by A. J. Aalto
“Nope,” I said. “Problem?”
“Probably not. The road in front of the cheese shop is open again and the lights are on in the store. He might want to check it out.”
I mumbled in acknowledgment, mulling over a check written for three hundred dollars to a Kimberley Fitzgerald. The memo was simply “services rendered.” Did Mr. Merritt employ a maid service? Was Kimberley the lady from Shield who brought Harry’s O-neg? “Hey, do me a solid? Run the name Kimberley Fitzgerald real quick, see what comes up.”
“Is this for our case?”
Our case. I smiled. “Maybe?”
“If it isn’t, the answer is no.”
“Then… yes?” I said hopefully.
Malashock made an unhappy noise. “Just a second.”
I studied the check and flipped to see if there were others. There were two. One in April and in February, both signed personally by Harry. The most recent had been signed by Mr. Merritt. Who the hell is she?
Malashock said, “Nothing much, just a license plate and an address. No record. You good?”
I tore the check receipt out of the check book and flipped it over. “Can I have that address?”
“What does this pertain to?”
“Boggles and cheese and dead guys, oh my!”
She grumbled. The address was a tourist shop off of Ferry Street in the Falls. Nowhere near our cheese shop, the lake, the boggle caves, or Ghazaros Merzyan’s house. I folded the receipt with the address and stuffed it in my pocket.
“Tell me what I don’t know,” she said. I resisted going with Harry’s scoffing about how long that would take. “Start with the least important and move up.”
Okay. I took a minute to think about that. The least important strand of this web seemed to be Nyquist’s work. “I don’t know much about boggles. I failed boggles in cryptobiology lab. But I do know that they don’t migrate, they are part of the land.” I felt a shift in my brain, a page turned. An important one. “They’re bound to their place, like the English Wyvern – there to frighten people away from a wellspring or sacred place. If the boggles aren’t eating the carrion beetles or spiders, they may be feeding on the passive energy emitted by revenants? Or guarding something important?”
“Is that possible?” Malashock asked.
“It might be why the phantasm can’t get enough sustenance from its DaySitters and a handful of victims and has to throw such a wide net. His, not its.” Dammit, Kill-Notch. His insensitive vocabulary was still stuck in my head. “I need to check this area. Where's Nyquist?”
“He’s not answering texts.”
One of the boggle areas ran near to the cheese shop. “Feel like doing some shopping, girlfriend?”
There was a deep, unhappy pause on the phone. “What just happened? Did you have a stroke?”
“I’m trying to be smooth.”
“It was alarming, don’t do it again.”
“I probably will,” I warned her, grabbing a plain navy baseball hat and putting on my tan gloves. “Meet me in front of Wicked Whiskers. An hour. Bring cash.”
I swung by the mysterious Kimberley’s address on my way Wicked Whiskers, going an extra fifteen minutes out of my way and slowing to cruise past. It was just an apartment above a souvenir shop near Clifton Hill, where all the tourist-y stuff was. Surely, Harry wasn’t spending hundreds of dollars on hockey-themed snow globes and postcards with the Horseshoe Falls on them, or cellophane bags of chocolate-covered raisins and peanuts advertised as Beaver Poop or Moose Droppings. Jars of syrup shaped like maple leafs lined the glass display windows. T-shirts hung on a rack, printed with various slogans about canoes and igloos and other stereotypical Canadian kitsch. There were four nearly-identical shops in a row; hers was wedged between a store where you could get your picture taken in a cardboard cut-out of a Mountie, one where you could pretend to be going over the Falls in a barrel, and a pizza joint with an arcade inside. If Kimberley was here, she was doing brisk business even on an October evening. The brightly lit sidewalk was packed.
I pulled away, heading where neon lights gave way to soft lanterns, concrete buildings disappeared, and century homes peeked through decades-old landscaping. Niagara-on-the-Lake was old money and quiet dignity — fine dining and live theater rather than wax museums and haunted house attractions. Wine tours ended here, with the wealthy fairly tipsy and loose with their purse strings. Wicked Whiskers would do brisk business in the summer, but would hold its own during the long winter months, with local chefs dropping in to stock up their kitchens.
