Wrath and Bones (69 page)

Remy had insta-turned Manflay the troll. Would she have done that to Batten? I didn't know her well enough to guess. I didn't know whether I hoped she had or hadn't.

I shrugged. “I’m sure.”
But is it possible? Could it be?
“Ninety-nine percent sure.”

“Wanna talk about what that one percent of hope looks like?” Hood said, astutely.

The floodgates opened at that and I sobbed openly in the night. Hood sat with me and said quiet, reassuring things, sparing me the foolish, empty platitudes he’d probably endured. With a cop’s experience dealing with bad news, death, and grief, he had a keen sense of when to be quiet and when to speak. He was wise enough not to dwell on the one-percent chance, sensing I couldn’t deal with that right now. There was no body, but maybe, through Harry, Chapel would be able to get the revenant court to cooperate and ship one, if it existed.
Or maybe
… my heart threatened to go numb again in defense.
Maybe I’d never know for sure.
If they played coy with the body, maybe we’d never get answers one way or another.
I should have stayed. I should have made sure.
This frustration, coupled with all the things I’d left unsaid and undone, tore grief from deeper in my core, and I sat there clenching my fists, willing it to stop.

When that particular torrent of tears subsided, Hood offered to escort me inside. When I demurred, he got up.

“It’s getting too fucking cold out here for training tomorrow morning,” he said. “Six thirty, indoor sparring. Running on the track. Got it? Don’t be late. We’re kickin’ shit up to eleven, yes?”

Grateful for the plans and the coming distraction of punching him, I nodded eagerly. I couldn’t see through my tears, but I didn’t want to see him anyway.

He said, “I’ll leave the donuts in the kitchen with Harry, Mars.”

When he strode off through the snow around the side of the house, the fairies took his place beside me on the dock, interested in my hot coffee and my undivided attention.

“What the hairy green fuck, guys?” I sighed, as they shook their tushies on the frost-slicked boards of the dock. “
Whyyyyyy
? Why are you here? This isn’t your home. Your home is back that way. Professor Pfaffenzeller, I told you, I don’t need any more weird sidekicks. How did you even find me? The planet is so big and you’re so
not
big. What brought you here? Did eating that seed pod make me give off pheromones or something?” Maybe I could research that for my next
Fast Science Quarterly
paper, if I could figure out how to get another pod, but I didn't really want to draw more of these little whacknoodles onto my property.

I mentally scanned through the playlist on Harry’s iPhone, wondering if one of their so-called magically musical prophecies had led them here. Bryan Adams’s “Run To You”? Zeppelin’s “Baby Come On Home”?

“Rats. I bet it was John Denver’s 'Back Home Again'. Harry loves that one.” I made a little snowball and skipped it across the ice at the edge of the lake. “I love when he sings it, too. Dammit-fuck.” Tears threatened again, and I watched the trio sway in perfect synchronicity, clustered around the earbuds, bopping to a song I couldn’t hear.

I tried to guess what was going on in Pfaffenzeller’s earbuds, but I couldn’t tell from his wiggles. There was a set of wireless iPhone speakers in the boathouse that Harry used so he could listen to his music while he was waxing his Ferrari. I unlocked the boathouse and brought the speaker stand out to the dock. I showed the spriggans how to set it on the charger. Queen blasted out of the little speakers.

Professor Pfaffenzeller pulled out a Freddy Mercury pout-and-point and informed me that he couldn’t handle this thing called love, while Captain Tuschoff and Doctor Von Nockelstein shook their little spriggan rear ends at me in the light of the boathouse halogen and went “Uh huh, mmhmm.”

I heard a rustle, and Mina, the female spriggan (which, I guess, made her the
de facto
spriggette) who lived in a honeysuckle vine at the eastern side of my yard, slipped out from behind my right butt cheek. Ever since she’d hitched a ride on Bat-Wes’s back, she had a wee crush on him, but now she was looking at the new gents with interest. She was thinking about pollination, I thought, and I warned, “Don’t do it, man. Love sucks. Save yourself.”

And then I knew: the funny poop arrow that had been smeared on my front door. It wasn’t an arrow, it was the symbol for male. It was an advertisement. It was Mina’s advertisement, that little pervbucket. She was lookin’ for nookin'. Is that how the male spriggans had decided where to settle after tracking me this far? Did spriggans mark their mating territory with dookie?

“Stop drawing on my doors, eh? It’s gross to humans. Look, you got three dudes to choose from. Want my advice?” I smiled sadly and exhaled long and hard. “Choose wisely.”

Mina plunked down on the back of my fist, her little legs swinging, her ankles tapping my knuckles. Mina patted my hand with one tiny green paw and looked up at me with her keen yellow eyes. I wondered if she still felt a connection, or if she was able to interpret my silence, or if she was just keeping time with the music. Captain Tuschoff played air guitar while “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” rocked from the iPhone speaker. The other spriggans fell into back-up singer mode, clapping and snapping and boogying, enthralled in the moonlight of a Colorado night. Mina conquered her shyness and abandoned me to dance with them.

I’d had a very long, very bad winter so far, the high point of which had been my visit with Declan, the staking of Jeremiah Prost, and snuggling Betty the Yeti. I hoped Batten had heard me in the court room when I said that Prost had been righteously dusted; I hoped he had been pleased, maybe even impressed. I didn’t get the chance to tell him that Colonel Jack might still be alive, Soul Leached into a different body, somewhere on the planet; if I had texted him that instead of waiting to say it in person, would he have changed his mind about attacking House Sarokhanian? I'd never know.

