Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (13 page)

ELEVEN

Harry was smiling, showing lots of white teeth, no fang. Batten averted his eyes as he always did; I think he was afraid that if he saw fangs he'd have no choice but to face that, no matter how many revenants he'd dusted, he was intimidated by this one. I'm not sure he could live with that. Or maybe he sensed Harry might try to mindfuck him with his unearthly gaze; Batten should know I wouldn't allow that. Not in public, anyway.

As though egged-on by Batten's discomfort, Harry's aura did a cold boil, a visible phenomenon. More than just his otherworldly presence filled the room. As always I could smell menthol cigarettes under his light, clean-smelling 4711 cologne. As he approached the bed with impossible refinement, I knew he was showing off. Harry didn't have to move like that. It was a conscious choice and he was making a point: here comes power infernal and immortal. How could any human compare?

Harry was dressed like he'd been back on his Kawasaki so I guessed it wasn't impounded. Big motorcycle boots, this time the leather as shiny and clean as the buckles. I wondered how long he'd been in the lobby shining the street salt off of them. His mid-length over coat flapped open to reveal black Levis hugging lean powerful legs. Black leather biking gloves looked so startlingly like part of a murderer's kill kit on his death-pale hands that I could all but feel them squeezing my throat. A grey cashmere scarf snaked several times around his neck reflected the battleship grey of his eyes. I wondered where his helmet was. Undead or not, you crack your skull open and sandpaper the road with brain tissue, story time's over.

“Agent Batten. Bon nuit, trou du cul,” Harry greeted, mock-tipping an invisible hat. I couldn't be sure, as my French is not good,
but I thought Harry called Batten an asshole. He turned and performed a low, sweeping bow at the bed. “How does my lady?”

“I does spiffy, and you?”

“Apart from being heartily distressed by your atrocious grammar, I do very well indeed. As visiting hours have long flown, I cannot stay long. ‘Tis pure luck that the nurse let me in at all.”

Luck, my ass. It was more likely terror; it wasn't like Harry was putting any effort into blending in. The poor nurse was probably twisting security's arms to come flush him back out. I wondered if there had ever been a revenant in this hospital before. Or any hospital in Colorado for that matter. Revenant emergencies don't require human doctors.

Harry handed me the thermos, and palmed two round white vitamins into my hand. “Doppio espresso macchiato, dash of cinnamon.”

“And suddenly, life is fabulous.”

“Because of me, or because of the caffeine?” He knew exactly how relieved I was to see that he was one hundred percent intact and healthy.

I humored him anyway, downing my pills then beaming up at him. Having his answer, he put his hand inside his coat and pulled out a jubilant bouquet of tulips in a rainbow of petal pink, spring yellow and the vivid orange of tangerine peels.

“Tulips in January?” I exclaimed.

He laid them beside the bed. “For my beloved pet, most anything is possible. Surely fetching her favorite flower is no great task. Am I…interrupting?” Harry aimed the bristly indictment in Batten's direction.

“Whether you're here or not makes no difference to me, vamp.” Batten propped his elbows on the chair's arms and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth.

“After some examination of the evidence, I should think you'll discover how little I care about your existence as well, young man.”

“Funny,” Batten said with a calm smile. “Got the impression you're threatened by me.”

Harry threw back his head and laughed with gusto. The sound of it rose goose bumps and then rubbed them with velvet. Despite the smiling and laughing, the moment was anything but friendly.

Baboons, I observed. One with a big gun and the other with a big mouth, and both with alpha-sized, flaming pink asses.

“Is there anything left of the cabin, Harry?” I interjected, disconcerted nerves jangling: they were as much Harry's as mine. “Was she there?”

“Our home is perfectly well and good,” he replied. “Unfortunately, fifteen officers of the law trod all over before I could tell if anyone else had been there but for the two of us and your morning visitors.” He aimed another brief accusatory glance at Batten.

“What about inside?” I asked.

“Agent Chapel was the only one brave enough to venture within. He's there now, and shall stay until we are ready to take you home.”

I struggled to sit straighter. A nagging, dull pain was starting in my lower back, right hand side. “He's an FBI agent, not a house sitter. He can't be watching soap operas and watering the orchids.”

Harry put a hand up. “Agent Chapel assures me that you are his top priority at this point in time.”

“That's ridiculous,” I said. “He's got better things to do.”

