Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (33 page)

“Sounds like a lot of work,” Batten said. “That's not regular witchcraft, like what you do.”

“Dark Lady, no,” Harry gasped from beside me, and clutched for my hand, forgetting the smell of it. “Do not for a moment think I would allow such monstrous acts from my DaySitter. I'm not happy about the space-hopping, either.” He turned my arm so he could see the hives along the inside, and gave me a long penetrating look. “If she wishes to dabble in a bit of candle magic or kitchen witchery, fine. Flesh magic, or any other black magic, is absolutely forbidden. I will not have demons in my home.”

Forbidden? I felt my eyebrows hit my hairline but left it alone.

“Anyways,” I continued. “A ghoul like the one we just saw is a similar story to the poltergeist, except it's corporeal. It's the literal raising of the dead, but unlike a zombie who obeys a bokor's commands, a ghoul is much less controllable and reasonably sentient. Once it's set loose, it's free-thinking and reactive to its environment. It'll adhere to its original task, given by the witch through the demon, but it'll take detours if it chooses.”

“Does it have to be a specific demon at work?” Batten asked.

“There are two types of demons that do this work. Judging by the appearance of the ghoul I'd say the witch used exothermic flesh magic to call a wrath demon, rather than sex magic, which is endothermic, to call a lust demon. Although,” I reconsidered. “The head in the mailbox wasn't sloughing skin and rotting quickly. Of course, it was cold and possibly frozen beforehand…”

“Sex magic?” Batten's brow almost went up in interest, but he kept it in check. Eyebrow magic.

“Never mind.” I crossed my arms over my chest, wishing I still had my jacket. I scratched distractedly at the hives.

“If the information would help us,” Chapel requested.

“You just wanna hear me talk dirty,” I accused. The glance Chapel gave me in the rearview mirror was not amused. “Sex magic involves laborious rituals rarely used any more, except by horny noobs, involving a nine-foot circle and lots of nudity. The witch conjures the lesser demon with the promise of possession. He or she literally allows the demon to enter their body, after which…” I shrugged. “Classic goetic magic has a witch and her sexual partner in the circle of power, but there's a lot of battery-powered magic in those circles now. Who has time to find a partner who'd be into orgasm under the influence of demons? Probably Craig's List doesn't have a subcategory for that.”

“I would not be so sure, my darling,” Harry said dryly.

Eeeeuuuuww. I pressed my back further into the seat. “People are freaks.”

Batten cleared his throat. “Why a lesser demon?”

Harry and I exchanged looks in the dark safety of the back seat. I had to laugh. “Uh, because you might be able to conjure a greater
demon against its wishes but it would not be controllable once it arrived. It would eat you alive. A superior demon might listen if it chose to, but would probably be pissed off at your audacity, and would eat you alive. Last but not least, a demon king wouldn't deign to hear you at all. Try all you like to conjure one, they've got better things to do than obey the call of humans.”

“Agent Chapel and I lost track of the ghoul, my love. Will it return to its demon master, or should we search for it before it cuts a swath through town?” Harry asked.

“No need,” I informed them. “Since the first thing it did was reclaim that eye, I'm assuming it was raised with the task to get its eyes back and destroy anything that tries to prevent it. Safe to say, it's going to get its other eye.”

Batten muttered, “Where is Kristin Davis’ other eye, Marnie?”

“Pretty sure I left it under my bed in a sandwich baggie,” I sighed, defeated. “And I thought I told you to call me Snickerdoodle.”

THIRTY

Some nights I wish I was five again. Wearing my fuzzy blue Smurfs pajamas with the loud slipper feet, curled up under my father's desk while he worked away at his poetry and chain smoked unfiltered cigarettes he bought tax-free in big bags on the First Nations reservation. A frustrated artist, starving only because he regularly forgot to eat, Dad was never the best at providing for his family. But then, he figured since my mother, Vi's only child, had no interest in feeding an immortal, that he'd be inheriting Harry (and Harry's considerable wealth) one day. A misconception that freed him from the burden of making more money than the bare minimum while he bided his time. After days in our family greenhouse, father focused on his true love: the written word. Driven to distraction, my father would stare at the pages in silence, at times struck mute and wordless for hours. One of his sock feet would tap the carpet earnestly. His pen would thump the legal pad while he struggled to fit the lyrical images in his head into verse that pleased his ear. Sometimes, real low, I would hear him muttering a stanza over and over, twisting it backward, or cut in two, playing with the language until it sounded fresh. Perfect.

