Grilled Cheese and Goblins

by Nicole Kimberling

  “Food security is absolutely our job,” Keith said.

  “No, it’s your job. At this office we focus on law enforcement.”

  “As do I.” Keith glanced to the field office’s only other inhabitant, a young woman decked out in a melon-colored vintage pantsuit, who sat silently staring at them both. Keith couldn’t tell if her lack of participation signaled tacit agreement with Nash or just passivity.

  “No, you enforce rules about handwashing,” Nash said. “I protect humans from monsters. There’s a huge difference.”

  And who, Keith silently wondered, protects the monsters from you, Agent Nash?

  If Nash had been the first guy to pull this on him, Keith might have bothered to get angry about being insulted for providing valuable social services. But Nash was far from the first pumped-up self-styled sheriff who had tried to minimize Keith’s contribution.

  “Yeah, I can see that you’re super busy with it too.” Keith gestured vaguely at Nash’s impeccably clean desk.

  It became clear that if he was to make good on his promise of dinner for Lupe, he’d have to accomplish it himself. A brief search of the internet revealed no food-grade blood outlets in town. The closest was in Colorado Springs, an hour’s drive away. And he’d need to drive there, because all the portals in the town were military and therefore restricted. Plus the cost of the meal was staggering.

  No way his department’s auditor would okay that. Especially when they were still pissed about the phone charger.

  He wondered if he could just make the meal himself, as it were. The idea appealed in several ways, including speed, cost and assured quality of product. He turned to the receptionist. “Is there a blood draw kit on the premises?”

  The woman silently shook her head. Her gold hoop earrings glinted as they swung back and forth.

  “Is anyone here qualified to draw blood if I procure a kit of my own?”

  Again the woman indicated the negative, then turned away. Again Keith could not decipher whether this was insolence or apathy.

  After a brief database search Keith found a NIAD-affiliated doctor willing to do the draw.

  Maybe it was because he now cohabitated with a trans-goblin, but recently Keith had started to see the deep inequity with which extra-humans were treated. First they had to live by the edicts of the official Secrecy Act, which prevented them from revealing themselves to the world in their true forms. That alone would be enough to wear on the personhood of anybody, but on top of that half of NIAD preferred to think of the citizens they were sworn to protect as monsters to be violently eliminated.

  Keith could understand the mindset—he’d been that guy once too a long time ago, when he’d suffered the shock of discovering that a lot of creatures he’d thought were imaginary had turned out to be real—and a few of them did actually eat human beings. But he’d overcome that sense of alienation at the largeness of the multiverse and his own relative smallness and powerlessness within it. He credited falling in love with a trans-goblin for the greater part of his mental transition. Though he liked to think that appreciation of the diversity of the world would’ve come to him eventually, given time and maturity.

  Lupe Balderas had not woken up one day and decided that she should drink human blood just for the fun of it. She needed it to live, and withholding it wouldn’t make her straighten up and fly right. She wasn’t a moral degenerate—just a person. And who knows what would happen if she began to starve? But maybe for guys like Nash that was the endgame—withholding resources from a person truly in need of them until violence and lawlessness are the only option for survival.

  Yeah, that checked out.

  Keith pumped his fist a couple more times, watching his own vivid blood snake down the plastic tubing into the bag.

  It was weird, but making a meal for a client—even one comprised solely of his own blood—appealed to him. Obviously he didn’t have a choice about plating. The entrée would be slurped out of this ugly plastic sack.

  The color was nice though. Bright red. But it needed some kind of garnish. Or at least a personal touch. In the end, he asked to borrow the doc’s Sharpie and wrote a simple “bon appetit” on the warm, slick plastic.

  Lupe had just stepped out when Keith arrived, but her aunt accepted the meal with a grateful smile.

  “Tell her I hope she enjoys it,” Keith said.

  Chapter Two

  “I feel like I really put a lot of myself into that dish.” Keith slid two pizza boxes onto the round kitchen table, then seated himself opposite his boyfriend. Gunther possessed an astounding physique, dark hair and bright blue eyes—which he currently rolled in response to Keith’s pun.

