by A. J. Aalto
“Do you think Harry wants you to mourn Batten forever, infecting your Bond with all that unhappiness for the next twenty, fifty, a hundred years?” She held up a hand. “I know you put part of the blame on Harry, because, you know, whose fangs, am I right? Whose fucking fangs?” She was speaking like she was reading the script in my brain, and I scowled at her even as the relief of being wholly understood spilled through my veins. “But is it fair to Harry, who must be mourning on his own, stiffly and silently, without your support?”
I studied the floor, since I could no longer look at her face. “Of course not,” I managed.
“I hate to be the one to say this,” Golden told me, “but no one else seems to want to. Hood wants to let you sweat and punch it out. Fine. That’s his part to play. Harry wants to bury his own pain and bundle you up like some dying pet on her last legs. Whatever. I’m probably going to pay for this, and that’s okay. I accept that. Be mad. It needs to be said.” She stood, putting a finger in my personal space, wriggling it to indicate my entire being. “This shit isn’t working. This shit isn’t healthy. And this shit is pissing me off.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, is my mourning getting in the way of your good times?” I snapped.
She spoke over me. “And this? This is selfish. It’s time to get your shit together. You’re stronger than this.”
That stung, and I inhaled sharply but didn’t disagree aloud. She was wrong, though. I wasn’t stronger than this. This was exactly how strong I was right now. I was floundering. I could admit that much. I didn’t see how going to a stupid memorial was going to fix anything, least of all my shattered ego and torn-up waste of a heart. I had never been this low. I didn’t know how to get out and up. That she didn’t understand also hurt, but I pushed it away.
She paused at the office door. “People need you, Marnie. Not just strangers getting a fifteen minute slapped-together psychic reading. Believe it or not, Chapel needs you. I need you. Dammit, Marnie, don’t you think Harry needs you?”
“You’re crossing the line, now. My personal life is my own fucking business,” I whispered, feeling rage roll in to replace shame. “How dare you criticize my private relationship?”
She faced that with one eyebrow arched. “You invited me into your personal life. That’s what friendships are.”
“Then get out,” I rasped, horrified to hear that pop into my mouth but standing behind it, now that it was out. “Get the fuck out of my life.”
She smiled bitterly. “No.” She shook her head. “You don’t mean that. You’re swatting at flies on a hot day. I get it. I’ll leave you alone. I won’t pretend that didn’t hurt to hear, but I'll be back before the funeral in time to hear the apology you owe me. Take care of yourself, Marnie. Please.”
After she left, the tears threatened fiercely but I pulled it together. Was she right? What the fuck was wrong with me? I went to the window to watch her go to her car by the street. She had parked in front of Batten’s empty garage. Chapel had taken Batten’s Bugatti to storage at the low federal building where the PCU was located, to keep the million-dollar car safe. It had once belonged to my Harry. I wondered if Chapel would try to return it; I wondered if Harry would accept it if he did. I wondered how far I'd get if I told Gary I'd take it back to our cabin, or how far into Shaw's Fist I could drive it if I floored the accelerator.
Golden got into her car and sat behind the steering wheel for a moment, fiddling with her GPS, with her phone, texting, fixing her hair in the rear-view mirror while Umayma and the deputy returned from the back yard and went to his cruiser. Golden waited until the cruiser was gone and Umayma had nodded hello and goodbye and returned to the office. Then she burst into tears, slapping a hand over her face to hide her crumpling expression.
My shoulders fell, and I considered running out to talk to her, to babble apologies, to comfort my friend. This wasn't how my life was supposed to be. What had I just done? Had I really told my friend to get the fuck out of my life? Before I could make my stupid, stubborn feet break the trap of pride that kept me stuck by the window instead of running to fix my idiot mistakes, Golden pulled herself together and put the car in reverse. I could see her pursing her lips to exhale slowly, blowing out her unhappiness. Then she was gone.
Zero points: Marnie, I admitted to myself. I respected her opinion enough to consider her words. Was I truly willing to give up all my happiness because Batten betrayed me? Us, I thought. Kill-Notch betrayed all of us. And he’d turned Harry, in the end, into the monster Harry has always tried so hard not to be. And I had been so buried in my own grief that I hadn’t paid a lick of attention to how Harry might be suffering. I hadn’t even let him try to comfort me; I’d fought him at every turn.
