Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (35 page)

“You promised that before but it was all a big tease.” Harry looked Batten up and down hungrily, his etiquette having flown the coop. “What do you say, Agent Batten? Shall we go outside and see about putting you in your place? You sorely need it.”

Chapel finally spoke up. “I don't think that's going to happen tonight.”

“Yeah, pull it together,” I agreed. “You're acting like a couple of low-swinging dicks and we've got serious business on deck.”

Harry blew a perfect smoke ring and watched it. “When he comes in snorting like a speared bull, any man in my position would be prone to grabbing the nearest red sheet.”

“You're not a man,” Batten snarled.

“Ah, you are correct, lad! A man cannot smell the abscissin that triggers the fall of leaves in autumn, but I can. I can taste the mulberries the Bombyx mori silk moths devoured before they were steamed to death for the silk threads of my seven-fold tie. I can feel the ache of my DaySitter's ingrown toenail. If I touch her arm, I can discern exactly where she longs to be touched next. Can you?”

Batten's jaw did his clenchy thing. Harry tapped ash into an empty mug.

“I feel her, Agent Batten, and I feel you, too: every flicker of doubt, every lurid desire, every hurried thud of your reckless heart. You cling to the belief that I am not a man.” Harry dropped his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “And I do understand why you need to convince yourself of that, boy. Truly I do.” The smile reappeared,
bursting through like bright white sunshine on a field of snow. It was followed by a hearty laugh. Batten turned angry cartoon bull-red.

“Can the innuendo, fool,” I reprimanded, swatting at Harry's pale bare shoulder. “And hold on, this might hurt.”

“Do try not to be melodramatic, ducky,” Harry admonished, and lengthened his neck, tipping his head forward so as not to cast my work in shadow. He opened his book again and brushed the page with a free finger.

I took a deep breath and eyeballed Chapel out of the corner of my eye. “If your stomach is still bugging you, you might wanna go elsewhere for this.”

When neither Fed made a move to leave, I rolled my fingertips around along the sides of the wound until I could feel where the hard nub of bullet was. “It didn't go in very far,” I commented. “Are you the man of steel?”

“Superman is bulletproof,” Batten said flatly.

“No,” I argued. “He's faster than a speeding bullet. Harry would be too, if he'd thought for a second Dunnachie would shoot him in the back.”

“No,” Batten argued back, “Bullets bounce off Superman, like they did in Superman Returns.”

The pliers closed in on the first bullet and when I pulled it out, Harry hissed into his chest. He said, “I had no idea you were a nerd, Agent Batten.”

“Harry,” I sighed. “We don't have time for pissing contests.”

“Revenants do not urinate,” Harry waved away with his smoking hand, then motioned to his second wound as I put the first bullet on the coffee table. Harry's pale blue blood bubbled against the mushroomed slug in a slippery mound.

Batten inched forward to look, hands-off, at the bullet. “Jacketed hollow point, but that's not copper or steel. Looks like silver.”

“Naturally, it would be,” Harry confirmed softly. “Do you like riddles, Agent Batten?”

I exhaled hard. Clenching my teeth, I ground out, “Lord Dreppenstedt.”

Batten supplied easily enough, “No.”

“Evidently, you do,” Harry corrected. “That's why you seek out mysteries to solve. When hunting innocent immortals with jolly old Jack Batten got boring, you joined the force. When police work wasn't challenging enough, you joined the FBI. When that failed to blow your skirt up, you joined Agent Chapel's PCU. And now there's the riddle of my pet: will she or won't she, before you get her killed?”

“Bit off-side, don't you think?” Batten charged.

“If you get her into danger, she needs you, but blames you. If you get her out of danger, she no longer needs you. If you work with her, you cannot have her. If you do not work with her, you cannot see her. Therein lies the rub.”

“Harry, stop,” I said flatly, digging for the second bullet a little less carefully than the first. Foam rose from the wound as the silver in the slug reacted with Harry's pale blue blood. Chapel was pretending to ignore us again, but his shoulders bunched and he looked uncomfortable.

“I'd never do anything to put her at risk,” Batten said angrily. “And the fact that she needs you is the only reason you're not a pile of ash.”

Harry considered for a moment, then nodded slowly in acquiescence. The second bullet hit the coffee table with a metallic clunk, and Harry folded out of his chair like nothing had happened. He stubbed out his cigarette butt.

