by A. J. Aalto
“I’m sure he’ll turn up, Madam,” Mr. Merritt said kindly.
I was sure he would, eventually. The question was, now that he had centuries to wait for vengeance, would I be around when it was time to make a difference?
Four
When I stirred, sometime in the deepest patch of night, the house was perfectly quiet and still, but there was a feeling in the air like a cork waiting to burst from a shaken bottle, and from the way my heart began to hammer, it was going to be some seriously sparkling bullshit. I slid from bed cautiously, staying low, slipping to the floor to yank on my jeans and socks. I side-tied my nightgown in a knot by my right hip so it wouldn’t tangle in my legs and hinder my movement and crept to the bedroom doorway to listen.
Nothing. But that wasn’t entirely true. I picked up the softest whiff of smoke. Harry smoking? No. A fire? Not wood burning. Molasses? Yes, a bit of that, but something else, something herbal.
I cut my eyes to the bedroom window. The black sky showed pricks of starlight in a slash where the curtains didn’t meet. As a precaution, I shut the bedroom door and turned the lock slowly, soundlessly. It wouldn’t hold against much, but the barrier would give me an extra second or two if I needed it. Keeping my head down, I shuffled to the wall next to the window, focused within, and began to draw open the Blue Sense before pushing the circle outward and pulling power from my surroundings, reaching out to my sources.
Harry was nearby for tapping. Our metaphysical Bond rolled open easily and I accessed him to pinpoint his whereabouts. A distinctly “Harry” vibe hit me immediately. My Cold Company was directly below the window, outside in the dark back yard. He was not alone, and though he was currently handling the situation, his mood had returned to furious. His power was riding high, dialed to territorial pissing.
I peeked out the window, but that was fruitless. There wasn't enough starlight to do any good with the moon shrouded behind thick, slow-moving clouds, and someone had turned off the light on the back porch. Not being able to see put my guts in a cramp — I needed to know what we were up against if I was going to have Harry's back. Where the hell is Wes? I threw out threads of psi, seeking that conspicuously bratty void that signified my brother’s immortal signature, and found it lurking, listening, and watching in case he was needed. An improvement. New-dead Wes, back when he was untested and uninhibited, would have thrown himself into battle at the slightest trigger. He was still a slipper-humping dumb-ass, but he'd leveled up the maturity a scosh. He’d come to our aid with lethal force once upon a time, an act that could have seen him staked without trial.
What were the chances of that happening again? I didn't want to find out, so I dragged my eyes off the dark yard to hustle down the carpeted hallway, bolt down the stairs, and fly into the kitchen. The lights were off, but Wes was visible as a darker blob in the grey-washed room, standing with his shoulder tucked close to the back door, staring out the glass panel. I let him sweep me behind him with his free arm.
Contact with him allowed an instant jolt of insight: unknown intruder, threat level undetermined. One more revelation rattled me: Mr. Merritt was in the yard, too, sorting recycling into separate boxes with his back to the tree line. In the dark. Playing bait.
I bared my teeth and hissed wordlessly at Wes, and his arm slammed me tighter against the wall behind him.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
I thought at him hard, Unacceptable.
“Not our decision,” he said softly but firmly.
Like hell it isn’t. I went limp and slithered down the wall like a toddler dropping from a mother's grasp, rolled once, then popped to my feet. Wes grunted softly and swung at me. It’s hard to dodge the undead in the dark, when they can see and you can’t, where their speed surpasses yours by a factor of several thousand, and I nearly did, but his grabbing hand whapped the side of my head as I was weaving. I went down with a squawk and a thud. My head slammed tile hard enough for my molars to clack together and my ears ring; the jolt of pain flashed over to anger in an instant.
The sway of the near-full moon and the lycanthropy virus lurking in my veins took it from there. Anger leapt upward to irrational, animal fury. I tried to shake it off, literally shaking my head like a dog with water in its ear, but the mixture of territorial concern for Harry, protective urges for Mr. Merritt, and the shock of being slugged combined into an unholy blend that washed over logic or reason. I fought it as long as I could, a heartbeat more, just one more second, then something wild exploded inside me.
