Deadhead (5 page)

“Seriously?”

“Are you fucking dense? That plant is its home. Pick it up and bring it here, and it doesn't go back to devouring your yard when we get the thing out of Marnie's head,” Wes said.

“How do we know it’s my MJ you’re getting these orders from?” Harry asked Wes.

I stamped my foot and tried to squawk, but all I got out was a throaty gurgle.

Wes translated. “Marnie says, ‘I’m gonna clunk your heads together like Moe, you dick-wiggling fuckbagels. Get your hot ass moving and hump that fucking shrub over here.’” Wes grimaced. “Did you really need to say that about his ass? Jeez.”

I started to think about what it looked like without his jeans on in the mirror of a hotel bathroom, and Wes slapped one hand over his forehead, as if that would block his telepathy.

“That was totally uncool.” His eyes widened. “No, I don't want you picturing Harry's, either, what the fuck,” he squawked.

I grinned.

“That’s her, all right,” Batten said.

Harry agreed, smirking. “Indubitably.”

I flapped my hands at everyone to get their collective, non-naked butts in gear. I picked up the candles, berries, potion beaker, and the powder, and pointed at the driveway with my chin.

“Wait for me to get back,” Batten suggested.

I tried to flip him the bird but my gloved hands were full, so all I managed was a derisive shrug and an
I-don’t-need-you
scowl. I had to start the spell during twilight and cast as dusk transitioned to night; that change was crucial. A lot of this depended on how much control she was going to let me have over my own mind. Since she wasn’t budging on releasing my ability to speak, I was going to have to force that, if I could. I thought I had a Plan B if she needed a bribe, but I’d hold that back as a last resort. I wondered if I was blocking her from knowing what I was thinking as effectively as I hoped.

The grass was still wet from the day’s showers. I strode out to the spot where my driveway met the road and kicked up a little dirt to check the state of it – soggy but not sodden, good for transplanting. The Jerkface, behind me, stomped out to his SUV. Part of me thought he sometimes drove something else, and I couldn’t imagine why that was important, but it nagged at me. I stepped to the side so he could drive past me, tires crunching as my stone drive met the dirty, pothole-riddled swath that was Shaw’s Fist Road.

The spriggan liked that the road had a name. She wanted to name other things. The rambling, wild pink rose. The fence under it. The boathouse. The sky.
You’re a funny little critter, aren’t you?

I set all my goodies down near the end of the driveway. Placing the yellow votive candle in a small glass holder, I walked over to the edge of the grass. Yellow was the color of balance and vitality, and it was here that I hoped to draw the spriggan out. I scattered the strawberries, a feminine, water-element fruit, to the far left, closest to the forest where I would have Batten the Jerkface plant the honeysuckle. Next came the blue, right between the grass and the driveway, on a patch where the grass gave way to dirt and gravel. Blue was a transition color, bridging the current state of my problem and the solution, the exit strategy. The grey went on the stone driveway, representing grey matter and intellect, where the spriggan currently resided in me, where I hoped the spell would begin, and, not coincidentally, the path along which her honeysuckle would arrive.

The revenants inside were tired but restless; I could feel it in my bones. They’d risen early due to my stirring the house, and they hadn't yet had a chance to feed. I squinted up at the sun. It wouldn’t be long before the dead guys could safely join me outside.

I Felt Wesley’s uncertainty about leaving me alone in the yard while I got a shovel from the boat house, but the spriggan and I had reached a tentative understanding. I tried to picture myself kicking butt and taking names, being tough and capable, even in my current situation; I knew he wasn’t buying it. When I returned, I used the shovel to cut into the turf near the edge of the yard as it met the trees, the spriggan helping to find the right spot and gauge the size of the hole we'd need. It was a nice, quiet, collaborative bit of teamwork, and the soft loam turned easily under the spade, even without Jerkface's muscles or the undead guys' preternatural strength.

