Blightmare (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 5)

by A. J. Aalto

  “Okay, luv,” Ruth said, and looked at me inquiringly. I finished my coffee and said that I’d like one, too, and Jacqueline added a request for a diet 7-Up.

  I set the scene for them. “So, I’m fighting monsters, see?”

  “Wait, where?” Nicky asked as she buffed my toenail. “In Ireland?”

  “No, now I’m in Egypt. There was a fake mummy, right? And—and!—this Egyptian tomb guardian who might have been an actual god. And did you ever hear about the revenant who shot me in New York?”

  “Revenant means vampire, right?” Jacqueline had dropped all her walls to me, now, and her jealousy, if that’s what it had been, was swallowed by the reality that my life, while it may have sounded exciting in magazines, absolutely sucked hairy donkey scrotum courtesy of the excitement.

  I didn’t correct her on the V-word and nodded. “Right. This Jeremiah Prost guy I was hunting with Batten in New York, he was a creepy old serial killer. And by old, I mean over a century. I lost him then, but he showed up in Egypt. Only Batten wasn’t there to help me, was he?”

  “Oh, no,” Nicky snarked. “Because he was ‘out.’ Like, thanks, buddy.”

  “Right? So…” I cracked my knuckles and turned up the intensity of the vibration on my massage chair, pressing the meat of my back into the grinding nubs; when I leaned back, Nicky and Jacqueline leaned forward, following my body like it had the secret happy ending to a miserable mystery. I realized, sadly, that my story had taken on the allure of a steamy romance paperback we had to finish no matter where it led, flipping pages late into the night. “I had to do what I had to do. I kicked ass, ladies. I got banged up and bruised, but I staked that vampire and only two people died.”

  Their matching gasps might have been comical if my friend, Pia Bakaras, hadn’t been one of the victims of Jeremiah Prost’s ambush and feed. I hurried on, “And then in Nepal, I got nabbed by an underground fight club and put in a cage match with a yeti.”

  “Bet that wouldn’t have happened if your boyfriend hadn’t been ‘out,” right?” Jacqueline said.

  I considered this. “Well, no, it would have still happened. To be honest, it all would have gone down the same way, jackass or no jackass. I’m sort of a disaster like that. But then—“ I felt my eyes well up, and even though I was really only recounting this stuff so I could then ask about the hooves of the girl last week, I found I couldn’t breeze through it the way I wanted to, quickly and painlessly. Again leaving out Svikheimslending, and Remy, and the trolls, and House Sarokhanian, I told them the bones of the truth.

  “I found out he had a plan, a bad plan, and he died. And I had to watch.”

  Nicky had applied an apricot scrub to my calves and was kneading my leg; her hands slowed as she realized how serious it was. Jacqueline put her 7-Up down. Ruth exhaled sadly and said, “Oh, you poor dear.”

  “So, yeah,” I said, aiming for witty chitchat and falling short. “Guy problems. Big time. Oh, did I mention this?” I showed them my right arm. “Bit by a werefox. No need to worry. I’m not contagious or anything. Probably, I’m not even infected. Don’t know yet. Maybe I’m a furry lunatic waiting to happen. Oh and this.” I let my fingertips flutter to the gauze-covered hollow of my throat. “A three-headed demon King whapped me with His tail and singed a big branding mark all around my neck to remind me that I belong to Him. It’s going to scar, if it ever heals. Won’t I be super sexy with all that going on?”

  Nicky rinsed both calves and propped my feet on the padded tray to start fiddling with my toenails in earnest. “You’re as gorgeous as ever, and you’re very brave,” she scolded me. “Ruth, get a face mask, would you? Let’s do this right. Our girl here needs some extra pampering.”

  “Righto,” Ruth said, and trundled off to find mud and cloth.

  Nicky added, “Jackie, how about some sugaring around the eyebrows?”

  “We can do that,” Jacqueline said.

  “Girls, really, I’m okay,” I said, but the extra attention was blissful. As one of them whisked extra hairs away from my eyebrows, the other massaged my scalp from behind the chair, and then a cool, tingling mud was smeared on my cheeks and strips of cloth were placed over my brow, cheeks, and chin. I was told to keep my eyes closed.

