Blightmare (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 5)

by A. J. Aalto

  I walked in, and above the scent of baking cookies, I smelled something vaguely maraschino cherry-like. My shoulders dropped tiredly and I threw off my boots and jacket, and shed my gloves. “Harry?”

  My Cold Company bustled out of the kitchen wearing his favorite red apron over a funny-fitting baggy striped suit. Pointy, vintage crocodile shoes clacked the floor loudly. He was dusted with a bit of flour on the apron, and he was vaping.

  “Oh no,” I groaned. “Not you, too.”

  “Might you be referring to my natty new electronic cigarette, darling? Only, you may rest assured, this is premium equipment.”

  “I’m so relieved,” I drawled.

  “A custom mod with mother of pearl shell and platinum inlay. Look, I’ve had it engraved.” He puffed out a massive, billowy cloud nothing at all like the nearly invisible streak borne of Beau’s plastic doohickey, then showed me his initials in swirly script along the side. “And these are the finest fluids on the market.”

  “Of course they are,” I said. Only the best for my Cold Company. I couldn’t even deal with this development and decided to focus instead on the baggy trousers and painfully narrow pointy shoes. In a startling role reversal, I found myself demanding in his voice, “What are you wearing?”

  “It’s a genuine zoot suit.” He showed me some old bullet holes in the left sleeve. Harry laughed throatily with disbelief. “My simpleton of a tailor was going to stitch these bonny memorials, if you can imagine the audacity.”

  “You need to stop with the auctions, Harry. This is getting ridiculous.” He drew himself up to full height and opened his mouth to retort, and I stopped him with a word of caution. “You don’t get to run around in a zoot suit, vaping cherry stink, and mock my wardrobe.” His mouth snapped shut, and I saw I had him. “So I want you to think very carefully, dead guy.”

  His grey eyes widened slightly and he said, “Go on.”

  “We’re on the precipice here. Look at yourself. How could you possibly snoot down your nose at me if you’re wearing that?” I flapped one hand at his outfit. “Snooting at me is one of your favorite things, but you might as well give it up, 'cause you’re giving me plenty of ammunition to fire back. Not only that, but this unlocks whole new levels of acceptable comfort-wear for me; I swear to you, I’ll wear nothing but 80s-neon track suits to the office, and you’ll have nothing to say about it. I can practically feel those leg-warmers and shoulder pads now.”

  “Have you ever known me to have nothing to say about track suits, muffin?”

  I aimed low. “Maybe you can go full court jester. Get you a walking stick with a nutcracker head on it so you can do some Punch-and-Judy impresario work.”

  “Flames and ether!” he gasped. “Never that.”

  “Or maybe full-on hobo clown is more your style. Polka dot pants, floppy shoes, and bright suspenders,” I warned.

  “Good heavens, you’re quite right,” he said, sounding bewildered by his own behavior. Through our Bond, though, I could sense he was on shifting sands, but it didn’t feel entirely genuine, and it certainly wasn't all centered around our questionable fashion choices. Harry was toying with me, but the manipulation was familiar and comforting, and I felt my lips turning up wryly as he pretended to be mystified. “Whatever has gotten into me, my pet?”

  I softened. “Harry, you’ve been clinging to the past awfully tight lately. Think it has anything to do with…?” I left it unsaid, because Batten’s death was the biggest thing in our lives these days, the biggest trauma to have happened between us, and it didn’t need to be named. I made my voice even gentler. “When we were at Skulesdottir that last day, you took great pride in being the young, hip, modern revenant. You set aside your historical duds and you wore a designer tux, and whipped out a couture walking cane made last year in Paris. You polished your brow rings with a chamois, not just your middle finger. But the night before yesterday, you put on some seventeenth-century jacket and breeches you pulled out of storage that smelled like mothballs and old wool. The seams were so delicate that you didn’t sit all evening, not once. You didn’t dare, for risk of tearing the antique threads. Are you wanting to turn back time, Harry? Do I need to put Cher on infinite repeat and strut around in some fishnets on the deck of a battleship?”

  He cast his eyes down to his shoes then held up the e-cigarette like it was his last defense.

