Blightmare (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 5)

by A. J. Aalto

  I bobbed a nod. “Yes, sir.”

  “And I want you fueled up an hour before our next workout. Yogurt. Oatmeal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Even if it’s just a bit,” he said, softening his voice. “I understand your stomach is off right now. I get that. Mourning does a number on a body. I’ve been there, Mars.”

  He’d been a mess after losing Neil Dunnachie, his chief deputy, but I'd been so busy trying to save my own ass that I hadn't taken any notice. And, technically, Dunnachie had been lost, found, and then had his reanimated corpse blown up. That was bound to be tough on a guy's best friend. If anyone understood what I was going through right now, losing a loved one to monsters and violence, it was Rob. He’d been a good friend these past few months, refusing to be driven off by my prickly moods and sharp tongue, rolling with the punches both figuratively and literally. He ignored Harry’s wishes when it came to coddling me, sensing I needed to work out hard and push my physical limits, and he fielded calls from Golden, Chapel, and de Cabrera with the same advice: if you want to help Marnie, give her space or throw on your sneakers and run with her. It was pretty much the only way to stay in my life right now unless you wanted to strap on the gloves and spar with me. I kind of felt bad for Harry, who had to listen to the sad and angry litany of my thoughts whenever he wasn't at rest, but I was still mad at him for his part in what had happened. It was complicated and messy, which described my head in a nutshell these days.

  Hood surprised me by asking, “What kind of car’s he driving?”

  My mouth dropped and I was tempted to check Buddy’s car; I hadn’t noticed which one he’d gotten into. Big mistake. Hood knew it, and sucked his teeth in disapproval. “Sloppy, Mars. It’s a truck. Nissan Frontier, silver. Now, if you had had breakfast this morning, you’d be far more alert.”

  I tried to smile wanly for him, but it got lost in a guilty lip shrug and never quite formed. “I'll eat.”

  “It’s a start,” he said. “No more lying to me, got it?”

  “I promise.” It felt like a lie, and my chest tightened involuntarily.

  We were quiet as Buddy’s truck drove past. Neither of us looked directly at it.

  “You don’t want help,” Hood said, fishing out his car keys, “but you got it. You can scare the rest of them off. I ain’t going anywhere. Hear me?”

  That hit home and I felt my cheeks heat up with a healthy torrent of shame. He waited me out until I could manage to sneak a peek at his face; what I found were understanding and determination.

  “Tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Nope. Tuesday’s your day off. See you bright and early, and,” he said, enunciating each syllable seriously, “fueled the fuck up on Wednesday. See ya then.” With that, he turned and walked away to the Hulk-like Hummer in the furthest parking space in the lot, big black gym bag over his shoulder, swinging his keys on one finger.

  I watched him go in silence then checked my texts; two from Chapel regarding stuff he’d cleaned out of my office, and one from Umayma to say she was waiting. For the first time in weeks, my stomach echoed Hood’s sentiment; maybe I should eat something besides coffee and the occasional cookie stuffed under my nose by my Cold Company. The thought of dropping by Claire’s for a small plate of something was erased quickly, however, by the summoning ring of my phone. It was Golden; I let it go to voicemail. I hit the drive-thru for a coffee and two cherry Danishes and sped toward the office.

  Chapter 2

  Umayma Eyasi was waiting for me, arms crossed, at the front door of our office at 226 Waterdown Avenue. Her dark, brooding eyes peeking out from between wisps of flat-ironed hair in a mid-length bob that accentuated her pretty, heart-shaped face silently judged me. I parked in my reserved spot next to the driveway, which I'd claimed with a sign that read, “Witch Parking Only: All Others Will Be Toads.”

  Umayma looked as though she disapproved of my lateness on top of the fact that I hadn’t yet given her a key. The rear of the house had been Batten’s home, while the front rooms were occupied by my office. The back rooms were still full of Batten's meager possessions, some of which he hadn't even had time to unpack. I couldn't deal with them, I wasn't going to make Umayma deal with them, and, much like everything else I wasn't dealing with, I was just going to pretend they weren't there until I could cope, sometime around the fourteenth of never. It was in my calendar and everything, filed under “Nope.”

