by A. J. Aalto
I gaped at him. “I didn’t! He’s making that up.” I struggled. “Besides, I can do whatever I want, so face forward and stop staring at me, weirdo! My coworker’s ball-juice is no concern of yours.”
Wesley said, “You sure told him.”
I spun to attack his solid shoulder with a flurry of slaps. “Shut up! You’re such a dicksmack.”
Wesley’s snort-chortle, smothered behind his hand, was victorious, and his eyes flashed with mirth. “Love you, too.”
As the flight attendant started handing us dinner packages, I stabbed a chiding finger at his face. “I’m checking you with my bags on the ride home.”
“I’d like to see you try,” he said, and pointed with an excited lip-purse at the Skymall magazine. “Oooh, look! A zombie garden gnome.”
Flashbacks of an undead Sherriff's Department deputy stumbling after me with his rotten, blistering face sliding off squashed my appetite for lukewarm pasta. “Yeah, more monsters for Marnie’s house… just what I need.”
Wes put the catalog away and put his tray table down. His hand hovered over his individually-wrapped oatmeal cookie for a second, and then he passed it over to my tray table and completed his assault with quick but noisy cheek smooch. I wiped it off and tried to scowl at him, but his smooch-and-cookie combo effectively softened me. I’m super-easy like that.
“Remember when I was a kid?” he said.
I laughed suddenly, one single loud ha! “Was?” I drawled.
He poked me in the side. “Remember when I was afraid there was a monster under my bed?”
“Because Carrie told you there was? And that he had two heads and six rows of broken teeth?” I pictured a traumatized five-year-old Wesley swimming in a pair of my hand-me-down Smurfette slipper pajamas, and Carrie’s wicked, caught-out grin. “And if you didn’t stop singing Whitney Houston songs while she was trying to sleep, the monster would claw his way right up through your mattress and savage you in the poopchute?”
Wes gaped with the memory. “Right? How mean was that? I wore six pairs of underwear to bed for months, one for every set of monster teeth.”
“In her defense, you have the singing voice of a weed whacker filled with cicadas. Listening to you could burst an eardrum.”
“Remember when you sat with me, though?” Our elbows did brief battle for the arm rest between us, two Baranuiks too stubborn to give in, and we ended up awkwardly sharing, leaning against one another, shoulder to shoulder. “And you told me it was bullshit, but even if monsters did come, you’d be there watching over me while I slept?”
I stirred my pasta and rolled my eyes. “Yeah, some help I’d be.”
“You’re the whole reason I could sleep naked again.”
“Crap on a Cheez Nip! I’m not taking credit for that!” I sputtered, and smirked over at him. His good eye was dancing with amusement, but underneath that was a surprising tint of gratitude I hadn’t expected. “Does this tiptoe down memory lane have a purpose?”
“You and me, we’ll fight the monsters together. Yeah?”
“If you say one more sappy thing, Wesley Alexander Baranuik, I will gut you with this plastic spork.”
“Uh huh,” he said. “And Iiii-ey-Iiii will always love yooooouuuuOOooOOoo!”
“You hit that high note, you’re gonna hurt yourself,” I warned him.
No longer a little boy, and in fact a monster himself, Wesley could easily be the boogeyman of many a mortal’s nightmares. He liked to brag these days about such things, but I doubted he knew just how much damage he was capable of, or at least I hoped he didn’t. Not my sweet, flaky baby brother. I watched him poke at the pasta, knowing he wouldn’t bother eating it; I’d made sure he had a full pint of O-neg before we’d boarded the plane. Wesley was still considered the “new dead,” and I was wary about trusting him in public without a full gastrosanguinem to tide him over and suppress his thirsts. The holy water scars on the left side of his face hadn’t healed well around the upper curve of his lip. Not at all. Flipping in and out of bat form hadn’t been the miracle cure Harry had hoped for. The pulled-up, pinched and wrinkled skin there did not entirely hide his very human canine, and even when he self-consciously pursed his lips downward, a tip of tooth still showed. Even before he’d become a revenant, he’d always had the overly pointy and slightly uneven Baranuik canines, vaguely fang-like to begin with. His angel-perfect face had always compensated before, and a flash of Wes' winning smile had been known to knock the wind out (and panties off) of unsuspecting girls from Niagara Falls to south of the Mason-Dixon. I wondered if that still worked the same, or if it did so now for different reasons.
