Deadhead (2 page)

“No,” he said. “Self-checkout kiosk at Home Depot. And despite what you may think, I’m capable of being polite in public.”

I faced that with doubtful silence, digging out and opening my thermos from my backpack; it was new, and Batten hadn’t had a chance to draw fangs on the green cartoon frogs yet. Harry had thoughtfully poured six shots of espresso into it, and laced it with sweet foam that morning; this much caffeine could’ve been considered a controlled substance. The blessed elixir was still hot enough to sear my tongue, so I blew on it. He’d also packed me a sandwich: crunchy peanut butter on Wonder Bread. I un-wrapped it and chewed as I ruminated. Mostly, I ruminated on how much I respected this ballsy plant. It had set down roots and wasn’t going
nowhere
. I’d never met a plant with that much audacity before; it was love at first sight. Maybe I’d transplant it to my house. I wasn’t hurting for space. Digging peanut butter out of my molar with my tongue, I had a thought.

I pulled a couple corners off the bread and tossed the crusts to the palest edge of the plant, where the leaves were youngest, still barely uncurled. Together in the shelter of the overhang, Batten and I waited for something to happen besides the bread getting soggy in the rain. When nothing did, I nodded, satisfied.

“Not a dryad.”

I poured a bit of the milk foam into the cap of the thermos and approached the plant, setting the cap down with a wary eye on the vines nearby. The rain began to water down the drink. I backed off five paces and waited. When no tiny hand swiped out at the thermos lid, I said, “Not a brownie. They
love
dairy products.”

“This how you always work?” he asked, clearly unimpressed. “Just taking random stabs at stuff?”

It was, but I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of admitting it. “I could say the same thing about your bedroom technique, buster. Besides, I don’t have any of my fancy equipment unpacked,” I bluffed.

“What do your psychic Talents tell you?”

“That you want to clobber me,” I offered. “Also, that my sass-mouth still gives you a major boner. You probably want to see a therapist about that. It’s super weird.”

“About the plant,” he growled.

“My sass-mouth is not, at present, giving the plant a boner. So, it's less weird than you are.”

“Marnie...”

“Zilch. I’m getting no empathic vibes from it at all. Or maybe it just doesn't have feelings because it's, you know, a plant.”

“I’ve been trying to get rid of this thing all day. I want to shower and order pizza,” he said. “If I leave you to it, can you take care of it?”

I laughed heartily until I noticed his scowl. “Oh, you meant that. No, I seriously doubt it. Would you like me to not-fix your computer, too? Because I’m fairly certain I could manage that.”

“Try again, Miss Positivity.”

“Errr, I’ll do my best?” Seeing the crease in his forehead hadn’t gone away, I continued, “I’ll do better than my best. I’ll be awesome. This whole bush will be gone by the time your pepperoni-bacon-double-cheese gets here if I have to chew the damn thing down like a fucking beaver.”

“For the price you quoted me, you’d better,” he said, glaring up at the storm clouds trundling across the late afternoon sky. “It’s supposed to be sunny this weekend. I have a lot of relaxing to catch up on.”

“You
do
seem to have your sack in a knot,” I agreed.

He just stared at me, cracking his knuckles to break the silence.

“Go shower. I’ll work my magic while you jerk off,” I promised, flexing to demonstrate that I had dialed my mood to
serious business
. Or maybe to give him something to think about when he got naked. Maybe he liked my gun show. I certainly entertained heated thoughts about
his
arms when I enjoyed my own company in the tub.

He considered me for a long beat. “Remember how I talked about hiring that other preternatural biology expert?”

“The one in Mumbai?” I nodded. “Devarsi Patel?”

“Remind me to give him a call,” he said, “as soon as I get out of the shower.”

“No can do,” I called after his retreating back. “He’s recuperating. Got his right leg torn off in Pakistan tracking some yeti on Nanga Parbat for his TV show. Wanna hear the funny part?” I cupped my hands around my mouth so he could hear me as he shut the screen door. “It wasn’t a yeti that got him; it was a climbing accident. Fell. Rope caught him the wrong way.” After he was gone, I cringed. “Funny strange, not funny ha-ha.”