  Declan Edgar had helped me re-brand my consulting gig as Helping Hands, since my first name for it — Bare Hand Services — was unanimously shouted down for sounding like a skeezy massage parlor, but I still had a brick of BHS business cards that I didn't know what to do with but couldn't bear to throw out. Regardless of what it was called, business was steady enough to warrant a full-time employee. Since I’d kind of murdered her last boss, Jeremiah Prost, in a tomb in Egypt, I felt like I owed Umayma a job; she and I were learning American Sign Language together, but were stuck in the rudimentary stages, since Jeremiah Prost hadn’t cared a whit for what his mute DaySitter might have to say. She couldn’t yet tell me exactly how deep her irritation ran, but I knew; the Blue Sense reported her impatience but lack of surprise, both of them overlaid with the kind of determination that made me want to be anywhere but between her and something she wanted.

  Also not a surprise: the fact that pretty much everyone around me was also impatient but determined to get through shit. I wasn't dealing with the loss of Batten well, and I was getting a pretty solid case of crankypants waiting for the rest of the stages of grief to show up and get their shit together. Waffling back and forth between denial and anger was getting pretty stale, and I was really looking forward to hitting acceptance, and maybe cookies. “Cookies” was the last stage, right?

  I might have asked Umayma if she could See me at the end of my grief, with cookies or not, but it felt like a crude imposition, especially since her Talent was waning with the death of her revenant. Even though he had been a gigantic asshole, that loss was painful and took time to adjust. House Prost was nearly empty, but those revenants who remained were precognitive, and as such, they infused their DaySitters with the Talent of seeing the future. What she had Seen in her own future involved education and success, something she’d never dared hope for while stuck with him. She had also Seen me, and had informed me in her no-nonsense fashion that I was an integral springboard from which she would launch into her own career.

  While Seers tended to ruffle feathers with their ability to tell you how things were going to happen, I found her predictions and demands endearing. Inspiring, even. I was resolved to being involved in any way I could. When I’d accepted, she’d shrugged and walked away, having already known that I would. Our first Friday in the office, I'd shown her The Matrix, and she had knocked over our shared bowl of popcorn laughing when The Oracle had told Neo about breaking the vase. Working with her was like that, except I was the one supplying the cookies that Harry insisted on baking.

  I drained my drive-thru coffee and left the empty paper cup in the car, slammed the door, and went around to the trunk, nodding and saying, “I know, I know, sorry.”

  Umayma was mute but not deaf, and listened to my grumbled apologies nearly every day. I hauled a box heaped with witchcraft supplies out of the trunk. I hadn’t been asked to perform any spells by a client yet, mostly performing simple psychic work that proved to be easy money and kept me occupied but not too overwhelmed. Still, I liked to be prepared. I heaved the box against one hip and closed the trunk, then went to the small cement pad that served as a porch.

  “Have you seen my black tourmalines? I can't find them.” I glanced at her to see her shake her head. “I can’t remember where I put the stupid bag. I can’t make my witch balls without them.”

  Umayma’s lips twisted into a small, lewd smile but she didn’t make a groin-cupping gesture the way Golden or I might have; she wasn’t that comfortable with me yet, but she was getting there.

  I nodded to acknowledge
the smirk and said, “Yeah, yeah. Glass balls. With herbs and yarn and gems. For protection.”

  She did a little yeah-sure nod and the smirk remained. Holding out her arms, she received my box of goodies so I could wrestle with the keys for the front door. The front lock liked to jam and almost always gave me trouble unless I got lucky and put the key in just right to hit its happy place. I tried not to think about what that said, in conjunction with some balls, but it was pretty easy to quash that line of thought; my libido had fucked off to somewhere in the far Arctic and showed no signs of returning anytime soon. The back door was simple to unlock and easy to jimmy in a fix, but it led into Batten’s quarters, and I wasn’t remotely ready to face that yet. I was barely able to deal with my own office.

  I swung the door open and received the scent of the house with my eyes closed, taking a moment to accept the little stab of agony. Batten’s house was old enough to have a historical fragrance of heavily polished wood and aging plaster walls, and under that, it still smelled like the fresh paint we'd applied to an office he’d only lived to use a couple times. To my super-sensitive nose, it also still smelled faintly of his holy water Brut cologne, which had done him absolutely no good in the end.

  Umayma either had no empathy for my moment, or knew I needed to get over the threshold with a bit of help, and bumped my ass with the box as she shoved past me and into the hall.

