Authors: A.J. Aalto
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, what are you going to name him?”
“He shall have a dignified name.” Harry considered the ball of fluff in the box, and then nodded decisively. “I shall name him after the Bard of Ayrshire.”
“Who?” Golden asked.
Amazingly, I knew this one. “Robert Burns?”
Harry smiled at me, impressed. “Indeed, my angel. The Ploughman Poet.”
“So…” I smirked. “Bob the Cat? Gotcha.
So
much classier than what I would have picked.”
Harry's smile disappeared, and he reached into the box to stroke the kitten. “Thank you ever so much, agents. Whilst I cannot imagine what follies led you to believe that my cantankerous chickadee could possibly care for one, the animal is now in good hands.”
I rolled my eyes, handed Harry the box, stood to hug de Cabrera, and mouthed
thank you
at Golden over Elian's shoulder. She accepted with a nod and a smile.
“We're hitting the local bar,” de Cabrera announced. “Check out the night life in the rockin’ town of Ten Springs. You coming?”
“Pass, I need to zonk,” I said. “Next time.”
“You sure? I'm buying,” Golden said, and then ducked out the door after de Cabrera. I followed to the hall to watch them cross the yard. The purr of an engine preceded a flood of headlights which hit the pink webs and caused them to sparkle obscenely.
“You're going too?” I asked Chapel, who tucked his phone away and began putting on his shoes.
“Paul Varney and I still have work to do,” he replied. “Assistant Director Johnston is waiting for my report.”
“Uh, Gary? Not to sound like a cheese-ball but…”
I imagined Spicer killing you and it horrified me.
He looked at me expectantly, hazel eyes serious.
I like having you in my life
, I thought, blinking away a silly flood of tears. “I'll fix that
dhaugir
mix-up ASAP. Scout's honor.”
“You weren't even a Brownie,” he said, studying my face with keen eyes, “but I'll take your word for it, Marnie. Is there anything else?”
I'm glad you're alive. I think I need you.
“Yeah. Just… thanks. You, uh, believed in me.”
Chapel frowned and took off his tortoiseshell glasses to polish stray zombie ash off the lenses with the bottom of his shirt. “Never had a doubt, Marnie,” he said finally, sliding his glasses back on the bridge of his nose. After a quick wave goodbye to Harry, he showed himself to the door. “See you Monday.”
I stared after him in open amazement and didn't notice Batten at my shoulder until he cleared his throat.
“I had doubts,” he told me.
I grimaced. “Yeah, no shit.”
“A
lot
of doubts.”
“Okay, shut up, would ya?”
I turned to scowl at him, but the smile on his face stopped me; a genuine Mark Batten smile, just for me, reaching the corners of his eyes, carving deep laugh lines that mocked me. I was getting those smiles more and more often, and I wasn't sure it was a good thing, but my irritation melted to grudging warmth. For a moment, I imaged the perfect ending to our case: him taking me in his strong arms, holding me tight, lowering that smiling mouth to mine, and saying something remarkably romantic and sexy before planting a long, lingering kiss so hot it could melt titanium. Not that we were allowed. But, man, would that be great.
He looked like he knew exactly what was playing through my mind. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. Dipping his chin nearer my face, he said in a low, sensual voice, “That picture on the mantel is your sister, right? She single?”
My mouth dropped open. “I hate you so much.”
“No, you don't.”
“I can't even believe how much I fucking hate you. There aren't even
words
for how much I hate you right now.”
Batten smothered his laughter so hard that when he finally breathed in, he snorted loud enough to make Harry exclaim in the other room, “Oh my!”
That instantly dissolved me into a fit of giggles, and Batten and I spent a good five minutes lost in silly, stress-busting laughter. His big hand landed on my shoulder and he squeezed it. I sighed, called him a jackass, and we walked back into the living room.
Harry let go of our new kitten long enough to fetch refreshments: espresso for me, a cold beer for Batten, and a goblet of warmed blood for himself to stave off the hunger pangs until Batten left and we could be alone. I curled beside Harry on the couch while Batten took the chair, and for a long time we sat in companionable silence, watching Harry's dancing fire through the open woodstove doors, Batten and I sweating silently so that Harry could be comfortable.
“A toast,” I proposed. “To my assistant, whom I never wanted, probably needed, and am going to miss. To Jean-Etienne Auguste Dufort.”