Batten disappeared, presumably to pretend his back yard was a calm and orderly place where plants grew only where they belonged and preternatural biologists did as they were told. Not that I had to obey him. Batten had never been my boss; the man who used to give me orders was Supervisory Special Agent Gary Chapel, who was probably still trying to replace both of us delinquents at the Boulder branch of the FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit. Batten had never grasped the fact that he wasn’t my boss, though, and now that we shared a roof over our offices, I could see it was going to be a daily struggle to remind him of his place. And then I remembered he had hired me, and the customer was always supposedly right. I sighed.

“I didn’t mean to kill him, Your Honor,” I practiced under my breath, “but his relentless pissy attitude severed my tenuous grasp on reality.”

For a positivity boost, I texted de Cabrera:
Grrrrrrr.

He texted back immediately:
Ask yourself, are things as bad as they seem?

I was pretty sure that I'd only imagined the plant’s leaves rustling to my right, but I froze nonetheless and held my breath, waiting for it to further encroach on my personal space. When it didn’t, I wiped raindrops off my iPhone screen against my jeans.

No, I’m good,
I texted.
Happier than a Hollywood horndog with hookers and blow.

Before I could read his scolding reply, I put my phone in my back pocket, where it vibrated chidingly against my butt.

“Are you the plant itself?” I asked the honeysuckle, aware of the wind’s gusts and how it picked up each tiny vine, each bobbing flower. “Or are you playing hide and seek and totally winning by making the plant grow around you? I think that’s cheating.”

I crept closer to the base of the plant, where Batten had indicated he’d originally planted it. The grass squelched underfoot and the rain misted my hair. “Surely, we can be friends. May I offer you a refreshing beverage? On a scale of ‘nah’ to ‘squee,’ how badly do you want some Miracle Gro?”

The plant did not respond, not that I expected it to. I was very glad that it did not, in fact, speak up in the drippy silence of the yard. I would have peed my pants on the spot.
Come on, Marnie, you’re the expert, here
, I reminded myself.
You’re super-pro. You’ve wrestled a Stonecoat boggle, got in a Twizzler fight with a poltergeist, and nearly had your face gnawed off battling berserker zombies. An over-enthusiastic plant isn’t going to intimidate you, is it?

Still, there was no getting around that feeling of being watched, like the leaves had eyes.

I went back to my backpack, dug in it to find a little box of matches, and turned to face the plant. “I like you, honeysuckle. I think we could be friends, if you’d just behave. The crabby vampire hunter isn’t nearly as impressed with you as I am, and sadly, the yard is part of his living space, so…”

I had to cup one hand over the matchbox to keep it dry while pinching it in the same hand so I could use the other to strike a match. It took me three tries to get a flame. Tucking the matchbox in my front pocket, I held the guttering match up to the plant. I heard the screen door slap open and Batten was in the middle of a sentence just as I pinched the leaf between forefinger and thumb and turned it up to look underneath.

In a tiny green blur, something stick-like and mossy exploded out of the wood, sending splinters of shredded bark hissing into the air and spitting spores that smelled exactly like fried egg yolks. Immediately, my brain offered up the impossible combination of
tiny moss monster
and
yellow eyes,
and on the heels of that revelation, a preternatural biology diagnosis:
spriggan!

Dizzy and disoriented as the spore creature spread into my sinuses and started invading my head, I momentarily forgot Batten existed. I stumbled backward, dropping the now-wet match, and fell ass-first into his recycling bin, cans and empty beer bottle clattering beneath my butt.

The setting sun was suddenly too bright,
too bright!
If I wasn’t stunned, I’d have questioned this further than just wondering,
bright at dusk in a storm?
The rain still tapped my shoulders, drizzled down under my collar. Bleary, I put one hand over my eyes and lurched toward the safety of my office, but halfway out of the recycling bins, the scientific part of my brain warned me that all my boxed-up business stuff was not going to help.

Batten was at my heels then; my muddled senses picked him up not as
that hunk I fantasize about constantly
but
vaguely familiar male human.
Deep in my core, I knew that something was terribly wrong, but a wholly separate thing surged to the surface to take control.

“Marnie?” His hand landed on my shoulder. “Need help? What was that greenish brown fluff?”

