Blightmare (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 5)

by A. J. Aalto

  The letter was hand-written, carefully printed, the copperplate letters small and slightly back-slanted. I read it three times while the boys disgorged and sorted out the food, and when Harry brought a plate of assorted deep-fried goodies into the living room for me, I read it aloud for him and Hood, who sat on the couch beside me in his usual spot under the lamp.

  “Dearest Dr. Baranuik, I believe I have come to own a lighter that belongs to your companion, Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt. I have reclaimed it from a DaySitter named Ms. Sayomi Mochizuki. It should be yours, and so I send it to you in hopes that it finds its rightful home. The events in Egypt, as relayed to me by Dr. Marek Rhys, have me deeply troubled. I know any apology I may offer at this point on behalf of my brother Gunther would be hollow, but know that I am sorry if he has caused you illness or trauma. If you wish to contact me or the Folkenflik skulk, please don’t hesitate. My brothers and I are at your disposal. Warmly yours, Finnegan Folkenflik.”

  Hood swallowed his chicken fried rice and then asked, “The what? Skulk?”

  “A group of foxes is called a skulk,” I explained. “I guess that goes for werefoxes as well.”

  “So are you…?” Hood cut open a chicken ball to release the steam.

  “I don’t know. I haven't done anything weird during a full moon,” I said, picking apart an egg roll with my fork. I felt Harry’s attention and looked up to catch his eyes. “Okay, anything extra weird.” He smiled, but it didn’t go close to lighting his eyes. “But if I am, that would make me a goddamn vixen. Kinda hot, right? I mean, Jimi Hendrix sang about a foxy lady, and he was drowning in--”

  Hood chuckled. “I’ll refrain from commenting.”

  “An excellent plan, sheriff,” Harry murmured, giving me a chiding cluck of his tongue.

  “I’m worried about you,” Hood said. “Both of you.”

  “We’re managing. Look, I’m burning stuff and Harry’s being snide.” I showed him a smile, getting up to throw the paper packaging and the envelope in the woodstove, saving the letter.

  Harry let out a haughty huff. “Don’t let her fool you, officer. We’re not managing well at all. If you’ll kindly look at the mess in her office, you’ll see a disaster of colossal proportions. Something called ‘extreme couponing.’ Saving a dollar on fabric softener! How utterly absurd. Only, I have enough wealth to support half the county!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with trying to save a bit of money,” Hood said uncertainly.

  “I assure you, there most certainly is,” Harry insisted proudly. “Also, my advocate is venting her rage on my very body, and has taken to inflicting upon me something called manscaping. Hot wax and clippers and all.”

  Hood’s lips crammed into a terse line and he did an excellent job of not laughing.

  Harry added, “She has, in addition, been unbearably cruel.”

  “I pay him to say that,” I confided smugly, returning to my seat to loop one leg over an arm of the couch and munch a piece of crispy duck.

  Rob gave me a look that said he didn’t doubt it. “How, exactly? Is she trying to use some of the submission holds I've been teaching her?” Hood looked slightly stricken. “She isn't... singing, is she?”

  “Hey, you fuck-knob!” I squawked.

  “Razor sharp is the harridan’s tongue,” Harry warned solemnly. “Twice, she’s made the Shield deliveryman cry.”

  “Oh, grab your oars, sailors,” I drawled, “cuz we’re rowin’ up Cry Me a Fucking River, now.”

  The three of us enjoyed the warm, companionable silence, filled with the crackling of the fire in the wood stove as the last of the packaging blackened against the biggest log. Hood and I finished our plates. He gave me subtle side-eye to check how much I'd eaten, but wisely didn’t call attention to it. I finished my water and considered an espresso, and then wondered if I would sleep better if I didn’t bother. Maybe it was time to ditch the heavy caffeine habit. Or at least dial it back to “kill a horse” from “kill a rhinoceros.”

  “Harry,” I said, “I should take up tea drinking.”

  Harry rocked forward with interest so far that his blanket slipped off his lap and covered the cat, who turned into a surprised, writhing lump before escaping beneath the couch. “Oh, darling, what an agreeable turn of events. I shall send for the very best from London and abroad.”

  “Harry, London is abroad,” I reminded him.

