Blightmare (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 5)

by A. J. Aalto

  “I saved her from the carnival folk, the centaurs,” he continued. “I saved her from her psycho friends, her abusive lovers. I saved her from doctors and lawyers and high powered people, I did that.”

  “What are you even talking about? None of that happened!”

  “And this is how she treats me?” he roared. “After I gave her freedom and love and safety? Ignoring me? Calling me a villain? She didn’t even care that I got sick with heartache.”

  I opened my mouth to argue that he only had a bit of a rash brought on by using black magic, but he was charging forward.

  “I was in the hospital!” he cried. “With a broken heart! It was torn in half! They had to sew it back together!”

  “None of that is true,” I said flatly. “Stop the nonsense.” The only cardiac event I could see him being hospitalized for was arterial plaque from all that fucking peanut butter.

  He cried, “She never even visited.”

  “You were not in the hospital,” I insisted, knowing fully that it was stupid to argue with a delusional nitwit, but unable to resist. “You were in my office and a pawn shop and this motel room.”

  “Never answered my texts and emails and calls. Not one!”

  “She told you to stop contacting her,” I said, wondering if he was even capable of hearing me. “She’s going to get a restraining order.”

  “Nothing can restrain true love, dummy,” he said.

  “Actually, that’s not true.” I slammed my grimoire down on the bed and opened it to the bookmark with a flourish. “I’m going to put a stop to this right now. I am the cockblock nobody wants.” Darkwing Duck has nothing on me for ominous patter.

  “With what? That?” He rocketed to his feet. “Fuck you, with your evil garbage! Always nosing into my private, personal affairs.”

  I kept my cool and showed him my stern-Marnie face. “You came to me for help.” And I don't want my nose anywhere near your affairs. I've already seen your taint in action, I thought.

  “To find her. To bring her back to her senses, and if not, then to, to, to…” He flapped his hand at my book. “You ruin everything, Marnie Baranuik!”

  “Good!” I blasted at him. “I intend to ruin it all!”

  “You’re just the worst mistake anyone could make, you hollow-eyed, lousy, shrill little shrew!”

  “Lousy?” I bellowed. “You take that back!”

  “No. Never. You’re the lousiest, you uppity bitch!”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I wear my uppity like a goddamn champ, and don’t you forget it.”

  “You’re nuts!” He turned to Umayma and repeated, “She’s nuts!”

  “And you,” I said, “are distilled stupidity in an oversized jacket and a pork pie hat.”

  He blinked rapidly, screwing up his nose. “Why are you so hostile?”

  “Because you are flakier than a cocaine croissant, spanky.” I thumped the grimoire. “You hired me to help stalk your ex-girlfriend because she wouldn’t play nice porn-doll. Not only did I cause her distress, but I feel like a dumbass for believing you.”

  “You don’t know what she is!” he roared, and then eyeballed the magic book and shrank. “The heart-breaking horsewoman she is.”

  “No, Beau. Or Bob. Or whatever your real name is,” I said. “She’s a nice, understandably nervous werewolf with a cute horse tattoo on her wrist.”

  “She is a horse.” His eyes darted frantically. “That’s their sigil!”

  “Let me get this through your head, Beau.” I stood, planting my hands on the table and leaning over. I liked to think I was looming, intimidating, but I think the only thing that worried him in the room was the grimoire. “She’s not a horse, or a demon-horse-lady. She’s not a mermaid, or a narcissist, or a harbinger of the end times. And centaurs don't have fucking cutie marks like some kind of living, breathing My Little Ponies, for fuck's sake.” I tried to soften my approach. “Beau, she’s just a harmless lycanthrope who doesn’t want to be with you. That hurts. Trust me, I know. She’s chosen to leave. She’s run away from you. Don’t chase her. Let her go.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do with my love life!”

  Had I said something similar to Golden earlier in the week? Had I sounded this stupid when I’d said it? I owed her another breakfast apology. I lowered my voice and dialed my face down to what-have-you-done? “You’ve done a little dabbling, haven’t you, Beau?”

  “No! What?”

