Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (26 page)

“Nothing we can do about it at this time of night, Harry, so just chill. I'll get it fixed tomorrow.”

“We are trapped here alone, then?” he clarified. I didn't like the way he said it, and a shiver tripped up my spine. I waited for the horror movie lightening and thunder, but it didn't come: the night was still and empty.

“Just stuck for a night.” I tried to smile. “Batten and Chapel will be back soon.”

Some dark thought slithered through the ash grey of his eyes like a fat black leach grabbing hold. His fangs were fully extended now, and I marveled, not for the first time, how clandestinely he could go from just-Harry to lethal preternatural force with little outward hint.

“Did you lock the door properly?” he asked.

I'd double-checked it, so I nodded. When I was sure he wasn't going to bolt, I dropped my hands. “What were you saying about Chapel?”

“Agent Chapel reports that the Davis family is reluctant to have you at the funeral at St. George Anglican in Ten Springs.”

Slighted, I huffed. “Fine. I didn't want to see those poopyheads anyway.”

“The very sentiment uttered by Sultan Mehmet II before he fled Prince Tepes and Wallachia,” Harry said.

“No doubt.”

“Fear not, my snubbed sugarplum, your industrious agents have instead secured for you an invitation to the funeral home to pay respects before the service. Agent Batten suggests we arrive in style.” Harry returned his arms to the warm haven of the sink, closing his eyes with pleasure. “Deputy Dunnachie and Sheriff Hood will watch the mourners in the church afterward on our behalf.”

“I don't wanna go at all,” I said, glad at least that I didn't have to bring Harry anywhere near a church. The last time we'd come within a block of a house of worship, smoke had started rising from his hair and he smelt like charred road-kill for days.

Dropping the broken jar pieces and singed lid in the recycling bin in the mudroom, I washed my hands thoroughly, grabbed a Ziploc bag from a kitchen drawer and stuffed it in my clean pocket. Standing shoulder to shoulder with him at the sink, I sighed. “You know, the funeral home is going to be awful, too. Maybe you better stay here. The family's priest will probably be there. You can't go near a man of God, he'll give you hives.”

“Your agents believe it is for the best that you make an official appearance, and I will not have you so exposed without my protection.”

He was right, I knew, but I didn't like putting him at risk. “I need cookies,” I sighed. “Pretty sure I've never needed a cookie this badly.”

“Without biscuits, there is no happiness in my pet's life.”

“Truer words were never spoken.”

“I thought you wanted a shower, Dr. Pepper and a sitcom to go with your supper of pizza?”

“I want all those things. But first I need a sugar boost. You know, to get the energy to pig out.”

“Hmm, yes.” He kissed my forehead, a rare occurrence and one that made my lips twitch up. “Pigging out requires great fortitude.”

“Batten's a crapweasel for using me like this.”

He hung his head. “Please do not make me defend him.”

I blinked in disbelief. “How can you?”

“I trust you are not honestly surprised by his actions.”

“He wants to finish this, I get that. I'm just surprised that you're on his side. Chapel was pissed. Do you think the case is Chapel's main concern, or does he actually have my best interests in mind?”

I glanced up at him, feeling Harry's hesitation, the flinching in his arms, a reflexive drawing-away. Doubt. Guilt. An answer to an unspoken question came to me as glass fresh-splintering clear across a mirror, so obvious, so indisputable that I should have seen it at once. It seemed unreal but once it occurred to me, it was the only thing that made sense. When I considered Chapel's guilt: the blushing, the way he was sometimes missing his necktie (which I would no doubt find downstairs in Harry's basement bed chamber if I cared to go hunting for it), Chapel's confusion and disappointment about Harry's delivery from Shield, it all made sense now. Gary Chapel wanted to feed Harry. Had he already? Was Chapel the source of Harry's warmth? Of all people, Gary?!

Of course it was Gary. Chapel had done what he promised. He'd stood in for me as Harry's daytime protection, but in truth he'd become DaySitter in every sense of the word as it applied to Harry's well-being, except for the Bond. He was there when we needed him, but he'd gone ahead and fed my companion from his own veins. I hadn't asked him to and I'd never have approved if anyone had asked me. Maybe that's why they hadn't. Could it have been Gary's agenda all along? Above and beyond the call of duty, indeed. I wondered if either of them would admit it.

