Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (61 page)

www.ajaalto.com

Preview of

Death Rejoices

(Book Two of the Marnie
Baranuik Files)

by A.J. Aalto

“Nutty Squirrel to Purple Pussy. Come in, Purple Pus
snfffuhhhh
—” I sneezed with gusto into the microphone, spraying the inside of the fursuit's helmet with a fine mist. With one fuzzy brown paw, I braced against the wall and hauled hot air into my lungs, letting it out in what could best be described as a death rattle.

“—the fuck?” Disgust muddled Agent de Cabrera's Cuban accent through the headphones.

If I hadn't been getting sick, the humidity of the fursuit might have been halfway tolerable, but I was brewing my first fever in over a decade and hadn't been this miserable since the time an old lady tried to use me as a demon's sock puppet. Sweat rolled into my eyeballs. I could barely squeak air through one nostril. My knee-jerk reaction was to complain heartily enough to make a Barbary pirate blush. But in exchange for flexible hours at the lab, I'd made short-sighted promises to my new boss, Supervisory Special Agent Gary Chapel of the FBI's preternatural crimes unit: less bitching, less swearing, less klutzery, and one poorly-thought-out commitment to something called “defensive tactics training” with Sheriff Rob Hood. All things considered, it was really hard not to lose my cool.

My name's Marnie Baranuik and I'm not usually a squirrel; I'm an ex-cookie addict, ex-forensic psychic, now head of the preternatural biology department at the Boulder branch of Chapel's PCU. Mostly I feed rat brains to zombie beetles and fail to solve Sudoku puzzles.

“I've got a bit of a cold, but don't worry, I'm still badass.” I snarfed, dipping my chin to talk directly into the microphone. “I got this.”

“Not that,” de Cabrera said. “Purple Pussy?”

“Code names,” I explained patiently. “This is a covert operation. You can't have a good covert op without code names, everybody knows that.”

“You don't need—” He clipped his words short with a growl; he'd been in the van outside for six hours, and sounded antsy. “There are only two of you. If a man speaks, it's SSA Chapel. If a woman speaks, it's you.”

I heard the implied
duh
. “Elian, stop crying and take some Midol.”

So I was antsy too. Something about a suspected predator in a white unicorn costume is vaguely creeptastic. More so when you're waiting for him in a vacant hall outside the handicap washroom. Add the facts that A) he wasn't alone in there, B) I could hear him grunting and panting in the stall, and C)I couldn't eat the black jelly beans in the glass bowl on the table beside me because my hands were covered in yak fur, and altogether I was not having the greatest night of my life.

The female in the stall with him oinked—
reeeek reeeek!—
followed by a squealing giggle. My shoulders bunched unhappily and I said a silent
eeeeuuuuww
.

For the millionth time, I wondered why I wasn't home in bed. Officially, Chapel hadn't hired me yet. I wasn't on payroll. The lab in which I was squatting didn't have my name on the door; it had a pink sticky note on it that read UnBioin Chapel's blocky handwriting. The papers I filled out every morning had a conspicuous blank space where my employee code belonged. That bothered me. I should have numbers. Everyone else had numbers. The whole thing was tentative, uncommitted, up in the air.

Yet here I was, a five foot squirrel with stuffed breast mounds (ten times the size of my own humble chest) waiting for my mark to haul me away somewhere private and do Goddess knows what. Three people were missing from the Fur Con since yesterday, long enough for friends to report with worry to their local cops, but not long enough to be declared missing persons. An attentive sergeant at the Denver PD got a hunch and knocked it over to Sheriff Hood, who'd made an unfortunate reputation in his neck of the woods by getting involved with preternatural crimes. Hood made sure a copy
landed on Chapel's desk at the PCU, along with an official invitation to check it out. We'd gotten a lead about some parties off-site, and rumors of something not-so-human.

I had a six-inch hand-whittled rowan wood stake in an ankle sheath on my right, and on the left leg, sheathed above my jaunty red Keds, Chapel's personal Columbia tactical folder knife. The idea that I might need either was giving me the cold sweats.

