The Book of Bart Read online

  I shrugged. “Sure. Maybe it will freak her out, make her think a ghost is calling.” The idea of messing with this Vixen’s mind felt too enticing. “Definitely call her.”

  Sam hit dial and held the phone up to her ear as I waited. After a few seconds, she ended the call. “Disconnected number.”

  “Of course.” Things would be too easy, otherwise. “Check his photos. Maybe she’s in there.”

  Sam went to the main menu, then over to photos. We both screamed at the same time. The first picture featured Casey, completely naked and posing like a weightlifter for the camera. The catch? Casey probably couldn’t lift a toothpick. His blotchy skin needed a tan. He reeked of nerd. Why did the football idiots like him? Probably pity.

  Sam dropped the phone and covered her eyes. “That’s disgusting.”

  I picked the cell up. “Your virgin eyes can’t take the sight?”

  “No. It’s inappropriate. Just please look for me?”

  I laughed and pointed at her. “You admitted you have virgin eyes.” I flipped through the photos. “You need to see this one.”

  I shoved the phone in her face, showing her a picture of Casey dressed like He-Man, blue thong underwear and all.

  “Gross.” She ran into the kitchen. “I’m not coming back in there until you’re done.”

  “Fat load of fun you are.” I could hear her whispering a Hail Mary to herself. What a weenie. “There’s no need for that. You’re not going to Hell because you saw a picture of a kid in a He-Man outfit.”

  “So you say,” she called out from the kitchen.

  I scanned the photos, but didn’t come across anything we could use. Back at the picture of the kid doing his best Masters of the Universe imitation, I noticed a hand on his leg. Wrapped around the thumb was a black ring in the shape of a snake. “Interesting.”

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “Either come in here or go outside. I’m not talking to you through a wall or while you’re chanting Hail Mary.”

  She walked into the room. I covered the part of the image of Casey with my fingers. The last thing I needed was Sam running out of the house screaming like her hair caught on fire.

  Sam studied the image. “Is that all we have? A ring?”

  I nodded. “The thumb might not belong to the mystery lady, but chances are it’s her. I don’t know who else would be taking pictures of Casey like this.”

  “Maybe it’s a special ring?”

  “Yeah. Or maybe she got it out of a cereal box.” I snorted.

  Sam pointed at the cell. “Send the picture to your phone. Maybe your friend Remy will recognize it.”

  “It’s a start.” I texted the photo to myself and tossed the phone on the floor.

  Sam rushed to pick up the cell. “We need to put this back where we found it. I don’t want his mom knowing someone broke into her house during her son’s funeral.”

  I pointed at the broken window in the back door. “Did you forget about that?”

  “Fudge.” Sam dropped the phone on the floor.

  We met Josh at a Starbucks to find out what he’d learned.

  “Not much,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “That figures.”

  Josh glared at me. “It’s not like I didn’t try, you Hell spawn. The kids pretty much just texted each other back and forth after the service. Some even did it during.”

  Speaking of which… I showed him the photo we’d lifted from Casey’s phone. “Did you see this anywhere?”

  Josh looked away and stuck out his tongue, disgusted. “C’mon, man. It was a funeral. Nobody walked around dressed like He-Man.”

  “I’m talking about the ring, smart guy. Did you see that anywhere?”

  Sam took a sip from her coffee. “We think it belongs to our mystery girl, or at least someone who may be able to point us in the right direction.”

  Josh took the phone from me and studied it. He used his hand to cover Casey’s crotch area. “No, I didn’t see it.”

  “Did you at least talk to people or eavesdrop? Do you have anything of use for us?” I asked.

  “I didn’t get any names. One of his friends did mention Casey seeing someone.” Josh took a bite from his lemon pound cake. “But they didn’t have a name or anything. Just that whenever he talked about her, he’d refer to her as Vixen.”

  “Do you know who said that? Did you get a name?” Sam asked.

  Josh shook his head as he swallowed some coffee. “I guess if you showed me his Facebook picture I could point him out, but that’s it.”