  “You Googled some ugly spells,” I accused. “Anti-glamour spells to make her look ugly so no one else would want her. She’s using all her own spell knowledge, limited as that may be, to remove each spell you slapped on her.”

  “You didn’t remove them, did you?” he croaked.

  “She did it without my help,” I said. “She’s ever-so-slightly better at magic than you are.”

  He turned red in the face and choked on his tongue.

  I said, “Frankly, you’re lucky that she hasn’t cast anything back at you. Rain of frogs, plague of leeches, really exciting burning sensation when you jerk off, that kind of thing.”

  “She has!” He brought both hands up to frame his face but it looked like angry jazz hands and I almost smiled despite the serious look on his spotty face.

  “No. You’re making yourself sick, because you don’t know the first goddamn thing about magic. You don’t know who to talk to and how to protect yourself, and as a result, the dark magic is not just coming directly through you, but it’s bouncing around like a pinball inside you, infecting you like crazy.” Something on one of the monitors flickered in my peripheral vision and I squinted at it. In the harpy video, someone else was in the darkened fuck-room, and it wasn’t Beau; it looked a lot like the shadowy goon I’d seen in the yard at Elyse’s hideaway. Whoever or whatever it was, they weren’t holding a camera, but it was dark and fuzzy and it wasn’t too clear what they were doing.

  “Tell me where Elyse is,” Beau demanded. “Now.”

  “She’s gone. You won’t find her,” I said. “Besides, I don't know.”

  “You can’t stop me,” he swore, and began grabbing his belongings and shoving them in a lumpy, beaten-up suitcase. “You have no right.”

  “I’m not going to stop you,” I told him, “but I’m not going to help you, either.”

  “You can’t do this to me,” he shouted, unplugging wires from sockets and bundling laptops into bags. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Good luck explaining that to the Feds. They’d like to have a word,” I said, strolling over and opening the motel door.

  I walked out into the fresh air, a relieved bounce in my step, and Umayma followed. Now parked at angles surrounding the front of Beau’s motel room were black SUVs belonging to the Preternatural Crimes Unit. SSA Chapel waited out front and nodded to me as I passed him; he was on the phone, and whatever the person on the other end of the line was saying, it was not making him happy. Probably, it was about me, and probably, it had something to do with not following protocol or whatever. I’d never really been good about following the rules. I nodded at Golden and de Cabrera as they walked past me into Beau’s room.

  “I’m going to need five minutes in there after you remove your evidence,” I said over my shoulder to them. I heard de Cabrera mutter something in Spanish about being hard done by, Golden mumbled, “Not gonna happen;” both of which made me smile.

  Inside, I heard Beau holler, “You can’t touch that, it’s mine!”

  Umayma made brushing-off-hands motions to indicate good-riddance.

  I nodded. “Remember when I hired you, and I promised you that this would be an easy gig? That you’d have lots of time to do your online classes and that you’d hardly ever have to do awful stuff?”

  She just smirked, and one of her hands went to tug at an earlobe in a gesture faintly reminiscent of Batten. It made me pause, but I pulled it together, all things considered.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I continued. “I’m sure by now yo
u want to quit.”

  Her smirk turned into a dubious, almost challenging look.

  “No, you’re right. You’re not the giving-up type.” Relieved, I made a mental note to give her a really great holiday bonus. She’d more than earned it by putting up with me and this case. Were there any holidays coming up? St. Patrick's Day was a week or so off, so, I suppose giving her some extra green could kinda-sorta be a thing.

  She signed, “Now?” and made it a question with a shrug.

  “Now, I have to Grope a few things,” I said. “I’ve got suspicions, Maim. This ain’t over.”

  She subtly pointed at Beau talking in low, horrified tones to Chapel, hanging his head, bringing out some more of those big, fake tears. He was pretty good at it. I nodded.

  “I know he’s been busted, but I don’t think Beau’s our big problem.” I started peeling off my gloves. “He’s a minor league pervert with his dick stuck in the left-hand path. There’s darkness here, running deeper than his lust and exploitation.” I told her what the spyglass tracked to the shower drain. “It’s icky. Major blerg factor.”

  Umayma mouthed, “Fuuuuuck,” which struck me as sadly hilarious.

