by A. J. Aalto
Wrath & Bones
The Marnie Baranuik Files, Book Four
A.J. Aalto
Copyright 2015 A.J. Aalto
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Cover Design by Greg Simanson
Edited by Rafe Brox
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.
PRINT ISBN: 978-0-9952004-3-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015920300
Acknowledgments
As always, when one writes a book, it feels like a solitary journey; crammed in your office alone, or scribbling at a coffee shop surrounded by people but completely separate from the crowd, there’s always a sense of being lost in the work. It’s critical, too, and not entirely a bad thing, until you look up and realize you’ve been lost there for days, weeks, a year, or more. We writers try hard to maintain connections in the real world, but sometimes our characters and make believe places take over. That’s why we appreciate so much those who understand our weird way of life.
I couldn’t do any of this without the support of my husband, Jason (a.k.a. the Viking), who shoulders my eccentricities with grace and a whole lot of silent eye rolling. My children, Jenny and Derek, temper my dance between reality and fiction with goofiness and humour. My editor, Rafe Brox, challenges me to do better in all things; he’s the little voice in the back of my head when I fall down, and the big voice on the phone when I need help getting back up. I’m not trying to say I need you, but I totally need you, Bossyboots McMeaniepants; if you die before me, I will reanimate your corpse as Zombie Editor. Don’t make me get the chicken feet.
I leaned quite a bit this year on the writers in our Bordies group, whom I love with the kind of warmth I don’t usually feel about real people… and not pants warmth, either, but heart warmth. A nuttier group of kookpies you’ll never meet, but supportive, wise, and a fabulous resource. Specifically, I’d like to thank MamaBear KD McCrite, science officer Gordon Bonnet, and ray of sunshine Christina Esdon for their amazing support. Love you guys!
I’d also like to thank my regular readers. When I have moments of doubt, or days where I can’t imagine continuing, or a less than stellar review has pricked me, your words of encouragement and your requests for more Marnie really keep me going. Sharing these adventures with you folks makes it far more fun. Thanks for trusting me when things seem dark. Thanks for sticking with me.
For Derek, my stalwart adventurer, my gentle champion, my needs-to-know-everything guy, my son.
Slow down a little. I like being your mom, and it’s going too quickly.
And please, I’m begging you: no more puns.
Chapter 1
“Remind me why we’re doing this? On a Friday night? The day after Christmas? With no pizza? And no beer?” Golden asked, standing on her tiptoes so her paint roller would reach the edging along the high ceiling.
“Nope,” I said, turning my binoculars out the frosty office window to peer at the silver Volvo shining beneath the streetlight across the street, commercial-grade parking job and all. No real people parked like that. They'd even got the five-spoked wheels perfectly aligned. The leather of my old tan gloves creaked as I fiddled, adjusting the focus, as if the frogs embroidered on the cuff were getting quietly jiggy; they provided a touch-psychic like me a valuable barrier between my psychometrically sensitive hands and the unfamiliar items in Mark Batten’s new house, any one of which could send me reeling with unwanted visions. Thin and supple though they were, they didn't do anything to diminish my innate klutz tendencies, and I over-corrected back and forth a bunch of times before I could see my target clearly.
“We’re here because of you,” she said. “You can’t say no to Batten.”
“I can so,” I murmured, tempted to believe my own words. I tried to imagine Batten asking me to do something to which I’d say no, but since he’s a sexy jerk, I nearly sprained my brain before giving up. “I didn’t have to say no; he didn’t ask.”
“You offered? You?” She paused in the process of dipping her roller in the tray, blowing her bangs out of her face with an upward puff of breath, then swiping at them with the back of her unoccupied hand. “But that’s a nice thing to do. You don't do nice. You do sneaky, or kooky, or clumsy, or awkwardly slutty, or exploding, or – ”
“I'll throw another zombie spider at your melon if you don't shut your wang-hole. I do the occasional nice thing when I think I’m going to get something out of it,” I reminded her primly.