  I leaned back in my seat. I hated wild goose chases. Tracking down leads one by one? Following the trail of bread crumbs? Boring. If this Vixen indeed wanted the Shard of Gabriel, chances were she’d have it in her possession by the time we found her.

  “We need to go to school,” I said. “For real. Not just for a visit. Like undercover.”

  Sam and Josh looked at me, each with one eyebrow raised.

  “I just graduated last year,” Josh said. “Took me four years to get out of there. You think I want to go back?”

  Josh actually finished high school in only four years? Interesting. Truly an astonishing achievement.

  Sam held up her hand. “I second that. Especially after what you told me.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Sam waved him off. “You don’t want to know. Trust me.”

  “Well, chances are Vixen is at the school, so if we play a little game I like to call common sense, that’s where we should look for her.” I ran my hand over my tie. “Besides, she might seek out someone as attractive as myself on her own to fill the void left by Casey.”

  Josh spit his coffee out on the table.

  “It’s true,” I said. “Aside from the obvious good looks, I’m new, seemingly don’t know anybody there… it would be easy for me to get in good with her and find out if she’s the one after the Shard.”

  “What about me? She could come after me,” Josh said.

  “Please. A giant, bald, toothless whore wouldn’t come after you.”

  “I don’t know,” Josh said, taking a sip from his coffee. “I think your mom would like me just fine.”

  I mock-laughed at him. “That’s original.”

  Sam played with her coffee cup. Clearly, the gears in her head were churning. “You’re right.”

  “I know I am. Nobody with an IQ above three would touch him.”

  She glared at me. “Not that. We need to go to school.”

  called the only person I knew in Raleigh old enough to pass as my father to enroll us at Frady-McNeely. My henchman, Quincy. He also hadn’t tried to kill me yet, which I considered a plus. At fifty-seven, he’d served me for over thirty years, and maintained my residence here in Raleigh when I got put away. A long, skinny fellow with thinning hair and glasses, Quincy and I came to our arrangement when he fell in love with a woman way out of his league and needed help landing her. The guy knew enough to make sure the deal wouldn’t blow up in divorce a few years down the road, but not enough that I didn’t get to make sure his kids wound up a couple of first class screw-ups.

  “So… How are the kids?” I asked as he met us in the faculty parking lot in front of the school. We’d been waiting fifteen minutes for him. Sam, ever the good girl, picked us up well before school began.

  He shook his head. “Terrible.”

  I laughed. I assumed that meant they were either into drugs, in jail, or both. I lit a cigarette.

  Quincy glared at me, but didn’t protest. “I want you to fix them. Call it an even swap for getting you three into this school.”

  I exhaled. “I’ll see what I can do, but you know I’m in the doghouse with the powers that be right now, don’t you?”

  “That’s never stopped you before. I have faith.”

  Faith. Having faith in me was about as misguided as having it in the man upstairs.

  I raised my head, then took a big whiff of privilege. The odor felt raw against my nostrils. Usual
ly it takes years of glad-handing to get into a place like this, but thanks to a generous bribe in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars, courtesy of me, we were admitted in the middle of the school year with zero red tape.

  “Remember, you’ll try to do something about my kids?” Quincy asked.

  I nodded. “Sure. I’ll at least see if I can get them off the whippets and Valium. Not sure I can do anything about their deviant sexual behavior, though.”

  “Just do your best,” Quincy said.

  The bell rang. Time for school. So exciting! The rush of meeting new people to corrupt, hoping for popularity so life would be easier… this place brimmed with souls to corrupt.

  “Thank you for helping us, Quincy,” Sam said. “I’ll make sure your children are okay.”

  I wanted to hug Sam. She’d just filled Quincy with a sense of false hope, especially since any request to “straighten out” his kids would be met with mockery and ridicule by my cohorts downstairs. Probably upstairs too, since the kids were born from a contract Quincy made with Hell.

  Quincy thanked Sam, then drove off. We were quickly swarmed by the most detestable group of humans this side of Nazi Germany: teenagers. Throw in the demons lurking about, taking advantage of their hormone-controlled brains, and the result was quite possibly the worst human experience possible.

