by A. J. Aalto
“I've been civil, people skills galore, just ask anyone, ask Elian, he'll tell you,” I said. “And what do you mean, Chapel wants us both?”
“Irish will be your assistant to start. Chapel's going to get you to train him in PCU procedures.” He gave a from-the-belly laugh. “It'll be a disaster. Let me take in your resignation and save you the drive.”
I sighed. “You've been back one day, you want me out of there?” I'd never been able to feel Batten's emotions with my Talents, but I diagnosed a bit of regret in the turned-down corners of his lips.
“We don't work well together.”
That was certainly true, and possibly the biggest understatement I'd ever heard in my life; all we knew how to do was fuck and fight and frustrate the hell out of each other.
“For your information,” I said, getting to my feet, “I'm keeping my non-job.”
Batten started after me as I made for the back door. “You never wanted this job,” he accused, tromping through grasses that needed to be mowed. “You avoided it for months.”
“What can I say, Batten?” I ignored him as he pulled up alongside me and tried to take my elbow. “I might be slow to start, but once I get going, there's no stopping me.”
“I know.” When I pulled open the screen door, he put his hand on it and shut it firmly in my face, preventing me from going inside, putting his body in my way. There was a wave of unspoken heat in his expression. Oh, boy, did he know how I could get going. The sun went behind dark clouds, spilling cool shade over us, as if the heavens were warning us, and we craned up in unison.
“If we work together …” he started, his voice thick.
I tossed back my head and laughed, surprised at his gall. “We won't be allowed to hump like a couple of horny rabbits hopped-up on E? I think we'll survive.”
“Marnie.” He dropped his voice to little more than a gruff scratch. “I can't work with you every damn day and…” Either he didn't know how to finish, or he didn't want to say what he was thinking.
“That's your problem.”
“Our problem. You don't hide it as well as you think.”
I told myself the sultry warmth curling slowly through my nether regions was anything else, that a good cup of espresso and a brownie would fix everything, but I had a sinking feeling the only thing that could fix me was tucked to the left in Batten's pants. My traitorous mouth started to water, and it wasn't for Juan Valdez or Betty Crocker.
I tipped my chin up at him; when our eyes met, a shot of heat lit up my insides, melting everything south of my neck into a tingling mess. My knees threatened to buckle under high-test passion, fueled by the fact that it was expressly forbidden. Well, technically it isn't, until Chapel hires me, my libido whispered. I really hated it when my baser nature had the facts on its side.
I hadn't had him since last October, shouldn't have him now. My body had not forgotten his; it remembered with vigorous clarity and I gave in to it, just for a moment, letting the ghosts of our passion rise from their shallow grave to howl madly through the limited corridors of my romantic history. Mark Batten was not a welcome guest there. He was a goddamned wrecking ball.
As if sensing a shift in my mood, he moved a breath closer, less than a step, closing the distance between us to a fraction of an inch. When the sun cut through the clouds above, his substantial shoulders layered me in generous shadow. They still looked delicious. I'd left bite marks on them before; I wondered if I'd be able to strike the same places twice. My mouth fell open helplessly. I could practically taste him again.
If he'd been a revenant, he could have taken me without further discussion; I've been around enough of them to know that the immortal lay claim to what they want, with charm and cunning, perhaps, but without concern for consequences, as they consider themselves, for the most part, above both the laws of mankind and conventional social politesse. As a warm-blooded man, chest rising and falling heavily with arousal, Batten stood clasped in the grips of his morals, obedient to law and conscience, his honest heart both a compass and a shackle. For a split second, I wished he wasn't bound by rules at all, but what would freedom from law and conscience do to a vampire hunter?
If I just dragged him to my bedroom and ravished him until we were both breathless and boneless, no one would have to know; I saw the same idea skinny dipping in the bottomless pools of Batten's eyes. It seemed an inescapable destiny that we'd end up nakedly entwined again and again, that fighting it was a fool's game, but nonetheless I took a calming breath and shook my head.
“Agent Batten, thank you for your concern, but I'll be fine. I have people skills now,” I assured him, “and I can be very professional.”
“Professional,” he repeated, as if to clarify.
“Very.” I nodded coolly, which was at odds with the heat I heard in my own voice. At that moment, I would have very professionally stripped him naked and jumped his bones.