  “That’s a terrible joke. But what you did was very nice. I hope you remembered to drink some juice after you donated.”

  “Does a giant iced coffee count as juice?” Keith considered getting down plates, but decided to forgo them as Gunther already had a slice in his hand. He settled for napkins instead.

  “Not at all.” Gunther went to their stainless steel refrigerator and selected one of his many fruity “health” drinks and set it down in front of Keith. A pink mandala decorated the bottle, while gold letters promised a dazzling variety of improvements to his health and spirit. Keith felt certain that the blend of apple juice, beets and carrots wasn’t about to deliver him “enlightenment in a bottle,” much less detox his spirit, but for Gunther’s sake he took a drink.

  Gunther smiled and sat back down in front of his pizza.

  He worked on a NIAD strike force, which meant he spent most days on the firefighter end of the first responder spectrum. A typical day for him meant portaling to locations all around the United States saving citizens from their own bad luck and bad ideas. He might attend the scene of a necromancy gone wrong in the morning and then be assisting with wrangling drunken Valkyries on a hen night in the afternoon.

  Now and then Gunther had to decapitate a dozen slobbering zombies with nothing but a sword. But those days happened very occasionally. And Keith avoided thinking about it when he kissed Gunther goodbye at the front door.

  Keith opened up the box that contained his own dinner—a plain cheese pizza. Gunther downed another slice of his meat-lover’s supreme with no cheese and extra hot peppers with all the salacious enthusiasm that one would expect from a goblin who had been transmogrified to appear to be human.

  “So what turned out to be wrong with the blood she got from SSA?” Gunther spoke while shaking hot sauce onto his pie.

  “I’m not sure yet. The magic forensics lab was already closed by the time I got back to DC. But I was able to run some standard tests. The blood is one hundred percent human, although from three separate donors. It had no off smell or color, but I won’t know more until tomorrow.”

  “What do you think is wrong with it?” Gunther inquired.

  “I have no idea.”

  “But you usually have a guess.” Gunther chewed thoughtfully on his pizza.

  “My guess is that it’s been adulterated with something—probably to dilute or extend the product. Maybe extra plasma. Because why else would there be three separate DNA markers? It’s not like there’s some blood sommelier out there adding a little bit of this and that to create a literal Bloody Mary.”

  “I bet you could find one at the Grand Goblin Bazaar,” Gunther mumbled.

  “Well, yeah, sure. There’s probably some great hema mixologists out there who we don’t know about, but this blood came from a NIAD-certified prescription blood dispensary in Colorado Springs.”

  “But did it really?” Gunther asked.

  Keith was about to argue but then realized Gunther had a point. Who was to say that the blood was voluntarily donated as opposed to being drained from farmed humans in some dark corner of the cosmos?

  Hell, that could even be happening in an apartment in Milwaukee.

  “You know, you could just tell me whatever theory you have, babe,” Keith said.

  “I’m not trying to barge i
n on your case.” Gunther looked self-conscious. “I’m just saying that you’re coming at this from the angle of a person who is looking for negligence in terms of food handling.”

  “Or adulteration for the purposes of increasing profits,” Keith added. “Which are both rife in the food industry.”

  “What if it’s not just some impersonal greediness? What if was a specific attack against the victim? Or against extra-humans living in Denver? I’ve seen a lot of reports of this kind of stuff on FaeBook recently. Harassment. Minor poisonings.”

  “You can’t believe everything you read on FaeBook.” Keith pointed this out automatically, before realizing how dismissive it sounded. “Sorry. I know that doesn’t mean extra-humans aren’t specifically targeted for attack all the time. But Lupe didn’t mention anything about being targeted. Her main concern was that the rest of the portions of blood in that lot might also be unsafe.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t understand that it’s happening.” Gunther folded another pizza slice into his mouth. “She might not be a naturally suspicious or cynical person. What does she do for the USDA?”

