Touched

by A. J. Aalto

  “A scary black?”

  It was the perfect question, completely enlightening. “No. A familiar black. Comfortable. Not strange at all.” I struggled to understand. “It's all she knows.”

  “What do you mean?” Batten said, but his tone said he already knew.

  “Kristin Davis was blind. Why didn't you tell me?”

  I thought he was going to have a good answer to that—something other than “I was saving that tidbit back to test you”—but before he could say anything, a flood of impressions collided into my brain. Overlapping, fighting to assert themselves: perfume, light and floral, rough hands on her arms holding her down, small hands but cruel without a trace of hesitation, wax and cat piss, an old musty cellar. Then sharp pain, sudden and searing along the front of my throat, savage, so unexpected and excruciating that I let out a gurgling scream and broke contact, flailing back onto my ass in the boot-churned slush.

  Batten scrambled to help me up. I shoved his hands away angrily.

  “I just forgot,” I hissed, embarrassed. “People are watching. Don't touch me.”

  “Your stitches,” Batten reminded, stubbornly offering his hand. I didn't want to touch him without my gloves on. I fished in my pocket for lambskin and yanked it on with a quick tug. He waited.

  “Forgot what?” he asked, pulling me to my feet.

  “To brace for the pain of decapitation,” I snapped, cramming my eyes closed, unable to focus with his voice in the mix. “But there was something else.”

  “Before? After?”

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Shut the fuck up.”

  It made no sense at all, the pain in her eyes after the throat slash. If her head was off, her eyes shouldn't be capable of pain, as she should be dead. Unless her head was off and her eyes were still alive to feel pain. But how? Why? That boggled my brain if it were true. I didn't really want to know the details. Brushing snow off my jeans before it could melt into them, I took a bracing breath before approaching the lid again.

  I knew I wouldn't feel anything through my gloves, but that didn't make me any more confident, frankly. My fingers trembled as I reached for the sunglasses, slipping them down from the pale, finely-veined eyelids resting limply closed, strangely saggy.

  The decapitated head of Kristin Davis opened its jaw with an audible crack. A wretched sloppy noise followed an icy hiss. Toppling to one side, its eyelids flew open accusingly; where her eyes used to be, ragged red holes gaped. What was left of her throat wetly gurgled at me.

  I vaulted backwards with a shriek.

  EIGHTEEN

  “Fuckshit—” Batten's reaction time was too slow. I took the fall hard on the back of my head. Impacting the frozen ground made me nip the side of my tongue but I forced myself not to react. I lay in the snow, still, faking a faint, clutching my plastic piece of the prize.

  Ice crunched under running boots, holsters creaking and keys jostling, coins in pockets, heavy huffing in frosty air. The K9's German shepherd was going ape-shit nearby. I hoped it didn't get loose and snap someone's arm off. Too much undead activity for the poor animal to handle.

  “She tipped it over!”

  “It moved, I saw it. It moved. Fuck me!”

  “She moved it, dumbass.”

  “Back off. Don't touch her,” Batten barked. His steamy breath bathed the side of my face.

  One man said, “Yeah, like I want to touch the bloodsucking vamp's creepy psychic wife?”

  Another piped up, “I swear it opened its mouth.”

  “It was bullshit, that's what it was.” Whoever said it didn't bother to lower his voice or soften the disgust.

  “Where are the sunglasses?”

  “She broke them. There's a lens missing.”

  “This is tampering with evidence, Agent Batten.” A gruff voice, demanding an explanation, accustomed to being in control. “Does the PCU regularly break evidence in the course of your investigations, or is it just this particular civilian you have trouble controlling?”

  “Calm down, Jack.” Sheriff Hood's voice. “I'm sure it was an accident.”

  “Marnie?” Chapel summoned calmly. I felt the back of his hand on my cheek, and the blue Sense instantly ripped me a new vision, of worry blended with excitement. “What happened, Mark?”

  “The mouth opened. Made a sound. Then she fainted, the glasses went flying.”

  “We should get her in near to Harry. I understand that might help,” Chapel suggested.

  “What might help is if we don't let civilians have access to the crime scene,” the Jack guy said, snarky.

