by A. J. Aalto
Copyright 2012 A.J. Aalto
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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 978-1-935961-57-4
EPUB ISBN 978-1-62015-061-0
For further information regarding permissions, please contact [email protected].
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012943463
This book is dedicated to my mother,
Lynda, for always calling me a writer,
even when the words wouldn't come,
and to my father, Marc, the best damn
storyteller I know.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the support of some amazing people, whom I am blessed to know and honored to mention here. A huge thanks to Berenice “Machinery” Jones—editor, inspiration, mad genius and treasured friend, always ready with a red pen and a cup of Earl Grey—and to Jason Jones, for not being afraid to apply a judicious layer of Painful Truth when and where it's needed, and for being the most entertaining person I know. Life's so much fun when the Joneses are around.
I owe an enormous debt to my Thursday Morning Beta Reader and personal assistant, Heather Goldie, whose laughter is the best ego boost a writer could hope for, and whose honest criticism I can count on at every step of the journey. What would I do without you, Miss H? I offer a warm thanks to Rob Goldie, my photographer and graphic artist, who knows all about techie contraptions. When I was lost and needed someone, he snorted and said, “Hey dummy, I can do that.” I dig that guy.
To my kids, Jenny and Derek, I want to say thanks for understanding when mom's distracted, thanks for cooperating when I need just a bit more quiet time, thanks for being wildly sweet and totally amazing, and filling my life with giggles. To Daxon and Sara Flynn, thanks for reading and giving me feedback and encouragement, and to my delightfully nutty sister, Robin Landry, for always “getting me” even when I tilt way past weird.
But most importantly, I want to thank my absurdly patient husband, who has supported my broke ass while I pursued this dream, and fully expects to continue supporting my broke ass until book equals profits, no matter how long that takes. For the overtime he works, for the artistic tantrums he benevolently ignores, for the thousands of cups of tea he has lovingly tiptoed into my office, for the many “let's go for a bike ride, kids, and let mummy work”, I owe him more than these few lines can express. Probably I should buy him a sports car. Probably I should give him a kidney. Probably I should save half this Twix bar for him. Not gonna, but I should. He'll understand. He always does.
I love you, Jason.
ONE
I didn't have enough eyes for this job, counting the two in my skull and the thirteen eyes of newt in a jar of alcohol on the corner of my housemate's antique ebony desk; when you track killers the way I had, vision and clarity take on layers like you wouldn't believe. I say “had” because I retired from my position as a consulting forensic psychic for the FBI six weeks ago, after my first and only case.
My name's Marnie Baranuik, and most of the time I'm OK with being a one-fail wonder. The case had gone wrong in every possible way, and blame-the-psychic is a convenient fallback position. While I'm the first to admit my failings, proudly in some cases, I like to think it wasn't entirely my fault.
My reasons for retiring at the tender age of twenty-seven haven't gone anywhere: they're the choking miasma of other people's sins, and they're out there, waiting to show me their worst, strangers forever rubbing me with their prickly, often-horrifying inner selves. Sadly, the reasons for my breakdown haven't gone anywhere either. This morning, two of them sat across from me in my home office, a forty-five minute drive outside the city of Ten Springs, Colorado. One of them was politely ignoring the goggling newt eyeballs and drinking my espresso. The other was glaring at me expectantly while the relentless tick of hail pelting the window filled an increasingly awkward silence.
To borrow a cliché, Supervisory Special Agent Gary Chapel—the Polite One—was the silver lining on the black cloud that was his subordinate, Special Agent Mark Batten. Long-jawed with a receding hairline of short sandy curls, Chapel wore beige in varying shades that complemented both his hazel eyes and the tortoise shell frames of his glasses. He'd always been patient with me, unobtrusive and gentle, his all-forgiving gaze and agreeable nature veiling a past in behavioural science studying the most abhorrent criminal minds in the nation's prison system. How anyone could be so pleasant, knowing what Chapel knew, was beyond me. They didn't make chairs to fit his lanky frame; he sat tall in my office chair as comfortably as possible, reminding me of a Great Dane secure in his alpha-status, quietly confident. There was no fight in his eyes: there was no need.
From the way Agent Batten gripped his espresso cup, dwarfing it in the palm of his left hand to keep his dominant hand free, I could easily imagine his former life as a vampire hunter. He was all hard lines, an immovable wall. Ninety percent inanimate object but carrying the underlying threat of action along the tension of his forearms. Shady from black military buzz cut, to cinnamon tan, to delphinium-blue eyes framed strikingly by dark, thick lashes. Those eyes were by far his best feature; it sure as hell wasn't his personality. His black-on-black wardrobe made a lousy attempt to disguise the brain-melting body that lurked beneath waiting to fry the self-control of innocent women. He peered at me over the rims of Oakley sunglasses with a gaze
I'd classify as both cunning and wary. Unlike his boss, there was plenty of fight in “Kill-Notch” Batten, a lifeguard with a hangover presiding over an airless pool of disapproval and suspicion. Without any outward effort, Batten managed to dial my mood from uncomfortable to downright hostile.
