Kindred Spirits: The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 6

by A. J. Aalto

  “What kind of people do we support financially but indirectly?” he asked, thinking aloud for my benefit. “Staff members. Employees. Does he have any?”

  “I’m positive he’d use Shield now and then. Most modern revenants do, but he wouldn’t dare meddle with the soul of an employee of Shield. If they caught, or even suspected him of doing so, they’d cut him off. One staff complaint of inappropriate behavior by a customer and he’d be blacklisted.”

  I thought about the various people Harry supported loyally and faithfully; barbers, car salesmen, the occasional vintner, bespoke tailors in London. A haberdasher. Mr. Merritt. What were Aston Sarokhanian’s regular purchases, things he’d splurge on often? Treats for his DaySitters, perhaps? I said, “Maybe a local shopkeeper. There might be some risk that the business would close or move, but not if Big Bad were supplying frequent and expensive purchases to keep it around? I mean, the mob uses otherwise-innocuous business to launder money, and that's been going on for decades, right?”

  He paused to mull that over, probably flipping through a mental Rolodex of suspected fronts. “Okay, what do you know about this guy, what kinds of things does he like? Does he have hobbies?”

  “Sucking blood and being a creepy dickhole?”

  Schenk slid me a look. “You made a point of teaching me that these are people, not monsters. That they were people to start with, and we should treat them like people now.”

  Him, not it. I had said that so many times to Batten. I wondered if Batten’s opinion about that had changed, now that he was immortal. It occurred to me that I’d been thinking of Nyquist and Pascal as not-all-human, not just the revenants, and felt momentarily disgusted with myself. It was all too easy to slide into, even though I was a “them” in more ways than one.

  “You’re totally right. Okay.” I tried to picture Aston Sarokhanian in my head, but my memory of him was fairly incomplete. Even casting my mind back to the throne room at Skulesdottir, I couldn’t picture the man; I mostly remembered Sayomi and her black leather catsuit and jaunty hat.

  Some elder revenants had more than one DaySitter. Did Sarokhanian? What did I know about him? Not a hell of a lot, besides the fact that he defended himself when Colonel Jack and Batten were busting into his home to stake him. Did that even make him the bad guy? Hadn’t Wes reacted the same when Neil Dunnachie attacked the cabin at Shaw's Fist? All I remembered of Aston from Skulesdottir was that he was old, uptight, and snooty — but that was literally all of them.

  “How do I find this host, if there still is one? Visit his regular haunts?” I asked, thinking aloud. I pulled up a map view of the area on my phone, scanning around Aston’s old nest, where Jack Batten had been lost and Aston had forcibly fed from Batten’s femoral artery, leaving a gnarly, knotted scar. Thinking of Batten’s groin was fairly exhilarating for a hot, pleasant heartbeat or two, but the memory of him showing me the scar, knowing the trauma it had caused him, and the lifelong struggle it had left him with, was enough to quench that fire.

  “What would happen afterward, between the victim and perpetrator?” Schenk asked. “Continued feeding? An emotional attachment? Some kind of psychic link?”

  I chewed the inside of my mouth and shook my head. “More like trauma bonding. The host will be dependent upon the revenant, but not in a pleasant way. They’d be in agony until the revenant came to reassure and comfort; the victim learns to associate their presence with relief from the torment, illness, and exhaustion caused by the revenant himself. The revenant’s return means a feeding, most likely, and protection from the damage he himself has inflicted, like a junkie meeting up with a dealer who they knew cut their fix with rat poison, but needing it all the same.”

  “And can the host be freed?” Schenk asked, although it sounded as though he didn’t want the answer. Maybe he already suspected.

  “The host and the trapped soul can both be freed,” I said hesitantly, “by the death of the host.”

  “That’s the only way?”

  “Unless the Soul Caller has his own method of extracting that trapped soul and is willing do so.” But I’m not fabulously optimistic about that happening. If Aston Sarokhanian had Colonel Jack Batten’s soul, as Batten had long suspected, would Sarokhanian ever let him go? I couldn’t imagine any reason he could be compelled to do so. Certainly, nothing I could offer him.