  “What did this accomplish?” the gruff voice demanded.

  “Are we about finished, now?” A coroner's assistant.

  “Take it away,” Batten said.

  “It didn't actually move, right?” The other assistant. Forced laughter.

  “Missing the lens, Agent Batten.”

  “We'll find it,” Batten assured them. “Fan out, it can't be far.”

  “She's not coming-to.” Chapel, concerned and not hiding it well for a change.

  Quietly, the second coroner's assistant, “No way it could fucking open its mouth.”

  The first assistant, with a smoker's cough. “Well it ain't moving now. C'mon.”

  My fingers worked with minuscule motion along my side, worked at tucking the missing lens in my waistband, praying that I wasn't being watched.

  “Let's get her out of the cold at least,” Chapel said.

  “With that thing in there?” one of the men scoffed.

  Another man made a guttural sound. “Fuck that noise. He ain't human. You saw what he did.”

  “I seen one of those things get both arms torn off and still manage to kill three SWAT guys in Juarez. True story.”

  “Yeah but how old was it? See, that matters.”

  “It don't matter, all them monsters the same,” Juarez-guy said.

  “Telling you, it matters. The older ones are worse. I heard it right from the FBI seminar.”

  “I don't care what you heard from no damn seminar, schoolboy, I seen it with my own eyes,” Juarez said.

  “Yeah but how old was the thing?” Mr. Seminar demanded.

  “This guy's American, right?” Another voice, quieter. “That means he's younger, and he can't do shit like that. Not like one of those fucking old-as-dirt European ones.”

  “I ain't finding out today…are you?”

  Hood talked around something in his mouth but I didn't smell smoke. “Put the lady in the van with the head, we'll take her into town, going by the hospital anyway.”

  “Won't be necessary. I got her.” Batten's arms hoisted me easily. Being jostled against his chest was nice; I resolved to enjoy it while I could.

  I thought about what the cops had been saying. If people did mistake Harry for American, then he wouldn't be as grand a prize. Why did Danika want him so badly? Did she hate me because she coveted Harry, or did she covet Harry because she hated me? Chicken and egg time. Why us? There were plenty of other young psychics worldwide, far more successful than I, with more powerful revenant companions with better Talents to covet, plenty of others to hate.

  “Agent Chapel, we need you!” one of the coroner's assistants called, voice climbing a full octave.

  The other yelled,

  “Oh fuck. Oh fuck!” A plastic sound, rustling. “Thing's squirming, oh God. Oh Christ!”

  “It's revenant,” Batten said to no one in particular, total delayed reaction. “And she's not his wife.”

  I doubted anyone heard him. The men had fled to watch the rustling bag with the reanimated head inside. He started towards the house, a hard exhale from his nostrils moving what was left of my hair.

  NINETEEN

  The lens of the sunglasses was digging into my lower back painfully as I lay recovering on the couch. It was my own fault for swiping it in the first place then tucking it so near my stitches. Sometimes having people think you're the fainting type works in your favor; that Batten th
ought I was a fainter was vaguely irritating, but I guess Sherlock was right. I'm a great little actress.

  “Would it have mattered?” Batten wanted to know.

  “You knew she was blind,” I accused, moving to rest on my elbow. “And that her eyes were gouged out. Right? This was some sort of test. You still don't believe I'm psychic.”

  “I believe that you believe you're psychic. Tell me what think you saw.”

  Riiight. “Could you reword that so it's a bit more insulting?”

  “Tell me, Baranuik.”

  “What exactly would be the point?”

  Harry, humming a vaguely recognizable tune, brought me a shot of espresso, a No. 2 and a Moleskine, and the cordless home phone. The cops and others had gone, and if it weren't for Mark and I fighting (did we ever do anything but?) the night would've been peaceful at last. I sank my chin into the arm of the couch and listened as Harry's voice hit each note with soft precision; after a minute I was calm. Harry tried to hand me the phone.

  “Who is it?” I whispered.

  Disapproval thinned his lips. “Vivaldi. Opera No. 7 concerto No. 7 in D minor. Have I in fact taught you nothing at all, in the end?”

  I had to smile, which grew into a tired chuckle. “I meant, who's on the phone, doofus.”

