by A. J. Aalto
“Your favorite man to hate-love and get freaky with died but didn’t,” he went on, “and he wants you but doesn’t. Your best ally in the world happens to be a dhampir who lives across the ocean, who is, incidentally, absolutely marinating in undead mommy issues, and whom you might never see again. Your own mother doesn’t like you very much. Your sisters, either.”
I couldn't really argue with any of that, and my traitorous brain decided to give Wes more ammo, because it's an asshole. Nothing like being tag-teamed when you're beating yourself up. I don't recommend it.
“Seriously, your cat doesn’t even like you?” Wes asked.
“Bob tolerates me. Or at least he doesn't barf in my Keds.” Much.
Wes would not be deterred. “Your dead brother lives in a cheap pine coffin in your basement. He reads your mind and wishes he couldn’t. Your yard is infested with spriggans. You’re bald because a chaos witch made your ghost hair fall out. The Queen of the Falskaar Vouras has an IOU for a body-swap, remember that? That not-awesome fun is coming. And a three-headed demon king has His brand around your neck. Jesus fuck, Marnie, you'd have Maury Povich and Doctor Phil in a bidding war to get you on their shows for a week.” He took a bite of an uneaten pizza crust and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Go with Doctor Phil. I love when he says ‘how’s that workin’ out for ya?’ Ha!”
“Are you going somewhere with this?”
“Yeah. Your life is weird as shit. You need to fuckin’ deal with your stuff and leave this other stuff to the pros.”
“I was a pro, and it almost got my ass killed, too.”
“But at least that was one-time normal-paranormal danger. You weren't in it all day every day like the world's gnarliest bath bomb. Let’s go outside and have a talk, you and me, eh?”
So many points: Wes. “You’re dropping ‘eh’s like a Canuck again.”
“It’ll happen to you, too, just wait.”
I made a doubtful noise and slopped through the kitchen behind him, abandoning my cheesy snacks on the counter. Mr. Merritt offered me a shortbread cookie and a sympathetic smile as I passed the butcher-block island, and I loved him fiercely in that moment. His slow slide into a family slot in my life was complete. Byron Merritt was officially on my Good List.
The back yard chirred with late-season insects until Wes walked out into the night. The presence of the unnatural caused everything living to go still and silent. Small wildlife scattered when they felt it was safe to flee. Even the wind seemed like a held breath in anticipation of his step. I admired the panther-like grace of his stride, not quite a match to Harry’s elegance, but getting there. He motioned to the dark sky.
I saw the moon, very nearly full, and my breath caught. The cloudless sky blocked none of its brightness, and I felt jittery tension low in my belly. I pulled up some psi to see if I could Feel some form of connection to the Folkenflik skulk, sense where in the world Finnegan was. I couldn’t, but the effort made me feel shaky, like my ownership of my own body and human form was more tentative than it had been before I tried. Maybe this is what it feels like just before the Soul Caller sucks out your soul. I pulled back on the effort, hugging myself and willing the trembling to stop. The sight of the moon drew my eye again.
“You’re out of your league, here,” I told myself. Old Marnie’s reply could always be counted on: Fuck my league. “That doesn’t even make sense. You can’t fuck a league.” I reconsidered. “Okay, you could fuck, like, a bowling league, I guess. But keep it in your pants, Marnie.” We’re always out of our league, since when does that stop us? “Well, maybe it should.”
“Are you talking to yourself?” We asked.
“It’s helpful.”
“It’s a sign that you’re cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”
“Wouldn’t I have to be?” I demanded. “Besides, it’s not like you didn’t hear the rest of the conversation.” I nailed the Telepath with a pointed look, and he smiled guiltily, the scarred side of his mouth doing an extra-wry twist. Point: Marnie.
Wesley propped his butt against the stone half-wall and crossed his feet at the ankles, one floppy-tongued, poorly-laced navy Converse Hi-Top over the other. “Baranuiks are pretty bad-ass; why not give shape-shifting a shot again now, while you're not freaked out and being an asshole?”
“I am trying to be more rad,” I acknowledged, giving the full moon an unintentional stink-eye, as if I could warn its influence away. My belly gave another quiver.
