Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (55 page)

“That's pretty insulting.” I thought about it. “Less than fifty percent.”

“That good, hunh?” His eyes strayed back to the car's curves.

“I'm not using magic, just my brains,” I assured him.

He lowered his face and shook his head, refraining from the obvious comment. “You should move Harry's car outside.”

“Gee, your concern for my welfare has me all choked up.” I flipped him a gloved bird.

“It's a two million dollar car, for fuck's sake. They only made fifteen of these,” Batten stressed.

“Yeah? Well there's only one Marnie Baranuik.”

“Thank God,” Batten muttered. “Seriously, move the goddamned car if you're going to do anything stupid.”

“Moving Harry's car would be doing something stupid. He'd rip me a new one.”

I heard Harry's motorcycle rumble to life, and Mark's head turned. He hesitated. No, don't ask, don't bring it up, I thought frantically, Wes’ words rattling through my brain: “he has to hear it from you.” His eyes snuck sideways at the car again.

“Need anything else at the store? Chocolate pudding? Pepsi? A flamethrower?”

I turned away to put the tubing aside. “Don't make me like you.”

“Can't help it,” he replied, and his boots crunched the snow as he retreated to join the revenant. I smiled with my back turned, smiled in relief, smiled privately in the dark, away from him. I placed the little kitchen fire extinguisher beside Harry's insanely expensive car.

I considered the Bugatti, shrugged, and went to fetch Kristin's eyeball.

FIFTY-ONE

The shriveled scrap of eye looked ridiculously small in the fish net and as I walked around the back yard with it swinging before me, queasy and faint, positive the grand scheme I'd hatched wasn't going to work in the limited free time I had wheedled. With the handle clutched in my oven-mitted hands, I flounced about in the growing breeze, making sure to flutter the eye in the gusts, hoping this would summon the ghoul from thin air. The eye was barely a scrap of filament now, and there was a heavy dose of doubt thrumming through my veins; what if she didn't sense it? How would I lure her, if not with this? What else could possibly draw her out of hiding? Maybe she wasn't even nearby. The black-watch spell showed me only Ajax and Wes’ unnamed vulture in the yard.

But the stench blowing across the lake left little doubt; somewhere, the remains of Kristin Davis were shambling, or swimming, or lurching around. I had maybe forty-five minutes before Harry and Batten cruised back to the cabin with a bag full of very unnecessary feminine hygiene products. The wind dropped, and a sound pulled my eyes to the dock.

That's when I saw her, barely visible beneath the planks. How long had she been festering under there in the lake with her head half-caved in, poisoning my water and lurking until it was time to come at me again? It wasn't often a dream came true, especially not a drippy oozing undead nightmare like Kristin Davis’ stubborn ghoul. The thing that was once a pleasant, friendly twelve-year-old blind girl discovering a love for Beethoven was now a horror of epic proportions, a horror that had apparently made a new home under my dock.

Corpse beetles had devoured most of her fleshy parts, gorged themselves, and would come back to finish the rest soon no doubt. She didn't seem to mind. Her bare ligaments creaked and stretched. Her mouth gaped stupidly, but there was an infernal intellect behind her empty sockets that made the space between my shoulder blades crawl. When she craned her head in the direction of the fish net, where her soggy, stringy eye was swinging, my stomach hit the floor.

I pelted for the boathouse door, the ghoul a foul shade clambering at my back as I whipped around the back of the car and grabbed for the rear end of the Bugatti to slow my speed to make the turn. My Keds pounded frozen dirt as I jumped the open hole. The goopy fish net fell from my grip. I heard the ghoul scrambling close behind. For a second I thought she'd jumped the trap too, or saw it in time to shrink back, because her footsteps stopped.

Then Dead Kristin made a bone-clattering thud into the pit, raining hard earth in an icy shower around her. I skidded to my knees, my brain screaming hurry hurry hurry, swiping the BBQ grill from under the car and slamming it down atop the hole.

My breath left in an explosive rejoice, half-whoop half-coarse gasp.

The ghoul's questing, claw-like finger bones scrambled at the rusty iron grate like hard little worms wriggling to find purchase. On one knee, I pounded one dusty Ked on the grill to hold it down, kicking more dirt down in her rotten face.

“Sorry, babe,” I said, not really sorry for the ghoul at all, but wishing I could spare Kristin Davis this end.

