by A. J. Aalto
“Your point?” he clipped.
“My point is, why are you riding my hump when you weren’t close to Batten when he was alive?”
He opened his mouth and then shut it. After a moment’s thought, he said, “You know nothing about Mark Batten.”
Now, it was my turn to stew; I imagined he was right, and that despite fucking the man several glorious times, I’d never really been privy to Batten’s past, his feelings, his hopes and dreams. I knew his thoughts on vampires — dammit, revenants! Fucking V-word — but beyond that and his dick, what did he really share with me? I wouldn't cry in front of this dipshit, even though he’d fired a very clean shot directly into my own insecurities. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
We’d settled into a stalemate. He grabbed two mugs and poured tea into them. He set a mug in front of me on the scratched turquoise linoleum of my old kitchen table.
After a sip of his, he asked, “Do you take milk and sugar or what?”
I stared at the mug, suddenly very tired, reluctantly sobering, drained from magic and wrestling and lugging around too much emotional baggage. The Blue Sense reported that he felt sorry for me. I wondered how I could use that. Maybe it was safest to be brutally honest. “You’re right.”
He opened the fridge and fetched the milk, putting it in front of me. Then he sat without replying. He drank his tea and watched me over the rim of the mug.
“You are,” I told him quietly. “Batten didn’t share a lot with me. With anyone here. He was a walking fortress. You couldn’t get in close. Oh, I could get physically close. Quite frankly, he was my biggest weakness. Mark Batten could have me at the drop of a hat. I don’t have a thing for cops.” Liar, liar, pants on fire, I thought. “But I had a thing for Kill-Notch Batten.”
“You loved him,” he said.
“Did not,” I shot back, as though he’d accused me of mugging an old lady.
He just stared over his mug.
“I knew nothing about him except he had an amazing body and a jerk face I wanted to slap and kiss at the same time. Are you happy to learn these things? Does this clear up some mystery for you?”
“Did he love you?”
Yes. Maybe. He wrote it, but he took it back. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Does it matter? Why do you need to know? Out with it, Dunlop. What do you want from me? Why are you snooping under my window, trampling my spring bulbs, and breaking into my office?”
“He’s dead.”
“You must be an absolutely amazing cop to have discerned that, Dunlop. I'm really, really impressed.” Even my sarcasm sounded tired.
“Tell me why.”
I put milk in my tea and grabbed the sugar bowl. After a moment’s thought, I started dumping spoon after spoon of sugar in my mug. “I think telling you the particulars might be a bad idea.”
“We can’t go forward unless we clear the air.” He put his mug down. “I want to help you, Dr. Baranuik.”
Hoo, boy. Full title. Shit’s gettin’ serious, now. “I guess I should have frisked you for a wire when I was tying you up, eh?”
“I’m not here as a cop.”
Because you’re not one anymore. “You want to ask me something more important than how he died. I can feel it. I’m psychic, as I’m sure you know. Don’t make me get it out of you the hard way. I’m losing my patience as quickly as I’m losing my buzz.”
“He left everything in his will to Gary Chapel? Nothing to you? There was no mention of you in his will?”
“Not that I know of, but Chapel hasn't read it to me. Unlike some people, I don't turn into a gigantic, snooping assjacker if I don't know something. Normal people ask each other questions before breaking and entering.”
He sighed, propping his elbows on the table and setting his tired face in his hands until it sank deeply and took the stress off his neck. He muttered something into his palms that I didn’t hear. “A nasty, pill-popping, alcoholic, demon-possessed psychic. Jesus Christ. You’re not what I expected. You’re the last thing anyone needs in their life.”
“Thanks for noticing. I try to tell people that, but they never listen,” I said sourly. “Why do you care? It’s done. It’s over.”
“Batten called me just before he died.” He parted his hands to look at me. “He wanted me here. For you.”