  “Yes, I see your very modern smoking device, Harry,” I said kindly. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  When he looked up at me through his lashes, I saw guilt, though he was effectively blocking that through the Bond. “I don’t want to leave our home anymore.”

  I blinked rapidly in surprise. “That’s my line.”

  “Nothing makes sense anymore.”

  “I don’t want to contradict your feelings, Harry,” I said cautiously, “but everything is just as loony as it’s always been. Nothing’s ever made sense. Everything is predictably unpredictable and plausibly stupid.”

  He sighed greatly. “The world is an unpleasant place.”

  “Well, duh,” I replied. “But we still have to go on with life, Harry. We still have to—” I finally caught on in a rush to his ruse and narrowed my eyes. “Oh, I see.”

  His caught-out grin was small and tight. “Do you, indeed.” It was not a question. His lids were heavy with pleasure and when the grin loosened, it flashed a hint of fang. “Then this ludicrous purchase was not in vain. Would you be so terribly kind as to pardon me while I change my attire for the evening?”

  “You pranced around in your goofy, old-timey finery for nights on end to make me argue your point for you?”

  “By my troth, that was meant to startle you into coherence. Alas, I think we can both agree that the attempt failed grandly. I fell back on this absurdity, determined that I would not fail again.”

  “How did you know I would object to the zoot suit?” I demanded.

  “Oh, petal,” he admonished gently. “Everyone hates zoot suits. You cannot imagine the effort I have been putting in to shield you from my self-loathing at having not merely spent money on it, but actually subjecting myself to the wearing of this misbegotten atrocity. I would sooner drive your Buick than wear its like again.”

  “Hey! Don't shit-talk Obi-Wan Carnobi!” I squawked.

  He swept off imperiously into the pantry and I heard his clickety-clackity crocodile shoes slap the stairs all the way down into his bedchamber. “Those shoes are going, too!” I shouted after him.

  I heard him chuckle, and it sounded like home.

  I dropped my head back and stared at the kitchen ceiling. Harry had begun the renovation preparations, and the antler chandelier above my trusty, rusty Formica table was missing, leaving a bare tangle of wires. Was everything being torn out and changed? I took a deep breath, noting Harry’s return to mind games with a sad, fond laugh. To be fair, he had tried to get the message through directly. When that didn’t work, he fell back on his tried and true methods of messing with me. I was certain he had my best interests at heart, but I could see that if he didn’t, his methods would be disturbing. Harry had spent centuries manipulating mortals, and it was a game he enjoyed playing. It was something that made revenants very dangerous creatures long before they were old enough to gain the true mind control talent of the elders.

  Harry’s cell phone jittered on the counter top next to a mixing bowl coated with the remnants of meringue making. Harry never turned off his phone's ringer and left it on vibrate. No wonder he hadn’t seen my texts. Was he ignoring his calls and messages? Without thinking, I picked it up.

  His texts were set to show on the lock screen, and this one read: She’s back, and she’s not talking to anyone.

  I jumped with guilt and knew instantly that this was not for my eyes. I had never snooped on Harry’s phone before, had always respected his privacy. I couldn’t believe I’d looked. I set it down in the exact same place it had been, even as I heard his steps rushing up the stairs. There was no way for
me to hide from my Cold Company that I’d snooped; he’d already felt the flash of guilt and shock through the Bond and my scramble to forget it happened or fake innocence. When he hit the pantry, he paused there, looking at me expectantly.

  “Well, ducky? You may as well tell me what it says.”

  “I’m so sorry, Harry,” I barely breathed. “I’ve never done that before, you know that. I don’t even know why I—”

  “The message, my dove?”

  “’She’s back and she’s not talking to anyone,’” I reported.

  His eyes were cool and steady on my face as he waited for me to ask. I struggled not to, so much so that my fists clenched and my face scrunched.

  “Oh dear,” he commented drily. “Isn’t that a sight.”

  “Not gonna ask,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “Not. My. Business.”

  Harry strolled into the kitchen now, fiddling with his e-cig and swiping his phone to pop it in the back pocket of his proper grey trousers. “Mmmhmm,” he agreed. He watched me struggle. It was agony.

  “I don’t need to know who she is,” I said, trying to convince myself. “Or why she won’t talk. Or what’s going on. Or where she’s back from. Or to. Or any of it!”