The cheeky rodent above the storefront seemed to jeer at me as I cruised over the freshly-fixed road and parked beside Malashock’s van. I know something you don’t know, the mouse taunted, its grin an obscene red slash. I was sure the cheese didn't stand alone. My macabre mind bounced unhelpfully to an old case, the disturbed bokor John Spicer storing spirits in baby food jars with the labels mostly peeled off. And just as unhelpfully, it whispered Kinship of the Departed again. Neither Harry nor Malas Nazaire could trace the bokor, John Spicer, to the mine at Ashcroft, for risk of Kinship of the Departed drawing the ghosts from the old silver mine, driving both them and the ghosts mad.
What was it about the phenomenon that bothered me so much in the shadow of Fuck E. Cheese? I threw myself out of the hearse, tugging my gloves on more securely.
Liv was already inside, pretending to shop. She was dressed to play undercover housewife in a cute canary yellow cardigan and a plaid skirt of overlaid tones of grey. A pair of Mary Janes had replaced her ass-kicking leather boots, and her white ankle socks had honest-to-Goddess bows at the ankle. It was a ridiculously cute ensemble. She had a long, dark bottle of olive oil in her shopping basket.
While Malashock browsed the shelf of a hundred different balsamic vinegars, I strolled casually to the cheese display shelf in front of a man in scrubs whose nametag helpfully informed me that this junior cheese-monger was Erik-flavored. Shakespeare, from the other night. I hoped he didn't recognize me, as he paid half a dram of attention to me while wiping down a slicer. That changed to a full dollop of attention when I spoke.
“Maybe you can help me.”
He looked at me steadily, not the courteous way a salesman would, but the knowing look of someone who’s onto you, who’s smelled your bullshit a mile away and is waiting for you to officially blow your cover. Fuck. He said nothing, but I sensed an eye-roll barely contained. Fuckanut. Apparently, my undercover look wasn’t as good as Malashock’s, though in my faded Muppets t-shirt, green Keds, and acid wash jeans I looked like the least likely person to be a detective. I look my baseball hat off and itched my peach fuzz hair a little before trying again.
“I’m looking for something different.”
Shakespeare slid open the display case. “You want Provincial Smoke. A small batch, two-year Quebecois cheddar, made by La Fromagerie de l'Île-aux-Grues. Natural rind. Cold-smoked in Ontario, at Hansen Farms. Cayuga. Sweet and smoky, mellows in the center of the block.”
“Cold-smoked, eh?” I thought of the painful bite of Pascal’s pen in my hand, the cold shock of it in my palm. Was I reading too much into that, or was his smile awfully coy? “Maybe not for me. I want a cheese with body. I want a cheese with soul.”
“Soul.” He looked instantly suspicious and the Blue Sense roared to life, prickling me with his wariness.
I backpedaled. “Like, depth. Of flavor.”
“I’ve got something with soul.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” I did a double-take. “Wait, you do?”
“Yep.” He brought out a wheel coated in a hard shell of forest green wax. Thumped it with one thick finger. “A unique cheese for a refined palate.”
This is too easy. “Is it… locally made?”
“Yep.”
“Smells kinda funky.”
“It’s very old.”
“Is it… over fifteen years old?”
“It’s exactly fifteen years old.”
“What a coinc
idence,” I said, laughing tightly. “I woke up thinking, hey Jackie-Joan, we should get some local, stinky, fifteen-year-old soul cheese for a snack. I like having cheese as a snack. Sometimes. Do you?”
“Cheese is my life.”
“Neat. So.” I drummed my bare fingers on my hip. “What’s this cheese called?”
“Kinship of the Dairy.”
Oooohhh shit. “That’s pretty weird,” I said. “Why’d they call it that?”
“Lots of weird cheese names.”
“Sure, sure,” I said, my head bobbing. “Say, can I buy it?”
He nodded. “It’s even on sale, half price. We’re getting rid of it.”
“How come?”
We shared a long look, and I hoped I was only imagining the weight falling in the air between us.
“Making room for new stock.” He made it sound like a threat, or maybe I only imagined that, too. Could the Soul Caller have stuck Colonel Jack Batten’s soul in a hunk of cheese? Was that even possible? The baby food jars occurred to me again, and goosebumps prickled up my arms.
