by A. J. Aalto
“Like most men easing into their fifth century of life,” I explained, “Harry's the victim of many old superstitions.”
“Harry is a victim's old superstition,” Batten said.
“I'll thank you to keep your teeth together, or you shall find the back of my hand a sharp retort, indeed.” Harry nailed Batten with a gaze gone delicately over to silver, chatoyant under the pale light from above. “You saturnine undertaker, you cold cook, you carrion-picker. Do not sit with your chuckle and snort at my table, and eat my food, and then mock my ways. ‘Twould be great folly to forget that I am more than capable of draining you dry as a puckfyst.”
Batten's eyebrows shot up, but the air of menace that normally surrounded him had subtly toned down since last winter, when a challenge like that would have been met with snarled threats or open defiance; the hunter's body vibrated with potential, but the tightness around his eyes softened. If I didn't know better, I'd think Batten was starting to enjoy not understanding Harry and had warmed to the familiarity of being lost in the cadence of another era. Or maybe he just thought Harry was so full of shit he squeaked going into a turn.
“I need a damn dictionary to talk to this guy,” Batten finally said.
“Won't help,” I said. “Half the words he uses aren't in there anymore. I've looked.”
Harry snapped his napkin then laid it primly across his lap. “Oh my, but you're all terribly merry, yes, a right good little jest at my expense. The devil shall lay hold on scolds.” One of his fingers got to wagging in front of his patrician nose. “I should not like to biwrixle you, but by my troth, you so very often leave me no choice at all.”
Silence. A snort. We burst into a collective chorus of guffaws; after a moment, even Chapel joined us, at which point Harry's face wriggled through a reluctant dance from exasperated to sheepish. He always came back from his UK visits with a bit of antiquity on his tongue, but he'd been caught out overplaying his hand. We were on to his nonsense. Or, at least, we knew it was nonsense. I still only understood about two thirds of what had been coming out of his mouth, and that was with our Bond's help.
When we'd settled, Harry swept out of his seat to return to the stove. “Where is our overly eager quill-driver this evening, he of the scandalous tale and ratt-rime?”
As though summoned from thin air, Dr. Edgar let himself in the front door after a brief knock, slipped off his shoes and placing them tidily on the mat, then offered a bottle of wine from his doctor's bag, leaving the bag propped open, perhaps a show of openness to his host: See? Nothing ominous inside.
Harry rose to greet him and accepted the bottle with a gracious half-bow. When he examined the label, his eyes widened slightly. “Chateau de Santenay Hautes Côtes de Beaune Blanc. A fine contribution, Doctor,” Harry said carefully. He was doing his best to hide the fact that he was impressed, but I knew Harry's signals. The shine in his eyes was full of new respect; my assistant had gone up in the revenant's estimation, and that was not an easy task. If I'd known all it took was a bottle of snooty French wine, I'd have tried it a decade ago. Well, I couldn't have actually bought it ten years ago, since I'd have been underage, but I'd have wanted to.
“Only, you should know,” Harry continued, “my humble meal will not meet the bar you have now set so high.” While reaching for a corkscrew, his pale fingers quivered happily. Odd. I wondered if the vintage meant something special to Harry, or the winemaker, or the vineyard for that matter, someplace in France that he'd stayed, some long-shelved memory resurrected? And if so, could Declan have known somehow?
In response, Declan shrugged with seeming casualness. Awakening with a sparkling prickle, the Blue Sense quivered in my chest like wet feathers, a fluttering finch beating tiny frilled wings in my throat. However, it reported nothing from our guest's direction, but rather in my Cold Company, a new suspicion blended with pleasure and nostalgia.
“I thought it might please you,” he said. “I hope to repair the insult I offered you earlier.”
I enjoyed a mouthful of Harry's divine soup, smacking my lips. Harry threw a linen napkin in my face with an impatient snap of fabric and I dabbed at my mouth with exaggerated care.
Harry bent to serve Declan some rare roast beef and a bowl of soup. Declan put a spoonful in his mouth and cough-choked, gasping liquid through his airways. I jumped up and thumped him on the back; he waved me off, but his widened eyes reported: panic.
