Born Again

by Adam Dark

  Peter had Ben drive them to some super woo-woo store right outside downtown to pick up another crystal for them to use. Ben didn’t even want to bother coming inside; if energies existed in everything else like they did for him with demons and dead-people spirits, whatever that kind of shop might be blasting on those kinds of levels seemed a little more than he could handle right now. Then Peter came back out to the car with a massive brown paper bag in his arms.

  “Shopping spree?” Ben asked, wondering just how much of this other spiritual-body stuff his friend actually believed.

  Peter shook his head. “I just got a bunch of them. Not really convenient to have to come back here every time we go after a new demon. Man, it’s freezing.” He rubbed his hands together, pulled out his inhaler for a few puffs, then strapped on his seatbelt.

  Well, that reasoning made sense. And Ben couldn’t help feeling just a little proud that Peter had adopted the whole Team Demon-Hunter attitude. If they were stocking up on supplies, they were really doing this. Before he could pull back out onto the street, he got a text from April:

  —Okay. I’m coming tonight.—

  That was all it said, and that was all he needed. “April says she’s down,” he told Peter.

  “Good. We should make that a rule, though, right? Miss one meeting, and you’re off the team.”

  “That doesn’t work if we actually need her,” Ben said.

  “We don’t actually need her.” Peter stared out the windshield for a few seconds. “Yeah, okay. We actually need her. Tell her to come to my place, ‘cause we have to go back there to pick up the box, anyway. And, you know… the whole switcheroo.” He patted the bag of bulk crystals in his lap.

  Yeah, unfortunately, they were going to have to take the black stone out of Peter’s metal box in order to use the engineered contraption at the park. So they’d have to deal with the rocking-egg effect all over again, most likely. Ben texted April Peter’s address, then pulled onto the street and headed that way. “I never told her about what happened last night,” he said. “She might have some ideas for what to do about our little demon escape attempt.”

  “What?” Peter frowned at him. “We might need her to fight demons, dude, but April doesn’t have any super-secret access to anything we don’t.”

  Except her dreams.

  It was completely dark by the time they parked at Peter’s apartment complex. When they stepped up to his front door, a brown package had been propped up beside it. “You got a package,” Ben said.

  “Probably wrong apartment. The office keeps all these until we actually go to pick them up.”

  Ben leaned down to pick up the surprisingly heavy cardboard box, which was pretty close to the size and shape of a pillow. He turned it over to find ‘Peter Cameron’ printed in boxy letters across the side. “Pretty sure they got it right.” He tipped the box to show his friend.

  “Who’s it from?”

  “Doesn’t say.”

  Peter just shrugged and unlocked the front door. “Guess we’ll see.” The apartment was still almost as unbearably cold as the air outside. “Oh, man,” Peter said. His teeth had started chattering the minute they’d stepped out of the car, and they didn’t stop now. “Was it seriously this cold in here when you came by last night?”

  Ben just eyed him and closed the front door. “Yeah, dude. It didn’t bother you?”

  “I don’t think so…” Peter grimaced as he glanced warily around his apartment. “Remind me to email the office tonight about fixing the thermostat, huh?”

  Ben nodded, but he didn’t really think this was a broken thermostat. Not after having nearly burned himself on the freezing-cold demon stone and watching it freak out all over the carpet. And he thought Peter’s inability to notice the weirdness of it the night before was part of the whole thing, too. He just didn’t know how or why. Well, duh. That was his constant state of knowing.

  He stuck the box on the kitchen counter and, with a nod from Peter, sliced through the tape with his keys. A few layers of bubble wrap, and then… “What is this?” Ben pulled out some kind of wooden cabinet tapered at the top to make a thick, awkward triangle. When he set it down on the counter, it didn’t even sit straight up and down but tilted a little to the left. “This looks like something they’d have in that crystal store.” Slowly, he turned his head to smirk at Peter. “You order a display case for your new rock collection?”