I threw off the oven mitts, fished under the car for the butane lighter, didn't find it. My mouth went dry as Dead Kristin's bony hands thumped and the metal bars clanged my death knell. Her old raisin of a face came up suddenly, all gnashing teeth and pale pink gums, rocking the grill, oblivious to pain now. I gave a little shriek and flung my hands away from her, keeping pressure on my foot as hard as I could. Craning, my bare hands fanned under the car, fingers questing desperately. Her mouth opened and her slimy black prune of a tongue lolled out along the sole of my shoe. Blerg!

I brushed against the butane lighter's frost-covered plastic end. Finger-tipping it closer so I could grab it, leaving my foot on the
grill. I backed my body away as far as my arm would go, aimed the lighter at the side of the pit, and flick-flick-kafoompf.

The gasoline caught in a searing blast of flames.

I jerked my sneaker away, but the grill clattered as she shoved it up, so I stomped it down again, wary of the licking fire consuming its target.

Cooking ghoul smells a lot like burnt cheese. I'm adding that to my list of things I wish I didn't know. With an inhuman shriek, the ghoul curled into a ball, acrid green smoke rising from its eye sockets, crumbled nose and mouth. I forced myself not to think about Kristin; I could hear her little preteen voice caught behind the ghoul's agony. When the monster she had become shrieked, I slammed my eyes shut and told myself this was for her own good. Something inside me went cold, hard and still, something that had always before been soft and warm. Part of me died, and I wondered if this was how murderers felt.

When the blackened hands fell away, I removed my Ked and inspected the gooey melted bottom. The rubber was like singed cheese, smoking and hanging in strings. Probably I should shove it in the snow.

I dusted my hands off on the oven mitts and thought, What do you know? I didn't fuck it up. I looked around to see if anyone was here to witness my triumph.

Dead Danika Sherlock stood drooling in the boathouse doorway.

FIFTY-TWO

I heard Chapel slam out the back door with a shout as I threw myself backward, wind-milling rapidly behind the Bugatti, mindful of the BBQ grill to make sure Dead Kristin didn't fly out like the monster's second coming in a bad horror flick. The second ghoul smelled worse than the first, fresher, more like old cheese and dirty socks. She hadn't served as a smorgasbord for corpse beetles and she had both her eyes, which trained in on me, tracking my every move. What had brought her here? My intuition squealed something unfathomable, and I'm sure if I wasn't soggy-brained with terror, I might have made sense of it.

Chapel was calling my name. Behind Danika's ghoul I could see him running while doing that two-handed gun-aiming pros do, which I'd always thought was a pretty cool trick. I'd never seen it done outside of an episode of Cops. He sighted on the back of the ghoul's head. Pointless, I thought, and he should know it. Instinct, I was guessing.

“Marnie, get out of there!” He called over the snow, closing the distance between us. I whipped out the kitchen fire extinguisher and ran forward, feeling like a badass. The ghoul snarled, dropping a wet hunk of flesh off her decaying lip. I aimed for that spot with the butt of the fire extinguisher. The solid can made a resounding clang as it rocked her head back.

“That's for stabbing me,” I shouted, and hit her again as she lurched forward. “And that's for lying about Mark. And this is for trying to steal Harry.”

Chapel was there then, grappling with her, hauling her by the armpits. I backed away, kicked the BBQ grill off the already-blackened pit and turned to instruct him. It wasn't necessary. He
shoved her forward at the dark gap, thrusting her so hard that her left arm flew out of its socket with a wet crack and skid under the front tire. The rest of her tumbled in a pile, scrambling as she collapsed, one remaining arm flailing. I hit the flicker on the butane lighter again and the residual gas lit like magic, trapping Danika's ghoul in a fiery embrace.

“Arm!” I barked, and Gary kicked it to me. “Grill!” Gary booted that to me too. I shoved the oven mitts back on and muscled the grill down over Danika's still-muscular arm, as she fought to toss it off. The pit wasn't deep enough to keep her in, if she was determined enough to explode out of it. Her jaws chattered and I removed the hot grill to kick her in the mouth.

“Knock it off,” I roared, frantic to be done with this. “Don't be a little bitch and die already.”

I kicked her again. Her head snapped back, leaving a big smear of rotting flesh on the toe of my Keds. Her teeth fractured, splitting her tongue in half. Horrified, I forced the grill back down and stood on it with the opposite foot, giving the left one a dose of burning love.

Dead Danika flew into a wildly flailing, pitching hysteria, sickly wet noises popping in her throat. I turned my eyes away so I wouldn't have to watch her face melt off in a big waxy slab.