“Excuse me?” Malashock called from the shelves. “When you’re not busy, I have a question about this balsamic.”
Shakespeare nodded in her direction without taking his eyes off me. Then he lowered his voice. “How much do you want?”
“How much can you give me?”
“I can give you everything I have,” he said.
It hung between us for a moment, and it really didn’t feel like we were talking about cheese. It also didn’t seem like flirting. It felt like a challenge. I told him, “I always take as much as I can get away with.”
“Bit of a hedonist streak, eh?” he said, breaking eye contact at last to check his stock behind the counter.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I grumbled, and whatever strange, unspoken tension had been between us slipped away like smoke from a candle dropped into a pot of fondue.
Shakespeare priced out my cheese, which rang up to nearly a hundred dollars, then wrapped it and put it in a paper bag for me. I gave him cash and handed it to him barehanded, making extra effort to sweep his hand with my fingertips, focusing intently on his skin — wax, a noisy lake, darkness, money, greed, desperation, loneliness, thirst. When he strolled out from behind the counter, a little flap between counters swaying noisily in his wake, I got one last impression clairempathically — the feeling of being stuck. Trapped. Shakespeare owed debts, ones he could not escape. He went to help Malashock with her purchase.
I'd never met someone who dealt with immortals who didn’t feel constrained in some way, and we’d seen him with one revenant already. I clutched the shopping bag to my chest and went back out to the hearse, thinking maybe I needed a better undercover car. The hearse was getting looks from passersby, which made sense. I gave them a little no-worries smile, fished out my car keys, and unlocked the door. I put the bag on the seat beside me, riding the razor edge between curiosity and dread, wondering what the hell I'd just bought.
Kinship of the Dairy? I unrolled my receipt — ninety-three dollars for the wheel of Pale Sister. If it was some kind of sick joke, it had an expensive punchline.
Pale Sister, I mouthed to myself, baffled. Was that the real name of the cheese? Had he been kidding about Kinship of the Dairy? Threatening me? Had he been telling me he knew who I was? What I was?
I drove away on autopilot, heading back to the beach, parked near Ghazaros’ house, turned off the engine, and sat back, pressing my back firmly into the hearse’s plush leather seat. I closed my eyes and listened to the engine tick softly. It was late morning, and all the revenants were tucked securely into their caskets, I was sure. The weight of the sun compelled them to rest, chased them into hiding, and pushed them into VK-Delta.
Their DaySitters would be close by, for the most part, doing their duty as advocates, unless they were also out cheese-sleuthing or at spin class or were sensibly asleep. Inside Casa de Ghazmeister, Steve the DaySitter would be tending his errands, one watchful eye on any entrances where trouble could stalk his undead companion. Did Steve belong to Ghazaros, or his elegant-but-irritating friend Zorovar? I’d only seen one mortal in the house that night, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others. Who was feeding Glen Strickland? I made myself a mental note to bring Wesley for his visit, then looked at the bag of cheese on the seat next to me.
Until I knew for sure that Pale Sister was just cheese, I wouldn’t dream of cutting into it. It seemed like a joke, but I’d seen plenty of weirder shit, and I wasn’t feeling confident in my ability to tell the simply weird from the terrible truth. I got out my pencil and wrote: Marnie’s Evil Tainted Cheese – DO NOT TOUCH on the bag to make sure that Mr. Merritt didn’t accidentally serve it with pie after dinner some evening. Whether it would deter Wes' questionable snacking expeditions was less certain, but he'd made headway on being less of a dumb-ass. I held out a thin sliver of hope on that score. Barely.
The clouds looked funny — rather than skirting the horizon, they billowed straight up from the earth in high, stacked mounds like something had exploded in a mass of white fumes. The hint of smoky grey below the clouds was unsettling, and I sensed bad weather on the way despite the otherwise crisp blue October sky overhead.
I swung out of the hearse, wondering if Malashock would catch up with me or move on to something else. Rolling my gloves off, I crouched. To anyone watching, I probably looked like a weirdo, running my bare palms all over the asphalt, grabbing handfuls of grit from the soft shoulder of the parking area. The Blue Sense woke at my summons, gently offering hints of sex and money and gunpowder, blood and greed and wrath, and I ignored them all until I narrowed in, pinpointing what I was looking for: beeswax and rum and intentions of subterfuge. And straw. Jackpot. I checked my palm and the fine grains of sand mixed with broken shell and little rocks. No straw.