When he'd thumped himself clear, he rasped, “Excuse me, Lord Dreppenstedt, does this soup contain carrots?”
Harry listed on his fingers, “Onion, carrot, chives, potatoes, butter, stock, and garlic.”
“You cook with garlic?” Batten asked.
“And you thought you were ballsy,” I told Batten. Don't think of his balls, don't think of his… dammit!
Chapel cleared his throat, his cheeks flushing pink. “Thank you for the meal, Lord Dreppenstedt. We should get some rest. Are you going to be all right, Declan?” Chapel asked, looking over his glasses while offering his napkin across the table.
Declan thumped a bit more on his chest, rattling thickly. “I'm allergic to carrots. My fault, I should have seen them. I tasted them and panicked, and breathed in.” He gave a self-mocking chuckle. “Got soup down the wrong pipe. I'll be fine, but perhaps I should pass.”
“Yeah, getting something stuck in your throat can be a hell of a thing.” I didn't mean to be staring at Batten when I said it.
Harry rolled his eyes and let out an entirely contrived sigh. “This is why we so seldom eat out, my darling dove. I can scarce imagine what an unlucky sommelier might hear in your vicinity.” He watched with interest as Chapel said his good byes to us and collected his boots.
I wondered at Chapel's sudden embarrassment; I'd made far more lewd comments in my day, surely a little vegetable suggestion wasn't making him this uncomfortable? I followed with Declan to the front porch, where the irritated shuffle of Batten's standard issue boots echoed at the threshold.
While Chapel started off across the dark front yard to the cabin next door, Batten and Declan hung back.
“Gonna give me shit about the carrot comment?” I asked Batten, craning up at him uncertainly.
“The what? Oh, no.” He shook his head. “Chapel seem all right to you?”
“A bit quiet,” Declan offered.
I added, “Twitchy.”
“After-effects of being released from that bullshit bond?” Batten asked.
Declan examined the side of my face with interest. “Should I know what bond you two are talking about?”
I pictured the vitamin bottle tipping into the circle cast by the spell, the gimp-mask on my computer screen, the energetic whump of power through the air. “Probably not…”
Declan bobbed a nod. “You left a pink notebook in my car, Dr. B, I'll just go grab it for you. Back in a moment.”
When he was gone, Batten ran both palms over his face like he was washing without water. “Quiet. Twitchy. You weren't in pain when you made that carrot comment, were you?”
Pain, no. Sexual frustration? Maybe. Okay, probably. Almost certainly. And that frustrating carrot was standing within arm's reach. I shut the front door behind me and opened my mouth to answer, but my near-confession was interrupted by Harry's bellowing from within.
CHAPTER 17
I CRINGED. Batten smirked expectantly. That was Harry's You're in deep shit cry, and I was dismayed that Batten recognized it so easily. My companion swept into the hallway in a flurry of red apron, drying his pale hands on the bottom, then immediately paced back into the kitchen, expecting me to follow at his heels. I gave a long sigh before doing so.
“What did I do this time, Harry?”
“’Tis that very same question which I must put to you. Whatever did you say to your brother today?”
I blinked rapidly, trying to sort the memory. “I said he had to knock off the food, stop squeezing our juice, and drink properly.”
Harry tapped his foot impatiently
, his immaculate Oxford making a paternal little pat-pat-pat. When I had nothing more to say, he flushed with annoyance. “Must you drive me to such splenetic heights, woman? What else did you say?”
“What's the problem?”
Harry opened his mouth to explain when the shadows in the pantry behind him shifted; drifting aside to allow the shadow's passage, Harry's face went from irritated to furious.
It took me a moment to recognize the young man who propped his hip casually against the door frame, flashing a smug smile that hit me like a slap. The mirth was what made my brain offer up a name, for nothing else was familiar.
“Wesley!” I breathed.
He'd clipped his hair in a preppy Ivy League cut, all those long, tangled white-blond dreadlocks shorn away. Gone were the stained, torn and well-worn jeans with the knees torn out, to be swapped for smart black dress pants, the crease sharp. The grunge-lumberjack plaid had been replaced with a crisp azure button-down shirt that reflected his husky dog blue eyes. Harry's favorite black Italian leather monk strap shoes completed the outfit. If he'd looked like a cherub before, he'd now ascended straight past seraphim to the Morning Star himself, Lucifer before the fall, God's most beautiful creation. My brother, the gorgeous, brownie-pilfering asshole, had stepped up his game. It wasn't fair.
