Wrath & Bones (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 4)

by A. J. Aalto

  “Go visit Mr. Merritt. Go visit my mom. Go play in traffic. Go run with the bulls. Go do the cha-cha in full sunlight. I don’t care where you go, just go.”

  Harry drew himself up to full height, drawing in a deep, unnecessary breath, and his mouth twisted into a displeased little moue. “I see the lycanthropy has taken hold of your senses despite the mellified man, and you have slipped into an early state of lunacy.”

  “No, I’m thinking pretty clearly right now, dead guy,” I said crisply. “I might get furry when the moon gets shiny-fat, but tonight, right now…” I thumped the Formica table with one fingertip, hard, and then thumped my temple nearly as hard. “Totally lucid.”

  “Let me be quite clear on this matter. I am going nowhere without you,” Harry said firmly. He showed me my name, tattooed on the inside of his wrist. “I am your rock; cold though I may be, I am solid and unmoving. So by all means, let your storm rage, my Dearheart, if that’s what you need. I will weather it. I will weather everything you could throw at me. Shake your fist. Thunder between us. Rock the rafters. Roll through the Bond and lash me with your blame.” He set his shoulders, an elegant but unmovable force standing in his pretty tuxedo on our scorched linoleum; he didn’t belong here, but he was the only man who did.

  My heart ached to reconnect with that bit of us. Being angry with him felt wrong, but that was the Bond tugging at me. I was mad. I was mad at him, and at Batten, and at Remy, and at Asmodeus, and at House Sarokhanian, but Harry was the only one here to rage at, unless I wanted to rage at myself, but I'd been doing that for days, and it was getting pretty stale.

  Harry’s voice fell. “It will be hard times,” he acknowledged, “but I will be standing beside you when the last wave crashes. If you need me to pick you up, I will. If you need me to hold you up, I will. If you need me to make myself scarce, I will be in my casket, quenching my thirst from a bag, but I will not leave my advocate’s side. Not now. Not ever. So, kick and scream, rail to the heavens and the hells, and I will bear it for you. Do you need me here to witness the kicking and screaming, my angel?”

  My anger fled, and then, because I’m a stubborn dolt, it rolled up in my throat again. “Yes, I do,” I retorted. “And stop doing that tricky thing you do, where you make sense and act mature and helpful. I hate it when you do that.”

  “Oh, I do apologize,” Harry said with a bob of his head. “Please continue. You were trying to shoo me from my home.”

  I felt my lips cave inward against my teeth. “Jerkface.”

  “Yes, too right,” Harry said agreeably, removing his cigarette case from his pocket and retrieving one. “Wait, to whom do you refer, now? That was always our cold cook’s charming sobriquet.”

  “You. Him. Both of you. Jerkfaces.”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  “Stop interrupting my tantrum!”

  Harry, to his credit, refused to smile with his mouth, though his eyes crinkled a bit at the sides as he tucked the cigarette between his lips and cupped his hands around his new gold lighter. Then he hid it, and I knew why: his old lighter, the one from Batten engraved JB for Jack Batten, had been lost on my journey. Lost like Mark.

  Harry’s head came up and he reached out to poke my coffee cup; it had a big-eyed cartoon frog on it with a thought bubble that said, “Keep on hoppin’, baby.” Batten had taken a permanent marker and drawn fangs on the frog’s mouth, just like he’d done to almost every froggy item in the cabin. My anger flared anew. I grabbed the cup and hurled it at the floor. The smash was disappointing; only the handle broke off, and the last dregs of coffee spattered on the linoleum. I couldn't even throw a tantrum properly.

  I launched out of my chair and stormed to the cupboard, throwing the doors open and dragging down every froggy cup I owned. Harry watched, smoking quietly, holding his cigarette the European way, while I made a concert of exploding cups, punctuated by the occasional blonk of a plastic water bottle. I heard Wes pound up the stairs, but it didn’t stop my whirling arms, and I felt alive with passion as the numbness of grief fled under a tidal wave of frustration and regret.

  Wes shouted over the clatter, “What the hell?”

  Harry ignored him, pointing with his cigarette at the sink. “You forgot the pink mug drying in the drainer, Dearheart. There are fangs on both sides of that one.”

  “Asshole!” I shouted, grabbing it.