“Agent Chapel also said if you didn't take my word for it, you could call home,” Harry said, offering me the phone beside the bed. “And he'll tell you as much himself.”

I glared at the phone, and then at my companion. I was no longer charmed by the accent, nor the naked devotion in his eyes, nor the almost-smile on his pale lips.

Harry didn't blink in the face of my glare. “Lay your fair head down. You are not going anywhere until the doctor allows, ducky.”

“Quack.” I turned on Batten. “Tell Harry that you guys have a murder to solve, and it makes no sense for you to be stuck at my house.”

“We're looking at Sherlock for the murder of Kristin Davis,” Batten told me, watching my reaction closely.

I didn't know what to think of that. At first, I couldn't wrap my brain around the barest possibility. I rubbed my left temple. “You think Danika moved to Denver to stalk me, and when that didn't blow up her skirt, she beheaded a twelve-year-old girl, made it look like a revenant kill, so that you'd call GD&C, who would then call her, and she could show up and… what?”

“Lure you to the scene?” Batten suggested. “Maybe she didn't feel confident in her ability to face you with your vampire around.”

“Revenant. And I'm retired. GD & C called her to your crime scene, not me.”

“She counted on the fact that I'd still go to you,” Batten said. “And she was right.”

Hot damn. Heat zinged through my chest and flushed my cheeks. Even though I was not supposed to be lusting after Mark.

“When you came, I sent you away,” I said, trying to imagine Sherlock's thought processes that day, her scheming. “And you peeled out like a maniac with your testicles in a knot.”

Harry coughed to cover a laugh, turning discretely to make a show of checking my vitals on the monitors.

Batten squared his shoulders at me. “She watched me leave,” he supposed.

“She guessed I'd told you no.” I got the momentary willies. Was she looking at me while I shoveled my snow and answered her call? How cringeworthy. “To take Harry, she had to break our Bond first; that meant luring me out and…” I left it hanging, trying not to get a vivid Technicolor flashback.

Inching two fingers to explore the lower back wound out of morbid curiosity was a dumb idea. It throbbed continuously and I wondered how long it would be until I could have more meds. “I touched the knife and got a clear impression.”

“That knife is evidence,” Batten groaned. “It's been bagged and tagged, it's going to have your fingerprints all over it.”

My stitches were under a dressing, and the area seemed a lot smaller length-wise than it felt pain-wise. “My DNA and fingerprints were already smeared all over it. I had to Grope it. Her feelings had re-focused towards Harry: want, need, loneliness, mixed with the belief that she could now take my place. Harry, I need my notebooks. I need to write this down.”

Harry said so quietly I almost didn't hear, “Oh, ducky, whatever for?” He touched the back of my hand with his cool fingertips.

I recalled, “She really did think you were hers, Batten, that I'd stolen you away. And she thought she deserved to have Harry, that I deserved to lose him, that it was fair turnabout. Someone else told
her that, someone she trusted. Mixed in all that were confused feelings about her revenant companion, George, missing him, needing him, jealousy. I didn't really get the connection. But her plan was destined to fail. Once Harry knew what she'd done to clear the plate for herself…”

“I'd have torn her in half stem to stern and had her guts for garters,” Harry agreed. “But you didn't hear that, Agent.”

“You think it surprises me?” Batten murmured, but his thoughts were elsewhere, his gaze past the window glass and into the distant night. “You talk of rules and law. You think I don't know you could kill at the drop of a hat?”

“For my DaySitter,” Harry said, staring a hole in Batten's back, and the edge in his voice tingled all along my right arm, where he hovered. “I'd kill for MJ. You really ought not judge me too harshly, lad, for I suspect you'd do the same.”

“And before DaySitters? How many innocent people did you drain dry in those years? A thousand? Ten thousand?”

“This is not the time,” I warned. “I'm trying to connect the dots and you're pointing fingers in each other's faces like a couple of drunk knuckleheads at a bar.”

“There is no doubt in my DaySitter's mind that you have killed more than I, Agent Batten.” Harry dropped his voice, as though he regretted having to point it out. “Ask her which one of us is more a danger to her well-being.”

“Hey, baboons?” I clapped once, hard, to get their attention. “This is truly fascinating in a Discovery Channel sort of way, but I'm switching off now. It's… well, they took my watch, but it's gotta be after midnight. Get out.”

