by A. J. Aalto
I sighed. “Where’s Harry?”
“The minute he got your text, he flew into a fit of packing, prancing around like a diva, trying on hats and cloaks,” Wes said. “Dude has more than one cloak. Were you aware?”
I smirked. “That’s hardly a crime.”
“He’s got an actual walking stick.”
“He’s from another time,” I said mildly. “If you’re expecting Harry to change, you’d better brace yourself for disappointment. He still owns lace cravats.”
Wes considered this as he followed me into my home office, where I’d moved Harry’s portrait onto the wall above the herb cabinets.
“He’s not bad looking, for a super-geezer.” He plucked something else out of my mind and said, “I don’t know why you’re all jittery. You know Harry will take care of you while you’re there, as long as you don’t…” He cocked his head, nodding. “Yeah, true, you might fuck up royally. Get it… royals? Royally?”
Even if he couldn't read my mind, the look I gave him was probably dour enough. “While we’re gone, don’t open the door for strangers,” I told him sternly, removing my little travel herb kit and locking the cabinets, moving around my desk to tidy the mess. “And don't let any of them smear shit on it, either. How the fuck did you not pick up on something like that?”
“I won’t,” Wes objected. “Wait, what? When? Holy shit.”
“No, probably just the regular kind, lucky for you.” I didn't have to remind him that he'd opened the door for a stranger, once, they'd said hello with a flask of holy water to his face. The flinch that said he’d already seen the thought in my head. Instead, I said, “No mucking with my grimoire until I get back. And no bacon double cheeseburgers.”
“I haven’t had one in months,” he squawked, pulling his shirt tight against his shrinking belly, the better to slap his pale abs and display his success. Any revenant who ate human food instead of blood was going to pork up, and Wesley had had a serious hang-up when it came to swapping a bag of O-neg for a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.
“And if people call,” I continued, “don’t tell them we’re not home, tell them we’re unavailable.”
His blue eye began to fade toward violet, but this was no longer a process Wes couldn’t control; his going slowly over to monster was borne purely of irritation. “I am not a latch-key kid, Marnie-Jean.”
“Oh, that’s exactly what you are, Wesley Alexander,” I disagreed, “but I’m going to arrange for Viktor to be here to keep an eye on you. Close the windows before you go to rest.”
“Hey, what happens if my debt vulture gets at me while I’m in VK-Delta sleep?” he wanted to know.
“Nope!” I sorted my Beretta into its travel case and tucked all my licenses and permits in their assigned pocket. “I’m not gonna go there, and you can’t make me. It’s bad. Leave it at that.”
“I’ll just Google it when you’re gone.”
“You can’t, I changed my password.”
“I just read the password in your mind,” he countered smugly. “Also: Batten has a hot ass is not a good password.”
“Says you; XKCD said it was awesome. Besides, I could change it to something better, like Wesley is a pain in the gluteus maximus,” I threatened. “Or some other stuff you can’t spell.”
“Your luck, you’d forget how to spell it, too.”
“How about this: if you touch my computer while I’m gone, I’ll hit you with a baseball bat. Unrelatedly, I need you to go buy me a baseball bat.”
We mirrored funny faces and nyuk-nyuk-nyuks. I said, “Hand me the mail. I’ll get rid of it before we go. I wish I could tell you how long we’ll be gone…”
Wesley shrugged and rummaged for me, coming up with a bunch of letters and a package. He flashed me a grin as he did, nodding at the parcel with a check-it-out smile, the way someone will when they’ve brought you a gift. My Talents tickled to life as I pulled my gloves back on to squelch the psychometry, a daily precaution when dealing with mail.
I started with the box, just to placate him. “What’s this?”
He shrugged mysteriously and handed me the letter opener. “Late Christmas present.” He held up a hand to stop my objection. “I know, you’re a witch, you don’t celebrate Christmas. But, still.”
I opened the box and looked inside. There was a small creature within, curled into a tiny ball, snoozing away in a pile of straw. His skin was like taffy, and his facial features were pointy and slim. He wore a small, green doublet and red hose, wee half-boots of brown leather, and a brown hat.