Chapter 12
Mitch Dunlop and I stared at each other for ten silent, uncomfortable minutes in the dim kitchen light. A million questions churned in my mind, but with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth, speaking seemed impossible. It required herculean effort to unlock my jaws. And after taking a sip of the lukewarm, badly-prepared tea he'd made, I regretted making the effort in the first place. I was almost entirely certain The Overlord's appearance in the steam wasn't to blame for how awful the tea was. It's tea. Hot water, leaves, honey, and milk. It should be impossible to fuck it up that badly.
A strong craving for the palate-cleansing, black-out comfort of booze hit me, and I pushed it aside; quelling that urge was an unfamiliar sensation since returning from Skulesdottir. Maybe Harry was right; I was developing, or more like wallowing in, a problem. Asmodeus got off on debauchery as a temporary substitution for sexytimes with Harry, my taking the bremelanotide pills as a cheap substitute for actual nookie notwithstanding. As penance, I took another sip of the god-awful tea and tried, unsuccessfully, not to grimace.
Dunlop busied his hands with brushing up the flower I'd dismembered, gathering the petals into a tidy pile. In a frustrated flutter, I swatted his fingers and the petals, flinging them all over the table.
“Do you mind?” he snapped.
“Do you?” I picked up a couple and flung them in his face. “They’re mine. I can be as messy as I want.”
He leveled a glare at me then sighed. “It’s your sandbox, kid.”
“Explain this Batten bullshit,” I said, tapping my fingernails on the soon-to-be-replaced turquoise Formica, not sure I wanted to hear anything this guy had to say about Kill-Notch.
The Blue Sense reported his unhappiness. “When he left the police force and Michigan, it was without a goodbye, without looking back. He just disappeared. Then, one day, I’m sitting there hanging up my blues for the night, and he calls me. And what does he want after all these years?”
I shook my head, unable to voice my thoughts.
“He gives me a few addresses, says he’s going to need me to check up on a woman named Marnie Baranuik.”
“And by ‘check up on,’ did he mean stalk me to my gym and home, spank my ass, and sass-mouth me?”
“He said he wanted me at his funeral,” he said, and his words punched me in the guts. I tried to fake nonchalance by sipping my tea, which was still terrible. “I asked him what was wrong. Was he sick, dying? He just made me promise that I’d make sure you were okay.”
“And this is how you do that?” I felt my eyebrows shoot up. “I find it alarming, considering your fucking profession, that you’re so oblivious to the potential trauma you could cause a woman by following her around, tracking her every move, and, I dunno, breaking into her office and skulking around her home. I mean, luckily, I’m not a normal person and I’m used to being screwed with by nutbags and monsters. But you didn’t know that. Another person might have been really freaked out. Or you could have caught me on a good night, and I could have just fucking shot you. I'm still considering it, by the way.”
His expression turned doubtfully sour. “It was fine when you didn’t know I was there.”
“That's the worst justification for being a creep I've ever heard. ‘You didn't mind until you caught me.’ Besides, I spotted you right off,” I said. “At the gym. Jogging. Every morning.”
His lips gave a sad twitch. “I’d already been watching you for two weeks by the time I joined your gym.”
I gave him serious side-eye. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Cuz to be honest, it kinda does and kinda doesn’t. I’m torn,” I admitted, thinking about it. “Either way, I could ha
ve you arrested for harassment and trespassing and, oh yeah, theft of whatever you were trying to cadge from Batten's room at my office.”
“I’m aware. I told Batten as much when he called. He wasn’t as concerned with what could happen to me as he was worried about you.” He finished his now-cold tea and I suffered through another sip of mine to relieve my dry mouth. “At first, I thought you seemed unaffected. Going to work. Going to the gym. Went to a bar one night with your friend from the PCU. Puked on the side of the road, but everyone has a bad night now and then, and you had just lost someone. I figured things were fine.”
“I’m peachy.”
He just stared at me until I shifted in my chair uncomfortably.
I felt my eyes narrow. “Why did you break into Batten’s hou– my office?”
“I was looking for his vampire hunting kit,” he said. “Do you have it?”
“I left it where he left it,” I lied smoothly. “It’s gone.”