  “Assholes plural, sweetheart,” Harry corrected courteously, “as you certainly meant to indicate both of us, yes?”

  “Assholes!” I bellowed, and chucked the pink one straight through the window above the sink. The glass shattered spectacularly and the mug sailed into the night. “Ooops. Shit.”

  “Mind the glass, please! Aim your rage inside the cabin, sugarplum, inside the cabin.” Harry waved his cigarette as though he were conducting an orchestra. He gestured at the old mustard yellow stove and olive green fridge. “That way.”

  Wes said, “Gee, Harry, I’m glad to see you’re taking this seriously.”

  “Oh, but this is most serious, lad.” Harry licked one finger and opened the latest edition of Fast Science Quarterly, which had been with the rest of the mail. “Dreadfully serious, indeed.”

  “Well, if you’ve got this covered, I’ll call home and make sure I’m welcome.”

  “Yes, yes, boy, see that you do that,” Harry said, flipping pages, scanning headlines casually as I continued my tirade. “I don’t hear swearing, love, are you losing steam already? Good heavens, but that’s most disappointing. Only, I thought you had hours of this passion in you.”

  “Cockknocker!” I yelled, grabbing my froggy tea towel and giving it a yank, attempting to rip it in half. I set my teeth together and snarled, but the fabric was too thick. I flapped it at him. “Damn your fine linens! Why can’t you buy the cheap shit just one time?”

  Harry slipped into a very street American accent and said, “My bad. Will do in future.”

  “In the future. The future. Americans say ‘the'!”

  “How terribly rude of me not to have noticed,” he agreed. “I’ll jot this amendment alongside your request for second-rate linens, shall I, my Own?”

  “See that you do.” I seethed in the face of Harry’s play at nonchalance. I had run out of things to break, but my anger hadn’t dissipated yet. It was unquestionably lessened, but it threatened to return full force, and right behind that, grief that would plunge me back into a bitter state of shock. I spotted the Kermit the Frog cookie jar on top of the fridge. I put my gloved hands on it and brought it into my arms.

  Harry spoke up and his tone stalled my throw. “Possibly you are considering that a better place for our dear, departed Monsieur Nazaire’s ashes might be the sad, cold little cemetery on Svikheimslending. I absolutely agree that returning him home to his house is the kindest action, now. He has spent enough time pricking your conscience from atop the refrigerator.”

  I looked down at the jar and then set it on the kitchen table.

  “I’ll see to the shipping details,” Harry promised, “if you are done needling yourself unnecessarily about Gregori and his end?”

  My shoulders felt too heavy, and they fell without my permission. I was sure in the coming days, weeks, months, I’d find more occasions to freak out and break stuff, to cry and yell, and generally fall apart. I was equally sure Harry would be there to witness it, to encourage it, to walk me through my stages of grief, accepting blame if I threw it at him, managing the details that I didn’t want to face. I stared at the top of his head, at his slightly receding sandy blond hair, at the twitch of his thrice-pierced brow, until he looked up from the magazine’s glossy headlines. I needed to expend more energy. I needed to stay pumped. When the energy drained, the sadness poured back in.

  “Going for a run,” I said.

  “In the cold and snow?” Harry asked. “Is that wise? Your injuries, love…”

  “Burns and bruises. I’ll be fine,” I assured him.

  “Won’t you turn an ankle if you catc
h ice? What would Sheriff Hood advise?”

  “That I take the first half mile slowly so I get warmed up, but Sheriff Hood can keep his teeth together and his advice to himself,” I said, and went to fetch my running shoes.

  Chapter 40

  My sneakers were sitting on top of the dryer with my terrycloth robe, having endured a quick wash and tumble dry. I heard a strange sound outside, and peeked out, expecting to see the debt vultures fighting in the trees, and finding instead a full-blown faerie concert going on. I heard the house phone ring inside and Harry’s kitchen chair scrape back as he rose to get it. I peered out into the dark to see flits of tiny bright eyes in the area of the dock, and wee fairy voices sang the wrong words off-key to a song I couldn’t even place.