“Afraid I haven’t tested that out yet,” he said quietly, and I cursed his telepathic abilities and my less-than-kind wandering thoughts.
“We’ll face that monster together, too,” I told him, and gave him his cookie back.
Chapter 3
Ah, Schenectady. It was my first visit to this city, and during the taxi ride, my eyes devoured the night’s details through a dusty haze of tiny snowflakes and coppery street lights. The last time I’d been in New York, I got shot by a rogue revenant serial killer. I hoped my time in Schenectady would be a kinder, gentler experience. As we closed in on the industrial park that had once housed the Orc Quarter, the snowflake slurry turned grey as it mixed with smoke and ash. I threw one foot out into crackling, ankle-deep December slush, immediately kicking myself for not changing out of my Keds and into boots. I asked the taxi driver to stay, threw him my business card and a butterscotch candy to suck on, and gave my tan leather gloves a snugging tug.
Wesley slid out of the cab as a silent shadow, and I was struck by the subtle advance in the fluidity of his movement as he crept along in my wake. He no longer slouched and kicked at the confines of immortality; he had begun to dance within it. Perhaps he wasn’t doing Harry’s slow tango yet, but he was taking steps toward quiet, otherworldly grace. I didn’t feel like I was approaching a case with my baby brother in tow; there was no doubt I had UnDeath at my back tonight. Wesley would be tuning in and out with his telepathy, offering me insights if I asked for them, practicing restraint if I did not. The snap-spark of burnt sugar that accompanied the stirring of his revenant magic was hidden beneath the stink of an industrial fire, burning chemicals and melted plastics, laced with fire retardant and the distinctive waft of melting, dirty snow.
No one had to tell me who the fire chief was; standing on the far edge of three acres of smoking ruin and rubble, Chief Fitchett was the one everyone checked in with, the one everyone reported to, the unmoving rock in a stream of busy firefighters and forensic specialists. He looked like a slab of basalt in an overcoat; in his early fifties, touches of grey hair at his temples stood out against his dark skin and balding pate. He was hardly taller than me — I estimated might top five-three in his working boots — but carried the mantle of authority and the confidence of a man you’d never dare challenge to fisticuffs unless you wanted to get your ass put through the floor. My grandpa Matts had a rule about short men: never get in a physical altercation with a dude under five-six, especially if he looks like he wants you to. Fitchett’s nose was markedly crooked, healed askew from at least one break (and probably more), and his dark eyes challenged anyone to try and break it again. If he’d ever had a neck, it was now buried in layers of muscle from hauling hundreds of pounds of firefighting equipment for decades. When Wes and I approached the police tape, only his eyes moved to greet us, at first with a hint of suspicion, until I showed him both empty hands in the universal sign for, “it’s okay, I’m not a reporter.”
Fitchett offered a hand and shook my gloved one gently, then pumped Wesley’s freely. He gave me a brief head-to-toe inspection, revealing nothing of what kind of first impression I made, standing there in my faded jeans, puffy pink parka, and berry-print Keds, my funky ghost hair temporarily tamed in a pair of long braids and stuffed under the striped, knitted hat Constable Schenk had made for me. I suppressed an urge to
salute, and watched as his inspection of Wesley lingered slightly longer. If he was displeased by having a revenant present, he didn’t show it, and the Blue Sense was slow to report, offering only a wave of relief.
So he's deluded and desperate, I thought. What would Elian say about your positivity? I asked myself. Whatever it is, it had better be accompanied by a cup of Cuban coffee.
Wes quirked up the good corner of his mouth, but remained wisely silent.
Appearing at Fitchett's shoulder was a dude in a tan suit who I assumed was a cop from the coffee stain on his tie and the ready-for-the-inevitable-shitstorm look on his face. His navy windbreaker was unzipped, just in case he needed to shoot one of us in a hurry. The look in his eyes reminded me of the flat, reptilian stare of Claire from the Early Bird, but I amended that when I saw a flicker of heat; there was nothing cold about this officer. He was a magma chamber pent up and waiting to erupt, shuddering near the surface and barely contained. The Blue Sense gave a jittery churn. I wondered if Wesley felt my powers stir to life, or if he only read my thoughts like a news channel’s footer crawl: Local Officer Perturbed By Arrival of Small, Ridiculous Psychic. Feet Cold. Hey, Nice Ass on That Guy.
