by A. J. Aalto
I got into the hearse and turned the heat on right away. Making sure to tamp down the Blue Sense, I drove holding the steering wheel with the heels of my hands buffered by the sleeves of my sweater as I drove back to North House, wondering if my trip had been worth it. I’d gotten some answers, but no promises that they’d move on. And what had he said about the old revenant feeding in phantasm form? (“Oh for sure.” And, “but that’s how the oyster’s shucked.”)
I like you, Roy, I thought. But this oyster’s no good. By the time I’d pulled into North House, I had only one thought: who is this old revenant, and how do I crush that bad oyster? Roy said he couldn’t tell me who the old revenant was, but he’d used those words carefully. Roy didn’t say he didn’t know, just that he’d tell me if he could.
I hoped Ludovic Nazaire would be able to.
Twenty-Three
Harry’s temper had diminished by the time we settled into the Winter Room for a deep feed and a nice postprandial cuddle. Even with the fire roaring, and my Cold Company warmed by his feed, I couldn’t seem to get toasty, even with the biggest cup of tea Mr. Merritt could brew me.
Wes joined us when we were done, and when I recounted the story of Rotten Roy, he fell off his chair laughing. My brother didn’t seem to mind the sister-in-danger bit, nor did he seem even remotely concerned about Glen’s precarious safety. He was tickled by the fact that a revenant had charmed me with old-timey gibberish, smooth-talked me into a date, plied me with alcohol, snatched my gloves, thoroughly bewitched me, got me talking mush about Jerkface, and rolled through my brain without me even knowing it had happened. Wes read my mind, undoubtedly noticed that I’d omitted the part about shooting Zorovar, but sensed no lingering ill effects from Roy’s toying, and shrugged, announcing that I was easy, but that that was no surprise.
Harry got up to pace, tolerating Wes’s glee with a shake of his head, tempered with a knowing, and possessive, glance at my neck.
“Shouldn’t we talk about this?” I asked. “Are we not even going to address the fact that I shot a vampire today?”
“V-word,” Wes teased, settling from uproar to chortle.
“Are we not going to talk about Glen?”
“Fear not, my love,” Harry said as his phone made a noise. “We have reason to believe it’s a non-issue.”
“Uh, when were you going to tell me?”
“Never, ya bimbo,” Wes said. “We kinda hoped it would keep you from pulling a Marnie. But you went and did it anyway.”
Harry had his phone to his ear, nodding as though the person on the other end could see him. “Of course, Kimberley darling, you know how seriously I take this sort of thing. I’ll come straight away. I should like to bring my girlfriend and her brother.”
Kimberley Fitzgerald, from the check book. I sat up straight. Girlfriend? This sort of thing? I mouthed: what the fuck at him and he flapped his hand fussily to shush me.
“I shall plow through the night’s wind to reach you post haste,” he vowed grandly, and hung up.
Wesley squealed with delight and squeezed his knees together, bouncing slightly. “I can’t believe it. Kimberley! I can come, too?”
Finally. More answers. “Who is Kimberley, and where are we going in such a hurry?” I asked.
“Miss Kimberley,” Harry announced, “is my psychic. She had a troubling vision, and needs to consult with me immediately.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I felt my entire world shift sideways. “Your psychic?”
Wes nodded eagerly and dashed off to get his shoes on.
“Your psychic,” I repeated, feeling my eyes bug out. “Whose DaySitter is she?”
“Oh, she isn’t a DaySitter, MJ. Oh, dear, no. She doesn’t even believe that revenants exist.”
I felt my jaw flop open and shut like those of a dying carp on a dock. “Then she’s not a psychic.”
“She absolutely bills herself as such.”
“Like, palm-reading, spirit-guide-consulting, sixty-five-dollar-an-hour psychic?”
“You’ve met her, then?” Harry said innocently, fluttering his lashes and showing me a big smile.
“I know the type,” I stressed, watching him don his argyle scarf and slip his arms into the sleeves of his wool trench coat. He popped the collar, buttoning it high on the throat. “Harry.”
“Yes, my dulcet darling?”
“I’m your psychic.”