  “Aerial photography. I don’t know if that means she’s a pilot or that she just straps a camera to her head and transforms into a bird,” Keith said.

  “Becoming a bird would be less expensive,” Gunther said. “But more dangerous. I wonder if anyone there knows about her. It’s not unheard of for human coworkers who discover extra-humans to exploit their vulnerabilities to win promotions or settle petty workplace grudges.”

  Keith nodded. All this speculation made sense from a sleuthing perspective, but he couldn’t help but wonder at Gunther’s sudden interest in this food inspection case. Normally Gunther liked to leave work at the NIAD offices and simply relax when they had time together.

  “Did something happen at work today?” Keith asked.

  Gunther shrugged. “We got a few new team members. More are on the way. Including my cousin Jerry.”

  “Oh? Jerry . . .” Gunther hailed from a large extended family that, unlike Keith’s own, remained close and very much involved in each other’s lives. Keith struggled to remember who Jerry was and whether that particular member of the vast Heartman Clan had struck him as a good coworker for Gunther.

  “The pilot,” Gunther provided. His expression turned unusually troubled. “All the new members are former air force.”

  Keith waited for more information, but none came. “And so?”

  “They’ve all been suddenly discharged and they’re all trans-goblins,” Gunther said.

  Ah, there it is.

  “That sounds like deliberate discrimination.” Keith kept his tone as neutral as possible. He didn’t know where Gunther would go with this.

  Gunther’s relationship to his own extra-human nature was complex and sometimes contradictory. If he wasn’t actively engaged in drinking kerosene or chopping the head off a draugen with one hand, Gunther passed for human. Maybe an exceptionally good-looking human, but human nonetheless. So he had the option of blending in, and he’d described himself to Keith as human on more than one occasion. Gunther often spoke about the need for the Secrecy Act in order to protect extra-humans from hate-based violence. But he also took immense pride in his goblin heritage and family. He’d wept with joy when the first extra-human had been elected to the United States House of Representatives representing California’s twelfth district—a longtime fae stronghold and Gunther’s hometown of San Francisco.

  So Keith never really knew where on the complex continuum of identity Gunther’s heart would lie.

  “Yeah. I think some high-flying bigot just found out about trans-goblins and is now trying to purge his ranks.” Gunther frowned at the single remaining slice of his pizza.

  Brooding on some asshole who neither he nor Gunther could touch was only going to frustrate them both and probably wreck their evening. Keith didn’t think said asshole deserved that kind of power over them, so he angled to shift the subject.

  “Do the new team members seem nice?” Keith asked.

  Gunther gave him a long, undecipherable look, then finally said, “It’s hard to tell. None of them are happy about having been kicked out of their former jobs. If they’d wanted to work for NIAD they’d have joined us instead of the military. Most of them really don’t have the ideal personalities for law enforcement.”

  “I see.” Frustrated pilot wasn’t exactly the right stuff when it came to keeping a cool head in the face of all the strangeness that Gunther dealt with on a daily basis.

  “So I guess what I’m trying to say is that you never know when you have to watch your back.” Gunther finished his pizza. “When you’re different.”

  “That’s true.”

  “But that’s probably just me bringing my work into your problem. What about this SSA company? Are they legit?”

  “They’re a subsidiary of Blissco.”

  “Oh wow.” Gunther raised his eyebrows. Then the corner of his mouth curved up in a mischievous smile. “That means you have an excuse to call your secret phone girlfriend. I’m so jealous.”

  “Come on, she’s not my phone girlfriend.” Keith felt his cheeks warming. “I’ve never even seen Susan. For all I know she’s a pile of old telephones brought to life by a corporate wizard.”

  “Even so, she did send a very nice fruit and nut tray last Christmas,” Gunther said. “You should keep flirting. Maybe we’ll get an upgrade to salami sampler next year.”

  Contrary to Gunther’s prediction, Keith did not start the day by calling Blissco or any of its subsidiaries but by swinging by the magical forensics lab to check on the sample he’d submitted the night before.