  He waved that away as though I were quite mistaken; Harry carried London with him in his heart wherever he went. “O, but charge me with this task, my Only One, and your uxorious companion shall ferret out the most delicious brews and delight you with each in turn.”

  He waited. I felt like saying something fabulous was warranted, but I was deeply unsuited to the task. I sifted through all the old-timey junk Harry said to me and finally settled on, “Uh, sound the hunts up and… sally forth with all haste, good fellow?”

  Harry’s lips quirked into half a smile. “Close enough, dear.” He got up and left the room, perhaps to start tea shopping right away on his laptop in the kitchen.

  Hood cast me a puzzled look. “He sure is easy to please.”

  “These days,” I agreed, and it made me sigh. Harry’s usual impeccable standards had bottomed out, and that was entirely my fault. “So, you had something to tell me about My Buddy?”

  He leaned back into the couch cushions and stared into the flickering fire, giving the back of his neck a good scratch and rub. Then he nodded. “Silver Nissan. The plates belong to a Michigan cop named Mitch Dunlop. Field Training Coordinator. Quit his job at the end of January.”

  Michigan. That was the accent I’d heard. Batten’s economy of speech, his dropping of certain words. That’s why it had sounded so familiar.

  “Two months ago. Right after Batten died,” I said. “Coincidence?”

  “Batten worked with him. Troy Police Department.”

  Maybe not a coincidence. “And now he’s following me to the gym every day.”

  Hood tilted his phone at me to show me a picture of an ID badge. “This the guy who broke into Batten’s house this morning?”

  “Nah,” I answered, though it was very clearly My Buddy in the picture.

  “Sure about that?”

  “Maybe it’s more fun to leave him out of jail,” I said with a wink.

  “Mars…”

  “What?” I finished off the last crunchy end of an egg roll. “I didn’t get a good look at him, sheriff. My head was in his junk. Wait, that came out wrong.”

  “Obstruction of justice…”

  I gave him a smug grin as I chewed noisily. “I’d like to speak to my lawyer.”

  “Nobody likes to speak to lawyers,” he objected, his tone low and warning. “In any case, I think we should consider working out here, or at my place.”

  I knew by “my place” he meant the building housing the Lambert County Sheriff’s Department in Ten Springs. There was a small area the deputies used as a workout room; it had served as a garage before the new one had been built.

  “Think this Bitchy Mitchy fellow can’t find me here or there?” I asked, knowing the answer. “I’d rather go to our gym and keep an eye on him, away from my home.”

  “All right,” Hood agreed.

  Harry brought me a slice of cherry pie and left the room humming what I recognized as a Vivaldi tune. Hood looked at the pie expectantly, and I snorted with a smirk.

  “Marnie Baranuik, 31, ghost hair, blue eyes,” I said, reciting my imaginary dating profile for him. “Hobbies include extreme couponing, headbutting dudes in the squishy bits, and eating pie in front of cops who ain’t got no pie.”

  “Talking a lot of smack these days, Mars.”

  “You want some of this, eh?” I grinned around my fork. “Well, no dice, sucker.”

  Harry ruined my gloating by bringing another slice of pie and a cup of coffee for the sheriff. Hood thanked him as he left again, and sipped the coffee. “You seem… more cheerful?”

  I forked pi
e into my mouth. “Guess I missed food.” Then I allowed, “Guess I should listen to you more often, eh?”

  His swampy green eyes gave me the classic Rob Hood skeptical-sympathetic look, but he accepted my words at face value. “I'd be happy if you listened to me at all.”

  I decided to think with my mouth open, even if it was occasionally full of pie. “So, if we know this Mitch guy’s a cop; you think he’s on the up-and-up? I mean, other than the whole breaking-and-entering and assault shit?” I asked. “Or did he quit because he wants to exact revenge against the revenant and the DaySitter who let his friend Batten die in Scandinavia at the hands of the undead? And why am I talking like a B-movie police procedural? Am I on some kind of MSG and sugar rush?”

  “We have to assume that’s a possibility. Also, that your theory is.” He grinned, and I scowled. “Maybe he heard what happened and handed in his badge and gun with the intent of hunting Harry down.” Hood had clearly already considered this. “So keep your ear to the ground and your eyes open, yeah?”

