by A. J. Aalto
When he stood, she was dead, and the puckering wound in his throat was already more than half healed.
“Well now, ducky,” Harry said to me, turning the hanky around to dab at the gob of spit on his face. “Whilst you have certainly been successful at failing utterly in a fair number of prognosticating attempts in the past, I am pleased to note that this was a more triumphant farce.” He swiped a handful of residual blue blood off his throat and flicked it on the floor mat. “Neatly done indeed.”
I folded my arms and gave Harry my very best glower.
“Have we met?” I asked. “Because I don't recognize you at all.”
“Then by all means, allow me to introduce myself,” Harry said, his easy playfulness returning. He stepped closer, straightening the blood-soaked black lace at his collar, backing me up with his soft, padding approach. “I am the icy push of immortality through your veins. I am the grave-wrought hand around your heart. I am the cold wind that blows up your skirt.” He crooked a brow at me. “Do you require a more tangible reminder, DaySitter?”
Hell, yes! my privates rejoiced, the mutinous bastards. Harry always knew just what to say. He half-caught me in his preternatural gaze as a tease; the quickening of my pulse was no joke.
I said, “Come here often, do you?”
“Do try not to be absurd.” He smoothed one eyebrow with his finger until it got to the three platinum loop piercings, then repeated the gesture. “I have never before been in the viscount's society. I might ask how you could have possibly imagined it safe to come?”
“Harry, can it. What are you doing here… and with Agent Jerkface, of all people?”
“Serving,” he said, like it was a fair explanation. He glanced over my shoulder at the sound of approaching footsteps, and fixed my boss with an arresting scowl. “What was your grand plan, Agent Chapel? I prithee, do not say it was to traipse into the manse of an ancient revenant and ask him to teach you to dance a gavotte.”
“Lord Dreppenstedt, I have three missing people,” Chapel started, but allowed himself to be interrupted by Harry's raised hand.
“I was given to understand that, regardless of the severity of your cases, my DaySitter would be in a safe laboratory and not active in the field, a demonstrably fallacious assumption on my part and an infuriating exaggeration on your own.”
Chapel's expression did not change, but inside he wilted; I felt it, and a protective urge kicked inside me on Gary's behalf.
“Hey, I kicked ass tonight,” I sniffled, pressing the tissue under my leaky nose. “I've got moves.”
Harry pursed his lips. “Oh, good heavens, you need hardly remind me of your so-called moves. Allow me to quote you, my love: ‘fuckshit, witchy-stuff’.” His eyebrow rings twitched expectantly.
My cheeks heated. “That worked.”
Chapel spread his open palms at Harry. “We needed her help this time.”
“Pray tell, what happens the next time you need her, Agent Chapel?” Harry's glare was Arctic. His voice sank like a collapsing ice shelf. “No, this simply will not do.” He went to his pocket for a fresh handkerchief, dabbed at his throat and checked it for weeping. It came away clean. “As always, when offered the opportunity for wanton mischief, my pet came perilously close to catastrophe and ruin.”
I squawked. “Don't I get a say in this?”
His gaze settled on me, the miserable weight of a thunderstorm across a late October sky; I must have only imagined the chill that followed, but goose bumps prickled up my arms all the same.
“Come.” He compelled me with the jab of a finger at the chair, where Malas was re-settling his bones. “We must ask to be dismissed.”
“I dunno, Harry. That revenant looks an ungodly level of pissed-off.”
“Do not speak slightingly of our host. Besides,” he said, “Malas always looks like that.”
I followed at Harry's heels, backhanding beads of sweat off my forehead. “Why aren't you in London?”
“My master got wind of a plot to end ‘the abomination’. When we tracked the plotters’ flight to Denver, we were lead to believe ‘the abomination’ was Malas, and by extension, his line. I was sent back early to intervene on my master's behalf.” He half-smiled without pleasure, stepping over the ruins of his new violin with regret. “Words cannot express how thrilled I am that I did not miss the party.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“How perfectly absurd.” Harry frowned disapproval down at me. “I always know where you are. Can you doubt it?”
“But how did you know which Furry I was? I had my squirrel on.”
