Wrath & Bones (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 4)

by A. J. Aalto

  Batten chose to ignore me, and clotheslined Declan on his way to the passenger seat. “Shotgun.”

  Neither taxi nor the subsequent plane ride did anything to settle my irritation. We rented a car at the Belfast airport, and Declan offered to drive. He let the GPS take us across the River Lagan and out of the city to the northwest, plunging into the snowy city and the countryside beyond in far less time than I'd expected, entirely unlike the miles of suburban sprawl I was used to. We went from major motorway to unpaved road fairly quickly, and through a grey haze of flurries, I got my first view of Northern Ireland, frosted under a fresh dusting of snow. Despite the interesting change of scenery and our upcoming throw-down with an indomitable gold-guarding dudeling, I was brooding.

  Okay, so maybe I hadn't solved any problems today. Probably, I made them worse. Probably, Asmodeus made them even more worse, but that was sort of His hobby, as far as I could tell. But my idea to nominate Remy for the throne had been solid, and I that. In addition, I was so much better at things now than I had been when Batten first met me. I got no credit for my progress; I was having a Rodney Dangerfield day, though I had to face the ugly fact that Batten’s respect mattered to me. It shouldn’t, but there it was. I wanted a pat on the back. It wasn’t my driving force, but it sure would be nice for a change. Demanding it wasn’t working. I’d already bitched at him ninedilly-eleventeen times. Maybe a logical breakdown of my improvements would get me what I was craving. Better yet, maybe I needed to ditch the whole idea of getting that reassurance. At least from Jerkface.

  Batten was in the front seat, doing some deep thinking. I stared at the back of his head. His jerky, jerkface head.

  “I’ll have you know, I solved three monster cases last year,” I informed Batten seriously. “It would have been ten but it was only three.”

  Batten turned around in his seat and quirked a dusky eyebrow at me. “I’m supposed to be impressed by that?

  “Well, in my defense, I am bad at stuff. But I’m better-bad, now.”

  Declan hurried to offer, “You’re enthusiastic.”

  “Yeah, enthusiastically bad,” Batten said.

  “Enthusiastically better-bad,” I corrected. I sank lower in my seat and distracted myself with catching up on work. I had brought some of my marketing materials with me to make notes in the margins. My favorite was a pamphlet with the title, “So You Hired a Psychic Detective (How Much Does Your Life Suck?).” I thought it was fairly professional-looking, but Harry had laughed himself into a coughing fit when I’d showed him. I had a feeling Batten would find it equally ridiculous, so I made up my mind to get Declan’s two cents on the matter later.

  Grimston was a ghost town without ghosts. Or at least I hoped there weren’t any. I’d had my fill of ghosts on my last trip home to Canada and still had the black and blue ghost hair tucked under my hand-knit cap to prove it. We cruised through town, pausing to peer into a couple store windows and a locked bank. It wasn’t a big town. The sign said population 35.

  “Aren't there supposed to be people living here?”

  Declan pulled over next to the deserted Grimston petrol station. The lights were on. The pumps were active. Back Soon, Please Be Patient! was scrawled on the front door in a pleasant shade of green paint. Who paints that on the glass instead of putting up a temporary sign, if they were going to be right back?

  “Huh,” I commented. “What do you think of that?”

  “I think if I were ever going to obey a sign,” Batten said, “that’d be the one, right there. And if you make any move to, I think it’s my duty to all of civilization to shoot you.”

  “I wouldn’t open it,” I objected, glaring at him. “You know, sometimes I get the distinct impression you think I’m an idiot.”

  “Absolutely not,” he assured me. “I think you enjoy the opportunity to be disobedient when it suits you.”

  “Marnie won’t do ya like that,” I said with as much sincerity as I could fake. I went to the newspaper boxes outside the store.

  “Anything in particular you’re looking for?” Declan asked.

  “Newspapers. They’re dated yesterday,” I said. “Delivery people kept coming even though the population seems to have vanished. Maybe they’re just at a village party? A home town chili cook-off? Or whatever the Irish equivalent is?” I looked at Declan for help with that, but he frowned and shook his head.