She aimed the roller at me, and the plastic drop cloth rustled under her feet. “He’s not even here helping.”
“He’s out of town on a case.” In fact, Mark “Kill-Notch” Batten was not just out of town, but out of the country, somewhere in Bolivia; his new independent work as an international vampire hunter, unhindered by his old FBI rules, took him to far-flung places tracking monsters that had chosen not to play by the rules. I didn’t like to think about him adding to the collection of tattoos on his right pectoral with fresh black hashmarks, one for each revenant kill, but I did like to think of him chasing down other types of baddies, and I assumed, with unrepentant sexual immaturity, that he did so buck-ass naked, his bronze tan slick with sweat and his big muscles glistening in the sun. Meowsa.
“You’re thinking about him naked again,” Golden said with a sigh.
It was bad enough that my brother Wes was legitimately telepathic; having mundane-as-fuck Heather Golden peg me like that was intolerable, even if I was totally obviously ogling Batten's ass in my mind. I had to change the subject, fast. “Nu-unh,” I lied, as tonight’s prey came into sight. “I’m checking out this dweeb.” White kid. Early twenties. Shirt. Tie. Clean shave. Bright smile at the Mustang pulling in his driveway.
My name’s Marnie Baranuik, and being nosy comes with the territory. I’ve worked as a forensic psychic for both Gold-Drake & Cross and the FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit. But now, I was flying solo, opening my own psychic detective agency. How I was going to manage as a business owner was anyone’s guess. Since I could pick my own cases, I expected a lot less ghoul scum and fewer opportunities for being chased around in my underpants by zombie Labradoodles. Blowing away human zombies with Diet Dr. Pepper, propane canisters, and kitty litter was still totally on the table, though. I was, I reminded myself, a badass. Now, I just happened to be a badass with tax paperwork. Oh, Goddess, I was turning into an adult. Abort, abort!
“Besides, it’s our office,” I continued. “I’ll be using it, too. I just volunteered us to paint while he’s gone, that’s all.”
“That’s awfully domestic. You hit your head on the refrigerator door the other night?”
“Whoa, slow your roll, troll,” I said. “I’m not helping him pick out fucking curtains.”
“You’re not painting, either,” she said. “I am.”
Point: Golden. “I will, I will,” I promised, “but Volvo Boy’s bugging me.”
She put her roller dow
n and stepped over the mess, weaving through sheet-covered furniture to cross the room. The office was in the front of Batten’s house, a cute two-bedroom-one-bath with a fenced back yard, compact and cozy, perfect for one guy. I hadn’t thought any further than sharing an office, because the idea of pursuing anything domestic with Kill-Notch made me queasy. Didn’t I already have a serious domestic arrangement with Harry? Can you have more than one of those? Come to think of it, I doubted I'd ever seen Batten cook; he'd always come over to my place, where Harry did the cooking, and filched the beer I bought specifically because I knew he liked it.
Batten and I had been on exactly one date. It had started with dinner and a discussion of what movie we might see, and ended in a giant fight about robots followed by vigorous, can’t-make-it-as-far-as-the-bedroom sex on his kitchen floor, sex that had left us both speechless and smelling like lust and linoleum polish. And if I'd hit my head on the refrigerator in the middle of it, I wasn't about to tell Golden.
Two days of stunned silence followed, during which Harry wrestled with the shift in attention, focus, and power by being an absolute prince. My Cold Company’s unperturbed reaction was more disquieting than if he’d blown a fuse, but I was dreading any sort of candid confrontation about it. If I was being honest, I was more afraid he’d say it was fine; I’d learned from Harry's combat butler, Mr. Merritt, that my Grandma Vi had had many suitors while she was living as Harry’s previous DaySitter. Was Harry a Bond-boffing voyeur? I wondered. Bad enough that Asmodeus gets his jollies when I get lucky, but my Harry, too? I pondered the uneasy mixture of trepidation and sexiness into which that might coagulate.
