by A. J. Aalto
He gave a sympathetic little chuckle. “I know you do, Marnie.”
“I don’t like being told off when I screw up. I get enough of that at home.”
He kindly did not point out that perhaps I should stop screwing up, and nodded instead. “Nobody likes their hard work criticized. Your tasks are difficult and often your methods must be unorthodox. I try to make allowances—“
“That’s part of the problem,” I said reluctantly. “You let it go, and then you get in shit for it. My mistakes become your mistakes. That’s hardly fair.”
“If that’s the only cost of doing business with you, Marnie, I will gladly continue to pay it,” he said. But I felt the weight he placed on the if, and the fact remained that I made his life difficult more often than not, even when he hadn't volunteered to be a pain-sink.
I had run out of points to make, and stared out at the grey-white skies; we shared a companionable silence as we approached the Denver/Boulder turnpike.
“Tell you what,” he pulled around an eighteen wheeler that made me think of Krystof Duchoslav chained underneath. “Why don’t you sleep on it, and we can talk about it on Monday? Maybe we can come up with some alternatives or compromises.”
Two days to reconsider. Did I really need it? I felt a surge of disquiet from Unflappable Chapel as the Blue Sense tickled my perceptions, and knew with sudden clarity that, despite my being difficult – and often an utter liability — SSA Chapel didn’t want me to resign. He felt like he was losing an asset. An asset? Chapel valued me. Only the Dark Lady above knew why. I doubted anyone else on the planet felt like that about me. It made me question my decisions again.
“Monday,” I promised. “Bright and early, your office, Boss Man.”
That seemed to assuage his worries. By the time we hit Boulder the sun had settled almost to the horizon. I turned on the radio and let some music soothe our uncertainties, and wondered if Constable Schenk had reprogrammed his presets (or developed an appreciation of perky techno) and figured out how to fix his dashboard clock, or if it was still telling him what time it was. I buried a smile behind my fist and stared out at the passing city lights.
***
When we hit my driveway I felt a familiar yawning emptiness in the back seat that told me Harry was stirring from rest. Chapel popped the back of the SUV as I hopped out and made boot prints in the first dusting of snow on the driveway, hauling the crisp mountain air deep into my lungs. One of the cabin’s windows glowed warmly.
Somewhere inside, my baby brother would be waiting to hear if the family asked about him; they hadn’t. That was probably better than what might have happened if they had, but I knew he’d be hurt. He’d probably sulk in bat form in a bunny slipper for the next week. Harry would give him scratches on his little furry noggin and tell him everything would be okay. I would make no such promises; no point lying to a revenant who could read your mind.
I took a long look at the cabin while I listened to Chapel speak to Harry as he emerged from his casket in the back of the SUV and into the cold night. Their friendly chit-chat was tense and hesitant; they both knew that changes were coming, and Harry wasn’t able to reassure Chapel as to the continuation of their friendship without knowing for sure what I had planned. Harry and I hadn’t discussed anything, but he was aware of my restlessness through the Bond, and my frequent complaints did not fall on deaf ears. Since my happiness greatly affected his own, Harry was paying close attention to my current List of Things That Piss Me Off. This Internal Affairs nonsense was currently the heavyweight on that list. Harry said nothing; he was taking a rare wait-and-see position.
Chapel reached for a casket handle and Harry tut-tutted. “Please, Agent Chapel, don’t strain yourself. The young lad and I will take care of that. MJ, will you kindly summon your brother and have him put on some pants?”
***
Batten was sitting in the living room in Harry’s chair, Bob the cat curled in a little fur ball on the blanket in his lap; he was still sporting a Movember mustache, but he’d styled it, kind of, and now he looked a bit like a badly-bleached Lando Calrissian. I dropped my go-bag. It had seen better days, but it had made it there and back again, and it had survived. Batten took in my black eyes, split lip, weird hair, mangled backpack, and scuffed up boots with a look that said he’d expected a disaster, just maybe not to this degree.
“Hey there, you snot-gargling fuck-knob!” I greeted.
