by Adam Dark
April finally pushed herself up into standing and offered her hand to Peter. “Let’s go.” Ben stood too, and Peter took April’s hand. The girl was a lot stronger than she looked; Ben had seen it for the first time when she threw a huge rock through a frat-house window to save a bunch of college kids from another demon’s sick desire to burn them all alive. She didn’t need any help hoisting Peter up to his feet.
“Seriously?” Chase asked.
Now that he’d given them his name, Ben couldn’t unhear it. He also couldn’t bring himself to answer the guy. April picked up the metal box again, and Peter led the way down the hallway toward the apartment complex’s elevators. They should have been long gone by now.
“You said I could help,” Chase called after them. “I’ll find you anyway. You know that, right?”
Nobody turned back to look at him or offer a reply. Yes, the guy’s sudden desperation was a little creepy, but he’d literally threatened Peter with a fake gun and punched him in the face. Not really a solid foundation for a new working relationship—even when that work included something as highly insane as chasing and catching demons in clear lumps of rock.
By the time they stepped inside the elevator and turned around to face the closing doors, the hallway was empty.
3
On Sunday morning, Ben sat down with his steaming latte at a coffee shop called Speedy Joe’s. He liked being early, normally, but this time, both Peter and April were late. It was just a little weird, but after their Friday night spent trapping a demon in the brothers’ apartment and seeing their own lives flashing down the proverbial barrel of a loaded gun, he was willing to ignore the weirdness.
They’d all spent the day before alone, doing whatever it was they needed to do to shake off the bad taste that Chase guy had left in all their mouths. Ben had spent most of the day sleeping, more in an attempt not to think about the night before than from any real fatigue. Thankfully, Ian hadn’t felt the need to wake him up for playful banter, so he’d had that going for him. And he’d managed enough waking time to text his friends about meeting here this morning. They had to talk about some things—namely, in Ben’s mind, the fact that they’d almost been thwarted by a toppled couch pillow that had fallen to cover Peter’s demon-catching box. Yeah, they’d gone into that apartment a little less blind than when they’d faced the Guardian, but they still had pretty much zero game plan. That needed to change if they were going to keep doing this and not die—or let someone else die—in the process.
Ten minutes after they were supposed to meet at 10:30, April crossed in front of the coffee shop’s windows, wearing a maroon thermal jacket and walking briskly in Boston’s blistering January cold. Ben sipped his latte, remembering the first time they’d met in a coffee shop to talk about what he’d really been getting himself into last semester at Boston University. Parts of that conversation had been an incredible relief for him; other parts had gone south on so many different levels. But they’d made it through, and April hadn’t taken no for an answer when she’d said she was going with Ben and Peter back to that nightmarish old house to free Ian and do whatever they could against the Guardian. If it hadn’t been for her quick thinking—and most likely her dreams—they would have left a freaky trail of clues they couldn’t explain their way out of to save their lives. Thanks to her, they weren’t currently sitting in jail weeks later.
The bell tied to the front door chimed, and April found him immediately at the relatively small table in the corner. Her smile was a little awkward; then again, it had been a little awkward for the last few weeks. Whenever they were alone—which hadn’t been much lately, and not for very long—Ben was reminded both of how much more time he wanted to spend with her and how unlikely that was now, given what had happened.
The night they’d banished the Guardian with Ian’s help, before the green fire shooting out of Ben’s hands and his four-day coma afterward, April had acted on her feelings. She’d kissed him the way he imagined women had kissed their Viking warrior husbands returning from epic battles with plunder and a doubled death count under their belts. And Ian had been in the driver’s seat of Ben’s body at the time, which meant not only that Ben never got to be a part of that kiss, but Ian had shaken it off and chosen to ignore April completely—as if she’d brushed a bit of dirt off his collar instead. And most of the time, when Ben looked in her eyes now, he saw the ghost of surprise and humiliation he’d seen on her that night. He’d wanted to die, then. Now, he wished he could get rid of it completely. But that meant he’d have to spill the beans about Ian pseudo-living inside his body with him, and he was nowhere near ready to admit to anyone that he’d made that kind of deal. So, good. Pretending all around.
April stopped at the counter to order her drink, then slipped out of her jacket as she approached Ben’s table. She unwound the scarf from around her neck and put that and her jacket on the back of a chair. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, sounding a little rushed.
Ben could only hope she didn’t have somewhere else to be. He hated feeling like she’d only showed up so she could keep playing nice. “No problem.”
“Peter here yet?”
“Nope. He said he was coming, so—”
The bell on the front door dinged again, and—hey, speak of the devil—Peter stepped into the coffee shop. His swollen nose was the only part of his face with any color, bright red from the cold spreading into something bordering on a bruise beneath both eyes. The rest of him was as pasty-white as ever, and he sniffed a few times before jerking off his beanie and stuffing it into the pocket of his coat. April waved to him, and whatever facial expression he was going for just looked more like a wince.
