Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (34 page)

I raised my voice and called, “Is the house clear?”

Batten came to the threshold. “It's pretty bad in here. Something tore through. I'll call it in…”

“Don't,” I snapped. “Please. What the hell are the cops gonna do? Put an APB out on a skinless twelve-year-old with no eyes?”

Wes blinked in surprise and his perfect face twisted in a grimace in horror.

I pointed into his chest hard. “Yeah, you heard me. Betcha thought you were the only one with problems. It's about to get nasty around here, a lot nastier than you can imagine. If you can handle it, then get in the fucking house. If not, then go back to…” I waved my hands at his clothes and hair. “Whatever Rastafarian vampire lumberjack cult you must have escaped from.”

Harry softly corrected, “Revenant.”

“Marnie,” Wes goggled at me. “What the hot, bloody fuck—”

“Fade your irises!” I shouted, jamming my finger into his immovable chest. “I won't have this conversation while you're beaming at me with your freaky wilted-pansy eyes, so back down.”

“I don't know how,” he whispered, and licked his lips. Tiny fang tips protruded. His eyes cut to Harry, not in question but in bashful admission. Harry did not display his amusement, but I felt him shudder against me with a repressed chuckle.

“Fine, listen up: I have a lunatic psychic trying to kill me, and a ghoul trashing my life to reclaim her eyeballs. That being said, are you staying or not, Wesley?”

My baby brother went still. To my dismay, I realized it was that stillness of the undead; the dreaded cudgel of reality hammered home the undeniable truth. I also realized he hadn't had to learn this skill, it was just the result of no longer breathing, blinking, twitching,
scratching, sniffing, adjusting, all those things that put human beings, living human beings, in constant motion.

He nodded once, seriously. “If you'll have me, sis?”

Soooooo tempting to refuse, and send him on his way North to Mom, but a colder welcome would await him there; I knew that from personal experience. Harry swept past us up the stairs, already assuming I was going to bring my brother inside. He lingered to speak low to Batten on his way into the house, their heads bent together in a rare show of consultation between the tiger and the panther. Both of them turned to look at me, and I squinted warningly at them to bugger off, while I reached out to grab hold of my brother's sleeve to drag him into the cabin.

Wes pulled back at the door. “Uh, Marnie…”

“God, it reeks in here,” I gagged, letting him go. “Are you sure the house is clear? Do I hear Chapel barfing on my bed?”

Harry hung up his overcoat. “My love, you must invite your brother inside.” One long finger pointed meaningfully behind me at the door.

My shoulders fell. I squeezed my eyes shut. “He's not really undead,” I attempted to convince everyone, including me. “He bought some funky contact lenses to freak me out. He's not a revenant. He can't be. He's not that stupid.”

“I beg you would excuse me, dearheart, but perhaps you could explain why there is a debt vulture fighting with my own in the Aspen, if young Wesley is not, in fact, undead?” Harry asked me politely, cocking his head. “Do enlighten us, Doctor Baranuik.”

“That's low,” I accused. “Appealing to my science. If I wasn't already pissed off at Wesley…” and the ghoul's mastermind, not to mention irritated that somewhere Chapel was losing his lunch in my house, I'd have sharpened my tongue on my companion. But of course he was right; Ajax was fighting off another debitum naturae for territorial rights. Ajax had four hundred years of seniority, but both birds were immortal, so it was bound to be a long, noisy night unless they could learn to share a tree.

I craned my neck to look at Wesley standing forlornly under the porch light, his eyes still pulsing with that unsightly non-shade where barest lilac met blue-white on a paint chip. If you painted a
room that color, you'd only be able to see the purple tint if the room was nearly dark, like the tone was sitting on the fence, lacking the conviction of its color.

“Stop beaming at me,” I demanded, slamming my purse on the hat stand.

“I can't,” he snarled back, throwing his baseball hat on the step. “I already told you, I don't know how!”

I considered another heartbeat before saying, “Wesley Alexander Baranuik, you are welcome in my home.”

“Uh…” He reached one hand up to scratch at his scalp. “That's not my name anymore. I took his.”

“Harry, I'm going to need to smoke one of your damn cigarettes in a minute.” I put one gloved hand to my head and left it there, pressing on the throbbing in my frontal lobe.

“Darling, many immortals take their maker's surname,” Harry reminded. “It is fairly universal.”

