Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (7 page)

I narrowed my eyes at him. “On second thought, gimme that
ring. Gonna summon Him up to get you right now.”

Harry made a stern cluck of his tongue and slipped the ring in
his pocket, giving it a safety pat to reassure himself that it stayed put.

“Go with her, Harry. I could babysit the dead guys,” Batten offered, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

My jaw dropped. I worked it, but nothing came out. I don't think I'd have been more surprised if he’d said he was proposing to Chapel.

Harry stopped packing my socks with a wide smile, no hint of fang. “Why, Mark, you surprise me,” he said warmly.

“Half-a-Vamp can’t be left alone,” Batten reasoned.

“Don’t call him that,” I said, and it would have come out much sterner had I not noticed Harry calling Batten by his first name, a rare thing indeed.

“But neither can she,” Batten finished, tossing a smirk in my direction. “You’d better go with her.”

“I could not agree more,” Harry said, “and we thank you. This is a kind answer to a question I dared not ask.”

I waved my gloved hands at them. “Where am I? What universe did I trip into? Am I even here? Can you see me?”

Batten shrugged it off. “Watched revenants before, remember?”

He had watched both Harry and my brother Wesley during the
investigation following my being stabbed by psycho hose-beast
Danika Sherlock, and he had managed not to stake either of them.

“Besides,” Batten continued, “I’m on vacation but on call; I have to stay in town. Chapel’s off. You’re leaving.”

“I’m not leaving!” I repeated, upping my volume in case they were both going deaf.

Batten continued, “You’re uncomfortable using Viktor.”

Viktor Moldovan Domitrovich was an eight-foot-tall, undead
Chukotka
ogre from the Zone of Absolute Discomfort in the far north of Russia, sent by the Association, a multipurpose service for
revenants.
He was an excellent — if completely creepy — guardian for the dead guys, but I didn’t like to have him in my home any more than necessary on account of his necrophilia. I didn't even want to think
of him licking the open, abraded wreck of Duchoslav's torso, much less what else he might do to it. Entrail-humping was a bridge or three too far.

“Harry, you don’t trust Batten to guard Wes, do you? I’m not even sure I trust him to feed the cat and water the orchids.”

“I regret to say, last year I would not have trusted your carrion hunter in the smallest degree. However, he has proven himself a stalwart companion of late.” His smile broadened. “I daresay this impromptu arrangement with your agent sounds not entirely unsatisfactory.”

“As a sentinel?” Batten suggested, their inside joke; last time he’d played bodyguard, Harry had tricked him into sitting by the casket for hours like a sentry.

Harry had the grace to look sheepish. “Why, this feels like the
beginning of a marvelous friendship, Mr. Batten.”

“Wouldn’t go that far,” Batten said.

Harry shrugged easily. “Who can say?”

I struggled to compute. “Can it with the bromance, you two. It’s freaking me out. I can’t go to Canada, even if I
do
want to, which I am absolutely not admitting to.”

They craned in unison to blink meaningfully at me. Since Harry did not require the act of blinking, I took it for the insult it was.

“I haven’t been invited to help,” I said. “I don’t just barge into active criminal investigations and push my—”

The rest of my argument was drowned out by another chorus of guffaws. I let my head fall back and stared at the ceiling as their shared humor washed over me. How I had gone from hermit slacker to pushy investigator, I’ll never know, but lying about my wants and needs to these two was pointless. I
did
need to know why Britney Wyatt had my decade-old business card, and what she needed me for, and where she’d gone, and why she’d taken a winter swan dive, and if I could help. I certainly wanted to solve those mysteries more than I wanted to sit here listening to these two numbskulls giggling
like little boys who’ve traded potty talk. Harry’s elbow hit the
dresser as he struggled to remain upright, doubled over by the force of his merriment. Batten fairly wheezed with laughter. That beautiful face I usually wanted to smooch all over was turning pink, and his hairy mocking grin made me itch to slap him.

“Oh, fuck off into a basket of pig shit, the both of you.” I grabbed my favorite black cable-knit sweater off the hanger and chucked it at my go-bag. “I liked you guys a lot better when you hated each other. I'm going to my office to get Chapel off the
dhaugir
hook, now that I'm so pissed off I can't screw it up.”

