by A. J. Aalto
“I was honor-bound to do so.” Harry looked up to speak to his master again, but the forest had lost the weak glow of his presence, and the phantasm had left nothing but a pale streak of green ectoplasmic froth in the cool air, the only trace he'd ever been here.
I sucked in a breath and let it puff out my cheeks, summoned my courage, and braced for Harry's wrath, shuffling in the leaf pile to face him, biting my bottom lip to keep it from shaking if he blew up at me. I lifted my chin, daring him to start yelling.
Instead, Harry's face crinkled. He started to laugh, softly at first, and then with great booming wonder.
My tension wavered, and with the amusement rushing through our Bond, most of it drifted sideways. “What the hell could possibly be funny right now?”
“You.” His shoulders shook. “Asking a prince of immortals to make me happy. How preposterous. How absolutely absurd.”
“You don't seem angry about all this.”
“Sometimes one must put corporeal intuition over intellectual reason, dearest,” he said. “I surrender the field, and submit to your crushing triumph.”
He threw out one hand, grasped me by the calf, and dragged me bodily to him through the loam with such a force that I yelped. I landed smack on my back, with one of his hands beneath me, but it was okay now; the warmth had returned to his grey eyes, tenderness that I hadn't seen in weeks, turning them from battleship to soft cashmere. He stroked bits of grass and leaves out of my hair with the back of his hand. “You may be the only one left who can make me happy, my own.”
“Holy mood swings, Harry. I thought I drove you bonkers.”
“Oh, you do,” he said. “Yet, even in these trying times, you bring unexpected warmth to my life such as I have not known in centuries.”
I felt a reluctant smile tug at the side of my mouth. “That's my job.”
“For one so capable of giving pleasure…” He indicated himself with one fine hand, then polished his nails on his shirt. “I suppose it is unrealistic for me to deny you all that you crave.”
“Uh, at the moment, what I crave is the truth. Then more of what we were doing before we got interrupted by Lord Spookywings. Can he really fly with those things?”
“Sweetness, I speak not to your cat-like curiosity, but to your sow-soft loins. Tell me, my angel, what exactly is it that you want?”
Sow-soft? “Did you seriously just call me a pig in the midst of a seduction? Oh, wait, because pigs have orgasms, right?”
“I am taking further requests, my lascivious little love. Perhaps you should take advantage whilst I—”
My mouth dropped open and something unexpected popped out without my permission. “I want you, wearing nothing but your jackboots.”
“Mon dieu.” Harry's surprise was quickly sublimated by a questioning quirk of his thrice-pierced brow. “My English cavalry Jackboots, or the hobnailed Marschstiefel that I removed from the body of that Nazi during the war?”
I thought about that for a moment. “Are the Nazi ones clean?”
“Everything I own is exceptionally clean. Except my current attire, of course.”
“Will you model them both, so I can compare?”
“As my lady commands,” he replied. “When?”
I snort-laughed. “How soon can you fetch them?”
Harry tsk-ed me. “Have I taught you nothing about the sensory delights of drawing-out one's anticipation?”
“I wait months for you to bang me, and you're going to be obnoxiously coy about playing dress-up? Hello, I'm wearing the shredded remains of your favorite lingerie right now.”
“You do make a compelling argument, my dove,” he said, tracing a finger along one dangling strap and raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with the night air on my skin.
But I had other things I wanted from him more, at least for the moment. “Harry, what does it mean to ‘travel high’?”
He rolled sinuously to his feet with a fluid movement I doubted any human could have managed to repeat without decades of dance and gymnastics, a boneless kind of zooop that made me think of Fred Astaire break dancing. Pausing to make sure I was watching, Harry tipped his imaginary hat and down-stretched his pale hand to me. “We shall discuss all this and more another time,” he promised.
“Why don't you want to tell me?”
“Plausible deniability, of course,” he said.
I crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue at him. “I can keep a secret.”
“Whilst you tango with a vampire hunter and play host to an unnatural historian? Do be serious, love.”
“Could you grow wings? That would be bitchin’.”