My right forearm ached badly under my bandage, almost as much as the sick ache in my chest, and I considered canceling the rest of my day and going home. Only the fact that Harry would be at rest for another four hours kept me from doing so. He didn't need to wake up in a tear- and snot-streaked coffin while I snorfled overdue apologies.
Instead, I busied myself with making another cup of espresso and burned the hell out of it when I wasn't paying attention, turning the normally sweet pick-me-up into a shot of dark bitterness.
I drank it anyway. I deserved it.
Chapter 5
A new head poked into my office just as I was fingering the blinds apart to peek at an old Mercedes Benz parked out front, heavy tint on the windows, and a shadow of a driver in the front. My new client had a long, pimply face with thin lips and darting brown eyes stacked precariously atop a lanky, twitchy torso. He had a tiny soul patch and wore a pork pie hat and shoes that looked like they'd outlasted three septuagenarians' best efforts, and still ended up in a second-hand store. My initial thought was If he offers to play Wonderwall, I'm going to shoot him, backed up by a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with the Blue Sense.
“Is it… is it my turn now?” he asked.
I glanced at the little white owl clock on the corner of my desk. It had somehow become one o’clock. The day really flies when you kill stuff and hammer balls with your forehead, even without dynamiting a friendship as a chaser. I waved him in. He slouched into the room tentatively, hovering by the door in his bulky coat, taking off his gloves and shoving them in his left pocket.
“I, uh, had my driver park at the curb. If that’s not okay, I can tell him to return later?”
“He’s fine where he is,” I said, waving it away as if all my clients had chauffeurs. I stuck my bare hand out. He didn’t take it. He was busy kneading his left hand in his right and watching his fingers, like he might find answers there. I let my arm drop. “I’m Marnie Baranuik, how may I hate you today?” Bitchin’ people skills, Marnie. “Help. How may I help you today?”
He swallowed hard, and I heard his dry throat click. “Hate’s about right. Everyone hates me. You’re supposed to.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I’m done liking people today. Are you Beau Boudreaux?”
“Uh, yes.” The Blue Sense reported: lie. Fake name. Not a big deal. He continued, “Look, I gotta find a missing person while also hiding from her. She’s gonna ruin everything, everything! And I gotta stop her. But she can’t know that I’m going to stop her.”
I watched him circle the room, a mad bundle of nervous energy in an expensive mountain climbing jacket.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” I suggested. He circled some more and my anxiety rose. “Could you maybe sit down and stop stressing me out?”
“I can sit.” He shook his head rapidly. “You won’t feel better.”
“Try me.” I pointed at a chair. He sat. His right knee started bobbing like crazy up and down and his hands twisted in his lap and his tongue swiped his lips. I felt the urge to start pacing. “Right. Get up.”
“Huh?”
“Get out of the chair and pace,” I ordered. When he did, some of my own anxiety fled. This was worse than my clairempathy on overdrive. “What’s all this?” I sw
irled a forefinger at him meaningfully and he nodded that he understood.
“I’m sorry. There’s really nothing I can do about it. I’ll feel better once I’ve… finished this business.” He took a small jar of peanut butter out of his right pocket, and a little white plastic spoon. I said nothing. He twisted off the top and tossed that on the desk, where it landed next to Golden’s tarot deck. He proceeded to dig in as he paced, smacking his lips as he repeated, “Gotta finish this business.”
I felt my eyes narrow, flashing back on my last meeting in the Arctic with the Overlord, and the trickass nonsense ol’ Three-Heads had sent me on. “I’ll have you know, I’ve sworn off demons this year. Are you some kind of peanut-loving hipster demon?”
“What?” His head pulled back, giving the skinny man a double chin under the soul patch. “No.”
“You’re not a demonologist or a black witch?”
“No.” His eyes darted wildly. “I mean, I don’t think so. I’m not trying to be.”
