Black Box Inc. Read online

  I opened my eyes, held my hands out palms up, and proceeded to shape the box. Smoke of the deepest black drifted up from my hands and took form. A thin panel about one foot square was joined by a second and third panel as more smoke came from my palms. Then I added a fourth and fifth panel.

  “Sharon?” I asked.

  The lovely Sharon gingerly picked up the kobold head and dropped it into the box. I created the sixth and final panel, sealing the box right there, and the head was gone. The box landed on the table like it was made of nothing. I scraped a nail across the top and tore off about an inch of black. I held the inch up as the four men arrived at the edge of the table. Two lifted Chappy off his feet by his arms and the other two faced me.

  “Give us that key,” they said in unison.

  Dopplers. Ugh. I hate dopplers. They don’t look exactly identical like you’d think they would, which is one reason I hate them. The name was derived from doppelgänger. Doppelgängers should be identical. But dopplers aren’t. Close, but there are enough slight differences in appearance that it becomes distracting. Maybe they’re called dopplers because they share a brain via a psychic link? Mental doppelgängers? Sometimes I want to punch whoever comes up with these terms. But they came through the portals with the name attached, so nothing to do about that shit.

  Whatever the origin of their name, all dopplers were moronic muscle of the worst kind. The One Guy uses them exclusively, and I am not a fan of that gentleman.

  “Sharon?” I asked.

  The quiet sound of a laser printer ejecting a receipt was all that could be heard over the Cuban jazz and the faint sounds of kitchen activity coming from the very back of the restaurant. The entire dining room watched us.

  Sharon held up the piece of paper the printer ejected and said, “Could you hand this to Mr. Reginue, please?”

  The two dopplers stared at her for a second, then one reached out, took the receipt, and gave the piece of paper to Chappy.

  “Thank you,” Sharon said. “We are done here.”

  “Hear that, boys?” I said to the dopplers. “We’re done here.”

  “Give us the key,” the two said.

  “No,” I replied. “The key will belong to Chappy and Chappy only. He has a receipt to prove it. Once I hand it over, the key will only work for him. When he gives the key back to me, then I’ll retrieve the box and open it.”

  “You open it now,” they said.

  “Listen, pals, I wouldn’t be in business for long if I went around opening boxes clients pay me to make to keep stuff safe that they don’t want guys like you to get their hands on, now would I?”

  It was a long sentence. It confused them. So, instead of answering, the two lunged for the box in the middle of the table. But I was faster. I snapped my fingers, and poof—gone. The dopplers’ hands landed in the mess that Chappy had started. I ended up with a good amount of goat cheese-smeared crostini with wild blueberry jam on my face as one of the small plates was flipped end over end.

  “Dammit,” I muttered as I lifted my napkin off my lap and wiped my nose and cheeks. “I hadn’t gotten to try that yet. Assholes.”

  “There was kobold on it,” Harper said.

  “We’re getting more anyway, remember?” Lassa waved at the waitress again.

  She looked frightened at first, then resigned, as she walked to our table. A person had to get used to the unusual when living in this town. At least if that person wanted to make any kind of living. And especially if that living relied on tips.

  “Yes?” she asked, trying to ignore the dumbfounded dopplers sprawled across our table and the ones still holding Chappy. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “If you could bring us one of everything again, that would be super,” Lassa said.

  He flashed his sharp-fanged grin and gave the waitress a wink. She pretty much melted. When he’s shaved, Lassa is possibly the most attractive being on the planet. He may have been an extradimensional being, but the guy set panties, and boxers, on fire.

  So, in spite of those scary fangs (possibly because?), she melted.

  “Are the gentlemen staying?” the waitress asked, eyeing the two dopplers splayed across the table as she managed to tear her eyes away from Lassa.

  The dopplers looked so sad and lost as they blinked at the spot where the black box had been only a finger snap before.

  “You guys hungry?” I asked. “Thirsty?”

  “Thirsty, right, my bad,” Lassa said and reached out to pat the waitress on the forearm. She shivered from head to toe. “Six pints of stout for Chase and I’ll have another whiskey sour. Harper?”