  Batten pointed. “Gas truck.”

  There was a tanker sitting beside the pumps without a driver. Batten stepped up on the truck’s running board to look in the cab, cocked his head to one side to read the delivery manifest on the seat. “Four days ago.”

  The wind whistled through silent streets; I felt like I was getting a sneak preview of the world, unpopulated, post-Trollpocalypse. There was a bad undercurrent, though I didn’t see a single sign of struggle.

  Batten was impatient to hurry through to Undercroft. “Can we hurry the hell up? I don’t want to trek the world with you two for longer than I have to.”

  I snorted. “Who are you, a guy with friends back home waiting to hang out with him? You’re not.” I showed him my most dubious face. “You got something better to do?”

  He refrained from answering, but the long blink he showed me said yes, yes he did. Maybe his ugly Hawaiian shirt collection needed rearranging by likelihood to cause blindness.

  “We should decide on aliases,” I suggested. “We can’t just march into Undercroft being obvious.”

  Batten’s jaw rippled. “We don’t need aliases.”

  “Code names,” I said.

  “No,” Batten said. “You’re you.”

  “I don’t wanna be me.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Batten said frankly. “I don’t want you to be you, either.”

  “Then why shouldn’t I be someone else?”

  His voice came out more forcefully. “I don’t want to have to remember what name to yell if I have to search for you.”

  “I’ll use one of my regular aliases,” I promised. “The ones you know about.”

  Declan raised an interrupting finger in the air. “Can I just point out how disturbing it is that you have regular aliases, Dr. B?”

  “Fine,” Batten said with an exhausted exhale. “Just keep it simple.”

  “Great. Simple.” I nodded. “Who are you gonna be? Who should I be?”

  “I’m staying me,” Batten said sternly. “You be whoever you wanna be.” I started digging in my go bag when he corrected, “Not Glenda Hasenpfeffer.”

  “Oh, come on!” I cried. “I brought the wig.” I crammed the wig back in the bag, but slid on the zero-prescription horn-rimmed glasses. They made me feel like a sexy librarian. “So, here’s a question: what happened to the people who lived here?”

  Declan said, “Something terrible, Glenda.”

  “I should have known Grimston would be a bad place,” I said. “It has ‘grim’ right there in the fucking name.”

  Batten’s stride was confident as he trudged down the road to check signs, holding his phone and flipping through maps. After a minute of scouting, he whistled sharply at us and Declan and I hurried to catch up. He pointed with one thick finger. A faded sign that read UN E CRO T hung lopsided from a post. If the empty town hadn’t made us feel unwelcome, the wall made of skulls certainly completed that sensation.

  Fuckanut. “I haven’t seen this much head since I got rid of my porn collection.”

  “Looks like the Paris catacombs,” Batten said, ignoring my head comment. “These are old skulls.”

  “Good news, that.” I checked the instructions again. “Grimston to Undercroft, Gareth Granger’s pod o’ gold.” I looked up. “Grimston is abandoned. Population zero souls. The hedgerow leading to Undercroft is broken by a cute wall of skulls. I, Glenda Hasenpfeffer, am starting to like this quest less and less, ya know.” I flapped our instructions at them noisily. “It’s no longer the spelling mistake that’s bothering me.”

  Batten set his shoulders and
started down the path, boots crunching frosty stones. Positivity, Marnie. I folded the sheet and crammed it in my pocket, setting my sights on the back of Jerkface’s head. I moved my gun from my go-bag back to my holster in case the pub was dangerous.

  “Come along, Dr. Edgar. We’re not going to be out-foxed, out-run, out-smarted, or out-jerked.”

  To underline my point, I swished my coattails with a stern fwap!

  Declan pointed to my coat. “That’s how you know it’s about to go down.”

  “Damn right. That’s how Glenda Hasenpfeffer rolls.” I got a stern march going. “You know, I used to find Batten’s insults just a reinforcement of everything I’d heard about myself since I was seventeen. I was just learning, and I screwed up a lot, probably a lot more than other psychics, and I heard about it from all sides: my parents, Harry, the media, Kill-Notch,” I said, “everyone but Chapel and de Cabrera, really. Most of the time, Batten’s criticism rolled off, and whenever it actually pricked my pride, I would just cuss him out. I used to think I got sassy because I was resilient. Impervious. But that’s not true. I acted like that because my self-esteem was a bag of shit. I believed the crap he said about me, so I just bent over and took it.”

