Black Box Inc.

by Jake Bible

  Aspen ignored our looks of confusion and busied himself with mixing drinks.

  “Lord Beelzebub,” Teresa said. “I don’t know if Mr. Lawter has filled you in on our predicament or not.”

  “He has.”

  “Good,” Teresa replied, smiling at me. “Accurately?”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I responded. “I told him about Daphne, about Iris, and about needing his soul.”

  “So the Fae can cross the border and try to take my dimension from me,” Lord Beelzebub said.

  “Nope. I didn’t say that part,” I responded.

  “Why else do you think that Daphne bitch wants my soul?” Lord Beelzebub said. “If she has my soul, then she can march an army of her Fae into my dimension and start the war she’s been wanting to start since the dawn of time. That bitch has had a hard-on for Ekron for as long as I can remember.”

  “You said you didn’t know why she needed your soul.”

  “I lied, Chase. That’s what I do.”

  “Drinks are ready,” Aspen said as he set four glasses on the bar, then turned and coughed into the crook of his arm. He didn’t comment on what Lord Beelzebub said even as we all turned to look at him. Again, except for Harper.

  “What the hell are you looking at the consumptive for?” Lord Beelzebub snapped. “He isn’t going to know what’s really going on. He’s not even Fae.”

  “Yeah, he’s Fae,” I said. “We’ve been stuck with the asshole for the past few days.”

  “Ha!” Lord Beelzebub laughed. “I’m the Lord of Lies. That thing is nothing but one big lie. Not only is he not Fae, he’s not even faerie. You people have been deceived so hard. It’s kind of sad.”

  He glanced at Lassa, then glanced away.

  “Very sad.”

  Teresa rubbed her face, then put her full attention on Aspen. To his credit, the faerie didn’t shrink back despite Teresa’s glow turning up to a very angry brightness level.

  “Mr. Littlestick?” Teresa asked, every question compacted into that one.

  “Don’t listen to that guy,” Aspen said. “Lord of Lies, right?”

  “Not lying about this,” Lord Beelzebub said as he sipped his drink. The guy looked broken. “Lying isn’t how I play everything. Unlike someone in this room.”

  “Oh, come on, Bub,” Lassa said. “We had some amazing times together, but you knew we couldn’t last. You knew that. I swear, this is why I prefer females sometimes.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Aspen asked.

  Wait a minute. Why would Aspen care?

  “Off subject,” Teresa barked. “Mr. Littlestick, or whatever your name is, would you please explain yourself?”

  Aspen looked like he was going to argue, but a coughing fit stopped him. Once he had himself under control, he stared directly at me.

  “I’m really sorry about this, Chase,” he said.

  Then his body morphed, and I was looking at Travis.

  It was a good thing Steve had taken my gun, or Travis would have been one dead shapeshifter.

  21

  “TRAVIS? WHAT’S the call?” Harper asked.

  She continued to cover the downed Steve with her shotgun.

  “The game is played out, Harp,” Travis said. “I appreciate your help with this. Sorry to get you involved. Can’t have been easy for you.”

  “I didn’t have much choice,” Harper said. “Doing my job, Travis. Keeping Chase alive. Which is never easy.” She nodded at Lord Beelzebub. “Case in fucking point.”

  Travis grabbed a bottle of bourbon and poured a triple into a glass. He downed the liquor in one gulp and sighed.

  “Put the shotgun down, Harp,” Travis said. “We aren’t fighting our way out of this one.”

  He started to pour more bourbon, but he was interrupted by a bout of coughing. He struggled to stay upright as he gripped the edge of the bar.

  “That cough has nothing to do with the atmosphere, does it?” I asked.

  “No,” Travis croaked. “I’m sick because”—hack, cough—“I take on the abilities of the form”—hack, cough, cough, cough—“of the being I shift into.”

  He took several shallow breaths before continuing.

  “I didn’t know faeries couldn’t get through the border,” Travis said. “The cloud did something to me.”

  “My protections are rotting you from the inside out,” Lord Beelzebub said. “Corrupting you internally.” He shrugged. “Better than what would have happened to the real Aspen Littlestick. That faerie would have exploded on contact with the border.”

  “Then why would Daphne send Aspen with us?” I asked.

  “Because you can’t bullshit a bullshitter,” Lord Beelzebub said. “I should know. Daphne was on to him from the beginning, but being Daphne, she knew an opportunity when she saw one. She also wanted the real Aspen Littlestick back, so she played along.”

  “She cares about that faerie that much?” I asked.

  “He’s the best,” Harper said.

  “Then who signed the contract?” Teresa asked. “The real Mr. Littlestick or the impostor?”

  Travis raised his hand. His breathing had become even more labored, and I seriously wondered if he was gonna live through this.

