Kindred Spirits: The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 6

by A. J. Aalto

  “He left without saying goodbye, Wesley,” I fumed, hurt and furious. “Batten got on the bus, and — did he say goodbye to you and Harry?”

  Wes just nodded, wary of my mood.

  “Why the hell? What the actual? How could? That fuck!”

  My brother waited patiently for me to form an entire sentence, but that wasn’t going to happen. I was far too shocked. “He’s a… he’s just…”

  Wes reached into his pocket and handed me a cell phone. Batten’s burner.

  “Said he wasn’t gonna need it,” Wes said quietly.

  Holding it in my hand, I scrounged helplessly for a curse word strong enough to express to my baby brother just how furious I was. Again. I ended up settling on a horrified, confused gurgle noise, followed by an angry bull-snort. Though serious snow was still a few weeks off, my breath fogged the cold night air.

  Wesley’s noticeably did not.

  Forty-Three

  Sheriff Hood’s phone rang once, and then shunted me to voicemail. The car cut through late night fog on our way home from the airport. I called again, and it went straight to voicemail, so I left a message to let him know that Harry, Wes and I were on our way to Shaw’s Fist, and we hoped he could stop by soon to check in. When the headlights hit the familiar crooked fence and the painted mailbox at the end of my driveway, I felt the knot in my belly finally begin to loosen. Home. As nice as it had been to be back in Niagara, I’d been homesick for the sight of my ramshackle old cabin, and now, with its single window spilling warm light into the dark yard, it was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in weeks.

  Inside, someone was house-sitting, and cat-sitting, and (if they were brave enough) spriggan-sitting. When Harry parked beside the black SUV and I opened the passenger door, the crisp scent of wood smoke tickled my nose, and I gazed up at the sky to see a curl of heat billowing from the woodstove pipe. It wasn’t as cold here in Colorado as it was in Niagara yet, but my house-sitter had decided on a fire this evening regardless, which told me a lot; this was someone who knew two revenants were coming home tonight, so it was someone familiar with the singular needs and desires of the undead. I hoped it was Umayma, that she was back from her retreat with Viktor the ogre, but once I opened the front door and saw two sets of shoes, one of them sensible brown Oxfords, I knew it was her and SSA Gary Chapel both.

  I kicked off my Keds, came to the threshold of the sitting room, and sagged against the door frame, grateful for the sight of Chapel and Maim, and the promise of their combined, sturdy-if-silent company. They were hunched in front of the fire playing chess, a bottle of wine open on the coffee table between two empty glasses. Maim looked up and smiled brightly — mostly at Wes, I thought. My brother’s dorky, twisted smile crooked up in reply, and I knew they had no need to exchange words. He would telepathically read my mute assistant’s mind with her help. They exchanged knowing looks and bashful eye rolls of relief that they were both safe and together again. It was too cute for words.

  I elbowed my brother. “Go hug her, dork.”

  “I’m gonna, jeez,” he said, flapping at me before slouching shyly into the room and slinging an arm around her. She jumped up to hug him. After briefly exchanged, meaningful stares, they strolled out the back door together holding hands.

  Harry sighed. “How charming. Oh look, you were three moves from checkmate, Agent Chapel. Such a shame the game was called on account of young love. Shall I hot the pot? Are we all having tea, then?”

  Bob the cat heard Harry’s voice and sprang out from under the chair, his collar bell jingling madly as he dashed over to his favorite person in the world.

  “That would be nice, thank you,” Chapel said.

  Bob was promptly scooped up in Harry’s cradling arms and given the requisite ear rubs, chin scritchies, and adoring baby talk while Harry drifted into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

  He didn’t know about Batten being alive, so I wasn’t going to be able to tell Chapel about my adventure, but boy, did I want to. “The cat was no trouble?” I asked him, plopping down in Umayma’s spot on the couch. Chapel shook his head, pushing his tortoiseshell glasses up his nose with one finger.

  “The spriggans gave Sheriff Hood a bit of a scare, I hear,” Chapel said. “The people who broke into the office and tried to break into the cabin have been identified as DaySitters belonging to House Hervi, particularly a Mike Harvey, linked to a revenant named Roy Harvey. Just thought you’d like to know.”