  “Fuck, indeed.” I faced the motel room, shoving my gloves in my pocket. When Golden came out into the sunlight, she was wearing a grimace.

  “I need to discuss something with you later,” Golden said grimly.

  “If it’s monster porn, I don’t wanna,” I said.

  “It’s personal,” she said, and I could tell by her tone, it wasn’t a conversation for here and now.

  “Find anything interesting in there?” I asked her.

  “Depends if interesting also means revolting?” Golden asked.

  “I bet you thought today was going to be boring,” I scoffed.

  Golden snorted. “Never a boring day when you get an S.O.S. text from Marnie Trainwreck Baranuik.”

  “Okay if I go have a Grope in there?”

  Golden glanced at Chapel. Beau’s back was to the room. “Officially, hell no. Unofficially... better be quick.”

  I nodded that I understood, and Maim and I slipped back in the room, where de Cabrera was packing up laptops. “Hey, Elian. Met my manager yet?”

  “Can’t be in here, kids.” He looked up from wrapping up cables. “Seriously.”

  “I just want to Grope a pillow or two and maybe Feel around the corners.”

  Elian shook his head. “You’ve always got the best requests.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  He glanced at the door briefly and then said, “Glove up and knock yourself out.”

  I frowned. “Well, I can’t glove up, that’s the point. Wait, why glove up? He’s just running some amateur porn shit, right? He’s not—”

  “Suspicion of murder, babe. Chapel looked deeper into that list you gave him after the few people turned up missing. He got two major hits, out-of-state deaths, unsolved homicides. Warrant for everything. Your client is going in for questioning.”

  My mind scrambled. Since the monster fuckers didn’t do humans, there was only one type of monster protected by human laws. “Were the homicides lycanthropes?”

  “I really can’t say,” de Cabrera said. “You understand. Just, look, here.” He flapped a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. “You can Grope through these, right? Be fast, get what you need. If you get caught, I didn’t say yes. Wait…” He straightened. “What do you need?”

  I shook my head uncertainly, taking the latex gloves and snapping them on. “I got a bad feeling, is all. I don’t think it’s over. I think we’re after something bigger, here.” I thought of that goon’s shadow – in the yard, in the fuck-room on the laptop, in the back of my head. “Beau’s not a seasoned witch. He’s a noob who stumbled across some spells, bad ones. But I wonder how, and I wonder where he got the idea. He’s not ballsy on his own. He’s a delusional weirdo, but he’s not exactly brave or bright.”

  Umayma made finger-horns behind her head to indicate a devil.

  I smelled the room, seeking the telltale stink of sulfur and brimstone. As before, all I smelled was peanut butter and body odor. I ran my latex-gloved hands over the walls, heading for the dark corners specifically. That’s not where I found him, though. My hands rode a warm shift of psi, palms nearly blistering hot by the time I got close to the bed.

  I found traces of the demon by the headboard, wedged in the little space between the bed and the shoddy night table, ethereal strands of his passing clinging to a brass lamp, bolted down. And to the car keys lying in the little puddle of light beneath it.

  “His driver. The chauffeur,” I said low, just for Umayma’s ears. She stood on the opposite side of the bed, clearly trying to read how bad things were by the expression on my face. I opened the night table, expecting the bible to be gone. It was. In its place was a small green book with sticky tabs in the sides. The title was an indecipherable tangle, the kind of thing that a death metal band would kill for to use as a logo. I reached out to Grope it.

  Lust hit me strong enough to punch my breath from my lungs. Winded and dizzy, I jerked my hands back, but not quickly enough. My thighs trembled helplessly as my body fought an unsolicited orgasm. I squeezed my eyes shut and dismissed the climax' residual feelings easily enough, hating every perk and brush and throb. I could practically hear Asmodeus snickering way back in my mind, below where the Bond Harry and I shared lived, and wagging His eyebrows suggestively.

  When I felt I could speak without my voice betraying my unwanted pleasure, I told Maim quietly, “This is bad. We gotta find that driver. Beau summoned more than a few anti-glamour spells. He’s got a goddamned incubus.”

