by A. J. Aalto
I sighed and got up from my chair, stuffing my arms into my jacket. I pulled my hood up around my head, and tucked my gloves on. “Okay, fine. You win this time. But next time Jerkface has a funeral, I’m not going.”
Umayma nodded and tried not to smile.
Chapter 23
There were two public cemeteries in the area surrounding Ten Springs; the one beside Pennywick Funeral Home was jam-packed with old growth trees and graves that dated back to the early eighteen hundreds.
When we pulled up to the front of the building, Viktor’s limousine was parked right by the steps, but his passengers were already gone. Umayma parked in the near-empty parking lot beside a white truck from Hood's motor pool. It stuck out among the smattering of black SUVs that I suspected were the FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit. The sight of them made the knot in my belly roll over and I took a few deep, calming breaths. We can do this, I told myself, while another part of my mind teased, His body is in there.
Agent Golden was standing on the top step at the front door waiting for us, and I could see de Cabrera behind her, talking in the lobby to SSA Chapel.
“Welp,” I said, hauling myself out of the car. “Let’s get this over with, Maim.”
She nodded. I thought the look in her eye promised me cookies later if I behaved well, but that might have been my hopeful imagination.
Golden, dressed in well-tailored black, face solemn, greeted Umayma with a warmer version of burgeoning friendship than she and I had had in the beginning of ours. I left them to it, wandering past the Feds, noting the location of Harry and Wes in the main room speaking to someone who, from behind, seemed only vaguely familiar; Harry felt my closeness and sent approval purling through our Bond but did not take his eyes off the tall, thin brunette woman with whom he was speaking. I moved away to find the small, quiet room where Batten’s casket rested.
The lights were lower there, and the music was a dull classical tune that I couldn’t peg. Chapel had ordered a small floral spray for on top of the casket. Shades of yellow for both roses and calla lilies, reminiscent of sunshine; as a man who fought darkness and things that went bump in the night, I thought the color choice was fitting. There were no other floral displays, no big portrait on an easel like I’d seen at other memorials. I felt Golden return to my side, sidling up quietly in her standard issue shoes, waiting patiently for me to talk first.
“Closed casket,” I noted.
“He wanted it that way.” Golden grimaced. “Why? Do you wanna smooch him one more time? It’s been — I mean, I hear he was embalmed and all, but you probably don’t want to do that.”
I looked at her as though she had grown a second head. “No, freak,” I hissed. “I just need to see him.”
“What about that guy?” She subtly gestured at Mitch Dunlop, who was speaking to a minister. He wore a black suit and a navy tie that looked like he’d dragged it out of a suitcase this morning, flapped it once, and shoved his body in it. He wasn’t looking in my direction, but I felt he was tracking me nonetheless.
“Not concerned about him.” I was concerned about Harry, but my Cold Company seemed content to be consumed in a serious discussion with SSA Chapel; for a moment, I wondered what they were talking about. “This feels staged,” I whispered.
Golden’s eyes narrowed. “As opposed to those spontaneous, naturally-occurring funerals you find in the wild?”
“If this corpse pops up as another fucking ghoul, I’m going to seriously reconsider my anti-cremation stance,” I said.
“Don’t say corpse,” she whispered and her whole body gave a shudder. “Batten wouldn’t like it.”
“He wouldn’t have liked any of this,” I told her. “It’s all wrong.”
“I'm pretty sure the guest of honor at a funeral never likes it. Your denial is at screaming levels today, huh?” She gave me the side-eye. “Harry said you weren’t coming.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I admitted.
“What changed your mind?”
“My boss,” I said mournfully. “She can be a pain in the bahookie.”
“Uh huh.” Golden wasn’t buying that. “What can I do to help? Just tell me and it’s as good as done.”
I noted Harry and Wes over by Chapel, now, having left the brunette’s side. I stepped deeper into the side room where the casket was. My brother lifted his head from the conversation briefly to glare a warning at me around Harry’s back.
Still, I said to Golden, “Help me peek at the body.”
“Oh, hell no. Do you want ghouls? Because that’s how you get ghouls.”