  Peter rolled his eyes and set the paper bag of crystals on the counter, too. “Never seen that before. What’s in it?”

  The little cabinet’s hinged door stuck a bit before Ben jerked it open. And yes, it did actually creak. Inside were two shelves, the top narrower than the bottom, and it looked like the thin silver lines spreading over every inside wall were actually metal slivers embedded into the wood. On the bottom shelf was a light blue sticky note with the same boxy letters scrawled across it: ‘Good for up to ten specimens at a time.’

  Frowning, Ben handed over the sticky note, imagining glass jars of pickled eyeballs and something labeled ‘Dragon’s Blood.’ That was stupid.

  “What?” Peter flipped over the sticky note, but those nine words were all they had to go on. “I wonder how many Peter Camerons there are living here. This isn’t for me.”

  “I mean, it’s cool,” Ben said. “In a creepy, not-very-well-built kinda way.”

  “Just put it back in the box.” Peter headed toward the couch to slip off his monstrosity of a backpack, and Ben took a little more time inspecting the inside of the cabinet.

  Any ideas about this one? he asked Ian, always open to consulting the demon encyclopedia also living in his body.

  ‘Looks like something we would’ve built in seventh-grade shop class.’

  Okay, encyclopedia not very helpful today, either. Ben had to keep from laughing at the remark Peter obviously couldn’t hear. I wonder how much we could charge for it.

  “Uh… Ben?”

  “What’s up?”

  Ben turned to see Peter standing beside the couch and facing the far end of his living room, his backpack at his feet. “You left that box right in front of the coffee table last night, didn’t you?”

  For a minute, Ben expected Peter to tell him the box was completely gone, whisked away with the escaped demon. Or maybe it had shattered into a million pieces and was now everywhere but where he’d left it. When he followed Peter’s nod across the room, he didn’t quite know whether this was better or worse.

  The metal box now rested against the far wall on the carpet directly under the window. “Aw, man.” Ben hung his head for a minute. He definitely hadn’t left it there. “You locked the door before we left, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s not a deadbolt, but I think we would’ve noticed if somebody busted their way through the lock on the doorknob.”

  Probably. Unless somebody with some serious lockpicking skills happened to have a go at the front door just to see what a frozen apartment looked like. Or a demon trapped in a black-green stone trapped in a box. Ben’s mind went to Chase first, but that seemed a little more judgmental than probable. The guy didn’t quite seem patient enough to learn how to pick locks. “Anything missing?” he asked Peter. It would be a lot easier to inventory all his friend’s things than Ben’s; half the time, Ben couldn’t find his own stuff underneath the mess of all his own stuff. Peter was particularly neat.

  “Not that I can tell.”

  Well, great. “Okay, so either someone broke in and was really good about covering it up, or…” No, he really didn’t have to say out loud that now the demon box was moving on its own because it’s unwilling passenger had figured out how to do that. Crap.

  “It’s still in there, right?” Peter asked.

  “How should I know? Go check.”

  “No way, man. I’m not opening that box again until we figure out how—” The knock at the door wasn’t especially loud, but it made Peter jump so violently, he stumbled over his backpack and almost flipped over the ar
mrest of the couch. “It’s open!” It definitely came out like a startled scream, and the door opened just as Peter managed to right himself and push away from the couch again.

  April walked inside, her eyes grew wide, and she shut the door behind her. “Why is it so cold in here?”

  Ben and Peter exchanged a glance. “Kind of a long story that doesn’t quite have an ending yet,” Ben offered.

  Rubbing her gloved hands together, April looked back and forth between the guys for a minute. “Okay. What’s that?” She nodded at the weird cabinet on the counter.

  “Peter’s getting anonymous packages,” Ben said.

  “Just one,” Peter corrected. “I still think it’s for someone else.”

  April approached the counter and leaned toward Ben to read the words on the sticky note. But it was close enough for Ben to smell her shampoo, even in the ridiculous cold. Why did she have to smell that good? “Hmm,” she said, then looked up at Ben and held his gaze for just a little longer than she would if she hadn’t wanted to keep looking at him. He hoped. “So when are we heading out to… the park?” A self-conscious little smile followed the question.