“Ms. Baranuik, I’m assuming,” the fire chief said by way of greeting. “Randal Fitchett. This here’s Stan Soldano.”
“Call me Marnie,” I said, offering my hand and business card to the cop.
“Randal, what the fuck is this?” Soldano demanded, giving my gloved fingers the barest of wiggles then dropping the business card in the grit by his salt-stained shoe. I watched my two cents go down in the slush and mentally filed it as a business expense under Dances With Dickwolves. That’s a valid tax deduction, right?
“This is our orc expert,” Fitchett said, sounding like he’d already had this conversation more than once and was tired of defending his decisions, or maybe he was always defending decisions to this person.
I opened my mouth to object vehemently to the word expert, but officer nuts-in-a-knot beat me to it. “You’ve gotta be kidding me with this shit. Telepaths and vampires, now?”
I raised a finger of objection in the air. “Uh, it’s—“
“What?” the cop snapped.
I was tempted to whip out my Miss Cleo impression but decided it wouldn’t help with what I was trying to accomplish tonight. “Just wanted to point out, I’m not the telepath, Wesley is… and it’s revenant, not vampire. The V-word is really uncool.”
“Uncool,” the cop repeated, and if he could have melted me with the hate in his gaze, he’d have gladly done so. It had been a while since anyone looked at me with so much unbridled loathing. The Blue Sense flared to offer me a whiff of something additional and vastly helpful: this guy didn’t like women at all, outside of the kitchen and bedroom, anyway. His tongue was buttoned on the matter, but his feelings were clear. To him, I didn’t belong anywhere that didn’t involve fetching his slippers or maybe a sandwich, and the idea that I might have the nerve to offer an opinion offended him on a level that stunk of sulfur and rage. Probably it should have bothered me, but it was actually quite freeing. This guy didn’t like me; well, that was settled, then, wasn’t it? Righty-O. My instinct to people-please, which was pretty tenuous at the best of times, promptly fled. I was free from the need to behave or impress him, and it felt marvelous. While Wes tensed protectively at the revelations rambling in my head, I relaxed.
“Yeah, uncool,” I told Soldano, “as in, don’t be a twatdribble. Does your face always look like you just got donked in the wombles, or does it uncrunch sometimes?” I cut my eyes to Fitchett. “I don’t actually have to work with this gasbag, do I? Because I’m liable to be fairly uppity the whole time, and this excellent fellow doesn’t seem to appreciate the finer points of my charm. I don’t enjoy sending cops into cardiac arrest when I can help it. At this point, I could probably cute this guy to death. Let’s have a care for his health, eh?”
Wesley coughed hard into a balled fist and hid his crooked, scarred smile behind the shock of his bangs.
Fitchett turned all the way around to face Soldano, as though he’d expected this to happen. Maybe he’d seen me on TV. “Stan,” he began tiredly, “I’m just gonna show my expert a few things out here before we talk to the orc. Why don’t you meet her back at the station? Shouldn’t be but twenty minutes behind you.”
Soldano gave me a long look before he left. I thought it might be meant to intimidate me, so I kindly widened my eyes as big as they could go and feigned a girly shiver for him. He didn’t appreciate my acting abilities. His glare turned to full glower and he stomped off.
“I think I’m in love,” I said to my brother. “I’m going to send him a nice fruit basket.”
Wes muttered, “Splurge for extra bananas.”
“No, dude-witch,” I whispered at him, “Bananas are for fertility. Make a note.”
“Pissing off the lieutenant isn’t the best idea, honey,” Fitchett advised, and then shook his head. “Fuck it, he gets on my nerves, anyway.” Then he cocked one eyebrow way up and his head fell to one side as though the action had unbalanced his noggin. “Donked in the wombles?”
“Ball-slap seemed unladylike in the moment.”
“But twatdribble was okay.”
“Twatdribble is always okay,” I said solemnly.
