[Marnie Baranuik 02.5] Cold Company (2 page)

I wondered for a moment if he'd spotted my Grandma Vi and Harry in those archives, which might explain why I was out here doing Canadian cop work instead of back home in Colorado playing with my cat and eating brownies.

“Good heavens.” The soft, cushioned padding of Harry’s Oxfords up the carpeted stairwell behind me was complemented by his amused chuckle and a faint waft of both his 4711 cologne and, thank the Dark Lady, a steaming brown paper cup of coffee. “‘Bleeders’ is it? That moldy nonsense?”

Harry placed a chaste peck on my cheek and lingered to press the tip of his nose against my face for warmth as I took the cup from his hands. I could tell he was reluctant to let it go; it was miserable outside, and Harry’s flesh was like a ripe grave, damp from the mist and cold as a tomb. Then again, Harry had been dead for over four hundred years, and he was always thirty degrees colder than the living, even after a solid feed. The caul of frigid air that always accompanied the immortal settled around my ankles, making me wish I’d worn warmer socks.

Behind him, shielding the scarred side of his face with a fedora tilted at a jaunty angle — Harry’s fashion advice, no doubt — my brother Wesley hung back in uncharacteristic silence on the stairs, his one visible eye a piercing blue. He avoided looking at me; Wes had volunteered to help, but being back in Niagara had him on edge. For him, this was still a little too close to home.

“You did not wait for us, my pet,” Harry said, and though his English accent was coolly crisp, his reprimand lacked its usual enthusiasm. “You hurried ahead with your officers in a very inexcusable manner.”

I sipped my coffee guiltily, but he had already moved on to scrutinizing the beefy male cop with predatory grey eyes. “How do you do, officer,” Harry damn near purred.

“Uh, good.” Fryfogle shifted from one foot to the other as he assessed the revenant before him. “I guess.”

“It wasn’t so much a question as it was a greeting. Be that as it may, if you require an evaluation of your well-being, might I be excused for observing your obvious physical vitality and muster as a marker of exceptionally good health?” Harry’s lips quirked mischievously as he gave the young cop a not-so-subtle once-over. “In addition to such robust corporeal vigor, one cannot help but note that you are still in full possession of your mortal soul. I would say that you fare undeniably well.” He smiled, flashing fully-extended fang. “Bully for you.”

I sighed. “For crying out loud, Harry. Dude’s fuckin’ name is Freddy Fryfogle, hasn’t he suffered enough?”

This time, Big Arms chuckled at me without checking his partner’s mood first. He did not react to the fangs; it was apparently not his first run-in with a revenant.

“Don’t hurt the nice constable’s head with any more of your jibber-jabber. It’s bad enough I have to listen to it.”

Harry’s pale lips turned out a little moue of disappointment; he didn’t like having his playtime cut short. “I fail to see what his name has to do with the price of cotton in Lancashire.” Harry clung to, and frankly relished, the vernacular of his youth; that is to say, he spoke old-timey nonsense at the slightest provocation. Even though he’d been my Cold Company for about twelve years, our Bond, the metaphysical link between an immortal and his DaySitter, did nothing to help me translate his antique English beyond giving me an emotional compass when I couldn't follow his tongue. Through the Bond, I could experience his moods, feel his hunger, and sense his closeness, but seldom did I fully understand him.

I pointed to the apartment. “In, you fancy-yapped stiff.”

Harry swept past me, leaving a lemony waft of cologne in his wake. His tastes are sybaritic, so his wardrobe choices normally run to silk, fine cashmere, and angora. Tonight, however, he’d chosen to dress down in a black Frog-enclosure cable-knit sweater above black denim, all of it under a leather duster which hung to the ankles of his square-toed engineer's boots. The cops didn’t seem terribly impressed, but Harry dressed for Harry, and whether classy or casual, he carried himself like a fanned peacock.

“Does it have to be here?” Constable Percy asked, lowering her voice to a whisper.

“It has preternatural senses,” I stage-whispered back. “It can hear you. It can hear your fucking heartbeat.”

Wes smiled at his Converse All Stars beneath his hat. Apparently, the cops hadn’t pegged my “assistant-slash-brother” as a second revenant yet, but next to Harry’s overshadowing aura, few humans would.