  Behind me in the kitchen, Harry said softly, “What do you mean? Last seen on the Meita with Captain Rask? Whatever for? Was she alone?” His silence was full of shock. “Was there a proper casket? Are you quite certain? Has Rask not explained his actions? Very well, lad. Do have someone get in touch with me as soon as this is handled. No. No, that won’t be necessary. I will broach the subject when the time comes.”

  I waited to see if Harry needed me as I tied my running shoes. When he settled into dragging baking ingredients out of the cupboards and preparing his cookie trays, I threw Carole Jeanne’s coat back on and pushed the mudroom door open, tromping into the snowy back yard. The minute I got outside, I no longer felt like running; I felt an exhaustion heavier than anything I’d felt in a long time, and the cold only made that crisper, harder. The lake called me to its side and I went numbly to it, shuffling through snow to the dock.

  I had completed my quests, rescuing the people of Grimston from spriggans in Undercroft. I had helped reunite Declan and his mother. I had stalled the troll scout long enough for Remy to be revived and fed. I had brought House Rask back to the Falskaar Vouras. I had rescued Devarsi Patel and seen to the release of Betty the Yeti. I had exposed the illegal production of fake mellified man in the so-called tomb of Huxtahotep. I had resolved the Prost mess.

  But I had lost so much. I studied the bite mark healing on my arm. I'd lost my friend Pia. I’d lost Batten, and maybe I’d lost myself in the process. Was I already incubating lycanthropy? It was too early to be certain; sometimes, it was dormant for months after infection. I couldn't even judge by how slowly the wound was healing; the literature said lycanthrope bites could take from hours to months to disappear.

  I heard the grinding of chained snow tires on the packed dirt of Shaw’s Fist road, then crunch into my gravel driveway. A door slammed shut, and recognized it was Hood's Hummer. The driver didn’t go into the cabin. Instead, he came around the side yard to find me, like he’d known I would be sitting on the frost-chilled deck, staring at the winter night sky instead of bundled up and warm by the wood stove inside a normal person.

  This time, he didn’t ambush me; he didn’t even speak. He stood behind me for a long beat in silence then sat down on the snowy dock to my left. He handed me one of the cups he held. I smelled coffee and eucalyptus candies as he blew steam off the little vent in his lid. My butt was cold and my back was sore from hunching against the wind, but I wasn’t ready to move back inside. He shifted as though his butt was instantly as frozen as mine was.

  Rob said, “New roommates of yours?”

  I glanced at Professor Pfaffenzeller and his spriggan band rocking out by the boathouse. “God, I hope not.”

  “Got some donuts in the truck.”

  I nodded dumbly.

  “Two dozen,” he continued. “I didn’t know how many you’d need.”

  We shared a long stretch of silence during which we both sipped coffee and stared out at the starlit lake.

  “I got a few of those ones with the cream filling,” he said, squinting up at the pregnant moon. “They’re my favorite. I wasn’t sure if you liked those, but…” He drifted off, and we sipped some more.

  Finally, he got serious. “When Neil died, I was pretty pissed off. At him. At the world. And at Harry and Wes, even though I couldn't prove they did it; hell, because I couldn't, which got me pissed off at myself, for failing his legacy, or some shit like that. I was even mad at you. He was more than my deputy. We’d been friends for years.” He paused to glance at me. “The anger is futile. At first, it gets you through your day, gives you energy, steams you forward. But if you let it go on and on, it can eat you up inside.”

  “I need to buy new mugs.”

  He nodded slowly, not understanding, but accepting my non sequitur. I stuck my gloved hand in Carole Jeanne’s coat pockets, encountered something, and drew it out. A pack of menthol cigarettes. Did she smoke them to remember Harry, or did Harry smoke them to remember her? Did it matter? I tucked them back where I found them.

  “I need a new coat,” I said.

  “And a new haircut,” he supplied helpfully. “It’s been a few days.” My braids were past my waist again. Unlike Batten, Rob didn’t reach over and tug one like a schoolyard bully. Rob kept his hands to himself unless we were training. He did, however, eyeball my bandaged neck. “Healing up?”

  “The burns will probably leave a pretty gnarly scar, but the painkillers are good.”

  “You be careful with those,” he said. “Don’t overindulge. Prescription only. None of that street garbage.”

  “Yes, officer,” I said, and wanted to smile but couldn’t.