  “And you know what?” Nicky continued, and I felt my toenails being lacquered. “Fuck that jerk. I mean, I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but come on.”

  “I…” Jacqueline made an uncertain noise. “I don’t understand. He’s dead? For real?”

  The Blue Sense told me she was in denial. That she had connected so strongly with my story that she wasn’t willing to hear a tragic ending. Sing it, sister. I knew just how she felt. “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Wait, pretty sure?” Ruth asked gently.

  “Positive,” I corrected. The massage chair helped soothe my tight shoulders as I started to tense up.

  Nicky shaped my toenails with short, precise movements. “You don’t sound positive.”

  “I watched him die,” I said with a sad laugh, glad my eyes were closed and I didn’t have to see their gloomy expressions. “I don’t know how much more positive I could get, really.” But there were doubts lingering, and the ladies must have seen that on my mud-slathered face, because one of them sharply inhaled.

  “There’s hope,” Jacqueline said, and her tone brightened. I heard her single clap. “I knew it! You might hate him for a long time, even if he is somehow alive, but if he’s not actually dead…”

  “They’re sending his body. The, uh, overseas government,” I said vaguely, flapping my hand. My toenails felt cold, and I smelled polish fumes. “There’s going to be a funeral.”

  Jacqueline refused to give up hope, and I kind of wished she would, because her denial was both comforting and infectious, filling that secret place in my heart that still held onto an ounce of foolish optimism.

  “You need to find out for sure,” Jacqueline advised.

  “I know for sure,” I said.

  She ignored me. “Before this so-called funeral, you need to find out from someone else who was there. Like a, what do you call them, a collaborating somebody?”

  “A corroborating witness,” Nicky corrected.

  Harry. Harry had absolutely seen Batten die with me. Seen, and felt. I couldn’t tell the ladies his part in things. I imagined that I felt that pain only in the palm of my left hand, clenched it into a ball, refusing to let it invade the rest of my body. And then my brain supplied, unexpectedly, What about Declan?

  Well, what about him? He had been there. Would he tell me any different? He couldn’t. We all knew what happened. Didn’t we?

  “What are you thinking, Miss Marnie?” Nicky asked. She was satisfied by the amount of gossip she’d gleaned, but troubled by the fact that I was suffering. This was not just some small-town jaw wagging. This was no “who was schtupping whom” or “who got fired for what?” This was monsters, betrayal, heartbreak, and death.

  “I suppose I could ask for confirmation,” I agreed, mostly just to make them stop pushing.

  “And then you’ll come back and tell us,” Jacqueline said.

  The mud was cleansed from my face, and Jacqueline took one last approach to my eyebrows with a pair of tweezers, carefully grooming. I felt like I was getting the real royal treatment today, and was grateful for it. From somewhere deep and small inside, I wondered why it was different, coming from them, than it was when Harry fawned over me, or why I was so much more receptive to their attentions than his. I reminded myself that this was exactly the kind of thing that always made me feel better, more than jogging and sparring with the sheriff and shooting targets and drinking. Well, maybe not more than drinking. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do all this.”

  Nicky chuckled. “Don’t worry, you’re paying for it. Friends and family discount, though. I mean, it’s the least we can do, Miss Marnie. After all you’ve been through, lately? I mean, come on.”

  “Sweet. Discount!” I said, smiling at Jacqueline
as she plucked a few final stray eyebrows. “You must do this stuff for each other all the time?”

  Jacqueline nodded. “I always sugar Ruth’s brows.”

  Uhhhh. I cut my eyes sideways at Ruth, who grimaced and walked away quickly; Ruth, whose eyebrows were heavily penciled-in. Did she have any natural brows left under that pencil? I dreaded the answer as Jacqueline held up the mirror and proudly showed me my reflection.

  I blinked rapidly in disbelief. The longer I stared, the less I liked what I was seeing. I made a sound, and altered it quickly to become a loose approximation of a happy squee.

  “I look soooo…” I forced out of my mouth. “Oh boy, Jackie!”

  “You like?”

  “Do I,” I said. This was not the time or place to wish I had brows left. “I can’t wait to show Harry. He’s gonna be speechless.” For once. I hope.

