“There’s…” It poked at its forehead with a claw. “Holes? Fuck you, boy, you couldn’t even raise the dead right.”
“I need to know about the deed, not blend in at the mall,” Ledger said. “Talk.”
The thing scratched at its chest. Skin and hair peeled away from splintered bones in wet, scabrous strips. It wiped the mess on itself and stared at Wren.
“I remember you,” it said. “We did business.”
“I gave you a year,” Wren said. He walked over to the fence and boosted himself up onto the top rail. “You gave me a fake.”
The thing stared at him before swinging its lopsided head back toward Ledger. “That’s what you brought me back for? God fuck me, how did you and Abby come from the same sac? I don’t fuck over anything bigger than me. The thing he works for? It’s bigger than me. He got what I got: the deed of ownership to the Skin House.”
“The what?”
Ledger asked the question without thinking about it. Two down. He bit the inside of his cheek in annoyance.
The thing started to answer and glitched out mid-breath. Bell’s swollen eyes glazed over with death, and it spasmed as it dropped to the ground. It ripped a chunk out of its own thigh, twisted into a hunched bend a human back couldn’t manage, like an animal in a trap.
It… hadn’t known the answer? It looked like it had, but maybe that bit of information was in one of the holes. Without the thin skin of what had been Bell there to hold the thing together, it was just hungry and dead.
Ledger didn’t know if that was right or not, and he only had one question left. Repeat himself or try another tack? Before he could decide, he shifted his weight and brought his heel down on a twig. It snapped, and the thing jerked its head up to stare at him. Slaver and pus dribbled out of its muzzle as it gathered itself to lunge again.
“How did you get the deed in the first place?” Ledger blurted out.
That switched Bell back on. It pushed itself up off the ground and staggered on a leg it had done enough structural damage to that it couldn’t support its weight.
“What the fuck?” It looked around and then back at Ledger. “What the fuck? Since when do you come to visit your old man?”
Ledger rubbed his hand over his face. Of course, anything else would be too easy.
“We already had this conversation,” Ledger said. “Just roll with it. You got the transfer deed to the Skin House to give to Wren. I just asked you how. Tell me.”
The thing wiped its nose on its hand. It was a weirdly familiar gesture from the patchwork meat thing with a mouth full of its own skin.
“I’m a simple man,” it said. Lopsided shoulders rose in a shrug. “I got my strengths, and I stick to them.”
“You killed someone,” Ledger said.
“See, that’s what people don’t get. Simple ain’t the same as stupid,” it said as it limped closer to him. “I’m one; you’re the other. Fuck knows how you and Abigail came from the same sac. What do you think I did? Pack me, my cancer, and my colostomy bag up so we could catch the bus to New York? I justhadsomeone killed.”
“Prison really made you turn over a new leaf,” Ledger said dryly.
“It was practically a favor,” the thing said. “She was one of the sad sacks that wrote to me in prison. One of the ones that knew a bit about this shit. She was boasting about some bit of paper she’d found that would be her invite to the big boys’ table, so I figured that if she was dumb enough to tell me, then she was probably dumb enough to tell other people… and if someone was going to kill her for it—”
“I thought you were in a hurry to die again,” Ledger said. “Move it along.”
The thing dragged itself another step forward. It was close enough that Ledger could smell it over the lingering reek of Earl, rot and bones, and the distinct whiff of bad teeth.
“How many questions do you have?” it asked.
“Three,” Ledger lied. “Two left.”
Whatever magic had raised Bell might know better, and Ledger didn’t plan to try and cheat it, but this thing didn’t. It had reset after it fell into the hole where part of it had been, and Ledger had always found it better to keep Bell off balance. The thing looked sour. The blunt human tongue licked at the split roof of the dead canine’s mouth as it leaned back.
“Ask me to go on, then,” he said.
Wren cleared his throat. “You haven’t finished this one yet.”
The thing snapped its teeth at him. One broke off its gum and dropped onto the road.