Wes sputtered, “Oh, fuck.” He planted himself in front of the door, and in uselessly stubborn Baranuik fashion, prepared to spring. I lowered myself into a crouch, releasing my resistance and welcoming the power that woke in me, both psychic and lycanthropic. My bones felt too hot inside my flesh; my skin crawled with goosebumps, but unlike the first time I began to shape-shift, the rapid images of forms didn’t flip like pages in my mind. One image insisted over and over, like a red alarm flashing in a smoke-filled hallway, and it was one I didn’t understand: a boggle, a big one, covered in clicking, jagged crystals smeared in mud, its misshapen face dripping brown slime.
I was so startled and confused that I missed the pre-pounce twitch Wes made. To be fair, I probably would have missed it even if I had been paying attention. Immortal speed made him a blur as he tackled me. A sound leaked from my throat that wasn’t remotely human, a wet gravelly noise I hoped never to hear again. I bucked beneath him, trying to shift him off of me, tossing my head. The tile was cold and hard under my ultra-short hair.
“Stay down,” Wes said hoarsely.
“Let me do my job,” I snarled, writhing against his preternatural hold as if I had any chance of overpowering him.
“Fuck no,” Wes said. “Not this time.”
Not this time. I stopped struggling, and a cool wash of fear spilled across the surface of my anger, chilling me right out. I bent my wrist until my bare fingertips touched his exposed forearm, and sifted through the rapid stream of new impressions I picked up: two cold fronts brushing up against one another, testing, tasting the strength on the other side, invisible fingers of influence probing, two matched powers mirroring one another. Harry was holding his own. Using Mr. Merritt as bait was not going to fly with me, but at least the danger was minimal.
“Good. Better,” Wes murmured as he felt my struggle weaken and my resistance fade. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
I had a sinking feeling he was very wrong about that. The moon’s influence had fried my wiring but I opened myself to the possibility of releasing my fear and anger back into my brother, who had effectively leashed the spilled lycanthropic power with immortal brute strength. Dizzy with the aftereffects of a thwarted shapeshift, I breathed deeply and slowly, trying to clear my head.
Even a young revenant could impose its will on any lycanthrope, and there was both comfort and frustration in accepting that — for a moment, anyway — my brother was in charge, and if he said everything was going to be okay, it was going to be okay. If Harry needed back-up tonight, he would choose Wes’ immortal strength, not my human efforts. Not in my regular or my shape-shifted form.
“Splendidly handled, lad,” Harry said crisply from the doorway as Mr. Merritt came in behind him. When I looked up over Wesley’s shoulder, Harry flipped on the kitchen light, momentarily blinding me. I slammed my eyelids shut against the sting.
“Flames and ether, love, do try to comport yourself with a little dignity. You’ve forced your poor brother to flop on his sister like a drunken lover.” Harry clucked his tongue. “Disgraceful. Do I need to separate you, or are you going to behave like a lady?”
Wes let go and took a quarter-step back, like I might make a sudden break for it, hovering above me, and glaring down miserably. “Does he have to make everything gross?”
I was too scrambled to respond to that. I rolled away from under him and came to hands and knees.
“I’ll have my DaySitter up off her knees, please and thank y
ou,” Harry said, holding his hand down to me and wiggling his fingers meaningfully. I swatted his hand away. It was that or try to bite it.
“None of this was okay,” I spat, getting to my feet.
Mr. Merritt was using a cane I’d never seen before, which he set against the wall by the back door. That is totally a sword-cane. I suspected the blade secreted within would be impregnated with silver, and perhaps stamped with the sign of the cross. He moved to the oven to check inside, using a wooden spoon to stir something that sizzled, while Harry stared at me steadily, expectantly. The smell of herbs and butter struck me as odd at nearly three in the morning. Wesley went to the butcher block bar and swung onto a wooden stool, humming one of Harry’s dusty old Rameau songs. I wondered if he even realized he was doing it.
