Blightmare (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 5)

by A. J. Aalto

  Chapter 29

  My picture of the appointment book at the Little Spa indicated than an Elyse was booked for a pedicure at eleven. I stuffed my backpack with the trumpet, the spyglass, and my own grimoire—a spiral-bound notebook with scribbled ideas and notes cut-and-pasted inside—and piled into the Buick, feeling lighter of step after a long night of being pampered, worshiped, and cuddled by an overprotective revenant, followed by a quiet day spent getting Umayma to reschedule the scant handful of client appointments I wasn't ready to sit through, organizing both my thoughts and my witchcraft supplies, which had gotten badly neglected and left in haphazard disarray over the last two months, and then an evening of fireside snuggles and rekindled affection. Also, I totally owned Harry at both Go Fish and Scrabble before he took me back to his bedchamber for some very enjoyable comeuppance.

  Wesley had steered clear of everything since the quote-unquote funeral. I suspected that he’d been lurking in the area for a while because he wasn't the only one doing so; as a Telepath who had developed his Talents too early and far too powerfully, Wes wasn’t good at blocking other people’s thoughts, and he wasn’t prepared for the emotional blow-out that had come. He’d wanted me to stop poking around in Batten’s casket because he knew that Batten was undead, that Dunlop was playing all of us to sell the story, and that Batten himself might be lurking nearby. I wondered where his debt vulture was, and what he'd named it.

  Wes had known that Dunlop was sheltering Batten. I wanted run him over with my car and thank him at the same time, which was pretty much the same reaction I had to Batten while he was alive. Some things hadn't changed as far as Jerkface was concerned.

  Did Chapel know? I needed to find out, and Wesley would be the best way to do that. If Chapel didn't know that Batten hadn't been in that casket, then we had to tell him. Someone had been in there. Perhaps we’d never know who, but I couldn’t just let him rot under another man’s headstone. That kind of disrespect didn't rest well with me. Maybe it was just a creepy, too-good waxwork, but I didn't know how much faith I could put in that hope.

  On my drive to Ten Springs, I thought about Elyse, who’d been branded a Horseman of the Apocalypse, sickened, harassed, tossed out of a centaur carnival lifestyle, was trying to ditch things from her former life and live among the humans, and was still being stalked by Beau Boudreaux. Once I found her, what, exactly, was I going to say or do for her? I’d have to wing it. Because that always went awesomely.

  My stake-out in front of the spa was brief. I had barely turned off the Buick and fished out the spyglass when a young woman came striding out in flip-flops despite the cool, damp weather, a glossy French pedicure on her toenails, complete with little shiny stickers that caught the daylight and sparkled. She had a mane of long brown hair that looked rough and straw-like, very much like a horse’s tail. I glanced at the time and it was eleven-twenty; I’d run late. I hauled the spyglass up to one eye and peered through it at her. A faint pink glow lit up on her backside as she went to stand by the curb until a taxi pulled up. Not a demon, but a hint of the Blight’s hand on her. My eye snuck up to the rearview mirror and I made a face at myself. You’re one to talk, Oh Leashed One. I tossed the spyglass on the passenger seat and started the Buick, waiting until the cab was departing before making my move to follow them.

  The drive wasn’t too long, though it was winding and, due to the lack of other traffic, difficult to hide that I was tailing them. Luckily, the shitty weather was my co-conspirator. I let the taxi get further ahead once I knew there was only one place they could be going.

  Chapel called as I was pulling up to a cabin on Farstrider Lake, a charming spit of water nestled between snow-tipped mountain peaks, choked with pine trees. The rain was coming down in sheets, blurring visibility beyond a few dozen feet. I put the Buick in park and answered the phone, keeping an eye on the closed, brown curtains on the windows of the cabin. One curtain twitched.

  “Yo, Boss Man,” I said, trying not to project a threatening or dangerous aura to the lady spying on me. “What’s shaking?”

  “I think you ought to be careful around this client of yours, Marnie,” he advised. “What did you say his name is?”

  “The name he gave me is Beau Boudreaux, but I feel that’s not his actual name,” I said. “Why? Did you find anything new about the list of names I sent you?”