  “Seriously? I only got in five minutes ago, Agent Curry,” the mage technician complained. She was a human woman of the midfifties variety with blond-frosted hair and a deliberate, frumpy manner. She wore a lab coat over a bulky, zigzag-pattered sweater despite the fact that it was mid-May. She didn’t like Keith, but didn’t dislike him either. “I haven’t even opened up the evidence bag yet. Plus you have two murders ahead of you. You’ll just have to wait.”

  “Listen, I’m not trying to be a pain in your ass, but I have to know whether or not to ask the company to issue a recall on the rest of the blood in that lot. That means potentially thousands of blood-dependent citizens going hungry today.” Thousands was a slight exaggeration, but certainly at least one thousand citizens across the West Coast. “Or worse, getting tainted meals and going berserk and creating more murder victims.”

  “I’m going to be the one going berserk if you don’t quit bothering me,” she said. “Why not just issue the recall?”

  “I have to have a reason, and magical contamination is easiest,” Keith said. “So please just could you look at it? It will take maybe thirty seconds and I’ll be out of here.”

  The mage tech let out a heavy sigh and pulled open the evidence bag. She eased the blood bag out into the center of the circle engraved on the work top. She then turned a knob at the front of the worktable and a ring of flames, much like those on a commercial stovetop, only vivid purple, leaped up. Thin lavender smoke rose from them. As the mage tech began her incantation the smoke began to form into arcane writing. Using a foot pedal, the mage tech photographed every word as it coalesced. These images were then sent to a computer that read and assembled them into a report, which the woman handed to Keith.

  “There.” She extinguished the flame and scooted Lupe’s leftover packaging back into the evidence bag with the tip of her ballpoint pen.

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to interpret this for me,” Keith asked.

  “The mixture contains at least thirteen percent magically volatile compounds, spells or spell fragments. That’s ten percent higher than normal.”

  “What are the compounds?”

  The tech shrugged. “Don’t know. You’ll have to take it down to gas chromatography.”

  “How long does that take?”

  “I think they’re abo
ut six weeks behind,” she said. “But thirteen percent is enough to get your recall or whatever, so...solved. Now please let me get on with the important stuff.”

  After alerting SSC about their bad blood problem and suggesting that they issue a recall, Keith headed down to gas chromatography, which did have a huge backlog.

  Handing over the leftover sample for analysis should have been the end of the case for now. Protocol would have him wait until the results came back to pursue the case of either adulteration or contamination further. But Keith convinced them that he needed to keep the packaging along with a small amount of residual blood because: what if Gunther was right? What if he was dealing with an attempt at poisoning either Lupe or the extra-human population at large?

  Technically he should have taken those concerns to the local agents, which would mean turning the whole thing over to the Denver field office. But chances of Nash putting any serious thought or effort into the case seemed slim.

  He wondered if there was a faster way to narrow the options as to what magical adulterants exactly had been added to the blood Lupe drank. If it had been something that only effected tlahuelpuchi biology then at least he would know that Lupe had been specifically targeted. Was there any quicker way to identify the components in that blood?

  Keith knew any number of human chefs and bartenders who could, with a great degree of accuracy, identify the components of drinks and dishes using their senses alone. Could Gunther have been onto something with the vampire mixologist angle?

  Sheer curiosity led him to search the Grand Goblin Bazaar’s website. Sure enough, there were three blood bars in the human-accessible area, though none were on NIAD’s safe travel list. That didn’t matter so much to Keith though. Because he realized he had an in. He’d met the Red Drop’s head bartender, Excoria, earlier in the year when he’d been doing routine inspections at a bartending competition in Vegas.

  The Grand Goblin Bazaar teemed with every sort of counterfeit or illegal product imaginable. You only had to walk a few steps down one of its crooked streets to find anything from knock-off couture handbags to bootleg grimoires whose accident-causing misspellings plagued the NIAD mage office. The only law in the Grand Goblin Bazaar was by edict of the goblin king: no street fights, no disruptions, no impairing commerce between citizens. But the line between citizen and chattel was very soft and smudgeable.