  “Good heavens, love,” he tsked. “Such a fuss you make.” He walked away from me into the living room and I followed on his heels like Bob the Cat often did. When Harry crouched smoothly in front of the woodstove to make a fire, it was clear he had no intention of fessing up, and I exploded with curiosity.

  “I have secrets too,” I blurted. “You don’t even know where I’ve been today.”

  “Of all the silly notions, of course I do; you’ve been to the carnival.”

  My mouth fell open.

  He paused in the act of crunching newspaper under tented logs. “You smell of straw and cotton candy and pony rides and spit-roasted sausages. You were either at a carnival or some candy-toting stable boy was rogering you in a pile of hay, though there is a distinct lack of a certain masculine fragrance that would accompany that sort of ill-bred activity.”

  “Gross,” I said with an astonished laugh. “Also: it wasn’t a regular carnival.”

  “Not terribly surprising. You’re not a regular woman,” he said agreeably, lighting the newspaper and closing the mostly-glass door of the woodstove. He stood and moved to wrap me up in his arms, smiling down at me. “Are you offering me quid pro quo? You tell me your secrets and I confess mine?”

  His arms felt wonderful, and for the first time all day, I relaxed in a rush, knowing this was as much the Bond’s response as it was my own familiarity with my companion. “Are you accepting?”

  “It’s a delightful idea, my own,” he purred, and lowered his face to nuzzle and smell the length of my neck. He spent an extra moment lingering over the thudding vein there and murmured against my skin, “Perhaps we can talk over dinner?”

  I smirked. “You can’t talk with your fangs full, mister.”

  He chuckled in return, and led me to the couch, taking my hand in his cool one, and placing a gentlemanly kiss on the back of it. “But you can.”

  I was walloped by a rush of completely overwhelming lust through our Bond, and did what passed for my best to play it cool. “So early in the evening?” I asked.

  “This vaping business makes one extra thirsty. As you can imagine, even the most discerning, custom-blend boutiques still blanch at the crafting of, how shall I put this? Extremely niche flavors. And you, pet, offer an utterly unique delight to my palate.”

  I laughed, and we sank into the comfort of routine, me swaddled in Harry’s embrace, his fangs working smoothly and gradually into my neck, and as he began to draw sustenance from my veins, my mind drifted into a pleasant blur where we were the only two people on Earth, and we were safe and warm, and nothing could come between us. Our feeds hadn’t been quite this friendly since Batten died, but time was healing that scar, slowly but surely, and it was a relief to sink into the release of our connection. I sighed and stroked his hair and began to talk.

  “There were numbers on the trumpet, and Maim figured out that they were coordinates where we should blow it, and when we did, a centaur appeared with a chariot, and he took us way up in the air and then slammo right down into a lake and out the bottom of it, and then somehow we were in a centaur carnival,” I said in one breath. Harry made a noise against my throat that might have been an encouragement to keep talking, or a moan of pleasure as hot blood filled his mouth. His tongue was doing delicious things with the skin of my throat, and I found myself beginning to flush and squirm ever so slightly against him. “I found clues about the missing person we were looking for, the one Beau claimed was a Horseman of the Apocalypse. Sounds like a nice lady. Shitty taste in men and poor judgment, but we’ve all been there, am I right?” Harry wisely didn’t answer that one. “I was pretty sure that his story was hooey the minute I heard it, but now that I’m sure the world is safe from Armageddon, I can confront Beau with the truth and send him packing, preferably off to a long jail stay for being a stalking weirdo after he pays me. I’ll check in with Chapel and see what he thinks about that list I gave him. And then we can burn your zoot suit to celebrate.”

  Harry licked the tiny marks on my throat clean with a tongue newly warmed by life. He shuddered hard behind me, and I smiled over my shoulder at him. “You’re welcome?” I said on a laugh.

  “My pet,” he murmured affectionately and with deep satisfaction. “Would you mind handing me my new toy, ducky?”

  “I would mind,” I said, grabbing his arms and wrapping them more firmly around myself. “Tell me all your secrets, dead guy, or no Sakura Delight for you.”

  “All?” He let out a ha and whispered rapidly to himself in French, his voice softly sibilant around slowly retracting fangs. “Mais ca c’est feu. Such a task would take years, my little lemon.”

