Blightmare (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 5)

by A. J. Aalto

  “What’s the matter, Harry?” I asked.

  Harry tucked the phone in his jacket pocket, hesitant to share the news. For a long beat, he chewed over his own thoughts before lifting his eyes to search mine. “That was Carole Jeanne. Captain Rask brought her back to the mainland to contact us.”

  Harry’s demeanor always changed when he had heard from his immortal family. I waited as patiently as I could, keeping my teeth together like my Grandpa Matts would sometimes advise. My silence was rewarded after a hard heartbeat or two.

  “Aston Sarokhanian has left Svikheimslending,” he said carefully, monitoring my reaction. “In fact, his entire House has emptied out. Vlastimirova is abandoned.”

  I went cold and still, and for a moment, I felt a chill like a shadow falling across my grave. Umayma dropped her hand to the back of mine; our worry melded for a moment, until she jerked her hand back, smiling apologetically at me for doing so.

  My voice was barely a whisper. “Probably, old Aston butts heads with the new Queen too much. He’s a cranky prick and she’s a stone cold bitch who doesn't put up with his shit after the way Den ignored it. That’s all it is.”

  “Perhaps,” Harry said doubtfully.

  “Are they returning to the new world?” I asked. “Do they travel en masse?”

  “I don’t suppose we are meant to know their destination, cricket,” Harry said, his voice soothing but his tone giving him away; he was afraid I was right. “I will, of course, be in contact with my master before things get complicated. Dritta lumina is on the horizon.”

  Dritta lumina was the season when most of the eldest revenants had a deep, heavy feed and sank into wraith state for the spring and summer months, avoiding the weariness brought on by the sun’s reign and the season of life and growth, like a bunch of reverse bears, hibernating. They would rise again when the nights became longer, and the season of the dead approached in late September, the Dead Month. Their Youngers would feed most heavily during the shortest nights and the elder’s phantasms would feed psychically from a pool of attending DaySitters. Aston Sarokhanian, as Crowned Prince of the Blood of his house and eldest in his bloodline, should be doing the same. The fact that it was fast approaching spring and he was ditching his stronghold for anywhere was alarming; that he was doing it with his entire clutch was positively terrifying.

  I whispered, “I have to warn him.”

  Harry didn’t need me to spell out who him was. “Has somebody left you a forwarding address, then?” When I made a troubled squawk, he added, “No, I thought not. It would be unwise of him to involve you in his activities and whereabouts.”

  If Sarokhanian knew that Batten wasn’t dead-dead, the immortal’s exit from Svikheimslending was a very bad sign. How many revenants made up the body of House Sarokhanian, I wondered?

  With a confidence that I didn’t feel, I declared, “I’ll find him.”

  Harry stared steadily into my eyes, and I expected anger, or at least some mocking. I was mistaken. His eyes remained a soft, reassuringly human ash grey. His left eyebrow, thrice-pierced by small platinum rings, twitched upward. “Will you?”

  I took a deep breath and answered with a nod. “I may have to search North America top to bottom, but I have a few solid ideas about where to start. If these two are going to tie on some kind of epic revenant grudge match, I only have to find one of them, and sooner or later, the other’ll show.” I shot my gaze at the hall behind Harry, where my brother’s silent shadow had appeared. I hadn’t heard him approach; Wes was getting good at this undead grace stuff. “Step one, putting out feelers.”

  “Oh, do be careful, love,” Harry barely breathed. “So very careful.”

  “I can be subtle,” I insisted, and for once, neither of the men argued. Sometime in the past few weeks, I had changed their opinions on a few things. I liked the new attitudes. “And I can find you-know-who before Sarokhanian does. I will find him.”

  “We’ll find him,” Harry corrected.

  I studied his fine, pale face, though I hardly needed to; through the Bond, I felt a rush of something far more vast than mortal loyalty. A dominant, primeval brand of ownership had flared in my Cold Company, and he let it spill between us into a cold, prickling mess. Whatever else he was, Kill-Notch still belonged to us. I’d have never said so, not until I felt what was surging forcefully through Harry’s veins. The might of it hit me like a club to the forehead. Maybe it was more accurate to say that Batten belonged to Harry. To House Dreppenstedt, certainly, but to Harry specifically. There was no question as to where Harry’s loyalty was now, and if you’d told me five years ago that Lord Dreppenstedt would go toe-to-toe, fang-to-fang with a Crowned Prince of the Blood and his entire house to defend an undead Mark Batten, I’d have laughed long and hard. It was ridiculous. It wasn’t happening. And yet, it clearly was. Without a word, Harry compelled me to kick into gear and catch up. My pulse hammered in response; his heady mix of anxiety and determination was dizzying.

  I swallowed hard and heard a dry click in my throat. “Wes?”

  He glided into the office to stand closer to Harry, as though the older revenant might have his back in this. “Don’t you dare leave me out of this.”

  I studied them both, my undead family, the elder practically vibrating with determination, the younger looking positively sick with worry. Then I glanced at Umayma. She nodded, though she could have spoken. I realized with a sinking feeling that both men were fond of Batten because of me, and I was dragging them headlong into a dangerous confrontation, perhaps a battle between immortal houses; for a second, I considered slipping away in the night and going on my own, keeping them out of it, but I knew they’d only come find me. Wesley narrowed his eyes at me warningly as he read the urge as it flickered through my mind.