  He looked down at the item in his hand, seeming surprised to see it. “Ah yes, how foolish of me. ‘Tis your sister on the line.”

  “Crapsicles. Not now.” Being the oldest of seven is not always a blessing. “Which one?”

  “The one that does not entirely despise you,” Harry remarked flippantly, urging me to take the phone. When I didn't, his frown deepened. “Do take this, lollygagger, I've a delivery from Shield at the door that simply cannot wait. Is the American Express card in your purse?”

  “My nightstand, the blue wallet,” I said.

  Did Shield, a local blood donor organization that Harry uses once in a figurative blue moon, explain his warmth, I wondered? My gut said he was attempting to pull a fast one, manufacturing a cover-up story on account of my suspicions. Suuuuure, he'd been getting deliveries. He sure as hell hadn't stored them in the boathouse freezer.

  I glanced at Chapel to gauge whether he had witnessed one of these deliveries while guarding Harry this past week and a half. I read Gary as curious, the name and idea of Shield seeming foreign to him.

  Disappointed, I said into the phone, “Carrie?”

  “My infamous sister is alive and well!” Carrie sang. “Well, halleluiah. You ever think some of us might like a phone call when your world goes tits-up?”

  She knows nothing, she knows nothing. I made my free hand useful, jotting the psychic impression I'd gotten outside at the mailbox in my notebook, while I kept my voice light, casual.

  “What the heck are you even talking about, kiddo?”

  “You've made the dinner-hour news. Did Lord Billionbucks forget to pay your cable bill?”

  I dropped the notebook and strode across the room to grab the remote from the mantle, flipping the channels until it landed on CNN. Horror gurgled from my throat. “That's my face!”

  “I know. Don't you ever wear make up?” Carrie said. “You're too pale to walk around without mascara. Eyeliner. Blush. You can afford make up, you know.”

  The entire Baranuik family had profited from Grandma Vi's death, and from Harry's generosity. After Harry paid Carrie three times what this little cabin was worth and bought her an overpriced townhouse in posh Niagara-on-the-Lake near Mom and Dad's Virgil farm, still she was bitter where Harry's money was concerned.

  “Why am I on TV?” I demanded, as though it was her doing.

  “They said you were in the hospital again. Is that true? Why didn't you call?” Harder now, with frost in her voice, “Why didn't ‘Harry’ call us?”

  Harry, in audible air quotes. Like it maybe wasn't his real name. Like he was an enemy spy on a mission of infiltration or something. Still, of my siblings, she was the only one who didn't outright despise us, so I let it go.

  “It wasn't necessary to call because I'm perfectly fine, really.”

  “Oh my God,” she said, the panic in her voice causing the Blue Sense to nearly explode in my ear: dread, worry, anger. “You're really hurt!”

  “Nope. A scratch.” I pshaw-ed, dredging up whatever psychic wall I could manage.

  “This has nothing to do with the shooting, it's a new injury,” Carrie guessed, her breath quickening. “Did that serial killer from New York track you down? Did he come back? I told you you're not cut out for police shit!”

  “You're way off now. Stop it. Jeremiah Prost is in the wind. Just calm down.”

  “That's it. You're moving back to Canada. I'm coming to get you.”

  “I'm not going anywhere.”

  “It's not safe down there with all the crazy vampires.”

  “Carrie, you know damn well there are more revenants in Canada than in the US,” I lied, flapping my arm as though she could see it. “And not all revenants are crazy killers.” I saw Batten's head came up sharply and ignored it. “OK, no more than half of them. Could you calm down?”

  “As you can plainly see, dramatic overreaction is entrenched in the Baranuik genes,” Harry commented to Chapel and Batten as he returned to the room with a dark indigo wine goblet in his hand. “Never have I known a conversation between Baranuiks to be touched by either peace or civility.”

  I felt Chapel's flush of discomfort as he put two and two together and figured out what was in Harry's goblet, what Shield must be. Flicking a glare at Harry, who had recommenced humming doleful Vivaldi, I turned up the volume on the TV.