  Nicky handed me my socks and I chanced a look down at my toenails. They were thickly coated and shaped like long, pointy barbs with brown glitter fading to white at the tip, where several diamond-like jewels twinkled. They looked like a grizzly's claws after dismembering Elton John's costume trailer. I could have slashed someone’s face off with them. “Holy tumbling titballs.”

  “Right? The newest trend. I call it ‘almondine.’ Super, super classy.”

  “Wow,” was all I could say. “I look like a sexy bear.”

  “Or a cougar.”

  “Or that,” I said, feeling a bit breathless with horror. “Ladies, you have, I just, wow. Don’t know how to thank you.” Besides toe murder.

  “She’s stunned,” Nicky said with pleasure, and sidled over to the cash desk. “I love seeing customers this happy.”

  “I’m without words,” I said honestly, carefully putting on my socks. The toenails tore right through them. “Whoops.”

  “Takes some getting used to,” Nicky said.

  “Never been this fancy before,” I agreed. “I need practice.” I whipped out my credit card and tried not to think too hard about how many dollars I had just spent to look like this. “Uh, did Ruth say something about a girl with hooves here last week?”

  “Ugh, so gross,” Nicky confided, swiping my card and punching numbers. “Pretty girl, very tired-looking, kept her sweatshirt hood up the whole time she was here, but man, the bottoms of her feet were like stone. No lie, they were like hooves.”

  “But not hooves. Like, she had human feet, right? Toes and everything?” I clarified.

  “Oh yeah, she was human,” Nicky said. “I’m going to give you a sample size of this mud mask. We’re going to start selling it, so if you like it, check back in, okay?”

  Jacqueline made another uncertain noise. “That girl smelled like horse, too. But maybe she just spent a lot of time in stables. Everything about her said ‘horse’ to me. Not that she looked like one. Maybe I’m just imagining. She’s coming back next week and I’m hoping I don’t get stuck with her and her nasty hooves. Beautiful eyelashes, though.”

  Nicky handed me back my credit card, smiled goodbye, and turned to clean up her station.

  Next week, eh? I nodded and pointed at the kitchenette. “Oh, hey, could I have another Dr. Pepper?”

  Jacqueline shrugged and went to get one. I slipped my phone out of my pocket, leaned over the cash desk, and snapped several stealthy pictures of their big floppy appointment book. Then I put it away, waited for Jacqueline to return, and left a big tip in the jar. “Thanks again,” I said as she handed me the can and my baggy with the mud mask sample.

  “Don’t forget to call and confirm about Mr. I’m Out, like you said,” Jacqueline reminded as the door swung closed behind me.

  The first thing I did when I got to my car was check for Mitch Dunlop's silver Nissan. Not seeing it, I swung into my Buick and angled the rearview mirror so I could see — or rather, mourn — my reflection. Fuck. I patted my face. Fuckanut! The arch of my eyebrows, what little there was left of them, was thin and high. I looked as startled as I felt. At least the mud mask had left my skin smooth and bright.

  I pulled out the picture I’d taken of the appointment book and scanned the list of names, not sure which one I was looking for. There were a ton of pedicures booked. I couldn’t stake out the spa for a week, looking for a vaguely horse-like woman. I’d need a name. I sent a text to Beau, requesting another meeting, and hoped the little creep would reply.

  I drove aimlessly for a couple of minutes, turning at random to clear my thoughts, wondering about the horse lady, and Batten’s letter, and Dr. Delacovias from the CDC, and my werefox bite, and whether or not I should really call Declan and talk to him about Batten’s death, and whether or not my freshly mud-masked face was supposed to feel so tight, hot, and tingly.

  When I couldn’t wait any longer, I pulled into a rancher’s access road and put on my hazard lights so I could sit and make my phone call. Hoping Declan was somewhere with cell service, I waited, counting the rings.

  After eight, he picked up, his voice sounded far away, crackling, and surprised. “Dr. B?”

  My heart gave a little squeeze at the sound of him. “Hey, Declan,” I said warmly. “Um, I won’t keep you long, but I have a question. It might seem weird, but humor me.”

  “Dr. B., I should warn you, we’ve left the north and we’re in France. I can’t talk long. I may not have… privacy.”

  “I’ll make it quick,” I promised. “When we went out the back door, into the Olmdalur, did you see snowmobiles?”

  “No. I must have missed that.”

  “The truck. Did you see a flat-bed truck?”