  Declan let me think about where my mouth had run off to in silence for a few moments as we walked. “And now?”

  “I’m not the same bumbling screw-up I was when we first met, but he’s still talking to me like he’s expecting me to fail at everything. A little recognition for how far I’ve come would be nice. There’s no trust there, just snide remarks and macho crap. Well, maybe I don’t want the insults to make me a resilient prick.”

  Declan put one finger in the air. “I think you got that mixed up.”

  “And I’m not gonna let his shit roll off my back. No, sir!”

  Declan cleared his throat and indicated that we were being joined again as Batten impatiently circled back to return to us. I braced myself to confront him.

  “You!” I said with an imperious point.

  Batten’s brows furrowed. “Yes?”

  “Do I look like a duck?”

  “Is this a trick question?” he asked.

  “Well, get outta the pond, buddy,” I said, “cuz I’m not going to be a duck for you any more times!”

  “Do I like that?” he asked Declan, who gave an exaggerated shrug that conveyed, “I am staying completely the fuck out of this.”

  “Remember when I found you tied up in that bokor’s hideout in the mine at Ashcroft and saved the world from a zombie apocalypse?” I asked.

  Batten nodded. “If I recall correctly, that ended with me rescuing you from a trap you yourself set.”

  “It ended with me kicking your ass.”

  “Sure,” he allowed. “Pulled you out of the trap and you attacked me. Remind me why I rescued you?”

  “Remember when I moved that Stonecoat from the pit mine to another den?” I asked, feeling increasingly frustrated.

  “What is this about,” Kill-Notch asked, “besides not being water fowl?”

  “This may be better discussed at a future date, Dr. B,” Declan suggested. “Thar she blows…”

  The Stout Ginger Prince was easy to find, as it was one of the only non-residential buildings on the single main street of Undercroft, and the only building with the lights on. I let my exhale out on a harsh puff that clouded the air in front of me. Batten was already opening the front door without any hesitation. Declan and I followed.

  I guess there were two reasons we didn’t immediately notice something was off: Gareth Granger’s Stout Ginger Prince sounded like a regular pub, with voices overlaid and the clinking of glasses, and there were vague shapes that didn’t smell at all like regular, healthy folk. That’s probably because they were, for the most part, mesmerized patients tied to chairs. I did a quick head count: thirty-six. I smelled dirty pants and urine and armpits and wine. These customers, if that’s what they’d ever been, were completely still, wearing full-face, rubber Halloween masks of various characters. Some had wigs on. One of the closer wigs looked exactly like my Glenda disguise, a fluffy, curly blond bob; I quickly ditched the whole idea of cheeky aliases for the remainder of the trip and made a mental note to chuck my wig in the nearest trash bin.

  A fire was roaring loudly in the stone fireplace, pumping out a pleasant amount of heat. I slipped Harry’s coat off and laid it over my left arm to better cover my holster.

  There was motion behind the bar. The bartender, unlike the patrons, was very much awake, washing glasses behind the bar. I thought this odd, since his clientele was dead and almost certainly weren’t consuming the pints he was continuing to serve. I scanned the room to find some of the glasses empty, or half full. There was other motion, too, but gone in a blink, motion that reminded me of the quick steps of the Lord High Treasurer in the jiekngasaldi. Were there more Fae here besides the clurichaun?

  Batten strode toward the bar, seeing the wrongness around him and keeping one hand near the Taurus on his hip. Declan stayed at my side.

  “What's going on here?” I asked softly. “I need properly gauge my degree of freakage.”

  “Degree of Freakage. DOF. Got it,” Declan whispered. “Captive patrons? Not sure why. The bartender is not the only thing moving in this room, though. Listen.”