My intermittently torrid and annoying chemistry with Batten wasn't news to Golden. She was my only girlfriend in the whole country, the only person who could drag my ass to Claire’s Early Bird for coffee, girl talk, and various forms of sugar and grease. She’d settled nicely into her role as my dirty-secrets confidante, sensing my preference for shallow jabs over deep connections, stowing neither her sharp wit nor her blunt attitude. Now, she leaned over my shoulder and squinted through the window at the blond boy standing in the snow across the street. She always smelled like lily of the valley, an old lady’s perfume turned warm and classic by her skin chemistry; it was a scent I was still getting used to. In the field of new relationships, Batten wasn’t the only person dropping their guard, showing me the chinks in their armor, and inching closer to my battlements. My people skills weren’t good enough for me to drop all my defenses yet, but I was trying.
“Just some punk dealing,” was Golden’s assessment, watching the exchange between the young man and his visitors with cool detachment; though my secondary Talent woke to offer me empathic glimpses of her emotional state, it didn’t take a psychic to gather she was unimpressed.
I felt a smirk curl onto my lips. “The most notorious vampire hunter in the nation, currently contracted by the Bolivian government to hunt a Hagenbeck’s werewolf in the Andes, Mr. Ex-FBI Badass, is living across the street from a drug dealer?”
“He’ll stop dealing when his mom runs out of pills.”
“This is America,” I chided, aghast. “Moms don’t run out of pills.”
Golden preformed a very feminine move, an effortless sweep that brushed escaped locks of strawberry blonde hair back over her shoulder where the rest of her ponytail laid; I couldn’t have matched the move without teetering over. Then she flipped me off. It was odd seeing her in garage-grey coveralls and black Converse sneakers with little skulls on them. Agent Heather Golden usually wore navy suits and crisp white shirts buttoned to the neck when working at the Boulder branch of the PCU, where I had worked, too, until recently. When we went out for coffee together, she still looked pretty professional, skipping the suit jacket but keeping everything else dry-clean-only. I knew from past adventures that her toenails were likely painted black. They might even have red stick-ons in the shape of little drops of blood. Golden had a fun streak that predated her work with the PCU. I was determined to drag it into the light so it could breathe a little.
She caught me staring up at her and made a face, crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue. “Adorable, right?” she asked. “So, do you figure Batten moved to Ten Springs to be closer to you?”
I choked on my surprise and horror, and blurted, “No!” Then I went back to a safe subject, returning to hiding my face behind the binoculars; I swung them back to the street. “Look at this twerp.”
Golden would not be distracted. “Why else would any sensible single man move to this godforsaken ass-crack of a town?”
“Sensible?” I snorted. “Batten?”
I could hear the smug smile in her voice. “Why would he add long and treacherous commutes to his life?”
“If he didn’t like treacherous, he wouldn’t be dating me,” I pointed out.
“Fair point. Why would he add a long commute?”
“If you had that Bugatti, wouldn't you want to drive it? Besides, he said he wanted to find peace and quiet,” I said, slowly, like I was explaining to a Cocker Spaniel how not to pee on my shoe.
“He couldn’t find peace and quiet in Boulder?” she asked doubtfully.
“Can’t get much quieter than Ten Springs, population five hundred and forty,” I pointed out.
“Five hundred forty-one,” she amended. The smugness in her voice had thickened, and I Felt her wary approval; she hadn’t always understood Batten chasing my skirt, but her opinion on the matter had changed, and she was currently rolling with it, happy to have something to tease me about.
Point: Golden. “Look at this dickazoid. Whoever heard of a drug dealer wearing a tie?” I asked, not exactly feigning my outrage, but trying to ham it up and change the subject.
“You’re Canadian. Deal with it Canuck-style.”
“That’s what I’ll do,” I agreed. “I’ll write him a sternly-worded letter. Dear Drug Dealer: You’re doing it wrong, eh? Sorry. Sincerely, Anonymous. P.S. Here's some maple syrup.”