  I realized with a start that I’d been discussing all this on the beach near Ghazaros’s house, having completely forgotten where I was and without minding the direction of my focus. After dusk. Close enough for Ghaz and his friend Zorovar to smell me. Smart move, dipshit. Maybe Batten was right. Maybe you should go home while you still can.

  “Ready to do the thing?” Schenk motioned behind him to his van, parked beside the hearse.

  “Oh, boy,” I said, forcing a smile and digging out my car keys. “Stake-outing.”

  Fourteen

  I’d spent a lot of time sitting in unmarked cop cars, watching stuff and daydreaming about how cool it would be if I apprehended the bad guys all on my own. In reality, capturing felons was hardly my forte. Still, the dude who was having a smoke at the edge of the Main Street sinkhole bore watching, and he was exactly the sort of guy I figured I could take down solo. I was a solid thirty-five percent sure I could outrun him at the very least. Small, soft, and round, he looked a bit like an aging Hobbit: a pudgy five-four, blond and bearded, with chubby cheeks and a bulbous nose. Dressed in pale blue medical scrubs and combat boots, lighting a second cigarette off the dregs of the first, he waited. Outwardly, he appeared calm and casual, but the Blue Sense told me he was jittery and seriously considering bolting.

  I drew upon a deep well of psi. It warmed under my tingling palms as I directed it outward to probe him cautiously. My Empathy picked up his doubt and fear, but also the overwhelming ennui of my co-stake-outers. Schenk and Malashock didn’t register any significance in the cigarette guy. Maybe they’d seen him before and dismissed him.

  “So, we’re not going to talk about Smoky Blonderson over there?” I murmured, sipping espresso and brandy from my thermos. “He’s not making either of you curious?”

  “That’s Erik Shakespeare,” Schenk told me.

  The cheese guy. “I thought he owned Wicked Whiskers, not worked in a hospital?”

  “I’ve only ever seen him wear scrubs,” Malashock reported. “Fashion choice? Comfort? Either way. I’ve interviewed him four times. He’s got nothing more to say.”

  “You’re sure about that?” I asked her. When she nodded, I checked Schenk’s face. “You, too?”

  Schenk slid me an unconvinced look. “He grows nice orchids in a sun room at his house.”

  I processed this while sipping my carajillo. Harry had made it the way I liked: with coffee strong enough to strip my stomach lining, and just the right amount of booziness. “So, he’s got nothing to do with old revenants, cheese smuggling, or boggle nests because he’s an orchid fanatic?”

  “No, it’s an irrelevant detail. You know what else is irrelevant? Scrubs.” He eyeballed my thermos. “Is that alcohol?”

  “Brandy. Want some?”

  He showed me a long blink full of meaning.

  “I’m not driving until we're done here,” I pointed out. “Also, I’m a DaySitter. I process it better than mundane humans. Even giant ones like you. I could probably drink your ass under the table, officer.”

  “You’re… physically different?” Malashock’s tone said maybe she didn’t really want to know.

  I told her anyway. “A revenant feed adds things to the human body beside a tidy pair of quick-healing puncture wounds. Their spit's the shit. V-telomerase extends human life by blunting chromosomal breakdown, and ms-lipotropin soothes the human and creates an emotional bond. That's why hospitals and blood banks have gold-capped test tubes when they need to draw the blood of a DaySitter. Everyone needs a heads up when dealing with ms-lipotropin.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Would it do something funny to regular people?
”

  I nodded and sipped. “It binds to the opiate receptors in the human brain. It can be addictive, and in some people, it only takes one dose.” I remembered Gary Chapel crumpling in front of my toilet, going through withdrawal, sweating and vomiting and looking pitiful.

  “I heard that vampires have been running a scam on the blood banks,” she said. “Any truth to it?”

  I resigned myself to hearing the v-word come out of her mouth as soon as the urge to correct her surfaced. “A scam?” I stared at the side of her face for a long beat, trying to determine the wisdom of even talking to her. I had once tried very hard to convince Batten that revenants weren’t the scum of the earth, and then he became one. When Malashock glanced at me, I continued. “There’s a company that gets tainted blood from the usual blood banks, blood that humans can’t use, so it doesn’t go to waste. Revenants can purchase this blood to supplement their regular diet. Say, if his DaySitter is away, or if they’re ill and he doesn’t wish to strain their system by feeding from them.”