Harry gave up offering me a hand and put on his coat, patting the pockets, pale fingers questing for something. “Are there any additional secrets of the Falskaar Vouras that you feel entitled to discover right this moment, beloved?”
I knew he was being facetious, but I nodded anyway. “Uh, yeah, what the heck are the Falskaar Vouras?”
“Roughly translated, ‘false old person’; I think you will discover that most primeval revenants find it an amusing sobriquet.”
“Okay.” I stored this for future reference. At least I'd gotten one answer out of him. “And where is this Bitter Pass? Prince Dreppenstedt mentioned it, and so did Declan.”
“Ah yes, your scatty assistant and his misbegotten project. Upon no account shall I be sharing any further information with that gentleman; I think you'll find I am quickly losing patience for his tiresome codswallop.”
A flash of silver caught my eye and I brushed leaves away to reveal Harry's cigarette case. I'd only noticed him carrying it over the last while, and figured he must have bought it in London until I saw the engraving on the front. JB. It was the same inscription as on the new-to-Harry lighter I'd seen kicking around the cabin. Who the hell was JB?
“Is this yours, Harry?”
“Cheers, love.” He took it with a smile, squirreling it away inside his pants pocket as he retrieved his jacket, batting leaf bits and tiny sticks out of the tweed.
“Where did you get that cigarette case, Harry?”
“My, but you are full of questions.”
“And no answers,” I groaned, recognizing the utter stonewalling I was running up against.
Harry smiled in the face of my frustration. “Come, darling, my cenatory rumblings are not yet sated, and I trust I have earned the comfort of our parlor,” he said, rubbing a hand high across his midriff.
“I'm not going to get any answers tonight?”
“No answers, but more passion. A fair trade, wouldn't you agree?”
When I didn't agree, he narrowed his eyes at me, groomed the front of my hair with a finicky squint and fussy fingers. “Only, we have decades in our future, during which you may use that clever tongue to rend from me all my Earthly secrets, yes? Must I surrender all my mysteries tonight?” He picked a twig from my hair, examined it, then flicked it aside. “No more chirping, cricket. I shall take you home.”
CHAPTER 25
SOMETIME AROUND OH-GOD THIRTY, my cell phone rattled; I fumbled in the dark for it, knocking over a bottle of Tylenol. A second ring vibrated it in my palm. When I peered at the display, it indicated Batten's number. No elaboration, just a short text: Body in ten.
Body in ten? It took me a minute to realize this probably wasn't a crude three A.M. booty call, and I gave my tired head a rub. Whose body? Where? I stumbled upstairs to shake Declan awake, nearly killed myself on the stairs coming back down, mumbled something that only barely resembled a good morning to Harry, who insinuated that the world would be a safer place if I went back to bed, and then slopped back into my bedroom to shower and do the quickest, sleepiest make-up routine possible: a sweep of lip gloss and a flutter of mascara. After wringing a promise from Harry that he would text before going to rest, I trudged outside with Declan and piled into his Buick. We did this wordlessly, though he did give me a disappointed grunt when I didn't move to take the Hummer. I didn't even know where the keys were
yet, never mind getting the seats adjusted or the radio programmed.
The lake road tested his shocks with its assortment of chuckholes and ruts, the Buick quietly kicking up clods of dew-dampened dirt. The early morning fog reduced the trees on either side of us to shape-less shadows pressing in en masse. Above, the leafy canopy blocked out any glimmers of starlight. The few denizens of Shaw's Fist who remained this late into the end of summer slept through our rumbling passage. I envied them.
It wasn't long before we pulled up beside a white utility van and SSA Chapel's black SUV. Declan eased the car's bumper right up to the yellow do-not-cross tape. A familiar 4x4 with SHERIFF in big letters along the side sat askew at the end of the road. A young Justin Timberlake lookalike in a tan Lambert County deputy's uniform, complete with Sam Browne belt and felt hat, was maintaining the perimeter. His eyes narrowed at us but he made no move toward the Buick.
Declan turned off the car without moving to get out. He yawned with a dry-throated click behind his hand. “I thought Cosmo Winkle's body was already at the morgue, Dr. B.”
