by A. J. Aalto
DEADHEAD
(A MARNIE BARANUIK
“BETWEEN THE FILES” STORY)
BY A.J. AALTO & PETER SKVORECKY
Booktrope Editions
Seattle, WA 2015
COPYRIGHT 2015 A.J. AALTO & PETER SKVORECKY
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Cover Design by Greg Simanson
Edited by Rafe Brox
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.
ISBN 978-1-5137-0770-9
CONTENTS
COVER
DEADHEAD
COPYRIGHT PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DEDICATION
DEADHEAD
MORE FROM BOOKTROPE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am ever so pleased to introduce my regular readers to Peter Skvorecky, who joined me in writing this, the third Marnie Baranuik “Between the Files” short story. Deadhead sits after Last Impressions and before Wrath & Bones in the Marnie Baranuik timeline, and can be considered Marnie 3.1. I’m grateful that Peter took time away from his swords and sorcery writing to play around in my world for a while, and hope you will enjoy this project as much as we have.
For my mother, her gentle nature,
her nimble mind, her green thumb.
This one is for Lynda.
I STOOD ON THE BACK PORCH, gloved hands on hips, taking cover from the downpour under the corrugated tin overhang above the door. My backpack was annoyingly heavy, slung over my right shoulder, so I dropped it by my feet, taking care that it didn’t land on the part of the cracked cement that was darkened by rain. The storm had quieted some, the thunder gone, but the late afternoon rain drummed on the old metal canopy like it had no intention of ending the concert. I was hoping there wouldn't be an encore, and just barely managed to squelch my own urge to holler, “Freebird!”
Batten stood like a meat monolith beside me, glowering at the shrubbery, whose leaves were dancing in the deluge.
“Well,” I agreed. “That shit ain’t right.”
“Ya think?” It was ironic that my very first official client was former FBI Special Agent Mark “Kill-Notch” Batten, star of many of my self-directed Marnie After Dark fantasies, and the man who doubted my entrepreneurial skills more than anyone else. He flipped the bird passionately, first at me and then at the source of his distress, a honeysuckle plant currently invading his postcard-sized yard, as if his hand gestures actually had any magic outside the bedroom or the gun range. It was a highly amusing spectacle, but I did my best not to smile; I had to bite down on my lip pretty hard to keep things serious. He saw right through it the minute my eyes watered, and pointed at the plant to emphasize his problem.
Kill-Notch was rarely pleasant when we weren't naked, but his balls weren’t usually in this much of a twist (I'd tried that once; he'd hated it). I wondered what was really rustling his jimmies; certainly not this over-enthusiastic creeper?
“Less face-noise, dickbreath,” I said, trying not to grin at his overreaction. “It’s Tuesday. Tuesday is my day off. Tuesday is always my day off. That hasn’t changed. Furthermore, it’s pouring rain and almost dusk. Not the best time for gardening. I don’t even know what you want me to do here.”
His jaw rippled unhappily, doing its clench-unclench dance. “I planted that yesterday.”
“Apparently, you shouldn’t have,” I pointed out helpfully. Said plant had declared war on the rest of the garden and had gone on a chlorophyll-fueled blitzkrieg. With twisting vine and glossy leaf, thick, brown branch and curling, exposed root, it was quickly choking out everything in its path. That was hardly unusual in honeysuckle; it liked to run happily amok. But normal plants took years to spread like this. If I stared at this one long enough, I could swear I could see it growing. It was a tad unnerving.
“Diagnose the problem,” he ordered.
“It loves your yard. You have stumbled upon the Platonic ideal of honeysuckle environments. Maybe you should sell cuttings. I know, you could do a beefcake marketing spread, call it 'Belt Buckle and Honeysuckle' and just pose in front of it, shirtless, in that pair of jeans that makes your ass look amazing. I bet you'd sell a lot of cuttings and calendars. I'll go get my camera.”
He blinked at me in disbelief.
“Maybe you have an especially green thumb?” I guessed, using my positive thinking. I thought my ex-coworker and positivity coach, Special Agent Elian de Cabrera, would be proud. “Maybe it’s vigorous?”
“It’s a mutant.”
I spied the empty pot in the recycling bin. “Marked down from twelve dollars to four. An on-sale mutant honeysuckle. Score.”
“Can’t believe I have to say this,” he muttered, making hand motions that looked like he was exaggerating the size of either a fish he caught or his dick. My eyes tracked his bobbing hands, trying to figure out what they were trying to tell me. Certainly, it was a mystery. “Listen to me. Focus. Marnie.”
“Yes, Mark?”
“I don’t want a mutant honeysuckle.”
“Then I hope you saved the fucking receipt.”
“Marnie!”
“Yo! What have I told you about chucking a tantrum?” I squinted at the big vein pumping in his temple. It looked like it was going to burst. “Did you smoke some of this plant or something?”
His eyes blazed. “You said Ten Springs would be a great place to buy a house.”
I had said that, and he’d subsequently bought this place; he lived in the back half of the house, and he and I were in negotiations to run offices out of the living and dining rooms, his preternatural predator hunting business on the left, and my as-yet-unnamed psychic detective business on the right. The negotiations might have taken place in the bedroom, kitchen, and master bathroom. Or maybe I'd just wanted them to.
