Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (28 page)

Trying to link to Danika Sherlock again and again through the cracked sunglass lens surreptitiously in my bedroom had drained me, since every time I started to open a psi-bridge I got psychically bitch-slapped away into dizzying darkness. My efforts came at a high cost. I had the mother of all psychic headaches, and no drug could touch it. There was indisputably a malicious force guarding Sherlock's lens, locking its secrets just out of reach, though it didn't taste like her, not exactly. If Sherlock had help, and I was beginning to think she did, then I had to find out what sort of magic this other person might wield. It was only a matter of time before I managed to out-maneuver the lens, but it was going to require some more assistance of a green magic sort. I was wary to do any more spells until I was fully healed. The black-watch spell had left me with cramps and a broken jar, which could have been a broken hand or worse if I'd been wearing any sort of metal rings or bracelets for the spell to react against.

Hours of flipping through every single one of my textbooks and scouring the internet for reference to “blind eyes” or “beheadings” had brought a ton of icky stuff I hoped never to be subjected to again. But it hadn't offered concrete leads on a spell in any form of magic that might tell us why Kristin Davis had been chosen to die. I had combed through disturbing websites and bewildering serial killer fan sites, and had tried to run down hints and whispers of reanimation spells and flesh magic, mostly of a Haitian Vodoo zombie-flavor. But these sorts of things (thankfully) were not widely available to the general public in detail. YouTube had one promising video to offer, something entitled witch-walking, using blind eyes. I'd never heard of it. The video was gone when I went to show Chapel. He was working with the company to trace its user.

I'd need a more reliable source anyway, but I hadn't come up with one. The costs of flesh magic were high, and its results, from what I remembered from school, were unreliable. Flesh magic spells could be interrupted, or jump-started, or amplified by water and fire, which is why you never, ever set a black witch on a flaming pyre unless you want a very angry, crispy version of a black witch removing burnt ropes and chasing you around said burning pyre. Witchcraft trials had seen thousands of white witches burned to death, but not a single black witch. Sadly ironic, when you consider the inherent non-violence of most white witches.

Speaking of torture, I was finding that living with Batten was a rare form of sexual torment. Knowing he was upstairs undressing at night robbed me of the necessary relaxation for sleep. Picturing him in my guest bed, easily able to drum up images of his familiar hard body splayed under the sheets, wondering if a leg was peeking out from under a blanket, wondering if he wore pajamas, wondering why in the world I wasn't tiptoeing up those stairs to find out. Why my hands weren't roaming under those sheets across that wonderfully hard, thick, manly… yes, it was making me restless and fidgety. Knowing that my sudden appearance beside his bed would probably be welcomed by Jerkface as the continuation of our not-so-secret tryst, made it ten times harder not to go to him. I'd spent the night wishing Mr. Buzz the purple vibrator was quiet enough to use with relative assurance of privacy in a house full of men trained in attention to detail.

When morning made its rude approach, I'd barely slept. A tossing-turning sexually frustrated half-doze that shouldn't even count. I showered, taking an extra ten minutes with my expert soapy hand, but it wasn't nearly enough. By the time Harry retired for the day to his casket, and Chapel shouted he was running to the precinct to meet with Hood and Dunnachie, my brain had long given up hope of getting lucky and had settled into a hormone-sickened blur. With my crudely shorn hair in a towel, my robe cinched tight, I padded barefoot to the mudroom to toss a load in the washing machine.

Harry had a load of angora socks in the delicate cycle. I chucked them in the dryer (probably the wrong thing to do) and dumped my own small load of delicates in with a bit of Woolite. I heard the old fridge click-clunk open behind me, glanced back to see a sleepyhead version of Batten in stretchy black boxer briefs and not a stitch else, standing in the glow of the interior light, blinking and scanning the shelves.

My belly contracted. I must have made an audible intake of breath, because his fresh-shaved chin turned in my direction. I side-stepped behind the mudroom door a heartbeat too late.

His voice was full of laughter as one of his fingers pulled the mudroom door wide open. “Hiding?”

“I thought it best, since you're clothing impaired.”

His eyes took in my robe with growing heat. “And you're not?”

“I'm impaired in so many, many ways,” I agreed.

Batten stalked toward me and I found myself retreating helplessly. My butt brushed up against the hot, tumbling dryer.

“I see you're not very smart in the morning,” I noted.

His eyes gathered heat, and the absolute worst thing he could have said came in a low, husky voice from the mouth I couldn't stop staring at. “We're alone. No one would know.”

My knees weakened. “My luck, it'd be on CNN tomorrow.”

