by Adam Dark
“I never told anyone what I saw,” Chase said with zero trace of regret or really any other emotion. He said it like he was just reciting facts—which, for the purpose of this little chat they were having with him, was pretty much all they’d asked for. “I was nine when they took her away, and even then, I was smart enough to know you don’t see something like that happen and then go running your mouth about it to everyone who gives you a minute to talk.” He looked at Ben. “Well, unless it’s you.”
“What?” Peter snapped.
The jab stunned Ben so much that for a minute, he literally couldn’t think of anything. “What are you talking about?” The words left him like cold, sticky goo.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Chase replied, waving a flippant hand in the air. “Come on. You were all over the news for like four or five years, right? Everyone thought you killed your friends in that old house, but nobody could prove it. They couldn’t prove anything you told them, either, and they probably would’ve locked you up like my cousin if you hadn’t learned how to keep your mouth shut. Which it looks like you got the hang of pretty well, by the way.”
“Motherf—”
“What?” Chase turned to look at Peter then with a wide-eyed chuckle. “It’s public record. Right there for anybody to find.”
Peter looked just about ready to clock the guy all over again, and Ben was right there with him. Either Chase was trying to get them riled up by bringing up the hardly buried past like this, or he was seriously this socially inept and really thought this was just the way three dudes sat down in a coffee shop to get to know each other a little better. He had to give himself a minute to make up his mind about which option he was going to go with from here on out.
“Yeah,” he said, running his tongue over his molars and making his jaw pop. “It’s public record. But how do you know that’s me?”
Chase stared him down, that half smile so frickin’ fake, then said, “I know how to put the pieces together a lot better than most people. ‘Cause I know how to dig deeper.” Ben could have sworn the guy actually winked at him, but it could have been a tick. Part of him hoped it wasn’t so he could justify socking that wink right off his face.
“Did you send that cabinet to my apartment?” Peter asked, his face scrunched up in a mixture of disbelief and rage.
“Uh… I can honestly say I have no clue what you’re talking about with that one, Petey.”
Ben had only seen his friend’s face really color a handful of times, probably due to the fact that it lacked so much color to begin with, but Peter’s cheeks flushed a startling shade of red. “Hey,” Ben hissed, and Chase turned that stupid grin on him again. “Cut that out, man.”
“Boy, you guys are high-strung, aren’t ya?” Chase raised his hands again in submission. “My bad.”
“You told us about your cousin,” Ben said, “but that didn’t actually answer the question.”
“You mean why I want in on your little club?”
Ben clenched his fists under the table and held himself back from telling the guy to leave right then and there.
“Yeah, so I know what you guys were dealing with in that apartment on Friday. Like I said, I saw it before with my cousin. And I’ve seen it more times than you’d think since then. But until I watched you guys do… whatever it is you got going on with your weird box, I’d never seen anyone actually do something about it.” He stared at Ben. “And I want in on the action.”
“Dude, this isn’t gambling or extreme sports,” Ben almost shouted.
“Really? ‘Cause that glowing green hand of yours says something different.” He nodded at Ben’s lap, where he still clenched his fists. “You’ve got some serious juice in there.”
“Ben, I swear, I’m gonna hit him again,” Peter said through clenched teeth, shaking his head and staring a hole through the side of Chase’s face.
“Hey, I couldn’t make this stuff up,” Chase said, but he didn’t turn to look at Peter this time. “You can’t seriously tell me I was imagining it. I bet you guys are the only people I’ve seen doing this kinda stuff with… I don’t know, demons or whatever, because you’re the only guy on the planet who can actually blast those things with some of their own medicine. ‘Cause that’s what it is, right?”
How in the hell had this one random dude managed to put together all the pieces into something so close to the truth in only five days?
‘No, you have me,’ Ian said. ‘I’m way better than a demon.’
Yeah, that’s definitely gonna help us right now.
Ben held Chase’s wild-eyed gaze, which was so intense at this point it was honestly starting to creep him out a little. An image of Jekyll and Hyde flashed through his head, only he was willing to bet Chase was all Hyde, all the time. Was that any better?
“So this is about redeeming yourself,” Ben said, hoping he’d grasped onto the one thing that might keep this guy from flying totally off his rocker.
Chase snorted. “Man, mostly I’m just bored out of my mind. But yeah. Sure. If it’ll make you feel better, I want to put the bad guys back where they belong just as much as you do.” The guy sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest again, and Ben didn’t even need Ian’s incredibly poorly timed powers of observation to know he’d nailed it on the head.
‘He’s not lying about that part,’ Ian said.
Yeah, I know.
He didn’t know how he knew, and he didn’t think he was ever going to get Chase to admit to anything more than that. But it was there, buried beneath all the ego and infuriating douchebaggery. Chase wanted to make a difference, like Ben and Peter did, because he’d never been able to before.
“I’m gonna need a tissue,” Peter muttered. “That was so moving.” Chase glanced at him and shrugged.
“So where’d you get the list?” Ben asked.
When Chase looked at him again, whatever embarrassment he might have been trying to hide vanished completely beneath a predatory grin. “You found it, didn’t you? Did you blast it into that little toy box too, or what?”