Wes explained, “I signed you up for a Brownie-of-the-Month club.”
“But it’s an actual brownie,” I said, “of the fairy family. This is a real, live creature.”
“Yeah.” He chewed the inside of his mouth. “Guess I didn’t read the fine print.”
I goggled at him. “What the hell am I supposed to do with a brownie? I'm certainly not going to eat it. You're not going to eat it. Bob is apt to eat it. So get it gone, right now.”
Wes thought about it for a full minute while I blinked expectantly. Finally, he put a finger in the air. “There’s an old fish tank downstairs,” he said. “Put in some rocks and a little water dish—”
“It’s not a hamster, Wesley!” I cried, turning to the rest of my mail despite the urge to use the letter opener on my brother. “This is a brownie. Specifically, a Scottish urisk. I don’t have time to housebreak an urisk! I have to go to Hammerfest!”
Wesley poked the little guy. He didn’t stir. “They must sedate them for shipping.”
I took a deep, soothing breath, seeking patience, and kept my opinions to myself. I had no idea what I was going to do with the urisk, never mind any further brownies I received in the mail. “Get on the phone, Wesley.”
“Told you, I’m going exclusively by Wasp, now.”
“I’m gonna get my flyswatter, Wasp,” I snarled. “Cancel this membership before I get a hobgoblin or something.”
“Would that be bad?” he said dubiously, reaching for my phone. “Because — heh heh — I think I saw that on the list. Thought it was a type of biscuit.”
“You’re going to have to learn to read the fine print better if you’re going to be working spells. Pick up the fucking phone before I shove a can of Raid up your ass, Wasp.”
Harry appeared as a cold push over my shoulder, bristling all the little hairs at the back of my neck. The scent of him, a mix of menthol cigarettes and his lemony 4711 cologne, filled my senses. “If you two children are quite finished with your bickering, there is the small matter of your packing, my dove. Mustn’t keep our flight crew waiting. Oh!” Harry made a tiny noise of surprise and leaned over the box o’ brownie. “Oh, what a marvelous little chap.”
“We’re not keeping him.”
“But certainly we must,” Harry said emphatically, wiggling his fingers at my mail meaningfully. I handed him the Overlord’s summons. “It’s dreadful bad luck to move an urisk out of your home once he’s there.”
Harry scanned the invitation, drawing in a deep, unnecessary breath and letting it out in a slow, smoke-scented stream. I’d asked him many times not to smoke in the cabin, especially not in the tight confines of his casket, but Mr. Flammable hadn’t been able to keep that promise very well. I studied his face to judge his reaction to the invitation, and when that didn’t work, I searched his emotions through the Bond. He cut his eyes down at me unhappily. “We travel light.”
Wesley hung up the phone with a guilty look. “Uh, Marnie? They’ll take a return on the urisk, but we have to pay for shipping.”
I held up my hand. “Deal with it. No more brownies. I want this solved before I get back. You wanna be a big boy, now? You can handle this like a responsible adult. I do not want to come home to a kobold on my couch or extra spriggans making nests in my rose garden, is that understood?” I’d had my fill of spriggans; if I never saw another of the little plant-dwelling, pollinator fairies, it would be too soon.
Harry ushered me out through the kitchen and into the mudroom, making clucking noises with his tongue that were half-chiding and half-soothing. “Perhaps I should pack your things. You are only taking a small bag. Come. You need a moment to breathe deeply.”
I felt through our Bond that Harry had more than one reason for bringing me outside, so I followed him across the lawn through the evening hush. Shaw’s Fist was a mountain lake with water that was cold even in high summer. Tonight, it glittered in the starlight, not quite frozen, but coming to that soon enough. Harry was content with a few moments of quiescence to let me calm down, and we strolled in companionable silence to the dock.
“I shouldn’t like to pry,” he said softly, “only it would be quite impossible for me to be unaware of your… taking liberties of late.”
Did he mean my heavy breathing in Batten’s home office? Or was he talking about the brownies I finished off the night before? I covered both with, “Marnie needs the occasional snackipoo.”
Harry gazed across the dark lake and murmured, “I have asked you to please stop referring to yourself in the third person, ma coccinelles.”