“You can't hide from me forever.”

“Yeah, I'm adding that to my list of reasons to hate you.”

“Maybe you should just stop running.”

“Listen…” I tried to sound convincing, but my breath was coming faster, and when my tongue swiped out to wet my lips, his eyes
fixated on them. “Despite what you might think, I'm not desperate for your flesh kabob.” Lies, lies!

His eyebrow crooked up just before his lips spread in a roguish grin that was downright lewd. “I seem to recall you enjoyed it.”

“Nuh-uh. My left ass cheek fell asleep.”

“Not the Kebob's fault; it hasn't had anything to do with your ass.”

I ignored the yet heavily implied. “I got a kink in my neck that bothered me for days.”

“No one told you to fling backward like a trapeze artist.”

“I don't control my arching when things get out of control!” I protested.

“Lucky I caught you before you fell off the table. Could have cracked your head open.”

The dryer's heat caused static in my robe and it clung to the back of my thighs. I cinched the tie tighter with trembling fingers.

“I'm not a plaything you can strip and moisten whenever you want,” I told him.

“Good. If I wanted a hooker, I'd get one.”

“Well, what the hell do you want?”

For a moment, he looked serious. “Let me in a little. Can't you do that?”

Oh crap on a rake. This was emotional. Back to shallow! Back to shallow! “I let you in as far as you'd go. To the hilt. Twice.”

He backed me up bodily against the dryer, his pupils dilating rapidly, his chest rising and falling heavily. Swallowing hard, he nodded. “Wasn't what I meant, but thanks for the reminder.”

“Shit,” I exhaled, aware that one of my hands had disobeyed a direct order and landed on the fine trail of hair beneath his belly button. The hard abs underneath his skin were mind-numbingly warm and all I could think was how nice they'd feel if his body was grinding against mine.

Batten's voice had thickened, gone husky. “Are you wearing anything under that robe?”

I shook my head back and forth as though imparting very bad news indeed.

“Shit,” he seconded. He put both hands on either side of me as though he needed to make sure I wasn't going to bolt. A hundred
and five black marks on one tanned pectoral, four and a slash for five, marched over and over inches from my mouth. His lean arms were covered with a dusting of fine hair, and shook slightly as his face descended toward mine. He groaned, “God, I wanna taste you again—”

The front door slammed open and Chapel's voice stabbed the air. “Someone slashed the SUV's tires.”

“Fuckanut!” I exploded, and this time I meant it. I could have throttled Gary Chapel to death with my bare hands. Batten's mouth tightened unhappily. In a flash, reality rushed back into his face.

“Next time you decide to waltz around half naked,” he said sternly, “make sure I'm not home.”

I called at his retreating back, “Next time I nearly give in to your lurid advances, do me a favor and shoot me in the head.”

TWENTY-SIX

It hadn't been a day since my release from the hospital, much too soon for a bath. By four in the afternoon I really didn't give a flying fig. Let the water spill in and fill my abdominal cavity, if it would. Damn the torpedoes! Let me sink tragically like the Titanic in my claw foot tub. Let Leviathan Himself come to gobble my scrumptious soul. Okay, I take that last one back; the demon king Leviathan would totally get his serpentine nose out of joint if I lured Him all the way from the abyssopelagic zone in the Bermuda triangle for a snack, only to renege at the last minute.

I lurked near the bubble line like a sunken hippo, only my slit eyes showing. After much dispute and scathing condemnation, a surly, early-awoken Harry had decided to allow me my bitter soak. Probably, he figured he'd helped me heal enough. I was going on my third hot water refill and my second bubble addition, and forty whole minutes of soaking delight.

“So, you intend to stay in there and prune?” Harry confirmed.

“I'm not pruning, I'm hiding. Psychos can't kill you in the bathroom,” I replied sagely. “Hard and fast rule.”

“Tell that to Norman Bates,” he pointed out. “And Janet Leigh.”

“I'm never getting out of the bath. I'll just stay here forever.”

“I see.” Harry studied me expectantly with the Bela Lugosi brow arch; I ignored it. “We have an important viewing to attend. You promised.” He tried the impatient toe tapping; I ignored that too. “Agent Batten will be sorely disappointed.”

“When have I not disappointed Mark Batten?”

He clipped a thumbnail and murmured disapprovingly under his breath, “I can think of at least once.”

“Twice. Shows how much you know.” I disregarded the nail brush he passed me, and the sea salt body scrub and pumice stone. This was a sulking soak, not a primping one. I stared at my freshly painted toenails, curled on the far edge of the tub, and used them to flick bubbles at the wall. “And you're damn right, I was fantastic.”