“Things are changing, Marnie-Jean,” she said. Nobody had called me Marnie-Jean except my mother until Golden found out what the J stood for. She rolled paint onto the walls, wide chocolate stripes of paint over the original, boring beige.
“The sissification of punkdom?”
“We’re all heartbroken about it,” she said solemnly. “Especially Henry Rollins.”
“I like my crooks like I like my coffee: strong, smelly, and liable to choke me.” I considered the boy who waved politely at his customers as they drove away; he held up his hand and just curled his fingertips down. Once, twice. A cute little finger-wave.
“Stop obsessing,” Golden said, “and help me paint your boyfriend’s walls.”
“He’s not my…for fuck’s sake, this crook drives a fucking Volvo.” I clutched the binoculars tighter. “No, don’t you do it. Don’t…Ohhhhhh, bitch.”
“What’s he doing? Helping an old lady cross the street?”
“He saw me. He gave me one of his cute waves.”
“You’re going to get shot in the face,” Golden predicted, doing precisely nothing to stop it.
“He went inside and opened the curtains in his living room.”
“Maybe he thinks you wanna jump his bones. Gonna put on a strip show for ya. You're the one ogling him through binoculars like the world's most boring stalker.”
“He took his shirt off. Aaaaaand now he’s doing yoga in his front window. Like a dick.” I shook my head, but could not take my eyes off the wiry little jerk doing inversion poses in what I assumed were Gap for Kids chinos.
“Doesn’t Harry do yoga? Don’t you do yoga?”
We both did, but admitting that wouldn’t support my irritation in this case. Golden passed behind me to look out the window and steal my Dr. Pepper. I would have slugged her if it had been a cup of espresso, but my new machine hadn’t come in, so I was stuck with soft drinks, and she was welcome to them.
I dipped my own roller and started on an untouched wall. I
n the mixed light from the ceiling fan and the camping lantern we brought to brighten up the corners, the velvety brown paint looked like a delicious blend of rich coffee and dark chocolate. I hadn't covered more than a quarter of it before I felt Harry approaching. Well before Heather or I could have heard the purring rumble of the Kawasaki come down the street, the Bond sending a pleasant thrum of anticipation through my belly, a vibration more metaphysical than biological, designed to awaken a DaySitter’s senses in preparation for their companion’s presence. I knew he felt me, too; like two machines checking one another’s distance and readiness, Harry and I pinged each other, striking metaphorical bells and whistles, and in response, dark urges rolled to life in my veins. It felt like hope, like the night was rife with endless possibilities, like I had sprouted wings and could take a swan dive off the roof without fear. His hopes, his endless possibilities, his reckless excitement, true; I got a mere sampling of his high. The creature who owned me cruised down my boyfriend’s street, an English revenant approaching a vampire hunter’s abode with a monster’s smile hidden beneath a vicuna scarf.
“This guy must travel with Cirque du Soleil,” Golden continued. “I can’t even imag—” She dropped to a crouch, still clutching the binoculars, and the Blue Sense roared open to blast me with an interesting one-two punch: alarm, followed by vigilance.
“Did he catch you ogling him?” I asked, but my humor failed, and I dropped the roller and got down on hands and knees to crawl to her position. “What’s wrong?”
“Harry’s here,” she whispered.
I relaxed with a smirk. “Duh. It’s after dusk, and he knows where I am,” I reassured her. It’s not like I could hide from him if I tried. “It’s absolutely fine.”
That was a minor exaggeration; my relationship with Mark Batten had always been a nettle in my Cold Company’s backside, but one he was tolerating better these days. I often felt a wary concern through our Bond from my companion when the subject of Batten came up, but it was tempered with curiosity, and an eagerness that I didn't quite understand. Harry continued to dote on me while holding ground in a wait-and-see place. What he was waiting for was anyone’s guess.