  I nodded but left it at that. “You didn’t run into Viktor here, did you?”

  “Umayma texted me when it was time for Viktor to go, and I came to spend evenings here at her request,” he explained. “Everything back home went well?”

  “Well, that depends entirely on what you mean by well.” Carefully avoiding any mention of Batten or his grandfather, I ran down the cheese smuggling case, and Rotten Roy, and the trapped elder immortals, and the phantasm feeds. I described Malashock as honestly as possible without sounding demoralized by how awesomely badass she was. I told him about my family visits, my sisters, and Wes finally facing my mother. Though most of it was settled, there was enough left undone that I couldn't reach that final state of relaxation I’d usually been able to do after a case wrapped up. There were too many questions unanswered, and that shoe would drop someday. With my luck, it would drop right on my lady-balls.

  I didn’t know what I could do or say to comfort myself. “At least I tried.”

  “You made tentative amends with your family, and set two trapped elders free,” Chapel said, his tone even and encouraging. “You stopped a deadly phantasm feed. You saved mortal lives. That's not nothing, Marnie.”

  He was right. It wasn’t nothing. But it wasn’t everything, either. I got up and went to the kitchen, where the kettle was beginning to softly titter and whistle right before shrieking. Harry had drifted off downstairs. I whisked the kettle off the burner and poured piping hot water into the teapot. Chapel followed at my heels and sat at the table. I unstrapped my fanny pack and tossed it on the table, spilling the last few remaining wrapped peppermint candies and my last pack of jerky.

  As the tea steeped, I got cups down. “The bad guys got away, Bossman. We know who they are and we know what they did. They’ll be taken before the Falskaar Vouras for a trial if and when they're caught. But old dead guys move slowly. In the meantime, I’m not entirely sure they won’t seek revenge. It’s unfinished business and it feels wrong. I’ve made an enemy, and I can’t imagine a universe in which they wouldn’t come back at me. I screwed up their shitty plan. I exposed their smuggling ring and their attempt to grab power. I released their makers, and confiscated the revenant nectar-spiked rum.”

  Chapel sat quietly studying my face. He took the teacup I set before him and sipped. Then he unwrapped one of the peppermint candies and rolled it into his mouth, crinkling the wrapper into a tiny ball and tucking it neatly in his pocket. For a long moment, he let me alone with my thoughts.

  “You couldn’t have seen this coming,” he said gently.

  “No, I should have seen this coming.” I slid my gloves off, picked up my cup, wrapping both hands around it and holding it close to my chest for comfort. “Or I should have seen something, anyway. That’s the point. I know nothing comes without a cost.” I shook my head. “I thought I could solve a revenant problem without bloodshed. That’s an impossible dream, so I have to assume the bloodshed’s coming.”

  “You don’t know that.” Chapel looked over the rims of his glasses at me. “You’re being too hard on yourself.”

  “I’m out of my league. Again. For the millionth time. I always have been,” I said with a disgusted, exhausted gurgle. “Fuck it. At least Jerkface has his answers now about Colonel Jack. Batten’s safe, even if he’s left us again without saying goodbye, probably forever this time.”

  Chapel froze, and then I heard what I’d said, the enormous secret I’d just blown, and I froze, too, staring at the way his face had suddenly gone hard.


  Cursing my big mouth, I hung my head, and from the pantry, I heard Harry’s soft, “Shruff and cinders, my pet. What have you done?”

  The Blue Sense picked up an overwhelming mix of confusion and broken-heartedness and resentment and shock from poor Gary, who was just now realizing with unhappy clarity that we’d all lied to him about Batten’s fake death for months. I gathered myself up, ready to defend myself, when Chapel stopped me by standing slowly, placing his teacup down carefully with a shaking hand, and clearing his throat.

  “Marnie, please stop blaming yourself for Mark’s misguided behavior. You do this every time.” His tight lips tightened further. “I have no doubt this was his doing. I watched you mourn him. Your suffering was not false. If he faked his death, and roped you into keeping the secret, that’s on him. I can almost understand why he didn’t involve me in the plan, though I’m nowhere near able to forgive him for it. I was forced to settle his estate, to plan his funeral.” He cut himself short, reigning in no small amount of anger. “I mourned him, genuinely, deeply. As a colleague and a friend.”

