Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (11 page)

“After dark,” he repeated. “Because your buddy's a real live vampire, right?”

“Revenant,” I reminded. “And I wouldn't call him live, exactly.”

Hood paused in the doorway, tucking his notebook away inside his jacket. “Are you actually bowlegged?”

“No, but it sounded good at the time,” I said miserably, sinking back into my pillows.

“Well, for what it's worth,” he started, and then apparently thought better of it. He had that charming redhead habit of turning helplessly pink when he was embarrassed and a blush crept up his throat. He smiled it away, full-beam this time; it was dizzying how gorgeous it made him. “I'll check back with you if I have any further questions.”

I found my voice by some miracle. “You do that, sheriff.”

TEN

There were so many things I should have seen looking back, proving once and for all that, as I suspected, I am an idiot. The phone call itself, for instance, of course neither Fed would have given out my private unlisted number. I hadn't yet figured out how she had it. Could a failing clairvoyant ferret out phone numbers, or did she have friends in low places?

That nonsense about no cell reception, what a crock. I'd gotten Harry's text message no problem. She certainly had no trouble calling my cell phone at Shaw's Fist. I managed to get Chapel on the line with no issues. That should have been a red flag. Stupid, Marnie, verrrrry stupid.

Her story about the elder revenant, feeling him moving in his room. Another clue that should have tipped me off, if I'd been thinking of anything other than Hardass Batten. Sherlock was a clairvoyant, a Witness, not a Feeler. Besides, even empaths didn't feel things over long distances. She could see things, no doubt, if she'd still had her power. Which she didn't, except for “tiny flickers”…

The eyeballs. I'd been mucking about with that damn jar, a baker's dozen of perfect, tiny newt eyeballs on and off all day. She'd plucked that scene out of my office, hadn't she, with her “flickers”? That's why she'd used the story about an eyeball-collecting DaySitter. Stealing eyeballs didn't sound too far-fetched to someone who had a whole jar of them.

Harry had gone home to check the cabin. Chapel and the sheriff were already there. There was a warrant out for Danika Sherlock's arrest, attempted murder. There were two bored plain clothes cops from the Boulder PD outside the door to the ward, and Batten had now settled into a sturdy plastic chair in the corner of my room, looking like he planned to stay there all night.

I took a deep breath. “So the wedding should be nice. June's popular for weddings. I've always thought I'd pick April Fool's Day. Seems like that kind of monkey business would be cosmic good luck.”

He stared at me, his face unreadable. “What wedding are we talking about?”

I sucked my teeth. “Yours, jackass.”

“My wedding,” he clarified.

“Yeah, and hey, thanks for telling me you had a fiancée before we got naked. If I'd found out afterwards that might have been real awkward for me.” I grit my molars together.

“I'm not getting married.”

“Well, I guess not now, considering she's a nutbag. So when are you going to break it off with Sherlock? After sentencing?” I reached for my ice water and the movement yanked a staple in my stomach. I pressed my other hand to the wound, refusing to wince aloud. He must have seen something on my face regardless.

“You all right?”

“If you so much as reach a hand out to help me,” I warned, “I'll beat you like a rented mule.”

He steepled his fingers in silent consideration of my attitude, did his watching-crazy-person-until-he-was-sure-it-was-safe thing. Sadly, it was a look I was used to getting.

“Why would you think I'm engaged to Danika Sherlock?” he finally said.

“You're not?”

“No.”

“Were you ever?”

“No.”

I boggled, flabbergasted. “Then she's absolutely bat-shit crazy. Did you date her?”

He shook his head no. “Who told you we were engaged?” He leaned forward. “Was it Harry?”

“Harry never lies to me. Never,” I said absolutely. “Danika said it. In Buffalo, after the shooting, at the hospital.”

“That was seven, eight weeks ago?”

“Six weeks, two days.”

“I just met her. Mid-November. Three weeks ago.”

There was a confused twinge scrunching up the front of my brain. I put my ice water to my forehead and let the coolness from the plastic cup spread into my skin. “Okay, hold on. I'm missing something.”

“What happened in the hospital?”

“She brought me yellow roses. Told me she was your fiancée. Said she hoped I felt better soon. She went to the vending machine for me and got me a Dr. Pepper. I remember it distinctly because she wouldn't let me pay her for it.”