“It is a great place to buy a house,” I maintained. “It's apparently an even better place to plant honeysuckle.”
“You said Ten Springs would be better than Boulder because it would be quieter, more peaceful. I believe the word you used was ‘serene.’”
“I never said ‘serene.’” I made air quotes. “I can’t promise serene. Or maybe I did, but I lied. I do that. And that plant is pretty quiet, even if it's, uh, eating your entire yard. Was it that close to the fence a minute ago?”
“This is not serenity. This is chaos and mayhem. The soil is cursed. The water is cursed. This plant is an animal!”
“Your profoundly flawed grasp on biology, both mundane and preternatural, offends my deeply professional mien,” I said with a not-unaffectionate chuckle, shaking my head at him. “You’re way too wound up about this. It’s not going to come over here and strangle us like a python.”
“Sure about that?”
I wasn’t. The way the leaves twitched made me nervous. Probably, the movement was caused by the heavy drumming of the rain. Probably. Then again, this was a ten-year spread made in a single day; Batten was right, it was u
nnatural.
“Can you fix it?” he asked.
I sighed. “Agent Batten, I am a dual-Talented psychic, a forensic psychometrist with secondary clairempathy, who, until a few months ago, had a very prestigious job working for the FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit,” I reminded him, though we’d quit the PCU at the same time and he knew damn well what I did there. “I have a PhD in preternatural biology. Additionally, I am very well versed in the dark arts.”
“Not hearing a yes.”
I shrugged. “I am neither a botanist nor a plant exorcist. Side note: I'm almost entirely certain ‘plant exorcist’ isn't a real thing.”
“Fine.” He exhaled hotly through his nostrils. “What do you suggest I do?”
“Cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring. Pruning shears? A weed whacker? Maybe some Agent Orange? Got any napalm in your nightstand for those evenings when you miss me extra bunches?”
He made an indecipherable noise like a bull about to charge and pointed aggressively towards a patch of the honeysuckle's wild growth.
I followed his stabbing finger to the east end of the garden, where a pair of pruners stuck out of the tangled vines, pointy ends facing out, gripped hard by wiry-looking brown branches. I felt one corner of my lips tug up. “Tell me that plant actually took the tool from your goddamned hands. Tell me you got disarmed by a shrubbery. That's gotta be more humiliating than the time I took you down. Hey, maybe Rob Hood could teach your vine some moves and make it his new deputy.”
Batten sighed, a long and defeated sound, and waved my attention toward the other end of the garden. A push-style lawnmower was barely visible as a glistening, metal lump under a jumble of leaves. Cheerful, creamy blooms bobbed around the handle of a shovel. The more I stared, the more garden implements popped out, like an agricultural Where’s Waldo. The thing that finally cracked me up, though, was the sight of Batten’s favorite back-up gun, the Taurus, sticking out of the dirt and wrapped between thick, girdling roots. I had once used that gun to blow off the top of a zombie deputy’s skull. Apparently, Batten tried to use it for landscaping, and failed.
“You did not try to shoot it,” I said, knowing full well that he must have.
“I just moved in a month ago,” he growled. “I wanted a garden oasis, a retreat from the stresses of the job. And this is what I get. A fucking plant monster.”
“Did you buy magic beans?” I eyed him suspiciously.
“No.”
“Were you a cockknob to the saleswoman? Did she mutter at you in Middle Hungarian after you turned your back on her?”
“No,” he said. “Self-checkout kiosk at Home Depot. And despite what you may think, I’m capable of being polite in public.”
I faced that with doubtful silence, digging out and opening my thermos from my backpack; it was new, and Batten hadn’t had a chance to draw fangs on the green cartoon frogs yet. Harry had thoughtfully poured six shots of espresso into it, and laced it with sweet foam that morning; this much caffeine could’ve been considered a controlled substance. The blessed elixir was still hot enough to sear my tongue, so I blew on it. He’d also packed me a sandwich: crunchy peanut butter on Wonder Bread. I un-wrapped it and chewed as I ruminated. Mostly, I ruminated on how much I respected this ballsy plant. It had set down roots and wasn’t going nowhere. I’d never met a plant with that much audacity before; it was love at first sight. Maybe I’d transplant it to my house. I wasn’t hurting for space. Digging peanut butter out of my molar with my tongue, I had a thought.
I pulled a couple corners off the bread and tossed the crusts to the palest edge of the plant, where the leaves were youngest, still barely uncurled. Together in the shelter of the overhang, Batten and I waited for something to happen besides the bread getting soggy in the rain. When nothing did, I nodded, satisfied.
“Not a dryad.”
I poured a bit of the milk foam into the cap of the thermos and approached the plant, setting the cap down with a wary eye on the vines nearby. The rain began to water down the drink. I backed off five paces and waited. When no tiny hand swiped out at the thermos lid, I said, “Not a brownie. They love dairy products.”
“This how you always work?” he asked, clearly unimpressed. “Just taking random stabs at stuff?”