His dark brow danced upward quizzically. “What the hell?”
“I wasn’t allowed to swear much in Canada.” I explained. “Too expensive. Sorry.”
“Uh huh. So now I’m bearing the brunt of your cork-popping?”
“Oh boy,” I said, sitting on the couch and curling up. “That sounds dirty. Maybe later, eh?”
Batten sighed, but it ended in a tired chuckle. “Nice accent. It’s cute.”
“Translation: you missed me,” I dropped him a wink. “Am I right, poonjockey?”
He rolled his eyes. “Finished?”
“You didn’t miss me at all? Not even a little?” I asked.
“You’re not so bad.” He made show of thinking about it. “I could have used a few more days off.”
“Dear Diary,” I drawled, dripping sarcasm. “Today Agent Batten said something not-quite-dicksmacky. It was a red-letter day. But he killed Mister Buzz, so I have to feed him to a wood chipper and a thousand rabid wolverines. Love, Marnie.”
“Buck up, kiddo.”
I threw a couch pillow at him, but it only made it halfway across the room. We both stared at the ill-aimed missile. “You know, I do have feelings,” I said.
Batten shook his head. “They’re just pants-feelings.”
I couldn’t deny that without admitting deeper, scarier things, so I nodded. Unlike Harry, who was as permanent as a tattoo, Batten was a feverish disease I couldn’t shake, one I was sure could be cured if that’s what I truly wanted. But I didn’t. If I was being honest, Batten was a weakness I wanted to keep. The hot-box of his company was overwhelming, not constant and calming like the hovering shade of my Cold Company. Probably, it was overwhelming for Batten, too. He was probably right not to cultivate too sticky an attachment to me.
He was reading something on my face, and advised, “Don’t always jump to the worst conclusion.”
“Sometimes a cigar is just a penis.” I nodded sagely. “You don’t seem as stressed out by vacation as before. Did babysitting relax you?” I held up a hand. “Wait, that doesn’t make sense at all. You hate revenants as much as you hate downtime. You hate the rules and the paperwork and Assistant Director Johnston’s bullshit, but you love The Job. You should be sitting funny, with your nuts in a big knot. Why are you chilled the fuck out? Did you break into my herb cabinet and smoke my weed? Please tell me you didn't break my vibrator in a moment of personal prostate exploration.”
“Your insight into my personality is breathtakingly inaccurate, Doom Chasm.”
“I know you better than you think,” I said.
To this, he rolled his eyes. He pulled the blanket off his lap and the snap-spark of static made the cat jump off his lap and scramble out of the room and down the hall. “Static electricity,” he said.
“You and your electric ball-sack,” I said. “So, what’s new? How’s Wes?”
“Can he change back into a man?” Batten asked. “Because I spent the entire time dodging his bat-faced dive-bombs.”
“Probably, but he’s having fun with the flight thing. You would, too. How’s our ward doing?”
“Mr. Half-A-Vamp? I peeked,” he admitted. “Once. When I was changing the feed bag. Cracked open the casket.”
“And?” I hugged myself, genuinely curious about the condition of my house guest, Mr. Duchoslav.
“He’s got a face again. There’s a lump under the blanket that might be hips.” Batten shrugged. “Smells pretty bad in there.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Like death?”
“Vampires always smell faintly
of death,” Batten said, daring me with his gaze to disagree. It made me feel tired, too tired to correct his use of the V-word or argue. I gave a whatever-you-say shrug. “More bad news from Internal Affairs. They wanna dig deeper.”
To this, I smiled. “Better pour me a bigger cup of give-a-shit, dude, because I am fresh out.”
“Vacation is extended across the board for another two weeks.”
“And still, you’re not upset?” I asked.
“It’s your files they’re taking time with, not mine.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but kept it to himself, tapping one foot on the carpet.
“See my concern?” I pointed at my face and leaned forward. “It’s small, and it’s buried under bruises, so you’ll have to look closely.”
“You’re smiling and not snarling,” he pointed out. “Are you high?”