  “A third person on this list has gone missing.”

  “Are they a non-human of some sort?”

  “Registered revenant living with a DaySitter in New Jersey. The DaySitter is also missing.”

  “Do we know a family line or a house for this revenant?”

  “Strickland. He was living under the name John Douglas.”

  My veins went cold. “That hits close to home. Henry Strickland is the revenant who turned Wes.” Thank the Dark Lady it had been a Younger, and not Strickland himself, or Wes would have been a pile of dust somewhere, lost to the wind, and I’d never have known what had happened to him.

  “Yes,” Chapel said, sounding concerned. “I remember.”

  “I think this Beau guy is snuffing monsters after he has sex with them,” I floated out his way. “His podcast is called Bagged and Tagged: Monsters I’ve Fucked.” I paused for him to comment on how disgusting that was, but of course, he didn’t; SSA Chapel had seen so much worse. “The problem is, some of them have no legal rights. A revenant can be killed with or without a warrant. Ditto the gargoyle in Vegas.”

  “I’ll look into the cases that can be prosecuted, but in the meantime, please be wary.”

  “What I can’t figure out,” I wondered aloud, “is how this guy is convincing anyone to sleep with him. He’s weird and creepy, he's practically rolling in peanut butter, and he’s no prize to look at. He’s openly disgusting on his podcast. Why would anyone meet him for coffee, much less bang nasties? I’m missing something here.” I put a gloved hand on my backpack and patted it. “Thanks for checking out my hunch, Gary. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  “Be especially careful, Marnie. Call me if you need anything at all.”

  “Will do,” I promised, and it only occurred to me once I hung up that Chapel had begun to consider me as something different. He no longer saw me as a human DaySitter to Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt, fancypants revenant. He thought I was at risk with my client because I he thought I was now in the client’s victim pool. And, technically, if Dr. Delacovias was correct; I was.

  The rain continued unabated, so I put my phone in the inside pocket of my jacket, zipped up, checked that my backpack was also zipped, and, ducking my head under one arm, hurried to the front step, where a tiny corrugated tin sheet drummed loudly while offering scant protection. I knocked, trying to make my summons jaunty and non-threatening, and smiled when she cracked the door.

  “Hi, sorry to bother you,” I said to a waft of marijuana smoke. I blinked rapidly as my eyes began to water. “Um, I have to talk to you, and I have a message from Tari, and also, wow, that’s a lot of pot.”

  “You a cop?”

  I beamed a smile. “Do I really look like one?”

  “Not really.” Her nose wrinkled.

  I wilted. “Oh. Well, I’m not. But I’m a psychic detective, and that’s kind of the same thing.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  “Well it is,” I insisted. “Uh, so, may I come in for a minute or two? It’s kind of important, and I am currently getting drenched out here.”

  She gave me another long look then closed the door so she could unlatch the chain. The door crept open barely enough for me to slip sideways into the dim cabin.

  Now that I was out of the downpour, I could see, but only through a haze of mellow smoke and a single lamp over a worn tweed chair, a relic from the 70s. The rest of the cabin was surprisingly empty. A kitchen counter piece that had been roughly hewn into a rectangle was fastened to a hinge and wedged under the window to serve as a collapsible dining table, and a single stool with a rip in the vinyl sat beneath
it. The fridge hummed and shuddered as much as mine did and looked about the same age.

  I pointed to it. “They don’t make ‘em like those beauties anymore. Fridges these days last a few years until their warranty is up, and then they cost as much to repair as to buy new,” I said.

  “Are you here to sell me a used fridge?” she asked.

  “No, that’s my small talk,” I said.

  She took another toke from the joint in her hand, blinked one bleary eye, rubbed it, and shook her head. “You suck at small talk, lady.”

  “Call me Marnie,” I said, and put my wet backpack by the door. “And you’re Elyse, yes? Before I start talking kooky at a perfect stranger who has no idea what I’m on about.”

  She went to the chair and set her roach down carefully on a small plate that was serving as an ashtray. The plate took up most of a tiny round side table with a scratched marble top, which might have once been part of a lovely ensemble, but now seemed out of place. There was a laptop on the floor, plugged in, with its cord snaking into a dark corner. With all the curtains closed, it was hard to see much.