The 3
^rd
Annual LoDo Fur Con wasn't the place one would expect too much crime. The usual media bustle around conventions was noticeably absent, as the media was prohibited. In the sparsely populated main hall, on this, the Thursday night before things really got started, there were only three artists set up at stations for me to pester. Two dealers, and one author of a popular Manga-inspired comic series involving a busty anthropomorphic jaguar woman toting a pair of ray guns in a space cowboy theme, which sounded like a damn good read to me. The voices of fifty-odd members of furry fandom barely penetrated to this far end of the convention center, where I could no longer hear the rain on the big plate glass walls. A solid half of the Furries were in full costume
(fursuit friendly dance Friday ten P.M.!
), an amiable crowd, a herd that had no inkling it was being culled. A full pack mingled around the tables and clustered near the refreshment center buying nachos, diet Pepsi and little cello-wrapped packs of Dad's oatmeal cookies.

Ah, cookies; I missed cookies like a dozen dead friends.

De Cabrera interrupted my thoughts. “What's taking so long? Are you bothering that author again? He doesn't need you hovering over his shoulder. Nobody does.”

“Elian, I shall give you an emo haircut if you continue this dreadful whining,” I said, noting with some surprise that I sounded like Harry tonight. I brought back Genuine Marnie. “You wanna talk to this pig-fucker yourself, we can trade places. Slap on your jockstrap if you need one, and get your skinny Cuban ass in here.”

“Oh, skinny ass? That how you gonna—”

“Sitting in your goddamned van making demands like goddamned King Henry the eighth down there,” I snapped, affecting a baritone bellow. “What's taking so long? Where's my cocoa?! More meat! More wine! More dancing girls!”

De Cabrera's sigh was long and defeated. “What the hell are you even talking about?”

“Do you know how hot this fursuit is? I'm sweating my tits off while you're sitting in the A/C acting like your life's so—
wa-chooo!
”

The helmet caused a regrettable back draft of spray. I clamped my lips shut, sputtered into silence, crammed my irritation down into the roiling depths of my gut and started the countdown:
ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven
…

“Just get the invite,” de Cabrera ordered.

“Sassy.” I swallowed a cough. “Who died and made you my master?”

I heard him start to say something, but it never materialized; a grin split my lips, hidden inside my costume head. After this much frustration, the other partner in my life, Lord Guy “Harry” Harrick Dreppenstedt, would have been firing theatrical exclamations at me. I could nearly hear Harry's “God's bodkins!” and “stop arsing about!” in crisp Queen's English. The table-thumping demands “
tire-toi, tire-toi!
” exploding in my face like cannon blasts, and the irate “
merde a la puissance treize!”
, neither of which he'd ever translated for me. He hardly needed to. I knew when my Cold Company was pissed off long before the cursing started.

For a moment, I missed Harry with an ache that ripped through my midsection like a fistful of nails, jerking my heart down into the soles of my tennis shoes. He was one more week in England. I could manage one more week at home in Colorado without him, right? The psychic headache building in my forebrain begged to differ, not to mention this brewing head cold—an actual virus? Me?—the first one I'd suffered in over a decade.

“Relax. We've got this,” I told de Cabrera, although there was no “we” at this point. I'd lost Chapel to the crowd a while back. He'd probably gone to scratch; his cat costume was itchy as hell and the seam twisted his nuts:
scrotation
, my brain filled-in helpfully. One more reason I wished I could keep Harry but ditch the psychic powers that the revenant's immortal presence granted me: knowing the state of Gary Chapel's ball sack. Or worse, knowing about the case of sweaty butt crack that made his computer techie, Adam, self-conscious. Though I hadn't noticed any outward signs of his condition, I'd mentally dubbed Adam Special Agent Swampass.

De Cabrera clicked back, but what came over the com could barely be called communication: a doubtful half-grunt.

“Gimme some credit. Even I can track a six-foot-tall unicorn with a rainbow mane and a limp,” I promised.

And if I couldn't track our mark with my wits, I'd take off a squirrel paw, remove the leather glove from my clammy hand, and Grope my way around the room. I am, according to a media nickname that persisted like a bad rash, the “Great White Shark of psychic investigations”. More like the Great White Guppy if you asked me, but no one would take my word for it. Everyone loves a hero. Once a label like that is planted, it doesn't easily peel off. No one wants to be wrong.

It's taking him forever to finish
, I thought, tapping my foot to the ear-worm I had going on. A few months ago, Harry had procured an old violin from Craig's List and, having had it professionally restored, he had taken to playing various pieces from Vivaldi's seasons in heart-thudding, toe-tapping
prestissimo
. Hands flying, the bow a blur, his preternaturally-pale eyelids fluttering with pleasure as the music vibrated under his chin. It had been decades since he'd played, he protested modestly, but you'd never know it. Muscle memory spilled the music forth with perfect clarity. Now I waited, and I tapped, and I pictured Harry playing before a crackling fire, omitting the part of my memory where I sweated through my t-shirt in the mid-summer heat while my chilly revenant companion stayed comfortable in the glow of the woodstove.