This caused a bark of unhappy laughter from deep in his belly. “I should think you'd need to be far better disguised for me to mistake my own DaySitter. That kenspeckle switch in your walk is a dead giveaway.”
“Ker-what? Okay, I'm calling you on that one. Kerspleckle is not a word.”
Harry drew a long, unnecessary breath and let it out slowly.
“If I look it up in the dictionary, will it be there, Wordy McBrainiac?” I demanded, squinting.
“Most assuredly, if you could but manage, by some miracle, to spell it correctly. Now hush, bird, it was a compliment.” He nodded behind me meaningfully; Harry was an ass man. “Come. Let us give our best wishes and receive permission to depart. We have an appointment.” He offered me his right arm.
I didn't wonder what kind of appointment a revenant and his DaySitter might have at nearly midnight on a sweltering August night, because the courtly gesture of his extended arm hammered home that my Harry was back. Regardless of why he was there, he was, for the first time in two whole weeks. It was glorious, so glorious my insides burned with the need to clutch and maul him. I recognized this as the Bond's doing, its preternatural burn through my veins assuring I'd resume my duties now that my companion had returned to me. My hands shook, and I put them tightly around his arm, restrained myself from launching at him and covering his face with kisses; that would be, as Harry would say, très indigne in front of shaken, milling costumed strangers and the swarm of officers now pouring up and down the stairs, rattling the treads with their standard-issue boots. Instead, I sent my Cold Company googly-eyes when he glanced down in my direction.
He did a double take. “Are you quite well?”
“I missed you so much. Almost as much as I miss cookies,” I said with a significant nod. “Maybe more.”
“You've gone slightly mad, then, is this why your eyes have come over so strangely?”
I ignored that. Some men just don't appreciate a perfectly executed googly-eye. “I thought we weren't going to be apart for long periods anymore. Isn't that the meaning of this?” I touched the inside of his wrist, where my name was tattooed in curly black script.
“There is no hiding place from the Father, no abditory or oubliette where one might be overlooked or forgotten when one is summoned home to one's creator.”
He said the last word with dismay. His trip to London was not recreational; it was a stop-over on his way north to an undisclosed meeting place. Prince Wilhelm Dreppenstedt, forever shrouded by the protection of his secret lair, had called His Youngers to him, and they came, fourteen of them in all, Harry being the youngest at four-hundred and thirty-five, and the only one from what they still charmingly consider the New World.
I held onto his right elbow, trying to stall his forward motion; I might as well have been trying to haul a 747 onto my shoulders. I didn't want to have a post-bloodshed chit-chat with a creature Malas’ age, especially not among broken bodies and fresh blood; his hunger continued to strum within me. I wondered how badly that hunger was affecting Harry. If it bothered him, he wasn't letting it show on his face and his emotional link to me was cautiously shuttered. That in itself was telling: the closer we got to Malas, the more muddled our link became. Either Harry was frightened and too proud to let me know it, or he was excited and thought it best I wasn't aware.
Malas was waiting in his chair, watching each step of o
ur approach with those eerie, gold-flecked eyes slowly melting back to aged cornflower blue. Harry's Oxfords padded to a crisp military stop and he bowed so low that his fingertips swept the floor.
“My Lord, may I have the pleasure of presenting my DaySitter, Marnie Baranuik.”
When I pulled back, Harry's grip on my elbow tightened with displeasure.
“Your assistance this evening,” Malas rasped, “will be remembered, Marnie Baranuik.” He reached out knuckles-first with his good hand, the hand with the gold ring, and for a second I thought he wanted me to give him a fist-bump (ancient revenants, very street,) until he opened his hand and dropped into mine an ivory shard. I brought it up to look at it more closely.
It was a tooth. Too small to be a fang, but pointy and sharp. A human canine.
I clamped my molars together so I couldn't shriek it's a tooth, it's a fucking tooth, though a horrified noise burbled unbidden in the back of my throat. I forced myself to smile; it felt wrong on my lips. What to say?
“Thank you, your grace.”