The barista called out April’s coffee while Peter ordered his, and once they were all seated and back at the table, Ben had to force himself to start the conversation he’d asked them here to have. The day before, that had seemed fairly easy—cut and dry, let’s get down to business, here’s the game plan moving forward. It should have been as simple to talk about as it had been stepping into that apartment on Friday night with Peter and April beside him, ready to thwart another demon and free a dead woman’s spirit to … wherever it was Melanie had gone. But Ben had never been good at talking, and the weird tension he felt like a cold draft at the table brought all his self-consciousness up to the surface.
April had set her phone on the table, and she’d already glanced at it three times, like she did have somewhere better to be. Peter kept gingerly prodding his nose and darting glances between April and Ben like he couldn’t understand what any of them were doing here.
“What’s going on?” April asked, making it impossible for Ben to avoid any of it, now.
“Right.” He set his latte back down on the table. “So, I thought we should probably have a talk about how we’re gonna go about this whole… you know.” He glanced around just to make sure nobody was listening. Like anyone even cared. “The… demon thing.”
Both his friends just stared at him.
“I made the box,” Peter said, like that should have been the solution to all their problems. It definitely wasn’t.
“Yeah, I know,” Ben countered. “And it’s really cool. And it works. But the box isn’t enough if we don’t want to almost kill the people we’re trying to help.” Peter narrowed his eyes. “I mean, the box almost didn’t work.”
“You’re talking about the pillow, aren’t you?” his friend asked.
“Yeah.”
“I told you it wasn’t my fault,” Peter said, almost yelling in the coffee shop. April frowned at him, and he ducked down toward the table in apology, scowling. “What, you want me to guard it, now? Is that it? Make sure nothing falls on top of it so you can command these… things into the crystal with your super weird chants?”
‘What crawled up his butt?’ Ian asked. He’d been quiet all morning; Ben had almost forgotten he was there with them. Almost.
Ben just shook his head. “Not what I’m saying. I just…” He
sighed. “You guys gotta admit it was a close call. Until April figured it out.” He looked right at her and raised his eyebrows, hoping she’d somehow interpret that as a thank you. Saying it out loud would have given her a little more attention in the situation; he didn’t want Peter feeling left out. Man, that was ridiculous. Peter was a grown man—
“Sure, April always figures it out,” Peter snapped. April turned toward him with wide eyes, and that awkward silence flared right back up again. Apparently, Peter was already feeling left out.
“Dude,” Ben said. “You okay?” This conversation was not going the way he’d hoped at all.
“Oh, yeah. I’m awesome,” Peter replied, lifting his coffee cup in a sarcastic toast. “I’m just the guy who didn’t see the pillow and who thought he was going to get shot but got punched in the face instead.”
“Hey, I didn’t punch you in the face.” Ben was starting to lose his cool, here. He had no idea what was making Peter so pissy, but he did know the guy wasn’t going to talk about it in front of April. The two of them had managed to stay on relatively good terms when they found the brothers’ apartment to suck the last demon out of it, but Peter hadn’t exactly warmed to her. And he liked talking about himself just as much as Ben did.
Peter mumbled something completely unintelligible, and April took a deep breath.
“Okay, so the pillow was just a mistake,” she said with a shrug, her voice rising a little as she obviously tried to keep her own composure under the strain. “We’ll be more careful about where we open the box next time. Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“So you guys still wanna keep doing this?” Ben asked. That was part of what he’d really wanted to discuss. He’d just about dragged Peter back to that house in Oakwood Valley because they were trying to free Ian—who at that time had only been able to talk to Ben in scattered nightmares. And April had stormed in with them because, as much as he didn’t like to admit it, they needed her. Her dreams had helped them more than once, and whether or not she’d had a dream about the damn pillow too, she was the one who’d recognized the issue. Plus, she’d been there with Ben the first time in eleven years he’d come face to face with a demon again—the night the voices of restless dead people found their way back into his head—and none of it had phased her. But Ben was the only one of them who really wanted to make this demon-hunting a regular thing. He wanted to be in control of his life again, to not be so afraid of everything, to not be followed by the mental misdiagnoses and the stigma of having lost his mind. He’d never lost his mind. Ben could do what no one else could—slip into the spirit realm, exist with his undead friend’s presence sharing his body, put the demons back where they belonged. He had to take advantage of that and do something about it. Didn’t he?
His friends stared at him for a minute. “I mean, yeah, Ben,” April said. “Isn’t that the point? If you want to keep doing this, so do I.” She sounded entirely serious, though Ben wondered how genuine she was being when she glanced down at her phone again and propped her chin in her hand.
“Pete?”
Peter glanced at Ben briefly, then jerked his head and stared at the table. “I made the box.” That was all Ben was going to get out of him, apparently.
“Okay,” Ben said and nodded. “Good.”
“I do want to know something, though,” April said.
The intensity of her blue-eyed gaze almost made Ben’s heart stop. “Okay…”
“Why’d you go off script?”
“Huh?”
“You spent all that time memorizing the chant, or whatever you call it, from the book,” she said. Ben stared at her. “The Lesser Key, right?” He nodded. “You said something completely different in that apartment.”