“It should have come to me. It was promised to me,” he said, and the Blue Sense reported that he was lying, too, I just couldn’t figure out why.
“Well, it didn’t, and you’re not gonna have much luck going after it, so make a new one.” I set my cup down harder than I meant to. “Are we finished, Dunlop? You’ve done your duty. You’ve followed me around. You’ve seen I’m managing my life just fine.”
“Debatable.”
“You don’t care about that,” I said, giving him a get-real look. “None of your behavior screams sympathy. You’ve done what you agreed to do, granted the dying man his stupid wish. As for the kit, it’s not recoverable. So I guess you’ll be hauling your happy, twice-kicked ass back to Michigan.”
“You haven’t explained how Batten’s death happened,” he said, getting to his feet as I did.
“And I won’t,” I said simply, moving to the front hall.
“Let me tell you something,” he said, ignoring my sigh-and-eyeroll combo. “You need to get your shit together. You’ve got a bad attitude. That’s not going to get you far in life.”
“You don’t matter to me enough to alter my behavior to suit you, Dunlop. Just in case you’ve forgotten your place. Motherfucker, I run this show. This is the Marnie Baranuik Hour, and you can exit stage left, thanks.”
“Explain Batten’s last day to me,” he said.
“Can’t. Legal issues,” I explained, short and sweet. “You should go before my companion gets home. He gets hungry after his ride.” I let the implied threat hang. “Good night, officer.”
He hesitated when I opened the door for him, opened his mouth, looked past me to scan my home office. Then he shook his head. “I’ll be at the funeral.”
“What a joy it will be to see your friendly face again,” I said, deadpan. “I trust I won’t bump into you at my gym anymore. Or here. Or my office. Wouldn’t want another pair of scissors to go flying.”
Dunlop left without another word, and I watched him storm down the driveway and hook left onto the street. I wondered how far away he’d parked, and if Harry had seen the truck. Stepping out onto the porch, I hugged my arms against the frigid wind, looking for movement; it felt like the night was alive. The spriggans were restless in the honeysuckle bush that Batten had transplanted last spring, rustling the vines. Ajax and Homer, the debt vultures, were familiar shapes in the trees. Homer? I did a double-take and smiled with relief. Yep, two shadows, side by side. Homer was back. That meant somewhere in the darkness, my baby brother was lurking.
“Wes?” I called quietly into the dark yard. I summoned a hefty dose of psi, marveling at how quickly and powerfully it responded still, after months away from Felstein; sending tendrils of psi in a widening circle around me, I searched the yard for signs of my brother’s arrival, but the only hint was his vulture, returned and waiting patiently for its chance to devour his soul.
Disappointed, I let my gaze fall, where it caught the sight of my shadow in the glow of the porch light, half its original shape. The left half had peeled completely off and gone on an adventure. The sight of the limp right half-shadow was a worrying reminder. Retreating, I slammed the door to the cold night.
Heading straight back to the kitchen, I dumped out the bitter dregs of my remaining tea and rinsed the cups out desultorily. The last thing I wanted was Harry fussing at me over leaving dishes for him to do from an unwanted houseguest. Dunlop's visit itself was going to be fodder for enough interrogation.
******
It was only an hour before I felt the summoning thrum in my veins that meant my Cold Company’s approach, the awakening of my DaySitter sensations; anticipation, security, and the Bond that reassured me that somewhere in the dark, closing the distance between us swiftly, was my link to House Dreppenstedt and to immeasurable power. The closer Harry got, the stronger the Bond surged through my body.
Harry parked the Kawasaki beside my Buick and hustled in out of the cold, and I knew he was fully prepared to complain vociferously about the ache in his bones and the stiffness in his joints. Instead, he stopped short at the threshold of the living room, sniffing the air with a curious head tilt as he removed his fingerless leather gloves and deposited them on the hall stand. “Who has been in my home this night, my pet?”
“Your nose, Harry,” I remarked, “amazes me. What does he smell like to you?”
“I might ask you the same thing,” he said tightly, unimpressed with my attempt at flattery. “It’s rather a familiar scent and I’m quite certain that was done with forethought. What mischief are you up to now?”
