2 Death Rejoices (29 page)

“Learned my lesson,” he assured me, flipping out thick fingers as he made his points. “Last time, you got stabbed, raised a ghoul at a funeral, waltzed into a crazy old bat's house of horrors to play with demons, got poisoned, almost got shot, nearly got eaten by two vamps, and nearly blew up my Bugatti.”

“The Bugatti wasn't yours yet,” I said, “and everything else was easily your fault, because you nagged me to help in the first place. Also, V-word, jackass. You should have known better.”

“I do now, that's my point.”

“Last time,” I reminded him, “you demanded I show some back-bone. Well, here comes Backbone Baranuik. How ya like me now?” I'm pretty sure the effect may have been undermined by the fact that I wasn't wearing pants. My backbone didn't need pants, dammit.

“You need to be home. Wes is injured, and he needs you. Harry needs you. They both need you more than I ever will.”

I didn't like that statement one bit. It was true, and lovely, and hateful, and insulting all wrapped in one, like being slapped with your own hand and smelling your favorite perfume.

“Since when do you care about what Harry wants? Are you his butt-buddy now?”

“Straight as an arrow. Need a reminder?” His voice had gone low and growly. Overcompensation, but still, it messed with my wiring.

In a moment of weakness I pictured grabbing the front of his shirt and jerking it open hard enough to send the buttons flying across my bathroom like tiny missiles. “Knock that off, you lip-diddling ninny. You can't distract me with your boner.”
Any more than usual.
“I got it all figured out. I made a pro/con list.”

His lips quirked but he controlled it. “What's on it?”

“Pro: You have the body of a Greek god. Con: You're a fucking asshole.”

“That all?” He crossed his arms over his chest, and I completely failed not to stare at the way his fists made his biceps bulge.

“No. My list is substantial,” I informed him. “Pro: Your tongue could melt glaciers. Con: You use it to talk.”

“Con: You're impossible.”

I waited for the Pro. Apparently there wasn't one, because he just smirked. I grit my teeth. “We have work to do. You know, dead bodies? Monsters? Icky stuff?”

His head did a slow crawl back and forth. “Can't give a man that kind of heat and expect him to forget it.” ‘
That kind of heat?’ Jeez, maybe I should have made ‘You use it to talk’ two entries in the Con column.

“You were just asking me how cold the lake was. Make up your mind. Besides, we've both had extensive training in Standards of Conduct. Doesn't it tell you not to do this? Your boss and mine, the patient and very
not
-stupid SSA Chapel might have turned a blind eye in Buffalo, but do you honestly think that'll last? That he'll be
fine with us blowing fraternization rules to smithereens, like we did to…”
Don't remember the door, don't remember the… shit.

He read my mind. “I took full responsibility for that,” he damn near gloated, and I ignored it, though the thrumming in my core would not. That door never stood a chance. And neither would mine, even though it was solid wood and a lot sturdier than the flimsy, foam-core one in the hotel room. I needed to get him out of my bedroom. And I really needed to put some pants on, if only to stop letting him get an eyeful of my thighs. Batten was an unabashed ass man, and I'd had the handprints on my hips to prove it. I needed to get off that line of thought before I wrapped my legs around him, smart talk about fraternization rules be damned. And then I just needed to get off, once he was safely out of my house.

“You know who won't turn a blind eye to us fooling around? Harry, de Cabrera, Dr. Edgar. Agent Golden, I'm sure, will go right over Chapel's head at the first whiff of something hinky going on. Still think nailing me is a bright idea?”

He was suddenly way, way too close, his body dwarfing mine, his chest rising and falling heavily. “I think it's the most rash, half-baked, lame-brained idea to ever cross my mind. And I can't wait to do it.”

Shut up and fuck me, Jerkface
, my body reported. Somehow, miraculously, my people skills resurfaced. I
could
wait, which surprised me. Batten had hurt me once before. Even though it wasn't his fault, and the hurt was based on a lie, it was still a wake-up call: of all the people I blocked out on a regular basis, this man got through. He'd found a chink in my armor and that made him a source of vulnerability in my life. Maybe it was the fact that I couldn't feel him with my Talents; I had no advance warning of his feelings from moment to moment, no time to plan my response. Where everyone else showered me with hints, he was a blank wall, and his advances felt like being ambushed in a dark alley. He didn't mean harm, or I didn't think so, but he was capable of hurting me when most people were not, because with most people, I saw it coming a mile away. Kill-Notch blindsided me. The lust that I felt wasn't the surprise. Everything else was.