“You’re not on a quest given by a three-headed weirdo, are you? Or a fishy-looking door-to-door bible salesman? He’s got crayon red skin.” I grimaced. “You’d notice.”
“No. Ms. Baranuik, this is personal.” His spoon scraped around and around in the peanut butter jar but he didn’t take it out to lick it. “I made a mistake, and I need help. I can’t fix what I’ve done.”
“Boy, do I know those feels, bro,” I said.
“I don’t even know where to start. Maybe it’s too late. She’s loose. But I can prevent her from causing too much damage.”
“Who’s loose? What damage?” I scowled. “I feel like I’m missing a lot.”
“I gotta explain the whole thing, or you won’t believe me.” His pacing stopped for a moment and his eyes seemed to glitter. For a moment, I wondered about lycanthropy, but only because it was top of mind due to my wound. This wasn’t the gleam of lycanthropy in Beau’s eyes, it was oily fear. “I had this dream, right…”
Any other client who’d started a conversation with I had this dream usually faced my barely controlled eyeroll. Dreams were almost never prophetic. But this guy. My gut was telling me he was tainted by something. I used to ask myself WWBD, or “what would Batten do?” I had stopped asking that because clearly Batten was a backass douchegoat who hadn’t known sense from insanity. What would newer new and improved Marnie do? Step one: gather intel.
“Okay, Beau,” I said, using his first name and putting on what I thought of as an SSA Chapel smile; amiable, non-threatening, with an inspiring calm. I’d been practicing in the mirror and I thought I was getting good at it. Opening a Moleskine notebook, I jotted his name and details. “In your own time, tell me everything you think I need to know.”
“I kept dreaming of this girl. This woman. She was—” He choked off his words and started digging at the jar again, slurping the spoon clean of peanut butter. “I mean, perfect, ya know? Just my type. She wanted me to become a famous musician and then she’d come from my dreams to reality, and we’d be together forever.”
I felt my flesh crawl. “Description?”
“Short, like you. But she’s pretty, not plain.” He flapped his spoon vaguely at my face to indicate what plain was. “Really pretty.”
I stared at him sourly, which probably didn't do my hotness quotient any favors, but it kept me from smacking him upside the head with my notebook. “Maybe we should discuss people skills later, Beau. I know they don’t come naturally to everybody. Could you be more specific about her description?”
“Oh, uh, dark haired and dark eyed, and her lips were full and soft and did this seductive sort of half smile that made my knees weak.”
“Uh huh. And how big was her tail?” I asked, thinking mermaid.
Beau’s spoon stopped. “She wasn’t a monster, Ms. Baranuik.”
Oh, I beg to differ. “Beau, while most of us don’t intend to use the word ‘monster’ in a derogatory way, some cryptids feel…”
“And she wasn’t a figment, either, before you say they were just dreams.” His bulbous eyes widened further, though I’d never have thought that possible when I’d first seen him. I saw several nearly faded bruises high on one cheekbone that I hadn’t immediately noticed. “I went to this pawn shop — Footer and Solmes' Fine Goods, that’s why I came to Ten Springs — and found the trumpet she wanted me to play. It was there, just like she promised.”
My scalp prickled, while the Blue Sense pricked me with the distinct impression that he had just told a half truth. “Trumpet?”
“What’s the big deal, right? A trumpet.”
“Did you bring it? I'd like to examine it. I might be able to get some impressions that would help.”
“No!” he cried, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “It’s a bad trumpet. It’s not safe.”
“But you bought it anyway,” I noted, mostly to calm him down and try to keep him focused. I wasn't sure how a trumpet could be dangerous, unless the mouthpiece was made of plutonium or the spit valve didn't work and the whole thing was gummed up with some kind of killer mold or something. Or maybe it only played Taps or Reveille, instead of some bitchin' Count Basie.
“I mean, it was all so weird, but exciting. My dream girl coming true. I’d have done anything by then, you understand. She had me bewitched. It’s black magic.” His voice wavered, and he nodded to shore himself up. “Stalked my dreams with black magic. She said I had to sign the ownership paper and make it officially mine, and then we could be together. It seemed like such a small thing, and my heart was so full of her.”