Wes nodded, like he believed me. “How’s that coming along?”
“It’s not, really.”
“Come on, could your life get any worse?”
I spun to gape at him. “What if it did, though?”
“Maybe that would help,” he admitted. “Wait, what’s a cheese-monger? Why’s that important?”
I did a double-take. “cheese-monger? Cheese is not important.” Except to Schenk. I narrowed my eyes. “Where did that come from?”
“Your subconscious is gonna have to think louder,” Wes said. “I missed part of that.”
“Cheese is important to the cop I know here, Constable Schenk. He’s a cheese buff. That’s a real thing.” Wes and I made deep, matching hmmmmm noises. “Also, there might be a cheese smuggling ring.”
“Did you say your cop is a cheese buff? Normal people are so weird.”
“The weirdest.” Then I considered that I was waiting to shape-shift into a wyrm – or something – again. I probably shouldn’t cast stones. I sighed, suddenly very tired. “Sometimes, I wish I could keep Harry and ditch the psychic stuff. Be something else. Like a nurse.”
“No bedside manner.”
“Or a waitress.”
“Your short term memory is crap.”
“You’re incredibly helpful, Wesley,” I told him as my phone began to buzz in my back pocket. I dug it out and checked the number. Sheriff Hood’s avatar blinked at me. It was just a quickly-snapped picture of the back of his head, taken stealthily as we were leaving the gym one morning, but I knew who it was because of the hat. I swiped to answer.
Hood’s voice was cool and unworried, though the Blue Sense told me that he was concerned. “Mars. Last night, Umayma came to your office to find a woman running out the back door. Maim didn’t get a good look at her, but she was sure it was a DaySitter. She said she sensed a revenant’s influence nearby somehow.”
He made that last bit a question, but it was one I couldn’t easily answer. As a former DaySitter slowly losing her Talents as her Bond to the deceased revenant waned, Umayma would still know one by her own sense of inner metaphysical longing. She would be physically drawn to the undead in a way that would be difficult to explain to a mundane mortal like Hood. It was even possible that Umayma, still an actively precognitive psychic, had foreseen this break-in and showed up ready to confront the issue. Not the type to shy away from conflict, our Maim. I could easily imagine her only texting Hood after the opportunity for kicking ass was over. I didn’t think it was my place to spill too many of those beans.
“Could be. Not sure why a DaySitter would break into my office?” I asked. “And why now? I’ve been a giant pain in the ass in Colorado for years. I’m not even home. I’m in Canada.”
“Making friends up there, are you?”
Oh. “Probably not.” I suspected that Hood’s instincts, as usual, were on the mark. “Guess I’m ruffling feathers. Where is Maim now? Is she safe?”
“She was going to hang at your cabin, but Chapel dissuaded her. Probably for the best. We’ll find her a place to stay if she hasn’t already. She’s headstrong. I’m not sure I have advice to offer that she won’t overrule.”
“You should listen to her,” I advised. “Umayma’s got nine lives, and she’s just begun her second. She knows what she needs.”
“Gotcha,” he noted. “I’ll roll past the cabin to do a check, and keep you updated.”
“Thanks, Rob.”
Wes’s eye had grown to double its size and the iris had waned in color from Hu
sky dog blue to a hideous wilted violet again. “Is Maim okay?”
I opened my mouth to explain but my phone immediately rang again. I figured Hood had been close to Shaw’s Fist on his first call. “Mars.” Then he muttered something that sounded like: “Fuck’s sake.”
“What now?”
“There’s a man hogtied on your front lawn.”
“I didn’t do it!” I objected. “I always hogtie men in the back yard.”
“I’m serious.”
So am I. “Who the hell is he and how did he get tied up?”
“Don’t know who he is but I have an idea about the latter,” Hood said. “I don’t see the other spriggans, but Captain Tuschoff is stamping on his neck and Professor Pfaffenzeller is gnawing on his earlobe.”
“Hey, that’s good news. He must be alive.”
“As far as I can tell. The spriggans haven’t let me get too close yet.”
“Let you? You’re not scared of the spriggans,” I accused, knowing he was not in any rush to free the interloper.