I also didn’t get a chance to guess Batten’s middle name, but I suppose I could pretend it was Bucky or Viggo or Ichabod or even Jazzhands, now that he wasn’t around to object. I mean, I could just ask Golden or de Cabrera or even Chapel to check his FBI file if I wanted the boring old truth, but where was the fun in that? If I had to write a eulogy, you better believe I was going to tell people his full name was Mark Jazzhands Batten; it would fucking serve him right for choosing his stupid vengeance over me. A lonely stab pricked my heart again and I wanted him badly, wanted him back, wanted to punch his stupid muscular chest right in the kill-notch tattoos.  I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the pull of Carole Jeanne’s coat sleeves, suddenly wanting my mommy, wondering if she’d comfort me despite her disapproval of my lifestyle.

No, I had my friends to lean on. I had my forever companion, Harry. I Felt him perk up through the Bond as he sensed me thinking of him, and knew that if I went inside, I’d find him baking up a storm of comfort cookies, whisking foam to top an espresso and brandy. My bed would be turned down, my pillows plumped, and my lights down low, my Cold Company waiting to comfort me.

The low point of my winter, I didn’t want to think about, at least not for the rest of the night; I still had ceramic dust on my jeans from the hail of mug shrapnel fired all over the kitchen. Damage done. Energy gone. I’d run tomorrow. I’d run a lot. I couldn’t outrun what had happened, but maybe I could outrun this ache, channel this anguish into something productive.

I’d run until I escaped my pain. Dark Lady knew, I might be running forever.

I took my phone out and looked at Batten’s last text.
I’m out
. My thumb hovered over the delete button, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, as if erasing his words was accepting the truth. He was out, just as he promised. He hadn’t wanted me to save him. He was out, but I wasn’t. From this point on, I would be all-in.

I flipped over to Golden’s last text.
Want company?

I texted back,
Yes, please.
And then:
Save me from the impending spriggan orgy
. Then:
Bring coffee and that chocolate croissant with maple filling you owe me, ya cheap pair of bitchnipples
.

She replied promptly,
On it, broomhumper.

When I felt sure my tears were done for the night and my knees could hold me, I got to my feet, wished the spriggans a good night, and went back to the cabin to accept the offerings of warmth and comfort inside. 

THE END

Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt, and his DaySitter, Dr. Marnie Baranuik; Her Seconds, Heather Golden & Mark Batten

Wesley Baranuik (Wasp Strickland)

Den, First Turned of the
Falskaar Vouras
, Blood King of Night, Death’s Adversary, Great Voice of the Fallen, Lord of the Undertide

Alastor Vulvolak, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter Elana Vulvolak; Her Second, Lyubomir Yordanov

Malas Nazaire, and his DaySitter Declan Edgar

Yulian Sergeyevich Buryshkin, and his DaySitter Georgina Harris

Tomas Duchoslav, The Undertaker, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter, Dr. Marek Rys; His Second, Roland de Hagh

Hendrik Van Solms, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter, Lisa Pivratsky-Churchill; Her Second, Sweyn Llewellyn

Aston Sarokhanian, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter, Sayomi Mochizuki; Her Second, Gunther Folkenflik

Wilhelm Dreppenstedt, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter, Carole Jeanne; His Younger, “Junior” Dreppenstedt

Remy Dreppenstedt, Duchess of the Darkest Corner, Mistress of the Eversea, Lady of Eternal Grace

Captain Konrad Rask, Crowned Prince of an Empty House, Captain of the
Meita

Viktor Moldovan Domitrovich, the Organization

Jeremiah Prost, and his DaySitter Umayma Eyasi

Johannes Prost, Crowned Prince of the Blood

Asmodeus, The Overlord, and His Infernal Minion, Speaker Aristoxenus, The Stonecaller

Angus Yeats, Lord High Treasurer and Toll-Taker of the
jiekngasaldi;
his Guardian, Mithridates the Manticore

MORE GREAT READS BY A.J. AALTO

Touched
(The Marnie Baranuik Files, Book One)
(Paranormal) The media has a nickname for Marnie Baranuik, though she’d rather they didn’t; they call her the Great White Shark. A forensic psychic twice-touched by the Blue Sense, which gives her the ability to feel the emotions of others and read impressions left behind on objects, Marnie is too mean to die young, backed up by friends in cold places, and has a mouth as demure as a cannon’s blast.

Death Rejoices
(The Marnie Baranuik Files, Book Two)
(Paranormal) Marnie Baranuik teams with the FBI’s preternatural crimes unit to discover that vampire hunters aren't easily rescued, secrets don’t stay buried, and zombie hordes are a pain in the ass to kill. 

Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files, Book Three)
(Paranormal) As subtle as a boot in the teeth, bumbling psychic detective Marnie Baranuik jets home to Canada to solve a ghastly disappearance in old Red Hook.

MORE GREAT READS FROM BOOKTROPE

Fall of Knight
by Steven Cross
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In Shadows Waiting
by Stewart Bint
(Paranormal) An idyllic family home begins to reveal a terrifying secret. A shadow that yearns, a shadow that will not be denied. Someone will die – but love never will.

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