I shrugged him off and dug in my pocket for my car keys as my tongue began to commit mutiny against my teeth. “Nnngggh,” was my reply. I stumbled away from him, aimed my wobbly knees at the alley between his house and the laundromat next door, and threw myself through the chain-link gate toward the curb.

The newest Buick in my life was a subdued beige color. I couldn’t remember how to unlock the door. My head swam, and I flopped against the car’s wet side. I tried to get into the car as quickly as I could, needing to be away before my intruder could make things worse. I wasn’t quick enough.

“Marnie!” the familiar man barked. He spun me around.

“Pollinate me, human!” came out of my mouth.

His eyebrows shot up. “Holy shit,” he said.

I got the car door open and threw myself behind the wheel. “Pollinate me or die!” I demanded, but it sure as hell wasn’t me making the request. I slammed the door, shoved the key fob in, and backed out of his drive so fast I fishtailed. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him running for his SUV, but I knew he couldn’t fix this. A hospital couldn’t fix this.

I needed Harry. I needed my grimoire. I needed cookies and milk, but the thought of it made my stomach roll.

My mouth made a long, loud horking noise without my permission and my head shook like a wet dog trying to shed rain. The creature burrowing into my sinuses and beyond didn’t want milk.
Water.
It wanted water. Saliva filled my mouth and I had to swallow. Clutching the steering wheel as tightly as I could and pushing the speed limit as much as I dared, I steered carefully through Ten Springs, unsure if the spore-creature squatting in my head had infiltrated enough of my brain yet to control my hands. I leaned over a little to peek at my eyes in the rear view mirror; I still looked entirely like me, albeit a version who really needed to wipe her runny nose. Black-and-blue ghost hair in a messy ponytail, blue eyes maybe a little wider and more harried than usual, there were no outward signs that I was hosting anything more serious than an allergy attack.

By the time I got to Shaw’s Fist Road, the rain was gone, twilight was teasing the sky, and I was no longer sure where I was going. I knew who I was; my sense of identity was still mostly intact. My direction and motives were less clear. The terrain was vaguely familiar, the rain-streaked forest going by quickly. Habit caused me to slow and turn in at my own driveway.

I turned off the car then sat for a long minute staring at my key chain. I thought:
Keys. Right. These metal things are keys
. Then:
You got this, Marnie. Shake it off.
I launched out of the car and teetered on short, human legs that I wasn’t sure I still commanded. My knees wobbled, and I pitched forward toward the cabin where my companion (
Harry, his name is Harry!
) might be lighting his first menthol cigarette after waking from rest for the night.

Two steps. Three.

The cabin became a brown blur, and I reached one hand out to swipe at the air in front of me as my depth perception shifted radically. Was this thing popping brain cells as it invaded? Commandeering my optic nerve? Another shuffling step and I stalled in place as the ground tilted under my feet. I squeezed my traitorous eyes shut and struggled to maintain control, commanding my body parts to obey me, reminding them who was boss. The spriggan in my head disagreed, and as the spores coalesced into a more cohesive being, it must have pressed up against something in my brain affecting motor functions. My right shoulder shot up and my right leg hooked out to the side, like I was doing a drunken Hokey Pokey.

Stairs. One. Two. (
Harry!
)

The front door whisked open, and one pale hand curled around the edge of it; a shadow figure lurked in the safety behind the door, a force of habit. Harry was awake, and through the Bond, I sensed he was anxious about my arrival and anticipating trouble. I lurched forward again, seeing safety within, the familiarity of the hall, the coats hanging on the pegs, the faded Keds lined neatly with their toes against the wall. Harry swept even further, opening the door wider, and then shut it behind me once I was inside. My left shoulder dropped and that hand flailed up in an inexplicable wave at nobody.

“That was a quick visit, Dearheart,” he said as I stumbled into the coat rack. “You’re not yourself; I sensed it before you turned up the road. You seem to be in quite a mopple. I expected to be done baking my lemon scones by the time you returned from your playdate with the carrion hunter.”

I choked on my tongue trying to answer.

Harry followed me into the kitchen, cocking his head. “My, what a chilly reception. Have I offended you, my pet? I do apologize. You know I mean Our Mark no harm, after all. Why, we are swift approaching a truce, he and I—“