  As Batten swung onto a bar stool and asked for a Guinness, I strained to listen, trying not to look directly at any of the dry-skeleton patrons with their deflated pants and their shirts that hung like bed sheets on their bones. Then I heard it, under the playful banter of the barkeep: the pitter patter of little boots. It might have been rats scuttling in the dirt, except for the whispers.

  “If this is an experiment to see how many ways you can creep an average person out before they run screaming into the night,” I said with a side-eye at Declan, “it’s a pretty good one.”

  “We’re a long way from average people,” he reminded me, and I knew it was meant to soothe me, but it didn’t. He was right. I wasn’t average, but right that moment, I really wished I could be the kind of person who could flee without any other reason than this is horrible and I’ll have no part in it.

  “Steady as she goes, Dr. B,” Declan said, and as I moved further into the dim pub, he walked beside me, shoulder-to-shoulder, to join Batten at the bar.

  Batten promised beneath his breath, “If you don’t break and run for it, I’ll reward you later.”

  “Promise?” When he nodded, I made a puckering, lollypop noise. “That was my vagina saying a preemptive thank you.”

  The bartender looked human, but that was fairy glamour and I had no doubt about it; everything felt wrong. I set Harry’s coat on the back of a chair and my go-bag next to it.

  “You ordered this,” the bartender told me, and put a glass of what looked like swamp water in front of me.

  “I did, eh?” I eyeballed my two cohorts, who shrugged. “Are you Gareth Granger?”

  “Drink and you will have your answer.”

  I considered my glass. It wasn’t wine. It looked like pale ale. Drinking fairy wine is a bad idea, always a bad idea, unless you’d already drank some, and then it was absolutely necessary to break free of the spell. Drinking ale given to you by a clurichaun? I didn’t know the rule about that one, but I figured don’t piss off the generous barkeep was a good rule for any species. I sipped, and when the bartender gave me a disapproving tut, I knocked the rest of it back.

  “This tastes like,” I smacked my lips and squinched up my nose like I'd seen fancy people on cooking shows do, “rat bile, with a hint of sewer gas and notes of rust and putrescence. Nice finish, kind like the dumpster behind a flower shop.”

  Declan sat on my right side. “That’s beautiful, Dr. B.”

  Batten asked, “Is rat bile worse than any other sort of bile?”

  “I’m fucking poetic.” I shot him finger guns. “Recognize.” For a moment, my entire body responded to the ale with a zing-tingle and a warm glow. “Gotta tell ya, my legs feel really
good right now. Ok, I drank your mystery juice. Are you Gareth Granger?”

  “I am.” He gave me the stink eye. “Who might you be?”

  Glenda Hasenpfeffer? No! I shrugged. “I am Sir Marnie Baranuik of Toots. I’m a knight, now. It’s a recent honor. You might also know me as the Great White Shark of Preternatural Investigations. How do you not know who I am? You're the one who said I ordered that drinkamabob before I ordered that drinkamabob.”

  He shrugged like he’d never heard of me, which was awesome and totally okay with me. “Why have you come to Undercroft?”

  “I’ve been sent looking for your treasure, good sir. And I’m afraid I can’t leave without it.” I handed him my quest itinerary so he could see it wasn’t my idea. He seemed fine with the whole situation.

  “You’ll have to talk to the spriggans out back. I’ve not had any luck getting close to th’ gold in decades, now.”

  “Spriggans,” I repeated with a long groan. “Why'z it always gotta be spriggans.”

  “Spriggans,” he confirmed. “They’re called Professor Pfaffenzeller, Captain Tuschoff, and Doctor Von Nockelstein.”

  I looked down at my empty glass. “Am I already drunk? Are they actually a doctor, a teacher, and a captain?”

  “Oh no, but I dare not argue with them. When I displease them, they make me flatulent. I’d gladly give you what you seek, Sir Marnie, but it’s beyond my abilities. You’ve got to deal with the spriggans.”

  Luckily, I just happened to have some experience with spriggans. One had attacked me in Mark Batten’s back yard. It had been lurking in his new honeysuckle plant. ”So, spriggans will negotiate. What do these guys like?”

  “Gold for gold,” Gareth said. “That’s the way my spriggans work.”