I'd known then that if I made a peep, I'd be asked to leave, so I'd stick to eating my Cheetos (in retrospect, probably not the quietest snack to be covertly munching) and reading Garfield comics. When Garfield was particularly goofy, I'd cover my giggles by slapping both hands over my mouth. Looking back, I'm sure my father must have heard my snorted-back laughter. Maybe his child's hilarity inspired rather than hindered him. I was rarely shooed from the study the way Carrie was.

The world was all right, then. No one ever fought, not in the world when I was five. We didn't have a lot, but we had our passions. No one said a hurtful word, for words were sacred tools in my parents’ house. Roget's thesaurus lived on our coffee table and we were encouraged to use the best word we could for every occasion. “Ghoul-bait” was never a winner, but it was the one I was thinking now as Chapel eased the SUV into my driveway and headlights swept the slim figure standing on my front porch.

His too-long, white-blond hair roped down along his shoulders in odd dreadlocks as his chin hung low, and even after he must have heard tires crunch frozen gravel he did not raise his face to us. It didn't matter. I recognized the build immediately through that spooky familial bond that lets you pin-point your own kin in a crowd.

Except he wasn't in a crowd. He was standing vulnerable and alone, blanched by my halogen porch light, in worn jeans and a tattered red and black plaid jacket that didn't look warm enough for a Rocky Mountain winter. Hands shoved into his pockets, a navy blue baseball hat tucked under his arm rather than on his head where it might have held in at least some heat. An oily sort of fear slid through me. He was still skinny to the point of being scrawny. And while all Baranuiks are built light-weight, he looked underfed and unhealthy, and I thought with disappointment but not surprise: drugs.

I felt rather than saw Batten in the front seat putting a hand on the butt of his gun and I said, “You shoot my baby brother, Batten, and I'll feed you to my ghoul-friend in barbequed chunks.”

“Brother,” Chapel said questioningly. He sat up straighter but didn't take his eyes off the young man in front of the SUV's grill. “I thought you had five sisters.”

“And Wesley, the unexpected gift from God,” I said, hating that my voice had become snide. Jealous, me? “Mother's singular angel. She made me take his picture to art class once when we were studying Bernini's Apollo and Daphne. Under all that hair he's wearing, the likeness to Apollo is…” I struggled to find an adjective that didn't make me sound like a bitch (Nauseating? Teeth-grindingly disgusting? True, but…) and finally settled on: “Striking.”

Harry touched my arm and opened his mouth to say something, warning swimming in his eyes. Something had raised his hackles; his eyes had that luminous, unearthly sheen to them. Then, ostensibly defeated by some emotion I was not privy to through our broken Bond, he shook his head and opened the car door.

“Harry, what is it?” I asked.

He shrugged wearily. “At least the media is not here to capture this.”

We poured out of the SUV in unison, Harry mindful of the bullets still lodged in his rapidly-healing back and visibly unhappy to see our guest.

Wesley looked up, his face so pale that his freckles stood out in odd dots like they were plopped on by a drunken doll maker. His narrow waist ended in hips that hadn't grown up with him, still boxy and adolescent though he was twenty now. If you ignored the hair and clothing, everything else about him was without flaw. As though painted by a master's adoring brush strokes, from his high chiseled cheeks, across the fine narrow nose to the softly rounded chin. Bright blue Nordic sled dog eyes were framed by playfully arching blond brows and too many lashes. He would have made a beautiful girl, Dad always said; in retrospect, not the kindest sentiment towards your only son. Probably why Wesley didn't spend a lot of time at home.

As I paced up the walkway, walking fast so I didn't have yet another flip-out in the ridiculous heels, I noticed the path and the drive had been freshly shoveled. My high heels clicked a fast rhythm as I closed the distance.

When I got close enough to my brother I felt a rare influx of power, un-requested, from behind me, from Harry. He never pushed the Blue Sense into action without my appeal, but I felt he was trying to show me something. My psychic empathy extended out to my brother and after the brief struggle trying to hone in past another's jumbled, tossed-salad of feelings, I felt Wes trying to cram down tremors of apprehension and regret. Uncertainty blended with a spike of pleasure and relief. Then, in typical Baranuik fashion, Wes dredged up some steel.

“Christ,” he exclaimed, giving me the once-over. “Where are you shopping, Hookers ‘R Us?”