And now Harry could scarcely wait for Gary Chapel to come home to us, pulling away from me when I mentioned Chapel's motivations. Why, when I was standing right here in his arms? Was Chapel a more ideal protector? A better partner? Was I no longer Harry's priority? Had I been usurped? Or was I just being paranoid?

I felt a flush of irritation and pulled away, rummaging for Oreos in the pantry. When I couldn't find them on their usual shelf between the Cheez Doodles and the peanut butter, my right eyelid started to twitch. I had to press on it to make it stop.

“Where…” I heard my voice drop to deadly quiet. “Are my Double-fucking-Stuf Oreos?”

“I believe they were set on the kitchen table earlier.”

“Those are my cookies to give, not yours. Mine.”

“If I have trespassed against you in some way, I do sincerely apologize,” he said calmly.

“It's strange how you're wrong about that, when you think you're always right about stuff.”

“That is a head-scratcher,” Harry agreed. “How can we reconcile this seeming incongruity?”

“Who exactly ate them? As if I need to ask.”

Harry's chair creaked as he sat back, unrolling his sleeves and refastening his cufflinks. “I am many things, darling: I am your instrument of reckoning; my reach, your retribution; the sound of my voice, your enemy's death knell; the reach of my hand, his final ruin. ‘Ere I tread, his doom shall follow.” He flashed a brilliant smile, teasing. “I am not, however, the monitor of this home's cookie intake, my spirited little sparrow. No man living or dead could manage such a task.”

I started running more hot water in the sink, turning my back on him. “It was Chapel, wasn't it? He took my cookies.”

Harry was quiet for a long beat; when he answered his voice held a cautious lilt. “It's possible?”

“Well, how dare he?” I threw the sponge into the water. “He comes swaggering right up into my personal space, my personal space, where he wasn't invited…”

“Was he not?”

“I didn't ask him to come here and shove pictures of headless corpses in my face then damn well move in with me! Then he opens his fat yap and swipes my goodies?” I rinsed the teapot carefully and set it in the drainer so I wouldn't chuck it through the window over the sink.

“Judging by your fury, I'm surprised he walked away from this act alive,” Harry said with a wary trace of sarcasm.

“What choice do I have? I can't blink my eyes and turn him into a smoldering ruin.”

“Hmm,” Harry agreed guardedly. “Dearheart, are you quite sure you're not projecting? Is it in fact Agent Chapel that is causing this sudden fury, young Gary and his felonious pilfering of your biscuits?”

“I am a law-abiding woman, and it's a damn good thing too, because he has some pretty big delusions, the deconstruction of which I would have heartily relished.”

Harry fingered his empty goblet. “I always suspected that Agent Chapel had some serious defects and was not to be trusted. Thank you for exposing the squirrel's true nature.” Now the sarcasm was liberally applied. My face heated.

“You're not taking this seriously at all,” I accused.

“Should I be? The Agents are human. They do need to eat.”

“They need to eat.” My throat felt full of bile. “They do. They've got lots of needs, don't they? What about me? What about you? Is nothing sacred around here?”

“A revenant does not eat biscuits,” Harry said, looking confused at his need to point out the obvious. “What is it about their needs that has you so upset?”

“Just because he's here doesn't mean he can help himself to whatever is mine, help himself to everything!” I sloshed soapy water around with the sponge, scrubbing the teapot more vigorously than tea stains required. “Why doesn't he just throw on my lingerie and traipse around waving my sex toys while he's at it!”

“Lord and Lady,” Harry choked back a surprised laugh. “That's not a pretty picture to paint!” After a beat. “You own sex toys?”

“No!”

“You do not, then, refer to the purple apparatus in your night table that I was surprised to discover next to your wallet?”

“That's a foot massager,” I fibbed, turning to scowl at him.

His face was carefully blank, tasting the lie with a heavy-lidded gaze. “I thought I was your foot massager.”

“Sometimes you're unavailable. And my foot massager isn't for Gary-blasted-Chapel to touch either!”

Harry's eyeballs crawled backwards as though he were searching for answers to my malfunction on the inside of his skull. “Brace yourself for further betrayal, darling. I believe your young hunter had several biscuits as well.”