Standing, I scanned the edges of the beach where the ground rose in low, uneven, jagged cliffs. There was at least one crevice visible from where I'd parked. Was it a boggle area? Had Nyquist already checked this one out? Too many questions, not enough answers.
I thought about texting Schenk, but I had nothing to go on, and he wasn’t accustomed to dealing with naughty revenants. I pinged Malashock about the cheese and rum vibes, and the crevice that I could see.
Her response was immediate and imperative: Do not go in without back-up.
I crossed my fingers and texted back: I’m just walking in a public place on a stormy afternoon like people do on vacation.
She replied: I’m going to punch you in the tit.
I grinned at my phone. And you said we’d never be friends.
I mean it, her last text read.
I was tempted to sass her, but she was right. We didn’t have enough information. I’m going home. We need more intel. Then we bust some shit up.
But first, I wanted a quick nap to make up for my all-nighter. My eyes felt like marbles left in a sandbox and my mind was buzzing in seventeen dimensions. Straw. I dusted my palm off and put my glove back on. After a long glare at the coming storm and the lonely beach, I reluctantly returned to the hearse and North House.
Twenty
I woke on the couch from a restless, heavy half-sleep to the sound of my cell phone. Harry had reset all my ringtones to the Ghostbusters theme for the millionth time, so I shook awake thinking I’d fallen asleep with a movie on. My hand swiped my phone off the coffee table on the third try. “Hey.”
“Yo.” Malashock exhaled long, slow, and hard. I could tell it was her because of the disappointment in her sigh. “Need you again.”
I tried to contain my excitement. “At least someone does. What’s up?”
She exhaled again, even less happily this time. “Nyquist left a note. He didn’t listen to me, and went to check the boggles by himself.”
“No fucking way. I’m supposed to be the wild card,” I said, sucking my teeth. Undercover Lycanthrope is disobedient, who knew? “When did he go?”
�
�Yesterday. Can’t raise him on cell. He hasn’t been back to his office. He’s not at his apartment.”
“And Schenk said…?”
“Schenk said he’d check it out when he got a spare moment, but I haven’t heard from him since.”
I was wide awake. “That’s not like him.”
“No,” she said grimly. “It’s not. At all. It’s possible he hasn’t had a chance yet, though. Too tied up with his own work.”
“Nyquist went to find boggles and disappeared. Schenk said he’d find Nyquist and disappeared.” I tried not to overreact. “It might just be poor cell reception in the caves. Any idea which tunnel they were searching?”
“No, Nyquist's note just said, ‘Gone to Port Weller East, back soon.’”
I chewed my bottom lip in thought. “I’ve been told to butt out, remember?” Not that I’ve backed off in the least.
She grumbled. “I’m sorry I said that.”
“Oh, not just by you, lady,” I said with a rueful chuckle. “Let me count now. Uh, you, Harry, my asshole ex, my ingrate brother… about the only person who didn’t explicitly tell me to butt out was Nyquist.” Because I hadn’t given him a chance to, yet. And he had more reason than anyone to want me to fuck off, because I know his secret identity. “So the rest of you can bite me, but if he’s in trouble, I’ll go poke around.”
“Thank you.”
“For Nyquist,” I emphasized. “Not you.”
“Where do you want to meet?”
“No, you’re not invited,” I said. “You can go get a pedicure. You’re on vacation.”
“What the fuck?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” I sympathized. “Doesn’t feel very good, does it?”
“Baranuik — ”
“It’s just cop-eating boggles, I’ve clearly got nothing to worry about.”
On the east side of Lock One, the beach lost its sandy manicure and gave way to pebbles and shells and grit. Walking on it became difficult, and several times I slid, one ankle or the other turning suddenly on the uneven surface when the stones underfoot shifted. Piles of driftwood festooned with dried seaweed formed obstacles under several willow trees where the beach got narrow. Ducking and climbing, I managed to get past without getting my Keds wet in the lake.