“‘Tis only ten o'clock, love, but surely you must be exhausted after surgery.” Harry motioned to the door at Batten. “I'll have a few minutes alone with my DaySitter now, if you don't mind.”

It was a dismissal. I'd love to say that Harry wasn't doing the big dog thing, marking his territory, but he wasn't even trying to be subtle about it. The effect was immediate; I didn't need any psychic powers to read the stiff, hot irritation flashing from across the room.

“I'll be with Chapel at your place, Baranuik.”

Ah, back to Baranuik, just one of the guys. Punishment for Harry's lordly manner, I guessed. I nodded at him mock-formally.

“Very well, Special Agent Batten, sir,” I said crisply, adding a salute. If he got it, he didn't indicate, and like always I couldn't feel anything from his side of the room. “Tell Chapel I'll be home tomorrow.” Both men started to object, Batten with an exasperated exhale, Harry with a ruffled-feather squawk. I cut them off. “I'm not staying here a minute longer than I have to. It's not safe for either of us. Tomorrow, I sign papers and ditch this dump.”

Their voices in unison became a cacophony of objections, all more than a little insulting yet admittedly valid. I closed my eyes and settled back into my pillows so I could ignore it. I yawned, long and loud behind my hand to make my point. Batten stalked out without another word.

When I cracked an eyelid, Harry was pondering my forehead. My favorite pink calfskin gloves lay limp across his palms, stained but newly stitched where Danika's knife had flayed the palm.

“Harry, these are probably evidence. You took these from the crime scene.”

“Perhaps I ought not to have done, only I thought you might want them.”

“You sewed them?” I touched them tentatively, brushing just my fingertips across the leather, waiting for an inevitable influx of residual rage, horror, pain. It didn't come. I examined the tiny, tight stitches. “You can sew?”

Harry sniffed with insult. “Don't be absurd, of course I can. I spent two world wars as a field medic with the Royal Army Medical Corps. In 1937…”

Crap. I'd forgotten, and now he was building steam towards his Victoria Cross lecture. I cut him off. “Right! Faithful in Adversity. The Linseed Lancers. I remember.”

“One expects that you should.” He slid the gloves onto my hands one at a time then reached up to tuck hair away from my temple. “I suggest a haircut, and you make an appointment with Sweeny Todd.”

“Oh God, my hair!” I had forgotten completely. Batten hadn't said a thing about it. Neither had the sheriff. “Bad enough I'm stuck in this horrid hospital gown. What does it look like?”

“It does nothing to hide that the chill affects your nipples,” he said frowningly. “Did you not notice the hunter's iniquitous stare? Apparently discretion is a foreign notion to the scoundrel.”

“Harry,” I wailed. “My hair!”

“At least they washed the blood out of it, that looked perfectly frightful. I have seen soldiers in the trenches along the Swiss Frontier with the tops of their heads blown clean off who had less blood in their hair. Of course, you are such a fair and flaxen blonde…”

“Harry!” I slapped my hands to my head, feeling around. “What does it look like?!”

“Quite…” He wrinkled his nose. “Punk rock. If you had a stronger face, you could pull it off.” He scanned my head, disapproval playing across his tight lips as he tapped them with one forefinger. “No, upon consideration, I'm afraid you simply do not have the cheekbones for it. You have been eating far too many biscuits; it has softened the line of your jaw.” He reached out and chucked my chin with a cool finger. I swatted him away.

“Knock that off.”

“I know you prefer the truth.”

“Not the whole truth!” I tugged edges of my bangs down to peer up around my eyebrows at the jagged clumps. “It's that short?”

“Oh, ‘tis gone, love. You look like the young lady who sings that song you like, the one with the demonic clowns in the video? Pink?”

I stared at him with growing horror. “Sherlock gave me a faux-hawk?”

“I shouldn't like to call it that.” Harry cocked his head, peering at my skull. “Rather, it appears as though you have, perched atop your crown, an albino hedgehog afflicted with severe jaundice. As I have repeatedly advised, were you to buy shampoo of a better quality, the color would not be so dreadfully brassy. Furthermore, I fear it is time to have your highlights refreshed.”

I exhaled hard, slumping back into the pillows. My defeat was complete, a real trouncing, though I couldn't tell you who'd done more damage, Sherlock, or Harry and his nitpicking. “Sonnuva twatwaffle.”