Which man I'd less like to meet in a dark alley, I couldn't say, nor was I sure that day wouldn't come, considering what my housemate was; for a moment, despite our acquaintance, I felt intimidated. I took a bracing sip of espresso and pictured Batten prancing out in the snow wearing nothing but a sport sock, trilling Tiptoe Through the Tulips in Tiny Tim falsetto. Better. In fact, I had to work not to smirk. Judging by the further narrowing of Batten's glare, my twitching lips nudged him off balance. Much better.
Chapel leaned forward, elbows on knees, palms out. The familiarity of the gesture struck a warning bell: Chapel and his body language tricks, trying to put me at ease. If memory served, he'd use only our first names, consistently. I was about to be handled with all the determination of a Hollywood dermatologist on a starlet's rash.
“Marnie, Mark and I have already ruled out werewolf,” Chapel said.
“No bite marks?” I blurted like a dummy, kneejerk. Ugh. Point: Chapel.
“Plenty,” Batten replied. “Space between's too small. No broken bones. No tearing. Tidy.”
I hadn't expected Batten's grim tone and economy of speech to slug my chest the way it did; he never elaborated, and he rarely softened his tone. I focused on Chapel, keeping my face dispassionate.
“Then you're right, it's not a lycanthrope. Could be a young revenant, un-Bonded and solo, not running with clutch mentality, though not completely feral or you'd find tearing.” I struggled with the stirring of temper and loins, bickering Siamese twins, linked in flesh and blood at hip level. “Agent Chapel, you do understand the word “retired” and all it implies?”
Batten made a throaty noise. I refused to look at him. Childish, me?
“Mark and I understand you're on a break, Marnie.” Chapel nodded like an FBI bobble head. Behold! The world's most agreeable man. His voice warmed a degree. “You need some time.”
Only a few decades or so. “Gold-Drake & Cross represents twenty-five other federally-licensed psychics you can consult,” I reminded him. “All of them outrank me in Talent, goodwill and general friendliness.”
“Now, you know the first part's not possible,” Chapel said.
I didn't miss the implication, and smiled for the first time. Point: Chapel. An attempt to disagree with the last two would have been blatantly ridiculous and would have ended this conversation, and he knew it.
“There are more powerful psychics,” Batten hedged. “But how many have a doctorate in preternatural biology and more than a passing understanding of the Dark Arts?”
As far as I knew, I was the only one, but admitting that wasn't going to make them go away. I played with my cup and shrugged at Chapel, expression neutral. “You'd have to ask my old boss at GD&C.”
“And how many have a media nickname?” Batten drew a rolled-up newspaper from behind his back, where it must have been crammed in his pocket. For a second I thought he was going to swat me on the nose like a misbehaving puppy; he waved it in my face, then dropped it on the desk. “Must be famous for a reason?”
I felt my face go carefully blank; as far as I knew I didn't have a nickname. Certainly, I didn't want one. I could only imagine. “If you hit a wall, there's some hardcore unlicensed Talent in Denver.”
“Freaks and lunatics,” Batten translated.
I sucked wind through my teeth; it was getting harder to ignore him. Was that sweat on my upper lip? It had to be a kajillion degrees in my office. Chapel must have noted my discomfort; he smiled to disarm, an excellent smile for a lawman: quick, genuine, safe. It was hard not to smile back at him, and while a part of me unintentionally loosened, I kept my guard up. Having worked with him in close quarters once before, it hadn't taken me long to note all his tricks; this one wasn't going to work as well as he thought, not this time.
“Marnie, we're not here to lure you back into something you're not comfortable with. We're not here to haul you back into the field. Mark and I were just hoping, since we were in the area, you'd do a quick consult for us, look at some pictures, give us your first impress—”
“Doesn't work that way.”
He corrected himself immediately. “I didn't mean psychic impressions. I know you need an object to touch.”
“Or a victim to feel up,” Batten said, like I was guilty of something questionable.