  Chapter 31

  I couldn’t wait to ask Harry about incubi and succubae, and wished he wasn’t deep in VK-Delta and unavailable. I could have called the organization, a service used by revenants, but chatting with strange dead people about lust demons was hardly the best way to heal my shadow split, and Harry would not approve. He still had a care for the salvation of my soul, such as it was. So, I was on my own for the moment, and tromped into my office with Umayma to get our informational ransack on.

  She took a moment to half-See the result of her book search as best she could – her concentration while doing so gave my Blue Sense a weird tinge of deja vu – and set about pillaging my library for any relevant information about how to exorcise an incubus while I sat at my laptop searching the web. What we needed to do was to rid Beau of this infernal monkey on his back, but if he was heading to jail, that would be tricky. Flushing the incubus out of hiding might also work, if he was angry that I had messed up his main human source of kinky jollies, but there was also the not-insignificant possibility that the incubus was being held rather than partnered with, summoned to be an unwilling participant. If that was the case, who'd done it, and why? There was the slim chance Beau had gotten lucky and trapped the incubus somehow, despite his obvious incompetence, that seemed like a long shot. Unless it was an incompetent incubus, which sounded like a surefire way to end up with demon dick in my ear. Ugh.

  Step one would involve protection, no matter what else we did. I grabbed my big salt jar and set about making a fairly large circle on my front lawn.

  Hood called as I was coming back inside and I picked up immediately. “Yo, Robin Hood. Plundering the coffers of the rich and defending the poor?”

  “Heard through the grapevine: Beau’s real name is Eugene Francis Yrul, and he’s out on bail,” he said, zero humor in his voice.

  “Already?”

  “No lack of money there,” Hood answered. “He’s got hefty representation. Just wanted to give you a heads up.”

  “He won’t come here,” I lied, going to the herb cabinet with my keys. I ignored the papery whisper as I slammed the sliding door open. Before even glancing at Ruby’s grimoire, I slapped the red leather gloves on my desk and pulled them on over my blue ones, creating a snug double layer. “I’ve got Harry. I’ve got a gun. I've got moxie. He can’t hurt m
e.”

  “It’s broad daylight,” Hood said. “Is Harry even up?”

  “Hey, what about me and my moxie?” I asked. “I have swell moxie, I’ll have you know.”

  Hood groaned. “I’d better come over.”

  The last thing I needed now was to bring Hood into a situation where an angry pervert and an incubus were out for revenge against me. Rob can’t be here for this. “I’m good, sheriff. You should go do your rounds. I hear someone tagged Claire’s dumpster with perverted graffiti.”

  “Was it you?” he said blandly, and I had to smile.

  “Not this time,” I promised, and hung up.

  I let out a long exhale and turned to watch Umayma pick through my bookshelves with eager fingers. She was making a tall pile that was starting to waver like an unstable Jenga stack.

  “Beau is on his way. His real name’s Eugene. So, how do I handle this, besides mocking him about the Eugene bit?” I pondered out loud, not really asking Umayma, but open to suggestions.

  She started to sign something, decided it was too complex for our level, and grabbed her notebook to write it down. “Why are you holding that horrible thing?”

  I looked down at my hands and saw that I’d taken Ruby Valli’s grimoire out of the cabinet; I didn’t remember doing it. I’d always hesitated before touching it, always cringed. Now, it felt right in my hands.

  “I think you know why,” I said.

  “Don’t use that,” she wrote, giving me a crazy-eyed look as she shoved the paper in my face, holding it in front of the grimoire as though she could block me from reading.

  “I need you to go downstairs and check that Harry’s bedroom door is locked and you can’t get in,” I said.

  She showed me her I’m-your-boss glare before doing it, stomping her feet loudly all the way into the pantry and down the stairs to make her point. I yelled after her, “No, you’re sassy!” Then, to myself, “I’m not sassy.” I'm still a terrible liar.

  I let the grimoire fall on the desk with a thud. My pencils rattled in their froggy-shaped cup. Fishing the spyglass out of my bag, I shook the black glass orb out of its leather sheath into the palm of my gloved hand and stared into it. All I saw was dim, red darkness. Then I held it to my eye.