Harry inclined his head. “Such a fuss you make. Are you feeling quite well, my piqued pipistrelle?”
“Now that you mention it, no,” I said flatly. “No, I am not. This was a bad way to wake up in the middle of the night.”
“Heavens, ducky, your midnight wanderings do have me passing concerned.”
“My wanderings?” I flung a hand in the direction of the back yard. “What is happening in this house? You had Mr. Merritt standing out there in the dark alone and exposed while some random creepoid stalked the perimeter.”
“Alone, was he?” His lips quirked. “Our dear Mr. Merritt is ever under my wing, love.”
“What if he got shot? Or… or… had his fucking face chewed off?”
“Bezonter me, but your imagination does run wild.”
“I know what I saw, Harry.”
“What you saw, dearheart,” he said calmly, “was my caretaker doing his job and doing it flawlessly, as I have come to expect of him over the many years he has been in my employ.”
Mr. Merritt straightened from the oven fiddling to say, “Thank you, my lord,” and went about putting the kettle on. Somehow, he made it look like a small, pleased bow of acknowledgment.
“If only I could expect the same excellence of service from my DaySitter,” Harry lamented. “Alas, one cannot have everything, I have found.”
“You’re so hard done by,” I said.
“T’is a burden I have borne with nary a complaint.”
“Nary, huh? That isn't fancy for ‘a whole shitwhack,’ Harry.” I looked at him sourly.
“As for your creepoid,” Harry continued, laying on the sarcasm nice and thick so I wouldn’t miss it, “it was a trifling thing, nothing to wake you for, and certainly nothing that should have triggered a shape-shift in the larder. I regret that I disturbed your sleep. Now,” he adjusted his ascot and then used a fingertip to smooth his eyebrow, “shall I tuck you in?”
“You’re not going to tell me who was out there?”
“If only my pet hadn’t been tussling with her brother like a couple of jug-bitten sailors on shore leave, I might have had the chance to discover his identity.” He nailed me with a chiding look. “You, my naughty pet, frightened him off.”
I didn’t buy that for a second, and stared Harry down with an answering look of disbelief. “You didn’t see, hear, or smell anything familiar out there? My big bad revenant leave his highfalutin’ senses in his casket by mistake?”
“I’m sure even you smelled the stirrings of revenant power.”
“Even I, yeah.” I waited, and when he seemed happy not to elaborate, I prompted, “What else?”
“Kinetic talent, coldness, sugar cane, none of which are unusual, considering…” Harry’s brow furrowed slightly. “But beyond that, the house mark was completely unfamiliar.”
Telekinesis. House Sarokhanian was a house of precognitives and soul callers, and Ghazaros Merzyan was a prince of that house. But they had never been gifted with kinetic powers, not beyond the stirrings of passion that all immortal beings could inspire in the living. I knew only one active house of telekinetic revenants. “You’re sure our... visitor... wasn’t from House Nazaire?”
“Quite sure.” Harry chose to share no more on that subject.
“Fine. Now let’s address — ”
“Let us now address my DaySitter’s madcap willingness to shapeshift in my nice, clean kitchen,” Harry interrupted, “when such a thing is neither desired nor required of her.”
“No, let’s talk about your willingness to use human beings as meat shields and bait, because I’ve seen a whole bunch of other old revenants take up that habit. I won’t tolerate it from you. You let Mr. Merritt, at a hundred bajillion years old, mortal and squishy and vulnerable, stand between you and a kinetic-type vamp.”
I heard the V-word leave my lips and felt Harry immediately bristle through the Bond. “Mr. Merritt is not your concern, and his whereabouts and activities are none of your business.”
“Bullllllshit,” I said, drawing out the word and clenching my fists. “That’s one of the rankest piles of bat guano you’ve ever shoveled.”
“Your job, DaySitter,” Harry said, teetering on the brink of letting his politesse slip, “is to serve your companion in the manner that he requires.”