“That was different,” I said. “There are no eyeballs in my pockets today, I promise.”
“Why does that do nothing to reassure me?” she asked quietly, following me stealthily closer to the casket. “I can’t think of a single other person who would have to reassure me about not having eyeballs in their pockets.”
This room had not gathered a crowd, and the feeling of silent stillness dialed my mood from restless to somber. Low lights barely illuminated the polished casket in dark cherry wood with shiny brass rails; the sight of it knocked some of my doubt away, like shaking cobwebs out of my mind. I fought to keep melancholy at bay, but it began to creep in with every step I took.
“He’s not in there,” I said to myself.
Golden stayed close. “What do you mean? You know he is. Marnie, you’ve got to stop this. Please don’t open that.”
I ran my hand over the closed head panel, grateful that Umayma had encouraged me to wear my gloves.
“It’s closed casket for a reason,” she reminded me, her tone less gentle. “What if he’s disfigured? What if they did something to him that you don’t want to see?” She touched my hand but didn’t go so far as to remove it from the casket. “Don’t let this be your last memory of him, Marnie. Just remember him the way he was.”
I chewed the inside of my mouth so I wouldn’t cry. “An angry dickhead?”
She smiled sadly. “Sure.”
“A hot piece of ass?” Humor, yes. This is helping. Rage, not regret. “An average-sized dick on an oversized prick?”
“If that helps you, yes.” She patted my gloved hand encouragingly and started back toward the main hall. “Say goodbye, Marnie. Say goodbye to Mark, say good-bye to what might have been, and then come away from there. You’re doing the right thing. Let him go.”
My eyes stung with hot tears. “Okay,” I said. “Can I have a moment?”
Golden didn't move for a long beat then slipped out of the room, and I stood there, clamping down on my sadness. In a rush, I tossed the casket’s head panel open, expecting empty white bedding.
Instead, there was a body. A dark-haired, vaguely jerk-faced body, tidied up as much as the mortician could manage. Broad, square shoulders looked stunningly familiar, and as my breath caught, I realized I hadn’t truly started to accept his death at all, not even through my tears and my anger. I had been mourning the idea of his death while harboring a deep and despairing hope that it couldn’t possibly be true. Shock punched a whistle from deep in my lungs, and the inhale that followed was a tight squeak of agony.
Worst of all was his face, mangled beyond the mortician’s repair. There had been a fair attempt, but it looked like someone had gone at him with a mace, and the blunt force trauma had slammed his features to one side, crushed part of his skull and mashed what was left beyond the aid of wax or stitches. Cocking my head to one side, I tried to gain some clinical, analytical distance from it; it certainly looked like a mangled version of Mark Batten. Was that the mouth I’d hungrily captured with mine? Were those the big, rough hands that had eagerly, greedily grabbed at my naked body? Was there a knotted scar on this thigh, high in the crook of his groin, from Aston Sarokhanian’s forced feed? I shifted his buttoned suit jacket to start searching his body for clues. I had to be sure. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. Regardless of how horrified I was to be touching this cool, dry, embalmed corpse, I had to be positive.
An equally-horrified gasp alerted me to my brother’s presence behind me, and he let out a tear-choked and chiding gurgle before trying to wrestle me away from the casket. His arms clamped down around mine and he wrestled me back, grinding out in my ear, “I knew it. I knew you’d lose your fucking mind. I’m taking you home.”
“One second, just one second,” I hissed at him, stomping on his instep.
“No, you’re insane. You’re undressing a dead friend. Stop it.” Wesley let me go and warned. “Touch him again, and I will slap you silly.”
“Then you do it,” I said, pointing at the cadaver’s suit jacket. “Show me the kill-notch tats. Go on. Count them, if they’re there. There should be one hundred and eight.”
“You’ve lost your fucking mind,” he told me again.
“Then help me,” I urged him. “I will not recover until I know for sure. I can’t. I can’t heal. I have to know.” My eyes filled again and I ignored the tears as they spilled over to roll down my cheeks. “Read my mind, Wesley. You know I can’t move on unless I’m sure.”