“I will give you this, Agent Batten. You endure torment with a brand of patience I have only ever seen in my own kind. You've got bottle, sir.” He rose nimbly and Batten jerked again. After a wide, cocky smile, Harry padded barefoot from the room in a very human strut, not bothering to pull out the dizzying slip-glide of the old ones. Guess he figured he'd riled the Fed enough.

“Is bottle a compliment?” Batten asked me, settling onto the couch.

I shrugged. “Hell if I know. That's a new one on me.” I glanced at Harry's book: Bed and Breakfast Ownership. Talk about your bad ideas. I tossed it into the woodstove and watched it catch.

“I could take him.”

It was one of the more childish things I'd ever heard come out of Batten's mouth, so ridiculous and so unlike him that it hurt my brain. I felt my eyebrows pucker.

“Sure. And Agent Chapel here could last three rounds of Ultimate Fighting in the octagon with Chuck “the Iceman” Liddell.” I rolled my eyes grandly. “Wait, lemme call my bookie and put some money on it.”

“Don't think that's a fair comparison,” Batten said.

“You're right. Because Chuck Liddell can't gnaw open people's chest cavities to eat their hearts, last I checked. I mean, get real, Batten. Harry's been amassing preternatural clout for four centuries, and you're only human. If he wanted you dead, you'd last one eighth of a second.”

“You see him kill someone before?”

I had, but there was no way I trusted Batten enough to share. I blocked the memory completely so the answer wouldn't show on my face and said, “Don't be an ass-hat.”

Unhappily, I perched on the chair that Harry had vacated, scooting it a bit further back from the woodstove so I wouldn't get quite the same blasting of heat. Quiet layered disquiet in the room until it was a veritable discomfort lasagna without the yummy ricotta. It was late and I was hungry. I had the lens of the murdered girl's sunglasses(or the murderer's, maybe) in my bedside table drawer, hiding under an old issue of Cosmo that I kept for the 50 new ways to blow your lover's mind! article. I hadn't completely given up hope that someday I might have a lover whose mind needed to be blown.

Batten's eyes were veiled again, his cop face, and he avoided looking at me. I wondered what he was thinking as he stared gloomily at the small square window of the woodstove, flames licking sooty glass. There was a long silence filled only with Chapel's fingers tapping on his keyboard. No one had made a move to clean up the ghoul's rampage, and I sure as hell didn't want to do it. I hadn't asked for any of this. I wondered if I could get Harry to hire a cleaning service tomorrow. Did Molly Maid know how to get ghoul-stink out of carpets? Could I live with goo overnight, or should I get a pail and soap?

I curled up in Harry's oxblood Cetus leather wingback chair and laid my head in the crook of my arm, curling my gloved hands into loose fists. Harry came back fully dressed, in his fine grey flannel trousers and a proper white dress shirt, rolled up to the elbows to expose my name tattooed on his wrist.

“I trust you gentlemen are staying the night.”

I moaned into the crook of my elbow, “They're not staying.”

“Thank you,” Batten confirmed, to the revenant not me.

“Why do you need to be here? I'm home. I don't need you to watch Harry.” And I sure didn't want Kill-Notch Batten around my baby brother right now.

“Someone's trying to kill you. A ghoul has been through here looking for her other eye, and we don't know whether either or both will come back,” he said flatly.

“She didn't get the eye. She'll come back. Fat lot of good you'll be when she does,” I said under my breath, punctuated by Harry's disapproving teeth-suck.

Chapel said from behind his keyboard, “Mark and I accepted Harry's invitation earlier, Marnie; we'll be here until this business is sorted.” There was steel in his voice, like he was telling me, not asking me. For once, Chapel did not sound polite. I didn't particularly like it, but I respected it.

Batten cut his deep blue eyes to me with a look that shot hot flutters into my belly: he has intentions. I didn't know what intentions (to talk? to argue? to fuck me senseless?) but it came across clearly that he was planning something.

“Well now, since we have guests, I should get busy in the kitchen,” Harry suggested.

“Don't go to any trouble, Lord Dreppenstedt.”

Harry held up a hand. “Don't be ridiculous, Agent Chapel, it's no trouble at all. I've already defrosted my loin for you.”

My head came up to witness Chapel's blush. He touched his throat for reassurance but the necktie was missing.

“Pork loin,” I amended. “Harry, don't tease.”

“Moi? Tease? I never tease.” Harry frowned as though he couldn't comprehend what I was saying. He smiled pleasantly as he watched Chapel leave the room. “I am afraid I do not have any beer left, Agent Batten, but if you're off-duty could I offer you some spirits?”