  “You’re saying vamps only drink from willing donors or tainted blood that would have been discarded?”

  “In an ideal world, there would be no littering, or theft, or infidelity, or murder. But we live in the real world, and nothing is perfect. Everything is horrible, in case you hadn’t noticed. Dead, undead, living, it’s all the same shit. Only the age of the shit is different.” Maybe cap the thermos, Mars, my internal Rob Hood suggested.

  Schenk grumbled something I hoped was agreement, and then added, “Shakespeare has company.”

  We took turns glancing over. Under the streetlight, two men talked and smoked. There was a subtle void about the newcomer, whom I immediately recognized from the beach: the uniformed revenant with Ghazaros who had tried to shrink when the cops were mentioned, Nautical Guy. I mouthed the word revenant at my van-mates and we sat in complete silence until both of them moved away from the street.

  “You know that one?” Malashock asked me, as if I had a Rolodex of dead guys in my head.

  “Vaguely, but no name. Probably a Sarokhanian, a Nazaire, or a Borodian.”

  Malashock made a thoughtful noise. “I have a warrant out for a Milosc Borodian.”

  I checked Schenk’s reaction to that, and he was as blank-faced as I‘d expected, though my clairempathy told me that his curiosity had been stirred. “A warrant for what? To check his house?”

  She went back to her recording devices.

  “Is Milosc Borodian suspected of committing a crime? Or is it a stake-warrant based purely on the fact that he’s not mortal?” My temper flickered to life, warmed though I tried to tamp it down. My gaze slid up to the sky and cautiously checked the size and phase of the moon, still anxious about its influence. “You sound an awful lot like one of those vampire hunters I’ve heard so much about,” I added, testing the air, waiting for her to deny or confirm Batten’s accusation. Again, Schenk’s curiosity stirred palpably under the Blue Sense but his face revealed nothing.

  Malashock punched buttons, but I could Feel her evasiveness. “I’m just a federal agent doing my job.”

  “And getting a judge to sign a warrant against an innocent revenant based on nothing,” I prodded, “is that how you conduct your business?”

  “You need to worry about how you conduct your business,” Malashock said.

  “You got a problem with me?” I asked.

  “You have a criminal record.”

  I do? Oh, right. “Fuck’s sake, I was only in the clink for a few hours.”

  “For attacking an armored vehicle.”

  “I jumped out and said ‘booga-booga’ to a jittery Brinks driver.” I shrugged. “I was feeling frisky and got an urge.”

  Schenk grumbled, “Lucky you didn’t get shot.”

  “You guys are no fun. That’s the one and only time I’ve even bent the law.”

  “Is there any way that’s not a lie?” Malashock asked blandly.

  “Anything’s possible. Think positively! Never give up hope.” I sipped the last of my espresso, smirking behind the lip of my Thermos. My carajillo was getting cool. “So, we going to pick up Nyquist and poke around the boggle tunnels tonight?”

  “There are a dozen tunnels and you’re not coming anywhere near a single one,” she informed me. “You’re not authorized. You’re just an advisor.”

  “Fuck off into a bucket,” I said, stunned. “You invited me here, remember? You said that I’d be helpful.”

  “And you haven’t been,” she reported.

  Trying to get rid of me. “I can be helpful. Longshanks?”

  “Sorry, that’s the rule.” He shrugged one massive shoulder. “No civilians on police business.”

  “Since when am I a civilian?” I cried. “I have Fed-Cred, remember?”

  “Had,” Malashock corrected.

  “I’m your professional forensic psychic advisor.”

  “Great. Prove your worth.”

  “What, like, right now?” I asked. Fuckberries.

  “Yes, now. Did you get any psychic vibes about either of these guys?” Malashock challenged.

  I hadn’t, other than some passing anxiety, but I considered being unprofessional and making shit up. In the end, I floundered, “No, but I might next time. Come on. Did I not just tell you that other guy was a revenant? That's gotta be worth something.”