That made me frown. “Familiar? He smells like sweat and grass and mud from the back yard.” My usually sensitive DaySitter nostrils hadn’t picked up anything beyond that on Mitch Dunlop. I encouraged my Cold Company to speak up by helping him off with his coat and leading him to his favorite chair beside the woodstove, though he declined to sit. Instead, he paced, smoothing his eyebrow compulsively with a fingertip. The fire had gone out. I crouched to put more paper and wood in the stove to rekindle it.
“There is the unmistakable smell of Our Lad’s Brut cologne, ducky,” he said. “I’m most surprised you haven’t said. Now, please explain the meaning of this.”
I blinked rapidly and my hand paused in the act of lighting the paper. Batten’s holy water mixture? I didn’t smell it, even when I tried a second and third time. I smelled my gloved hands, my shirt, my hair. Granted, Harry’s preternatural senses were far more accurate than my own, but I was disappointed that I couldn’t pick it up.
“It was Mitch Dunlop who was here; that ex-cop I told you about, the one from Michigan.”
“You invited this ne’er-do-well into our home?” Harry demanded with prim shock, and his hand fell away from his brow taming.
“I did not,” I said. “Well, yeah, I guess I did. After I put him on the ground and showed him his place.”
“Only, why had he come here?”
“To peep in my bedroom window.” I meant it in a teasing way, but Harry picked up on the truth of it, and took in the grass stains on the knees of my jeans and the wild tangle of my hair.
Harry’s eyes bled past chrome to airy platinum in warning. “This is most unacceptable, my pet. Who is this man to us?”
“He’s a friend of Jerkface.”
“I see you are still using Our Mark’s odious sobriquet despite his untimely demise. Is that any way to speak of the dead? Is that kind?”
I shot him a to-hell-with-kind grimace, closely followed by the have-you-met-me head shake. A real one-two punch. He met it with cool disapproval.
“Your sheriff is meant to be watching over this Dunlop chap more carefully,” Harry deduced. “I see that I shall have to have a word with him.”
“Now, Harry,” I soothed, but it did nothing to calm the worry bouncing through the Bond. I stood from the wood stove, placed both hands on him, and steered him into his wing back chair so I could cover his lap with his favorite wool blanket. I tucked it in all around his legs.
“Well,
what does the man want with you?” he said, drawing himself up to full height in the chair. “Out with it.”
“From what I could tell, he was on a fishing expedition,” I said with a shrug, “to see what I knew about Batten. It didn’t seem like he knew much, but my Talents confirmed he was hiding a lot.”
Displeasure again sluiced through the Bond. “And who, one wonders, sent him on that mission?”
“Batten did,” I said with a still-surprised laugh. “According to Dunlop, Batten called him from Norway and made him promise he’d check on me. The jerk.” Secretly, it made me feel a teensy bit better, knowing that Batten had actually given a shit about how his actions might affect me, what ramifications they might have, what the fall-out might look like for me. He just hadn’t cared enough not to go Captain Kamikaze Vamp Hunter into the fully-populated lair of a primeval revenant. I wondered what Dunlop was supposed to do if I wasn’t handling the death of Kill-Notch well? Had he been instructed to pat me on the head and say, “there, there?”
Harry was on a different track altogether. “Is that what this Mr. Dunlop says,” Harry said, barely making it into a question. “That Our Lad sent him. An interesting cover story that would be difficult to confirm.”
“You think he’s a spy with ulterior motives?” I laughed. “If so, he sucks at it. Him and his stupid Fozzy Bear wig.”
Harry murmured wordlessly to himself and his long fingers began tapping the wool blanket. From behind the chair, Bob the cat scurried suddenly into view, his collar bell jingling madly, to claw up the blanket and pounce on the immortal’s moving finger. Harry absently scooped up the kitten and tucked the noisily purring ball of orange fluff under his chin for a snuggle. Bob gnawed on the collar of Harry’s dress shirt, kicking playfully.