  “Oh, Gary,” I whispered, my eyes filling. Hating myself, I wished I could go back three minutes and watch my words more carefully. “I’m so sorry.”

  Gary’s chin dipped and I knew he was trying to avoid showing tears. “Is he safe?”

  Harry cleared his throat and swept forward from the shadows in the pantry.

  “Our Lad will be cared for, this I swear.”

  “Did he find what he was looking for?” Chapel asked.

  “It wasn’t the answer he wanted,” I said, “but at least now he knows.”

  “Will you share the details?” he asked, his voice breaking, and then raised a hand. “Not tonight. I don’t think I should stay just now. I think… no, I need to be alone. For a little while. I hope you’ll both understand if I excuse myself.”

  “If you’ll allow me to walk you to your car,” Harry said softly, “I would enjoy the opportunity to say a proper good-night.”

  I knew what that meant. Harry wanted to touch his friend, if only briefly, to draw away some of the man’s pain if he could. Gary Chapel had once bonded himself to me as dhaugir, a metaphysical whipping boy, stealing away my own pain and absorbing it himself so that I could continue to work. Harry would summon whatever lingering effects that bond might have, and work it in reverse to comfort and soothe our very special Special Agent.

  Chapel nodded wordlessly and then managed to choke, “Thank you, Lord Dreppenstedt. Good night, Marnie. I’m glad you’re home.”

  Fuckanut. I need to stop fucking everything up. “Night, Bossman,” I said, attempting to push lightness into it, to return the mood to normal or at least normal-adjacent.

  Chapel slipped on his shoes and laid his jacket over his arm. “You’re doing your best, Marnie, given the situation.”

  The fact that he was still trying to bolster my confidence despite my springing the ugly truth on him made my eyes well up again. “I’ll check on you in a few days, okay?”

  “Perhaps it would be best if I call you,” Chapel said, and left before I could say another word.

  Harry avoided my eyes. This time, if I was lucky, a lecture might not come; irrelevant, really, since I’d be punishing myself for the rest of the night, and probably longer.

  Forty-Four

  The last thing a girl wants to see when she’s in the bath, especially after the kind of week I’d had, is a three-headed demon king leering from inside her foggy mirror. Asmodeus, Prince of Lechery and Overlord of the Falskaar Vouras, pressed forward from the glass, straining the silvery reflection, cocking His human head and flashing His broken piano smile.

  “Boy, you really hosed that up, Toots,” He said cheerfully.

  I gripped the soap bar and rubbed it on my little yellow bath puff, vigorously making suds. “Well, hullo to you, too, Chicken-Legs.”

  The furious, revengeful shriek of seventy-two legions of lesser demons blasted from the mirror, causing a hot, Sulphur stink that stung my eyes before He shushed them. “Is that any way to greet your beloved Lord and Master?”

  “I’m not in the mood for any of your twattery, so make it brief.” The scar around my neck throbbed hotly as if to remind me it was there, or maybe that was my traitorous imagination. I started exfoliating my elbows, refusing to look at Him as His ram face brayed over His deep, infernal chuckle. “What. Do. You. Want?”

  “Falsefeather,” He said. “She is not amused with you tonight.”

  It took me a minute for my gears to click. “Who, Remy? Why the hell not?”

  “You set the charge, Toots.”

  “I’ve done a lot of things, Azzie baby,” I admitted, “but I'm pretty sure that wasn't on my list, so go blame some other fool.”

  His tone became condescending. “House Dreppenstedt and House Sarokhanian have been in a cold war for a very long time.”

  “And when a demon king says ‘a very long time,’ I guess that’s really, reeeeallly long, eh?” I surmised blandly, rinsing my arms and reaching for my shaving cream and razor.

  “You have shaken up the power balance in the new world, and have released Old Hervi.”

  “I liked him,” I said lightly. “He was a bit frosty, but nobody’s perfect.”

  “Toots, Toots, Toots,” He clucked one of His tongues. “You set the pot to boil.”

  “I thought I lit the fuse.”

  “Set the charge,” He corrected.