“It's not safe out here, Wesley.” I reached out to him with one gloved hand and he shrank away from me. I tottered on my heels without his support, flapped to gain balance. “What are you doing here, in Colorado, out of the blue, dressed like you just crawled out of a ditch in West Virginia?” He needs money, I suspected. He'll clean up, flirt with us for a while, toss around his winning smiles, pour on the charm, make us laugh, make us feel good, and then mention how he's been down on his luck, and wait for a sucker to nurture him. This was Wesley's game.

I looked past him to the front door standing wide open and my eyes nearly popped out. “And how did you get in?”

“It was like that when I got here,” he said. And then more defensively, “I didn't ransack the place.”

The ghoul. I glanced over my shoulder, past Harry, at the Feds, hanging back, giving us space. Batten watched us closely. Chapel scanned the yard, his eyes everywhere. Despite an incongruous nighttime bird fight somewhere in the naked trees, the yard was deserted and windless.

I said to Wes, “How did you get here?” There was no car. I looked down at his big sloppy work boots. There was a scuff so deep it was threatening to become a hole in the left toe. “You just show up at your sister's place one night, hang around on the porch, shovel the walk, take in the scenery?”

Wes’ Husky dog eyes flickered past me to the SUV and the FBI agents. His teasing smile appeared, slipped to lopsided.

“You're welcome, bitch. Next time I won't bother. You can just get your big ass stuck in the snow drift.”

“Big ass?” I repeated, clenching both fists and stepping up in his face. Somewhere above, Ajax the debt vulture echoed my angry cry.

Behind me, Harry cleared his throat unhappily. “I see time and age has improved neither the lad's vocabulary nor gentility.”

“Baranuik,” Batten barked. “Continue this inside, maybe?”

Wes bit his bottom lip, turning his gaze from the Feds to consider Harry at last. I saw plain male thoughts creeping through his gaze. “Jesus, sis, exactly how many guys you fuckin’ now?”

Harry's hand flew before I could react, a blur too fast to see. The jarring smack as the back of Harry's tensed hand made impact with my little brother's cheekbone snapped Wes’ head to the side, but he didn't go over. He should have gone over. He didn't even stumble. Like an iron rod had been shoved up his spine, Wes took the blow, closed his eyes for a beat as though he were thinking, pondering a fitting response to the revenant. I saw Wes’ tongue run under his lips along the front of his teeth, checking for blood perhaps. I wondered if the impact had broken skin inside his mouth. If so, he was lucky that's all it was. Harry must have pulled the strike or Wes would be on his ass.

My brother had always been a hothead, getting thrown out of bars when he mouthed-off to the odd bouncer who wouldn't accept his fake ID, or tussling with guys hitting on the girl he'd set his eyes on. I fully expected Wes to forget he was facing a four hundred thirty-five-year-old revenant and blow his lid, at which point Harry would have no choice but to put him on the ground.

But when Wesley's head craned slowly back to face us, there was no fight in his expression, and when he opened his eyes they had gone a disquieting ice-violet, a sickly unnatural warning.

I shouldn't have shrieked. That was a mistake, in that it brought the Feds running. I flung back in horror as Harry's hands closed in on my biceps to keep me from hitting the ground. Batten's boots beat the frozen gravel fast, but I was already struggling to surge forward again, livid now, out of Harry's cupping grasp, making fists to beat my brother's chest.

“What have you done, what have you done?” I bellowed.

Again, Wes took the assault, just stood there as I pummeled him, fuming. He didn't have to brace his stance or flinch from the blows. It felt like I was hitting a flat plane of bricks. Cold, immovable bricks.

Harry's hand shot up to warn Chapel and Batten off. “Go inside, agents, but be aware that the door was open when Mr. Baranuik arrived, and the… escapee may already be within.”

“You didn't! You didn't!” I shouted in my brother's face, “You couldn't! How could you? No no NO!” and all the while Wesley stood unblinking, unflinching as I fell apart on him. All of a sudden, I couldn't bear to look at those abnormal eyes a second longer. I
twisted to flee deep into the dark of the yard, but the smell of ghoul scum on the wind made my gag reflex react, so I spun toward my porch. I couldn't go there either, to face the Feds and their inevitable questions, not now, not yet. I couldn't stay out here. I couldn't look at my brother. Lost, with nowhere to run, I pulled back into the shelter of Harry. Closing my eyes against the hot influx of shocked tears, I realized that my falling apart was not helping anyone, and quickly pulled my shit together.