  We fell into another silence broken only by the occasional and not-unpleasant yip and yowl of the spriggans and our sipping counterpoint. By now, Captain Tuschoff was really rocking out, oblivious to my pain, chattering away in their fairy tongue. Maybe I could be a back-up dancer, go on tour, get some groupies. Bright lights and strangers every night might be good.

  My phone blipped with a text in de Cabrera’s text tone, but I was in no mood for positivity training at this time, so I left it alone for now. When Golden’s text tone binged, I glanced at the phone. It said, Want company? I wasn’t sure, so I put the phone in my back pocket.

  “When Neil disappeared,” Hood said, “I had a hard time believing he was really gone. Even after his zombie turned up, I could still half-believe that the real Neil would show up at my house someday, alive and well, asking if I had time for pizza. I wanted that badly enough to have a blind spot.”

  “I have no blind spots left,” I assured him.

  “You’re positive he’s dead?”

  There was always the possibility, however unlikely, that some revenant had thought it would be funny to force feed the vampire hunter from their veins, to offer Kill-Notch Batten the path of the immortals. Knowing Batten the way I had, I had a hard time imagining that he’d ever accept such a transformation, from a man into what he considered a thing. He’d only recently started referring to Harry as something other than “it” and the V-word. Would he have agreed to become one of them willingly? Would they have done it to him unwillingly, as they’d done to Remy? The Dreppenstedt clan had a history of doing just that, as did Malas Nazaire.

  Remy had insta-turned Manflay the troll. Would she have done that to Batten? I didn't know her well enough to guess. I didn't know whether I hoped she had or hadn't.

  I shrugged. “I’m sure.” But is it possible? Could it be? “Ninety-nine percent sure.”

  “Wanna talk about what that one percent of hope looks like?” Hood said, astutely.

  The floodgates opened at that and I sobbed openly in the night. Hood sat with me and said quiet, reassuring things, sparing me the foolish, empty platitudes he’d probably endured. With a cop’s experience dealing with bad news, death, and grief, he had a keen sense of when to be quiet and when to speak. He was wise enough not to dwell on the one-percent chance, sensing I couldn’t deal with that right now. There was no body, but maybe, through Harry, Chapel would be able to get the revenant court to cooperate and ship one, if it existed. Or maybe… my heart threatened to go numb again in defense. Maybe I’d never know for sure. If they played coy with the body, maybe we’d
never get answers one way or another. I should have stayed. I should have made sure. This frustration, coupled with all the things I’d left unsaid and undone, tore grief from deeper in my core, and I sat there clenching my fists, willing it to stop.

  When that particular torrent of tears subsided, Hood offered to escort me inside. When I demurred, he got up.

  “It’s getting too fucking cold out here for training tomorrow morning,” he said. “Six thirty, indoor sparring. Running on the track. Got it? Don’t be late. We’re kickin’ shit up to eleven, yes?”

  Grateful for the plans and the coming distraction of punching him, I nodded eagerly. I couldn’t see through my tears, but I didn’t want to see him anyway.

  He said, “I’ll leave the donuts in the kitchen with Harry, Mars.”

  When he strode off through the snow around the side of the house, the fairies took his place beside me on the dock, interested in my hot coffee and my undivided attention.

  “What the hairy green fuck, guys?” I sighed, as they shook their tushies on the frost-slicked boards of the dock. “Whyyyyyy? Why are you here? This isn’t your home. Your home is back that way. Professor Pfaffenzeller, I told you, I don’t need any more weird sidekicks. How did you even find me? The planet is so big and you’re so not big. What brought you here? Did eating that seed pod make me give off pheromones or something?” Maybe I could research that for my next Fast Science Quarterly paper, if I could figure out how to get another pod, but I didn't really want to draw more of these little whacknoodles onto my property.

  I mentally scanned through the playlist on Harry’s iPhone, wondering if one of their so-called magically musical prophecies had led them here. Bryan Adams’s “Run To You”? Zeppelin’s “Baby Come On Home”?

  “Rats. I bet it was John Denver’s 'Back Home Again'. Harry loves that one.” I made a little snowball and skipped it across the ice at the edge of the lake. “I love when he sings it, too. Dammit-fuck.” Tears threatened again, and I watched the trio sway in perfect synchronicity, clustered around the earbuds, bopping to a song I couldn’t hear.