“That’s nice, dear,” he said. “Get your coat on, please. You’re holding us up.”
“Harry.”
“Yes, sugarplum?”
“I can’t believe you’re going to make me ask.”
“I’m making you do no such thing,” he said, marveling at my nerve. “I’m busy putting on my shoes, my Own, which is something you might consider doing with alacrity. You’re choosing to make a fuss. Do take responsibility for your own actions, please.”
“Harry!” I clenched my newly gloved hands into frustrated fists. “Why are you seeing a psychic?”
Wes was throwing on his jacket, uttering a giddy litany of oh boy, oh boy, oh boy under his breath. Harry grinned at Wesley’s excitement and ushered him to the front door, tossing a shout over his shoulder to Mr. Merritt that we’d be borrowing the hearse.
I realized I wasn’t going to get an answer; Harry was having too much fun with his little intrigue. I grabbed my parka and the first pair of gloves I could find, put my knit hat over my peach fuzz, shoved my feet into my sneakers, and followed the capering dead guys into the night, nearly running to keep up. When we piled into the car, Wes was driving, which is always a bad idea. Harry sat in the back with me so he could cozy up to my warmth, which he hardly needed after a big feed, and which I was increasingly annoyed to provide without getting an explanation.
While the immortal shivered ostentatiously at my side, I changed tactics. “How long have you been seeing her?”
“Oh, Miss Kimberley and I do go back a ways,” he said lightly, as if this wasn’t huge news. “She read for me out of her home for years, then she got a store in Niagara Falls. She’s moved up to a shop near Clifton Hill, now.”
“Next to the haunted house attraction?”
“I do believe she’s located behind a souvenir shop,” Harry corrected, to which I rolled my eyes.
“And I suppose you expect me to bite my tongue the whole time I’m there.”
“What I expect, DaySitter, is that you will be on your very best behavior,” he said crisply, his London accent stubbornly strong. “One presumes that you will rise to the occasion and meet my expectations.”
“Boy, are you about to get disappointed,” Wes said from the front seat with a hoot.
I slapped the back of his headrest, then tapped my foot on the floor rapidly in distress. “If this woman doesn’t believe that revenants exist, then what the hell does she think you are?”
“Whatever could she imagine I am but a fine English chap with seemingly bottomless pockets?” Harry asked. “Why does this throw you in a mopple, my Own?”
“You don’t need her,” I said.
“Oh, but I do,” he said firmly. “I have cultivated this relationship with significant care for nearly a decade.”
“What the hell for? If you want to know the future, you call Gold Drake & Cross and chat up a Seer. If you want to know what’s going on right now, you can figure that out your damn self. In case you’ve forgotten, you have psychic abilities. Though the Falskaar Vouras don’t call it that, that’s what it is.”
“Thank you for reminding me of my nature, dear,” Harry purred at me. “I so enjoy when you do that.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“All will be made clear.” He patted my knee and ducked his chilly nose behind my ear to nuzzle me there. “Patience, my Own.”
“Fine, but tell me one thing, Harry,” I said. “How much does this woman know about me? Is she hot reading or cold reading? Has she researched us?”
“Miss Kimberley thinks I am Guy Harrick, and y
ou are my girlfriend, Pepper Johnson.”
“Pepper Johnson?” I threw my hands up in defeat. “He’s a football player.”
“I believe he might be a coach now, dear,” Harry said. “But I don’t often watch sports.”
“Why did you name me after Pepper Johnson?”
“His was the first name to pop into my head,” he explained, “and a celebrity name saves us from wondering whether or not Miss Kimberley is researching you or your work on the internet. She’ll run into hundreds of results pointing to the athletic gentleman, and nothing pointing to you.”
I had to admit, his method made sense. As a bonus, I did enjoy employing code names on a covert operation. “Why did you use your name, Harry?”
“There aren’t any modern records of Guy Harrick, love. It was harmless to do so. And it wasn't so long ago that our erstwhile carrion hunter fell for the selfsame ruse with a different accent, pet.”