“’Twould give me great pleasure, mademoiselle, if you should use this to call upon me in your time of need. I should think it very unkind of you if you did not afford me the occasion to repay your courtesy.” He attempted to catch my gaze; I played coy and focused on his chin. “Mark the sound of my reply. I will come for you, this I vow.”
Gee, dial-a-vamp. Nifty. My glance floated up sideways at Harry to judge his reaction; his expression was unreadable and he was flat through our Bond.
“Lord Dreppenstedt,” Malas continued, “I was most perplexed at the seeming inability of your DaySitter to accept the endowment of our Father this evening when, through me, His blessings were offered. As eldest in this territory, I must insist that you explain this.”
Harry hedged for half a second. “She is incapable of such a feat at this time, I am afraid, due to… Bonding issues.”
My mind flitted briefly on Gregori Nazaire, and hoped that Malas wasn't thinking of his Younger, too, during his long stretch of thoughtful silence.
“You have my sympathies.”
Harry accepted this with a nod. “I daresay, it is enough to drive one perfectly mad.”
I interrupted before Malas could nose his way into the nitty-gritty details of my lackluster sex life. “Do you know the whereabouts of your own DaySitter, your grace?”
Malas cast his gaze down like a wad of spit at Ben the unicorn, as EMTs worked to control the bleeding in Ben's shoulder. There was a look in the revenant's eyes which said, more than the flicker of his tongue at the side of his mouth, that if the humans weren't there, he'd have cleaned up Ben's blood with his tongue, lapping at his leisure.
“Like my Master of the Revels, my beloved Stuart still lives. Our Bond continues unbroken. It should not be difficult for me to find him. Do not trouble yourself in this matter.”
“Do you also know, my Lord,” Harry asked, “what has set the Grand Priory in a mopple after all these years of relative quiet?”
“I regret to say, I am left to marvel as well. There seems to be dissent in their ranks. We shall labor to discover what this ‘abomination’ is of which they speak, for it appears as though they were under the assumption that I had the creature. This is not the case.” His tongue swiped again at the corner of his mouth, as medics stomped up and down the stairs, their equipment clattering. “Who is your clever mortal assistant, the stalwart gentleman with the large firearm?”
“A police officer,” Harry said, waving vaguely in Batten's direction as though he were unimportant.
“He should not have used deadly force to protect you, young Dreppenstedt,” Malas noted. “Mortal law in this country is most unfriendly to our kind, even in times of distress. His superiors will not approve.”
“The lad will no doubt declare that he was defending my DaySitter, who is human and therefore worthy of their protection,” Harry offered with a patient sliver of a smile.
“I expect to be updated when your DaySitter regains the blessing of our Father's Favor. She will be a far better advocate therewith. Until then.” Malas waved his good hand as though we were flies to shoo.
Harry bowed again. “Thank you, my Lord.”
Once released from Malas’ company, Harry didn't waste time, marching quickly toward the stairs. I jogged behind him, hustling to keep up with his stride.
“So much waste. Two people dead.” I said, tallying the hen and kitty. “And what for?”
“Do not forget, one very important man was saved.”
“Malas? How is he important, exactly?”
“A discussion for another time, when we are alone,” Harry said stiffly. “As things stand, one wonders how the law will view his actions this evening, though he had no choice but to defend himself. He is a master of a line, and is therefore responsible for the lives of all those whom he has made.”
“Do you think the cops will get a warrant to stake him?”
Harry's lips did the quickest quirk of a smile I'd ever seen; if I hadn't been watching his face, I'd have missed it. “Would you?”
“Try and stake a telekinetic revenant? Hell, no, I'm not suicidal.”
“One wonders,” Harry murmured.
I ignored it. “Then again, I'm not the capital-L Law. Guess we'll have to wait and see. Still, such a waste, two humans dead.”
“One must always adjust for cloffe, dearheart, in every transaction.”
I paused at the bottom of the stairs, hanging onto the railing. “I know I'm going to regret asking this, but what the fuck is cloffe?”
“Natural wastage. A hundredweight is one hundred eight pounds for a reason.”
Massaging my forehead vigorously did nothing to help. “Probably a hundredweight isn't used anymore, and if it is, it's not a hundred eight pounds.”