  “I’m going, I’m going,” I said, mostly to myself. I shook it off and followed her in, swinging the front door shut hard enough to rattle the wavy old glass. I stomped my heavy black boots on the carpet runner to shake off the residual snow and salt.

  March in Ten Springs, Colorado could not decide whether it wanted to try spring on for size yet or was going to let winter linger like an annoying ex. Saturday, the temperature had been a sunny and seasonally-toasty fifty-five; the snow had melted on the streets but not in the shady places under the trees and on the north side of most of the buildings. Sunday had been a mix of cool and cloudy with bursts of sunny promise. Today, as was befitting of a total Monday, the sun had gone back into hiding, as though the change of seasons was a threat.

  Having spent half of January in the Arctic, the deserts of Egypt, and then Nepal, I was okay with the meteorological flip-flopping, as long as I had my new leather jacket on me. I’d chosen it because the severe cut of it seemed to give off a get-out-of-my-way vibe; my puffy pink parka was tucked away in a closet with my equally-adorable Keds and every pair of gloves I owned, and I’d had Harry return Carole Jeanne’s beige wool coat to the Falskaar Vouras by whatever means necessary. I'd kept her pack of menthol cigarettes, but couldn’t have explained why. It seemed important for me to have something of Harry’s ex-DaySitter, so I tossed them in my bedside table drawer to keep them safely nearby.

  Umayma hooked left into my office with the supplies while I went right, into the waiting room, which had been Batten’s office before Harry and I had installed four leather arm chairs and a Lucite table loaded with boring magazines. I went to the black walnut credenza under the front window where I’d set up the espresso machine.

  “First appointment at eleven?” I called out to her. Rather than running in to sign at me or nod, she knocked once loudly on my desk in the other room; we had a “one for yes, two for no,” system going on, in addition to a hundred other little things while we learned together. It was working for us. I fresh-pressed her usual single shot of espresso and three for myself, and opened the credenza door to find my brandy. The bottle was not in its usual spot, tucked between the extra napkins, stir sticks, and boxes of sugar cubes. I shuffled a few things around in a last-ditch search, but suspected Harry’s cold, trickass little fingers had filched it. I was going to have to do the next few hours sober. Ugh. Undead, maturity-enforcing killjoy. If drinking at the office was good enough for a tough-ass P.I. like Mike Hammer, it should be good enough for me.

  I turned, mid-scowl, with our cups to find Umayma standing with her slim arms crossed and her eyes full of unspoken disappointment. “Hey,” I said defensively, “the customers want me fortified by brandy on a day like this, trust me, Maim. Want. Need.”

  She was happy with my use of her preferred nickname, but wasn’t buying my booze-hound bullshit, so I switched gears. “Okay, okay. Who am I seeing today?”

  I knew one of the answers before she even used her thumb and forefinger to make an L on her forehead; this was not the client’s name, but it was Umayma’s opinion. It was my turn to look disapproving, though it was tough not to smile.

  “Mrs. Swerdlow is not a loser. She’s just needy.” We all have our moments, I thought.

  Hazel Swerdlow, no matter how many times I reminded her, simply could not grasp the fact that I couldn’t see into the future. She wanted a precognitive, a Seer. She wanted someone like Umayma, who was entirely uninterested in wasting what remained of her Talent on customers. Me? I can’t see shit. Ever since Bonding with Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt, my undead companion, when I was seventeen, I had inherited his House's rare trait of having two psychic Talents; I could sense psychic vibrations and impressions left on objects, which made me a psychometrist, and I could also pick up how people were feeling, primarily through skin-to-skin contact, but also through strong emotional residue left behind or welling up in people, making me a clairempath. In the lingo of DaySitters, I was known as a Groper-Feeler, but that slang wasn’t going on my business cards any time soon. Maybe if I went back to offering Bare Hand Services, it might be good for that kind of business. Not that giving psychic hand-jobs was going to be a font of deep emotional insights, because desperation and lust and shame were hardly limited or interesting phenomena.

  Mrs. Swerdlow liked to come in once a week to check in. I felt like her pet psychic or, alternatively, her adopted granddaughter. She brought various items for me to Feel, not that they ever revealed much. Sometimes, she brought me bran muffins with dried fruit in them, but they were to eat, or in my case, to pawn off on my new neighbor, Mr. Kujawski. The old bachelor probably needed all the fiber he could get. Once, Mrs. Swerdlow brought a bag of runes that she picked up at a flea market and asked me to cast them and read her future. I had to take two shots of brandy in my espresso before patiently explaining to her that since they weren't my runes, charged in my sacred circle, any reading I did for her would be skewed, not only by everyone who touched them at the flea market, and the company that mass-produced them (they were cheap resin, and were about as authentic as bones as Mr. Buzz was as a boner), but also by her own power.