  “And the changeling angle?” Teresa asked. “Was that Daphne’s plan or . . . what?”

  “Yes,” Harper said. She hadn’t lowered the shotgun yet. “That’s where Travis comes along.”

  “Lay every detail out for us,” I said.

  “Time out. Before we get into that,” Lassa said and faced Harper. “So you’re not a traitor? This was all part of a plan?”

  “A shitty plan, but yeah,” Harper said.

  “Woo hoo!” Lassa cried as he grabbed Harper up in a big yeti hug.

  The second her shotgun was off target, Steve sprang to life and pulled his pistol. He fired twice, but I’d been waiting for everything to go south. Further south than it had already gone.

  I tossed out a wall of Dim, then wrapped it around the bullets as they raced at Harper. With a snap of my fingers, the fired slugs were banished to the Dim.

  “Oh,” Lord Beelzebub said, his melancholy gone at the sight of my handiwork. “That was impressive.” He grinned from ear to ear. “Do that again.”

  Steve fired at me.

  “Goddammit,” I muttered as I brought up more of the Dim, but that time right in front of me. I caught the slugs and banished them like I did the ones aimed at Harper.

  “Can you do that on a larger scale?” Lord Beelzebub asked.

  “In theory,” I said. My gut clenched again, but I managed to not react. The pain was getting even worse. “The larger the piece of Dim I manipulate, the more energy I expend. I’m not inexhaustible.”

  “No, no, of course not,” Lord Beelzebub said. “But still quite impressive. I might have some different work for you. Forget the gift idea. I’m coming up with something better.”

  “Okay, sure, yeah, great,” I said. I had no idea how else to reply. “I’ll put you in touch with Sharon. She schedules all the jobs.”

  “Lord B?” Steve asked.

  Lassa had let Harper go, and she’d brought her shotgun back to bear on Steve. His pistol was down at his side. He’d figured out that if he aimed at someone, I’d know where to throw the Dim. So now he was obviously betting he was faster on the draw than me. The guy was good, and he was right. My energy was low as hell. I might have been tricked into not feeling hungry, but my body still needed food to keep going.

  “Let’s back up a minute,” Lord Beelzebub said. “Ms. Sullivan? Do you represent this bunch?”

  “I don’t represent Travis, but I do represent the members of Black Box Inc.,” she replied.

  “Yes, well, I am not
concerned with the shapeshifter,” Lord Beelzebub said. “But, if you represent the others, then perhaps we can come to some arrangement.”

  “I am listening,” Teresa said. She’d moved into lawyer mode and glided her way to the armchair I had sat in before. “May I?”

  “Please do,” Lord Beelzebub said.

  Teresa sat.

  “What if I were to give my soul, and your freedom, in exchange for a job performed by Black Box Inc.?” he asked.

  “I would say that depends on the job,” Teresa replied.

  “Does that really matter? I’m giving you an option to leave here alive,” he said.

  “I am well aware of that, Lord Beelzebub,” she said and bowed her head. “For which I am grateful. But, again, any agreement we come to will depend on the job you are asking to be done.”

  “Lord B, you can’t give up your soul,” Steve said. “If the Fae bitch gets ahold of it, then she’ll come for us. The soul was a decoy. The gift is the plan.”

  “I know, I know, Steve,” Lord Beelzebub said. “But when a better idea comes along in the form of a human being that can manipulate the Dim, you don’t ignore the opportunity that presents. That would be crazy. I am many things, but I am not crazy.” Lord Beelzebub looked at Harper. “How about the abomination tells us everything she knows first and we go from there.”

  “Hey, let’s stop with the name-calling,” I said. “Defiler of dimensions. Abomination. Not cool.”

  “It’s okay, Chase,” Harper said. “I’m used to the name.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “You’ve really been protecting me this whole time?”

  “Of course I have, you stupid asshole.”

  “You’ve got to admit, you were playing the traitor role pretty tight.”

  “I had to or Daphne never would have believed me.”

  “Explain,” Lord Beelzebub ordered.

  “Fine, sure,” Harper said. “This shit show all started the other night. Well, the night Chappy came into Taps & Tapas.”

  “What’s a Chappy?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Daphne had sent the changelings to handle Chase and Iris. The hit Lord Beelzebub—you—hired the Fae for was real. Daphne instantly saw an angle and way to get us to steal Beelzebub’s soul. Which we’re living now. But Travis showed up out of the blue and killed the Iris changeling. She fought like hell, but finally went down.”

  “All the blood outside the restaurant,” I said.

  “Yep,” Harper said. “That’s when you called me, Chase.”

  “Don’t have any memory of that, but I believe you,” I said.

  “The loft is mine,” Harper said. “A crash pad I keep in case I need to disappear, but stay close by.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” Lassa asked. “I could have used that place.”