Wes’s lips crumpled inward and he stormed over to the body. He unbuttoned the crisp white dress shirt and peeked inside. “There. See? They’re there! Are you satisfied?”
My jaw dropped and so did my shoulders. I felt my entire face shift through a gamut of emotions from disgust to horror to shock to sadness and finally stubborn disbelief. “They are?”
He spat, “Come see for yourself, since you’re so determined to be a fucking lunatic.”
Part of me didn’t want to see, now that I knew they were there, but my feet moved robotically until I was close enough. Wes parted the crisp white shirt to reveal crisp black kill-notch tattoos, lined up neatly across his left pectoral. I felt dizzy and my knees went soft. “Wes?”
Wesley buttoned the cadaver up, made sure everything was just so, and closed the lid quietly and carefully. When he was sure he could speak without yelling, he asked, “Yes, Marnie?”
“I think that might be Mark.”
“Oh, you think?” he whispered harshly, brow furrowing under the swoop of his blond bangs. The Blue Sense rushed in to offer up his return to anger. “Who the else would it be? Now are you going to stop this madness, or do I have to carry you out—”
He stopped abruptly, sniffled, shook his head, and brushed past me to leave the room. I turned to watch him go and found Harry standing there in the threshold of the room, his grey eyes soft and unhappy. He began toward me, the slow approach of one untouched by time, who had left mortality behind but still mourned those he inevitably lost. Intimately familiar with it, he understood the complications offered by grief better than anyone here. An old pro, Harry knew how I felt even if we hadn’t been linked metaphysically. My knees weakened further, this time with relief.
For a moment, Golden popped back in, but upon seeing Harry’s elegant, purposeful approach, retreated to give us privacy. I only vaguely registered her brief appearance; Harry’s eyes spiraled down past chrome to airy platinum, purposefully snagging my gaze with his preternatural magnetism, capturing each strand of my concentration until every ribbon of my focus was firmly on him.
The funeral home receded; the low, solemn chatter in the other room went soft and dull, and then disappeared under the not unpleasant buzz of Harry’s mind as it weighed heavier and heavier upon mine. Every time a wisp of distress bubbled to the surface, his patient mental control swept it aside. The closer my Cold Company got, the more the Bond pulled me under; the strain in my neck loosened, and my muscles seemed to melt toward him as he swept open his arms and enfolded me safely within. I thought maybe I should cry, but I didn’t want to make a scene, even though this would be the one time and place that sobbing was hardly unusual, and so, Harry was preventing my tears. My belly quivered until one of his hands landed on my lower back and tucked me in closer to his body.
Pulling shadows around us like a blanket, snatching filaments of darkness from every corner, he wrapped us in a bubble and quieted the world until there were only the two of us, a pair of broken creatures drawing comfort from a metaphysical bond growing warmer and deeper by the moment. I wondered if anyone could see us; I’d seen Harry slip through shadows and skip ahead, alarming mortals for his amusement. Now folded in those shadows, I felt invisible, safe for all harm, even the harm of my own bereavement, like Harry had pressed pause on life and held us in a quiet place. I knew it was temporary. I knew it couldn’t last. But it was a vacation I badly needed in that moment.
Wesley was the one to break it. His mind pushed into ours, invaded the way a Telepath couldn’t do until much, much older, but like a typical Baranuik, he was stubbornly stumbling head-first, biting off more than he could chew. At first, it was a jumbled garble of throat noises, indecipherable. After a few more aborted attempted, his words came through. Time to say goodbye, Marnie-Jean.
******
Chapel looked very composed at the podium, hiding his grief well behind tortoiseshell glasses. His curly, sandy hair looked a bit unruly this evening. His hands didn't shake as he shuffled through his notes and then put them away. He might be hurting, he might be grieving, but Gary was still Unflappable Chapel.