  “I saw some sort of large vehicle, but I wasn’t paying attention to details. It was by the propane and oil tanks.”

  My gut quivered. “Was there a generator?”

  “Well, there would have to be. That, or geothermal. How else would they have had electricity?”

  Oh, Dark Lady. “They didn’t though, did they? Gas lanterns, candlelight, wood burning stoves in the kitchens…”

  “Malas absolutely had electricity. There was a freezer with a backup blood supply for emergencies. The eldest are very careful. They must be. Their entire line depends on them.”

  My heart thumped harder. “Emergency blood supply. You’re sure of it?”

  “Marnie, why are you asking?”

  “Remember when we got back from our quest, and Harry mentioned that he’d fed from Tara. He said there was no blood supply, so he’d had to.”

  “I’m sure he only meant that his hunger wasn’t worthy of the emergency supply. You were only gone a week. He would have become peckish, but could have hardly claimed to be starving, you know that.”

  “Declan, do you think they have medical supplies, maybe a doctor?”

  “Of course they have a doctor. At least one, that I can think of.” The signal cut out a bit but came back. “Marek Rhys. He lives on the island with the elders. He’s responsible for the health and welfare of the DaySitters.”

  My mouth was dry now. “And he’d have everything set up for… all sorts of calamities. Yes? Such as… perhaps an over-enthusiastic feeding by the new dead?”

  Declan rattled several scenarios off. “A fall, a feral attack, yes, I’m certain of it. That’s a very common occurrence, but the Falskaar Vouras take very good care of their…” He cut out again and then I faintly heard him. “Dr. B, Why are you asking me this?”

  “If a human were to be drained. I mean, completely, to the point of death.” My hand shook on the phone. “Could Marek Rhys revive them?”

  “Dr. B…”

  “Could he?”

  Declan’s voice became heavy with regret. “I know what you’re thinking. It’s not possible. You know it’s not.”

  “But if he worked quickly?”

  He didn’t remind me that I was a doctor or that I knew more about revenant feeds than the average preternatural biologist. He simply said, “No.”

  I tried to remember the aftermath of Batten’s death and Remy’s courtroom drama and the Overlor
d and the Dreppenstedt revenants and all the details. “I don’t recall seeing Dr. Rhys in the courtroom after Batten died. Did you?”

  The sound he made was a frustrated gurgle. “In truth, I wasn’t looking.”

  A lie. “Don’t do that. What are you hiding?”

  “Marnie, I need to get off the phone now. Master Malas is awake.”

  “Don’t you dare use that old creep to escape this conversation.”

  “I really will not feed your denial. It isn’t healthy.” The Blue Sense reported that Declan was truly as worn down and sad as he sounded, and desperate to ditch this discussion. “Mark Batten is dead. No one is hiding anything from you.”

  That last part was another lie. “Tell me what you know.”

  “Dr. Rhys went with the Dreppenstedts who removed Batten’s body.” Before I could pounce on that, he raised his voice and pushed on. “But only because it is Rhys’ job to attend to the dead as well as the living and the undead. It’s ridiculous to assume Rhys could have revived Batten. Harry drained him completely.”

  Had he? Now, I wasn’t so sure. You saw him die, dumbass. You felt it. Harry had been trying to shield Mark from the fear and pain, but some other revenant — I was guessing that it had been Sarokhanian, but it could have been any of them, really — had blocked Harry’s attempts, and for those last few moments, I had felt Batten clearly for the first time ever. And yes, he was dying, and he’d known it. He had no doubt; he’d turned to face his own grave. He had fucked up, but he had no regrets. He’d been terrified but resolute.

  Declan had hung up on me without saying goodbye while I was distracted by my speculations. I guess I could understand why. I shot him a quick text: Sorry if I upset you. Putting my phone away, I sat and listened to the soft noise of my hazard lights tick-tick-ticking away. A misty rain had started to film across my windshield, blurring the sight of the ranch fence before me. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to sleep all day and all night and tomorrow and into next week.

  I couldn’t. I had a case to solve. I had a horsewoman of the maybepocalypse to find. What I would do after I found her was anyone’s guess. Maybe there would be some clues in the trumpet or the certificate ownership; I had to get a look at the items Beau had been sent to buy by his dream lady.