Kiss Me Deadly: Tales of a Paranormal Romance

said. “Manny and I debated letting you in on the plan, but couldn’t risk Amie catching wind of it, lest she elope and evade capture. Which, by the way, was brilliant salvage work. Simply brilliant.”

He handed Velvet the pink envelope from the robe of his pocket. Inside folded twice was the letter from Manny.

Dear Howard,

You’re quite right. This girl is a master of manipulation. In our short time together she has attempted, on no less than two occasions to determine the whereabouts of our keys. No doubt to unleash her fellow banshees in our cellar. A most heinous criminal, who I have no doubt in my mind, Velvet and Nyx—as Nick is sometimes called—will be able to find out and dispatch. I pray for the safekeeping of your salvage team and your missing undertaker. Let’s hope that all shall come to their just rewards in a timely fashion.

Sincerely,

Jayne

Velvet slipped the note back into its envelope. “You know, I thought this was a love letter.”

Howard chuckled briefly and then waved a quick good-bye.

“You know what?” Nick whispered in her ear. “He didn’t deny it.”

And he hadn’t.

The Hounds of Ulster BY MAGGIE STIEFVATER

This is not my story.

My name is Bryant Black. I’m nineteen years old, I worship Paddy Keenan (you don’t know who he is, and I’m okay with that) and I don’t embarrass myself on the guitar. I lift weights, I like to think I am moderately talented with my tongue (if you take my meaning), and around my left bicep I have a tattoo of the Ouroborous—a snake eating its own tail. I consider myself pretty interesting, although I’m a bit on the biased side of the department.

But this story still isn’t about me. Nobody’s interested in the ones that got away.

This story is about my best friend, Patrick Sullivan.

(I miss him, still.)

* * *

This is the scene: we are seventeen and we are going to change the world. Sullivan—no one who knows him worth a damn calls him Patrick, which is his father’s name and his grandfather’s name and, if he is nothing else, he is not his father nor his grandfather—has his fiddle and I have my guitar named Cú Chulainn and we are punk Irish gods in our D.C. suburb.

I should tell you about Cú Chulainn because, like most things that are cool, you probably haven’t heard of him. Cú Chulainn means “the hound of Culain” but most people called him “The Hound of Ulster”—not that you care, but that’s okay. In Irish legend, he was a mighty warrior who was famous for, among other things, his warp spasms (these are fits of rage). During a warp spasm, Cú Chulainn’d grow so agitated that his body parts would move all around by themselves. He’d get an arm coming out his chest or his eyes wandering down to his neck, his legs all changing sizes and shapes, his skin boiling, and then he would go out and kill his enemies.

Must’ve been some pretty freaky shit to behold. Can you imagine pissing off some massive Irishman, and right before he kills you, you can literally see his balls in his eyes?

Some days, being an Irish punk god in D.C. is not the easiest thing in the world, and on those days, I wish that a warp spasm was in my future.

Okay, see, that. This is the sort of thing I used to say casually. That I’d like a warp spasm or a lucky charm or a bolt of lightning to strike mine enemy to the ground. The usual turns of the phrase. But now, I’m more careful. You never know when you might get what you wish for. But back then, when it was me and Sullivan against the world, I hadn’t learned that yet. Seventeen is criminally younger than nineteen, and I knew everything I needed and nothing about using what I knew.

But like I said, we are seventeen, we are gods, and we are slowly taking over the hearts and minds of D.C. with wickedly fast reels and power chords. Oh, I know you are doubtful, but that is because you haven’t heard Sullivan on his fiddle. When Sullivan plays a sweet set of jigs, girls’ clothing literally melts off. It’s pretty fantastic. There is no one that can bend a tune like him in fifty miles. A hundred. Nobody this side of Baltimore, anyway, and definitely no one down all the way to Richmond. I think it’s a fact that his has the fiddling crown pretty much sewn up for the tri-state area, and it’s not just me that thinks so. To hear Sullivan play is to have a story to take home and tell your friends.

I know no one sees me when we are playing together, even if I did use a Sharpie to draw a gnome blowing fire on my guitar, but I’m okay with this. I am utterly confident in my Irish punk guitarist status, and a good guitarist knows when to hot dog and when to just stand back and support the wickedness that is your best friend’s musical wizardry. And let me tell you, there is nothing sweeter in this world than the moment when it is the two of us on some greasy stage of some open mic night, him leaning toward me and me leaning toward him, and we are riffing off each other, Cú Chulainn howling with electric fury and Sullivan’s unnamed fiddle singing high above it. Together we are so much more than either one of us is alone.

I never thought the music was dangerous.

* * *

Should I back up and tell you about us, or should I tell you about Them? I don’t know how long they were listening to us. Months before we earned our place at Mullen’s, I think. Way before Sullivan applied to Julliard, that’s for sure.

Ha, look at me, even now. I still can’t bring myself to say what They are—just this word, so coy: Them. I can’t name Them. Not out loud. I know that They hate the word we use, that hearing it spoken infuriates them. And fury is a terrible thing when They have it. But I should be able to say it, now, with impunity. They have no interest in me. Not any more.

So here it is. This was all because of the—

I still can’t bring myself to say it.

* * *

Let me tell you about Sullivan’s dad, the one Sullivan was so sure he wouldn’t be. Patrick John Sullivan II, or P.J. as he was known. Sullivan’s mom told me once—oh, she was a good one for talking, ’specially with one or two drinks in her, she was hilarious, if platinum blond, fifty-year-old women saying stuff they shouldn’t is your idea of a good time—that Sullivan’s dad grew up so poor that his house back in Ireland didn’t even have a real floor, just a dirt one. I Googled that shit, because I didn’t think that people still had dirt floors in this century. Because even though Sullivan’s father looks old as a block of rock (they’d had Sullivan really late), he was definitely born sometime in the twentieth century. Dirt floors seem pretty feudal (now there is an adjective you don’t get to use very much). And Ireland is not exactly the African bush. But Google supported Sullivan’s mom’s story, so dirt it was. Sullivan’s dad, had officially been dirt-poor.

Sullivan’s mother told me that back then, they were superstitious. They put out bowls of milk for luck and tucked iron nails in their pockets when they had to walk out on Midsummer’s night. And there was all this stuff about things you threw over the threshold on the New Year’s Eve and places you just didn’t go because it was not done. I always thought all the superstitions were sort of cool. I mean, what did they think was going to happen?

“Bad luck,” Sullivan’s mom—her real name was Dolores—said. “Or worse. Probably worse.”

Definitely more intriguing than terrifying. There is a fairly recent slip jig I know—it’s a pretty tight slip jig, from the fifties—that was supposedly given to the musician by the ... I can’t say it. I still can’t say it. Anyway, he said he didn’t write it. He said it was given to him. And I have to admit, I was attracted to that idea. I mean, sublime music handed over by supernatural creatures? You don’t have to be a punk Irish god to appreciate the coolness of that.

But Dolores Sullivan, platinum blond businesswoman of the future, doesn’t believe in any of that stuff, now. There are no bowls of milk or upside-down horseshoes over her doors or open scissors hanging from strings. There