His yawn was contagious. “Giant beaver suit and all.”
“I thought the crime scene people already scoured the fishing camp for evidence.”
“They did.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Mentally undressing Justin Timberlake?” I suggested. “That there's a yummy little snackipoo for Marnie.”
Irish rolled his skull against the headrest to look at me without speaking. The seats had been off-white leather, but age had turned them the color of smokers’ teeth, a drab contrast to his black curls. He had done a horrible job of shaving this morning, missing a broad stroke along the line his jaw. I bet he didn't know, and probably he didn't care. It didn't look like he'd gotten much sleep. It's three-oh-five in the morning, genius, nobody has had enough sleep. His stoplight green eyes were shot-through with red; from the way he blinked at me, I thought they might be the perfect medium in which to grow a cactus. Maybe he'd gone to bed with a bottle after we parted.
“No really, why are we here?” he asked.
I wasn't going to tell him “I wish I knew,” because that wasn't true; I was sure that long before breakfast, I'd wish I didn't know.
My limbs were heavy and my brain was still logy with sleep. He grabbed his doctor's bag and cracked his door open; the interior light nearly blinded me. When I hauled my tired ass out of the Buick and came to stand with Declan at the front bumper, I wondered if we were twins separated at birth, one dark one light. Together, we looked like fresh hell gone bad.
Agent Batten, on the other hand, looked entirely scrumptious under the massive floodlights as he strode up the sandy incline toward us: eyes bright with determination, jaw clenched against the task ahead. I recognized the look: Kill-Notch does Serious Business. There was no hint of the teasing grin he'd given me last night, or any of the warmth. I had the urge to salute, quelled only because my arms don't wake for duty until well at least six A.M.
“Dude,” I greeted, hoping I didn't look as tired as I felt. “Where's the coffee?”
Batten blinked at me. “We're in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night.”
“And the coffee's not quite ready?”
This got me a twitch of a smile. “Coffee's back at your place. You'll be all right without it,” Batten said. “Ready?”
“No.” I bit my tongue. “Problem.” With effort, I put the two together. “No problem. What have we got?”
Batten warned, unlocking the back of the utility van, “You'd better change into coveralls and boots. It's a mess in there.” Then he hooked two fingers at the young deputy to indicate that Declan and I were okay to pass the perimeter, and his long legs propelled him toward the rest of the PCU crew, his vigilant gaze scanning left and right, monitoring and overseeing.
“He doesn't know me at all,” I boggled aloud. “It's a mess in there, but I'll be all right without coffee? Has Jerkface even met me?”
Declan paused before getting in the van, worrying at the gold necklace under his shirt. He hoisted himself wordlessly into the back with his bag to change.
I didn't need privacy to put the coveralls over my clothing, because even the smalls were two sizes too big. I took breath mints, my Moleskine, and a tiny pen out of my pockets before getting suited up. I shoved my legs into the white suit, wriggling it around my hips, stamping my foot when the leg of my jeans rode up inside. I had barely gotten my red Keds back on when a silky, noxious female voice came around the back of the van.
“Cute,” Agent Golden said. “You look like a fat little marshmallow.”
“I taste like one too,” I told her darkly. “Eat me.”
She studied me. “You think you're a pretty tough cookie, don't you?”
I stared off into the floodlit space beyond her shoulder. “Oh,” I lamented, “I miss cookies.”
“Do you believe all that Great White Shark stuff they write about you in the papers?”
I didn't bother to reply; she only said it so she could laugh at my answer, regardless of what that answer might be. Instead, I offered her a breath mint, my face carefully expressionless. Her eyes narrowed. I insisted with an encouraging nod, wrinkling my nose the way one might if they were passing a chicken farm. Her lips tightened. I shrugged and popped one.
“Dr. Edgar is going to snap some pictures,” she said. “Make sure he gets some great close-ups of your green face coming out of that shed.” The van jostled a bit as Declan, suited and booted, organized his gear.
Shed? “I'm a preternatural biologist, Agent Golden. I've seen it all before,” I promised. “There's nothing in that shed that could shock me.” Lies, lies. I slid the protective goggles up onto the bridge of my nose, feeling totally pro.