He barked a laugh and strode off, shaking his head as he went. How does he walk that fast with a crippling hard-on? my brain demanded indignantly. He stopped in the grass with a warning point of one thick forefinger. “Hope you've got one helluva resilient dildo, woman. You're gonna need it.”
I saluted. “I could kill a thousand rabid wolverines with that thing, trust me.” I grimaced at the admission (See? People skills!) and followed him around the side of the house in a huff. “Don't flatter yourself, Kill-Notch. I can work with you every minute of the day and it won't bother me one fucking bit.”
He turned on me. “Who's Elian?”
“What?” I threw my arms up again. “Who cares? Elian doesn't matter. It's not like I have no self-control. My middle name isn't Wonderslut.” That doesn't even start with a J, duh.
Just then, Hood popped out the front door at a healthy half-jog, leaving the front door open to bass-driven suggestions from Bob Marley in a song I didn't immediately recognize; Hood's arrival snapped my mouth shut like a trap door. With his bag slung over his shoulder, still drying his hair on my monogrammed hand towel, Hood jerked his chin in casual greeting at Batten.
“Hey Batten, what's up? Didn't hear you were back.”
Batten, ever master of the obvious, said, “Sheriff Hood,” and craned stiffly to examine the side of my face. “Look, Marnie, it's Sheriff Hood.”
Hood gave the towel a sniff. “Your body wash smells like peaches and ice cream. It's going to be distracting me all day.”
My mouth opened again and I floundered, left with nothing in my arsenal of witty retorts.
Hood frowned at my inability to speak and continued, “We got mud all up the back of your yoga pants, and ripped them open at the seam.” He indicated with a slashing hand motion that looked like an air-spank.
“Oh. Wow,” I said. This isn't happening. “We did, huh? Gosh.”
“Rolling around in a ditch in spandex is a recipe for disaster,” Hood told Batten.
“Anything involving Marnie Baranuik has potential for disaster. Someone should have warned you, Sheriff.” Batten scratched the back of his neck. “Funny, could have sworn I did.”
“Well, we sure found out this morning, didn't we?” Hood made a playful swat at my hair and I dodged it. He tossed the hand towel at me; I swiped it out of the air. “Anyway, I don't know if your pants are salvageable, Mars.”
Mars? When did I become Mars?
“I threw them in the sink in some cold water,” Hood went on. “Hey, did you know your bedroom blinds were up?”
I expelled a soft noise of acknowledgment that came out part whimper part breathy laugh. Is he messing with me on purpose? My cheeks began a slow broil.
“You must have opened them just before I came,” Hood said.
Sweet Jesus! “To my house!” I choked on my tongue, which seemed far too clumsy. “In the morning, yeah I did. You betcha.”
“I'm surprised you opened them. Don't want ol’ Harry going up in a puff of smoke. Or is that a myth?”
Batten's jaw snapped shut, started doing its clenc
h-unclench dance, even as he clearly calculated the best explanation for this situation. He said finally, “Definitely not a myth; older the vamp, bigger the puff.”
“I should have closed the blinds before I stripped down; if you've got neighbors, I sure gave them an eyeful.” Hood smiled at me, bright and innocent, but I caught the distinct whiff of mischief riding on a subtle psi wave from his direction. “They're shut now.”
I stammered something that might have been a thank you, added stupidly “for everything,” which I could tell by the further narrowing of Batten's eyes was instantly misinterpreted.
Hood gave me a stern look down the line of his pointing finger. “Tomorrow morning, six A.M. Practice what I taught you, all day, if necessary. Muscle memory, right?” When I didn't object, he winked. “Good girl.”
Holy crapbaskets. If I blushed any hotter, I'd probably start piping steam from my ears. Bob Marley started wailing across the front yard about how he wanted to share the shelter of his single bed, and in stunned unison, my eyes and Batten's swung up the driveway to watch Hood's well-toned ass leap into his personally-owned Ford F-150 for a quick getaway.
When the truck was gone, Batten's gaze crept down sidelong to search my face with a frankly businesslike expression. If he was looking for evidence of anything but stupefied embarrassment, he'd have to be a hell of a sleuth.
I opened my mouth, dithered and struggled, and finally ended with a dumbfounded laugh. “Do-over!” I said. “I want a do-over!”
“I bet you do.”