And, amazingly enough, that's exactly how it went. A candle, his picture, a pinch of this and a sprig of that, and Gary was free. Harry and I were in the car on the way to the airport less than an hour later.

THE OVERNIGHT FLIGHT
from Denver to Toronto’s Pearson International was uneventful, unless you counted the fact that Harry had replaced half the songs on my iPod with a subliminal recording entitled, “Self Restraint for Compulsives: Your Graceful Nature”. I spent the first chunk of the flight trying to figure out when the hell I’d put an hour of ocean sound effects in between Tom Waits and the Beatles. Sure, they were soothing, and I managed to pass on the cocktail service when the stewardess offered it, but I was left with the urge to thunder-punch a cheeky dead guy in the sockstuffer.

Filling out the Customs forms had been an adventure, especially when Harry piped up from within his casket to complain that “undead English sassmouth” was both inaccurate and impertinent; one of the porters who had been carrying his casket let out an indelicate shriek and nearly dropped his end. I bit the bullet and put down “family visit”, as the reason for travel, but I sincerely hoped that if Harry chose to see them, he wouldn’t insist I join him.

My best friend in the whole world, Ellie Meath, was due to meet
me at the arrivals area. I had convinced Harry to pack relatively
light, fitting everything I thought I needed for a short stay into a single, albeit lumpy and heavy, carry-on bag. For ease of travel I’d left both my gun and Mr. Buzz, my favorite vibrator, behind. I figured if I couldn’t live without either for a couple days, I had bigger problems than I thought.

Harry, on the other hand, had packed for himself like he was Celine Dion on a cross-country tour. As the porters took his casket
beyond
customs, I tried not to think how much extra he’d paid for the
luggage charges, not to mention the price of hauling his casket, with him in it. When we traveled, infrequently though it was, we usually did so in a private jet or chartered bus for exactly these reasons.

I spotted Ellie’s chic, platinum-blonde pixie cut in the crowd,
bobbing and weaving a good foot below everyone else’s heads;
Ellie’s short like me, and kind of quirky in a dry, reserved way. I hadn’t seen her in four years, since the last time she’d popped out west to
visit me when I'd still been with GD&C. When she found me she
shot
me a two fingered salute off her brow. There was no smile, but
thanks to the Blue Sense, I knew she was glowing on the inside.
Between us,
I
was the sunny one.

I bounded over to her and tried to give her a hug. She sighed and tolerated it, arms limp at her sides. “Yes, yes, hi,” she said,
rolling her eyes. “Must we be melodramatic?”

I backed up and grinned at her chest. “What’s with the tits?” I jumped at my own loud voice, and looked around to see if I’d been overheard. Several curious passersby looked at Ellie’s chest. I whispered, “Hello, new boobs?”

“Oh!” she said as though she’d completely forgotten. She passed a hand over her modest beige silk blouse. “They’re new. Like them?”

“Expensive?”

“What do I care?” she asked. “It’s Fred’s money.”

“Do
you
like them?”

She frowned at me like she didn’t understand the question. “Get
real. They’re plastic toys for Freddie.” She left out that she’d do
anything and everything for Fred, but I knew it to be true. He had been in and out of hospital as long as I’d known him, and needed full-time care at home. When Ellie wasn’t at work, she was caring for Freddie. The deadpan humor and flat stare didn’t fool me; Ellie was a total softy on the inside. Apparently, that softness extended to body reconstruction.

She gave me a critical once-over. “You’re not getting laid.”

“Hey, sometimes I—” I smiled again, noting the hint of teasing in her eye. “Maybe I should get a set.”

“Would Harry like that?”