  “Okay, okay. I’m going to need you to listen in on some phone calls and do your thing,” I told my brother, making mystical-like finger motions at his telepathic skull.

  “You got it,” Wes said.

  “Harry, I need you to call North House and arrange for Mr. Merritt to open it up.”

  “It shall be done, my pet,” Harry answered.

  “You shouldn’t appear to be in a rush,” Umayma cautioned. She was right. If we flooded into Canada at the same time as Sarokhanian, who would be the eldest revenant in the Niagara Region, that would not only break etiquette, but it would send up red flags left and right. I felt Maim draw on psi once again and she said, “They will arrive in your home town in time for the first frost.”

  Home again. I thought I’d seen the last of my mother for a while, and certainly wasn’t looking forward to seeing Aston Sarokhanian, either, though frankly I didn’t know who was crabbier.

  “Then we have months to prepare,” I said. “To find you-know-who.”

  Harry said, “Yes, my pet. I will have Viktor do some subtle explorations under the guise of finding Wesley’s own master.”

  “We need a code name for Jerkface,” I suggested, popping to my feet and dropping my hand to offer Umayma a lift up. “You know, other than Jerkface.” Or Hunkypants, my mind teased. “And we need code names for us. Code names are essential to a successful caper.”

  “Do try not to be absurd, ducky,” Harry said primly.

  “Hey, I want a code name!” Wes objected with a grin that answered mine.

  “And I’ll stay and take care of business here,” Umayma offered softly, still voice-shy. “But I’d like a code name, too.”

  “Well, we all know what your code name should be, my angel,” Harry said to me teasingly, his smile coy, and he walked away into the kitchen without saying it.

  “Hey!” I cried, following on his heels. “Are you being cheeky, dead guy?”

  “Whoa!” Wes said, clapping his hands over his ears as if he could block the words he just heard from Harry’s head. “I don’t wanna hear that kind of junk about my sister!”

  “What did you call me?” I demanded, laughing. “What did he call me?”

 
“I can’t tell you,” Wes said, eyes bright with teasing, “but he’s probably right about that last part.”

  “What last part?” I flailed my arms in the air as the dead guys walked away from me, leaving me smiling like an idiot. “Fine, that’s it, you guys asked for it! No more Miss Nice Marnie. Be afraid! Didn’t you see what I did out there?”

  Wes said, “You literally sat your fat ass on evil until it went away.”

  “That was the best white magic defense of all time,” I cried. “Nobody got hurt and I got the job done!”

  Umayma groaned expansively and shot me a grin when I stuck my tongue out at her; I was so happy to hear her groan that I wasn’t about to challenge the emotion behind it. I marched into the kitchen on their heels, past the piles of paint cans that Harry had recently trucked in for the kitchen renovations.

  Harry made a dubious little murmur and said, “You’re not terrible, in the end. And to be sure, you can’t do more damage to Our Mark than he’s already done to himself, so why not have a cookie, ducky?”

  I folded my arms and arched one brow. “Are you trying to mollify me with sugar and…” I eyeballed the plate on the table, heaped with crispy brown gingersnaps, chocolate oat drops, and fragile Madeleines; my mouth watered. “Butter and spices and chocolate? Because it won’t work, you know.”

  Harry’s pale hand lifted the cookie platter and offered it across the table. “Of course not. My pet is not so easily seduced.” His grey eyes paled to chrome. “Perhaps I ought to try a more enticing lure.”

  Wes groaned from the sink and stomped to the pantry. “Why did I come home?”

  “You wanted a goddamned job,” I called after him.

  “I quit!” Wes bellowed, his feet quick on the basement stairs. Umayma popped into the kitchen with a surprised look on her face, and mouthed, You hired your brother? She hadn’t quite got the hang of this ability-to-talk-aloud business. I indicated that she might go offer him a shoulder to cry on with a wry smile and a nod of my head. The Blue Sense indicated that her outrage was both fake and designed to hide a touch of excitement. Did somebody have a burgeoning crush on my brother? Well, well. Also, I want nothing to do with that. Also-also, Morgan Sally is gonna be bummed.

  I took a cookie and Harry put the plate down in front of me. “Wimp!” I yelled at my brother. “You haven’t even started.”

  Harry flashed me a wild grin with a hint of fang, a glint in his eye. “And neither have we, my pet.”

  He was right, I thought, munching an oat drop.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket with a new message. Of course, thanks to the mischievous Overlord and Batten’s new bloodline, Kill-Notch had heard the Dreppenstedt call, too.

  Guess I'm not out after all, his text read.

  I met Harry’s otherworldly gaze and allowed him to snag my mind ever so gently, felt his immortal presence swirl delicately like the cool brush of dew-slicked spider webbing first thing in the morning, and he lulled me, brushing away the strands of anxiety. Who cares that I was made a meat-puppet for the revenant queen, I thought, or that I chose a giant, awkward sea monster for my first shapeshift on land, or that I fought evil with my scale-covered butt? I felt when the dust settled, I had more strength and determination than ever before.

  And I was going to need it.

  The End

  MORE GREAT READS BY A.J. AALTO

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