by Adam Dark
“That’s probably better,” April said.
Ben shrugged, and when nobody said anything else, he realized April and Chase were both staring at him with an intensity that had to mean something. Then April tipped her head toward him. “You mean right now?” he asked.
“Why not?” she said. “While we’re all here.”
“Except for Peter.” Now he really did feel like crap for the fact that even Peter hadn’t shown up to hear about these dream similarities and be there when Ben made the call he’d already decided he didn’t want to make.
“He told me he didn’t want to come,” April said, giving Ben one of her pitying and still completely understanding looks. “That I should just fill him in later.”
Well, at least Peter wasn’t absolutely against being involved at all. Ben could only hope that was a good thing. “Fine.” With a sigh, he pulled out his phone and the card Rufus Dirre had given him, still thinking it ridiculous to be looking at the logo of a car dealership on the front. He punched in the phone number and looked up to see April’s encouraging nod and Chase’s blank expectation.
‘Yeah, I don’t think anybody’s gonna stop you, now,’ Ian said. ‘I’m not, either.’
Great, thank you very much. Ben pressed send and put the phone to his ear.
The line picked up on the second ring. “Ben. I’m so glad you called.”
For a minute, he couldn’t say anything. These people already had his phone number, too? He cleared his throat. “Uh… hi, Rufus.”
“I’m guessing this means you’ve made a decision, then?” The guy sounded genuinely cheery, which would have been a little odd if he hadn’t been like that when they’d met the night before.
“Not quite.” Ben looked at April again, and she just nodded. He would have put this whole conversation on speaker phone, but Speedy Joe’s wasn’t quite the best place to make everything public. “I have a question first.”
“Ask away, Ben. I’ll help in any way I can.”
“What’s Gorafrim?”
The pause on the other line definitely couldn’t be mistaken for anything but the man’s hesitation. Maybe surprise. Then Rufus said, “I think you might already know what my response to that will be.”
Ben closed his eyes. “That you’ll tell me if I say yes to your offer.”
“Correct. I have to say I’m surprised to hear you say the word, and I really would love to explain it all to you. If, of course, that is in fact your choice.”
“Right.” Ben took a deep breath and slowly shook his head at April. “I’m gonna have to call you back.”
“Absolutely. Don’t wait too long.” Then the man ended the call before Ben even had a chance to pull the phone away from his ear.
“So he definitely knows what it is,” April said.
“Yeah. I think it caught him off guard that I even mentioned that word. And it’s just another one of those secrets the Sectarian Circle can’t share, apparently.”
“Unless you join them.” April shook her head and set her elbow on the table to rest her chin in her hand.
“I just really want to know how they kept finding us,” Chase said. Clearly, the guy had limited interests in this, but Ben had to accept the fact that that might just be the best they were going to get out of Chase being on their team. Maybe the guy would quit moping over not being the best hacker if Ben just said yes to the Sectarian Circle already and gave him the freakin’ answer.
“Well, if it didn’t feel personal before…” Ben tried now just to bring a little humor into it; he felt like a snared animal left in a trap for days to figure out how to chew his own way out. Only this trap was his entire world.
“Okay,” April added. “So what are you going to tell them?”
Ben blinked. “I don’t know. This isn’t completely my decision.”
“You’re the only one who can make it,” she said. “You’re the only one they want to join them. They made that pretty obvious.”
Yeah, but there was no way Ben was going to take any offer if it meant he had to leave April and Peter in the dark about everything. Okay, even Chase. “What do you think?”
April’s eyes grew wide for a moment, and she gave him a very small smile. “I’d call Rufus again and tell him you’ll at least take him up on going with him for whatever project he said they needed to get to.”
Project. Ben laughed despite everything else. The term still stuck when they talked about demons, and he was really glad that hadn’t changed now that Richard Monday and the Sectarian Circle weirdos had come into the picture. “I guess that’s one way to make sure they’re for real.” Then he turned to Chase. “Any input?”
“Dude, I’d go.”
Simple. Short. Chase’s serious side just kept surprising him. “You guys’ll come with me, right?”
Chase’s nostrils flared, and for a minute, he looked like he was about to start shouting obscenities. “You really think I did all that work to get in with you guys just to sit back now and let you have all the fun? Maybe just think about it a little more before you ask.”
And there was his annoying condescension. Fine. “April?”
She laughed fully at that and tucked her blonde hair behind her ears. “Don’t ever ask me that again.”
‘Looks like you’ve got some loyal followers, Demon Hunter.’
Ian’s comment would have been a lot more appreciated if it hadn’t had so much sarcasm attached to it.
‘I meant most of it, though.’
“Great,” Ben muttered, which was fine because he could say it to all three of them at once. “Hey, will you ask Peter for me, then?” April nodded. “I won’t call Rufus back until Pete’s weighed in on this too.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he won’t want to be left out,” April said.
“Well, just in case. I’m not really sure what he wants to do right now.”
“He’s always been overdramatic,” Chase said with a snort. “He’ll cool off.”