  “Carrie, honey,” I soothed, “you know how the media blows shit out of proportion when there's no real news. Oh Lord and Lady, I look like I'm dying of consumption. Couldn't they have gotten better pictures of me?”

  “Do better pictures of you exist?”

  “You meant that in a nice way,” I deadpanned. “Right?”

  “All that pretty blond hair and you drag it back into a boring ponytail.”

  Not anymore. “Have you and Harry been trading critiques of my ‘do?”

  “Yeah, right, on our nightly phone chats,” she sneered. “You look like a drowned albino rat. On a lighter note, who's the delicious hard-bodied hottie bossing you around? Look at those shoulders, those arms. Yowza, that's a big man, right there. Yum.”

  The snapshot frozen in the corner of the screen was from Buffalo. The delicious hard-bodied hottie was Batten. He was pointing at a dumpster, his brow furrowed, his lips curled up exposing one pointy-yet-human canine. I remembered the argument, the exasperation in his voice. We'd been driving back to the police station at half past three in the morning from a sixteen hour strained and silent stake out, the day after our first vertical romp. He'd stopped behind the station to toss out our leftovers while I was asleep. I woke up hungry when he parked, and when I'd found out my food was gone, I lost it. He'd been telling me where I could find the rest of my burrito. I'd been telling him where to go. The photographer had caught me in a flash-framed double-shot, half way to enthusiastically flipping Batten the bird with both hands.

  “Uh, that's just a cop,” I coughed discretely. “An indescribably annoying Fed.”

  “Oh my god, it's him, the one you told me about. You had sex with that guy?” Carrie shouted into the phone. “Holy shit, you lucky slut!”

  “Voice down,” I begged, acutely aware I wasn't alone in the room. “Seriously, I'm just fine.”

  “Forget what I said before, I do want details,” my sister laughed. “Tell me about his body. Every inch. Start at the shoulders and work your way down. Don't skip a freckle.”

  “You're overreacting. Dramatically.” I smiled at Harry then stole a glance at Batten, who was watching my end of the conversation with one eye while monitoring CNN with the other. “We'll talk about this another time. Give my love to mom and dad…”

  “He's there,” she guessed. I could picture her swinging her knees up in
the chair and settling in for a juicy chat in her sunny family room. “He came to see you. Did I interrupt? My God, you were about to fuck.”

  “No!” My cheeks burned. The screen on the TV changed. “Holy hell, that's my office. Why is CNN at my friggin’ office?”

  “Someone forgot to water your plants,” Carrie noted. “Probably it was you. You never were good at keeping things alive. Well, except for “Harry”, but how hard is that? Any one of us could have done it.”

  I bit my tongue. That huge thorn in my family's side had not withered over the years: why me and not any of them? Vi's last wishes had named me, but it wasn't written in stone. Harry and I both had the ability to walk away. My family assumed we'd refuse one another. Sitting in the lawyer's office that bizarre evening, buzzing with nervous anticipation, not knowing what to expect, considering one another for the very first time. Me a shy seventeen-year-old Canadian puzzle fanatic in dark-rimmed glasses and ash blonde braids, he a cultured centuries-old British aristocrat. I guessed he would bow out gracefully with an apology, that the apology would be the last I'd hear from Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt of London, England. At the same time, an immediate understanding resonated in me: if he wanted me, I would accept, and on some level, I was already his. Harry could have chosen instead to Bond my father, as everyone expected. Roger Baranuik had been studying for this eventuality, and would have made an excellent guardian, an educated companion. Or, Harry could have gone back to Europe, to his own familiar corner of the world. Instead, he offered me the Bond. And I accepted instantly and unequivocally, plunging the rest of the Baranuik clan into bewildered fury. Together, we had borne their disapproval.

  Now, Harry was looking at me steadily from his wingback chair, aware of my reminiscing, eyelids heavy with unspoken pleasure, his gaze wistful. He swirled the contents of his goblet, but his hungry stare yearned for someone warm wiggling beneath him; a shiver tickled my spine and I had to look away.

  “All those lovely philodendron, dead.” Carrie asked in my phone ear. “Always surrounding yourself with death. At least you made it with one living guy. That FBI guy looks like one angry SOB. I bet he fucks like a jackhammer. Am I right?”