Yes, I'm dual-Talented. GD&C used to promote me from their third-floor retrocognition department in forensic psychometry, otherwise known as token-object reading; this is my main Talent, a touch psychic. In-house lingo pegged me as a Groper, but we Gropers didn't like our slang to leave the office, for obvious reasons. Neither did the Feelers, the empaths who felt both the real-time emotions of the living and strong emotional residues left behind. The fact that I wielded both empathy and psychometry had given GD&C the opportunity to boast of a rare dual-Talented employee in their ranks, touched by the Blue Sense not once but twice, earning me the title Groper-Feeler; anyone who called me that to my face landed just below Batten's permanent spot on my shit list.
“Marnie, I only meant,” Chapel was saying, “using your experience with preternatural biology, just have a look at some pictures and tell us what you think we're dealing with.”
(Only. Just. Just have a look…) “Just a bit of gore to start off my day,” I drawled. “In case the hail storm and oppressive cloud cover weren't depressing enough?”
Neither man called me on it. I should have known they weren't here on a social call from the moment I eyeballed them through the peephole. The way they stood there on my porch, looking nowhere in particular with that habit cops develop, their gazes devouring every detail, missing nothing. Right then and there, I should have listened to my impulse to scrunch down and pretend I wasn't home, though honestly at the time that urge had been based on my desperate need for a makeover, or at least a sweep of lip-gloss.
Another murder. Another grisly set of photos in full unfortunate color. At least they didn't want me on a crime scene, still I was amazed at their nerve. Specifically, Batten's nerve. What part of “I quit” did they not get? What part of “go hop up your own ass” did he not get?
“Tell me, Agent Chapel, was the secluded cabin not a big enough hint?” I asked. “No offense, but you FBI guys should be way better at grasping clues.”
Again, I was on the receiving end of not one but two stony silences. I'd have classified them as chilly, but my housemate is moody and I had survived true chilly silences. These didn't even remotely compare. I pressed my back into my chair and turned my attention at last to Batten's face.
Even blank-faced, as he was now, those freshwater blue eyes were alive, bright, calculating. Shrewd. My stomach twisted into a quivering ball. I'd never been able to read his emotions with either of my psychic Talents. Not because he was in any way adept at hiding them; Batten was as mundane as a man could get. I wanted to read him too badly, that was the problem. The harder I tried, the more it was like trying to pick a wet watermelon seed off a Formica table: think you've got it, then it squirts away. To get an easy free-flow of psi, I had to relax to the point where I almost didn't care. I was never that relaxed in Batten's presence. I doubted I ever could be.
I hadn't seen him since Buffalo. Brains had come to check on me in the hospital, but Brawn hadn't. I'd hoped that by some bizarre happenstance Batten had lost his magnetism, or that some clever, savage creature had taken him down a notch, wrested his ego, humbled him. I saw it wasn't true. He was as cocky as ever and a few degrees hotter. Considering I looked like I'd just been released from a typhoid clinic, I thought it highly unfair.
I watched Batten's jaw ripple as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. I gave him credit for not looking away; he met my glare and must have read the fury stirring there, but he took it
like a man.
“Agent Batten can ask me to look at the file,” I said coolly. “He can say pretty please, and follow up with tulips and a pack of Double-Stuf Oreos.”
Batten's answer was the quirk of one dusky eyebrow. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly and noisily without speaking. Nor did he look away. Maybe this was his way of apologizing. Maybe it was all I was going to get. It sucked, frankly. I'd have loved to see him hang his head in shame for what he'd done. Even when I fantasized that moment, though, it felt wrong; Kill-Notch wasn't the apologetic type.
My warring body parts continued to bicker. I wanted to taste him again. I also wanted to whap him in the face with a ball-peen hammer. Probably I couldn't do both. Shouldn't do either, really. Memories of his abs pressing hard against my soft naked belly intruded, sending heat prickling down my thighs.
Kill-Notch wasn't going to say please any more than I was going to win the Miss Congeniality award at the annual GD&C ball, and the tulips were a long shot. I could get a please out of Chapel, maybe cookies too, but it wouldn't be the same.
“I'm not on vacation,” I told Chapel. “I know that's how GD&C spun it.” I eyeballed Batten's newspaper, sluggishly unrolling on the desk. (How many have a nickname?) “For what it's worth, I didn't leave because of the Prost case or how it ended. I knew working a serial of a preternatural sort would land me in the spotlight. Bad press wasn't a shocker, neither was the injury.”
Batten grumbled, “Who'd have thought a vamp would be packing?”
“I'm not taking time off to nurse old gunshot wounds. I'm not suffering from post-traumatic stress or whatever you guys are calling it now. I'd just like to be done.” That sounded too much like asking permission, so I rallied the troops and tried again: “Quitting is not a whim. I'm done.”
“The team trying to find Kristin Davis’ head will be disappointed to hear that,” Batten said.