  “Don’t I always?”

  “No,” he said sincerely. “Wednesday morning. You, me, and Morgan. Who is madly in love with your manager, by the way.”

  “Umayma?” I finished my pie and my full belly ached. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “She has that effect on people. I’m just thankful Wesley isn’t here. A telepath in unrequited love is a dangerously miserable creature.”

  “Never know,” Hood said, crossing one ankle over another and showing me a teasing smile. “Maybe she digs little blond twerps.”

  “Dead ones?”

  “Maybe?” he guessed. “Anyway, he’s going to run with us on Wednesday. Morgan, I mean. You don’t mind?”

  I confirmed that I didn’t with a shake of my head. “Can I punch him?”

  “You can try,” he said; probably, he didn’t mean it. “I’d better get going. And I mean it, Mars. Be careful.”

  I looked up to find Harry standing in the doorway, staring at me coolly, a cup of tea in hand. Probably, I should have told him about My Buddy earlier. He did not look amused.

  Well, I had all night to fess up, and my dead guy still needed to feed. Maybe some fresh vein juice, rather than another bag from Shield, would buy me a little forgiveness. I sent a query through the Bond, a little probe to test his hunger. He had been far too pleased about my eating well to hold the Buddy thing against me tonight, and so I welcomed him to the couch, where we spent the next few hours in silence, our hands speaking for us.

  Chapter 7

  Tuesday has always been my day off, because everyone knows that Mondays are supposed to be crap, and who am I to buck tradition? This Tuesday was no different: no appointments, and only the vaguest of plans. It had once been my habit to sleep in as long as possible, but I was a new woman with new habits, and dawn had become my bitch, or maybe it was the other way around.

  These days, Harry frequently saw me before going downstairs to his casket to settle into VK-Delta. This morning, he greeted me with steel cut oats sprinkled with brown sugar and a touch of cream. “Your sweaty ginger friend suggested that I might consider preparing oatmeal for your breakfast, Dearheart, though I have begun to suspect this gruel is the good sheriff’s form of punishment,” he said primly, eyeballing the bowl he placed before me with distaste. “Surely, you’d prefer a nice scone with a bit of lemon curd?”

  “Let’s eeeease back into the idea of breakfast, eh?” I said, playing the spoon across the top to skim off the sugar and eat it. Harry had piled the newspapers and magazines on his side of the Formica table. I reached across to drag over my science journals. Opening the new Fast Science Quarterly, I was alarmed by my own pale face, close-up and widened like a moon, no make-up, black and turquoise ghost hair wildly tangled, a smear of dirt on my chin; the photo was plastered across the inside crease. A staple went right through the middle of it. Not only was it crap editing, a total Photoshop hit-job, but it made me look like I had a fishhook in my upper lip.

  I slapped the magazine with a huff. “Well, that’s just perfect.”

  “Oh, bloody hell,” Harry agreed. “I see your personal grooming regimen took quite the slide whilst you were away.”

  “I had just wrestled a yeti in Kathmandu!” I cried. In truth, it had been more of a prance-pedicure-cuddle situation, and my Cold Company knew it. He kept his correction to himself, turning away to hunt in the fridge for the orange juice. I scanned the article. “For fuck’s sake, I was not involved in an underground fight club with an endangered cryptid.”

  “I should think if you were to examine the bare facts—”

  “Fact: we were above-ground. Fact: I was under duress.” I glowered at the article as if I could change the printed words through sheer will. “Imagine the stupidity of a monthly magazine that still calls itself a ‘quarterly.’ Why do I even subscribe to this crap?”

  “I was given to understand you wished to keep an eye on that dead pool they are running on you?” Harry read over my shoulder. “This sensation-scavenging quill-pusher claims that you bought the yeti a hot dog?”

  I made a long, disgusted noise. “It was not a hot dog. It was a yak-meat shepale, and it wasn’t for the yeti, it was for me. I was hungry after all the prancing.” Betty the Yeti had swiped it out of my hands and I’d ended up trekking into the Nepalese wilds with a grumbling belly.

  His gaze slid. “I thought Dr. Edgar was meant to be keeping an eye on you.”

  “Nobody needs to keep an eye on me, Harry.”

