Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (25 page)

Freed of its decayed wrist joint and the tangle of my shoelace, a brown, skeletal hand bobbed to the surface.

I’ve seen bodies in all stages of decay, so I probably shouldn’t
howl when I see one. I definitely shouldn’t have spazzed out at an active crime scene, or made a sound like a wounded cow. I
absolutely shouldn’t have thrashed so hard in the dead people water that I soaked the cop, either, because I’m positive I scored no points with that smooth move. Dripping and sputtering, Schenk took one big step into the water, hooked me under the armpits and hauled me out kicking and braying.

“That was a hand,” I said.

“It was?”

“It was a skeleton hand. It was a grabby-grabby skeleton hand!”

“It was a branch. Look again.”

I looked again. He was right; my eyes had betrayed me into seeing the shape I was afraid of, instead of what was really there. A
clump of
tangled, browned vegetation, a nest of old, dried vine that had
become waterlogged, bobbed in my wake.

“Well, it was really cold,” I breathed up at him, hearing the
defensive tone of my own voice.

“I bet,” he said, nodding. He hurried me up away from the edge, probably afraid I’d pitch us back into the water together. Avoiding the sharp, reaching branches of the buckthorn trees, he got us back to the path without further injury and we started back to the van at a fast clip.

“Patrick?”

“Yes, Marnie?”

“The killer ghost didn’t show.”

“No,” he said, “it didn’t, did it?”

“Patrick?”

“Yes, Marnie?”

“Don’t tell anyone I fell in the dead people water, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “Never happened.”

“And if it did, I absolutely did not make that wounded cow noise.”

“Nope,” he agreed, throwing his coat over my wet parka.

“Because I’m a scientist. A notfreakoutologist.”

He agreed with a nod. “You’re tough like a cinderblock.”

“When I get home,” I predicted, “I’m going to need to swear. A lot.”

“You’ll owe Mr. Merritt a million dollars,” he said, hurrying me faster as the van came into view. The new patrol officer had arrived,
a K9 unit, and dog and man were sharing a snack preparing for their
first out-of-car sweep. Schenk raised a hand at the new guy, who
recognized him and waved back.

“Mr. Merritt won’t make me pay it,” I said, teeth chattering.
“He’s a gentleman. Then again, I have a problem with gentlemen.”

“So you’ve said.”

“They don’t like me because I’m not a nice lady.” My whole body was shuddering hard, constantly, and though Schenk had me by the shoulders and was propelling me into the van at breakneck
speed, I felt like I was still wading through the purl of icy water.
“Even bad boys don’t like me, much. Certainly not as much as I like them. Agent Batten calls me Doom Chasm.”

That was the last straw for Schenk, whose ability to keep a
straight face faltered. He belted a laugh from the belly, standing at the open passenger door to help me with my seatbelt, while I just blinked in disbelief at him, numb and stunned, feeling like a child. The Blue Sense flared hot against my side to report that laughter was rare for Schenk, a serious man who seldom let his defenses fall. For a second,
the taciturn mask slipped, and his protective side took a softer
approach.
He helped me take my wet gloves off, wrung the moisture out of them on the icy ground, laid them across the hot air vent on the
dash, and put my still-warm thermos in my hands.

No small amount of shame pinked my cheeks. “You didn’t panic. Of course you didn’t panic. You would never panic.” I looked up at the side of his face uncertainly. “
I
panicked.”

“Just a little,” he allowed.

“Promise you won’t tell?”

“I probably won’t tell,” he teased. “Let’s get you home and into
dry clothes, eh? That’s enough ‘stake-outing’ for you.” He took a
blanket out of the back, and took me home, shivering in shame, revulsion, and probably hypothermia, wrapped up like the world's lamest leftover burrito.

NORTH HOUSE FELT
empty, and Mr. Merritt’s silent, ghostly-pale appearance did nothing to dispel that sensation. I had really been hoping for Harry’s company, but he was gone, and Combat Butler was being annoyingly tight-lipped as to his whereabouts, deflecting my queries with fussily solicitous offers of a hot drink, dry clothes, and a piping-hot bath, all of which were awesome and necessary, but I was still chilled inside and out and didn't appreciate being treated
like a wayward six year old. It was all I could do not to stick out my lip and pout, which probably wouldn't have helped my argument anyway.