Peter almost growled. “It’s not a toy.”
“It’s not a toy,” Ben echoed, just because he thought it highly possible that at this point, Chase had tuned absolutely everything else out. “And yeah, we got it.”
Chase slapped a hand on the table, and Ben reached out to grab his coffee cup, just in case. “Right on. Was it hard? I mean, harder than the thing you guys put away in that apartment?”
The second Ben locked eyes with Peter, he thought of the pillow falling on Peter’s metal box and the three of them almost strangling under that demon’s grasp before April kicked the pillow away. Apparently, Peter had the exact same thought; he glared at Ben and shook his head really slowly. Ben bit his lip to keep from laughing, which seemed a little weird because the pillow thing hadn’t been all that funny. But it kinda was.
“Just different,” he said instead.
A little of Chase’s massive amounts of enthusiasm dimmed, and his shoulders sagged. “What do you mean?”
“We had to get a kid out of the way, first,” Peter said.
“There were two guys dangling mid-air in that apartment,” Chase said with a frown. “You didn’t have any problem with them, right?”
Peter cocked his head. “It’s basically like the difference between getting a snake to let go of a mouse and pulling a tapeworm out of a different mouse.”
Chase jerked away from him a little. “Ew.”
Yeah, Pete. Ew.
“Different,” Ben repeated, wondering where the heck Peter had come up with that metaphor.
“But you did it,” Chase said.
“Yeah.”
“And it was at the park.” The guy nodded at Ben, like this was the happiest news he’d been waiting to hear all his life.
“Yeah.”
Chase turned back to Peter and smirked. “So you guys do need me.”
“Not exactly,” Peter said.
“Come on. I gave you the list—”
“It was literally just one thing on a piece of paper,” Ben interrupted. “You put a lot of work into being a jerk about blacking out the rest of it.”
Grinning, Chase opened his arms again and shrugged. “It’s no fun without a little bit of mystery. But you guys never would have found the thing if I hadn’t given you the list, first.”
Crap.
Peter snorted. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Double crap.
“What?” Chase asked.
The balance of power had shifted now, only Peter didn’t know he was using a total lie as leverage. “Ben already knew about that thing at Buckley Playground. Your list just happened to confirm it.”
Chase’s surprised chuckle took Ben totally by surprise. “And how the hell did you know that?”
Ben tried to give Peter the ‘don’t take this too far’ look, but his friend was pretty much soaking up the opportunity to put the new guy in his place. “He’s got his own way of figuring this stuff out. Ben?”
For a second, Ben’s open mouth just worked without any sound. Peter never acted this proud when it was just them, but the guy was trying to put on a good show. “Uh… spirits.”
‘Really?’ Ian said. ‘That’s super impressive.’
“Dude, it’s more than that,” Peter said. “They send him messages.”
Well, there it was, in all its ridiculous glory. Chase squinted at Ben, obviously fighting between laughing it up at a bad joke and letting himself believe what still sounded exactly like a bad joke. Okay, why not?
“Yup,” Ben said.
“For real,” Chase muttered.
“Yeah. There’s one standing behind you right now,” Ben said, nodding just a little behind Chase’s chair. “Wanna know what it’s saying about you?” Chase offered a weird little shrug and a quick shake of his head, which obviously meant yes. “It says you’re a tool.”
Peter snorted and buried it in a long drink of his coffee.
“Yeah, thanks,” Chase said, but he folded his arms again and couldn’t completely hide his disappointment.
Ben wanted to ask the guy how it felt to have his own game shoved in his face, because Ben thought it felt pretty frickin’ great. And he didn’t even have to pretend he had a loaded gun in his pocket. Instead, he hid his own smile and said, “It’s true, though. Not like I can control it. Most of the time. But it comes with the glowing green hand.” He waved his hand, loving the way Chase flinched back just a little.
“Okay,” Chase said, some part of him having fallen back into a measure of humility. Ben hoped. “So if that part’s real, too—”
“It’s real,” Peter said.
Chase shot him a scathing glance. “Then that just means the stuff I can find will help you guys get to these… things that much faster. Unless all the spirits are talking to you at the same time and you have to tell them to take a number.”
That almost made Ben shiver a little, because at one point, that had been true. The voices screaming in his head up until right before he graduated high school—the voices he’d been trying to medicate away for years after that night—had actually been a bunch of spirits all struggling to get his attention when they realized Ben had taken a piece of the Guardian’s portal with him when he and Peter escaped that house the first time. When that piece had become a part of him. At least, that was how Ian had explained it.
‘Because that’s exactly what happened,’ Ian offered.
“No,” Ben said to Chase. “There’s no line. I just kinda wait for the next one.”
“Well, there you go.” Chase shrugged, but it looked like Ben’s admission had just given the guy’s confidence a massive dose of steroids. “You won’t have to wait if you use the stuff I can pull for you. So we good?”
“No,” Peter said, clicking his tongue against his cheek. “We’re not good. Not yet.”
Chase frowned at Ben, who only tilted his head and deferred to Peter on this one. That was why they’d shown up earlier to talk about what they wanted to get from this guy in the first place.