Harry stood on the porch smoking a menthol cigarette, staring at me with his benevolent grey eyes, and every now and then I felt his mind flicker across mine, felt the probing of my Cold Company through the Bond, his approach polite, like two strangers meeting for the first time. When I finished digging, I reached out mentally to one of the revenants inside to bring the grimoire. Harry nodded and said something over his shoulder to Wes, then flicked his cigarette butt in the gravel driveway and turned inside to check his scones. I began to light the candles. With each new light, I took a generous swig of the boozed-up Marseilles vinegar, soothing my guest as the liquor started warming veins. I left just enough for the last phase of the spell.

The sky was edging towards dark over the wide expanse of forest to the west when Batten returned. He opened the back of the SUV and branches flapped out, smacking him with greenery and dropping blossoms on the driveway. He wrestled them into a bundle in his arms, dug his hands under the root system, which he’d collected in a garbage bag, and lumbered over. I showed him the hole, and he dropped his precious cargo off in a dirty lump.

Wesley joined me in the yard with the book, eyeballing Ajax and Homer, his and Harry's debt vultures (I had to internally share what those were with the insatiably curious spriggan). He had my grimoire in his hands and was studying the incantation as though he was cramming for an exam. He needn’t have bothered sweating the fine points; in most magic, and certainly in the type of green kitchen magic I practiced, focus, belief, and intent were far more important than the word-for-word recitation. I appreciated his attention to detail, though.

I watched his lips move as he read and was filled with an unfamiliar warmth joining that of the booze; my baby brother’s brow was set low with concentration, but his one good eye was filled with something else. Discovery. Curiosity. I sensed he wasn’t entirely sure he could pull it off, but he was determined to try his best. For someone who'd dropped out of high school after just one year to bounce from couch to couch, smoking dope and mooching off anyone who’d have him, this might have been the hardest I’d ever seen him strive to do something. I was impressed. He’d grown up a lot in the years since I'd left home.

He'd been Mom’s favorite, could do no wrong, and had practically everything he'd wanted without having to work for it. He faced a childhood without consequences beyond me or one of my sisters beating his ass for being in our room, stealing our chocolate, or crop-dusting us at the dinner table. Perhaps the consequences he was facing as an adult – the cost of giving himself to Master Strickland and immortality, and the price he’d paid when he’d pretended to be Harry at the front door and someone greeted him with holy water, the burden of seeing and helping with my work when it went onto dark places – were teaching him a hard but necessary lesson. I’d give him a gold star later.

Wesley’s good eye wilted to the color of old violets and faded silk as he slowly brought his telepathic gaze up through his lashes at me. My assessment had been tough but fair, though, and I stood behind my thoughts by showing him a loving and sympathetic smile.

“We all grow up someday, Marnie,” my brother said. “Our parents taught you how. But not me.”

That was fair, too. I reached for his hand and he let me take it. His lips turned up near his scar into a smile that the puckered skin morphed into a partial snarl. Behind us, a dirt-smeared Batten began to plant the honeysuckle in the hole, the sound of his exertions filling the yard.
Normally, I'd be all over a sweaty, muscular dude going to town on my hole
, I thought at the spriggan.
That is some serious pollinating-for-funsies
.

Wes grimaced and swatted my arm playfully. “Do you
mind
?”

Harry swept out of the cabin, having changed for the evening into his finest tux and tails, top hat and all. The yard seemed to respond to his arrival with a hush as all the living things twittering in the dusk sensed the press of immortal power into their space. Insects fled, night birds took flight, and forest animals froze in place, afraid to be spotted. Harry pretended not to notice, but I knew better; the affirmation of his ability to startle living things always amused him, and showed in the tiniest curl of his lip. In the near dark, his eyes flashed chrome at me, and he fluttered his lashes in a show of faux innocence. My spriggan felt a quiver of fear; it was clearer than ever to her that the dead guy had dangerous powers, the extent of which she didn’t quite understand, and she didn’t like it.

Coming to stand behind Wes, Harry clucked his tongue chidingly. “You’re making the beefy mortal toil over a job you could complete in seconds, lad?” Harry said with laughter in his voice.

Wes squawked and motioned to the grimoire. “I’m learning how to be a dude-witch or something. That’s harder!”

I snort-laughed.
Dude-witch?

“Do you want this meathead to do it?” Wes demanded of Harry. “He’ll never get it right. Can he even read?”