Harry drew himself up to full height with a little huff of irritation. He did not enjoy being called an “it,” but said nothing outwardly. He let his grey eyes speak for him; they dilated with displeasure, leaving a warning chrome ring around ravenous black pupils. The effect on the cops was immediate and palpable; though they appeared cool on the outside, I felt their rush of adrenaline and a chorus of quivering nerves with one of my two psychic Talents, clairempathy.

“Yes,” I said, “they both need to be here. Your missing person’s life may depend on my not screwing up, so we want the best reading possible, yes? I can function without Harry, but since my Talents come from the revenant, and his presence amplifies my abilities, the revenant stays. Besides…” I swept a displaying hand at him. “Look at him. Shame for those fancyass duds to go to waste. He’s all schnazzed-up for a night out at Shag Towers.”

Harry’s thrice-pierced eyebrow went up at the word shag and his pale lips curled into a smile that was pure sex and sin. His pleasure licked through our Bond, sending a rewarding surge of lust through me, and forcing me to wonder whether or not Harry and I would have some time alone later.

Wesley groaned, and the corner of his upper lip peeled off his canine; my brother was a young revenant, what we called “new dead,” and afflicted with the rarest Talent of all, telepathy. A budding Reader, Wes was not yet skilled at blocking what was rambling around other people’s minds. So, maybe it sucked to be him when my thoughts got naughty, but that was a tragic case of Not My Problem.

Fryfogle directed an unhappy shrug at Percy, who was carefully stone-faced. The request that we assist had been made somewhere further up the food chain, from a Detective Sergeant Malashock, whom I hadn’t met nor spoken with. I was getting conflicting feelings about whether or not the constables wanted the help of a psychic, much less a couple of undead guys, but they were clearly resigned to going through with the boss’s orders.

“Gloves off, my pet.” Harry put his cold left hand on my shoulder and opened his right palm to receive them.  “Wesley, I will need to you to remain between us at all times.”

I didn’t usually have their help on cases. Back in the States, it was expressly forbidden for the FBI team to utilize the Talents of the undead directly, but Canadian laws were more liberal about such things. Since Harry was eager to give Wesley the opportunity to practice, here we all were, crammed into a missing woman's foyer.

Reluctantly, I finished my coffee and handed the empty cup and my gloves over. Psi tingled immediately on the updraft I felt rushing through the apartment, stirred by the push of Harry’s unnatural force. Wesley made a soft noise of surrender as he yielded control and opened his own powers, moving closer to me. His peripheral vision compromised by the hat and his bad left eye, he accidentally bumped my shoulder.

Without warning, the Blue Sense roared open like a hungry dragon in the front of my skull, and I staggered, throwing out a bare hand for balance. Harry’s cupping hand took my elbow, and his tsk in my ear soothed as it scolded.

“Steady as she goes, ducky,” he murmured, and then evenly to Wes, “Between, lad, not on top of. Mustn’t overwhelm.”

I ignored the smudge of doubt coming from the cops at my unintentional swoon; to the uninitiated, it probably did look like I was hamming it up for my audience, but if I tamed my initial reactions, I could close my mind off to impressions, too.

There were warring emotional remnants in the apartment, but all pointed to the same thing: this woman had been living on edge. Constant fear, anger, and paranoia made a pungent mélange that stung my psychic senses. Caring less about what the cops thought of me and focusing on Rachel, I glanced at the front door as Percy swung it shut, noting the clutter of multiple locks and deadbolts.

I said, “You didn’t tell me your missing girl had already been the victim of a crime, Constable Percy.”

The officer did not reply.

“You also didn’t mention that her name isn’t Rachel Houseton; it’s Paula McKnight. You also failed to mention that she’s been living in Witness Protection.”

Again, Percy was silent. I’d run into this hoarding of information before; it wasn’t helpful to me, and it was certainly a waste of time when dealing with a forensic psychic, but telling her things she already knew did help me gain  credibility with the woman hovering by the front door.

“Where would you like us?” Fryfogle asked me.

“I’m going to start in the bedroom,” I answered. “You guys are welcome to come, as long as you’re quiet.”

Harry shed his coat, laid it over one arm, and swept ahead of me, his cloak of cold air purling along behind him in the hallway. Wes went with him, keeping his hat tilted down over his face. I shrugged out of my parka, took off my knit cap, and followed.