“How did she know you were in the hospital?”

I smiled at him sourly. “You mean if she didn't see it on TV or hear it at the office? She is, or was, a second degree clairvoyant. Retrocognition. She can perceive past events, people, places, objects from a distance. If she wanted to know where I was, all she had to do was meditate on it.”

“Why did she make up being engaged to me when she hadn't met me yet? And why didn't you just ask me if it was true or not?”

Because I'm a fucking coward. I sank sadly in my pillows. This had nothing to do with Batten. This woman hated my guts, and not because I'd had sex with some Fed. This was personal. Batten was a weapon used to hurt me. What I couldn't imagine was why? What the hell had I done to incur homicidal wrath? Was this about taking Harry? Or was that also just a way to hurt me?

Batten clued in. “She came to see you at your worst. Injured. Prone, in the hospital.”

“She must have searched the events of my recent past for something that was making me happy.” My eyes strayed to his lap and I dragged them away, blushing gloomily. “So she could take it away, kick me when I was down.”

I avoided his gaze but felt it searching me. If he didn't know why I was so pissed at him before, he knew now. All this time, I'd been furious for no reason. He wasn't a liar, or a cheat, or a jackass. Well, he might be a jackass, the jury was still out on that one. But I didn't have the hots for a lying cheater; maybe my taste in men wasn't as horrible as I thought. It was too much to think about. I resolved to deal with it later.

I hurried on: “She must have convinced herself it was true in that demented little skull of hers. Three weeks later, she shows up in your life for real.”

“She came to Virginia with her lawyers, asking about getting some footage in and around Quantico for her reality TV show. We turned her down; she hadn't done work for the PCU at that time. But it was amicable.”

“Those pictures you showed me this morning,” I pointed out. “She was there.”

“We called GD&C on our flight in. They said they had a psychic living in Denver, said she could be there in fifteen minutes. I assumed they meant you. She showed. We made her leave her TV crew in the van. She wasn't pleased, but she did it.”

“She's been living in Colorado?”

“Think you better tell me exactly what happened in that motel room.”

I didn't want to get you fired so I got myself stabbed.

“Please.” I shook my head, pushing my water aside. “I'm sick of hearing myself say it.”

“You went to the Ten Springs Motor Inn because Sherlock called and said she had a clue…” he encouraged, but his eyes had narrowed in on something in my face, reaching shrewd with alarming rapidity.

“The End. Please. I've over-explained to two men already.”

“Sheriff Hood,” he listed.

“And Harry.”

“You said two men. Harry's not a man.” He could never resist.

“Well, I know for a fact he has a penis,” I pointed out, feeling petty. “I've seen it about eight hundred thousand times. Penis still equals male, right?” A little white lie; I've never seen Harry naked, not once in ten years together. Harry would never get caught with his pants down.

“He's not human.”

“He's human-ish,” I established. I didn't like getting sucked in, and Batten's jaw was starting to do his clench-y thing. He didn't seem in the mood to let it go. “Why not date Sherlock?”

As always, there was a disturbing lack of feeling in his corner, like I was facing a projection of a person but not the real thing, an empty wall with a handsome reflection.

“She's too…” His lips puckered in a bizarre imitation and he cupped his hands in front of his chest. The result was so ridiculous that I nearly choked on surprised laughter. I huddled up protectively around the pain and slapped the spare white hospital blanket.

“Stop!” I gasped. “Don't make me laugh, tool.”

“Sorry,” he said, but a smile had slowly spread across his mouth, reaching his eyes: a genuine Mark Batten smile, just for me. “You don't think she looks a bit…overdone?”

“Guys love her.” I informed him sternly. “You're breaking ancient traditional man-rules by not being completely senseless about her.”

“Sorry. When I grab an ass I like it to have some—” He broke off with a cough as the door opened and a nurse came in.

I grinned at him steadily as the nurse came to the bed side with a tray.

“Yes, Agent Batten? By all means, finish that intriguing sentence.”

“A discussion for another time, Miss Baranuik,” he replied smoothly, his face perfectly blank, easily business-like. An unexpected memory slid into my brain thick and sweet like honey, the sound of him going over the brink, panting oh baby, oh fuck yeah, hotly into the crook of my neck while the bathroom door slammed repeatedly against drywall. I dropped my eyes to his crotch to look for signs of stirring. He gave me a warning glare behind the nurse's back, stood up suddenly and went to finger the curtains open to look down at the rear parking lot, glittering with ice under a full winter moon.