  I loved it.

  “Why don’t you have a backpack?” Josh asked me.

  I glanced at him sideways. “You think I’m wearing a backpack over this suit? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Sam pulled out her schedule. “Okay, I have history. What do you two have?”

  “I have history, too,” Josh said. “With Kowalski?”

  Sam nodded. “Same class.”

  She waved goodbye and wished me luck as they disappeared into the swarm of moving bodies.

  Looking at my schedule, it seemed I had… oh hello. English with Miss Evans.

  I walked down the hall and into her classroom. She wrote notes about Macbeth on the chalkboard while I entered. “Et tu, Brute?”

  Miss Evans glanced at me and smiled. “Hello, there. This is certainly a nice surprise.”

  A nice surprise, indeed. I double-checked my schedule. “Seems I have the pleasure of being in your class.”

  A kid behind me snickered. I ignored him and focused on Miss Evans.

  She turned to face me, her breasts heaving up and down as she breathed. What made this woman so ridiculously hot? Every male in the classroom had the same clumsy look on his face, myself included. The last time a woman had me so dumbstruck was the fourteenth century. The girl was set to marry this asshole prince. I did everything I could to stop the wedding, which went over real well with the royal court.

  “Have a seat. We’re talking about MacBeth today. Is that all right, Mr. Shakespeare?”

  “Sure. I’ve read it a few times.” In fact, the entire play was my idea. The Bard beat me in a game of cards, forcing me to give him ideas for some of his greatest works―mostly the tragedies―at no charge. I still maintain to this day the piece of fecal matter cheated somehow.

  I unbuttoned my suit jacket and sat down in the middle of the room―the best place to engage the entire class. From this vantage point, I could anger anyone or incite a small riot. My goal today was the latter.

  Class began and Miss Evans introduced me as the new student. Most of the kids didn’t give me a second look, but I heard a few of them laughing about me wearing a suit. Idiots.

  “Lady Macbeth is one fascinating character, if you ask me,” Miss Evans said. “What really makes her worth studying is that she had to suppress her femininity to get ahead in the world she lived in.”

  I scoffed. Audibly.

  “You have a different opinion?” she asked.

  “Lady Macbeth did what she did because Macbeth couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get things done in the bedroom.” I knew this because I’d told William to write her like that.

  Bits of nervous laughter spread throughout the class.

  Miss Evans narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure that’s entirely appropriate, or correct, but please. Continue. I’d like to hear where you’re going with this.”

  “Clearly, Lady Macbeth loved to be in control. And it’s pretty obvious Macbeth himself is a bit, well, conservative in the sack, if not downright incapable. Viagra would have come in handy for Mr. Mac, if you know what I’m saying.” I leaned back in my seat. Yes, that was my grand idea. Have two characters be married where one is a nymphomaniac and the other is impotent. The result? One of the most dramatic pairings in history. “It’s a shame, really, because living in a castle, there were probably all sorts of torture devices Mrs. Macbeth would have loved to use during play time.”

  “Where are you going with this?” Miss Evans asked. Where was I going? William got the idea from me. But I couldn’t say that. “If Macbeth hadn’t been such a prude and taken care of business, Lady Macbeth wouldn’t have had to get her dominatrix on outside the bedroom in more destructive ways and they’d all have lived happily ever after, albeit with slightly rawer nipples.”

  Several kids laughed when I said nipples. Silly children.

  I held up my hands to quiet the crowd. Now that I had everyone’s attention, I needed to put this rant to good use. “What can I say? She’s a vixen of the highest order.”

  “A vixen?” A wry smile crept across Miss Evans’s lips. “It’s an interesting point, Bartholomew. I never looked at it that way.”

  The bell rang and I walked out of the class with the other kids. A girl with a ponytail rushed up to me, cradling her books. She introduced herself as Jenny McPherson. “That was so intuitive what you said in there. Just amazing. I never thought of Lady Macbeth as a sex-starved dominatrix.”