I’d stripped out of most of my wet clothes immediately upon arriving home and thrown on one of Harry's long coats over my
underthings like some half-drowned but classy flasher. Mr. Merritt had taken one horrified look at his sopping-wet charge and gone to work in the kitchen fetching warm things with which to nurture and coddle me, while I tromped upstairs to hang my wet clothes in the shared bathroom off the upstairs hall. I exchanged Harry's tweed cloak for a fairly decadent, fluffy, vanilla-beige bathrobe. Ellie would
approve; Ellie loved beige. I was more of a black and blue girl, myself.

Even though my normal sanctuary of a nose-deep soak in a
steaming bathtub topped with mounds of bubbles had been
somewhat tainted
by visions of diaphanous, grabby hands and questing, skeletal
fingers, I thought a hot soak might be just what the doctor ordered.

Mr. Merritt's polite knock at the open bedroom door preceded his entry with the tea trolley, complete with silver tea service and a
posy of yellow roses and orange Asiatic lilies. I thought that I might be too tired to eat or drink until he took the napkin off a golden scone and produced a demitasse cup.

“It’s terribly late.”

“I fell in dead people water,” I confessed, pulling on my back-up gloves; beige, suede, but most importantly, dry. “It’s officially too late for everything.”

“Shall I turn down your bed, madam?”

“Like in a swanky hotel, huh?” I asked. When I saw he was quite serious, I hid a smile. “Sure, knock yourself out. It’s after midnight.” I left that hanging and favored Mr. Merritt with a conspicuously pathetic
that's your cue, dude
look that I honestly didn't expect him to acknowledge any more now than he'd done downstairs. Apparently, seeing that his charge was now ensconed and no longer dripping, he could favor me with a straight answer.

“Lord Dreppenstedt went to Virgil, madam. He is due to return soon and asked me to tell you…” He cleared his throat.

“Not to spaz out like a du--llard?”

Mr. Merritt stuttered in an attempt not to chuckle. “No, madam.”

“Right, how silly of me. What’s the most archaic, highfalutin
word in the English language for
goober
?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” he said.

“Okay, what’s French for
spazola
?”

“I’m certain Master Dreppenstedt meant for you not to worry, is all,” he said, buttering a scone on the tea cart with important strokes
of his knife, like it was imperative that he got it just right. I
wondered if, to Harry, it
was
important that the butter was just right, which lead me to wonder how much Harry had to train this guy before he was
so precise and excellent at each task… which, of course gave me
insight into why Harry was so constantly frustrated with my refusal to accept any sort of training. He probably expected me to snap-to like Mr. Merritt; on the other hand, he chose me based on my sass-mouth
and poor cooking skills, so I guess he got what he asked for. Mr.
Merritt probably had pretty awesome scone-buttering skills to begin with, which is why Harry would have hired him in the first place. In fact,
I'd have bet every dollar I owed the Combat Butler that Harry
bought
North House on the condition that Mr. Merritt remain with it, and
would have kept house hunting until he'd found someone of equal
caliber if Mr. Merritt hadn't been cool with revenants, or whatever
the classy way of saying
cool
happened to be back in his day.

I parted the curtains to look out at the snow lashing across the window, and imagined my companion out in the miserable weather, then dropped them.

“He’s a very competent driver, madam,” Mr. Merritt said, but the Blue Sense reported a thread of fatherly worry that I found
endearing,
considering Harry was centuries older than his butler. “I’m sure
Master Dreppenstedt will be fine.”

It wasn’t his driving skills I was worried about; my Cold
Company
had been driving since the invention of the car. He’d mounted and tamed wild horses, buzzed dangerous mountain roads on
motorcycles, flown just about every type of airplane and helicopter in existence. If it moved, Harry had piloted it at unreasonable speeds. I wasn’t even worried about the weather, really, though the snow showed no signs
of letting up; in Virgil, he faced a problem frostier than any blizzard on record, and while my nerves were raw with the urge to shield him from it, the thought of fetching him from my parents' doorstep made me cringe.