  Yeah, Ben was pretty sure they all felt a little silly planning to go to a kids’ playground at night and potentially do something pretty badass. If they could get the whole metal-box issue figured out. “As soon as we can figure out what to do with that,” Ben replied, waving toward Peter’s metal box against the far wall.

  “And hopefully not kill ourselves in the process,” Peter added.

  “Um.” April frowned across the living room. “Something wrong with the box?” Peter let out a high-pitched, nervous cackle, and like a champ, April apparently decided to ignore the outburst. Her eyes widened at Ben instead.

  “A little bit,” he said. Probably the wrong time for understatements. “We kind of have a little problem with the stone already inside the box right now. You know…” He rolled his eyes up to look at the ceiling, feeling like a kid who got caught playing with matches and was now trying to find the perfect excuse for it that wasn’t pyromania. “And the demon we put in it.”

  Another smile flickered across April’s face. Did she think this was funny?

  “And the problem is…” She spread her hands a little, waiting for the big reveal.

  Ben glanced at Peter. “Well, it—”

  Something knocked against the far wall of the living room.

  “That!” Peter shouted, jabbing a pale finger at the box quivering on the carpet now. “It’s been doing that.” The guy almost started jumping in his anxiety. “It’s trying to get out.”

  Boy, that sounded particularly overdramatic. Ben eyed the box, swallowed, and said, “We… think that box probably isn’t enough to keep the demon there for a long time. It’s… I mean, the stone’s been moving inside it at least since last night.”

  “And we can’t just take it out,” Peter added, not looking away from the metal box. “It’s worse without the box. But we need it to…”

  “The park,” April said and nodded. How could she possibly be so calm about all this? “Nothing you tried worked?”

  Peter whirled around to look at her. “We haven’t tried anything,” he almost shouted. Then he cleared his throat and seemed to recognize the need to pull himself together a little. “We’re not stupid enough to try something without knowing if it’s gonna work, first.”

  April shot Ben a look that might as well have said, ‘That’s a load of crap.’ Because, actually, that was exactly what Ben and Peter had done when they’d summoned the demon Ebra for the first time, or when they went back to the abandoned orphanage for Ian and to face the Guardian. Or pretty much with everything before they’d caught this demon at the brother’s apartment, but now it felt like even that small win didn’t make a difference anymore at all.

  “So what about the cabinet?” She nodded at the lumpy wooden triangle on the counter.

  “That’s a piece of junk,” Peter said. “And it’s not even mine.”

  “Well it was obviously meant to hold something.” She tapped the sticky note on the counter, then made her way around the couch toward the metal box under the window.

  Peter flashed Ben an accusatory glare, and Ben could only shake his head. He didn’t know why April wasn’t freaked out by any of this, but she couldn’t do any damage. Right?

  The guys turned back to watch her, only now she’d picked up the metal box and was carrying it toward them.

  “No, no, no,” Peter shouted.

  “Woah, hey,” Ben said at the same time.

  Halfway back to the couch, April paused and looked at them both like she’d just walked in on them hanging out in nothing but their underwear. Which was a weird thing to think about, and Ben could only hope she never looked at him like that if she ever actually did see him in his underwear, someday in the future. Probably never going to happen, now. Maybe.

  “You guys seriously need to chill out,” she said. “And I promise, if anything goes wrong, you can blame me for it for the rest of our lives, and I won’t try to argue.”

  “That’s not how you reassure people,” Peter whined, clenching his eyes shut and hunching over the couch. The guy had a point.

  Before she reached Ben at the counter, the metal box jerked in her arms. The hollow, tinny echo of the stone bouncing around inside it made Ben cringe. April’s eyes lit up, and she met his gaze with wide eyes. “Woah.” It came out as an enthusiastic giggle of excitement, which Ben was pretty sure was the exact opposite of what any of them were supposed to be feeling right now. “Ben, can you just…” She nodded at the wooden cabinet.