Batten paused digging to glare at Wes, then tossed the shovel aside and motioned to the landscaping. “Maybe we should have put you in here first, see if we got the depth right.”

Harry purred. “
Point: the cold cook
, yes, my MJ? Your sweaty gigolo does have a clever side. As it has previously escaped our notice, one is forced to wonder where usually he keeps it?”

“Okay, stop,” Wesley told them. “I have to focus. This is serious.” He fished through our collection of goodies to press the blended herbs into my gloved palm. He began to intone solemn words that I tried not to anticipate, lest my little green hitchhiker see what was coming. Wes stumbled when the spell slid into Latin. I frowned; I didn’t have many spells that weren’t translated into English for my own ease of use, and I wasn’t going to be able to help him. I took another pull from the flask to still my tongue and distract my thoughts and, oh yeah, help with the ceremony.

Harry sighed and peered over his shoulder to smoothly finish up, “Cave! Cave!”
Beware! Beware!

Wes muttered, “I could have said
that
part.” He sighed and slapped the grimoire’s top page. “You guys don’t give me enough credit. When are you going to start taking me seriously?”

Harry smiled at me over my brother’s head and said, “I think you should find that I would be quite relieved to take you seriously, lad, when you have at long last proven yourself worthy.”

I lit the last candle, knocked back the last of the vinegar and rotgut tincture, and tossed the match into the gravel. Wes continued grumpily, “
Mother and Crone, call your child, Fair Aradia, back to the wild,
” and put one hand under my own. He tapped some powder into my gloved palm and shoved the cupped herbs under my nose, at which point I sniffed inward as hard as I could. The sneezing began in earnest after the third snort of powdered herbs. My eyes watered, and I crammed them shut.

“Marnie?” Wes said, his voice full of concern.

It felt like something was tearing in my brain. Could she really be ejected the way she’d entered? She was a creature of magic; no mundane creature could have made their way into my brain the way she had without doing serious damage. Maybe the reverse was also true. It felt like she was holding on by wrapping splintered roots in my sinuses and forebrain. I hurried to summon what little green energy I could while the spriggan was clumsily bumbling in that area of my mind.

Batten stood over us with his arms crossed over his chest. He grabbed the whole mortar of blended herbs and tilted it under my nose a moment too soon, and I sneezed into the mixture, splattering it everywhere. “
WAAA-CHOO!”

“Charming,” Batten commented, one eyebrow darting upward. “Is magic always this goopy?”

The spriggan made me swat unhappily at his face, and he caught my wrist in one hand easily, even if it hadn't been slowed by the rotgut and was being worked like a puppet.

“Oh no you don’t, sassy,” he growled, holding my arm without difficulty as the spriggan and I struggled in his grasp. He lowered his voice, his deep blue eyes calculating. Normally, I'd have been reduced to a throbbing, flaming pile of lust by a move like that. “Is that
you
trying to clobber me, or the moss monster?”

I wasn’t sure; we stuck my tongue out at him.

Wes stopped chanting his spell and said, “This isn’t working.”

He was right. My spriggan was a clever, resourceful creature, and she didn’t entirely trust me or the men. We’d have to try something more drastic. I closed my eyes, summoned psi, and Felt my surroundings to get a taste of all the forces at work. There was power available to me, but it was either external and muted in nature, or internal and muddled by my guest pushing through grey matter and rattling my metaphysical connections.

We needed to pull out the big guns. I thought at Wes,
Seven bites of seven plums, charged with moonlight. Goose feathers gathered under the noonday sun scattered around the planting spot to ensure strength to withstand. Unsalted butter on corn. Pomegranate seeds for female prosperity. Four pennies for Hecate buried at the crossroads and soil from that dig site transferred to the new planting.

“How do you know all this?” my brother wanted to know, flipping pages in the grimoire. The Blue Sense reported he was feeling lost and out of his depth. “I don’t know, Marnie. If she knows what you’re going to try next, won’t she be able to predict and fight it?”

I prodded him with one foot because I didn't have enough control to kick him in the ass, especially with the Jerkface still holding my arm. He was right again, but I couldn’t deal with his lack of belief and still focus on distracting the intruder. I needed Wes to be my eyes, ears, hands, and voice; how could I even attempt this without him?