The nurse prepared to take blood and I said, “Uh, nurse, wrong vials. You need gold caps for mine.”

To her credit, the nurse's eyes widened only momentarily then she said, “All righty, hun, I'll be right back then. Don't you go anywhere.”

I gave the required polite chuckle. When the nurse had gone, Batten asked, “Gold caps?”

“Anyone who feeds a revenant directly from the vein gets residual saliva in their system. Undead saliva contains a minute amount of their telomerase. The medical community still thinks they need to keep those samples conspicuously marked and separate from “normal” blood from “normal” people. Didn't you wonder
why I'm stuck at the end of ICU in isolation? You watch, she'll come back in a Hazmat suit.”

“I'm sure I should know what telomerase is? Vampire disease?”

“I'd give you a bio-chem lesson if I thought there was any chance you were honestly interested.” He nodded without a dig, which surprised the truth out of me. “When normal human cells divide, the chromosomes lose telomeres at the ends. This is related to aging, the loss of telomeres. Revenant telomerase is a protein complex which replaces the tips, halting deterioration of chromosomes during cell division, a supernatural version of the regular stuff found in human cells, produced in the gastrosanguinem in their stomachs. It flows through their bodies when they feed. It's why they never change, one source of their immortality.”

Batten's lip curled slightly. “And this stuff is in you?”

“Tiny bits, yeah. It's like when you swig from a can of Coke, and there's backwash left behind. When Harry feeds…” I felt suddenly exposed. “He leaves traces of it in my veins. End of lesson.”

The nurse came back in, and to her credit she neither hesitated or slowed her stride. She hadn't even doubled up on the latex gloves. After taking my blood, she got out the cuffs to take my blood pressure.

Batten stared out the window at the dark parking lot for a long time while the nurse pumped up the cuff and put a stethoscope to the inside of my elbow. Nearby in my purse, my cell phone started grinding out Bobby Brown's My Prerogative. Horrified, I snatched the bag and frantically dug for the illusive noise maker.

The nurse's eyebrow wanted to creep up but she got it under control. “You'll have to turn that off.”

Batten smirked at me over his shoulder, like he'd somehow figured out my dirtiest secret. I flipped the phone shut, wishing Harry would stop messing with my ringtones. If he wore underwear I would give him the wedgie of a lifetime.

Batten said, “This shit shouldn't have happened.”

“I didn't pick the ringtone,” I told him.

“I meant the altercation. You should have called me. You had no business going out there.”

Altercation? That sounded a lot like a tango, for which two parties were needed. A mysterious valve slapped open in my stomach
dumping acid like a breached dam. “I gotta call you before I leave my house, now?”

“When it has to do with me or my job, yes.”

“You don't get it.”

“Fill me in,” he said tightly, folding his big forearms over his chest. My jaw clacked shut, and I backtracked.

“I thought it was the capital-R right thing.”

“Right thing for who?”

You, jackass! “Everyone.”

“Fail to see how getting stabbed was the right thing for you.”

“Oh, I suppose you would have seen that coming?”

“You're supposed to be psychic!” he shouted, ignoring the nurse's tearing Velcro and alarmed retreat. Guess my blood pressure reading would have to wait.

“I'm not that kind of psychic.”

“You should have called me.”

“I called Chapel!”

“I would have asked better questions,” he threw in my face. “Like, where are you?” Point: Batten.

“This wasn't my fault!”

“I never said it was,” he belted back, his voice vaulting octaves. “Why do you fight me about every goddamned thing?”

“Because the minute you open your mouth, you turn into a ginormous dill hole.”

“And you turn into a neurotic little twerp.” He paced. “Just hear what I'm actually saying, Marnie, without imagining insults between the lines.”

“I don't do that!”

“You never actually listen to me.”

“Well, right back at ya, jackass.” I settled back against my pillows carefully, ignoring the pull of stitches here and staples there.

Batten stalked back to the window, speechless with glittery-eyed anger. The silence that followed was a mire of unspoken questions, unexpressed feelings, and I understood none of it. He finally said, “You're not done hating me, obviously.”