.
“You barely even know him,” she answered, but it sounded feeble even to herself. Counting through the many rules Doom had violated by bringing him here, she regained some of her composure. Her voice turned cold, analytical. “You don’t know who he is or how many people he’s told about you.” She shot Doom an accusatory look, but Doom didn’t even have the good grace to wince. Death continued in clipped tones. “And more importantly, you don’t know how many other people might be after him and are therefore already on their way to us because you brought him here.”
“Two months of observation, and two weeks in here, in person. I know him. I love him,” Doom answered and a sinking feeling of fear spread through Death’s belly. No word about the risks, the danger. No pleas to not tell him about Doom’s job, the way she’d found him.
The other shoe dropped. “Does he know what you are? What we are?”
She nodded.
“You told him?” Death was aghast. They were truly and utterly fucked, unless she thought of something. Quickly.
“He’s smart, he figured it out.”
“Good for him,” she answered and reached under the bed, almost on autopilot, retrieving a small semi-automatic. Now where was the silencer? Groping under the bed, her hands came up empty. Well, a pillow would do. Now she just needed Doom to shut up and stay in here for two to three minutes, tops.
“D, don’t! Didn’t you hear what I said?”
Meeting Doom’s pleading violet eyes, Death had to fight the urge to shoot her partner instead of their mark. How could Doom be so sentimental, so stupid? So blind? “You told him who we are, what we do. You brought him here. He could be the Holy Father himself and I would have to shoot him. You know that.”
“You’re not even Catholic,” Doom shot back, making Death smile.
Still, she didn’t put the gun away but unlatched the safety instead. “True.”
“You need to make us disappear.”
Death frowned. They were almost back on track. “I am planning on making him disappear. Into the Hudson, to be precise. Go get the car. I’m going to save my ass and yours, not that you deserve it.”
Doom didn’t move. It would be much harder with her in the flat, but Death would find a way to rid them of this problem. She just needed to be fast: he could be calling the police as they spoke. They were wasting time, valuable time.
Doom moved towards her and reached out for the gun. Her voice was sad. “You know what I mean.”
Death paled. “No.”
“Please. Please, as my friend. Make us disappear.”
And so Death had, and the mafia had been happy, and Doom had been happy, and bacon boy had been happy. The only person who was not happy was Death herself, who suddenly found herself without a partner and perhaps even more importantly, a friend. She had known Doom for such a long time; they’d known each other when they still went by their real names, Raye and Mina, two personalities they’d shed a long time ago. Well, Death had. As it turned out, Doom hadn’t and was know once again known as Raye. Raye, the cattle herder. Raye, the idiot.
Time flew by as Death drove towards Redding. Both coffees were long since gone, and when she passed the big road sign that cheerily welcomed her to Redding, the clock had just struck seven-thirty.
Knowing that no antique shop was likely to be open that early, Death parked her car in front of a friendly looking diner. It even had a little bell that chimed when she pushed the door open, and she found herself a seat by the window. After placing an order for more coffee and a cherry danish, she opened the paper she’d brought. She read through every single page, always looking for some sign of actions from one of her trade, but the world was more occupied with finance and stock markets and baseball these days than with people or paintings disappearing. This month was very quiet.
Being a slow reader, it took Death almost two hours to finish the paper. When she did, she paid for her food, and made her way to the antique shop whose address she had memorised. It was a fifteen minute walk, and with each step, Death felt herself relax. It was pretty here. She liked Connecticut, all the warm colours and the harmless, little people. Perhaps she ought to sell the house on the Bahamas and buy one with a white picket fence somewhere around here. Of course, it was unrealistic. In small towns such as Kent and even in bigger ones as Redding, people would pay attention to her comings and goings, would ask questions once they’d gotten used to her and saw past the shield of cashmere.
No, if she really wanted to live in a place like this, live a life like this, she’d have to give up her job. A small, niggly voice in the back of her head told her to do just that, that it wasn’t the same without Doom anyway, and there was a point in life when she should go antiquing to go antiquing, and not to scout potential marks, but Death had always been good at ignoring the voices, even her own. The only one she could never ignore was Doom’s, but tough luck, Doom was gone and would never return. Happy cattle branding, she thought with derision and new-found tension in her shoulders.
The antique shop was open when Death finally walked up its steps. Again, there was a chirpy bell, announcing her arrival to whoever was inside. What was it with small towns and this need to know when someone arrived? What about the element of surprise? Coming to think if it, it was a small wonder that The Lazy Cat didn’t have one of those annoying bells. Maybe it was broken.
The small entrance room of the antique shop was lined with bookshelves, so Death’s first impression was having stepped into the wrong place. It looked like a library, an old library. All the books’ spines were brown or yellow or musty green, and Death found herself reaching out to them almost involuntarily. Her eyes flew over the spines, taking in titles printed in faded golden letters. On the third shelf to her right, she found Sense & Sensibility. It looked nothing like her own flashy paperback edition; instead, it was solemn and serious and her fingers closed around it and pulled it off the shelf. All thoughts of lampshades and marks forgotten, she began to search for other editions and titles. Persuasion was two shelves down, and another edition of Sense and Sensibility pressed right next to it. She pulled both books out and added them to the one she was holding in her left hand.
Another hand suddenly came into her line of vision, reaching for the shelf above her head. She turned around and came face to face with a tall man. He smelled of soap and detergent and just a hint of cologne.
“I believe you would like this one as well,” he said formally, and handed her the book he’d pulled off the shelf. Pride and Prejudice, she read as she took it from his hand. He had long, graceful fingers. No wedding band.
“Thank you, I do,” she answered and gave him a little smile. He didn’t smile back, but his green eyes were friendly behind the wireless glasses he wore. Dressed in brown corduroy paints and a soft and worn-looking blue jumper with leather patches on the elbows, the collar of a blue-checked shirt peeking out underneath, he didn’t look anything like he had in the picture the client had sent her. In the picture, he’d worn a suit and looked cold and unfriendly. In the picture, he’d looked like he didn’t give a damn about the red-haired woman clinging to his arm. In the picture, he’d looked like her next paycheck.
In his shop, he looked like the stained glass windows of The Lazy Cat, the Sunday morning smell of fried bacon, the pleasant feeling of turning the pages of an old book. She swallowed.
“I’m thinking of buying a house in Kent,” she found herself saying and not lying, “and I need a lampshade or two.”
*** The End ***