To a woman who had no romantic future available, that made him dangerous. As preoccupied as I was with sex, and with Mark
Batten's delectable and carnally talented bod, I was pretty sure I wasn't capable of keeping it casual. Already, a warm spot was being rubbed on the soft underbelly of my heart's guard dog. I hadn't forgotten those few precious minutes after our first romp, when he had returned to kissing me; instead of the previous bout of frenzied, hungry kisses, these were slow, sumptuous, sensual, like he was trying to download the taste of me deep into his long-term memory. I wish I could forget those leisurely post-coital kisses. It would help me sleep at night. Instead, they were fodder for a thousand rabid wolverines.

“Dude, we don't react well after giving in to this craziness,” I said seriously, swallowing back no small amount of emotion. “We drop our shields, then we regret it, and we find reasons to be cruel to one another. I can't.”

Oh yes I can
, my privates cried.
Right here, right now, and all fucking night.

If he called my bluff and laid his hand on me, that big hand that hovered uncertainly in the space between us, I'd fall like Carthage under the siege of Rome. I hoped my poker face was holding. Wait, I sucked at poker.
Fuckanut
.

Whether it was the rebuff or the desire to keep his career, Batten's face veiled over. The heat in his eyes banked. When he turned to leave, I thought it best to follow, if only to soften the rejection with my continued company. And not just stare at his ass.

But he didn't leave the cabin. He stopped by the espresso machine and started toying with it, not looking like he had a clue what buttons to press or where anything came out. I let him fiddle, leaning in the doorway, one eyebrow arched in bemusement.

“Lab reports,” he said. “And a heads-up. Hood will be here at dawn, but not for your little sweating-with-the-sheriff routine.” He shot me a look I couldn't interpret. “They're gonna be dragging the lake.”

Dunnachie.
While espresso started to hiss and sputter out of the machine, Batten watched my face.

I was prepared for it. “For the other missing Furries?”

“Hood hopes they'll find some clue about his missing deputy. They found the snowmobile on the other side of the lake, nose buried in mud.”

The other side of the lake. Down that dappled pathway.
That slick ginger fuck ran me right past the site to check my reaction
, I realized, appreciating the technique. I wondered what I had been doing at that exact moment, when Hood had been analyzing me for clues. Clearly, the sheriff was a bit more clever than I'd given him credit for. “How far in was the snowmobile?” I asked.

“Quarter mile. Looks like they're leaning towards calling it an accidental drowning, death by misadventure.”

If pissing off two revenants by throwing a Molotov cocktail into their kitchen isn't a misadventure, I don't know what is
. “They haven't found a body yet?” I said lightly. “Maybe he's alive. Maybe he took off after firebombing this place.”

“You don't believe he's alive any more than I do.”
Point: Batten
.

I watched him finish the espresso; the sight of lab reports on the kitchen table negated my urge to shove him away from my very expensive caffeine supplier. I spotted my jeans under the side of the bed, grabbed them, and pulled them on. When I came back into the kitchen, I took the bundle of file folders into my office and started sorting through them. I switched on the barrister's lamp and laid the reports under the pool of light. He set my Kermit mug down on the desk in front of me, mindful of the paperwork, and noticed me glaring at him. He'd doctored the cups for us his way: weak, milked-down nearly to a pasty ecru, and way too sweet for any reasonable human being. But that wasn't why I was giving him the stink-eye.

“What?” he asked.

I turned the mug to face him. Kermit had black fangs scribbled on in permanent ink. Batten's idea of high comedy, a prank from the last time he'd been a guest in my home. The marks hadn't faded, despite vigorous scrubbing with both bleach and a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Frog's teeth are stubborn things.

He dragged over the other chair and sat across from me. “You're not the only one whose temper goes off the rails now and then.”

“When I get mad, I don't deface other people's personal property,” I pointed out.

“No.” A knowing smirk. “You kick old ladies in the crotch.”