  “Ew. No,” Harper said. “I only took you there because by the time I showed up, Travis had Chase’s changeling in a headlock and we needed somewhere to interrogate the son of a bitch.”

  “That got out of hand,” I said. “Obviously, with me waking up in a pool of blood.”

  “No, that comes later,” Harper said. “After the real Aspen showed up.”

  “Be quiet, Mr. Lawter,” Teresa said.

  “Yes, please,” Lord Beelzebub said.

  I grunted a halfhearted sorry and let Harper continue.

  “Aspen was the fallback,” Harper said. “He tracked the changeling, knowing there might have been a possibility I would be around to protect Chase and Iris. Except he hadn’t expected Travis to be there. Travis took down Aspen as soon as he popped into our dimension. That took some magic. He showed up right there in the loft.”

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Getting to that,” Harper said. “I know the faeries. I know the Fae. And I especially know Aspen Littlestick. I needed to know everything, and the questioning took all fucking night, but I got the story out of him. So, Travis and I hatched a plan while Chase kept Iris from completely freaking out.”

  She eyed me and shifted her feet. I hadn’t seen her look that guilty in a long time.

  “That’s when Travis killed the changeling so he could perform the control trance on you,” Harper said. “We needed you to cooperate. You were totally against cooperating.”

  “And why was that?” I asked. Then I thought back on the story Back Chase had told. “I have Iris hidden in the Dim. But I wanted to go with her.”

  “She wanted you to go with her or she wasn’t going to play along,” Harper said. “So, Travis knocked her cold.”

  “Sorry,” Travis said. He was half passed out over the bar. “Didn’t want to.”

  “Then we made you build a big Dim box to stash her in,” Harper said. “She’s safe. Probably not very happy. But safe.”

  “Where’s the changeling body?” Lassa asked Harper. “Or corpse. Totally a corpse after you bleed a body dry.”

  “Yeah, where is the corpse?” I asked, not wanting to know the answer. Please don’t let it be . . .

  “In with Iris,” Harper said. She scrunched up her face. “We had no choice. Safest place to put a corpse on short notice like that with the possibility of more Fae on the way.”

  “The key the cops have?” I asked. “That goes to the box with Iris? I was wrong?”

  “No, you were right,” Harper said. “The key the cops have goes to the box you put the real Aspen in. I knew the cops had him on a watch list, so we dumped the Iris changeling body, planted the Aspen key with it, and called in a tip.”

  “That was a good idea,” Teresa said. “One question, if I may?”

  “Sure,” Harper said.

  “Why does Daphne believe you’ve turned on your friends?”

  “That’s on me,” Travis said. He took a deep breath and was not looking good at all. “I’ve been playing a long con on Daphne. I’d been using the form of one of her lesser enforcers and I’d overheard her plotting to take you, Chase. Even before this opportunity came up with Lord Beelzebub, you were a target. Daphne has something on Harper, which she won’t tell me about, but it was enough that I knew it was only a matter of time before she snatched you. I learned of all this and tried to head her off.”

  “What a stand-up guy,” Lord Beelzebub said. “He owed you a life debt, yes?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Gonna say that’s paid in full.”

  “Thanks, man,” Travis replied.

  “You, however,” I said to Harper. “When the boss of the Fae has leverage on you, you tell your friends. We can help. Kind of avoids all this shit.”

  “Yeah,” Lassa agreed.

  “It wasn’t something you could help with,” Harper replied. “It’s part of the exile curse. Too dangerous to involve any of you.” She cleared her throat. “But, in the end, I guess, well . . . Sorry.”

  “Good to know you’re sorry, that debts have been paid, and all of that,” Teresa said. “But Daphne’s plan was foiled, so why bother with any of this?”

  “Excellent question, Ms. Sullivan,” Lord Beelzebub said. “Who wants to answer?”

  “Your soul,” Travis said. “I figured if we went through with the heist, then we could negotiate to get Daphne to leave Chase and Black Box Inc. alone forever. Including Harper. Like I said, it was only a matter of time before she came for Chase.”

  “And since my reality doesn’t always follow Time’s rules, you already knew the mission was successful,” Lord Beelzebub said and clapped his hands. “Bravo! If you weren’t about to die, you disgusting little shapeshifter, you, I’d hire you and put you on my payroll.”

  “That’s a great goddamn plan, Travis,” I said. “But one detail is missing. An important detail. Where’s the key to Iris?”

  “You have the key,” Harper said.

  “Wher
e?” I asked. “I hope you wrote down where I put it, since I can’t remember shit.”

  “The amnesia was part of the control trance,” Travis said. “Didn’t hurt that it meant you could honestly play innocent and tell the truth in front of Daphne.”