“Gin, if you have it.” Batten was still drilling me with his gaze like he was trying to send me telepathic signals or something; it was starting to rub against the grain.

“Ah,” Harry recalled wistfully. “I remember three pennies for a glass of gin in East end of London back when Saucy Jack was gutting prossies in Whitechapel. Now killers take the heads of little girls clean off and gin's five whole dollars a bottle. What is the world coming to?”

“Harry, what the hell are you doing?” I asked.

“Being a good host, ducky. You should perhaps try it sometime. So, Agent Batten, how do you keep life interesting while you are on the job? I mean, other than incessantly trying to plant yourself between my DaySitter's lovely thighs.”

“Harry!” I wadded up a napkin and fired it at his head. It bounced off ineffectually. Harry ignored it.

Batten parried, “The job's interesting enough.”

“Oh yes,” Harry said. “Ghouls, goblins and goetic magic. I am curious, when first you came to Denver, what exactly were your expectations?”

My stomach did a sick flip-flop. I wished I had gone to bed early. I wished Harry had lost his tongue months ago in a tragic bloodsucking accident. I wished Kristin Davis’ ghoul would crash through the kitchen window this instant and give us all a gooey, snarly reason to drop it.

Batten's face was unreadable as he pressed his broad back into the couch, staring at the coffee table as though the right answer was written on the bullets in Harry's blue blood. Finally, he looked up at the revenant and said, “There's no such thing as goblins.”

“I believe it is time for you to face an unpleasant truth, Agent Batten. In the empire of her heart the rest of you, you mere mortals, are but court jesters for her temporary amusement. There can be only one king, and I am he.” His eyes gleamed, luminous, as he summoned his unearthliness to underline his point. “Ask her. She will say as much, I promise you.”

Batten put his elbow on the back of the couch, a seemingly casual gesture. “You seem pretty sure of yourself, bloodsucker.”

“Play with her if you must. Pleasure her to your heart's content, and to hers. You have my permission.”

“Oh?” Batten's smile was fleeting, tinged with incredulity. “Do I? How generous.”

“Uh, pardon me while I put these bullets back in,” I said, grabbing the pliers and waving them in Harry's direction.

Harry ignored me. “It worries me not, Agent Batten, for you are inconsequential, and her interest in you is transitory. I am forever.”

Would he feel this strongly about every man, or did Batten make him bluff and bluster this way? I looked at Harry and knew then that he had put his foot down in a most final way. I would never be married. I would never have children. Vi had been allowed these things, but something had changed in Harry since then. Maybe he saw mistakes in hindsight. This time, his DaySitter would be his alone. There would be no room for any other man, not seriously, not permanently. I had given my only oath, my only vows, my last commitment.

Batten must have seen something in my face. “Marnie?”

I was utterly seized by Harry's eyes; they were very human grey now, like lead shavings on cashmere, soft and pliable. But beneath that was a solid, immovable thing—a thing, not a person, I knew—the limits of its power unknowable. It was the first time I'd ever caught myself thinking of my Cold Company as a monster, more than a man and not at all human. I felt myself nodding.

“Harry knows he's my number one. I'm not going anywhere,” I said in a daze. It sounded like conviction but felt like defeat.

“Why don't you just put her in shackles and a chastity belt,” Batten said grimly.

“She chose to spend time with you, however briefly,” Harry reminded him. “She chooses to stay with me.”

“So this territorial pissing is for my benefit? Because it feels like you're telling her, not me.”

“Revenants don't urinate,” Harry said for the second time tonight, and brought his gaze back to me. He smiled benevolently.

I did my best to muster up a smile for him in return.

THIRTY-TWO

Changing a subject usually requires a clever segue, or at least some understated wordplay. I had neither. Chapel would have been a help, but he had disappeared upstairs without saying good night following Harry's defrosted loins comment. Maybe his nausea had come back. Mine sure had.

Facing off across the coffee table, Harry on his home turf and Batten the invading force. They looked like a biology grad's interpretation of male-male competition for a thesis paper on Cro-Magnon sexual rivalry; neither moved, but both measured, calculated, estimated, subtly without words now, both of them sure they were the superior choice. Since neither of them was an ideal “mate” by any stretch of the imagination, I wasn't sure what the hell we three were doing. Whatever it was, it was damn uncomfortable.