As soon as the hands stopped clawing, I pulled my foot back and gave it and the pit a few blasts with the fire extinguisher. Then I foamed the Bugatti so Harry's two million dollar car wouldn't go kablooey. Charred ghoul bits mixed with foam spit up and floated out of the pit into the air.

But it wasn't over. After the foam and charred ash settled, a warmth remained, a sickly heat that did nothing to warm my spirit or put me at ease. I felt my lips moving even before I could imagine the problem.

“Beroth of Sanchoniaton, Berith of the Sichemites, known as Duke Bolfri of the Grave, here and below, Seer of the Past, Present and Future: I witness thy Great and Terrible otherworldly presence, and hereby free thee of thine unnatural chains to mortal flesh.”

A shriek to rattle the boathouse window ripped through the air and blew past us, shoving out the door and into the night. When our
hair settled and our shoulders un-pinched, I craned my neck and snuck a peek at Chapel.

He looked like a man in a trance. His mouth opened, but he didn't seem to be able to make any sort of sense, so he closed it again. When he did speak, he said:

“What the hairy fuck?”

I'd never seen him baffled, and I sure as hell never heard him swear, ever. A laugh, sudden and straight from my quivering knot of a gut, exploded into the night air behind the vanished demon. I was victorious. Exhilarated.

“Burnt the heck out of my Keds, but I think the ghoul problem's solved.” I tossed the fire extinguisher on the ground with a clang. When I was sure my knees weren't going to embarrass me by buckling, I took a few shuffling footsteps toward him. “Thanks for, uh… Danika.”

“I've got your back,” he said dazedly.

“I'm sorry you got ghoul scum on your hands.”

“Not your fault.” He dropped his too-wide eyes down and examined the smears on his palms and in between his fingers. “I'm going to throw up.”

I nodded in complete understanding. “I might do that too. We'll take turns.”

“OK.” He backed out of the boathouse. “I'm sorry about before. About overstepping the boundaries. I owe you an explanation.”

“Maybe later,” I suggested. “Right now, I'd love a shower. And then what do you say you and I celebrate by getting rip roaring drunk, Gary Chapel?”

Gary bent to pick up his gun, looked at it like he didn't understand why he even carried one anymore. “Where is everyone else?”

“Buying me tampons and chocolate.” I motioned to the stinking ghoul pit. “I have PMS.”

He surveyed the damage. “Obviously.”

“Batten drank all my gin, but Harry always has absinthe,” I said, putting a hand out to grab his elbow. “How about it, SSA Chapel? Are you on duty tonight?”

“I don't see why the hell I should be. Hey Marnie?”

“Yes, Gary?”

“I meant what I just said. I've always got your back. Why didn't you…” His face appeared pained. “I hope you know you can always call on me. You never have to face any of this alone: the Motor Inn, Ruby, any of it. I wish you hadn't gone alone.”

I bit my tongue, casting a glance at the reeking boathouse, where Danika had finally come to rest. “Look, I'm no angel. I don't pretend to be. I had to go to the Motor Inn. She had something on me, threatened to expose it to the media if I didn't help her. It was self-interest on my part.”

“Don't protect him,” Chapel advised with a shrewd look. “Mark's a big boy, he can take care of himself. And when he can't, it's my problem, not yours. If he knew that's why you went, he'd say the same thing.”

I kept my face blank. “I have absolutely no idea what you mean, Gary.”

“All right,” he conceded.

“It's all water under the bridge,” I sighed, trying to change the subject. “The Green Fairy awaits. I'll get the bottle, you get the sugar cubes.”

A furious squawk made both of us flinch. In the distance, Ajax and Wesley's debt vulture had taken flight to defend their turf against a third bird, a creature of generous proportions and enormous swooping wing span. I cast my chin around nervously at the yard, looking for movement. Looking for Gregori Nazaire.

“Too bad Ruby Valli didn't follow her bitches in,” he mused, then caught himself. “Monsters. I don't say the b-word. Officially, I didn't say any of that.”

“Officially, I didn't hug you for sayin’ it,” I said, and planted a big wet one on his cheek, squeezing him hard. Taken off guard, he was stiff in my arms, and didn't relax until I said, “It's fine, Chapel. Harry isn't going to rip your head off for a hug.”

He let his breath out, patting my back. “But Gregori Nazaire might. We should get back inside.”