Kindred Spirits: The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 6

by A. J. Aalto

  Oh, balls. “Not you.” I made a disgusted gurgle. “Come on, man. I can’t deal.”

  Harry purred low and pushed his satisfaction through the Bond. “I’m quite sure that at some point this evening you have seen a more disagreeable sight than the face of Our Dreadnaught, my darling, but do try to comport yourself with charity and compassion. He may be low and undeserving, but he is our guest.”

  “Stop needling,” I told Harry.

  Harry fluttered his lashes, which meant he most certainly would not stop.

  “Why are you here instead of literally anywhere the fuck else?” I asked Batten, unsure now whether or not I was happy about it.

  “Harry summoned me. He’s teaching me useful skills.”

  “Oh, is that what he’s doing?”

  Batten rolled his sore shoulder, clutching it. “I’m learning how to shadow-step.”

  I cut my eyes in my Cold Company’s direction in time to catch the mischievous smile that flickered across Harry’s lips, there and gone in a heartbeat, replaced by another innocent lash-flutter.

  “Uh huh,” I said skeptically. “More like, Harry’s conning you into running face-first into a variety of immovable objects for his own amusement. It's a good thing these old houses are sturdy. Your head is hard enough to fuck up some drywall even without, you know,” I gestured vaguely up and down his frame, “this undead tanking bullshit.”

  Harry sucked his teeth in admonishment. “Ducky, you wound me.”

  “And he's wounding the woodwork.”

  Mark shot him an accusing look. “Almost got it that time, direction or no direction.”

  “The issue is, as it always has been, my Carrion Hunter,” Harry said, “your greed. You simply move too quickly and call too many shadows. In your enthusiasm to do well, you’re blinding yourself.”

  Kill-Notch and I stared at Harry in displeased unison.

  It did not deter Harry in the least, as he was much too pleased with his analysis. “I have long suspected that feverish passion was your greatest fault and would be the death of you.”

  “That so?” Batten said flatly.

  I put my hands on my hips and stared at him. “I mean, it pretty much fuckin' was.”

  “Restraint,” Harry said, “is the difference between agony and ecstasy. It’s a subtle touch, like caressing a woman instead of grabbing her, groping with insatiable need. Someday, you might learn the difference.” He cast us both an arch look full of accusation.

  “Harry has a point, under all that gibberish,” I said. “With your accelerated transformation, and considering the nature of your maker, you might want to take things slowly. None of us know what you’re dealing with, Talent-wise. It’s a complete question mark at this point.”

  Their eyes flicked at each other.

  “What am I missing?” I demanded. “Do you guys know something I don’t?”

  “Flames and ether, my pet, try not to be absurd,” Harry scoffed. “If I had a score of years with which to — ”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I cut him off with a middle finger. “You know lots that I don’t know. Wankity wank wank. I meant about Batten’s nature, his Talents. You shared a look, and don't think I didn't see it.”

  “Harry’s got something important to tell you,” Batten said, rubbing his nose.

  I swiveled to face my Cold Company. Harry cupped his pale hands together, manufactured a polite smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and approached me by one step, speaking delicately. “Darling, I know this must come as a great shock to you, as it indeed does to me. However, one finds one must speak one’s mind.”

  “Must one?” I said, recognizing the tone and bracing myself for the load of horseshit that I was no doubt about to hear. I sent daggers of warning through the Bond that Harry deftly ignored.

  “I regret to inform you, that upon hearing Our Lad’s opinions, I have fallen into complete agreement with him on the matter.”

  “What matter?” I felt my shoulders tighten and my eyes narrow.

  Batten said, “He’s trying to tell you what I told you: butt out and go home.”

  “Harry’s not telling me that,” I shot at Batten over my shoulder. A wave of regret washed through the Bond and I felt my jaw drop. “Harry, are you telling me that?”

  Wes cleared his throat from the hallway. “I told you bo-oth,” he sang with dread. “This is a bad i-de-a.”

  “You need not go home, love,” Harry said soothingly. “But you mustn’t be involved in these endeavors.”

  “Coming here to back up Jerkface and solve the mystery of the missing colonel was my idea,” I said.

  “And it was a dreadful one,” Harry said.