  “Flames and ether, my pet, but a more preposterous statement you have never made in my presence,” he accused, punctuated by a hearty burst of laughter.

  I felt my lips tighten. “Declan Edgar is not my babysitter, he’s my assistant.”

  “Is he indeed?” Harry said, now beaming at full-throttle amusement and not bothering to hide it. “I’m dreadfully sorry that I’ve misread the situation so.”

  “Declan Edgar was my ex-assistant,” I corrected, flipping magazine pages, amazed that this publication still had the power to irritate me. “He was there to assist me. I got him a knighthood. He owed me.”

  Okay, so it was a knighthood to a revenant court given by a demon king from the second circle of hell; beggars can’t be choosers, and pickers can’t be picky, right? Sir Declan the Abominable was better than my title, anyway. I was saddled with Sir Marnie of Toots, because the Demon King Asmodeus is a smug, three-faced bastard who fancies Himself a comedian. And nobody but me has the sauce to tell Him where to stick it. The scar around my throat throbbed ominously, a reminder of how poorly The Overlord took criticism.

  There was another shot, this one of me hauling ass into the Jeep with Nischal the park ranger and Betty the rescued yeti, but it looked like I was chasing them, and the caption read, “Does the self-proclaimed Great White Shark of Psychic Investigations not know when to give up?” I mouthed in wonder. Self-proclaimed? I did not make that nickname up for myself. I hadn’t wanted it in the first place.

  Harry put a glass of juice in front of me, patted my head, and reminded gently, “Your gruel is getting cold, dear. Never has a more cruel task been placed before you, but please do eat your oatmeal.”

  “Okay, okay. You don’t have to twist my nipples about it.”

  “Always a lady,” he remarked pleasantly. “And now I am afraid that it falls upon me to inquire: what tomfoolery might you be planning today, love?”

  “None at all. Just being a good little DaySitter and staying here to guard you like I’m supposed to.”

  “I hardly believe my ears,” he murmured, sweeping into the chair opposite me and giving me a knowing cluck of his tongue before snapping open the New York Times. “In fact, one cannot imagine that you plan on doing anything of the sort.”

  I slopped my spoon around in the oatmeal with a sigh. “I might hit the gun range and show off my mad skills to Hood’s new chief deputy.”

  One corner of the newspaper flipped down so that Harry could display his thrice-pierced eyeb
row arching up. He made a drawn-out, contemplative mmhmmm. “Perhaps it is best he does not see your ludibrious quagswagging too soon.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, certain I’d just been insulted. “I think it’s only fair he gets a heads-up on who’s Top Dog around here.”

  “Try not to be perfectly absurd, darling,” Harry said.

  “I do try,” I said. “Would you not describe my absurdity as imperfect?”

  “I suppose this plan is better than last Tuesday’s lying about in your sleepwear all day, drinking merlot and yelling at the TV meteorologist.”

  “It was pinot noir,” I said, “and it wasn’t all day. You know Al Roker drives me crazy in the morning.”

  “What utter rubbish. You have nothing but love for Mr. Roker when you are sober. How fickle is my pet’s heart on a bibesy,” Harry chided. “You kept me awake in my casket long past ten, what with your ill-tempered yowling, like a red fox screaming in a trap.” His lips turned up in a private smile and he shook with a silent chuckle, proud of his comparison. I stared at him until he looked up from his newspaper inquiringly; then, I cut my eyes to my bandaged arm, then met his gaze with one of my best scowls to impress upon him that the too-close-to-home comparison did not go unnoticed. His smile widened until he was damn near grinning across the table.

  “Isn’t it time for you to rest, Harry?” I asked him, looking at the clock on the oven. “I’m almost sure it is.”

  He folded the paper and smiled. “If it pleases you, my cheeky one.” He came around to plant a cool kiss on my forehead and then went to the pantry, where the cellar stairs were. “Promise me that you’ll spend some time on self-care. A visit to the salon. A nice massage?”

  “We’ll see,” I said, thinking of a pedicure. And maybe a professional haircut.

  “See that you don’t cause the sheriff more collywobbles than is typically expected of you. He’ll be no good to us if he goes completely off his trolley,” Harry warned. “Only folly, fire, and mischief can come of that.”