  “So,” I started again, “you’re not a horse.”

  Elyse did this thing with her eyebrows that I’ve seen a lot, a kind of twisting pucker that told me she was trying to figure out if I was insane. “Do I look like a horse?”

  “Do I look like a great white shark, a little orc killer, or a possible werefox?”

  “You look like a drowned rat,” she said.

  Point: Elyse. “Thanks, I appreciate you noticing that. If you’re not a horse, or a demonic horseman-woman, may I assume you are also a centaur like Tari?”

  She rolled her eyes, and that’s when I caught the telltale gleam, like a greasy patch rippling on the surface of a lake. Lycanthrope. I tried not to feel a rush of fear, because that would have been pretty fucking hypocritical, considering my own situation. In this state, she was just a girl who wasn’t too amused with my company, even if she was stoned enough to make Shaggy choke on one of his Scooby Snacks.

  “Werewolf?” I asked. “Why would he say you’ve got anything to do with horses? Why are you traveling with a centaur carnival?” Why did the ladies at the spa say your feet were like hooves and you smell like a barn?

  She retorted on a mouthful of smoke, “What are you, and why are you helping my ex?”

  “What do you want from him?” I asked.

  Elyse slumped into the chair. “To be left alone.” She indicated the state of her living space, as if to show me how far she’d fallen. It was a hole in the wall, and the wall wasn't all that great to begin with.

  I asked, more to myself than her, “Why did he say you were a Horseman of the Apocalypse and that the world was in danger?”

  “The only horsey thing about me is this.” She showed me a cute little silhouette tattooed on the back of her speckled wrist. Rash. It was the only place on her exposed skin that I saw it, though, and she didn’t look rough or scabby the way the pawn shop guys had described her. She looked a bit… dried out, I supposed. Hollow. I dropped my gaze to the floor, where the lamp light struggled through the smoke to show me the barest scrap of a shadow, barely half. I nodded to myself.

  “You’re using black magic,” I said.

  “No shit.” She snorted. “And I’m no expert. I’ve done what I can.” She coughed, a rattling, phlegm-ridden sound from deep in her chest. There was a gun on the rickety secondhand table to her left that I hadn’t noticed until just that moment, but she made no move to reach for it; I figured she didn’t need to. In this room full of power, I was at her mercy anyway. “Wouldn’t you? I can’t let him find me.”

  I waved the smoke away and blinked rapidly. “He’s paid me to hide him from you.”

  “That’s rich. Always playing the victim. Big bad Elyse, won’t let me touch, won’t let me film. Pig.” She rolled her eyes. “Lemme guess: in order to best protect him, you had to find me, right?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “But he didn’t stop at that. He wanted you to do something to me, right? To punish me. He wouldn’t put it like that, but that’s what he’s wanted all along. He’s not afraid of me, he’s angry. I’m used to his shit. I’ve dealt with this for three months and sixteen days.”

  “I’m assuming you didn’t actually come to him in a dream,” I said.

  “Hell if I know.” She picked at a loose string on the ratty chair. “That’s what he said, but I think it’s a line. If I could appear to men in their dreams, I wouldn’t have appeared to him. I would have appeared to The Rock, or Jeffrey Dean Morgan.”

  “Mmm. Nice choice,” I approved. “And I see your point. So how do you know Beau Boudreaux?” Tari had told me about the podcast, but I wanted Elyse’s side of things.

  “Is that what he’s calling himself now? He told me his name was Bob Hudson. I met him online after listening to his podcast for a while. We thought he was a scream,” she said, going to the kitchen to fetch a can of warm soda from a ripped-open case on the floor. She offered me one, which I accepted, if only to get the skunky taste of cheap weed off the roof of my mouth. “I mean, we just thought he was a hoot, Tari and me.”

  “You travel with the centaur carnival?” I asked.