  “You agreed to it.”

  “To my great shame. I should have kept you on a tighter leash,” Harry said, and then heard his words. His molars clacked as his mouth shut.

  “Yikes,” Wes said with a sad whistle. “You are gonna pay for that one.”

  “Better to tell a hard truth than let her run off like a maniac and ruin everything,” Batten said.

  I glared at Kill-Notch. “Why can’t you just be quiet like other corpses?”

  “Such a dreadfully poor choice of words on my part, ducky,” Harry backpedaled quickly. “I apologize. What I meant to say was that my need to please you and acquiesce to your demands blinded me to the risks, and that my heart is weak when it comes to you. I long to give you what you want. But now that I have examined the perils involved, with Our Lad’s help, I cannot bear to see My Own exposed to such things.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” I tilted my head.

  “Let the men handle it,” Batten growled.

  I blinked with disbelief. “I’m sorry, what just came squealing out of your blurt-hole?”

  Wes jumped in. “No, no, let the immortals handle the immortal stuff. That’s all he meant. In his head. I swear. His mouth got it wrong. Right?”

  I felt my rage bubbling. First Malashock, now this? “You want me to butt out?”

  “Take a vacation, is what they’re saying,” Wes said eagerly, shrugging. “You love your days off! I could go with you. We’ll visit.”

  “Visit Glen Strickland?”

  “No!” Wes said. “Um, we’ll play tourist. Go see Niagara Falls and Clifton Hill. Maybe take in a few winery tours.”

  “Go get your nails done,” Batten added.

  I picked up a magazine from the breakfast bar, not even seeing what it was, not really reading it, flipping pages angrily and pretending interest. “Fine. No work. I can do that. I’ll go lie on the beach and watch the early snow come across the lake, that’ll be relaxing.” I sniffed. “Vacation. Sure.”

  Harry squared off with me. “I can see you’re not taking this seriously. I mean for you to do exactly as I say, DaySitter.”

  “Oh, I heard you,” I said with an astonished laugh, showing him a big, sarcastic thumbs-up. “No worries, pal. I promise to be on my best behavior.”

  “Christ, you’ll have to do better than that,” Batten said.

  Wes warned, “She doesn’t mean a word of it anyways.”

  “Oh, you’ll see! I’ll do nothing for any of you.” I bit the words off crisply. “No-thing. No things. Not any things at all.”

  “Are you sober, dear?” Harry asked, and then answered himself. “Of course you are, you’re just tired. What a corking girl you are, always so full of sass and vigor.”

  “This just shows how little you people know about me. I didn’t want to work with you poopy-heads anyway.” I sniffed. “I had a better offer. From my new BFF, Nyquist. Even eating fruit-garbage directly from Shakespeare’s dumpster, he’s still way cooler than all of you combined.”

  “Oh my,” Harry murmured. “Is he indeed?”

  “Maybe we’ll do outdoorsy stuff,” I said. “Maybe he and I will go cave exploring.”

  “You mean spelunking?” Wes asked. “You spelunk?”

  “I could be a spelunkster,” I said. “You don’t know.”

  “P
retty sure I know,” Wes said. “And you’re not.”

  “I own a headlamp.”

  “Well, consider me corrected,” Wes said with a half-relieved grin. “You’re all set.”

  “The problem is, I’m pretty lazy,” I admitted, flipping to the last page of the magazine and finally turning it over to see it was just a detailed pamphlet for a denture clinic with Mr. Merritt’s name on the address sticker. “I wonder if there’s a pro spelunkster I could hire to do a tandem exploration?”

  “You’re picturing yourself hunting subterranean monsters while you piggyback on some poor cave explorer?” Wes asked. “You better give that guy double hazard pay.”

  More specifically, I was planning on blackmailing the aforementioned Nyquist into agreeing to piggyback me through a cave. “For sure. Now… when piggyback spelunking, who wears the headlamp?”

  Wes said, “An etiquette question maybe Harry could help with.”

  I turned to see my Cold Company’s pale hand on a patting quest across the bar for his cigarette case. He was still eyeing me suspiciously, certain that despite my return to humor, he had not won this argument.

