by Adam Dark
“Okay, sorry.” Ian folded his arms and nodded over Ben’s shoulder at the nasty green slime of the apartment building behind him. “You’re a lot more—”
A nauseating crunch cut him off, followed by a thick, sickening slurp that sounded way too much like Ben’s dream of the Buckley Playground demon actually eating the kid with Ian’s face. Slowly, both he and Ian turned their heads toward the center of the alley, where the dissected cat still lay in this realm, too. And crouching over it was a man.
He looked like he might have been in his sixties, but it was hard to tell beneath all the green-tinged dirt and mud clinging to his wild, matted beard and mustache. Or was that…
Yep. Not dirt. It was blood.
“Ew.” Ben couldn’t help himself; it just slipped out. He turned to look at Ian, who’d cocked his head so far his ear nearly touched his shoulder, his face folded in a curious frown. For a minute, Ben wondered what had his friend so confused until he realized it himself.
The man sitting there in the alley, hunched over his disgusting spirit-realm dinner, didn’t have the green tint of the rest of this place or the slightly muted color Ben and Ian retained because they weren’t dead. He was a washed-out gray—almost no color at all, not counting the green-brown cat blood dripping from his beard and running down his wrinkled neck.
“Oh,” Ben muttered. “Not a demon.”
“Spirit,” Ian said.
Right on cue, the man gorging himself on gourmet feline lifted his head from the animal’s body and turned it to look right at them. Ben swore he heard the guy’s mouthful of cat squelching around in there as the man’s lips peeled back into a grin that made Ben want to hurl. “Get your own.”
“Okay,” Ian said.
In the next second, their swift exit from the spirit realm punched him full-on in the gut. Ben took a deep breath that wasn’t quite a gasp and stumbled a little on the asphalt in the alley. Which was completely gray and dark and cold again. Normal. “So, what?” he muttered. “This is like a ghost haunting or something?”
The minute the words left him, the gray cat lying half-eaten in the alley moved. Its tiny head twitched toward him, heavy-lidded eyes opening just a little more, and the most pathetic mewl he’d ever heard gurgled from the thing’s throat.
‘Yep,’ Ian said.
Ben lurched toward the wall of the apartment building and indulged in his urge to puke. He managed to spread his legs just in time to avoid splattering his lunch all over his boots. Well, there went his grilled cheese.
16
Ben didn’t know how long the half-empty bottle of water had been under the passenger seat of his car, but when he found it, he really didn’t give a crap. He took a long swig to wash out his mouth, then spit it on the street right outside his open door. Then he downed the rest of it and tossed the empty bottle into the back seat. With the door closed now, he just sat there for a minute and stared out the windshield.
“Okay. So this level-one demon is actually a ghost.”
‘Spirit of a dead person, but sure. Ghost works.’
“And it’s eating cats. While they’re still alive.”
‘Looks like it.’
Ben sighed. “Any idea how to deal with this one, then?”
Ian offered a high-pitched hum of consideration. ‘I mean, a person’s spirit hangs out in the spirit realm after they die because they haven’t finished something in their life.’
“Looked like he’d be finishing that cat pretty soon, no problem.” And that part was even weirder. How did a dead person’s spirit actually eat away at a living cat?
‘Right,’ Ian said. ‘Normally, I’d say all we had to do was give the guy what he wanted, but… Well I mean, he seems to have done a pretty good job of that all on his own.’
Ben nearly gagged again and forced it back down. “No clue how to finish the guy’s unfinished business?”
‘Not unless his sole purpose in life was to literally eat every last stray in Boston.’
The worst about this was the thought that the man in the alley, when he’d been alive, might have actually been eating cats just like that. Ben didn’t know which image was worse.
He took out his phone and texted Peter.
—Got another message from the green place. We should hit up the library about ghosts this time.—
—Ghosts?—
Yeah, it even looked weird just reading it on his phone.
—And hauntings, maybe.—
Ben ran his tongue over his teeth and wished he had more water to wash out his unintended second helping of grilled cheese. It took Peter another few minutes to text him again.