Just when Ben thought he might have been okay with Chase hanging around, the guy had to start telling him how Peter—his best friend—dealt with his issues. “Dude, you’ve known the guy for like a month.”
“Hey, you don’t have to pull rank or anything. I’m just trying to be helpful.”
He definitely needed a little more practice with that, then. “Cool,” Ben said.
April let out a little hoot and puffed out her cheeks. “I’m totally done with being this serious and moody about everything right now.” She flashed Ben a grin. “Anybody wanna go do something else? Ben, you still have another day to get back to Rufus.”
“Can’t,” Chase said, leaning back in his chair like they’d just begged him to come be the life of the party somewhere. “I have a bunch of work to get to.”
“Bull.” Ben said it automatically; how much work did this guy really have when he’d obviously just been taking money from huge corporations to fund all his mysterious projects? Or whatever the heck he spent his time doing.
The guy just leaned back again and laced his fingers behind his head, like this was some kind of vacation for him. “Whatever you think you know, man, I promise you don’t know everything.” When April gave him a weird look, Chase sat up again almost immediately and slapped his hands down on the table. “So. I should get going.” He stood, grabbed his coffee, and jammed his other hand into the pocket of his hoody. “Let me know what the plan is, and I’ll be there.” He raised his coffee at Ben first, then April, and took off for Speedy Joe’s front door. The bell chimed, and then he was gone.
Ben laughed.
“What the heck was that?” April asked, turning back around after having watched Chase walk all the way back to his car. She looked like she couldn’t decide whether to laugh too or be insulted.
“Uh…” Ben gave her a mocking wince and shrugged. “I can’t really—”
‘Yes you can,’ Ian interrupted. ‘April knows about me. Chase literally has nothing on you anymore.’
; “Holy crap.” That was the best thing he’d heard in the last twenty-four hours. Ben only realized he was grinning when he looked at April again and saw her confused frown. “Ian just reminded me of something awesome,” he added.
“Wow. That’s gonna take a little more getting used to.” She chuckled at that, and Ben might have been a little put off by that if he wasn’t so unexplainably thrilled by Ian’s revelation.
“You mean knowing about Ian now?” he asked her, twirling a hand beside his head. “That he’s constantly talking in my head while I’m trying to focus on other things?” His grin just wouldn’t go away.
‘Hey, I’m not always talking.’
“It’s pretty much all the time,” Ben said to them both.
“Yeah. That part.” April looked like she’d just watched the most hilarious joke delivered and couldn’t wait for more. “Why are you smiling like that?”
“What, I’m not allowed to smile?”
Still amused, April pressed her lips together, gazing at him with those bright blue eyes and slowly shaking her head. “I haven’t seen you this excited in a while. I’m glad something got to you, whatever it was.”
“Oh, I think I’m just realizing that not everything is a trap forever.” Ben snorted at his own sarcastic summary of the last few months—maybe even the last few years of his life. Why did he feel so freakin’ euphoric about this?
“Wanna share?”
Ben chugged the last tiny cup of water and sighed. “Can I backtrack for you a little bit on this one?”
“Please.”
He just stared at her for a minute, imagining April saying that one word just like that, in a completely different scenario, where they were alone and definitely somewhere more private than Speedy Joe’s.
‘Dude, I don’t want to be a part of that.’
Tough. Ben could imagine whatever the heck he wanted. April blinked at him, looking a little nervous now beneath her smile, so he let go of the daydream and finally told her everything.
15
People were definitely staring at them now when April all but cackled. “He actually thought you were possessed?”
Ben didn’t even care one bit. “Yup,” he said, grinning at the empty plastic cup and squeezing it in his hand. “And he threatened to call you and Peter to… I dunno. Come over and do an exorcism.” It was laughable now, absolutely. He didn’t have to tell her he’d been a little freaked out and desperate at the time.
“And Ian can get into computers?”
“It was actually pretty awesome. He pulled up all kinds of dirt from Chase’s servers. Or whatever it was. I still don’t know.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t, either.” She laughed again and ran a hand through her hair.
‘Tell her about the checkmate part,’ Ian put in. ‘Tell her how cool that was.’
No.
“And the dirt was…” April looked just a little more excited than seemed natural. What was she expecting?
“Financial records,” Ben said. “I only saw a few. Pretty sure he’s been hacking into giant corporations and skimming their money off the top for himself.”
“That’s insane.”
“That’s what I thought. I have no idea how he hasn’t been caught yet.”
‘Except by me.’
“Well, except by Ian.”
“Way to go, Ian,” April said with another laugh.
Ben didn’t even wait for his friend to say anything else inside his head. He could hand the guy this one. “He says thank you.”
‘You’re pushin’ it.’
She clenched her eyes shut and shook her head again, but her smile remained. “This is like…” Tucking her hair behind her ear, she sighed and looked up at him. “It’s weird, right? But it’s awesome. I knew there was something going on, but I couldn’t ever figure out what it was. I never would have guessed in a million years it was Ian the whole time.”