“And I’ve asked you to drop the indoor smoking and the French gibberish, but you just French-called me a bug, so I guess we’re at an impasse.”
Harry accepted this with a brief quirk of his lips upward, a wicked little curl. He tipped his head in the shallowest of bows. “If it would not trouble you dreadfully, I would prefer to be kept informed in regards to your amorous activities.”
Whoa. “Are you giving me permission to bone Batten as long as I give you the what-where-how?”
He gave a hard-done-by huff and sought patience in the stars. I recognized he was building steam toward a good old fashioned drama king performance, the kind he truly enjoyed, the kind he maneuvered us into on a bi-weekly basis for his own amusement. I waited him out politely.
“Oh, but you are the plunderer of my poor heart,” he declared.
“Uh huh. That’s me.” I called myself out to the lake, waggling my long braids. “Big bad plunderer, right here. Come see the plunderer, everyone!”
“I cry you mercy, ma bichette, must you drag the wretched, suffering thing through the muddy battlefield of your spoiled romances?”
“Did you just do a mash-up of Pat Benatar and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at me with a Lady Gaga twist? Impressive.” I whistled, grinning in appreciation. “Harry, your heart stopped beating in the early sixteen hundreds. Pretty sure it’s not capable of romantic melancholy. What are you really trying to say?”
He cleared his throat. “You are the empress of your own fate, my spirited sparrow, and as such, you do not require my permission. That being said, if you were to pursue such ill-considered activities, if it were not done on the sly, I would be inclined to… complain less vociferously.” He stroked his thrice-pierced eyebrow with one pale finger, again and again; Olympic relay smoothing.
“Okaaaaaaay?” I waited for the but. There didn’t seem to be one, which could only mean he was withholding the but for some future use; I knew my Cold Company too well to think there would be no trade-off where he used this to gain something grand for himself. Harry stood, still and unblinking, an alabaster statue: Debonair Dead Guy. His eyebrow quirked up playfully; Harry couldn’t read my mind outright, but through our Bond, he felt my suspicion. And ignored it, grandly.
“Take a moment to say goodbye to the lake,” he said.
“I want to say goodbye to the lake?” I screwed my face up. “Am I never coming back?”
“Since your survival beyond the Bitter Pass depends heavily upon your abilities to behave and obey instruction, that is a distinct possibility.” He reached out to pat my head, and I dodged his hand. His wicked little smile returned for a flicker, highlighting a single dimple, and then Harry swayed back toward the cabin.
“Harry, do you know anything about the arrow drawn on the front door?”
He stopped abruptly and turned on his heel to face me. “I do not. Perhaps it was done while Wesley and I were at rest? All the more reason that you should attend to us more closely, my careless crumpet.”
My shoulders fell and I rolled my eyes while he retreated indoors to pack and arrange our flight. Striding out to the dock, I wrapped my arms around myself, ignoring the cold. Elian de Cabrera, my old FBI partner, would encourage me to see the positives, and whenever I caught myself worrying, I tried to remember his guidance. When I couldn’t quite dig down and find optimism, I could always text him for a pep talk. Tonight, I didn’t need to. The cold air hauled deep into my lungs reminded me that I was alive. For now. Way to think positive, Marnie. Zero points for that.
“Everything will be okay,” I said, gazing up at the moon. “Isn’t that right, Dark Lady?” I thought about all the things I might take in my go-bag, and wondered what Batten would be taking in his own, and whether or not mine measured up. We all had our different skills. Positivity, Marnie. I reminded. I am in tune with the powers of the Watchtower; I am a Daughter of the Night; I am an honored and cherished DaySitter of House Dreppenstedt; I am a doctor of preternatural biology; I have been trained by both the FBI and Sheriff Hood. What could possibly go wrong?
The answers to that were myriad and ridiculous, and I pushed them away as I went to the boathouse. There weren’t many ways I could protect the house while I was halfway around the world, but I knew one that worked reliably well: the witch bottle. I aimed an experimental thought at my brother: dig a hole by the front door, twelve inches deep and five inches wide. I didn’t know if his telepathy skills worked like that or from this far away, but it was worth a try. It's not like my thoughts went to voice mail.