The Blue Sense suggested he was amused, but he did a good job of not showing it. “I should apologize for the chilly welcome,” he said.
“I’ll stop you right there,” I said. “You may fight fire, but monsters and dickbags – and monsters' dickbags, even – that's in my neighborhood, Chief.” I showed him my I-got-this smile and rode the waves of psi as they sloshed around me, a tap turned on full and coursing through my veins.
Fitchett considered me with a fresh dollop of understanding and got down to business, leading us through the safe zones along the edges, the areas we didn’t need equipment or special training to go, pointing out spots where fires had been started, rattling off suspected accelerants, showing me the wind direction and the hot spots that still smoked, hot spots where there was no warning smoke but he knew were still troublesome, describing areas where sinkholes had opened when underground structures collapsed. He was far more upset about losing his orc population than about any damage, though the mayor didn’t necessarily share his opinion. Riding a steady stream of psi, I knew his concern was genuine; this was a man who’d grown comfortable with his orc neighbors, saw great advantage to having an established and thriving warren in his county, was proud of his orc den’s cooperative efforts, and was upset at his loss. I also sensed that he felt the orcs had enjoyed their relationship with the community, and Fitchett was baffled by their dramatic and sudden flight. He did his best to hide his hurt and concern, bookending his worries in simple, politically-fashioned phrases and buzzwords, but he couldn’t hide it from my clairempathy.
He finished our tour with, “All I can say is, this has got to be a sign of something serious, and I’m guessing I’m gonna need to know what that is, the sooner the better. Think you can help me out with that?”
I glanced up at Wesley, who had forgotten to keep his fedora tilted to hide his scars, engrossed by the sight of so much ruin in one place. Wesley nodded vaguely without taking his eyes off the wreckage, and I thought he was reporting on the sincerity I’d felt from the chief more than the situation at hand.
I gave Fitchett a brief explanation of my two psychic Talents and how they worked, here, and their limitations. “I’ll be honest with you, without touching hot coals and shit, the site tells me little more than they bugged out, which you already knew. I can confirm something else you suspected: there’s some heavy duty panic embedded in the remains of their belongings. They didn’t just pack up and leave… they fled. The mood here is ugly. This was a mass of hearts-in-throat, heels-on-fire bolting exodus. This wasn’t something this particular den had ever done and they hadn’t practiced; there was a lot of upset in having to leave precious things behind. I’ll nee
d to see the orc who stayed. Did he remain of his own volition, or was he placed in custody?”
“He stayed. He insisted. We didn’t understand most of what he said because it was some kind of garbled blend of Orc and English, but he got his point across. He said a few things we didn’t understand but he repeated your title. I got it; he had to speak with you.”
Because I’m the Litenvecht Späckkenhuggar. The rootin-est tootin-est Litenvecht Späckkenhuggar there ever was. “We shouldn’t keep him waiting any longer, then. It’s getting late. Thanks for showing us around, Chief.”
He pumped my hand, harder this time, but still mindful of my smaller bone structure. “Text me before you go, would you? If you get any answers? I’ll be up all night. Keep me in the loop.” He began to stride back to his command spot, pointing a thick finger at his phone in a battered leather belt pouch.
I nodded before he disappeared into the swirling snow and ash. Wes cast one last look at the emergency personnel and various government officials who were still picking over the area, the latter group probably looking for a political angle. Wes’s jaw did a twitch that reminded me of Batten, but when I touched his arm, he just shook his head; the Blue Sense told me he was feeling suddenly sad and protective, and I realized that this was the first time Wesley had the opportunity to experience the general public’s dislike of me. He didn’t like it. I didn’t like it much, either, but it no longer bothered me as much as it once had. I unwrapped a butterscotch candy and returned to the taxi, knowing my brother would follow once he was done wrestling with this particular touch of chilly reality.
Chapter 4
Since Soldano didn’t really want to see me, it was easy to avoid him on the way into the precinct. It was a little after midnight when a female officer showed me and Wes down a hall that smelled of old coffee grounds and human beings at the ends of their ropes. I’m not sure what I’d expected upon entering Schenectady PD’s last interrogation room at the end of the hall, but this wasn’t it.