I laughed. Unlike my sisters, Ellie didn’t say
Harry
in audible air quotes, like it maybe wasn’t his real name, or draw it out like it was a dirty word. She wasn’t thrilled with my living as a DaySitter, or pleased with the effect it had had on my relationship with my family and most of my old friends, but she wasn’t unhappy about Harry as a person; she didn’t like him being undead, but being a wealthy English gentleman scored him some major points. I think her family
coming from a corner of the English aristocracy and being raised
with
the same sense of refinement and dignity had a lot to do with it.
Harry’s disdain for most of my behavior tickled Ellie’s funny bone. On more than one occasion they had happily compared notes on my lack of poise for hours over tea and watercress sandwiches while I played video games and flipped them both off.

I thought about her query and realized I had no idea what Harry
would think about fake boobs. Probably something with way too
many
antiquated syllables, regardless of which way his needle pointed. Batten, for his part, was an avowed ass man. “I missed you,” I
offered to change the subject.

“You and your sloppy sentimentality,” she said, but the set of her shoulders softened. For a moment she looked like she wanted to tell me something important, but it disappeared as quickly as it had
materialized. She zipped her coat up. “You must need caffeine.
Come
on. Your car is waiting out front and your man is fetching the
luggage.”

My car?
My man?
I allowed her to take my go-bag off my
shoulder, because with Ellie, I pick my battles. If she wants to do something nice for you, Dark Lady help you if you try to resist. We hit the Tim Horton’s and scooped a couple of coffees. I boggled at the extra-large size but said nothing, as I was coming from America, land of super-size, high-test everything.

“He’s a little stuffy,” Ellie was saying, giving me her humorless
smile, like she hadn't expected “him,” whoever he was, to be any different. I didn’t have a clue which “him” she was talking about, as
Harry was still in his casket. She nodded at my pink leather gloves approvingly. She’d seen me wear gloves for the last decade, quite accustomed to my habits as a Groper. “Got a hat?”

“What car? I didn't book a rental,” I said, fishing my knit cap out of my pocket and plunking it on my head. The hat was Kelly green and shaped like a cartoon frog, with bulging white eyes on top and nifty kiddy-ties that I fastened under my chin. Ellie held my coffee
for me while I zipped up my puffy pink parka, then I followed her toward the exit doors, sipping cautiously and blowing into the little hole in the brown plastic lid. “And who’s stuffy? Harry? Constable Schenk?”

She shook her head
no
. “Did this cop invite you to help on his case,” she asked, “or are you butting in like always?”

“Since when do I butt-in without being invited? I usually try to butt
out
, but nobody lets me.”

“You hate an unsolved mystery.” She had me there, but I was
going
to keep practicing my denial skills. Or maybe just reheat my
sarcasm.

“I absolutely, positively
love
not knowing what’s going on,” I
scoffed. “I spend ninety percent of my day not knowing what the
fuck is going on.”

“That, I don’t doubt,” Ellie said. “You're going to see that horde you call family while you’re in town, aren’t you?”

I snorted. “I’d rather freeze to death and be eaten by wolves, not necessarily in that order.”

We pushed out of the airport doors. The blast of winter air hit me directly in the face, nearly freezing my eyeballs open on contact. They watered instantly. We both stopped with matching expressions of agony. My shoulders shot up to offer some protection to the nape of my neck. I made an involuntary little whooping noise and chased Ellie’s quick footfalls to the right, hugging my coffee cup to my chest, not that it offered any warmth through my parka, but at least it wasn't going to be blown clean out of my hands. The snow slanted
nearly horizontally, slick white streaks in the near-light of the
creeping dawn. There was a crowd of porters and curious travelers gathering at the curb. We lurched through the sea of gawkers, using them as a
human wind break, and ran aground against a vintage Bentley
hearse. A short, lean, white-haired man of indeterminate age who looked
like he might have an iron rod in his spine directed the porters
loading
Harry’s casket. He wore a black suit under a long wool coat that
swirled
around his polished boots in a way that reminded me of Harry’s
opera cloaks. The gentleman took my bag from Ellie swiftly to stow it.

“I am Byron Merritt, madam,” he told me, bowing his head
slightly into the fierce wind. “Everything is ready for you.”

“See? I don’t know what the fuck is going on, and I love it. For
realsies.” I looked to Ellie for help. She shrugged. “You’re who,
now?”

“Byron Merritt, madam. Lord Dreppenstedt’s butler and valet for North House,” he said.