“Well, of course he did. Batten I expect to annoy me. Batten can't help it. Batten was born to aggravate me. His very existence is punishment for horrid things I did in a past life. But Gary? Gary?” I waggled the wet sponge at him and dripped all over the floor. Harry watched the soapy mess with rising distress. “I suppose we should
get his name tattooed on our wrists, since he owns everything else in this damn house.”

“What sense does that make?” Harry pushed back from the table, rising. The kitchen filled with his anxiety, and despite the breakdown of our Bond, I felt it hit me in the solar plexus.

“Stop that!” I shot back. “It makes perfect sense. Angry sense.”

“As one can clearly see.” He swallowed hard. “Perhaps you should retire for the evening. You have had quite enough excitement for one day.”

“And another thing.” I balled the sponge and tossed it back in the sink. “I want a fucking bath! Not a shower, a bath!”

“Well, you cannot have a bath,” he said calmly. “Doctor's orders.”

I pointed at him hard. “You bother me!”

“Is there anything that is not bothering you at the moment, my love? Perhaps I can help you sort things out.”

I exhaled hard, squeezing my eyes shut to stop weary tears. “Oh Harry. I'm sorry. I'm…”

“Overwrought?”

My shoulders fell. “If stress were water, I'd be dog-paddling the Pacific.”

“Such a fuss you make. Come to me.” He stood and beckoned me to his embrace with arms open. Despite my suspicions, I stepped into the shelter of his familiar clinch and let myself melt against his body, the well-fed warmth of which I stubbornly ignored. “Oh, the crown of my comfort, the spring to my bumbershoot, the very laces of my boot. How I do abhor the song of your distress.”

“Gosh. Never been called someone's bootlace before. I don't know what to say,” I muttered into the revenant's chest.

“I may know what you need, my quivering quail.” His hand slid down one of my arms, his lingering touch raising all the hairs at the nape of my neck.

“I don't think I'm ready for that just yet.”

“Mmhmm,” he said as though he didn't believe me. “You're a tough little bird.”

“I'll hurt something.”

“We shall have to be gentle then, won't we?” he promised, tipping my chin up to face the twinkle in his eyes. “I'll go slip into the appropriate attire and meet you in the living room in ten, shall I?”

“There's no way I can talk you out of it?”

“Tut, tut,” he chided. “Surely you recognize that I know what is best for my pet?”

TWENTY-FOUR

“You're going to have to do better than that,” Harry reprimanded.

“But it hurts.”

He asked me. “You're not injured here.”

His graceful, supple body moved in to faultless alignment alongside mine, close enough to touch. The fine sandy hair across his perfectly sculpted chest tickled my bare shoulder as he leaned in closer. The lithe, taut line of the revenant's belly put me to shame, reminding me how very out of shape I'd let myself become.

“You're stiff and out of practice,” he said, his mouth brushing my ear.

“You're calling me stiff?” I huffed. “Don't make me state the obvious, dead guy.”

Harry's cool hand landed firmly on my shoulder. “You can do it.”

I groaned, reaching for my heel. “I don't think I can.”

“Do not crank your ankle, you will injure yourself. Come now, ducky, this is a simple position. You mastered this long ago.”

He helped me slide my ankle onto my knee in lotus position and then patted high on my thigh. So intimate were his long, even strokes kneading my muscles with familiarity, if anyone had peered through the frost-covered glass of the living room window, spying me in padmasana and Harry in yoga pants and bare chest, they might assume he was both my personal trainer and my lover. If only.

“Better,” he encouraged. “Breathe. Don't slouch.”

“I couldn't slouch if I tried,” I snarled.

“Less whining, more focus. Straighten your spine. Now we are only going to do a half-twist. Stop when you feel pressure right here.” His agile hand lit across my belly.

Yoga massage with Harry always involved a lot of coaching. He'd been limber for the better part of two centuries and I was just learning. Exercise is vital for revenants; their muscular systems don't work the same way as ours and fall flaccid quickly without daily upkeep, which eventually affects their preternatural might. Being undead doesn't negate the effects of a sedentary lifestyle, quite the opposite in fact. One look at eight hundred pound Fat Dracula on YouTube should explain why revenants stick to human blood. All ingested food becomes permanently stored fat in a revenant body, which is why Harry's only indulgence is the odd roll of Polo Mints he brought back from London. Even after Fat Dracula's liposuction, his weight had ballooned right back up, because he refused to give up bacon double cheese burgers. I sympathized, nothing like a good bacon double cheeseburger.