Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (3 page)

“You don't need me.” I heard my voice tremor and forced it out evenly. “Time for you to go.”

Chapel scrambled to gather up his pictures. “Is there something…?”

“Sorry, Gary,” I clipped. “You have to leave. Now.”

Batten stood. “Marnie—”

“Get out!” I shouted, bolting up. My chair clattered to the floor. If I was pyrokinetic, Mark Batten would be a pile of ash in a second. He opened his mouth, and there wasn't any way I could hear him say my name again without bursting into tears. “Are you fucking deaf? Get the hell out of my house!”

“Too right,” a crisp British voice agreed from the office doorway. “I should think that will not be an issue, now that I am here.”

The knot in my gut dissolved instantly. The sound of Harry's smart London accent was an injection of refinement and gravitas, like switching on the BBC news or summoning one's English butler. My housemate lounged in the threshold, effortlessly more vibrant than either of the humans. He was only five foot seven, short for a
man, but the unnamable otherness that marked him as immortal made him loom, and his whip-slim build masked infernal strength. Any room Harry entered soon became ten degrees cooler; he carried it with him like an immutable cloak, the chill that seeped in around my ankles.

Harry was a revenant who refused to dress it down. His nobility predated his turning. I suspected his egotism and fastidiousness did too. Today he looked like Fred Astaire might have, sartorially speaking, if Fred had been undead while tapping Putting on the Ritz: black coat tails and dove grey ascot, white spats on immaculate black Oxfords. Garnet cufflinks were like fat droplets of old blood on French cuffs that covered a fresh tattoo on his pale wrist. Except for the three tiny platinum loop piercings in his left eyebrow, and the thin white iPod ear bud cord snaking down into his shirt collar, he looked like the perfect aristocrat. The top hat was missing; I was sure it would be resting on his end of the kitchen table.

“Gentlemen, it would appear that you have worn out what short-lived welcome my DaySitter had afforded you,” he observed. “I must insist on escorting you to the door. Might I recommend you not return without an invitation?”

It was not a question. Batten's square jaw worked on clenching and unclenching again. If he wasn't careful, he was going to gnaw a hole in his cheek. His eyes were impenetrable dark matter, nailing me across the vast expanse of Harry's desk. It satisfied me to know Harry could sidle up silent and unheard behind the infamous vampire hunter: Kill-Notch was only human, after all.

“Got a license for that thing?” Batten said low. He knew perfectly well that Harry was legal.

“Why?” I leaned across the desk, splaying my fingers like I was planning on doing push-ups. “Did you bring rowan wood into my house?”

“Kit's in the trunk of the car,” he assured me.

I felt my lip curl. “And what makes you think you'd make it as far as the fucking car?”

“Ducky,” Harry reprimanded me softly, and then addressed the hunter. “I salute your optimism, Mr. Batten.”

“Agent,” Batten corrected.

“Hmm, yes.” Harry sounded unconvinced. “Your darling imitation of testicular fortitude notwithstanding, I have offered to escort you out. ‘Tis conceivable you have grown muscles betwixt your ears and consequently may be excused for not hearing. To be sure, I should not have expected to repeat myself for an attentive gentleman such as Agent Gary Chapel. How do you do, Agent Chapel?”

“Good morning, Lord Dreppenstedt,” Chapel said over his shoulder, as he subtly checked his watch. “I hadn't anticipated you to be… around, at this time of day.” He stood, swiftly collected his things, zipped his heavy coat right to the neck almost protectively. “I'm sorry you had to see any of this, Marnie.”

“She's seen worse.” Batten's eyes flicked meaningfully at Harry and settled on his chin, avoiding direct eye contact. “Nice tux.”

Harry performed the shallowest of bows. When he straightened, the feather grey of his irises had fled, leaving a thin warning ring of high-gloss chrome. I lifted my cup to my lips to hide my smile and let my Cold Company have his moment; how he did enjoy his subtle dramatics.

Harry's unearthly glance flicked at me in question, seeking permission; through our Bond I felt the stirring push of anticipation. I gave the barest shake of my head: don't you dare.

Chapel paused at the door, lingering close to the revenant: ballsy or trusting? Gary Unflappable Chapel. “Marnie, I have to ask you both where you were on Tuesday night?”

“Don't even.” I set my cup down hard. “You know my Harry doesn't do shit like this.”