“That was all bad, every minute of it.” Quickly, I opened my mouth to change which foot I had in it.
“Rolling around in the mud?”
“Would you believe I tripped over my own feet and flew headlong into a ditch?”
“I would,” he said easily. “Interesting that you're so twitchy about it, though.”
My molars clacked together and I did a not-at-all intentional Daffy Duck sputter.
Finished with his scrutiny, Batten gave his verdict, “No vulnerability,” then marched to the Bugatti, shaking his head.
Another man who found the possibility of my getting laid implausible. It was an insult I wasn't about to swallow.
“A smoking hot cop steps out of my shower at barely eight A.M. and you think nothing of it?” I shouted at the back of his head. “I could have been blowing him all fucking morning, shitdick!”
“No endorphins, either, Snickerdoodle. See ya.” The Bugatti roared to life and drove off in a quietly impressive controlled fury. The distinctive rumble of the engine faded behind rows of trees.
Now I had images of Batten's body and a prolonged fellatio scenario with Sherriff Hood to contend with. I trudged back inside, where it was just me, Bob Marley, and a thousand rabid wolverines.
CHAPTER 10
I'M A RECOVERING AVOIDAHOLIC, which is something like an alcoholic, only with more swearing and fewer meetings. When troubles scrunch in the front of my skull, my first impulse has always been to lock myself in the bathroom and soak or crawl under my bed with a bag of Doritos. I'm supposed to be rehabilitated now, so hiding would not do; no shirking my bizarre job, no dodging Batten the mintylicious uber-douche, no concealing myself behind a big palm frond from Hood's earlybirditude.
Harry was right. I had to break Chapel's dhaugir bond. It was long overdue. Also, if I were going to continue to work full-time, now that Harry was home, I was going to need help watching over him and Wes during the day. This wasn't as simple as calling a house sitter, or hiring a nanny; one look at the casket downstairs or the blood in the fridge and any rational nanny would bolt. I needed a reliable fix, and knowing Harry, he wasn't about to collaborate on a solution. My place was by his side, and there wasn't any way he'd volunteer a suggestion as to how I could more easily shirk my duties.
I tromped to the boathouse, thinking to fetch my bolline to cut some lemon mint for tea, ruminating on my dilemmas. In the shade by the door, my phone vibrated in my back pocket, setting off a wave of discomfort in my right butt cheek. I dug it out, bracing for more crap from Batten, but the voice was mangled and foreign. I tapped on my emoti-translator and slapped my pockets until I found my Moleskine and golf pencil.
“Je veux sentir ta varicelle,” the stranger snarled. The phone showed me a tiny picture of a roast turkey and translated, I want to sniff your chickenpox.
I bristled as I transcribed his words into my notebook. “That sounds like a threat, sir. Maybe you ought to find the balls to say it to my face? My place …” I need Harry for this. “After dusk?”
He ground out something wet that sounded like a polar bear knocking back a salmon whole. Once again, the Blue Sense awoke and his rage flared hot against the side of my face right through the phone.
He damn near shouted, “J'aimerais sucrer ton cornichon,” through a chesty, phlegmy cough and the translator's emoticon went angry-red. I'd love to sugar your gherkin.
Despite my confusion, I couldn't help but flash back on a memory of Danika Sherlock tied to a chair — a dark cellar, a foul pentagram, sour purple light — rejecting the invasion of a demon (“Speak without guile, demon, in my mother tongue, of things infernal”) that gurgling choke of her trying to shove the foreign spirit out, of trying to reclaim her own voice, her own body. My nerve returned, and I lost my temper.
I slipped one glove off and crammed it in my pocket, then gripped the phone hard, letting the psi that pressed into my ear float through my head until it dizzied me. I waited for him to talk again, to make another sound, but there was nothing. He was gone.
I jotted my psychic impressions of the caller, plus “mother tongue” and “things infernal” and a note to show Harry my transcriptions so he could explain the mistaken translations; it had to be this cheap app malfunctioning. Sugar my gherkin? What does that even mean?
Jingling my keys in my pocket, I found the boathouse door unlocked; when I turned the handle, I did so cautiously. I let the door swing open on its own as I stood in the dim threshold, waiting for my eyes to adjust, but the morning sun slanted in such a way that its light did not penetrate inside. It merely illuminated the dust motes stirred by the warm breeze.