  “Yeah, like, they treat me like I’m normal, you know?” She returned to her chair, cracking open her soda slowly and letting it hiss, then slurping the escaping bubbled liquid before opening it all the way. “And I always find work there. Money’s never an issue. It’s gotten me the line on some lucrative leads. Like Bob Hudson, or Beau Whateveryousaid.”

  “You’re his…?”

  Elyse lit up again and puffed. “I was paid for what we call the GFE.”

  I stared at her blankly. “'We' being...?”

  “Sex workers.” She looked at me levelly.

  “And the gee eff thing is...?”

  “The girlfriend experience. Laugh at the client's jokes, hold hands, make out a little before the main event.”

  “You’re a hooker.”

  I never saw her hand move, but she slapped me so hard I saw dark stars in the dim room. By some miracle, I neither fell on my ass nor spilled my drink. Maybe Hood's calisthenics weren't completely useless.

  “They pay me for my time and company,” she corrected. “I’m an escort.”

  “You have sex. For money.”

  “Not with just any ol’ guy.”

  “You have sex for money with some men.”

  “Okay, sure, but only for wizards,” she said, exhaling and staring at me steadily through the smoke. “And they don't have to be men.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that for a long time. I shifted from one foot to the other. “You’re a wizard-hook-- uh, escort? That’s a thing?”

  “Ex-wizard-escort,” she stated, pointing at me. “And everything is a thing, if you look for it hard enough or have the cash.”

  I wasn't sure if being ignorant of the preternatural nookie industry was a professional failure on my part or not, so I circled back around to what I was familiar with – solving mysteries. “So, what happened? Beau didn’t want to pay to play?”

  Elyse shook her head, took a drag on her cigarette, and sighed on her exhale. “I didn’t want him as a client anymore. He wanted too much of my time. He’s not my only client, you know? I told him so, and he just kept demanding more. So I had the nerve to try to dump his sorry ass.”

  “He told me you were one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

  She laughed harshly. “You believed that?”

  “No,” I scoffed. “Okay, maybe for a day or two. To be fair, I’m having a bad year.”

  Her lips curled around her smoke at me. “You’re using black magic, too.”

  I made a throaty noise of denial. “Am not.”

  “I can smell it on you. Plus, most of your shadow peeled off.” She pointed at what was left of it.

  “Oh. That.” I looked down at the carpet; the last spindly bit of my forked shadow was scrambling, hands way out,
trying to slap-drag away from me. I stomped at it, but that didn’t do much. “I have some uncomfortable questions to ask you about videos…”

  “I never—” She rocketed off the couch suddenly, grabbing the gun in clumsy hands, fumbling with the safety. “His goon’s here. I thought you said you came alone.”

  “What goon? Where’s a goon?” I’d heard nothing, but the gun shaking in her hand was fairly convincing. I jumped away from her, out of her line of fire, and then moved away from the window blinds. I put my back to the wall, sidling close enough so I could turn my head and peek into the yard. No cars. After a moment, though, a shadow shifted. I showed Elyse one hand to say hold up, in case there were more.

  “Okay, I see one guy, but there are two of us, so we got this. Here’s what you’re gonna do,” I whispered. “Dive out the side window, take three years of Krav Maga, and then come back and rescue me.”

  Elyse stuck her gun in her waistband. “Or we handle this like witches.”

  “Awfully bold with that word for an amateur,” I warned her. “Don’t ever overestimate your powers. Trust me, I’ve done it. It does not turn out well. Besides, Beau will have counted on that. If he’s sent a goon here, whatever goon that might be, he or she or it has been told about your tendencies. I think we need the element of surprise.”

  “You deal with things your way,” she said, slapping open her bag and drawing out a purple sketch pad. “I’ll use mine.”

  My scalp prickled with gooseflesh from nape to forehead. “I’m not going to like your way, am I?”

  “On the contrary,” she said. “Judging by the shady area your magic has fallen into, I think you might enjoy this a lot.”

  “Elyse, let’s talk this through,” I said. “You’re new to magic. Let’s just take it easy. You don’t want to get sick again. I’ll go outside and—“

  “You’ll go nowhere,” she said sharply. “He followed you here. You’re clearly an idiot. I'll handle myself from here on out, thanks.”