Black Box Inc. Read online

  “Listen like a goddamn little bitch,” I said. She stared at me hard. I sighed and shook my head. “I’ll listen.”

  “Very good,” Teresa said and turned back to Daphne. “Please continue, Daphne.”

  “Thank you, Teresa.” Daphne smiled at Teresa, smiled at me, and said, “I’m going to make you a promise, all right little birdie? You get me that soul and I’ll make sure your girlfriend . . . I’ll make sure Iris is returned safe and sound. No faerie trickery, no Fae caveats. She will be unharmed and in perfect health, free to live the rest of her life however she wants. She may be pissed, but I am more than certain that anger will be directed at you since you got her into this mess. Right or wrong, that’s how she’ll see it. How does that sound?”

  I shrugged.

  She sighed and closed her eyes. I think she was counting to ten.

  “You can speak,” she said.

  “That sounds goddamn great,” I said. “And us?”

  “Same deal,” she said. “You and yours can go free. No harm done to any of you. No hidden clauses or tricks. Free and clear to go back to your storage-and-courier-service life. Of course, you will still have your law-enforcement agencies to deal with. But that shouldn’t be much of a problem with the excellent legal representation you have retained. Do we have a deal?”

  “What about the hit?” I asked. “Lord Beelzebub paid you to take out a hit on me. You’ll do what? Void that?”

  “Not quite, but you will not have to worry about Lord Beelzebub’s little hit,” Daphne said. “You have my word on that as well. No hit, not retribution or trickery, and all you have to do is fetch me Lord Beelzebub’s soul. So, little birdie, do we have a deal or do we move on to the part of this meeting you are most certainly not going to enjoy?”

  I looked at Teresa. She nodded.

  I stepped forward and offered my hand. “Deal.”

  Daphne took my hand, and we shook. It felt like fire slipped under my skin and was shooting up my arm, then the pain was gone and I let go of her hand. I stepped back and regarded Daphne. Nothing sexy about her anymore. The hot was gone, and all that was left were the cold eyes of a predator.

  “When do we get started?” I asked.

  “Right away,” Daphne said. “Aspen? Show them to the guest wing, would you, love? You all have twelve hours to prepare and plan, then I expect you back in that limo and headed for Lord Beelzebub’s dimension. I have a time line I need to keep.”

  “May I ask what that time line is?” Teresa asked.

  “Of course,” Daphne said and laughed. “You have two days to get the job done. Not a second more. Got it?”

  “Yes,” Teresa replied, pretty much spitting the syllable at Daphne.

  “Good. Now, get out of my sight,” Daphne said. “I’m done with all of you and don’t want you back in this room unless you have something good to give me. Go.”

  “Come along, losers,” Aspen said as he opened the study door and gestured for us to make a hasty exit.

  We hastily exited. Except for Teresa. She took her sweet banshee time leaving the study, much to Daphne’s obvious annoyance.

  When we were back in the sunroom, Aspen slammed the door to the study and the wall became glass again. Outside there were two ostrich topiaries performing sodomy on each other. Lassa tilted his head so his cheek almost touched his shoulder as he watched the shrubbery get nasty. He looked as confused as I was over the woody contortions.

  “Follow me,” Aspen said. “The guest wing is this way.”

  He led us back out to the main entrance and up the grand staircase. We hung a left and walked for at least a football field’s length of hallway before we came to a set of double doors. I was fascinated by the pornographic art that hung on the walls. Not because of the sex acts, but because they all appeared to be painted in the styles of various famous painters.

  “They’re real,” Aspen said as he opened the double doors and caught me studying a medium-size painting of a peasant girl having way too good of a time with a piece of fruit. “All of them. Artists are easy to manipulate. None of them remembered a thing when they were done with the works. Except Van Gogh. That guy was impossible to wipe clean. Drove the man nuts in the end.”

  “Did it, now?” Teresa asked. “Poor fellow.”

  “You know what? You could let us go and tell me where I hid that huge box Iris is in,” I said, changing the subject. “Seriously. Tell me where I hid the box. Or better yet, the key. Give me the key and this can all be over.”

  “You think it’s that easy, Chase?” Aspen said. “My ass is tied to your fate now. Only way is through.”

  “A strange turn of events,” Teresa said. “What did you do that angered Daphne so much?”

  “Nothing,” Aspen snapped. “She trusts me to keep you all in line.”

  “I do not need anyone to keep me in line, Mr. Littlestick,” Teresa said. “I am always in line.”

  “One thing you could lose is that last name, pal,” I said.

  “Shut up,” Aspen said, giving a quick glare to Teresa and me. He didn’t bother looking at Lassa. The big guy was too busy staring at the art porn on the walls.