He fingered the button front of the shirt and waited for the inevitable compliments with a self-satisfied smile lingering lightly on his lips.
My voice had been stolen; it was Batten who spoke first, voice swathed in amusement. “GQ running an all-vamp issue next month?”
“Revenant,” Harry corrected on a snarl, turning his back on us to start running hot water into the sink.
“Wesley, you look…” I shook my head, the drastic transformation still rapping me in the forehead. “What did you — why?”
“Kid cleans up nice, huh?” Wes bragged, brushing away stray hairs. “Harry loaned me some clothes.”
Harry huffed. “I most certainly did not.”
I moved to Harry's side to stroke his arm. “We'll take him shopping and buy him his own clothes,” I consoled. “Wesley, you should have asked.”
“I did.” Wes snorted. “He said no.”
I rubbed both hands over my forehead, as if I could wipe his self-centered stupidity off before it reached critical, contagious levels, and hoped he was trying to read my extremely blunt and colorful thoughts.
“Would that you had taken note of my wishes!” Harry replied, scrubbing the teapot vigorously. “It is inexcusable! The lad will plaster my Ozwald Boateng trousers with mustard and pork rinds.”
“I think it's a good sign, Harry. He's all grown up,” I soothed. “Mark, a little help here?”
Batten gave a one-shouldered shrug, offering a sarcastic toast with his beer. “Imitation is the highest form of flattery?”
Harry choked on his tongue but did not dignify the hunter's effort with a reply.
Wes said, “Even Captain Masculinity thinks I look sharp.”
“Stay out of my head,” Batten said, returning to his seat at the table. “And watch your mouth before it gets your ass in trouble.”
Don't think of Batten's ass, don't think of… Goddammit. “The last thing this house needs is an ersatz Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt.” I looked Wes up and down. “Luckily, there's still something missing.”
“Wot, the accen’?” Wes attempted to match Harry's accent to remarkably offensive results. “Jolly good and pip pip, govn'ah!”
Harry and I both drew back with matching horrified grimaces. “I say,” Harry gasped, but could manage no further response. He looked to me to fix it.
I shook my head rapidly at my brother. “Wesley, sound is coming out of your face. You might wanna look to that before it gets you hurt.”
Wes puckered his lips like he'd just crammed an unripe lemon in his mouth, and maneuvered further into the kitchen in what could only be described as a sashay. Batten's sudden choke-laugh through his beer sprayed foamy head across the table, and he jerked back in his seat, eying his now-damp shirt with disappointment. Harry shot him a glare and a dishtowel with the same eye-blurring movement.
“Death wish territory, Wes,” I warned.
“Hey, my Harry imitation is solid,” he assured me. “I got it all down cold. Get it, hunter? Cold?”
I didn't encourage him, and neither did Batten, but it didn't matter.
Wesley's mood had shifted from self-pity to bitter humor and he didn't require an audience; he was amusing himself. “Watch this.” He plucked Harry's platinum cigarette case off the kitchen table, slid out a cig and held it limp-wristed with his thumb on the filter. When Harry did it, he managed to make it look masculine. Wesley looked like a straight guy playing a flaming gay man in an off-off-off Broadway play. He took up my old espresso mug, flicking his pinky finger high in the air, and took a tight-lipped dainty sip, making kissy-tasting noises.
“Right. That's quite enough,” Harry slammed his palm down on the kitchen counter. “I must insist you cease this discourteous charade.”
“Or?” Wesley challenged.
Batten finished dabbing his shirt dry and looked up expectantly with his carefully-blank cop face. I jumped in.
“Bo-oys, we have comp-any!” I sang. “Let's not say or do anything we'll regret. Now, Wesley, why did you do this?”
Wesley's bad English accent persisted. “I figured if I splurged on the swank, I could get some tail. Maybe even some neck. Know what I mean?”
Batten made a queasy noise and stood. “My cue to leave.”