“My baby brother is not immortal. He's a stupid fucking moron, but he's a living, breathing stupid fucking moron.”

“Denial is self-defeating, my sweet,” Harry said gently, taking my elbow. “If you are ill-equipped to handle this, I could…”

“You can't, we didn't put you on the title,” I surrendered. “Wesley, whatever your new name is, you can come in.”

“You must invite him by his new name precisely and in its entirety,” Harry said.

Somewhere inside, I heard Chapel retch again, and half-turned my head in that direction. “Can you go check on him?”

Harry nodded once. “Yes, of course, if you wish it, my Own. Do be kind to your brother.” He lowered his voice, though it was sort of pointless. If Wesley was a revenant, his supernatural hearing would pick up anything the elder whispered to me. “He came to you for a reason, MJ. One can only imagine why he chose you, but perhaps he had legitimate grounds? You must consider the lad may yet be suffering untold distress if the transition is fresh.”

“Harry, are you sure this is a smart idea?”

“Love,” he admonished. “If you have so steeled your own heart as to render it unfathomable, search my heart for your answer.”

“I would, but I'm afraid of the dark,” I sighed. As Harry drifted off to check on Chapel, I folded my arms and just looked at my mother's angel. All of twenty and never to age another day. Washed-out from above by the high motion-sensor porch light, and in the circle of deathly-pale light it looked as though heaven itself was pointing out the joke.

Wes shifted his weight from one scuffed boot to the other, a very human gesture of discomfort, drumming up a hopeful smile for his sister. “I'm called Wasp now. Wasp Baranuik Strickland.”

After being clobbered by one surprise after another, this one broke the bank.

“Why?” I grinned openly. “Because you have all of Sting's greatest hits?”

My mother's perfect angel lost his smile. “No. Because I'm part of Master Strickland's swarm now.”

“Swarm?” I couldn't help it: the guffaw brayed out of my chest, doubled me over, and I had to grasp the door jamb so as not to trip forward off my heels. Wes was the one folding his arms now, jutting his chin up, daring me to cast aspersions against his chosen name. I felt my head shaking slowly back and forth, as if, in denying the absurdity, I could render it less funny. It didn't work. I pictured my old poster of the Police in my childhood bedroom and it set me off again. I kicked off my heels and, still shaking with laughter, padded outside across the cold porch in my stocking feet. With one gloved hand, I grabbed my brother by the shirt front.

“Wasp Baranuik Strickland, you have the stupidest name in revenant history, and are welcome in my home,” I said, pulling him hard into the house and slamming the door. “But that's the last fucking time I call you that, dickweed.”

THIRTY-ONE

A shower was required before I could do any more mind-wrangling. The smell in the house wasn't as bad as Chapel's vomiting let on. Luckily, he'd made it to the bathroom before the events of the evening forced his dinner up. He looked like he was in serious pain, though he hadn't been injured. It was rather humanizing to watch calm, steady Unflappable Chapel lose his cool. I hadn't thought that was possible. After he picked himself up off my bathroom floor and disappeared (hopefully to find his toothbrush) I turned on the shower full blast and stood under it for longer than strictly necessary, letting the water pulse down on my scalp, tilting my head back so that hot water ran in rivers down my face, over my closed eyelids, down my cheekbones, drumming off the point of my chin.

When I finally stepped out, I was thankful. The ghoul might have ransacked my house and slimed a trail that even Mr. Clean wouldn't cut without a ton of elbow grease, but it wasn't still in here. Didn't know where it was, but it wasn't lurking under my bed, so that was a big bonus. My brother might look like the undead cast of Cool Runnings 3: Vikings Take Jamaica, but he wasn't dead-dead. Batten's endurance might be slipping but he was still vigorous enough to argue with Harry.

From the shelter of my bedroom, I could hear the two bickering, Batten's voice hard and full of distaste, Harry's playful and jousting. Ah, all my boys were home. I pulled fresh bandages taut on my belly, making sure they stuck on my shower-damp skin, then slid on a pair of faded jeans and a simple white t-shirt, forgoing the bra. The underwire push-up one I'd worn to the funeral had left dig-marks under my armpits against my ribs and I'm small enough to get away with not wearing one. Probably no one would notice but Harry, and he'd be far more distressed about the threadbare jeans.

My wet hair I toweled dry—the only good thing about Sherlock's hack-job was that I didn't have to style my hair anymore. It just sorta stuck up in its own peculiar fashion. I told myself I liked it that way, that I was hip enough to warrant a haircut like this, and I almost believed it. Almost.