I sat between Harry and Golden; Wesley had decided to sit behind me, presumably to lean forward and pester in my ear. I swatted distractedly at his whispering face like he was a buzzing fly. Chapel was preparing to speak, waiting for the last stragglers to find their seats. There were more people here for the memorial than I’d expected for someone like Batten. Strangers, a sprinkling of them, whom I assumed had come from out of town. Agents from the Boulder FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit, of course, most of whom I recognized but hadn’t worked with directly. I saw at least a dozen other police, fire, and sheriff’s department uniforms. Hood was among them, as was Morgan Sally. A couple curious folks from the salon and spa were there, and I recognized the owner of the Indian Gourmet and Saloon and a couple of the wait staff. How quickly the local townsfolk had taken to Batten, I marveled, when he’d only been there a short while and was such a prickly personality. Claire from the Early Bird had brought her mother and brother; they were polished to the nines and looking uncomfortable. I didn’t even know they’d known Batten, but I suppose he may have been a recent fixture at the diner. He had enjoyed a good steak and egg breakfast.
Remembering that made me smile sadly down at my hands, gloved and clenched tightly together. I can do this. I can sit through this, was followed by, He’s really in that casket. My thoughts went fleeing down a million different avenues. Instead of blocking these thoughts, I figured this was the appropriate time to honor them. Batten had liked his coffee sweet and his tea iced and bitter. He could wolf down a whole bag of spicy BBQ potato chips and not gain an ounce. I remembered how the zombie Labradoodles had attacked him and Hood, and how one had jumped on his back, and how scared I’d been. I remembered how the propane tank exploded, taking out Zombie Dunnachie, and Mark was there, running up to Hood’s truck with his coins and keys jingling in his pockets, and how scared he’d been. I remembered him verbally sparring with Harry even though he couldn’t have hoped to win that sort of contest. I remembered him staring down into a trap I’d dug myself, one into which I’d fallen, and debating on whether or not he should just leave me there, and I remembered distinctly slamming him to the ground and playfully propping one red Ked-clad foot on his chest in victory soon after.
All of these memories hurt, and none of them were unwelcome; such was the nature of mourning. Chapel began to speak, and for the first bit, I let my mind wander, his soothing voice like white noise. When Golden nudged me subtly, it took me a second to swim up from a trancelike state; following the direction of her thumb, I caught the sight of Mitch Dunlop in my peripheral vision. I glanced back at where Hood had been sitting, but he had moved up four aisles to place himself closer to Dunlop.
Gary’s voice caught and it nabbed my full attention; Unflappable Chapel’s eulogy had left the realm of platitudes and generalities and h
e’d begun to speak of Mark Batten, his friend. His protective layers were peeling away quickly. It made my eyes sting hotly and unexpectedly to see him wavering on the verge of tears, even as he tried to fight it with tight lips and a quivering chin. Harry was quickly unwrapping something, his pale, nimble fingers making no crinkling noises with the paper. He put it in my hand: a Fancy Fruit Lifesavers candy, like the ones my mom had kept feeding me during Grandma Vi’s funeral. Sucking on the candy helped me not to cry, then. Of course Harry had remembered. His eyes regarded me with gentle understanding and compassion as I popped one in my mouth and then clutched his hand.
I whispered, “Who were you talking to before? The woman?”
Harry’s pierced eyebrow quirked but he said, “It is not important.”
He should have known that would only make me more curious. I sucked my Lifesaver and looked around. When I found her, sitting tall and straight, the tattoo on her throat took my breath away, and I whipped my head around to gape at the side of Harry’s face. “That’s Elana Vulvolak.”
Golden shushed me and nudged my knee with hers. Harry did not look at me. He just nodded once, slowly. As Chapel continued to reminisce, I missed most of it, remembering the first time I’d seen the wife and DaySitter of Alastor Vulvolak, in the throne room at Skulesdottir, surrounded by the eldest revenants in the court of the king. House Vulvolak was chummy with House Sarokhanian, and not at all fond of House Dreppenstedt. Furthermore, it was a breach of etiquette for her to enter Harry’s territory without announcing herself. What she was doing here, I could guess; she was spying for House Sarokhanian on Mark Batten’s last day aboveground so she could report our anguish back to her master and to the Crowned Prince of the Blood who had sent her.
Wes crowded my ear to whisper, “She’s satisfied with your degree of pain.”