The bedroom was spotless: the dark, restful den of a minimalist.  Harry flicked on the overhead light, a multi-armed chandelier with only one bulb. My focus zeroed in on the alarm clock on the nightstand and I glanced at Harry. He nodded once, approving. I’d try Groping without Wesley’s telepathic input first, to test the waters. I moved to brush the plastic buttons with a bare fingertip.

McKnight started the morning the way she always did; the safety went on the gun before she turned off the alarm clock; the sheathed hunting knife came out from under her pillow; with it held in her lap, she switched the answering machine back on before turning on the ringer on the phone. Shaking two Lorazepam and three Vicodin from the pill bottles on her nightstand, she slid them past her chattering teeth to dry-swallow and, shoving her legs in an old pair of sweats, went through her Start the Day mantra:  He will not confine me to one room. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never again. Five repetitions, seven, ten, until she almost believed it.

I mouthed her mantra silently, trying to see who she was afraid of, but that impression wouldn’t come. I willed myself deeper into the vision, drawing on Harry's cool power through the Bond and steering well clear of the trickle of deep, dangerous heat beneath it.

After spending a couple minutes sharpening the gut hook on her knife with a round whetstone, Paula felt ready to leave the bedroom, but upon finally placing her hand on the knob, her mouth went dry.

I moved to put my bare hand on the doorknob, where hers had been only the day before. I felt the ripple of fear and irritation that went through her, and close behind it, an ounce of strength.

Harry’s voice pushed against my ear, breaking into the vision. “Very nice, pet, but you must tell your officers what you’re getting.”

What was I getting, exactly?

New strength. This was fresh, this anger-fed strength; Paula had battled a long time to recoup it. I could see her using her forefinger to punch the alarm panel, turning off the motion sensor in the hallway. She didn’t just open the door; she wrenched it open with force and determination.

“At seven-fifteen, Paula woke up, took her medication, and got dressed. She was armed with a hunting knife and a gun. I like her style. I should do the same thing when my asshole physical fitness instructor shows up too damn early in the morning.”

Wisely ignoring the indignities of my personal life, Percy said, “We didn’t find a gun.”

“She owned one.”

Fryfogle scanned his notes. “Not registered.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “but it was hers, and she knew how to use it.”

I moved into the hallway and the cops sidestepped out of my way. I kicked off my Keds and then peeled off my socks so I could make bare-skin contact with the carpet. My main psychic Talent, psychometry – also known as token-object reading, or Groping – doesn’t work as well through my feet as it does through the palms of my hands, but every bit helps. Both cops watched, radiating the usual blend of skepticism and curiosity that I got from pretty much every law enforcement agent the first time they worked with me, but neither did so with the running, doubt-filled, spoken commentary I sometimes heard.

Once, Paula would have heard the sound of the TV drifting from the living room, the morning news set to turn on at the same time as her alarm clock; the morning she went missing she heard nothing but the quiet, steady huff of the heating system. As much as she loved the company of the meteorologist’s friendly prognostications, she could no longer afford to have that sunny rambling cover up the minute, stealthy sounds of someone moving through the apartment. Her life depended on silence; the innocuous background babble was just one more thing she’d been robbed of, one she never failed to notice. It was the sound of normalcy.

The hall had been dark, hushed, and blessedly empty. Every single morning for the last six months, Paula had entered it tense and ready, afraid it would frame the indistinct form that haunted her nightmares.

“Whose form, Paula?” I wondered aloud. Constable Percy cocked her head at me, but this time she said nothing. I squatted in place, letting my fingertips brush the carpet.

Paula didn’t know what he looked like. His face was a void. She had learned the pressure of his body and the contours of his dark soul from behind a sweaty, reeking blindfold. And every morning, she was so relieved to not see someone standing in the hall that her knees, the ones he had once shattered with a tire iron, went weak and began to throb. The pain served to remind her that she was still alive.

It had taken Paula six steps to reach the bathroom this morning; each stride was a throbbing feast of agony.

“Not a revenant attack,” I said softly, moving with the vision until I stood right where Paula had stood, touching the bathroom door.

Constable Percy shadowed me. “Oh?”