—This the level one?—
—I think so. Library today?—
—Class.—
Yeah, of course Peter had class.
—After?—
—Dude, I have so much reading to do.—
Ben probably did too, but he didn’t think he’d be able to look at anything without seeing that half-eaten cat mewling at him.
—Tomorrow?—
—Class.—
Now he was starting to think he’d never get a break, here. Did nobody else think school was a little pointless when they had demons and cat-eating spirits to chase down?
—Fine. I’ll ask April.—
He sent the text before he remembered how busy she said she’d been, too. Well, it was worth a shot, anyway. He wasn’t above going to the library by himself if he had to; he’d done it before. But it would have been nice to have someone else there as a buffer against Anita librarian’s laser-intense glare.
Ben started his car, buckled up, and shifted into drive. Before he pulled away from the curb beside the out-of-date playground, his phone went off with another text from Peter.
—Have fun.—
After he explained things to April—in a super short text conversation made of even shorter one- or two-word sentences—she’d actually agreed to meet him at the library between 5:30 and 6:00 after her last class for the day. Surprise.
Ben considered stopping for food on the way, then immediately remembered the cat and settled for a sports drink at the gas station. That was probably all he could handle right now. He parked in the closest student lot and braved the freezing ten-minute walk to the campus library. He’d managed to narrowly avoid the worst of rush-hour traffic when he’d gotten to campus just after 5:00, but he wasn’t so lucky with the flood of students emptying out of buildings at this time. Maybe Thursdays just had later classes or more of them; he thought he’d had a lecture his freshman year that got out around now. But trying to weave his way through a bunch of college kids who all seemed way too eager and rowdy on a Thursday evening in January—especially in this kind of cold—only reaffirmed his choice in a self-led degree program. Granted, he probably would have still majored in angelology and done all the work if there had been a previously set-up curriculum for him to follow, because what else was he going to do? Doing his own work on his own time, though—that suited him far better. He’d been avoiding this kind of clogged-up campus rush for two and a half years, and he was ready to be done with it altogether.
The library had the same kind of traffic, and Ben got a little twitchier than he would have liked. Wondering if it was worsening social anxiety or the start of a panic attack made it worse, so he just barreled through with his head down and headed for one of the little study cubicles right inside the library’s front entrance. It wasn’t as quiet as if he’d chosen something farther in the back surrounded by bookshelves, but he wanted to watch for April.
After sitting there for about twenty-five minutes with no sight of her, he wondered if maybe it looked a little desperate, him doing absolutely nothing there in the library while he waited. He didn’t have to tell her he didn’t want to get started without her, which was true. Whether that was because he wanted her help from the beginning or didn’t want her to think he didn’t care enough to wait for her was anybody’s guess. It wasn’t like this was a date or anything.
Right? At least, he thought he’d made that clear when he’d told her Peter couldn’t get away long enough to help look through a few bookshelves on ghosts. Unless that didn’t matter to her and April was willing to make it a date anyway—
‘I’m getting dizzy listening to this,’ Ian said.
“Then get off the ride,” Ben muttered in the study cubicle.
‘Uh… what?’
Fortunately, April walked into the library right then, and Ben stood like he’d just sat down on a thumbtack.
‘Smooth.’
“Ian…” Ben forced himself to smile when April caught sight of him—probably due to his remarkably ungraceful ejection from the hard plastic chair—and lifted his hand to wave at her before realizing she’d already seen him. So it turned into more of an awkward flutter somewhere around his chest, and he wanted to cut his arm off.