  “I’m a lemon, now?” I smirked. “Why am I always fruit, or birds, or bugs?”

  He tweaked my nose. “All good things, MJ, all good things.”

  I made a teasingly uncertain grumble and poked him in the belly. “What’s happened that I don’t know about?”

  At this, Harry threw his head back and laughed heartily without pause for a good five minutes. The firelight flashed off his white teeth. I let him go on until my sour smile couldn’t pucker any further, and something in my chin threatened to cramp from trying. “Condense it,” I said crisply. “Reader's Digest. Cliff Notes. Executive summary. The short-short version.”

  He collected himself and cleared his throat. “Very well, if you wish it. In 1732—”

  “Harry!” I cried, wriggling in his grasp to try and swat him. He held me tighter, ducking his face against my shoulder to snigger against it. Then he let me go, happily consenting to be the victim of my admittedly clumsy wrestling. Bob poked his nose around the corner, saw us being weird, and flopped in front of the fire, taking a completely nonchalant bath.

  “Give it up, fang-face! Spill it!”

  He hooted with merry bliss and collected my wrists in one hand. “I must of course surrender to your fearsome and formidable onslaught.” He encouraged me to settle back down against his chest and I did so, sensing through the Bond that he was done toying with me, though having me literally in his clutches immediately after having fed was doing nothing to slake his lust. I arched against him saucily and met his gaze, giving that right back to him, and surprising myself with how good it felt to simply enjoy my Cold Company. He allowed himself one last chuckle and then a long sigh. “I fear we will not be this playful for the rest of the night.”

  Waiting seemed the best course of action, so I did, enjoying the new thud of his heart beating post-feed. After a moment of enjoying our mutually affectionate silence, he sighed again, releasing my wrists.

  “When we returned home from our merry journey abroad together, I received a telephone call from Norway with the news that there was a search party.”

  I vaguely remembered a call that
had come in the first night after our return. I think I'd been keeping company with Jose Cuervo that evening, so it was a little hazy.

  He continued, “It seems my Master had lost someone, and Captain Rask had been an accomplice in the unexplained disappearance. Upon his return to the island, Rask would not speak of his task, and our Prince was understandably distraught.”

  “Who went missing?”

  His voice became soft. “Carole Jeanne.”

  I felt myself go still. “But she’s Wilhelm’s primary DaySitter, and he’s the Master of the House. They’re so tightly Bonded. She couldn’t just leave. She wouldn’t. It would be agonizing for both of them.”

  “That was my thought as well. It seemed completely out of character. Last week, Captain Rask—or perhaps I should say, Prince Rask, the Queen’s Consort–”

  I gasped. Salacious revenant court romance gossip! Queen Remy had taken gruff, taciturn Captain Rask as her lover? Did this Bind House Rask and Dreppenstedt even further, or did she still feel as though she had no association to the house of her maker? I had a feeling that the budding immortal soap opera wasn’t the most shocking news Harry had for me. Rask had been literally alone and adrift when we'd met, and Remy even moreso; the fact that they were shacking up and banging nasties wasn't exactly the kind of thing that came as a surprise.

  “Prince Rask left the island once more, and did not report to the Bitter Pass. Instead, the Meita crossed our lookouts on Svalbard and sailed toward Russia.”

  Russia’s policies toward the revenant community were unfriendly at best. How would Russian military fleets react to such an old ship captained by such an old revenant heading toward their coast? “Any idea what he did there?”

  “Oh, yes. Apparently, if tonight’s text is correct, he brought Carole Jeanne home to Wilhelm, and she is not speaking to anyone about her little excursion.”

  “Well, she’s an adult,” I supposed. “It’s a free country. She can go where she likes and she doesn’t owe anyone an explanation.”

  “Oh, do allow me to disabuse you of that notion before you get any bright ideas, my pet,” he said tersely. “This is a free country. Svikheimslending is most certainly not. Carole Jeanne is the DaySitter of a Crowned Prince of the Blood, and as such, she has taken vows and devoted herself to the care and keeping of a primeval immortal. She may not go wherever she likes and she does owe an explanation. As if the Bond would permit such secrets to be kept.”