  “What-the-fuck-ever,” I said with a sigh. “You’re mixing your metaphorical bullshit. I didn’t boil nothing, because Alvar Hervi isn’t a pyrokinetic revenant. That’s not a thing. He’s cryokinetic, so if anything, I froze the pot.” I added under my breath, “Think you know everything.”

  “You should have left it alone,” Asmodeus told me. “You should have taken the advice of your elders, known when to butt out, and walked away. You have unbalanced power in the New World, and returned old powers to stand before the UnHallowed Throne.”

  I propped one bare, wet foot on the edge of the tub, calf dripping. I craned my head around to look at Him, aimed the shaving cream container, and shot foam at my leg without looking. My foam-aim wasn’t great but my pointed nonchalance was dead-on.

  “In case you missed it, Rotten Roy and his flunky, Pascal, double-crossed Aston Sarokhanian after he double-crossed two elders, and were ultimately responsible for phantasm feeding causing illnesses and deaths. If you think I’m the sort to walk away from that, you haven’t been paying attention.” I showed him an exaggerated shrug. “From where I’m sitting, seems I left things better than they were when I got there. That’s a win.” For the humans, anyway.

  The demon king stared at me from within the mirror. His bull head snorted and snapped at the battered fishing hat atop His human head. “You stuck your cute little ass smack dab in the middle of a vampire war.”

  “You said the V-word,” I said with a scandalized gasp. “Shame, shame. That’s awfully saucy.”

  “I made ‘em, kid.”

  “I am assuming that old Alvar Hervi will deal with Rotten Roy, and Sirekan will punish that naughty Aston Sarokhanian, and Ms. Fancybritches will in turn handle all of them, including Ghazaros, who should have rescued his maker instead of suckling on the teat of Aston’s moneybags. And whatever Zorovar gets, he's got it coming. They’re all Remy’s mess to clean up. I figure my part is done, but if they want me to fuck shit up even more, I can do that. No problem. I’m ready to be a total disaster day and night. Did you tell them that?”

  “You didn’t meddle to save humans. You meddled out of your undying lust for the hunter, Mark Batten,” Asmodeus accusing laughingly. “You meddled for love of a mortal.”

  “Nu uh! A: he’s not a mortal anymore,” I reminded Him. “And B: I didn’t do it for some ass who keeps leaving me without saying goodbye.” I held his gaze for a long beat. “Go ahead, roll the replay, Prince Pervypants. Zero dickings.”

  “This whole mess started with the vampire hunter, Toots,”
Asmodeus reminded me, to my ever-increasing discomfort. “If you examine the facts impartially, I think you’ll see I’m right.”

  “Oh, you demon kings think you’re sooooo smart. Gotta be right about everything,” I snarled, shaving my left leg with swift, angry swipes then giving the right leg the same treatment. I aimed my creamy, stubble-specked razor at the mirror. “But guess what? You’re wrong this time. And anyway, that’s over. Mark Batten is gone for good.”

  Asmodeus threw back all three heads and laughed and laughed. “I’ll let Her Majesty disabuse you of that notion.” He said, and vanished in a puff of foul, tainted smoke that greased the mirror with an oily residue. Harry was gonna be so pissed about the mess. Windex didn't do shit against infernal demon snot.

  “Her Majesty, my ass.” I snorted at the now empty mirror. “She can keep Mark Batten. Good riddance. Him and his jerky handsome face, his love bullshit, and his annoyingly hot ass. Who needs him?” I asked, immediately answering, “Not me.” I went back to scrubbing, perhaps a bit harder than was necessary. “You’ll see. You’ll all see. Even if he did come back, I wouldn’t care one bit.”

  Is that so? Remy purred in my head, causing my inner ears to itch something fierce. I tried to scratch by jamming both forefingers behind my ears and pressing and rubbing, but nothing relieved the strange sensation.

  Harry appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, ending his cold shoulder treatment with a sniff of concern. “My Own? Your appointment is over? What did He want?”

  I rolled my eyes at “appointment” and grumbled one of Harry’s own favorite admonishments at him. “He has a name, Harry, He’s not the cat’s mother.”

  “It is always best not speak His name, pet, especially this soon after a visit. Why are you shaving your ear?”