“May I phone you, pick your brain about this case?” Chapel pressed.

“You have another psychic working it.” My stomach coiled-up like a snake spitting hot acid. “So there's really no need.”

I strode out from behind my desk, backing them into the hallway. I like to think it was me who was intimidating them, not Harry.

“Don't ever doubt you're needed, Baranuik,” Batten said gruffly. “Happy Shark Week.”

Shark Week? I scowled my confusion, speechless until he was out the front door, jogging to the SUV with his leather jacket pulled over his head to shield from the hail storm. Baranuik, like I was one
of the team. One of the guys. My gloved hands were shaking as I balled them into fists.

“Go to hell, Mark,” I said, too late. Chapel was barely in the car, his door ajar, when Batten slammed into reverse. I watched them lurch out, the spinning tires spitting frozen gravel in the drive.

Thunder rolled overhead. Thunder in December. Hail mixed with cold sleet instead of thigh-high snow. Was nothing as it should be? At nearly nine in the morning, it still looked like midnight outside, the sky blanketed with dark wool and misery. Naked branches shivered and clawed at the edges of the property, clicking together, making woeful music with the wind that moaned against my little cabin. Kristin Davis would be at the morgue now, waiting in a drawer for her turn to endure the indignities of an autopsy.

My Cold Company moved behind me, raising all the little hairs on the back of my neck, not an unpleasant experience and very familiar. Discomfort washed through me; I knew it was as much Harry's as it was mine.

“I thought you quit so you would not have to see that man again,” he said.

It wasn't until I noticed the box of Kleenex in his hand that I started to cry.

THREE

Even chin-deep in bubbles, with aromatherapy candles and a much-too-early cocktail, it's difficult to relax in the bath when a four-hundred-and-thirty-five-year-old vampire is sitting cross-legged on the closed lid of the toilet, staring at you. Revenant, I thought-corrected fiercely, pissed that Batten had stuck the v-word in my head.

“So they have replaced you already, and with such meager substitution,” Harry said, inching forward as though it was fascinating gossip I'd collected on someone else.

I did my admittedly bad Al Pacino, clenching a sudsy fist. “Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in.”

“Thrown you in a mopple, has it?”

As I soaped, I felt his preternatural probing wash over me, licking through our Bond to taste my emotions; it was like being probed in the brain by rubber-fingered aliens. He didn't have to do it that way. Harry could be exceptionally subtle. Apparently Harry wasn't in the mood for subtle. The FBI agents in his home had him flustered like a murder of crows disturbed from their roadside pecking.

“I'm fine. In fact, I'm relieved.” It was pointless to lie to Harry of all people, but fuck it, it sounded good. “Now that Batten's officially recruited his little airhead, he's got no reason to pester me.”

“Yet they were here, and one is forced to wonder why,” Harry said with a hint of a smile. “It is increasingly evident that without you the police, most notably your agents of the preternatural crimes unit, have the devil by the nose.”

I said dryly, “They're not my agents.”

“You must concede that you have made an impression with the hunter.” Now there was a full-fledged twinkle in his eyes. “He moved Shark Week up several months to celebrate it with you.”

He showed me the newspaper headline again: Marnie Baranuik, the Great White Shark of psychic investigations, lets child serial killer slip through her jaws.

I hate sharks. Sharks eat people. I, on the other hand, do not. I have no plans to start, either. So how the hell am I remotely shark-like? And why was it my fault the killer escaped? I wasn't the only person on that team. I motioned for Harry to throw the paper in the trash; he tucked it behind his back.

I narrowed my eyes. “Batten's only coming around to get close enough to stake the cheeky dead guy I share my life with.”

Harry nodded once in genial concurrence. “Are you quite sure it was Danika Sherlock in the photograph?”

I sank deeper in the shelter of hot water, not wanting to think about those ankles: claimed ankles, spoken-for ankles, betrothed ankles. That silver bracelet might as well have been a sparkling engagement ring with a lady killer diamond, the way it twisted like a jagged piece of ice shoved under my heart and jerked around in my vitals.

“My gut would recognize those ankles anywhere.”

Harry frowned as though my sentence hadn't made sense. It made his eyebrow rings twitch, the platinum reflecting candlelight. “The bigger issue is: how can they employ this over-switched nizzle-toppin without rousing controversy?”