“I might be,” he lied. “They’re dancing around him in victory and chanting something squeaky.”
“I can see how that might be terrifying. Did you have a bad experience with some Lilliputian slash Brobdingnagian cosplay during your formative years, Sheriff?”
“The guy in the ropes looks pretty terrified. His eyes are glassy and bright.”
Lycanthrope? I wondered briefly about Gunther Folkenflik, Sayomi Mochizuki’s pal, the werefox who bit me in Egypt. “Is he getting furry?”
“He’s wet his pants. Hardly wolfing out, if that’s where you’re going.”
Under attack and not shape-shifting. Not a lycanthrope. “They — whoever ‘they’ are — sent another DaySitter, maybe. And not a very good one.”
“Their mistake.”
“One they won’t make again.”
Hood made an unhappy noise of agreement. The next time they came, they’d come in force, and my home would be invaded. “Got any idea who ‘they’ are?”
Aston Sarokhanian’s goons? “Maybe. Unfortunately. But for now, I need to play it cool. Politics.”
“I’ll have a patrol loop set up.”
I pictured some poor deputy driving alone on that dark, forested road, path crowded by tree limbs, headlights cutting the night, pulling up at my cabin, and getting set upon by a clutch of young, angry revenants.
“Nope,” I shook my head even though he couldn’t see it, more to clear the horrific image from my head. “I’ve got someone who can house-sit.”
“Can’t let a civilian put themselves in the crosshairs like that.”
I blurted out a surprised laugh. “No, no, no. Viktor is no civilian. He’s an eight foot tall undead ogre, and this shit is his job. He doesn’t sleep, he’ll drink Harry’s blood supply from the freezer, and he can translocate immediately from Russia. He can be there as soon as I contact The Organization. He’ll be on high alert, so don’t send deputies by my house, day or night. At all. Ever. Consider my yard a no-go zone until I get home. Okay?”
Hood was speechless for a beat, and then I thought I heard him laugh softly. “You live a strange life, Mars. Call me if you need anything else.”
“Will do. Can you text me when you know Umayma is settled in? And an ID on Dipshit von SprigganVictim? Book him for trespassing or something.” After he agreed, I hung up. I sent a quick text to Viktor directly, bypassing the rigmarole, and got a curt, affirmative reply that instantly made me feel better about my home, if not about the quality of my life choices. I texted Maim, too, and got an equally curt, affirmative reply.
Wes had heard everything. I could see him wrestle with an internal conflict: he had to see his maker, Glen Strickland, at Ghazaros’s request, but what he wanted was to hurry home to Maim and make sure everything was okay. What I wanted was to drop everything and go back home to Ten Springs where the action was stirring. Home invasion and interlopers, I was good with. Revenant politics, boggles, cheese, and dealing with my relatives were all lousy with landmines in comparison.
Wes gave me a questioning look. I knew what he was asking, because my thoughts were there, too. If the trouble was in Colorado, was that also where Aston Sarokhanian had disappeared to? And if so, was that where Batten was headed? Had we traded south for north, east for west, and vice versa? Was shit going down in Ten Springs without us? Could we extract ourselves early from our ruse of staying for Thanksgiving without looking like we were specifically chasing Sarokhanian’s shadow? If we left now, would it be a sign of strength or weakness? Would it show we could be drawn away, or that we were willing to defend our territory? Original Recipe Marnie didn't worry about appearances or subterfuge, she'd just say, “Fuck it,” and haul ass to kick butt. Wes was right; Old Marnie would think New Marnie was a wiener.
A wiener with very cold feet, standing around on the back porch in her socks. I turned to go back into the house, maybe prop my feet up by the fire. Like the opposite of a bad-ass.
I knew what Harry would say. We would ignore the games to the south. We would carry out our charade of visiting my family and make nice with Ghazaros. We had no Batten to protect because Batten was officially dead and gone, I reminded myself. A little breaking and entering at my office, a little light trespassing at the cabin – all that could be handled by local police, with an assist from Viktor and the spriggans.
“You think Sayomi Mochizuki wants us to run back to Ten Springs,” Wes said, effortlessly following the thoughts racing across the clear screen of my mind, “because we're a threat to their House here.”