I accepted that with a nod and stared out the window, watching the cheesy glitter and glow of downtown Niagara Falls go by. The Wheel cast a huge, silvery target in the sky for us, and we aimed at it through the choking traffic. Pedestrians shot across the road carelessly, even at this late date. Usually, the cold weather and chilly, misty air drove people from the tourist area, but a stubborn swell of international travelers still packed the sidewalks and roads. The noise of them pushed through the windows. We were too far from the gorge for it to be coming from river, so I figured it had started raining. The closer you got to the Falls themselves, the harder it was to tell actual rain from the ever-present mist swirling up from the churning cascade. That's one thing the postcards and the tourist guides never told anyone – the Falls were breathtaking, but they were also annoyingly, unceasingly damp. “Come squint through the fog and barely see the soggy splendor of Niagara Falls!” wasn't going to bring in the big bucks.
Wes pulled over in a parking lot and took a ticket, tucking it on the dash. We scuttled down the sidewalk, dodging incessant waves of bodies, to a little sliver of a building. Inside the souvenir shop, there was another set of glass doors. The windows were plastered with neon signs in the usual array of pseudo-mystical trappings and frippery: a purple hand outline, an eye, a pyramid, a tarot card. When we went inside, bells tinkled overhead.
Miss Kimberley swept in wearing exactly what I expected; long, flowing, layered robes in gemstone shades, fingers loaded with heavy, ornate rings, her dangling crystal earrings catching the light. She stopped abruptly, looking between Harry and Wes and settling her gaze on me.
Harry grinned expansively. “My dearest Miss Kimberley, how do you do?”
She wasn't quite giving me the stink-eye, but the look I was getting was perilously beyond its sell-by date. “I’m sorry, Guy, but I’ll need to read Pepper tonight.”
“As you wish, of course.”
“Because she has many spirits coming through, insisting to speak to her,” Kimberley said. “One of them in particular is being very rude.” She began smacking herself in the side of the head.
“So you’re a medium…?” I asked.
“I don’t encourage my customers to speak,” she said. “Especially if these spirits are telling the truth about you. They may not be. Spirits fib.”
“But I — ”
“Quiet, meat puppet,” she snapped. “Park your ass.”
I did a double-take then turned to Harry. Harry put one finger to his barely smiling lips, eyes twinkling, and then pointed meaningfully to the chair. I supposed after the mischief I’d been up to today, I couldn’t complain too much about Harry’s. I should have expected some payback. Harry did love to play.
“We’ll wait in the back lounge, shall we?” Harry asked.
Wes opened his mouth to object, but Harry took him by the arm and led him away.
She pointed at me from across the table. “There’s an older woman coming through, calmly and happily, quite proud of you. She's surrounded by flowers. A florist? Gardener?”
I maintained a blank face and kept my body language neutral.
“She's much older than she looks. Her young lover keeps her youthful, though he’s still with us? She’s showing me violets?”
Vi. Harry must have mentioned Grandma Vi in his past readings.
“She’s coming through with so much love for you, but frustration with how you’re treating her daughter? The Violet Lady was a mother in title only, not raising her child herself.”
I thought about Kinship of the Departed, but said nothing.
“But another lady is coming forward now, furious. I’m seeing red gems, red gems, red gems.” Kim shot one hand forward and showed me a garnet ring. “Red like this.”
Ruby? Ruby Valli? I didn’t think Harry would have mentioned her. But if this woman had any idea of who I actually was, coming across the case involving Danika Sherlock and Ruby Valli would not have been difficult, just like Harry’s former DaySitter having been Grandma Vi was public record, if she had learned the Dreppenstedt name.
Then Miss Kimberley’s eyes rolled back in her head and I felt an unexpected wash of psi as the Blue Sense showed me her determination. She slapped the table three times and announced, “You need to look past the cheese. The family concerns! Not the rum, not the rat bat liquor.”
These were not her words. These were not ghostly messages from beyond. These were Harry’s words. Not rolling my eyes was getting difficult. Harry wants me to shift my attention to what he believes is safer business. Reconciling with my family, while uncomfortable, was distinctly less dangerous than anything else I'd done, other than diner-hopping and buying fudge. Helping Schenk get some sleep therapy, also easy-peasy. She’s just feeding me Harry’s directions. Does he really expect me to buy this?
