[Marnie Baranuik 02.5] Cold Company

by A. J. Aalto

  Under the repetitious shouting of the police, who quickly took control of the situation, Harry allowed the killer to release the gun. With all the noise and commotion, I must have only imagined I could hear Paula’s sob of relief. Her nightmare was over when his body hit the ground underneath two officers, who made quick work of cuffing him and hauling him to the nearest squad car. The realization that she could begin to heal filled her, and me, with hope. The adrenaline surge was abating, and her hands shook badly as she reached for me almost blindly, needing the comfort of touch.

  She frowned up at me. “Who?” she started, but that wasn’t the question she really wanted to ask, and shook her head, turning to look over at Harry and Wes, who were being vigorously questioned by Constable Percy. “How?”

  I paused, putting on my gloves, clenching and unclenching my chilly hands. Where to begin? This woman was going to be battling a lot of confusion in the coming days; should I be adding to it? Before I could think of something to say, the ambulance arrived, and the knot in my belly began to relax.

  Paula ignored the medics who started collecting around her. “Was there really a dump site picked out?” she asked me.

  “In cases like this, there usually is. The good news is: you won’t be seeing it.”

  “Thank you.”

  I smiled at her. “Once the cops are done asking you a million questions, go someplace warm, and take care of yourself. I hear Negril is nice.”

  ***

  I was shaking Freddy Fryfogle’s hand and waving goodbye to some very tasty-looking officers whose names I didn't manage to catch when a dark-haired woman in a crisp black suit approached like a dive-bombing falcon.

  “Marnie Baranuik,” she said, not a question. “Detective Sergeant Malashock, pleasure to meet you.”

  “A pleasure?” Yeah, riiiiiight. “You must be new.”

  She didn't blink, but I got a whiff of amusement through the Blue Sense. “Am I holding you up?”

  “I’m heading home to my espresso machine and have the senior dead guy feed me brownies until my jaws hurt,” I said, “but my flight’s not until ten. Is there something more I can do for you?”

  “I feel obliged to offer you an apology,” she said. “I should have warned you that the subject matter of this investigation was especially troubling.”

  I tried not to smirk. My life is a whirlwind of monster hunting, demon sock-puppetry, old lady crotch-punches, and flaming zombie goop. One more grim, bizarre case shouldn’t add too many new nightmares. “Don’t sweat it, ma’am. Par for the course.”

  “It’s very fortunate that things worked out the way they did.”

  I stuffed my gloved hands in my pockets and made an affirmative noise, avoiding the sudden searchlight quality of her gaze. Malashock worked at reading my face, perhaps wishing she could read my mind.

  “Can’t interrogate a corpse,” I agreed, keeping my shrug casual, “though frankly I would have preferred to see his skull go kablooey.” To emphasize this, I showed her a vigorous hand-explosion and made wet splurching noises. I thought she appreciated the visual.

  Neither of us needed to point out that if Harry or Wes had so much as tweaked the killer's nose, they could be staked. Canadian law might be more lenient about revenant participation in legal investigations, but they were just as hard-edged as their American counterparts when it came to revenant-on-human violence, warranted or not.

  We took a moment to watch Paula nodding at the hottest of the EMS guys as he checked her vitals. I considered faking a turned ankle, and Wes made an unhappy noise behind me. The telepathic weenie was cock-blocking me after the day I'd had? Some nerve from a guy whose sex life involved bunny slippers.

  “Now that this is all over, is she going to be all right?” Malashock asked.

  I thought that “all over” was a stretch; for Paula McKnight, it might never be, and I wouldn't lay long odds on “all right,” but she was a tough cookie. As a cop, Malashock knew that much already. She was looking for mystical answers where I had none.

  “Sorry,” I said, showing her my gloved hands, “I’m not that kind of psychic.”

  “Well, I do appreciate you offering your help, today,” she said, and the Blue Sense awoke to report her sincerity.

  “I didn’t do much,” I said with a sigh, attempting modesty; probably I should have left out the self-satisfied knuckle-cracking.

  “If there’s anything I can do for you in the future…”

  “Hold on,” I said, digging out my pink Moleskine notebook and a golf pencil. “Are you saying you owe me one?”

  “Uh…” She looked wary as I scribbled an IOU in my book. “Sure?”

  “Hot diggity-doggity-doo,” I said, handing her the pencil. “Sign here, please.”

  Malashock studied my face to decide whether or not I was serious before signing reluctantly. “As I was saying,” she said, no longer as sure of herself, “a real pleasure.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, waving the notebook at her as she left. Harry slid up behind me, a cold press at my back.

  “Let us be off, dearheart.” His battleship grey eyes sparkled. In them, there was no hint of the violence that had caused his near-fatal salute. There was also no remorse, though I certainly hadn’t expected to find much. While Harry was concerned about the possibility of his soul’s redemption, his interest in total innocence waxed and waned. I had no doubt that he’d already rationalized his behavior and had moved on. Wesley might want to discuss it later, but Lord Dreppenstedt would feel no such need.

  Harry offered me his right arm, a familiar, gallant gesture that soothed my nerves. “If you’re quite finished, here?”

  I slid my Moleskine back in the pocket of my jeans and watched Malashock’s sedan pull away. “Nope. I’m pretty sure I’m not,” I said, “which I why I got this nifty IOU. Pretty crafty, huh?”

  “Oh, yes,” Harry said with a hint of a teasing smile, “How clever is my wonder-wench, and how perfectly proud I am of her divinipotence, if you will pardon my whildom words.”

  “Uh huh. I might not understand all that gobbledygook, but I hear the sarcasm, smartass, and I’m choosing to ignore it.”

  “Certainly, you do not expect me to chase the mare’s nest of your intellect whilst standing ankle-deep in the snow, angel?”

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out whether that was an insult or not. “I’m Googling ‘mare’s nest’ when I get home, revenant,” I warned.

  Harry’s smile was slow, smug, and playful. “When your vocabulary is augmented, you may consider me suitably chastised.”

  “Uh huh. That being said, we better grab the other dead guy and get the fuck out while we can.”

  Harry did not hide this eye roll. “Eloquently put, my spirited sparrow.”

  A fierce new wind off the canal and a growling sky conspired to make our escape from Niagara miserable. My brother’s palpable relief, and Harry’s hand in mine, attempted to warm our departure, but the cold had settled in to stay. Paula’s freedom, if not her happiness, was certain. My own – from the work I did, the company I committed to keeping, and the visions I am subjected to – would never be, and for a moment, as I stood by Harry’s rental car in the frigid darkness, I felt it as cold and bitter as the stale coffee that had spent all day in the frigid car.

  When I came back to Niagara several months later, the season had changed, but the bitterness had only deepened.

  (Stay tuned for Last Impressions, Book Three of the Marnie Baranuik Files. And keep reading for a Bonus Excerpt from Touched, Book One of the Marnie Baranuik Files.)

  BONUS EXCERPT FROM TOUCHED BY A.J. AALTO

  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 we
eks 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 oppressi
ve 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.