  “Well, I mean, why do you do what you do? It’s for the same reason, right? To get laid?” I said without looking at her.

  The insinuation of sex seemed to make her squeamish. “Not really. I want to get into a good college and be successful and―”

  I stopped and turned to her. “All so you can meet a quality guy to bang, right? Pass those genes of yours on to the next generation?”

  The girl seemed to shrivel. “I guess?”

  “You guess. I know.” I walked down the hallway, leaving the girl to stand there and contemplate becoming a skank. I looked down at my schedule. I had PE next.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  They issued me a ratty pair of shorts that were length-appropriate for a girl, or a guy circa 1965. The gray shirt they gave me to wear had the year 2002 embroidered on it. The thing definitely smelled like kids had sweat in the thing for over a decade. Heinous.

  The best part about PE? Nothing. Demons didn’t need exercise. Today, we were playing badminton. Thing One and Thing Two, aka Clayton and Darrel, took turns smashing birdies into Kyle, the geek these guys bullied back at Casey’s.

  Clayton overhanded a birdie at Kyle, then sneered at me. “Look who it is. The chump.”

  “Chump?” I moved next to Kyle. “People still say that?”

  “We’d call you worse,” Darrel spat out. “But adults are present.”

  I twirled my racket in my hands. “Tell you what. How about me and my buddy Kyle here play you two?”

  Clayton laughed. “You like losin’, do you?”

  “Sure.” I smiled. “And to make it interesting, how about a friendly wager?”

  Clayton and Darrel exchanged glances.

  “You’re on,” Darrel said.

  “Good. If you win, you can shove a racket up our asses. Whichever end you see fit.”

  Kyle’s eyes went wide. “Are you crazy? I don’t want anything shoved up there. Especially by these guys.”

  “Oh ye of little faith,” I said, patting his shoulder. “Trust me.”

  “And if you somehow win? What do you get?” Clayton asked.

  I grinned. “Anything we damn well please.”

  Darrel laughed. “Why not?” He tossed me a birdie. “Yo
u can even serve first.”

  Kyle and I took our spots on the court.

  “You better know what you’re doing,” he said.

  I winked and served the birdie underhanded. Clayton volleyed back, then I hit the birdie with all my strength, pegging Darrel in the eye. He fell to the gym floor, screaming like a little girl.

  “Man up. It’s just a little birdie,” I said. “Kyle here took I don’t know how many from you two and he’s fine.”

  Kyle looked at me, pale as a ghost. I gestured with my head for him to join in.

  “Yeah…Yeah! Take that, sucka,” he said.

  The next thing I knew, we’d pulled ahead of the Things seven to nothing. I made sure Darrel’s other eye got nailed with a birdie on our twelfth point.

  “Stop it,” he cried out. The first eye I’d hit had swollen a little. “That’s cheating. I can’t see.”

  I laughed. “Quit whining.”

  “Bunch of babies,” Kyle said.

  We rattled off eight more points. One more and we won. I really wanted the win to mean something, so I decided to do a little experiment. I served the birdie, then Darrel tried to hit it at Kyle, but I jumped underneath, ready to strike. I swung at the birdie. It disappeared. I looked around but didn’t see it.

  “Point,” Clayton shouted, like he’d just opened a present on Christmas Day. “Point for us.”

  “Holy crap, man,” Kyle said. His mouth hung open at the sight of the birdie stuck in my racket.

  “These rackets suck,” I said, throwing that one off to the side. I went to get another. The PE coach, a paunchy middle-aged man who called himself Coach Mort, stopped me.

  “Hooie, boy, how’d you do that to your racket?” he asked. “I never seen something like that before. You work out?”

  I picked up a new racket. “Steroid suppositories.”

  Coach Mort crossed his arms. “That’s not funny. Steroids are serious business.”

  “Compare Barry Bond’s head sizes from 1990 and 2003,” I called out, jogging back to the game. “And tell me that’s not funny.”

  Clayton served the birdie to me. He hit it high, and this time I wasn’t going to screw up. I steadied myself and swung at the birdie, laying off just enough not to destroy another racket.