“Nope. Just feeling…” I took a deep breath and let it out in a long stream. “Well, kinda ballsy.”
He took that in with a frown, but let it go. “Canada makes you relaxed. It’s creeping me out. How’d the case end up?”
“It was mostly good.”
“Mostly?”
“Parts of it were disgusting and awful and terrible and sad.” I admitted. “To be specific, my parts of it.”
“Say it isn’t so,” he deadpanned. “I find that hard to believe.”
“To be fair, everything Constable Thag Longshanks did was just swell, for a half-believer with a double ration of What The Fuck Is This Shit thrown his way. He’s totally pro and everything.”
I thought his jaw rippled a little. “But your contribution was…?”
“One magnificent fuckup after another. Then I saved the day, because I'm still awesome like that.”
He nodded again, like this was to be expected. “What about this ghost you were chasing? Did you find it?”
“It found me.”
He motioned at my bruised face. “Big bad ghost fists?”
“Not big.” I see-sawed a hand. “It was the size of, you know, little.”
His eyebrows came together in a knot. “What is ‘the size of little?’”
“You know big?”
“Uh huh?”
“Less than that.”
He smirked, and chuckled softly. “I did miss you.”
“Yeah?” I brightened, perking up.
He nodded but did not elaborate. That was okay. The room was warm and cozy and his company was, for the first time in a while, welcoming. “Will your new buddy ask you to help again?”
“Schenk? Oh, I highly doubt it.” I smiled to myself. “Not until sandal season, anyway.”
He gave me a curious head tilt, and I shrugged it away. I looked at him for a long time, and he sat there quietly tolerating it; ever the psychic null for me, he radiated no hints of what he might be feeling as I drank him in with famished eyes. My heart picked up to do the Snoopy dance in my chest.
Finally, he lifted from the chair. He stuffed both hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “If you don’t need me for anything else, I guess I’ll get back to my apartment. Water my plants. Sort my mail. Buy some beer. Watch some football.” He rocked back on his heels. “Now that Harry’s home, I’m not needed.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that.”
“What?”
“That you’re not needed.”
“Oh.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug, looked down at the empty beer bottles on the coffee table, then back up at me. “Well?”
“Well what?” My belly had exchanged butterflies for a nest of bees, and they were stabbing me all over with the need to blurt out all my wants and needs and doubts and fears. I practiced my cool face, while at the same time hearing Schenk’s voice in the back of my head. (“Ballsy… at work, anyway.”)
Batten opened his mouth, took one hand out of his pocket to scratch at his chin stubble. “Should have shaved, except for the mustache,” he said, mostly to himself. “Want me to put your bag in your room for you?”
I looked down at the pitiful, mostly-deflated backpack. It weighed about twelve pounds, max, with my dirty diary, pencils, Dad’s Moleskines, toothbrush, deodorant, extra gloves, and change of underpants in it. “I think I got it.”
“Right.”
“Could you, before you go,” I clenched and unclenched my gloved hands, “maybe make a fire? It’s kinda cold in here. For Harry, I mean.”
“You can’t build a fire?”
I puffed hot air out my nose. “Well, you wanted to be needed!”
“I never said that.”
“You’re impossible,” I said hotly. “I try to find something for you to do—“
“Don’t do me any favors, Marnie, for fuck’s sake.” He moved to leave.
“I quit the PCU!” I blurted.
He stopped dead in his tracks, and slowly turned around, forehead scrunched like I’d started speaking an alien language. I squirmed in my frog socks, my toes curling with anticipation, wondering what the hell he was thinking or feeling, hating that of all the people in the world, he was unreadable to me.
“Why did you quit?” he asked.
“Why shouldn’t I?” I said, standing up straighter.
“I’ve been telling you to quit for months.”
I glared at him, incredulous. “I've been trying to quit for months. I quit the day before I went to Canada, too, didn't I? Besides, I don’t do what I’m told.”
“But now you’re quitting.”
“I can do whatever I want.” When he just stared at me, I felt pressured to continue. “The hours are shit. And they took away my zombie beetles.”
“Fred and Wilma.”