  “You’ll notice that Nyquist is also not with us,” Malashock pointed out as Schenk geared up and moved to the back of the van. “Nyquist is a government employee, a geologist. Not a cop.”

  “Technically,” I said, “he’s law enforcement.”

  “Technically, he’s a squishy pencil pusher,” Malashock said.

  “Fine. But don’t expect to be invited to my stake-outs, then,” I told her, gathering up my things in a huff. “I’ll just invite Nyquist. And I withdraw my invitation to get matching pedicures.”

  “You didn’t invite me.”

  “Well, I was going to. But now, Nyquist and I will go. Deal with your emotional devastation.”

  “I’ll try,” she deadpanned. “Look, we’ll compare notes tomorrow.”

  I gave them both a sour smile, feeling yet again rejected and hurried off. Taking a moment to make sure the cheese-monger and his revenant buddy were gone, I slipped out of the van and went back to the hearse.

  The side streets behind Wicked Whiskers and the Blind Tiger were a tree-sheltered suburban paradise, with the types of older, established homes for older, established people who hired gardeners and maids. No one was out at this time of night except for a solitary dog walker carrying a black poop bag: an older lady with a purple rinse in her hair that matched the purple rinse on her Bichon Frise. I parked alongside a church with a plaque out front, likely informing tourists about its long history or its function as part of the Underground Railroad. There was a statue across the street in a small green space, a soldier on a horse; it was safe to assume that in these parts he’d have been some captain or other from the War of 1812. These were all things I expected to see.

  I also expected to see, directly behind the cheese shop, a small staff parking lot and two dumpsters, one for garbage and one for recycling. I waited for the little white dog to finish his constitutional, then waited to see if my portly hobbit and his undead friend would head out the back. When they didn’t, I closed my eyes and focused on drawing psi while ignoring the thrum of the moon’s weakened influence.

  Nothing.

  What I needed was to go up and Grope the back door, or the dumpster, or the silver Toyota Corolla parked on the gritty asphalt slab. I fiddled with my gloves, debating the wisdom of that, when I spotted a slouched figure behind the green dumpster, lurking, his hat pulled down over his ears, his hands in his pockets.

  Nyquist. Interesting. Was he doing his own stakeout? Was he waiting for Shakespeare? Nyquist was supposed to be monitoring potential problems in the cave-in areas, like this spot, for the Blind Shale Boggles. Had he spoken to Shakespeare about the sinkhole on his
own, without Malashock’s knowledge or permission? Ballsy. Not that she or the FUSZ had the authority to tell anyone from the PUC not to conduct his own investigation. Undercover Geologist had a job to do, and by golly, he was doing it.

  Erik Shakespeare swung out the back door in a hurry, locked up, lit up another smoke, and then strode purposefully to the silver Toyota. I didn’t bother ducking as he drove past but I did look away, as if I was waiting for someone to come out of the church to the hearse. Pretty good cover, I thought. When he was gone, I looked at the dumpsters to find Nyquist scurrying around with plastic grocery bags, filling them with stuff from the garbage. He paused, sniffed at a hunk of discarded fruit from a cheese tray, and started licking grapes.

  What the fuck? Why eat discarded fruit from a dumpster when you could just buy some? I jotted that in my Moleskine, which made for a strange sentence indeed. Underneath, I jotted fruit cup, since that’s what he’d eaten at Bits n’ Bobs. Baffled, I started the hearse but left the lights off, and eased away slowly from the curb, wondering how my night could get any weirder.

  I didn't have to wonder for long.

  Fifteen

  When I walked into the kitchen at North House, still turning over why Nyquist would be pilfering from the dumpster at Wicked Whiskers, I found Harry leaning against the breakfast bar and looking amused. A dark blur streaked past me and smacked into the wall to my right with a door-rattling whump. I darted back after the fact, my reaction time slowed by my preoccupation with cryptogeologists and fruit and boggles.

  “What the friggity-fig is going on now?” I demanded.

  The blur settled to reveal Batten, nose-to-wall, shaking himself out of it, groaning. A thin veil of revenant-pulled shadows dissipated, shlooping back to the dim corners in a flaccid stream.