  She seemed to get a kick out of the idea that she might have powers. The truth was, everybody did, whether they knew how to use it or not. Power, mojo, influence, juju, whatever someone wanted to call it, was just movement of energy, push and pull, recognizing flows and learning to manipulate them. She wanted so badly to see the future in these “bones” that she had imprinted what future she desperately wanted me to report from them. Even if they had been carved from the knuckles of an ancient shaman who'd been DaySitter to the Elder of a line of Seers themselves, she'd tainted them beyond any possible hope. It would have been like taking a Rembrandt and giving it to a class of kindergartners with finger-paints and pinking shears for a week, and then trying to see the original, and this was more like a mass-produced version of Dogs Playing Poker.

  I sighed and made sure the blinds were up and what natural light there was, despite the overcast, fell on my regular client’s preferred chair. Ever since I’d put in the waiting room, she was a Monday morning fixture. Sometimes, she came early and sat there finishing a knitting project. Umayma thought Mrs. Swerdlow was a waste of my time, but I found comfort in her predictability. Umayma also didn’t like me charging Swerdlow money every week for the same, “I can’t help you with that.” So I didn’t. Umayma couldn’t complain about that, though she sure tried. If we got to the point where her appointment was getting in the way of a paying client, we could argue about it.

  I handed Maim a cup as I breezed past into my
office. When I got to the desk, I scanned the appointment book; Harry had been spoiling me rotten with piles of new Moleskine notebooks, and this was a big, black hardcover with soft pages and lovely grey lines.

  “Four clients today? Oof.” I ran my finger down the names. “Swerdlow: basic reading. Boy, wonder what she’s going to bring me today. Three new names?” I glanced up and Umayma nodded in the direction of the laptop to indicate online bookings. “Ramona Ingermanson: psychometry, noon. Beau Boudreaux: missing person query, one o’clock. Carl Esparza: basic reading, three-thirty.”

  I heard Umayma puff air out of her nostrils unhappily and I looked up to see her studying my hair with a critical eye. One of her hands produced a bobby pin and tucked back the turquoise lock at my temple, which was curling disobediently out of my braid, as usual. When it was as tidy as she liked, she went back to sipping espresso and watching my face expectantly.

  “Do I look presentable, mom?” I drawled, not entirely unhappy with her attention. She and I had into fallen into a relaxed truce as we moved about settling in to work together. Umayma had decided part of her job was to take care of me and remind me where my faults and flaws were while Golden and Harry were falling down on that account; my job was to make sure there was nothing standing in her way, including me and my big, dumb mouth.

  Umayma signed almost time so we could practice some of the American Sign Language we’d tackled last week, lifting one upturned hand off the other and then twice tapping her wrist where a watch would be. I signed back “yes,” my fist bobbing like a nodding head, and she left me alone to mentally and psychically prepare for my clients.

  I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk and chose a peppermint basil candle, feeling the need to clear negative vibes. I probably needed one the size of a sequoia, but there was no way that was going to fit on my desk. After lighting it, I let my eyelids fall closed and I softened all the muscles in my face, drawing my thoughts further and further inward until I felt enclosed in a safe, warm bubble. I touched my fingertips together and rested my hands on the edge of my desk, letting my shoulders relax, letting stress drain down my body, imagining it falling through my feet and into the earth to be whisked away. The space between my palms began to stir to life with heat but I settled that; I wasn’t going to need any earth magic rising back into me today. My legs felt restless, even after my long run. I took a slow breath in, paid attention to my body, the twitch in my right thigh, my desire to pull on my earlobe the way Batten had always done when he was soothing himself. Nope. Again, my disobedient thoughts strayed back to him; this mourning shit was hard. I was doing my very best to block it out, but it didn’t seem to be working. I’d be damned if I was going to cry again. My only sob session had been a breakdown in front of Hood on my dock the night I’d come home. I wasn’t about to repeat it. Getting all the frozen snot out of the sleeves of my jacket had taken three washings.