The din in the living room rose as I put on the only pair of gloves I still owned. I couldn't imagine what they'd chosen to fight about this time. Maybe Wes had said something to set them off. It felt later than the clock said it was. We'd had an atrocious night. Maybe I should just shut off my light and go to bed. I'd performed for them at the funeral. Not well, perhaps, but it was over and done with. The media had captured not only images of my underpants, but of me “working” with the FBI. I had effectively vaulted back up on the proverbial horse. I'd scared off Dead Kristin so she wasn't pillaging through Ten Springs in search of her body parts. I'd all but painted a big target on my forehead for whoever started that ghoul's spell. Hadn't I earned some peace and quiet? I whipped open my bedroom door.

“Ok, shut your pie holes or I'll put some knuckles in em!” I shouted on my way out of the bedroom. Wouldn't my father be proud? “Where's White Bob Marley?”

Harry waved vaguely toward the pantry. “I sent your brother to rest in my chambers, to lay in the woolen. He has been travelling and needs time to adjust to his new surroundings.”

Batten made an exclamation under his breath, the gist of which I got without hearing the words. I touched the hollow of my throat and realized the t-shirt I'd chosen didn't cover the marks from Harry's earlier feeding. I didn't like being made to feel like a red-cheeked teenager caught with her panties down, and hated him for it.

Harry's gaze followed my hand, his eyes heavy-lidded, his sensual contentment tinged with smugness.

“Speaking of images I'll need therapy to get out of my head…” Batten muttered, turning his attention back to the revenant lounging by the fire, who was shirtless now in his grey flannel pants, waiting for me to pry two .45 caliber bullets out of his back. There was a pair of needle-nose pliers on the coffee table, not too far from a glistening patch of slime. That's my life: non-stop glamour and ghoul scum.

Batten was asking Harry, “I thought you said something about self-restraint?”

“And I thought you knew how things worked in this house,” Harry volleyed back, laying a large trade paper book to rest in his lap. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his position.

“You have no shame, do you?” Batten accused.

One of Harry's fingers went up to smooth his eyebrow until he got to the three small platinum loop piercings. His dark-lit gaze was so intense, so deceptively alive, and the flush of his feeding still colored his cheeks.

“I've yet to do anything about which I should feel shame. But I assure you,” his eyes gleamed meaningfully, “I am thinking about it.”

Batten tossed his nylon jacket on the back of the couch. “If that's a threat, bloodsucker, bring it on. I'm not the least bit afraid of you.”

Harry chuckled. “Then my DaySitter was right: you are as stupid as you look.”

“I didn't say that!” I yelped, hands flying up like I was caught in the floodlights during a prison break. “Not recently, or in those exact words. At least, not behind your back.”

“Any time you're ready,” Batten invited flatly, motioning at Harry with one hand.

I rolled my eyes and picked up the pliers. “Harry, it's not polite to play with your food.”

“But doll face,” Harry's was the delighted smile of the birthday boy surveying his pile of presents. “He started it.”

“This is how much you've matured in four hundred plus years? ‘He started it’?”

“Be a shame not to see it through.” Harry abruptly swung his leg down from the arm of the chair and Batten flinched. Harry's smile grew tenfold as he swept a pack of menthols from the coffee table, and showed it to Batten as if to say: See? Just grabbing this. No need to panic.

“Hold still,” I ground out of clenched teeth as I surveyed Harry's back. The edges of his wounds were already softening, progressing towards healing. I'm no expert in ballistic trauma or the dynamics of bullets, but I knew enough to prod my companion's shoulder with my fingers to check for shrapnel or shattered bone. I could feel nothing but the hard nub under his flesh. It should have been the nastiest thing I'd encountered all night, but it didn't come close.
Compared to Dead Kristin, the gaping blue-tinged gunshot wounds were tidy.

“Look at the poor thing, so eager for confrontation: fists clenched, jaw tight, heart pounding. He really wants a piece of me, and he thinks he has a fair shot.” Harry's unearthly platinum eyes pleaded with me. “Oh, do let me school the boy.”

“We might need Agent Batten's brains fully intact for a while longer,” I lectured. I made an exploratory poke at the first bullet wound with the pliers. Harry didn't even flinch as he lit his cigarette and snapped his lighter closed. “If you're a good boy, you can eat him later.”