Harry cleared his throat. “That is Malas’ son you are toasting, are you not forgetting a surname?”
“Oh, right. Jean-Etienne Auguste Dufort Nazaire,” I added.
“And his mother's maker?” Harry said, and his single dimple showed. “After all, let us not forget, he
is
an immortal.”
“Dreppenstedt. Jeez. Jean-Etienne Auguste Dufort Nazaire Dreppenstedt. That guy's name is fucking ridiculous.”
“All rev names are fucking ridiculous,” Batten murmured, but his tone was softened with something akin to tolerance.
Rev
not
vamp
. Baby steps. He sipped his beer and eyed Harry knowingly. Harry stared back at him through a lazy curl of cigarette smoke. The eye contact they shared was tentative, but when Harry made no effort to push any revenant mind control, the tension around Batten's eyes eased.
“I'm just going to call him Leprechaun.” I raised my espresso cup. “To the Leprechaun. May he find peace.” I remembered our Riverdance night, and his toast. “Best while you have it, use your breath. There is no drinking after death.”
We clinked cup to goblet to beer bottle and shared a moment of thoughtful silence while we sipped. Then Batten rose. “Don't know about you, but I've got paperwork.”
“Yeah, after I sleep for about three days, I'll get right on that,” I assured him.
“See you in the morning, Snickerdoodle.”
Harry tensed, and I patted his cool hand reassuringly. “Good night, Jerkface.”
Batten shot me a lopsided grin, shot Harry a two fingered salute off his brow, and let himself out.
I gave Harry's hand another pat. “Down, revenant.”
“I cannot imagine what you could mean, ducky, I am the very soul of civil restraint.”
“Mmhmm,” I murmured, smiling up at him.
“I am merely more comfortable when he calls you ‘nitwit’ or ‘knucklehead’.”
I tucked my head in the crook of his neck. That's when I noticed Declan's iPad amid our cell phones and Harry's Nintendo DSI and remote controls and other electronics scattered on the coffee table.
“He left it behind,” Harry said.
“He never went anywhere without that thing, except near the end. Maybe he was hoping you'd snoop and figure it out.”
“He knew that I could not resist reading about my favorite topic.” He tried to smile wryly, but it didn't come anywhere near to reaching his eyes. “I should have known, perhaps, by the direction of his questions, what he truly wanted to ask. All those questions about my first loves, my early relationships. Where I was, and when, and with whom.”
I nodded, and showed him the file in the iPad, the one he'd probably already read a dozen times. “This book was not about you, or the Dreppenstedts, it was about him. Declan was writing his autobiography.
Life In Limbo: The Story of the Dhampir
.”
“And yet, he places my history alongside his own, values my life stories as much as he values his own. He is, in a way, my brother, another soul made cold by my Master. I should have liked to know him better.”
“He never gave you that chance.”
“Perhaps I do not deserve that chance.”
Uh oh.
The familiar opening strains of the Poor Me song. “If you're going to start singing the blues, can you start with Muddy Waters? I like when you do him.”
Harry's half-smile was full of affection.
“He searched the world over for you, Harry,” I said, “for answers about you and his mother, answers about death and life and immortality, answers about himself.” For a moment, I remembered Declan's arm around me at the fish camp as he eased us both back from the powerful surge of Earth magic during his moth-in-chains spell, and how he'd tried to keep me out of Malas’ house, and out of the mine, but supported me when I decided to go for it.
“Declan might be a monster, Harry, but he's a damn good one. I'm glad I got the chance to meet him. And who knows?” I stroked Harry's cool forearm fondly. “Maybe he has no intention of returning soon, but in a few years, he could change his mind and come looking for his bro again.”
Harry's chin jerked upward. “No, that won't do, my cricket,” he said primly. “That's a simply dreadful appellation; I think I should prefer sibling, or brother. Never
bro
.”
I grinned at him. “Whatever you say, bro.”
“Oh, do continue sassing me, ducky,” he said slyly, lifting me off his lap and setting me on my feet, “and I shall be ever so happy to remind you that you are also the mystical equivalent of family to that cheeky Irishman.”
I squawked, and followed him into the kitchen. “I need a nap.”
“What you need is a cookie, and I intend to bake your favorite: chocolate chip with caramel centers. No, do not fight me, MJ. I know what is best for my pet.”