“Most assuredly, it is.”
“Are we talking about wool again, Harry? What is it with you and wool? You can't compare human waste with wool scraps.”
Chapel, his helmet removed but still dressed in his purple cat suit, called down the stairs at us. “Marnie? I need to see you first thing in the morning.”
I gave him a limp-wristed salute, complete with flourish. “Sure thing, pussycat.” Harry elbowed me, face scrunching with consternation. “I mean: sir, yes, sir, Supervisory Special Agent Chapel, sir!”
Harry made an aggravated noise in the back of his throat.
Chapel hesitated. “You'll be there?”
“I said I would, didn't I?” I softened it with a smile-and-wave combo.
“My office, about nine thirty?”
“I promise, I promise.” To Harry, I muttered, “Jeez, wonder what he wants so badly.”
“Probably wants to fire your ass,” Agent de Cabrera said as we approached the front doors, waving me over to the van. “Squirrel's a good look for you.”
“I suspect that Agent Chapel is at last prepared to hire you in an official capacity,” Harry interrupted, eying the Cuban while touching my elbow. “You will want to reflect upon what your reply should be. Do you not intend to let me say hello to your little friend, MJ?”
“No, he's not important,” I said, giving de Cabrera the stink-eye. “Right, Cuban? You're so not important.”
De Cabrera didn't take the hint. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Whatever you say, cariño, just peel the squirrel.”
“Are you calling me road kill, or is that some coy euphemism?”
“Y'ain't my type,” he assured me. “Just gimme the suit, chica.”
I unzipped and began working my arms out. “Level with me, Elian. How am I doing?”
“Your so-called people skills? God-awful,” he said seriously.
“Besides that.”
“You're also a giant pain in my ass.”
“I get the job done, don't I?”
“That you do,” he offered. “As a bonus, you're kinky.”
“Like a hooker on a tricycle?”
“That's plain sick.” De
Cabrera gave me a brilliant smile. “Seriously, everyone told me you were trouble, but you seemed pretty collected to me.”
“Oh, goody.” I said. “I peed myself on the inside three times.”
De Cabrera did a full head to toe inspection, letting me see it. “On the inside of what?”
I reached out to slug him and he danced away. “As for the PCU,” I told Harry, “I wouldn't dream of working during daylight hours. I have to be home to watch you; Gary knows that.”
“And who shall keep me company during these long, unbearable summer evenings, my pet?”
“Maybe I could start work in the winter?”
“Please do remove the rest of that ridiculous outfit, it is hardly appropriate for our appointment.”
I had to get a little funky to wrangle out of the sweaty squirrel suit; I moved to tuck my gift-tooth in my front pocket when Harry's hand darted, a blur of pale skin, to snatch it.
“Hey,” I cried, “Malas gave me his gross tooth, not you.”
He tucked the tooth into the safety of his inner coat pocket. “ ’Tis not even his own; it is a Waterloo tooth, which I shall henceforth carry for you in safe-keeping, lest you accidentally use it.”
“What the hell is a Waterloo—wait!” I flung a palm up to stop him. “Don't tell me. Probably, I don't want to know. Instead, explain this: did you bring Kill-Notch Batten, notorious vampire hunter, here, to protect an ancient master revenant?”
Harry barked a laugh around fangs I hadn't seen him extend, startling de Cabrera into a jerky backward flight.
“Batten didn't know,” I diagnosed, watching de Cabrera retreat to the van with the de-Marnied squirrel suit. “Batten had no idea he was coming here to save a revenant's life. What did you tell him?”
“By my troth, I told him nothing,” Harry said lightly. “’Twas someone else who requested he be here this evening, and in fact hired him to protect one Benjamin R. Sahelian from an attempt on his mortal life.”
“Ben is the unicorn who looks like Santa, leaving in an ambulance with a stake in his shoulder?”
“Sadly, yes,” Harry acknowledged with a cock of his head. “Your Agent Batten has botched his evening's endeavor. He seems a man who does not endure failure well. Why, it makes one wonder how he will sleep tonight?”