“What, you guys all get to fuck and I don't?”
“Stay out of my head!” Batten and I chorused, then scowled at one another in passing as he made for the mudroom.
Wesley snorted. “You two are doorknobs. In fact, all three of you are plain stupid. Three cold, lonely people who desperately want each others’ heat, and you do practically nothing about it. Well, I'm not going to be like you. I'm upping my game.”
Harry's eyebrows shot to his hairline. Ignoring the implication of an awkward triangle in the room, he said, “Are you given to understand that the fairer sex will find you more attractive if you emulate me?”
I, on the other hand, was both terrified and titillated by the improbable implications, not to mention the contortions, mechanics, and outcomes, but even my most fevered lustings recognized that the chances of anything remotely lascivious taking place along those particular lines anywhere but in my head as exceedingly dim. But the seed had been planted, and it spread some very hot, slippery roots quickly. I really hoped Wesley wasn't tuning in, because if he said anything about what was running through my mind at that moment, I'm not sure who would kill me first, or if I'd die of embarrassment before they got the chance. No way am I going to the grave without taking this fantasy for a test drive, I promised myself.
“Fuckin’ duh.” Wesley laughed. “Chicks drip for you prissy-ass Eurotrash vamps with the debonair crap.” I amended my opinion of my baby brother to include “misogynist ass” to “gorgeous and stupid”.
Batten paused at the mudroom and opened his mouth, maybe to offer a counterpoint of a personal nature, starring Yours Truly, then finally managed, “So much win in that statement, I don't even know where to start.”
“Ah! This must be my delivery from Shield,” Wesley announced, hearing something out front that I didn't. “Wallet, dahlink?” He made gimme-gimme finger motions at me.
My upper lip still curling up with disgust, I handed him my credit card without a word. His sashay-prance made another appearance as he moved down the hall. “Tally ho!”
“This is … this …” Harry's mouth worked around his rage until he noticed Batten still hovering by the mudroom. “Just exactly what are you sniggering at, lad?”
“Gotta admit, it's fuckin’ funny,” Batten said. “Come on. Dead guys have a sense of humor, right?”
Harry drew himself up, the unearthly sheen of his eyes swallowing any hint of human grey there, the preternatural vig
or of him pushing into the room. As quickly as it came, though, it dissipated, when Harry's lips peeled into a half-smile.
“Oh, bugger,” he said ruefully; Batten and he shared a rare companionable chuckle.
I heard Wesley's awful English accent to my left at the delivery man. “Tut tut! I'll thank you to address me as Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt, viscount Baldgate, my good man, for I earned my title!”
The wry smile had only half formed on my mouth when Wesley's ungodly shriek split the air.
CHAPTER 18
I HIT THE HALLWAY FIRST, running full tilt with my heart in my throat. Wesley floundered backward into the wall, palms-to-face, surrounded by a putrid green-brown ring of smoke. The noise he made was a constant blare, a drawn-out wail with no end. He toppled to the ground and rolled, heels kicking the floor. The air hissed and shimmered where heat belched from between his fingers. I didn't have to call for Harry: he was already there, barking orders for us to pursue.
It didn't occur to me for a second not to obey. As Batten bolted from the front door with his head bent to the night wind, I was right on his heels, just in time to see our mark duck behind the Hummer.
We hit the dirt road in unison like two synchronized swimmers breaking the surface, looking left and right for clues. There was a flash down the street to the left, a grey uniform, heading into the woods.
I heard Batten check his clip behind me. “Hell if I'm letting you go first. Get behind me.”
I made a hurry-the-fuck-up-then motion at him as we moved at a more cautious, watchful run, eyes darting for signs of danger. I patted myself down, but knew it was futile: I wasn't carrying the Cougar mini. I was sure I'd hear about that later, but I might have caught hell if I had been carrying, too. There's no pleasing some people.
It was late summer, so every bush and tree was overgrown, clawing, reaching, overburdened with leaves and fruit. Even with the attacker leaving us a trail, the going was slowed by whipping branches and stirred-up vines. Running the clear path in the forest with Hood had not prepared me for thrashing after a bad guy through the thick of it. Insects buzzed in swarms, and gnats clouded our sweaty faces.