Black Box Inc.

by Jake Bible

  No idea why the law firm kept glitter hanging out in the suite, but hey, to each their own.

  There wasn’t much to it after that. Flip poured an almost perfect circle of glitter around the black box then stepped back to study his handiwork. He made several adjustments, even starting from scratch twice, before he was satisfied.

  “The task is complete,” Flip said as he picked up the bag of sugar and tore open the top. “When you are ready, Mr. Lawter.”

  I was more than ready to crack open that black box. It took a lot of energy to make a box out of Dim, then throw it back into the Dim. It took even more energy to keep a made box at the ready in our dimension. Especially one holding a really pissed-off Fae assassin. Every second the box sat there on the floor, it sucked some juice out of me. Figuratively speaking.

  I stepped over the glitter circle, careful not to move too quickly and disturb any of it, then put my hands on the box. Aspen had quieted down, but I could feel him tense and waiting on the other side of the black. He was coiled like a snake ready to strike. I gave the others a heads-up, and Flip moved closer with the sugar while Lassa and Harper readied themselves for a fight, if needed.

  Sharon hid behind a chair in the far corner of the room. None of us faulted her for that. Her flesh was so soft that she’d be nothing but pulp if Aspen got ahold of her.

  “Might as well get this shit done with,” I said as I tore the sides of the box open.

  I jumped back, Flip held up the sugar, Aspen started to go for me, then saw the sugar, changed directions, and slammed into an invisible wall.

  “You glitter-wielding little shit!” Aspen roared. He bunched up his fists and beat the invisible barrier. “Damn gnomes!”

  “Be nice to Flip,” I said, taking a couple cautious steps back. “He’s good people.”

  “Not people,” Flip said quietly.

  “No offense meant,” I said.

  “None taken,” he replied. “Much.”

  “Really? I thought we had a rapport going, pal,” I said.

  “Focus,” Harper snapped.

  “I’m focused. Chill,” I said and returned my attention to the enraged Fae killer stuck in the glitter circle. “You made a deal for three questions. That deal still stands.”

  “Not with you, it doesn’t,” he snarled.

  “I give him my questions,” Harper said.

  “Son of a bitch,” Aspen mumbled, then took several deep breaths before slapping on the fakest of fake smiles. “Chase Lawter, defiler of dimensions, what are your three questions?”

  I cleared my throat.

  “Why did the Fae create a changeling of Iris Penn?” I asked.

  “Because we wanted to,” Aspen replied.

  “Goddammit,” I snarled. “That’s not an answer.”

  “Oh, I beg to differ,” Aspen said. “That most certainly is an answer.”

  “You want me to take over?” Harper asked. “I know faeriespeak better than you do.”

  “I know bullshit better than anyone, though.” I kept my attention on Aspen and asked, “Why did the Fae want to?”

  “To frame your sorry ass,” Aspen said. Oh, he was goddamn loving it. “Last question, Chase Lawter. You think you can handle it?”

  I paced for a few seconds, then stopped. I was being an idiot and playing his game. What I needed to do was change the game entirely.

  “Last question,” I said. “What are all the secrets of the Fae that you know?”

  “What?” Aspen replied, stunned. “That has nothing to do with you. I refuse to answer that.”

  “Yeah, but you have to,” I said. “Three questions. There were no ground rules on what the questions had to be about. You assumed I would ask them all about me and my current predicament. That’s on you, pal.”

  “You have to answer,” Flip said.

  “Shut up, gnome!” Aspen barked.

  “I have to admit, that was a good one, Chase,” Harper said as she relaxed and sat on the arm of the couch. “Aspen? You know what happens if you break a deal made from a blood calling.”

  “Yes, Aspen, don’t break a blood calling,” I said. “Even Fae can’t get out of that shit.”

  “I will not answer,” Aspen growled.

  “Listen, pal, a blood calling is ancient universal magic,” I said. “Being a faerie, you’re used to being the one that does the outsmarting. Tough shit. A blood calling binds you to this dimension and compels you to answer. You break that and the magic will break you.”

  “This! This petulance! One of many reasons why the Fae hate you so much, Chase Lawter! All the power of the Dim in the hands of an infant child that barely knows how to use it!”

  “Which one am I?” I responded. “An infant or a child? Saying infant child is redundant. And no one knows how to use the Dim. I’m the first. A singular entity. Deal, bitch.”

  “You aren’t helping your rep, dude,” Lassa said.

  “I will not answer your question!” Aspen yelled. “Do you know what the Fae will do to me if I utter even one of the secrets I know?”

  “It’ll be worse than breaking a blood calling, but not by much,” Harper said. She enjoyed watching him squirm. No way to hide that kind of happiness.