When Chase turned to look at Peter, it looked like he was finally acknowledging him for the first time at their little corner table at Speedy Joe’s. “We wanna know where you’re getting the stuff you put on that list.”
Chase just stuck out his lower lip and shrugged. “I just know how to put the pieces tog—”
“Yeah, yeah. You dig real deep and most people don’t,” Peter said, nodding like he heard this kind of thing all the time. “Cut the crap, man. If you want to do this, you have to tell us what we wanna know. That was the deal.”
They stared at each other for a long time, and Ben wondered if they’d end up hitting each other again. Then Chase gave in. “Ever heard of the dark web?”
Peter grimaced. “Seriously, dude?”
“Hey, you want me to buy into the whole spirits leaving messages thing, cool. And you’re just gonna have to buy into that as my answer.”
“That’s not an answer. That’s a catch-all.”
“Well, that’s as much as I can tell you. The rest would just go right over your head.”
Peter leaned his head back and eyed Chase down the bridge of his nose. “Try me.”
“Maybe some other time, huh?” There it was—that wink that could have been a tick again.
The legs of Peter’s chair screeched against the floor and echoed through the coffee shop when Peter scooted quickly away from the table. “I’m done.”
“Woah, Pete. Hold on,” Ben said, leaning forward and trying not to look right back at all the nosey strangers glancing their way. “Just hold on a second.” Peter stared at him, but he didn’t move his chair back in toward the table. He didn’t stand, either, so that was something. “Okay, you don’t have to tell us exactly where,” he said to Chase. “That part doesn’t matter nearly as much. We just wanna know how you’re finding all this stuff. Like, if we can trust it. Or if we’d just be stepping in a bigger pile than we can clean off our shoes. Right?”
“I hear ya,” Chase said. “And I’m not an amateur, okay?” Peter rolled his eyes. “I’ve been watching these forums for a while. Cross-referencing them. Looking for what sticks and what just blows away when it’s poked enough times. I told you I’ve seen a lot of the kinda stuff you guys are trying to deal with. To… put away, right? A lot. And I’m not the only one, either. People put a load of stuff out there, and most of it’s just a bunch of crazies who can’t get a real job and send this stuff out from their parents’ basements just ‘cause they like to hear themselves talk. Well, figuratively.”
Ben had the strongest sense Peter was about to make some kind of jab about Chase hiding away in his own mom’s basement, but the look he gave his friend might have been enough to keep him quiet. Peter just bit down hard on his lower lip and flared his nostrils instead.
“But there’s a tiny river of truth floating around in all the crap,” Chase continued, “if you know where to look for it. That many reports with the same level of detail that all match each other?” He nodded. “That’s worth paying attention to. I’m not the only one zeroing in on it, but I’m the only one who found you guys.”
So far. If they gave in and pulled Chase on board, Ben expected it to feel a lot like jumping off a cliff without looking to see if there was any water at the bottom—or just a bunch of jagged rocks.
He sat back in his chair and looked at Peter. They eyeballed each other for a while, and Ben could see the wheels turning in his friend’s head. He could probably assume they were thinking along the same lines. Then the corner of Peter’s mouth twitched, and he just shrugged. Okay. Agreement reached.
“So here’s the deal,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Chase and hoping it made him look a lot more in control of the situation and the way he felt about it than he actually was. “Send us that list again. No more cute markups.” Chase smirked. “And if the next one works out—” Peter flashed him a wide-eyed glance.
“Okay, the next two. If they work out and we can deal with the things you found, we’ll keep this arrangement going.”
“I want to be there for the next one,” Chase said.
Peter groaned. “Dude.”
“I didn’t bring this up just so I could be a pencil-pusher for you guys.”
This was ridiculous. They were talking about this like it was an actual job or some kind of underground business run by the mob or something. It was the last thing Ben had ever expected.
“Fine,” Peter said, surprising Chase and Ben both. “But if you get in our way or screw anything up, we’re done.”
“Fine.” Chase jerked his head back and made a face like a fourteen-year-old girl trying to convince her parents she didn’t care about being grounded. And now that they’d apparently climbed to the top of this unforeseen mountain, none of them had any idea what to do next beyond just staring at each other in silence. “So… you want me to email it, or…”
Ben just glared at the guy.
“I know,” Chase said, his smirk fully returned now. “Bad joke. I wouldn’t do that anyways.”
“Just… we’ll meet here again tomorrow,” Ben said, feeling completely unsure about all of it. “Same time?” Peter and Chase both shrugged, which made it look like they were in on this together instead of the other way around. Which was stupid.
“What about the girl?” Chase asked.
A flare of protective rage lit up in Ben’s gut. “It’s April,” he said before Peter could correct the guy again. Apparently, that little bit of rage shone through.
“Jeeze, okay,” Chase said. “Got it. Hey, what does she do in all this, anyway? I mean, you’re the guy with the green hands and the spirits. You”—he turned to Peter—“handle the box and stuff, right?”
“Yeah, I made it,” Peter offered with a scowl.
“Cool. So, what’s the—what does April bring to team?” The guy wiggled his head like he was just too excited to contain himself.
Ben blew a sigh out through his lips. “We better let her answer that one.”