Agent Golden gave me a once-over like she was examining a piece of iffy meat in a butcher's window. “When you walk into a man's bedroom dressed for sex, Doctor Baranuik, does Darth Vader's Imperial March start playing in your head?”
Okay, that hurt. Mostly because it was true. I liked to think I was a badass in the sack. Or the forest. I managed not to smirk, though my hand did drift up to where Harry had fed earlier. “What are you saying?” I asked. “That I'm some sort of evil deviant? Or just insinuating that I sound like James Earl Jones this early in the fucking morning?”
“Not at all.” She laughed. “I'm saying you're a huge geek and you don't belong here.”
“Ah.” I nodded sagely, rapidly clicking and clicking my pen to keep from jamming it up through her chin. Soft palate impalement, that's what Batten called it. And then remembered, No, no. Killing federal agent equals bad Marnie.
“Well, geek is one term for it,” I allowed. “Educated, intelligent woman would be another.” Just then, my cell phone started playing the theme from Ghostbusters. I cursed in my head and pushed the call through to voice mail.
Agent Golden beamed triumphantly as though the phone had proved her point. “The way I see it, there are educated, intelligent women, and then there's Marnie Baranuik, Mistress of Disaster.”
“Oh yeah?” Smoooooth. “Says who?”
“Everyone,” she informed me brightly with a brand of pity that seemed to delight her. I bet if I pulled her eyelids down over her mouth and stapled them there, they'd stop fluttering. I hate morning people. Well, I'd hated Agent Golden around lunchtime, too, so that wasn't really a big stretch.
“Well, ‘everyone’ is entitled to their opinion.” I shrugged. “Your boss trusts his cases to the best that preternatural biology has to offer, and that would be me.”
“God help us.”
“There'll be no help for you, if you don't back the fuck up,” I snapped, noting her irritating habit of inching up into my face.
“Honestly, why don't you do us all a favor? Go do what you do best.” She scrunched up her nose in what would have been a cute smile if I didn't want to hurt her. “Go be food.”
At least she hadn't said, “Fuck Mark Batten”, so that was st
ill under wraps. I summoned up a whopping retort for what she could go do, and then bit it in half and swallowed it. My stomach was getting used to the influx of half-digested curses; it barely rolled over. “Is there something I can do for you, Agent Golden, or did you just come by to get in my face?”
“I wondered if you could solve a little mystery for me. You know, with your infamous psychic abilities, none of which I've witnessed as of yet.”
I rolled my tightening shoulders. People skills, Marnie. “Fine. Shoot.” … yourself in the butt.
“Seems Agent Batten disappeared from the cabin for over an hour last night. He returned with a smile on his face. This is odd, since Agent Batten never smiles.”
It was true; the smiles were rare. My heart kicked up a notch, but I showed her a cool, indifferent shrug. “Sorry, distant event viewing isn't my thing. That would be the Talent of a clairvoyant, a Watcher.”
“Agent de Cabrera saw Batten coming out of your place.”
So, the whole team's staying at the neighbor's cabin, and Elian's a big fink. Good to know. “He must have been with Harry. I understand he was sitting up talking to Wesley. Wes was injured, you know.”
I glanced up, expecting her to back off a little; instead, I saw a remarkable lack of sympathy in her face, for me or my brother. Drumming up psi, I searched her empathically for compassion, and found nothing. It didn't surprise me, but it did disturb me, and I had to look away.
When she pushed on, her voice hadn't softened. “There's a rumor going around that you and Agent Batten had a fling last October.”
“You know how office gossip is.”
“Any truth to it?”
I snort-laughed. “Do I look like someone Agent Batten would be interested in?”
“Absolutely not,” she agreed, “that's why it's such a hilarious rumor.”
“You know what's even more hilarious? That you care so much,” I told her. “I think maybe you've got a little crush.” I faked a big grin. “Flattering, but I'm straight.”
Fire lit in her eyes. “I will say this: you've got a nice ass. It'd be tragic if something happened to it.”