At last he sighed grandly and put away the clippers, picking up his nail file instead. “You do realize this calls for a dramatic rescue of Herculean proportions,” he warned. “I shall not be held accountable for any ensuing affront or grievance.”

I watched him suspiciously out of the corner of my eye.

He continued, “But of course, I would do anything for you, my merry grig. Consequently, at great personal risk to my image, here goes the Marnie Baranuik theme song…”

To the best of my knowledge, I didn't have a theme song. I braced for the worst. He cleared his throat. Raising his voice to a nasal falsetto, he did a bang-on impression of Lou Christie and started trilling:

“I don't want the world to kno-ow. I don't want my heart to sho-ow!” He fluttered his eyelashes, and gathered steam. “Two faces have Iiiiii, ah-Iiii! Yii-yii-yii-yii yi-ah-i.”

“Harry!”

“Yii-yii-yii-yii yi-ah-ii.” His pitch bounced off the tile walls and reverberated in my head. I gulped a deep breath and sunk under the water. I saw him leaning above between the bubbles, smiling around full fang. His audiomancy would not be buffered by mere water. Through it, his voice carried perfectly and I heard him even louder than before: “Yii-yii-yii-yii yi-ah-ii.”

I exploded up out of the bathwater. “You burst my eardrum, you're paying for it, you preternatural pain in the ass!”

“I could go higher if you like.” He filed his thumbnail, tapping his foot along to the beat in his head. He bumped it up an octave. “Two face have I! Oh no no no. One to laugh and one to cry!”

“I'm begging you, begging you…”

“Two faces have I! Ooooone to laugh and one to cry! Ah-ah-ah-iii.”

“Okay! Uncle! Uncle!” I whipped out of the bath water in a shower of bubbles. “I'm going to have that flippin’ song stuck in my head for hours. If I start humming it at the funeral home, it's your damn fault.”

Harry handed me a bath towel. He dropped his voice down a few octaves and crooned mock-sorrowfully in his lounge singer voice: “Will I ever laugh again… he'll never see me cry. Will I walk with a smile on my face, knowing I live a lie-iii-ii!” His voice shot up four octaves to a shrill noise that cracked the bathroom mirror clear across. I jumped in surprise, clasping my towel around my chest.

Batten bellowed from somewhere deep in the cabin, “Jesus H. Christ!”

I wriggled a finger in my ear, smirking conspiratorially. “That one hurt.”

“It did, rather.” He cringed apologetically. “I may have given myself a hernia.”

“Sounded like you had your dick in a Cuisinart.” I grinned. “How the hell is that my song, anyway?” I toweled-off.

“You really don't know?” He blinked at me in mock-astonishment. I swatted at him and he danced away in a blink-step, grinning and unreachable. He lifted one finger into the air. “And now, to the wardrobe!”

I let my shoulders fall in defeat. “Yes, Alfred, to the bat cave.”

*   *   *

I'm one of those fair ash blondes who look best in pastels. Though I've never been able to pull off “girly-girl” in act, deed or dulcet speech, clothing in the tones closest to petal pink are most flattering on me.

Unfortunately, my companion had chosen a clingy, low-cut silk blouse in hot magenta that made me look like a freshly smashed pomegranate. The curling frill along the bust line made my cleavage itchy and I'd never mastered the art of the inconspicuous tit scratch. I couldn't have possibly drawn more attention to my breasts without a neon sign. The skirt was barely there, flippy as opposed to tight, deep black against my winter-light legs. Not that I was ever tanned outside my least realistic daydreams; I burn, blister, freckle and go right back to pasty. For that, I blame my mother's Nordic stock.

Now, as the limo took the turn at Lambert's Crossing, I put some Shalimar perfume on to cover the pungent scent of a brand new leather jacket and tucked the tiny trial-sized vial into the pocket with my pink pearl lip gloss, emergency condom and a plastic baggy containing one of the squished newt eyeballs. After the viewing, while respectable folks went to the funeral, I'd pop into the store to find a suitable envelope to mail it back with the sternly-worded letter I'd jotted explaining the defect. Probably I shouldn't be sending ruined animal body parts through the mail, but I'd figured out the cost to be approximately eighteen dollars per eye of newt. I didn't need the money, but that wasn't the point. For eighteen bucks each, you'd think I'd get usable eyeballs, not deflated stringy goop; in fact, the site had guaranteed perfection. I didn't like it when people broke their promises to me. That was grounds for full-on bitch mode.