  “The answer to that, of course,” Harry said, “is another question: who is the top, darling? The top has the benefit of the equipment, the bottom tags along for the ride.”

  I swallowed hard, letting out a soft heh heh. “Are we still talking about caves?”

  “Of a sort,” Harry purred, lighting his first menthol cigarette of the evening. “But I of course in no way believe that you’re willing to back off this case just because we asked you nicely.”

  “That was you asking nicely?” I snorted. “Try again.”

  “What are you planning?” Batten asked me.

  “Nothing,” I lied. “I told you. Tourist stuff, like Wes said. Maybe going to a cheese shop.” Through the back door. “Also, maybe hitting the casino.” Hunting a chatty, heckin’-old Nazaire revenant. “And a tavern.” Maybe owned by a smuggler. “And the cave.” With boggles, and Nyquist, who’s probably just as weird as I am.

  Wes pounced. “That’s where the big cop and Bizarro-Marnie thinks they’re storing the smuggled cheese! In a cave! With a maybe-phantasm! Marnie’s still working cases.”

  “Stop picking shit out of my brain, snitchy-dick,” I sputtered. “And Liv Malashock is most certainly not the bizarro version of me.”

  “Uh, no. That chick is exactly what you would be, if you were good at stuff.”

  “I’m good at some things.”

  “Those things,” Harry put in, “are a bit more personal in nature, shall we say?”

  We shared a matching pair of lewd grins. Batten and Wes groaned.

  “But first, a stroll through the cheese shop,” I said. “Mr. Merritt needs a brie.”

  Harry crooked a thrice-pierced brow. “He hadn’t mentioned.”

  “I assumed,” I said defensively. “Since when does someone not need a brie?”

  “You presume to know another man’s cheese needs?” Harry asked. “Good heavens, is there no end to your impertinence?”

  “Guess not,” I said. “But you wanted me to back off and take a vacation. Well, I’ll show you. You want me vacated, I’m vacating to the max.”

  “Splendid,” Harry said with a decisive nod.

  “Like I was never even here,” I went on, gesturing expansively.

  “How perfectly marvelous.”

  I made ghostly mystical fingers and a whoosh sound. “Like I’ve been dead for fifteen yeeeeears.”

  “Shruff and cinders, my pet, it’s not an episode of Scooby Doo.”

  “You take that back. Everything is an episode of Scooby Doo,” I said, thinking of Nyquist as Shaggy. Does that make me Daphne or Velma? I checked the time on my phone. Eight-fifty. Schenk and Malashock would still be staking things out, and by this time of night, the cheese shop was closed. I could pop by the Blind Tiger for a drink, but Longshanks and She-Batten might spot me or the hearse. I doubted I could talk Nyquist into going boggle hunting at night after Malashock told him not to. He might be a sassy Undercover Were-geologist, and he might be cheeky enough to skim discarded fruit from a smuggler’s bin, but I doubt he’d plunge into vampire territory without back-up.

  V-Word, I chided myself. Always when Batten is around.

  Batten’s lessons in shadow-stepping and face-planting were apparently done for the evening, and I wondered where he was staying, but knew better than to ask. I could follow him, but he’d know I was doing so — now that he was undead, part of our house, and familiar with my personal mark, I’d never be able to sneak up on him.

  Wes was staring at me steadily, still blatantly and shamelessly reading my mind like he was flipping through a glossy magazine. I showed him my restless irritation and a half-hearted middle finger. He offered a one-shouldered shrug and turned back to the basement.

  “I do believe I’ll retire to my chambers, if you’ll both excuse me,” Harry said. “I may be expecting a visitor soon and must prepare.”

  Harry had set up his resting space like Dracula having a garage sale — tables of wrought iron candelabras topped with black candles awaiting the touch of the match, thick velvet bed curtains drawn against the chill of the room, only the filmy gauze drawn back. The lid of his casket was fully open, as if an exhausted Constable Schenk might climb right in, if he'd even fit. Harry himself had, sartorially, gone all out. He’d polished his double monk strap shoes to a high sheen, pinned his off-white silk ascot with his favorite garnet, and taken the lint roller to his chocolate crushed velvet jacket. I groaned loudly.