She continued, “Go further. Deeper. He’s not what he seems. He’s guarding his secret well. You might not want to find it. Danger lies in wait behind the secrets. Secrets. Exposure, exposure. Explosive results. Rage. Vengeance. Death. And worse.” Her hands slid up to her cheeks and she started rocking wildly forward and backward hard enough to shake the chair. “Egyptian. Treasure. Betrayal. A moonling. Madness. Foxes everywhere.”
Dr. Delacovias? Another distraction. It still sounded like a real shitpocalypse to me. “You wanna slow down for those of us who may have had booze and hypnosis for lunch?”
She stilled. “You’re wrong.”
“I get that a lot.” I nodded sadly. “What now?”
“You’re wrong about the bootlegging.”
“Okay.”
“You’re wrong about the leeches.”
Leeches, plural? I noted that for later, just in case she wasn’t completely full of it.
“You’re wrong about how the moon chooses your path — the moon does not choose. That power is yours.”
Was she talking about lycanthropy? I hadn’t trained long enough with Finnegan Folkenflik, the head of the skulk, to know. I made a mental note to text him and ask.
“And you’re very, very wrong about the dead.”
“Which dead?”
“Most of them.”
I didn’t know what to do with that.
She said sonorously, “You’re wrong about the Soul Caller.”
That was too dead-on, and it made me both nervous and confused. If Harry wasn’t giving her a script, how could a non-DaySitter be picking things out of my head? I squinted at her ears to see if she was wearing a wire, and there was nothing there. Maybe Wes was feeding her things with telepathic pushes.
“It gets worse before it gets better,” she warned. “Don’t let your guard down. A good deed is repaid with cold, cold bones and frozen ashes.”
“This is some bullshit,” I said. “Why do I smell cheese and buttered toast?”
“I made my last client a grilled cheese sandwich.” Her lips danced with mischief, now, and her eyes slid to the left, to a curtained wall, giving away her secrets.
I watched the mask fall from her face, not surprised. “Why don’t I get a damn sandwich, Mis
s Kimberley?”
“He’s making you one now. Patience.”
“Who is?”
She stood up. “My time is up. If you’ll excuse me.”
I glanced at the slit in the curtains, where a familiar figure lurked, dressed in a sparkly, wizard-type robe, purple velvet with silver crescent-moon embroidery. He handed me a plate. “I made egg salad. With diced onion and celery bits, just the way you like.”
I grimaced and swiped the plate from Batten’s hand. “Oh, for fuck's sake.”
Twenty-Four
After the pseudo-psychic had taken her leave, Batten shed his fancy wizard disguise in a swish of velvet and sighed. “Needed to see you. Knew you needed to see me.”
“Is this my punishment for Rotten Roy?”
Batten frowned, clearly not knowing what I was talking about.
I shook my head. “This is where you’ve been hiding? Cosplaying for tourists in the Falls?”
“Don’t worry about all that,” Batten said. “We need to talk.”
“If this is about my off-duty wandering, that’s none of your business.”
“I get flashes of things now,” he said, indicating his temple like Wes used to when he was trying to explain his telepathic moments.
I finished the first half of the sandwich, wiped the corners of my mouth, and leveled my gaze at him seriously. “We need to explore that, and we will, because your Talents are coming on stronger than you do, but first, I need you to explain to me why the hell you didn’t bring me a glass of milk.”
His brow furrowed.
“Everybody knows the Norman Bates Special is a sandwich, a pickle, and a glass of milk,” I said. “The celery bits were a nice touch, but your plating leaves much to be desired.”
“Marnie — ”
“The milk is mandatory. Only the pickle is optional, Hunkypants.”
He shook his head, smiling wryly. It ended in a stress-busting laugh. “Babe. I miss you.”
“Ugh,” I said with a scowl. “Gross. What the fuck?”
“Shut up and listen.”
“Not if you’re gonna make me sick with all that mushy crap.” I dropped the second half of my egg sandwich. “Turnin’ my stomach.”