  Aspen led us through the double doors and into the guest wing. Another long corridor, and we were at the top of a grand staircase that looked exactly like the one in the front entrance to the mansion.

  “Uh . . . ,” Lassa said, as he studied the staircase, still a little dazed by the last painting. Couldn’t blame him. It was from Picasso’s cubist period.

  “Not the same staircase,” Aspen said. “And not real. Word of warning: do not try to go down the staircase. It isn’t there. You’ll end up lost in a void and that means calling in the fire department to rescue you and they charge huge fees for that.”

  “You have a fire department?” I asked.

  “Of course we have a fire department,” Aspen said. “You think we let shit burn down?”

  “I figured you’d use faerie magic to put the fire out,” I replied.

  “Idiot,” Aspen said and continued walking.

  We took two lefts, then a right, then another left, then two more rights and finally ended up staring at a blank wall. Faeries are shit at reasonable architecture.

  “Turn around,” Aspen said.

  We did and were suddenly in a huge sitting room. No doors. No windows. Chairs and couches and walls of Reader’s Digest editions of books and plenty of big-eyed figurines and other tchotchkes.

  “Get comfy,” Aspen said. “You have twelve hours to get your shit in order before we leave.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Take a nap,” Aspen said and plopped down on a couch, where he proceeded to close his eyes and take several breaths until he was lightly snoring.

  “Is he really asleep?” Lassa asked.

  “It does not matter,” Teresa said as she sat down on a different couch and slapped the folder onto the coffee table in front of her. “Let’s get to work.”

  As Lassa and I started to sit in two chairs opposite her, Harper appeared by one of the bookshelves, looking like complete hell. She stumbled and grabbed onto the shelf, then straightened up and gave us all a sad, sorry smile. One of her eyes was swollen, and her bottom lip was split in the middle, dried blood crusted on her chin.

  “Good,” was all Lassa said as she limped her way over to us.

  She grabbed a chair along the way and dragged it to the end of the coffee table. Slowly, and carefully, she lowered herself into the chair, wincing the whole time.

  “Get out . . . the plans,” she grunted. “We need to study . . . the palace first.”

  Teresa pulled out the plans of Lord Beelzebub’s palace and placed them in the center of the table. I watched Harper. She was messed up. I should have felt fine with her getting he
r ass beat. I should have, but I didn’t. Harper had been there for me from the beginning, one of the first people who knew I could work the Dim. We’d been through shit. A lot of shit. Despite whatever role she played in all this, I couldn’t forget that.

  Conflicted didn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling right then.

  13

  SIX HOURS LATER, and we were still stuck on how to get into the palace without being detected. Once inside didn’t seem to be a problem. From the documents in the file folder, it looked like Lord Beelzebub was so sure of his external security protocols that inside the palace was fairly lax.

  There were regular guard patrols through the hallways, but we’d dealt with challenges like that before. Slipping past patrols was simple timing. We could use brute force and violence, if needed, to make our way to Lord Beelzebub’s quarters, but we didn’t think we had to.

  If we could figure out how to get in.

  “The portico here,” Lassa said, hunched over the table. “What if we were to—”

  “We’ve already looked at that,” Harper groaned from the other side of the table. “Pay attention, Lassa.”

  “Shut your traitor mouth, Harper,” Lassa snarled.

  “Children,” Teresa said from the end of the table, opposite me.

  “Hey, don’t get superior with me, lady,” Lassa said, pointing a finger at Teresa. It was a hairy finger. Lassa was in need of his every-other-day shave, but that wasn’t happening in the faerie dimension. “I’m older than these two humans combined. I’m older than three of their generations combined.”

  “Is that true?” I asked. I started to count on my fingers. “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “Doesn’t matter how old you are if we don’t figure out how to get into the palace,” Harper said. “You may have been born before Chase, but you’ll die on the same day.”

  “If I get to watch you die, then it’s worth it,” Lassa said.

  “Stop,” I snapped, reaching across the table and slapping both of them across the face. It was pretty impressive. I used my left hand on Harper and my right hand on Lassa and—

  Ow!

  Goddammit. They slapped me back.

  I stood up. They stood up.

  Harper was rage mad. Lassa was confused about who should get his anger first. I was plain-old pissed off.

  “I will destroy all of you with one loud word,” Teresa said in a calm voice that contained more promise of violence than I’d ever heard from any being before.

  We sat back down.

  “Oh, my gods! Shut up!” Aspen shouted from his couch. “I am trying to sleep here!”

  “How about you come help, since your life is tied to us figuring this out?” I said, rubbing both cheeks.

  “Sure, fine, how about I do that?” he said as he leapt up from the couch and stomped over to our table. He stared at the map, huffed out a surprised breath, then pointed at the portico. “Shit.”