“That was months ago. I've got people skills now,” I pointed out.
“Also, it was a punch. Also-also, it was self-defense. And, also-also-also, it was your fault she was here, anyways. So there.”

He just smiled at me. I hated his smile, because it was so rare, I couldn't do anything but try to keep from jumping him to appease the flare it kindled wherever I didn't have any common sense. Instead, I warmed my hands on Kermit's fang-besmirched face and blew on the espresso. We were quiet for a while, studying page after page of documents from the crime scene and the ME's lab. There were workups on forensic chemistry and serology, UnBio samples, dental reports, skin scrapings, and more mundane stuff, like fingerprints and hair and fiber analysis. We drank our bad coffee in silence. The pictures of Cosmo Winkle's gutless body made me incredibly thankful to be alive.

All at once, I couldn't believe I'd let Harry talk me into going in that water.

A tapping at the window behind me made me think of the rosebushes, losing their blooms to the late August night. Plunk-tap.
Screeeeee
. I strained to hear what wind would be moving branches around, but the night air was quiet. Still, there were
scritch-scritches
against the glass and a coo. Unable to solve the mystery sounds, I gave up and went back to the reports, mulling them over for a good fifteen minutes in silence.

“You see something,” he deduced finally. “Tell me.”

I watched him over the rim of my cup. “Not a revenant.”

He finished his drink in one gulping mouthful, his eyes flicking to the window over my shoulder and then back at the papers.
He hears it too.
He seemed to dismiss it as easily as I had. I got up and shifted the blinds, then paced to the office door, where I paused to consider the possible consequences of shutting the office door, closing us in together; I shut it anyways.

“Explain,” he said.

“Revenant feeding introduces the morphinomimetic peptide ms-lipotropin—”

He held up a hand. “Slower.”

“Reh vuh nant fee ding—hey!” I jumped back, grinning, when he smacked me with an empty manila folder. “Break it down,” I said patiently, sitting and bringing my feet up to tuck them under my bum on the chair. “When a revenant feeds, there's a chemical in their
saliva that mimics opium, morphine, or heroin, depending on the age of the revenant. Increased age equals increased potency, and therefore increased effect on the recipient. Once ms-lipotropin enters the bloodstream, it never completely leaves.”

“All right, Doctor Baranuik, go on.”

I ignored the dig. “As I was saying, feeding introduces ms-lipotropin into the mortal bloodstream, ‘ms’ from the Latin
mortuus somes
for dead body. Even the new undead create significant amounts in their saliva. Ms-lipotropin—and its synthetic replacement, oxy-lipotropin—targets and binds at opiate receptors in the human brain. This alters mood, offers pain relief, causes relaxation, often euphoria.”

“And with long term exposure, addiction,” he finished for me, with a cop's understanding.

“Preternatural biologists call this addiction Rapture of the Blood. I don't know if there has been any formal study done on whether these analogues are as addictive as the real thing.”

“Do you think they are? You get sucked a lot.”

“Keep up the talk like that and you won't be.”
Don't think of his cock, don't thi-- oh sweet Dark Lady
. I dragged my thoughts back out of his pants. Barely. “I've never tried hard drugs, so I wouldn't have a baseline for comparison. Also, I'm not a smack-head for Harry's feeds, if that's what you're suggesting.” True, I got headaches if I didn't get him to feed regularly, but I hadn't had too many occasions where we'd been separated for long periods. “Withdrawal from even short-term use has been reported to include detox symptoms, like mood swings, insomnia, inability to taste or smell. Agonizing pain. Strong men weep for the mercy of ms-lipotropin once they've had a regular diet of it. So, you know, you should watch your ass in case I spike your coffee when I make it. Also, it won't taste like sugary shit.” I smiled sweetly.

“Vamps do this on purpose,” he said, propping his boot on the bottom rung of my desk chair, bridging the gap between us with one long leg. “Hook people. Like drug dealers.”

We both looked away; during our last case, Chapel had fed Harry, and Chapel's own withdrawal from ms-lipo had not been pretty.

“
Revenants
don't control what substances are in their saliva any more than you do.”

“So you're saying it's God's will that they hook people?”

I threw my hands up. “Whoa, when did I bring Him into this? I don't talk about Him. And since
He
didn't create revenants, I'm sure
He
had nothing to do with their spit.”