“My job,” I said, “is to protect your ass and mine, to keep you fed and alive, and to keep us secure in our place. And this is our place.”
“This is not — ” He blinked into stunned silence, rearing back at what almost came out of his mouth. He swallowed reflexively with an audible dry click, and a wash of shame and regret blew through the Bond at me.
A prick of surprise lodged in my heart like a thorn and tugged. Wes said my name softly in an effort to soothe and reassure me. I ignored him.
“Did you almost say that this isn’t our place, Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt? Is that what almost slipped out of your mouth? I am your current, living DaySitter,” I said firmly. “This is not her home, this is my home, and Mr. Merritt’s welfare is absolutely my responsibility now. And I don’t give a prickly, pineapple-shaped fuck whether or not you like that, Lord FancyBritches, but it shouldn’t come as a news flash after all this time. Harry, it’s been twenty years, and you still think of this as your and Grandma Vi’s house.” I jabbed my thumb in the butler’s direction. “My staff. My home.” I poked Harry hard in the chest. “My dead guy. Got it?”
Harry’s thrice-pierced eyebrow did a slow rise. The silence between us drew out as I awaited his apology or retort, whichever was coming. His eyes remained the softest ash grey. He opened his mouth, considered his words for a second, and then asked, “Potatoes, dear?”
I squinted at him. “Is that some weird, old-timey threat?”
“Only to your waistline, I assure you.” He fluttered his lashes, all innocence. “Our mutually beloved Mr. Merritt has been roasting them in duck fat, went a fair distance out of his way to procure it. Though the hour is late, one feels it may be rude, after all of his fine efforts, if you were to refuse them.”
It was my turn to consider my words, and I felt my jaw do Batten’s clench-unclench dance. I glanced at Wes, who shot his gaze up to the ceiling as if counting tiles.
I asked, “Are there fried onions?”
“I could arrange onions,” Harry said lightly, and his smile grew until it showed the slightest hint of fang. “After such a display of adorable audacity, my fierce little vixen, I could be inspired to arrange anything you might fancy.”
“You know, I was trying to make a point,” I said tightly.
“I am aware,” Harry said pleasantly.
“You’re losing this argument and trying to defuse the situation by offering middle-of-the-night snacks.”
Harry went mmhmm and smiled.
“Because you can’t win,” I clarified.
“Correct,” Harry said with a slight bow.
I cocked my head. “Because you’re… wrong?”
“Try to contain your surprise, darling, it has been known to happen a time or two.”
“Huh,” I said, wilting. “I don’t think I like being right.”
“Good thing that’s a jolly rare occurrence,” Harry offered he
lpfully.
“This is a lot less fun when you stop fighting back.”
“I promise it will be more fun when I show you my apology.”
“Is that what we’re calling your man-bits, now?”
Wes snort-laughed and got off the bar stool. “All right, you sure know how to throw a party, but if you two are about to get kinky with duck fat, I need to get the hell out of here.”
“Shruff and cinders, pet, but you’ve gone and made your brother uncomfortable.”
“Try to contain your surprise,” I said, “but that’s been known to happen, too.” As my brother wandered off, and Mr. Merritt took his leave, I settled into a long, shared look with my Cold Company. “I friggin’ love that old man.”
“Yes, ducky.” Harry’s voice had gone velvet soft. “I am intimately familiar with every corner of my pet’s heart.”
“Don’t ever use Combat Butler as bait again. I forbid it.”
Harry declined his head in acquiescence. I wondered if it was a promise he could keep.
Five
I woke with a pillow-muffled snort and lifted my groggy head from beneath it. The second half of my night’s sleep had been full of nonsensical dreams in which a tiger with no eyes covered in red feathers stalked me through dripping tunnels that stank of alcohol and unwashed feet. My bed covers were twisted around my legs. It was before dawn, and though I was the only living thing in the room, I was not alone.
The shape in the corner was shaking slightly, and I Felt his amusement. The Bond had tickled me awake — my companion was hungry, but perfectly willing to distract himself until I was ready to feed him.