Silly, I chided. There's nothing in there. Then that feeling of being watched tickled the Nervous Nelly in me. Within the shadows, nothing moved. For a good two minutes, I waited for something to leap out of the dusty pitch and chomp my face off. When nothing did, I stepped forward.
And walked face-first into a spider web.
I squawked, letting out a hoot while nearly breaking my back flailing the Heebie-Jeebie Hustle. I don't hate spiders, but skittering legs of any sort make me jumpy, whether they belong to brain-eating zombie beetles or beautiful Brimstone butterflies; the irony that I am a scientist, and a preternatural one at that, does not escape me. After flapping my face clean, slapping around to make sure nothing alive or undead was crawling in my hair, I drew myself to stiff attention and summoned back whatever pride I still had. It fit nicely in a teacup. Irritated, I turned in a slow clockwise circle — deosil — observing every inch of the boathouse, every nook, cranny, shade and shadow, and intoned, “By the thread of your crimes/by your own designs/I see your workings/seven times.” I clenched my fist and focused on my Keds. “As I will it, shall it be/Bright your clever traps I see.”
When I glanced up, something clear and vivid pink-red brushed the air like silt through water; lazy without wind to push it, the remains of the spider web were trapped in the corner of the rough door jam. It was as retina-searing pink as a flamingo bathed in pomegranate juice. Point: Marnie. Satisfied with my success, I grabbed the bolline off the potting shelf, where I saw another thin web, this one strung across the dusty, greyed-out window. I arched a brow, musing about how many spider webs must go unseen as people went about their daily lives. I got my answer; my Keds came to a gravel-shuffling halt at the door.
My yard was littered with fluorescent pink webs, like the scene of a bad, booze-fueled Halloween staff party in a discount
novelty shop. My jaw dropped and the blade tipped from my hand. Blinking rapidly did not, as I sincerely hoped, clear what I was seeing.
“Holy Hestia's hemorrhoids,” I breathed. Picking the knife out of the grass, I slunk back into the mudroom, cursing spiders, lemon-mint tea, and my distressing lack of cookies.
What I really needed was a strong espresso, a pencil, and my lime green Moleskine notebook. Never knock caffeine and a good To Do list for clearing the mind. Ignoring the pink cobwebs in the corner of the office, I jotted fix webs, fix Chapel, get rid of OSRA clown, find guardian for dead guys, research Waterloo tooth, look up Benjamin R. Sahelian and find missing Furries, under the date.
“I need a bodyguard,” I mused aloud, tapping my pencil on my lips. “Someone who's good with a weapon. James Bond. Or Jack the Ripper.” I wonder if Combat Butler is a real job? It should be.
It hadn't been as dangerous to leave Harry when we lived in Portland. Our condo had been on the fifteenth floor, making life difficult for the things that might like a nibble while he was dead during the day. Harry had quite an ensemble of things that wanted to nibble on him, and none of them were nearly as cute as I was. There was the debitum naturae, the debt vulture we named Ajax, which followed him endlessly waiting for a chance to devour him; the necrophile beetles that followed the debt vulture's path; and the dreaded spitting carrion spiders that fed mostly on the beetle larvae, but would nosh on the resting revenant, too.
When I'd gone to Buffalo on my first case with Batten and Chapel's PCU, Harry had chosen to stay behind, and I'd dosed myself with oxy-lipotropin to combat my “Harry withdrawal.” That wouldn't work as well here; we needed more and better protection. I'd started battle-hardening the cabin in small ways; the cupboards along the south wall had a new lock. I don't always learn my lessons after the first mistake, but once upon a horrible night, black witches Ruby Valli and Danika Sherlock had poisoned my lavender, and it had made an impression.
I unlocked and opened the largest cabinet door, and my eyes fell on two grimoires sitting on the shelf, a good bit of distance between them: mine, a hand-tooled leather book of shadows in black with a generous green tree on the front, and a wan yellow “leather”-bound book I'd stolen from Ruby, its cover suspiciously similar to stretched human flesh. I half-imagined that I could see little hairs coming out of its tiny pores. I didn't dare Grope the thing with my bare hands to find out for sure. I'd tried to blow the dust off it once; instead, it clung as though the leather was sticky, damp with sweat, and I swear I saw the cover ripple with goose bumps. From that moment on, I left it alone.