“Right. And I’m not allowed to write the paperwork the way I want to. And Internal Affairs are a pain in the ass. And Assistant Director Johnston hates me. Besides, I don’t wanna work with you.”
“You don’t want to work with me,” he repeated.
“That’s right. Because you’re…,” I floundered. “Annoying. And you wear holy water mixed with Brut aftershave. Who does that?”
The tightness around Batten’s eyes softened, and the lines in his forehead vanished like some magic hand had erased them. “I’m annoying?”
“You heard me.”
His lips curled up and he started to laugh. “You should have consulted me.”
“I don’t need your permission to quit my job, you overblown snatchmagnet.”
He opened his mouth like he had something else to say, and then accepted my statement with a nod. “So now what?”
I realized I was staring at his mouth and tried to find something else in the room to look at, but my traitor eyes went back to his face helplessly. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“When you need your fire lit?”
A hot shot of lust rocked through my body from tits to toes and my brain melted instantly into a syrupy pile of goo. My lungs forgot how to draw breath, but that might have been because my heart stuttered in my chest so badly. “When I wha—?”
A rare smile that was all white teeth and victory grew, a genuine Mark Batten smile, just for me. He nodded at the wood stove. “The fire. For Harry. When you need me. You give me a call.”
“For Harry,” I repeated.
“Mmhmm,” he said, putting his hand on the doorknob. “Talk it over, see what he thinks. You let me know when you’re tired of doing it yourself, and you might like an extra hand.”
I blinked rapidly, pretty sure I knew where he was offering to put those extra hands, and followed him to the front door; as he strolled to the car, I wondered what the hell just happened. What had I said? What had he said? More importantly, what did it mean? The first snow of winter began to settle on the driveway. It looked like it had followed me home, along with that courage Schenk had wished upon me. Feeling a little stunned, and anxious, and hopeful, and scared, and maybe a little bit randy, I held the door open and watched him get in the car. The car that Harry gave him to keep him in Colorado, my brain remin
ded me. To keep you happy.
But how far would Harry go to make me happy? Would he sit by and watch me have an actual, adult relationship with Mark “Kill-Notch” Batten, notorious vampire hunter? With, what, romance? Sex? Love, even? Was that possible? Batten was not a psychic null for Harry; my Cold Company felt every twitch and flutter of emotion that Batten felt. Perhaps this would be Harry’s shot at a small remembrance of that one mortal emotion he was no longer permitted to feel directly?
Could Harry love me through Mark Batten? Was that possible? If Batten and I didn’t kill each other before getting there, that is.
Harry appeared behind me in a push of cool air, radiating comfort and encouragement, which struck me as odd, considering I was debating the best way to seduce Batten. Together, we watched Batten pop the collar on his jacket against the wind, and set to brushing snow off his SUV.
“I figured you’d be unhappy, Harry. Why is my quitting the PCU so damn amusing to you both?” I asked Harry without turning around.
“I believe you’re missing a rather important tidbit of information, which is the source of amusement, beloved,” he replied, and one of his cool hands brushed down the back of my hair. “Agent Chapel informs me that your carrion hunter is returning to his original line of work. Full-time.”
I felt my jaw loosen. “Sorry? He’s what, now?”
“Mr. Batten has also quit his job with the FBI, ducky. He made the decision and informed Agent Chapel two days ago. It looks as though you will both be working independently henceforth.” He made an amused little cluck. “Interesting, that. I thought he quite enjoyed his arrangement with the Preternatural Crimes Unit. But of course, our Mark does crave the thrill of the hunt, does he not? Oh yes. Onward and upward for our cold cook.”
This is not about me. This is not about me, I repeated mentally, but a secret, hopeful part of me whispered, What if it is? “What do I do now, Harry?” I asked.
“I trust you will take this slowly, kitten,” he said, his mouth directly over my shoulder. “T’would be wise to consider your next course of action carefully, and not rush into it like the proverbial fool.”
“Let me get this straight, so there’s no confusion. You’re not going to tell me not to chase the vampire hunter?”