The boathouse door was unlocked, as I knew it would be; I’d been chiding, bordering on haranguing, Harry and Wes about it for months, but it was useless. Harry’s car, a Ferrari Scuderia Spider in rosso corsa red, was parked inside for the winter, and much of the cabin's blood supply was in the chest freezer, both valuable enough, I thought, to at least keep some damn doors locked.
I flipped on the overhead light and went to the potting shelf to reach for one of the mason jars stored there. I tossed in several nails, sorting through the nail jar for the rustier ones, and grabbed a box cutter so I could steal the razor blade from it. I wrapped an empty glass bottle in an old towel and whacked it against the shelf, shattering it and breaking up the larger pieces, then brushed them carefully into the jar. After peeling off a glove, I used the neck of the broken bottle to jab my fingertip just enough to draw a dot of blood. Running my bloody fingertip along the mouth of the jar, I took a moment to look inward, searching for that sacred part of me that commanded power, that called the Watchtowers, that summoned magic. Over the years, finding this place had become easier, but it never became effortless. A wise witch always stopped to mark the well of the divine; taking magic for granted was a good way to have something go wham-bam-kablooie right in your face. I should know. I’d spent a lot of time with kablooie giving me a big old money shot.
At the first liquid stir of potency in my belly, I relaxed and drew it forth, rubbing the blood along the rim.
“Merry-match my veins to Earth / Cernunnos, I summon forth / Steel and needles, nails and pins / Soil and toil, and blood of sins.”
The Earth magic was quick to respond with a rush of strength and solid warmth under my feet, making me feel sturdy and grounded. I invited the power through me, conducted it up and up until it spilled down my arms and into the jar. The nails rattled in unison just once and then settled.
Harry pushed his unearthly whisper from the back of the mudroom, his audiomancy making him heard from the distance; it never failed to send a shiver crawling down the back of my neck. “Dearheart? Our ride is waiting.”
Already? Damn. Dead guy was in a hurry. “Can you pack my travel herb kit? It’s on the desk. Also, my disguises.”
Harry didn’t answer, but I could sense his impatience through the Bond as he withdrew into the cabin; while he respected my spiritu
al needs and knew damn well my magical talents were real and powerful, he always felt my kitchen witchery was far more useful at home than abroad, especially when I traveled with him. Maybe he was right, but it was better to be prepared than to be caught short of a bit of salt or clary sage if it was needed.
I began rolling the jar between my hands, focusing on the light reflecting off of its contents, a single drop of blood swirling along one side as it descended in a twisting path. “Guard of gate, ward of door / Watching towers, seeing more / Vine and fire, twist and spin / Home and Hearth and love within.”
I couldn't ignore the building warmth of the jar as I put the lid on and screwed it tight, then booked it across the yard to the back steps. When I came into the mudroom, Wes was putting away the shovel behind the door.
“You don’t have to yell,” he said, annoyed. “I was watching Dr. Phil.”
“Sorry to have interrupted such riveting TV,” I apologized, moving into the kitchen with my brother on my heels. “I didn’t know whether or not you’d hear me. Harry, is everything packed?”
“I suppose it must be, as your go-bag was full. Do you have anything you’d like to add to it?” He wrinkled his nose at my witch bottle, but wisely said nothing, linking his hands casually behind his back.
I remembered BugBelly’s warning about the stinky mummy and went to the linen closet to grab a few N95 surgical masks from the box there, and a few pairs of latex gloves, because goo lurks everywhere. I also grabbed my silver barber scissors, after taking a moment to hack off the bottom eight inches of my freakishly long ghost braids over a trash can and re-secure them. I snagged an extra pair of knee socks – frog ones with stripes – and my brand new Kitten Kewt nail polish in Pussylips Pink, because I may be a balls-out monster hunting bitch, but at the end of the day, I’m still a fucking lady. I briefly considered bringing Mr. Buzz, but decided against; this trip was not a pleasure cruise, even with both Harry and Batten in my retinue. On my way back to the front door, I crammed on the hat that Constable Schenk had knit for me and scooped up a few extra pairs of leather gloves; a Groper can never be too careful.