  “Huh?”

  “Lay it down.”

  Man, he’d never felt so completely behind someone else’s thought process before. “Yeah, yeah.” He lifted the heavy, chunky cabinet to flip it so the back now rested on the counter, wondering the whole time why he was just willingly going along with this insanity.

  “Okay.” April turned the metal box a little in her hands. “How do I get this thing open?”

  “What?” Ben and Peter said together.

  “Seriously. Stop with the drama, guys. Just walk me through it.”

  Ben looked at Peter, who glared at him and mouthed, ‘Drama.’ Ben pointed to the metal box.

  Peter took a deep breath. “There’s a round impression on the top panel. That releases the spring, but try not to let the whole thing just fly open. Please.”

  “I got it, Peter.” Oh, yeah. She definitely sounded annoyed, now.

  “Right. Release the spring, keep the box together, I guess slide the top open super slowly until… well, whatever happens.”

  April pursed her lips and found the top panel. Her gloved finger paused over the impression, which was basically the open button, and with no warning, she stabbed at it.

  Peter groaned. “How about a countdown next time, huh?”

  With the box cradled in the crook of her arm so it wouldn’t pop open completely, April worked at the sliding top panel on a hinge and shook her head. “Jeeze, how old are you?” She was most likely just talking to Peter, but it felt like that was directed at Ben, too. When she turned the box over so the top panel was now directly above the open cabinet, the stone clanked around in there again, trembling in her hands. And all she did was giggle.

  Ben glanced quickly at Peter, who had his hands buried in his own hair again. But he couldn’t stand not to watch—he couldn’t stand watching, either, but it was better than being caught completely off guard—and returned his attention to April.

  She’d nearly placed the metal box into the opening of the cabinet, and now she slid the panel out from the bottom a few centimeters at a time. Ben grabbed the corner of the cabinet with one hand and the hinged door with the other. He could step up and at least pretend to be brave about it. He thought.

  The minute the heavy thunk echoed in the wooden cabinet, April yanked both hands and the metal box over her head, and Ben slammed the cabinet lid closed. He heard P
eter suck in a breath behind him, but at least it wasn’t another shriek.

  For a few eternal seconds, he kept his palm on that closed door. Nothing happened. At all. Finally, he removed his hands and slowly stepped back.

  April had tucked the metal box under her arm and was smiling at him. “Problem solved, ya think?”

  Ben just took a deep breath.

  “Yeah, for now. I guess,” Peter said, moving away from the couch for the first time since they’d realized the box had moved. “I will blame you if this goes wrong.”

  April laughed at him. “I said you could.”

  “How’d you know that would work?” Ben asked, feeling like something had definitely changed about the air in Peter’s apartment.

  “I didn’t,” she replied. “But trying something is a lot better than sitting around and pulling your hair out over this.” Ben wanted to shoot Peter a look at that, but he didn’t.

  “You sure you didn’t just mail that cabinet to me yourself?” Peter asked, his voice entirely flat now. “Like to prove some kind of point?”

  She raised her eyebrow at him. “I would not spend money on mailing you something just so I could play a joke on you.”

  Peter shrugged. “Well, I would.”

  With closed eyes and a shake of her head, April clapped her hands together. “We’re good now, right? Anybody up for a walk in the park?”

  9

  Peter must have tried to make it sound like he thought she deserved it when he told April she could hold the metal box on the drive to Buckley Playground. Ben thought the guy was just pretty freaked out about it still. Peter had always believed in science and technology, which made sense when his own biology tended to turn against him more often than not. The fact that the mechanics of the box he’d designed—which had worked enough to trap demons—hadn’t really done much to keep the demon fully put away had most likely taken a chunky bite out of the guy’s confidence. Ben understood the feeling, he really did, but he wished Peter would pull himself out of his sulking discomfort. Like right now.