  “Ha!” Lassa laughed.

  “Can it, hairy thumbs,” Aspen said. “I know we can’t go in that way.”

  His finger moved to the plans of the second floor of the palace.

  “But above that portico is a balcony,” Aspen said. “With what protections?”

  Teresa shuffled through the papers. I could tell she was exhausted. Her glow was dimmer than I’d ever seen it. She found a specific page and held the sheet up.

  “Second-floor balcony, west side,” she said. “That is protected by a . . . cursed yeti.”

  All eyes went to Lassa.

  “And bingo was his name-o,” Aspen said. “Lover boy puts the moves on the yeti and distracts her—”

  “Him,” Teresa said.

  “Him,” Aspen continued. “Distracts him while Harper sneaks up from behind and takes the big furball out. Then the banshee does her thing with the balcony door locks.”

  “Wait, what’s your thing with the locks?” I asked.

  “Everyone stop interrupting me,” Aspen snapped. He took a deep breath and made a show of centering himself. “Banshees can manipulate any and all locks. Don’t you know anything about banshee lore?”

  “They’re loud,” I said.

  “Yes, idiot, they’re loud. They also lure their victims outside to their demise. Hard to do that when a door is shut and locked, now isn’t it? Sorta breaks the spell if the victim has to stop and unlatch, unbolt, unchain, and open the front door.”

  “Targets,” Teresa said. “Not victims. Banshees are the victims in the situation.”

  “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that,” Aspen said.

  “But, the faerie is right,” Teresa said. “We manipulate the locks so the door is wide open when we call to the target. They must leave their dwelling of their own free will, but we help them along by removing any hindrance. It’s easy to stay inside when you have a safe, locked door to hide behind. They don’t stand a chance if all there is open air between them and our calls.”

  “Oh, come now,” Aspen said. “Wails. Don’t try to pretty that part up. Calls, my faerie ass.”

  “So Lassa seduces, Harper bludgeons, and Teresa picks the lock,” I said. “Then we’re in.”

  “Then we’re in,” Aspen said.

  We looked at each other, and none of us had anything close to agreement or satisfaction on our faces.

  “It’s a shit plan,” I said. “We all know it. Thanks for the assist, Littlestick, but it’s not going to work.”

  “Nope,” Lassa said.

  “I do have to agree,” Teresa added.

  “Total shit,” Harper said.

  “No one asked you,” Lassa snarled.

  “Stop,” I said.

  “Not going to work?” Aspen grumbled. “Not going to work? Well, something has to work! And obviously you morons figure it out because in Lord Beelzebub’s temporally fluid reality, you somehow already did!”

  “Are we morons or do we figure it out, Mr. Littlestick?” Teresa asked. “Do make up that faerie mind of yours.”

  The tension in the room was ratcheting up big-time. Lassa and Harper were going to come to blows at any second, and even Teresa was losing her banshee cool with Aspen. We were no closer to solving the problem than we had been when we first entered the room. And we didn’t have much time left to figure it out.

  Time left . . .

  “Hold up,” I said. All eyes turned to me, and none were too happy. “We’ve way overthought this. Littledick is right.”

  “I’d laugh at that, but you also said he’s right, so boo,” Lassa said.

  “Get on with it, Lawter,” Aspen snapped. “What are you babbling about?”

  “To Lord Beelzebub, we already stole his soul,” I continued. “We only have to go through with a plan, any plan, and the job is done. Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter what plan we come up with.”

  “That is a gross oversimplification, Mr. Lawter,” Teresa said. “And a very dangerous one. Lord Beelzebub may have temporal fluidity, but we do not. Our time is now, as our time in that dimension will be then. To us, nothing is set in stone nor has it happened.”

  “That’s the risk we take,” I said.

  “I applaud your willingness to embrace the loophole aspect of temporal fluidity, Lawter, but, and I hate saying this, the banshee is right,” Aspen said. “This is a very dangerous game to play.”

  “So? It’s dangerous to even go to this damn dimension. We can’t get rid of the danger,” I pressed. “Listen. I’m right. I am. We don’t need a plan. We only need to get inside. And that’s what doors are for.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Harper said and rubbed at her temples. “This is like the Virginia Beach gig, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, damn,” Lassa said. “Oh, damn!”

  “Exactly
.” I saw the looks on Teresa and Aspen’s faces. “We’re going in the front door.”

  “They will kill us all, Lawter,” Aspen said. “We get anywhere near the front door and they will kill us all.”

  “You aren’t getting near the front door, I am,” I said.

  “In Virginia Beach, we had to—” Harper started to say, but I held up my hand and shot her a look. Traitors don’t get to explain. She bit her tongue and gave me a sharp nod.