Ben’s enjoyment of this conversation dimmed just a little now that she’d mentioned how long he’d been keeping that from her. “You almost had me a few times,” he said, smirking away what was left of his guilt. “I really wish I’d told you sooner. Just so you wouldn’t have to hear about it from Richard Monday and his… I just don’t like him.”
“Hey, I get why you didn’t tell me. I do.” She held his gaze for a few more seconds, studying his eyes, like maybe she was trying to get into his mind and tell him everything that way. That’d be nice. “That’s some pretty big stuff to carry around all on your own.”
“Actually, I don’t think he weighs anything.” Ben grinned.
‘Oh, real cute.’
April’s eyes widened, and then she burst out laughing again before she clamped a hand to her mouth. “Your jokes are awful.”
He shrugged. “You seem to still like ‘em.”
“You got me.” The way she was looking at him now made Ben really wish they’d left Speedy Joe’s a long time ago.
“You wanna get outta here and do something else?” he asked, loving the way her eyes lit up at the suggestion.
She hummed in playful curiosity. “What were you thinking?”
“Honestly, anything. And Chase drove me here, so it’s either leave with you or call an Uber again.”
April rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course,” she said, then stood from the table. “You just want me to be your chauffeur.”
“Exactly.” When Ben stood too, he grabbed the two empty cups on the table and bent to pick up the one Chase had flicked onto the floor.
April stopped halfway to the door and turned to wait for him as he tossed the cups into the trash and all but skipped after her. “I’m gonna get compensated for driving you around, though, right?”
Ben hurried past her to hold open the door. “Whatever you want, it’s yours.”
She raised an eyebrow, grinned, and stepped outside.
‘Oh, jeeze.’
He’d never in his entire life thought he’d ever have as much fun grocery shopping as he’d had with April. Not because he enjoyed going to the store, as his almost-empty fridge would clearly prove. Ben was just happy to be with her, making her laugh with the worst jokes he could come up with and watching her make entirely obnoxious faces at him while she pushed the cart around. He loved even the worst of them. And he hadn’t felt this unaffected by all the craziness of his life since the last time they’d hung out like this, when he’d cooked her spaghetti in his apartment and kissed her for the first time for real—without Ian driving his body. Yeah, that was the same night he’d gotten that stupid invitation from Richard Monday before he knew the guy’s name or what he wanted, but he could drop all that right now. Ben felt good, and it had nothing to do with demons or summonings or banishing anybody, and he wasn’t trying just not to die.
They went back to her apartment at Back Bay, which he’d only ever seen once a few weeks ago, when he’d barged in there thinking maybe somebody had a knife to her throat. Instead, she’d just been freaked out about her ex-boyfriend stalking her years later across state lines, and apparently, the guy wasn’t an issue anymore. This time, though, Ben got to enjoy being in April’s incredibly nice apartment, with her, and not have to worry about anybody screwing with her. Or him.
He’d had no idea she could cook; Ben had never claimed to be good at it, though April had gone all out in complimenting his spaghetti. Which was pitiful compared to the reverse-broiled and then pan-seared steak she made him, complete with asparagus and a salad. The girl had cooked him a medium-rare steak. Could his life have gotten any better than this?
It did, just a little, when he said he should probably call an Uber again to get a ride home—that he knew she had a lot of schoolwork to finish up before the week started again the next day. Ben didn’t exactly have a set schedule for his last semester at BU before graduation; he hadn’t since the sophomore year of his student-led undergraduate work for a bachelor’s in angelology. But April had made it perfectly clear that she always had a bunch of work to do—an
d classes—and Ben technically still hadn’t finished his dissertation, either. Okay, not technically. He hadn’t touched it in days.
As usual, April pretty much forced him into letting her drive him home, which wasn’t exactly something he wanted to fight. At all. He could have accepted her invitation to stay a little longer, if he wanted, but he had a feeling that if he stayed, he might never leave. And right now, that didn’t seem like the best thing for either one of them. April seemed totally okay with it, casual, and it didn’t change a thing. Ben hoped he was reading that part right, because April had an uncanny ability to hide what she was thinking and how she felt—only when she wanted to.
So she took him home, and now they sat in her car in the parking lot of his apartment complex, and Ben realized he had one last thing to tell her.
“We should be hanging out like this more,” she told him, turning off the engine and shifting in her seat to face him. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I enjoy kicking demon ass just as much as the next girl.”
Ben laughed and was awarded by that brilliant, flashing grin of hers. “It definitely wouldn’t be the same without you. Mostly, I think Peter and I would be dead by now. Totally different adventure, I think.” When she tilted her head and blinked slowly at him, Ben knew she recognized the truth behind his unstable humor. “Like I said,” he added, “I should have told you everything about Ian from the very beginning. It’s… everything feels a lot better now that you know. I’m sorry it took so long.”
“Let’s just quit bringing it up, okay?” She nodded. “Because I really don’t ever want to hear you apologize for that again.”
“Right. Got it.” Ben spent a few seconds just looking at her, and then he figured what the hell? He really had to just get the rest of it out. “There’s one thing I haven’t told you yet.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
‘Come on, dude,’ Ian whined. ‘Your night went well. Can’t you just let it go and leave me out of it?’