April smiled back at him, still looking just about as distracted as she’d been at dinner Monday night. Only she wasn’t looking at her phone, and he didn’t see it in her hand. So that was maybe a good sign. He went to meet her in the middle of the lobby, and the closer he got, the more genuinely happy she looked to see him. Hopefully it wasn’t just wishful thinking.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hey.” Ben started to turn toward the main room of the library at the same time that April stepped toward him and opened her arms for … yes, she’d actually tried to hug him. He spun awkwardly back toward her, bumping her hand with his shoulder, and almost groaned. She laughed a little, and Ben half shrugged and half reached out to pull her in for a hug. The kind of hug that was entirely friendly and way too quick. The kind that said, ‘I’m an idiot, so let’s just get this over with.’ Which was not the kind of hug he wanted to be giving her, but he’d already screwed that bit up now. He thought the last time she’d hugged him had been sometime before their demon raid at the brothers’ apartment last Friday. His only redemption was the fact that April slid her hand down the arm of his jacket and left it there just a little longer than an entirely friendly hug warranted. As long as he wasn’t imagining it.
She blinked quickly, glanced at something else that wasn’t him, and flashed him a winning smile. So there was that. “You okay?” she asked.
Ben shook his head and hopefully whatever dumb look he’d plastered on his face right back off it. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Are you?”
Her smile faded just a little. “Yeah, I think so. Lots of stuff going on.”
“Sure.”
April met his gaze again and held it for a minute. “Feels like I haven’t seen you in weeks.”
Ben’s heart almost sucker-punched him. He wanted to tell her to say that again, just so he could be sure she’d said it the first time. Because it sounded like she was saying she’d missed him. Instead, he opened his mouth for the horrifying reply of, “It’s only been a couple days.” Come on, Ben.
She tilted her head and blinked quickly again. The light laughter that came out of her sounded like embarrassment, which he wished he could make disappear; he’d already humiliated himself enough for both of them. “I know,” April said. “Long couple days.”
“I know.” At least on that, they could agree.
“So.” She shifted her weight and grabbed the straps of her backpack. “You said it’s like… a ghost this time?”
‘Spirit of the dead,’ Ian corrected.
“Yeah, basically,” Ben said. “I think.”
“Like the last one? The woman who told you about her kids?”
“Uh, not quite.” He wanted to suggest they just move toward the sections with occult, paranormal, and ghost subjects, but April was looking at him so intently, he didn’t think he could move. “This one doesn’t want our help. Probably.” This made her frown, and he tried not to stumble on our words. “This one is the…”
“Project?”
All the tension rushed out of him at her smile, and he laughed. “Yeah. The project.” He felt like they’d reconnected a little, even if it was over something so incredibly benign as their replacement for ‘mission’.
“All right. So let’s get lookin’.”
Ben nodded and followed her to the shelves they were about to scour. Man, he’d follow her anywhere—in the non-creepy way. Like with her consent. He wanted to slap himself.
The activity in the library had died down quite a bit in the half hour they spent looking through loosely paranormal-activity-related books. Maybe that was why Ben was feeling a lot calmer now, even as he put another book back on the shelf and scanned the titles again. He’d gone through about a dozen already. Maybe he felt so much better because he and April were here together, working on this as a team. Alone. It didn’t matter that they weren’t talking or that they were focusing on typed pages instead of each other. Or that they hadn’t found anything that looked remotely helpful.
April sighed and sat back on her heels, putting her own book back on the shelf. Then she looked up at Ben and asked, “You sure we can’t just use the crystal and Peter’s box for this one?”
Actually, he’d just assumed that wasn’t an option when he’d realized they were looking at a spirit and not a bona fide demon.
‘It’s not an option,’ Ian said. ‘People can’t really be commanded in the same way. Even if they’re dead.’
“Pretty sure,” Ben replied. “I think this is like the whole resolving-unfinished-business deal.”
“Okay.” April nodded and glanced at the shelves. “So it’s haunting something? Or…”
Ben let out an undecided hum. “More like eating… cats.”
She looked back up at him with wide eyes. “Cats.”
“While they’re still alive.”
For a minute, he thought she’d burst out laughing at him. “This ghost is eating live cats.”
“Yeah.” Then she did laugh, and Ben shrugged with a wary chuckle. “What? It’s not like this is the weirdest thing we’ve seen.”