  “You called me here, Harper, so I will be sure to tell everyone that this is your fault,” Aspen said with a sneer. “Your skills cannot match the wrath that will be brought down upon your head.”

  “Blow me,” Harper said. Lassa snorted.

  “I’ll give you one more chance,” I said. “Only because I’m such a good guy. What are all the secrets of the Fae that you know?”

  “This breaks a thousand extradimensional protocols,” Aspen said.

  “You know what? I don’t care,” I said.

  “Chase, extradimensional protocols are something we should all care about,” Sharon cautioned from her spot behind the chair. “Breaking them could have serious repercussions on our ability to do business.”

  “Listen to the undead lady, Chase Lawter,” Aspen said.

  “I want an answer,” I said. “To the question I asked.”

  Aspen threw one hell of a hissy fit inside that circle. He utterly lost it. A good half an hour went by before he tired out and finally let his shoulders slump in defeat.

  “Fine,” he said. “I will answer the question.”

  “There is no need for that,” Teresa said as she came into the suite. She had three other banshees behind her and about a dozen gnomes. “As much as I would love to hear every secret you keep, I cannot in good conscience allow my client to make such a catastrophic blunder.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Sharon said.

  “However, you are not off the hook, Aspen Littlestick,” Teresa said as she was handed a very thick stack of papers. She in turn handed the stack across the glitter circle to Aspen.

  He stared at the papers with distrust, then took them.

  Littlestick? Every ounce of control. Every ounce in my body not to say something. I could see Lassa struggling too. We struggled in silence together.

  “What the hell am I reading?” Aspen asked as he flipped through the papers. “What is this?”

  “It is your way out of this mess without breaking a blood calling,” Teresa said. “You sign that and it absolves you of the previous promise you made to answer three questions. That nullifies your duty to answer Chase’s final question. In return, you will do no one in this room any harm of any sort for the rest of your existence upon all planes and dimensions.”

  “Sure. Fine. Where do I sign?” Aspen asked. He held out his hand. “Pen me.”

  “I’m not finished, Mr. Littlestick,” Teresa said. “The final stipulation is you will tell us everything we want or need to know regarding the changeling and the situation Mr. Lawter seems
to have found himself in.”

  She nodded at the papers. “And believe me when I say that any possible avenue you may think you have that will allow you to circumvent the truth has been covered in that document. We are very good at our jobs, Mr. Littlestick.”

  “Banshees,” Aspen growled. “And once I’m done telling you what you want and need to hear? Then what? I go free?”

  “You go free,” Teresa said. “Please. Take your time and read the document.”

  A gnome stepped forward and turned an hourglass. Inside the glitter circle, Aspen appeared to speed read the document, but that was only our perception. Time bubble. Had to have taken him at least an hour to read the whole thing. When he was done, the gnome stepped forward and picked up the hourglass.

  “You know we invented lawyers,” Aspen said.

  “We banshees appreciate that,” Teresa said. “Will you sign?”

  He held out a hand. She gave him a pen, and he signed, then handed the stack of papers back to her.

  “Excellent choice, Mr. Littlestick,” she said.

  “The glitter?” Aspen said, pointing at the circle.

  A gnome kicked the circle apart, and Aspen lunged. Then he froze.

  “Sorry,” he said with a wicked smile. “I had to try.”

  “I expected nothing less,” Teresa said. “Hence paragraph thirty-seven, page sixty-eight.”

  Teresa looked at all of us and smiled.

  “Get comfortable. It will be a long night.”

  She wasn’t kidding.

  8

  “I’M SORRY, BUT I did what?” I asked for like the seventieth time. “I swear I haven’t ever been to that dimension. Sharon? Back me up here. And what is this guy’s name again?”

  “Lord Beelzebub,” Aspen replied through gritted faerie teeth.

  “Yeah. Him,” I said. “Really?”

  “Even without consulting our files, I can say for certain Black Box Inc. has never performed a job in that dimension,” she replied as she hurriedly scanned her phone. “Yes, yes, I am correct. I have no records here regarding that dimension or a Lord Beelzebub. We have not been there.”

  “No, I didn’t say you had been there, I said you will go there,” Aspen said. “Lord Beelzebub—”

  “Of Hell,” I interrupted.

  “It’s not Hell,” Aspen snapped. “You humans and your itty-bitty little minds. There is no such thing as Hell! There is no such thing as Heaven! There are only dimensions that approximate your mythology. Some of your people were given glimpses into them, so, as everyone in your idiot race does, they wrote books. What is it with humans and having to put everything in a book?”

  “Forget the books, will ya? But you’re talking about Lord Beelzebub, which is the Devil, and—”

  I was interrupted by Lassa. “He’s not the Devil, dude. Stop saying that. Have you even read your Bible? He’s serious shit.”