“Yup.”
“Well, fuck her,” was my brother’s assessment.
I nodded once. “And the fangs she rode in on.”
Ten
My bed was calling, and I was happy to answer. I slipped into a long t-shirt, its cartoon long faded away to nearly indistinguishable pastel blobs. Supervisory Special Agent Chapel’s picture lit up my iPhone and I scooped it up.
“Hey, Bossman. Everything peachy-keen at the PCU?” I answered.
“I have you on speakerphone, Marnie,” he cautioned. “With Assistant Director Johnston.”
Hooo, boy. “Okay? Working kinda late, eh? I know, I know — crime never sleeps.”
“Dr. Charles Delacovias has come to speak to us regarding your health.”
A jolt of sick heat rolled through my guts. For a long moment, I didn’t even know how to respond. Dr. DudeCanShoveIt had drugged me and proceeded to be a five-sided fucktangle of HIPAA and medical ethics violations after I’d been bitten by a werefox. He also had the bedside manner of a hagfish.
I finally stammered some sounds, then tried again. “You’re joking. He’s not in prison? Last I heard…”
“I’ve been released under several strict conditions, Doctor Baranuik, so that I might continue my important research,” Delacovias sneered, every bit of furious contempt he had for me packed into the word “doctor.”
“Gary,” I said, feeling my heartbeat drum hard, “don’t drink anything this guy gives you. Coffee, tea, Kool-Aid…”
“You needn’t worry about your colleagues,” Dr. Delacovias said. “You are the one in danger. From yourself.”
His voice made my skin crawl. Worse, I felt the virus within me respond unhappily, and the heavy influence of the near-full moon made me prickle internally, like my bones had ants gnawing on them. I let my breath stream out of my nostrils hotly and stared at the bedroom wall for a long moment. “How do you do, Dr. Delacovias?”
“Good evening, Dr. Baranuik,” he greeted. “I’ve got wonderful news.”
I seethed, longing to tell him to hop up his own ass. “I’m listening.”
“I understand your virus has taken control of your judgment already once, is this correct?”
“I would absolutely not characterize it that way,” I said carefully, wary of Director Johnston’s ears being present. If he thought I was compromised in some way, I might not be able to work with the FBI in any official
capacity in the future. That was, no doubt, why Dr. Delacovias was making this call from the PCU office in front of witnesses.
“It’s important that you don’t let it happen again, with or without Finnegan Folkenflik’s supervision,” Delacovias said. “The more frequently the shape-shifting occurs, the deeper the virus becomes entrenched in your nervous system. I may not be able to cure you if that becomes the case.”
“Cure?” I shivered and pulled up the wool blanket to my shoulders. Through the Bond, I felt Harry perk up, noting my uneasiness, and knew he’d be joining me from the cellar in a minute. “You mean you’ve found one?”
The doctor made a wary noise, but didn't have the cojones to commit to even voicing a “maybe” in front of the same witnesses he was using to dick me around. Point: Marnie.
There was a long beat of silence, and I heard a chair squeak, and could picture Gary Chapel shifting in his seat uncomfortably. There might have been a meaningful throat-clearing from Director Johnson, whose time was apparently being wasted outside of business hours.
I could Feel Delacovias going back on his bullshit. “If you consult with Folkenflik, or any member of his skulk on this matter, you will find yourself ostracized from their community in a most unpleasant manner, so I must caution you against doing so. They seem certain that their infection makes them somehow better than the rest of us mere humans.”
“Chuckles, I know carrion spiders who are better people than you are.”
There was the sound of Gary Chapel aspirating his coffee and coughing sharply, and a surprised grunt from a voice I assumed belonged to Johnston.
“Of course you believe that,” Delacovias said smoothly, “that is the virus talking. I assure you, it impairs you more than it benefits you. And part of this impairment is the way it infects the brain to convince its host to take risks. You’ve heard of Toxoplasma Gondii, which passes to mice through infected cat feces, and makes mice more attracted to cats. The virus family Lupoviridae, and specifically the Vulpes virus, acts upon the human brain in much the same way. And even moreso with mutated shape-shifters such as yourself.”