“No.” April laughed again and shook her head. “I just definitely didn’t expect that one.”
“Me neither.”
“Wait, so you got a… message from this ghost. And what? It said it needs to eat more cats before it can move on or whatever?”
Ben snorted. “No. It’s actually the first thing we picked off Chase’s list.” The minute he said it, he knew he’d seriously screwed up.
April stood and studied him with narrowed eyes. “You said this ghost thing contacted you.”
“Kind of.” Ben scratched his head and took a deep breath. He should have known she’d be super aware of all the details he’d given her and the fact that two main ones didn’t add up. Those being that he had Ian’s help finding this cat-gobbling spirit in the spirit realm and that April had no idea Ian had anything to do with it. Or that he shared Ben’s body. “It just happens to be one of the things on the list.”
“The one you guys picked to do tomorrow night.”
“Yeah.”
Her face scrunched up in a grimace of either disbelief or disappointment. “Did you see the ghost before or after you and Peter decided we were doing this one?”
Ben’s mouth gaped open for a few seconds. “After we decided. Before I put two and two together that it was the same one.”
“That’s really convenient.” April frowned at him, running her tongue under her lower lip like she was trying to find her patience in her mouth.
‘Dude, she’s gonna put all the pieces together eventually. Now might be a good time to tell her about our awesome partnership.’
“I know,” Ben said, replying to both of them. If he spilled the beans now and backtracked over this massive lie he’d been maintaining, there was no way April would be anything but totally furious. And maybe she’d come around eventually. Maybe she’d understand why he’d kept his deal with Ian a secret all this time. In the beginning, he’d stayed silent to protect her and Peter, to not force anymore weirdness on them than they could handle after they’d watched him banish the Guardian without kn
owing how and shoot green fire out of his palms. After they’d dragged him back to the car and taken him to the hospital. It made sense at the time, but now it felt like he was protecting them even more by continuing the lie as long as he could. Things were already fragile between him and April, and he didn’t want to shatter them with a final blow before they had a chance to try working it out. Whatever it was. So maybe he was protecting himself.
“Wanna tell me exactly how this ghost contacted you?” There it was—that same condescending, ‘I already know everything but go ahead and try’ tone Ben’s mom had used when he’d stayed out too late with his friends during the summer.
So he went ahead and tried. “Okay. Bear with me, ‘cause I’m still getting used to it too.” April just raised an eyebrow. “First, I can’t control it. It just… happens. One minute I’m here, and the next minute, well, I’m still here. It’s just a different realm. Everything’s green, and all the people are gone. But the demons and spirits and stuff are there.” True.
“Yeah. You’ve said that before.”
Right. He’d told Peter and April as much as he could about kind of how this worked. “So earlier today, I was pulled into that green… spirit realm. And I saw this guy, in an alley, literally eating a cat. It was super gross.” Mostly true. Ben swallowed back another wave of bile.
“Uh-huh.”
“And then I saw the street signs next to the alley. Monk Street and Peters Street. I recognized it from the location on Chase’s list.” Complete lie. April’s frown twitched a little when he mentioned the list again. “You can check it if you want. I sent you the picture.”
She shook her head. “I’ll take your word for it.” Ben felt like he was being picked apart by her scrutinizing stare. “How do you know this cat-ghost guy actually needs us to do anything?”
Ben shrugged. “He probably doesn’t. He’d probably prefer to just keep doing what he’s doing without anybody getting in the way. It looked like he was really enjoying it.” Gag again. April pursed her lips. “But this was one of the things on the list.” Then he realized he’d never actually explained the details of what he and Peter had gone over with Chase and their pseudo agreement. “I told you we were doing like a test run with Chase and two of the things he gave us. To make sure he’s not still jerking us around. Everything he put there was basically reported by a bunch of different people, which means these things, in this case the ghost, have been showing up repeatedly where they were sighted. Meaning this guy has probably been snatching up all the neighborhood cats and freaking people out by what he’s leaving behind.”