“He’s crazy,” I sighed. “You know where he’s gone, right? To have a door slammed in his face. Maybe repeatedly, because he’s a
persistent
bugger.” Picturing him on the porch, hat in his hands, out in the cold, while my family,
Grandma Vi’s
family, rejected him over and
over, gave me a cramp of sadness in my chest. I didn’t even want to think of what words they’d use; in typical, cutting, Baranuik fashion, they'd try to hurt him enough to make him leave the doorstep.
Oh, Harry, just come home
. “They’ll never talk
with
him; they’ll hurl words in his face. They’re not going to invite him in. I don’t even know why he wants them to.”

“Begging your pardon, madam, but I believe he’s doing it for your sake,” Mr. Merritt said gently, turning down the covers on my
bed. I
watched him do it, uncomfortable as he fussed around turning off
the overhead light, fetching my My Little Pony “Derpy Hooves”
nightshirt, putting it on the bed under the warm glow of the bedside lamp.

“I can do all this myself, you know,” I said.

“There’s clearly nothing wrong with your arms,” Mr. Merritt agreed, unfazed, “but isn’t it nice, madam, to have someone to do it for you? This is the reason Master Dreppenstedt keeps me on.”

Begging your pardon, Mr. Merritt, but I believe he’s doing it for
your
sake
, I thought, but carefully did not say aloud. “It makes me feel more lazy than fancy. I feel guilty.” I tried not to make a face as he
put my bunny slippers beside the bed near my nightshirt. They
looked
super
clean, but the memory of Wesley in bat form humping
the left one while the fluffy ears rocked madly made me squirm. “Did those get washed again?”

“If I’m not mistaken, they’ve been replaced.” His lips clamped down on a smile that might have dimpled that elderly cheek had he let it out, and I knew Harry had shared the joke. “Shall I draw your bath now, madam?”

I frowned at the slippers and reconsidered my stance on immersion. “Uh, sure. Thanks.” I followed his light, quick steps into
the
en suite
bathroom. There was a television mounted in the far corner of the room, opposite the bathtub. I turned it on and flipped channels until I settled on one of the more popular paranormal shows, the one with the ghost-hunting plumbers.

When Mr. Merritt bent over the tub to turn the water on, the sink faucet squeaked on behind me, and I whirled around.

I squinted suspiciously at it as it began to dribble. Mr. Merritt straightened immediately to frown at it. “That was odd.”

“I take it that doesn’t usually happen?”

“No, madam.”

“If the threads were loose the street pressure could turn a faucet on,” I reasoned, reaching one gloved hand toward it. I hesitated only
a second before berating myself with a huff and turning it off.
“Whew. Debunked.” The bathroom window rattled in its pane. “There’s no ghost in this house, right?”

“Of course not, madam.”

The window thumped hard enough to startle both of us, and we smiled nervously at one another. “Except that one?”

“Just the wind,” Mr. Merritt said with a nod. I nodded back.

“Hey, remember when my brain wasn't broken?” I asked. “A
few days ago, I never would have imagined that it was anything other than wind. I’m still way too jumpy because of the grabby-
grabby skeleton hand… which wasn’t a hand, it was a branch, but still, it was in the dead people water.”
And it was scary, and now I’m babbling.
I didn’t have to add that last bit; Combat Butler read it on my face and gave me an understanding nod.

The wind moaned.

Mr. Merritt smiled. “It’s a terrible night. I can’t believe that
officer had you out in the cold for so long.”

His tone was accusatory, and I felt the need to defend Schenk. “To be fair, he probably didn’t want me there. And I doubt I’ll be invited back after flailing in the water and wailing like a banshee.”

“Your joints must be aching.”

“My knuckles feel like they’ve been squeezed in a vice. And I'm pretty sure my ladybits are never going to un-pucker.”

He looked nonplussed but still somehow sympathetic. “I’ll
warm a heating pad for you and slip it into your bed, madam. There’s sports rub in the medicine cabinet. Will you be needing me
further?”