It was, but I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of admitting it. “I could say the same thing about your bedroom technique, buster. Besides, I don’t have any of my fancy equipment unpacked,” I bluffed.
“What do your psychic Talents tell you?”
“That you want to clobber me,” I offered. “Also, that my sass-mouth still gives you a major boner. You probably want to see a therapist about that. It’s super weird.”
“About the plant,” he growled.
“My sass-mouth is not, at present, giving the plant a boner. So, it's less weird than you are.”
“Marnie...”
“Zilch. I’m getting no empathic vibes from it at all. Or maybe it just doesn't have feelings because it's, you know, a plant.”
“I’ve been trying to get rid of this thing all day. I want to shower and order pizza,” he said. “If I leave you to it, can you take care of it?”
I laughed heartily until I noticed his scowl. “Oh, you meant that. No, I seriously doubt it. Would you like me to not-fix your computer, too? Because I’m fairly certain I could manage that.”
“Try again, Miss Positivity.”
“Errr, I’ll do my best?” Seeing the crease in his forehead hadn’t gone away, I continued, “I’ll do better than my best. I’ll be awesome. This whole bush will be gone by the time your pepperoni-bacon-double-cheese gets here if I have to chew the damn thing down like a fucking beaver.”
“For the price you quoted me, you’d better,” he said, glaring up at the storm clouds trundling across the late afternoon sky. “It’s supposed to be sunny this weekend. I have a lot of relaxing to catch up on.”
“You do seem to have your sack in a knot,” I agreed.
He just stared at me, cracking his knuckles to break the silence.
“Go shower. I’ll work my magic while you jerk off,” I promised, flexing to demonstrate that I had dialed my mood to serious business. Or maybe to give him something to think about when he got naked. Maybe he liked my gun show. I certainly entertained heated thoughts about his arms when I enjoyed my own company in the tub.
He considered me for a long beat. “Remember how I talked about hiring that other preternatural biology expert?”
“The one in Mumbai?” I nodded. “Devarsi Patel?”
“Remind me to give him a call,” he said, “as soon as I get out of the shower.”
“No can do,” I called after his retreating back. “He’s recuperating. Got his right leg torn off in Pakistan tracking some yeti on Nanga Parbat for his TV show. Wanna hear the funny part?” I cupped my hands around my mouth so he could hear me as he shut the screen door. “It wasn’t a yeti that got him; it was a climbing accident. Fell. Rope caught him the wrong way.” After he was gone, I cringed. “Funny strange, not funny ha-ha.”
Batten disappeared, presumably to pretend his back yard was a calm and orderly place where plants grew only where they belonged and preternatural biologists did as they were told. Not that I had to obey him. Batten had never been my boss; the man who used to give me orders was Supervisory Special Agent Gary Chapel, who was probably still trying to replace both of us delinquents at the Boulder branch of the FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit. Batten had never grasped the fact that he wasn’t my boss, though, and now that we shared a roof over our offices, I could see it was going to be a daily struggle to remind him of his place. And then I remembered he had hired me, and the customer was always supposedly right. I sighed.
“I didn’t mean to kill him, Your Honor,” I practiced under my breath, “but his relentless pissy attitude severed my tenuous grasp on reality.”
For a positivity boost, I texted de Cabrera: Grrrrrrr.
He texted back immedi
ately: Ask yourself, are things as bad as they seem?
I was pretty sure that I'd only imagined the plant’s leaves rustling to my right, but I froze nonetheless and held my breath, waiting for it to further encroach on my personal space. When it didn’t, I wiped raindrops off my iPhone screen against my jeans.
No, I’m good, I texted. Happier than a Hollywood horndog with hookers and blow.
Before I could read his scolding reply, I put my phone in my back pocket, where it vibrated chidingly against my butt.
“Are you the plant itself?” I asked the honeysuckle, aware of the wind’s gusts and how it picked up each tiny vine, each bobbing flower. “Or are you playing hide and seek and totally winning by making the plant grow around you? I think that’s cheating.”
I crept closer to the base of the plant, where Batten had indicated he’d originally planted it. The grass squelched underfoot and the rain misted my hair. “Surely, we can be friends. May I offer you a refreshing beverage? On a scale of ‘nah’ to ‘squee,’ how badly do you want some Miracle Gro?”
The plant did not respond, not that I expected it to. I was very glad that it did not, in fact, speak up in the drippy silence of the yard. I would have peed my pants on the spot. Come on, Marnie, you’re the expert, here, I reminded myself. You’re super-pro. You’ve wrestled a Stonecoat boggle, got in a Twizzler fight with a poltergeist, and nearly had your face gnawed off battling berserker zombies. An over-enthusiastic plant isn’t going to intimidate you, is it?
Still, there was no getting around that feeling of being watched, like the leaves had eyes.
I went back to my backpack, dug in it to find a little box of matches, and turned to face the plant. “I like you, honeysuckle. I think we could be friends, if you’d just behave. The crabby vampire hunter isn’t nearly as impressed with you as I am, and sadly, the yard is part of his living space, so…”