Peter looked up with wide eyes from where he’d been glaring at the table. “Yeah,” he said, suddenly perking up. “That definitely wasn’t in the book.”
‘Whoops,’ Ian said.
Really? Ben thought. That’s as helpful as you wanna be right now? He swallowed, feeling exactly the same level of discomfort as when April had called him out on withholding similar information after the frat house had burned down. She’d known he was hiding something, and Ben had eventually opened up and told her everything, hoping she wouldn’t be just another person writing him off as a lunatic. She’d taken it all in and actually believed him. But he was still keeping secrets, and she knew. She just didn’t know what they were.
April tilted her head. “I mean, what you said definitely worked. Obviously. But that wasn’t the plan, either. We already knew the words from the book would be enough to bind the demon, and like you said, we already had one close call with the…” Her eyes darted toward Peter, but he was frowning at Ben. “With the box. So why’d you change it up?”
‘Man, she doesn’t miss a thing.’
Yeah, I noticed.
“How’d you know it would work?” Peter asked.
Ben froze. He had zero explanation other than he’d been repeating what Ian told him, and now was not the right time to bring that up.
‘Just say Melanie told you,’ Ian suggested.
Well yeah, that was a decent excuse. “Same way I knew about the demon and where to find the apartment,” Ben said and swallowed thickly. Unfortunately, neither of his friends interrupted to give him a little more time to plan out the lie. He felt like his chair had been kicked out from under him. “You guys know I can go into the… other… the green place.” He felt ridiculous saying spirit realm out loud, but it didn’t make a difference. Peter had seen it happen when they’d summoned the demon Ebra for the first time in Ben’s apartment, and Ben had explained it as much as he could to both his friends that they didn’t have a reason to think this blatant lie was impossible. They’d never seen the spirit realm, and they never would. Not until they died, anyway. “Melanie called me back into it right before we got to the apartment.” It didn’t really work that way, but they didn’t know that.
“Who?” Peter asked.
Jesus, sifting a tiny bit of truth from a massive lie was hard. “The dead woman who told us about the demon. Those guys’ mom.”
“I thought you didn’t know who she was,” April said.
“I didn’t. Until she called me back again. Then she told me her name and what to say to the demon.”
“She gave you a message too, didn’t she?” April asked.
Well, at least that part he didn’t have to lie about. “Yeah. You heard part of that. I was trying not to make it weird.” April bit her lip, then shrugged. Hopefully, his half-truth would be convincing enough for a while.
“You gave them a message?” Peter glanced back and forth between April and Ben.
“When you were out in the hall.” Ben didn’t have to say it was when Peter was being held hostage by the end of that guy Chase’s vape. Peter just clenched his jaw and looked away. “I found out all this stuff right before we went through the door, and then… I mean, it was pretty messy the minute we stepped inside. I didn’t have time to think about telling you guys. Sorry.”
“All right,” Peter said, then sniffed and wiped his still-red nose with his sleeve.
“Next time, try to remember, okay?” April said, scrunching her nose in an attempt to lighten the mood a little. It almost looked like she was trying to apologize for her mini interrogation. “It was kinda freaky not knowing what happened.”
“I know,” Ben said quietly. “I’ll definitely say something if it happens again.” Even while he said this, he fought the urge to throw himself at her feet and confess everything about Ian right there, to apologize over and over and beg her to forgive him for so many stupid lies. It would be humiliating—he had no delusions about that—but he was certain it would feel better than the Texas-sized brick of guilt burying itself in his gut. April’s first instinct that he hadn’t told them everything had been eerily close to the truth, but she’d believed his crappy excuses. As far as she knew, she had no reason not to trust him. Since he’d woken from his
coma in the hospital, Ben knew he should have told both his friends what had really happened with Ian—that he was only making things worse the longer he tried to keep it to himself. Now, in a really messed-up way, it felt like he’d just been digging his own grave.
‘You could win an Oscar for that one.’ None of Ian’s comments had been making Ben feel any better about things the last couple days. This wasn’t an exception. Ben just tried not to listen.
“Since we’re talking about not knowing what’s happening,” Peter said, apparently having bought Ben’s story too, “I still have the box at my place, guys. And that thing’s still in there.” He grimaced and slowly looked up at Ben. “I don’t think—”
“Well look who it is!”
All three of them turned toward the front of the coffee shop to see the last person any of them wanted to see now—or ever. Chase stood there with his arms spread wide, grinning like the four of them had been best friends since kindergarten. He wore the same dark beanie with the same stupid lock of hair peeking out of it over his forehead.
April groaned. “Oh, come on.”
4
Chase walked toward their table, apparently oblivious to the rising level of disdain blasted toward him from three different people. Either that, or the guy just didn’t care about how any of them felt, which Ben realized was way more likely. And the guy even had the balls to pull out the fourth chair at the table and slide right into it like he owned the place.
“What are you doing here?” April asked in a low voice, glaring at their new, unwanted arrival.
The guy leaned back in his chair with a shrug. “Same as you guys, I bet.” When no one said anything, Chase added, “It’s a coffee shop. I’ll get my coffee in a sec, but first I wanted to come say hi.”