“Nizzle-toppin,” I repeated, as though just making sure I heard him right. I felt my lips tug into a reluctant smile. “At least she's not downright phony.”

“Oh, but she is, if we are speaking of boobs,” Harry offered. I loved how he said con-trov-ersy, and how his “issue” was said with soft, snake-y Ss, but it never failed to strike me as bizarre when words like “boobs” popped out of his mouth in his posh Queen's English. He'd slipped off his jacket, but the ascot remained, and the mother-of-pearl buttons running the front of his crisp white shirt were sheer perfection. He'd rolled up his sleeves to the elbow; now I could see my name in calligraphy tattooed on his left wrist.

“Though it grieves me to say so,” he continued, “Agent Chapel appears to be recruiting a fine tribe of malefactors; scullions and kitchen knaves, blackguards and fools, your codding bully-rook of a
hunter, now this rigmutton rumpstall. And whilst your nemesis, she of the bejeweled ankle, certainly possesses a resplendent flair for staring attire, something which you obstinately refuse to adopt…”

He paused to give me space to retort, lifting his eyebrows as though expecting an explanation. I blinked long and hard at him; I was sure there must be an insult buried in all that antiquated rigmarole, aimed at me.

When I couldn't find it, I said, “I'm a what?”

Harry closed his eyes for a moment as if he could draw patience from the ether. “For certain, her clairvoyant abilities have been steadily decreasing for the better part of seven years.”

“That's hardly her fault, since George got dusted.”

As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn't. My gaze dropped from Harry's; he looked like I'd sorrow-slapped him into another decade. Yeah, that's what he needs: paint him a picture of three hunters staking Sherlock's companion while he lay prone in his casket. Hey, while you're at it, why don't you remind him about that spectacular day when Ville Aaman revealed during one of his precognition seminars that all psychics in the entire spectrum of Talent were in fact DaySitters for revenants, a great old shitpile of memories to stir, right Big Mouth? Or how about when Aaman's companion, Reginald Davidoff Renault, stepped forward to offer his body up for scientific testing against the screaming protest of his kind, and also ended up as a pile of dust? Party time!

As though reading my mind, Harry offered me a smile that didn't go anywhere near touching his eyes; history weighed heavy in the corners of his mouth. “Are you so simple as to believe that these assassinations did not occur before the notorious Finn and his dreadfully honest companion exposed my kind?”

“What I believe, Harry, is that without George, Danika Sherlock has lost her flippin’ mind,” I said. Seven years post-Bond, like a tire leaking around a nail, Danika Sherlock's residual Talent was hissing flat; without her revenant, the solo DaySitter had no way of gassing up the proverbial psychic tank. In the next few years she'd be no more psychic than your average 1–900 daily tarot reader, (Only $4.99 a minute! First minute free!) “Last I heard, she was working on a reality show about her day-to-day life. That ought to be about as intellectually stimulating as a Teletubbies marathon.”

“I suppose you'd have me accept that you would get on just fine without me?”

“Of course, I'd be fine. I'd have Tinky Winky and Po,” I teased, but chasing off the unease wasn't that easy. I couldn't imagine… I glanced up at Harry while he meticulously filed a thumbnail, blowing daintily on the edge. No, I couldn't, didn't want to imagine being in Danika's place; I had reasons not to like her, but no one should have to lose a part of themselves like that.

“You should have collectively denied Mr. Aaman's claim,” Harry said without energy, an old argument spoken by every Bonded revenant who craved a return to anonymity. One by one, other psychics had reluctantly followed Aaman's example and admitted the truth about the source of their powers—that we were guardians who merely borrowed and directed power that belonged to a revenant we secretly protected, nourished and nurtured. After Renault's proof of his true nature, what choice did we have?

Now any psychic who denied having a revenant in their care was either fake, or good at hiding the casket. Harry was right, of course: admitting it had put us all at risk. The laws in both Canada and the United States had no provisions to protect the undead, though they were pretty swift about spelling out that any crimes committed by revenants were punishable by death. Vampire hunters, once considered eccentric weirdos chasing shadows, were the new superheroes. A few of the prolific vampire hunters, like the inexhaustible Mark “105 Kills” Batten, were eventually hired by the FBI.

Instead of wasting my breath—to the one person in the world who understood my feelings better than I did, no less—I said, “That's my favorite shirt, Harry.”