“Batten's gruesome death-by-cookie?”
“I know this is a vow you made to the Dark Lady, but I am happy to inform you that Hecate cares naught for your eating habits,” Harry said, “though nothing would please me more than to see the end of your stubborn association with the hunter.”
“We're not going to fight about Batten, are we?” I asked.
“I'm not yet in a position to say, my love,” he said, tying the laces of his bright red apron around his back with a sharp jerk. “When it comes to you, matters of the heart are sometimes difficult to predict.”
“I wish I knew what Batten's little smirks were all about.”
“Possibly they are meant to indicate the degree to which he finds you ridiculous.” He aimed an indicting wooden spoon at me. “More likely, they are meant to indicate how ridiculous his feelings are for you. Why are there dark circles under your eyes?”
“Life's rough, Harry. I'm recuperating from corpsepox, a zombie ate my flip flops, and my brother's having a triple-X tryst with my bunny slippers.”
“I prayed that you'd dripped yogurt on them this morning at breakfast, but I see it isn't so.”
“Oh no!” I wailed. “That ain't
right!
”
“Such a fuss you make. What would you have me do for you, sweetheart?”
“I suppose laundry is out of the question?”
“Not for all the coal in Newcastle.”
“I don't know what that means, Harry.”
“I know, ducky.” He smiled tolerantly and began cracking eggs into his big ceramic bowl, one after another, with deft fingers. Vanilla and brown sugar went in next in a sweet, sprinkling symphony of busy work as I resigned to eat whatever Harry baked for me, and let the chocolate chips fall where they may.
“I disobeyed Three-Face, you realize,” I said tiredly, digging out Asmodeus’ ring. I plunked it on the table, where it glinted under the kitchen fluorescents. “He wanted Anne, and instead I melted her with diet soda and kitchen witchery…which turned out to be
not at all
lame, in the end.”
“Whom did you displease, now?”
“The Overlord.”
“Oh, dear,” Harry said. “I suppose we shall deal with that when and if He returns to object. Do keep in mind that He has many things to attend to, and time does not at all work for those in the Second Circle of the Dragon's Workshop as it does on Earth. It may be decades before He notices.” He licked something off his finger merrily.
“Be my rock, Harry?”
He glanced over his shoulder at me as his electric beaters began to hum. He must have seen something in my face, because he turned them right back off and whipped off his apron, tossing it on the back of a chair. “Come, chickadee. I have something to show you.”
* * *
The harvest moon was a massive pumpkin pie; from the very edge of the dock, surrounded by black sky and even blacker water, I felt like I could reach out and swat it, sending it tumbling into the universe, orange streaked with deep umber. Impossible to ignore, the Silver Lady had blossomed gloriously to gold, Mother aging to Crone, filling the night sky. Her enduring wisdom commanded attention, changing doubts and fears and disappointment in my head with the nurturing sweep of an old broom. Shedding demons gratefully left and right, I felt my cheeks turning up, pressed by a buoyant smile.
“I needed to see this, Harry, thank you,” I said thickly. “She's incredible.”
“Not here.”
I turned to frown at him, but complied to the offer of his outstretched hand, setting my gloved palm there. His grip was swift and unusually firm; yanking me against his body, he took two running steps, set a boot against the boathouse and pushed off, launching straight up. Surprise yanked my gut and I clutched Harry in response, but before I could let out the startled yip in my throat, he had landed effortlessly on the roof of the boathouse, as easily as if he'd stepped off a porch step. When he was certain of my equilibrium, he let go of me.
“Ever think of competing in Olympic pole vaulting, Harry?”
He smiled with delight. “One hardly needs a pole.”
My answering smile was lewd. “Speak for yourself.”
“As always, obsessed with your loins. Now, stand here.” He led me by the shoulders to the edge of the peak.
I looked straight down: twelve feet beneath my toes was shallow, inky water lapping against jagged red rocks and trailing evergreen scrub. My tummy gave a warning quiver.
“Is this the part where you shove me to my death and call it an accident?”
When he didn't answer, I glanced over my shoulder to see him unfastening the mother-of-pearl buttons on his white shirt. His jacket was already carefully folded and laid to one side. The top button of his pants, he thumbed open. Stepping out of his Oxfords one at a time, he lined them up so that they wouldn't slide down the incline of the roof.