  Harry twitched a thrice-pierced brow. “Something vexes you, my plum?”

  “This is to help Schenk sleep?”

  “It is.”

  “Schenk is not going to want that. Or this. Or this. Or that,” I said, pointing in turn to everything.

  “Whyever not?”

  “It’s ridiculous! It looks like you’re putting on a high school play.”

  “Thank you very much for your assessment, ducky, but if you would kindly note that, whilst I am in full fig, you are dressed like the hobbledehoy.” He sniffed indignantly. “So let us ponder for one moment which of us should make the design and fashion decisions, shall we?”

  “Patrick Schenk does not require elaborate design and high fashion, I promise you. The dude is a regular at a greasy spoon diner and drives a Hyundai.” I tried to imagine what the poor guy would think if he walked in this room. One the one hand, his sleep issues would be over; he’d be dead of a heart attack. “If he chooses you over the Gold-Drake & Cross therapist, then we’ll help him sleep in a guest bedroom like, you know, a normal guest, and I’ll be setting the tone. Casual. Sleepy. Longshanks is a jeans and t-shirt guy on his comfort days, I’m sure of it.”

  Harry’s frown deepened. “Longshanks? Goodness, what a horrible moniker to give a man whose friendship you enjoy. I assume he bears no resemblance to King Edward.”

  “Harry, how the hell would I know? You’re missing the point. Think chamomile tea and a wool blanket.”

  “I think I know how to properly entertain a guest.”

  “This is not entertaining, Harry. Think of it as…” I chewed on it for a minute, then brightened. “Your days as a field medic. Remember? The Linseed Lancers, or whatever they were.”

  “Is there any point in correcting you?” Harry asked. “I don’t believe you’re listening.”

  “Right, that. You’re tending a wound, that’s all. Think hospital. Boring therapist's office. This is supposed to be relaxing, remember?”

  Harry pondered this, not unhappily. “Very well, I see the logic in your suggestion.”

  “That was almost too easy.”

  “Anything to please you, my pipistrelle, this you know.”

  “Good, then I want you to tell Batten to fuck off and let us help him,” I said, and when he opened his mouth to retort, I corrected, “Let me help him.”

  “My Own is displeased,” Harry said, strolling around t
he foot of his bed to come closer to me. “Our Lad does know precisely how to insult and exasperate you, doesn’t he?”

  “Being a sexist ass would piss off pretty much any woman, Harry. I hardly think his words were tailored specifically for me.”

  “It was clumsy of him. An inelegant swipe, but an efficient one. One might think he was doing it on purpose. Funny behavior, considering how much he claims to adore you.”

  I took a long, soothing breath. “What are you saying, Harry? Spit it out.”

  Harry took my shoulders in his pale hands. “In the past, dearheart, Our Lad was ever able to arouse your passions by first driving you to frustration and rage. It’s a strange quirk of your relationship, to be sure, but one that cannot continue. Even if the Cold Cook were still living and available, it’s unhealthy behavior, you must see that.”

  I gave him a knowing stare. “Seriously? You’re going to lecture me about toxic behavior?”

  Harry fluttered dark lashes at me and waited for the accusation that remained unspoken, trapped in my gaze. I let him off the hook with a grand eye-roll — Harry knew precisely what his flaws were, and I knew exactly what sort of creature I was bonded to.

  Man, I reminded myself stubbornly. Not creature. Him not it. Revenant, not vampire. Dammit, Batten.

  “He is ever in your thoughts,” Harry said unhappily, cupping my chin and examining my sad eyes. “Even as he displeases you. Especially when he displeases you. I beg you, my Own, see this for the push it is. Let this be a key step in freeing ourselves of him, once and for all.”

  Easier said than done, I knew.

  Sixteen

  Just after dusk the next evening, Wes and I were bundled in the hearse on our way to Thanksgiving dinner. We had a German chocolate cake in a bow-wrapped box and bellies full of coffee and butterflies as we rolled through the small, suburban part of Virgil and onto the back roads towards my parents' seven-acre greenhouse operation. My brother was finally realizing that a confrontation was coming, and he practically vibrated with tension beside me. I reached over one gloved hand to pat his arm and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

  “It’ll be all right,” I lied.