  “But, that name . . . How do I take it seriously?”

  “I advise you take all of this seriously, Mr. Lawter,” Teresa said. “Despite whatever connotations the name may have in your dimension, humorous or not, Lord Beelzebub is not a being you take for granted or joke about.”

  “I stand corrected,” I said. “No need to get all schoolmarm pissy on me.”

  “I wanted you to understand the gravity of this situation.”

  “Gravity understood.” I returned my attention to Aspen. “Lord Beelzebub says I stole his soul?”

  “You will try to steal his soul,” Aspen said. “You will try to steal it and put it in one of your stupid boxes. Then you will send him a ransom note.”

  “I send him a ransom note,” I stated. “That’s got to be the lamest thing I have ever heard.”

  “You’re telling me,” Aspen said. “But we faeries don’t judge.”

  “You judge all the time,” Harper said.

  “Yeah, we do,” Aspen said. “We lie a lot too.”

  “Beelzebub then hired the Fae to do what? Kill me?” I asked. “To stop me from doing something I haven’t even done yet?” I looked back at Teresa. “You’re the goddamn Beelzebub expert. Talk.”

  “This is why he must be taken very seriously,” Teresa said after a quick glare in my direction. “The Lord works outside normal temporal streams.”

  “He’s temporally fluid, then?” I replied.

  Teresa sighed. “If you must insist on putting it that way, then yes. He is temporally fluid.”

  Aspen’s turn again to get my grilling.

  “I didn’t steal his soul,” I said. “You were hired to kill me because I stole his soul. Doesn’t reality negate the contract?”

  “I’m faerie. Reality does not play into it. I’m also of the Fae, and if a contract is taken out, then a contract is fulfilled,” Aspen said.

  “Despite time being out of whack.”

  Aspen hesitated, then grinned. Such sharp teeth. Jesus . . . “No, no, because of the potential time shift. That gave us a lot of leeway to get creative on our end. A plan was put into motion and that is one reason I am here.”

  “A plan put in motion? That plan included creating a changeling? Of me?”

  “Yes. A good friend of mine came up with the idea to kidnap the Iris woman you lust after and use her as leverage against you. Your changeling was simply to distract your . . . security.”

  Aspen sneered at Harper; she growled at him. He blew her a kiss. To her credit, she didn’t get up and try to kick his ass.

  “So why the Iris changeling?” I asked once I was sure shit wasn’t going to go down between them.

  “Decoy. By the time anyone figured out you were missing as well as this Iris woman, it would be too late,” Aspen replied. “I’d have you, your Iris would be safely tucked away, and you’d do what we wanted. I’m guessing you will cave and do whatever we ask if you know your little crotch dream of a woman is threatened, right?”

  “I wouldn’t call her that again. And I don’t cave,” I said. “I also don’t know what you’re goddamn talking about. I have never been to Hell and I have no plans to go to Hell despite how many times people tell me to.”

  “It’s not Hell!” Aspen shouted.

  I was needling him. It felt good.

  “All right, we have covered all of this,” Teresa said. She’d changed out of her flowing banshee gown and into a pair of sweats and a light sweater as the night had worn on. She sat with her legs tucked up under her on the couch and yawned. “Tell us where Ms. Penn is and what you want. We can go from there.”

  “Ms. Penn is safe. Very safe,” Aspen said. “As for what we want, well, that is not for me to say. Not in your dimension.” He leaned forward and tapped his ears. “Too many entities monitor this dimension.”

  “You want us to go to the faerie dimension?” Harper asked. “No way.”

  “Yes, I must agree,” Teresa said. “I believe the next step is to set up a meeting here at my firm instead and get this all straightened out. We can guarantee the meeting will be free of extradimensional, and intradimensional, eavesdropping.”

  “Who are we setting up a meeting with? Head of the Fae? What’s her name again? It’s not the Fae Godmother, is it?” I asked. More needling of Aspen, but Harper stepped in.

  “No,” Harper said. “Never call her that. Not unless you want her to feed you your nuts.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Her name is Daphne,” Teresa said. “I advise you address her as such. And you are not taking this as seriously as I have already asked you to, Mr. Lawter. Please start.”

  “Good advice, but makes no difference. Daphne is certainly willing to discuss removing the hit, but she will never take a meeting with you here,” Aspen said. “She hasn’t set foot in this dimension in over two million years. There is no way she’s coming t
o talk to you over something this trivial.”

  “Not trivial,” I said. “Really, really not trivial, pal.”

  “To her, it is,” Aspen said and shrugged. “This is a faerie that deals with gods, you simpleton. Your little wet dream of a woman means nothing to her. You will go to Daphne or the Iris woman dies.”