Who is this guy, the Viagra Pony?
Aloud, I told de Cabrera, “I hope the piglet he's nailing wasn't hoping for the quick bizznasty. Rolly-Polly's getting the full treatment.” I adjusted my headphones again. “Purple Pussy, come in?”

“Enough with the code names!” de Cabrera roared in my ear.

“Dude, don't chuck a tantrum. Want I should interrupt him mid-thrust?”

“You need to get that invite, Baranuik,” he stressed.

The hell you say, pea-brain
, I thought but did not say. Harry had been teaching me the fine art of self-restraint as part of my on-going people skills training. Frankly, I thought I already had decent people skills, not like these yammering jag-offs would know it.

De Cabrera sounded like he might be choking on his tongue, so I did my Daffy Duck impression for him, singing Kool and the Gang's “Jungle Boogie” in my best lisping quack.

He sighed. “What kind of FBI squad hires someone like you?”

“The awesome kind,” I assured him. “Anyone ever told you, you do a bang-on Mark Batten impersonation?”

“Partner,” he said softly, “that's low.”

“So, you admit I'm your partner?”

“Word is, that Batten guy's a total asshole,” de Cabrera said.

The Blue Sense, the wave of psi upon which my psychic Talents ride, awoke with a tingle, offering up Elian's feelings of concern. He wasn't entirely sure how I'd respond, and his uncertainty made him regret his words.

“Asshole's pretty accurate,” I said. “Total might be an exaggeration.”

I was surprised to find I missed Mark Batten, vampire hunter, ex-lover, and general pain in my ass. He'd been in South America for months with no contact and no ETA on his return. Most of the agents at the new Boulder PCU hadn't met him yet and rumors ran wild: he was a jerk, he was badass, he had a ninety-nine percent solve rate (the one that got away being
my
fault), he'd slain more revenants than anyone in North America, he was smokin’ fierce in the sack …Okay, I started that one. Black marker on the wall of the ladies’ room. The rumors, even the saucy ones, were all true.

“Is he worse than Agent Golden?” de Cabrera asked. “Or as I like to call her, the Frost Queen?”

“Oh, Elian Gutiérrezde Cabrera,” I purred, “you have no idea.”

“Goin' all full-name on me, now,” he clicked back. “Don't be like that.”

The door to the handicapped stall banged open without warning and a giggling grey pig Furry spilled out, clutching behind her at the half-zipped unicorn. The unicorn's brilliant mane shook over enormous black plastic eyes as he laughed at something she said.

At my elbow, someone else inquired, “First time here?”

I jerked with an un-squirrel-like snort and whirled, trying to steer my big head in the direction of the friendly voice. This fursuit's eye beads offered literally zero peripheral vision. I found a second white unicorn with a rainbow sherbet mane, and a name tag that
said Ben. Did I have the wrong guy all along? The unicorn coming out of the bathroom was limping, but maybe he'd pulled his gluteus maximus from all the vigorous pumping. Ben actually used a cane and his limp was pronounced.

“First time here,” I affirmed, quelling an urge to chase the other unicorn. Over the speaker's shoulders, I spotted Chapel's tall purple cat costume, and under my breath said: “Grey pig, two o'clock.”

“Sorry?” Ben's frozen, stitched-up smile tipped toward mine as he lowered his head. (
All the better to hear you with, my dear
.)

“I said, I should have come at two o'clock. I hear they had entertainment?”

“That's not until Saturday.”

“Oh. So, I'm not missing anything if I duck out early?”

He chuckled, sounding hollow inside his mask. “I wouldn't say that.”

If I hadn't been stuck in a squirrel, I'd have prompted him to continue that train of thought by lifting my brows, or a quizzical smile. Instead, I was stuck with an exaggerated shrug of my shoulder pads. He gestured downward, dipping his chin with significance.

I looked down and stifled what almost came out as a horrified
urk!
Bobbing out of a custom-designed slit in his fursuit was a mammoth crooked penis with an urgent, spot-speckled head surrounded by billowing, untrimmed white pubic hair; a hungry snake with an allergy to yak fur. The cloud of pubes matched the costume almost to the shade.