An enchanted trumpet, maybe? Enchanted by what? “And did you sign it?”
His eyes told me I wasn’t grasping the enormity of the situation, but the tears that suddenly glossed them filled me in. He said on a gulp, “Oh, Ms. Baranuik… I didn’t get that far.”
The horrified quiver in his voice made my gut drop. “What did you do, Beau?”
“The ownership was all rolled up in the case, and shut up with a blob of wax.”
My mouth went dry and there an odd, tinny buzzing in my ear. “Wax?”
He nodded slowly. “An old wax seal. It felt gummy and it was fuzzy with dust. I opened it. To sign the paper. But the paper was blank. It doesn’t matter, see? Because I opened her goddamn seal. And now she’s here. I broke the seal.” He rocketed to his feet and shouted, “I opened the seal!”
I had to be on my feet, too, lost but driven out of my chair by his fear. “What seal? What did you do, Beau?”
His teeth grit together with frustration, and he ground out, “My ex-girlfriend, the dream bitch, tricked me into opening the first seal of the goddamn apocalypse.”
I blurted, “Satan’s shitsicles!”
“She gave me crotch rot, and then she ditched me, and now she’s going to get some other fool to open the next seal, because she’s one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
“No, she’s not,” I gasped, but it was more shock than denial. How the hell would I know who his fucking ex-girlfriend was? “Get the fuck outta here.”
He blinked in surprise. “You’re kicking me out?”
“No!”
“It’s the STD, isn’t it? I should have kept that bit to myself.”
“No, no.” I waved bare hands at him as if to erase my last words from the air between us. “I mean, I’m struggling with this. Bear with me. I just — okay, I’m rusty on my bible studies, first of all.”
“I’m not!” he shouted. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t go by words written thousands of years ago. Do you think demons haven’t modernized right alongside us? Do you think they’d be lost up here with us? They know the terrain. They know just how to manipulate the modern mortal.”
I knew they could; I’d seen it with my own two eyes, many times. I couldn’t put that into words, but I did remind him, “I swore off demons this year.”
A light sheen of sweat topped his upper lip. “I know what she is.”
“Okay, okay, hold on,” I said soothingl
y. “Sit. Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems. Please sit. We’ll sit, yes? Let’s take a breather.” I texted Umayma to please bring in tea instead of espresso, because the last thing any of us needed was more speed in our veins. “Let’s both agree that we tend to think our exes are worse than they are. That’s the nature of an ending. Endings are brutal and we like to make devils of the ones who cause us pain. But most of the time, they’re not literally evil.” Except for Batten. He was definitely as bad as I remembered, that sexy fucking asshole. God, I hated him. “I’m not saying she’s not pure evil, I’m just saying you might be blowing things out of proportion.”
“How can you say that?” he boggled. “She’s after me. She’s using black magic on me. She came to me in a dream. She’s not human!”
“Well, I know that,” I scoffed. “I never said she was human. But just because your ex-girlfriend is representing herself as one of the fucking Horsemen of the Apocalypse doesn’t mean she is. She might just be a mermaid. Or a narcissist. Ugh,” I wrinkled my nose. “Hope she’s just a mermaid. Narcissists are the worst.”
Umayma brought us all the fixings for tea and a pot of hot water, but after taking one look at our faces, fetched herself a mug and joined us, shutting the office door behind her. She fixed mine light and sweet, and bobbed her head to indicate that I should ask how Beau takes his.
“Have a little tea. It’s decaf. It’s nice,” I said to Beau, keeping my voice calm. “This is my manager, Umayma. We’re going to sort you out, and hash out a solution. But let me assure you, Mr. Boudreaux, now that I’m on the case, we’re gonna solve this shit. You’ve got me. I’m all-in. And I’ve never failed.”
Umayma raised one eyebrow, a single doubtful twitch, but when Beau tried to make tea with shaking hands, she stepped in and nodded at his whispered, “Just a bit of milk, please. Thank you. I’m sorry for being such a bother. I couldn’t find anyone else who believed me.”
I sipped my tea and settled back into my chair, observing Beau over the lip of my cup. “How many other people have you asked, Beau?”