  “Bloody Mary, extra bacon,” Harper said. “Two.”

  “Two portions of extra bacon?” the waitress asked.

  “No, I meant two Bloody Marys, but yeah, two portions of bacon per.”

  “I’ll eat some of that,” I said.

  “I figured,” Harper replied.

  “I’ll take a Bloody Mary also, if you have any congealed blood left behind the bar,” Sharon said. “If my last drink, which is now dripping off the table, used the remainder of your blood stock, then nothing for me.”

  “I believe we received a new batch of blood this afternoon.” The waitress didn’t even shudder as she mentioned the congealed blood. A true professional. I liked that. “I’ll get the food order in and then have the bartender work on the drinks. And a towel. I’ll bring a towel.”

  “A couple towels,” I said. I stared at the dopplers. “Guys? Are you staying or what? The nice waitress . . . ?”

  “Brynn,” the waitress said.

  “Brynn is trying to do her job, and you two acting mute is not helping.”

  “No,” the dopplers replied.

  “Nothing for them,” I said to Brynn. “Just our order, please.”

  “And the towels,” Sharon added.

  “And the towels.” I smiled as I spread my hands out. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of this mess.”

  “I appreciate that, but I can get a busboy to handle it. As for . . .” Brynn eyed the dopplers again. “Should I call someone?”

  “They are leaving,” I said. “Right, gentlemen? You don’t have any reason to stick around, do you?”

  The dopplers on our table finally pushed back and stood upright. They tried to wipe the food off their suits, but only smeared the crap around more.

  “Good job,” Harper said.

  “They should make a sitcom with only dopplers,” Lassa said.

  “I’d watch the shit out of that.”

  “Watch the shit out of a sitcom.”

  “Shitcom.”

  They chuckled together, but their eyes were on the still-uncertain dopplers, and their bodies were tensed, ready to do what needed to be done even though I’d said no to fighting. They knew that my no was conditional. We were far from being pacifists.

  “Guys?” I said to the dopplers as Lassa and Harper continued to grin. “You can go. Really. We got a good mood right now. Don’t turn the mood into a bummer, okay?”

  “We want that head,” the dopplers said.

  “What head?” I replied.

  That fried their psychic link. You could almost see the thoughts feverishly trying to connect across their shared brains. But they couldn’t quite process the question.

  “We want the head,” they said again. “Tell us how to get the head.”

  I sighed.

  “Guys, listen, I don’t talk about client business with strangers,” I said. “I’m a professional. No one would hire me—.”

  “Eh hem,” Sharon coughed.

  “No one would hire us if I went around blabbing confidential information to every moron who came drooling up to me,” I continued, giving Sharon a pat on the leg. “My apologies, Sh
aron. Us.”

  “Apology accepted,” she replied.

  “We want the head,” the dopplers repeated. “Now.”

  Lassa and Harper stopped grinning.

  “And the mood is gone.” I shook my head and stood up.

  So much for not fighting. Too bad.

  Smoke shot from my palms and formed into thick, two-foot-long rods. Rods that were good for the cracking of doppler heads.

  “No!”

  I sat my ass back down, as the main reason I liked this restaurant flung open the kitchen door, letting the thump of the door against a wall punctuate her order to stand down. My Dim rods poofed out of existence, which confused the dopplers even more.

  Iris Penn could only be called a force of nature. The owner of Taps & Tapas was dressed in a black pencil skirt and black silk blouse, buttoned perfectly so men noticed and women were slightly jealous, but not so jealous they didn’t want to come back. Five foot six with gray eyes, black hair pulled back into a simple ponytail, and more energy than a herd of pixies hopped up on cotton candy, she was something to behold.

  She was the main reason I insisted that the place be our hangout when we weren’t at the office. The food was great, but there was a lot of great food in Asheville. There was only one Iris.

  “You do not shit where you eat, Chase!” she yelled.

  And that mouth was the coup de grace for me. I hate to use the word, but I was smitten. Smitten bad.

  Iris? Not so much. I tended to be trouble, and Iris did not like trouble. She liked order. She liked organization. She was a lot like Sharon in that way, except Sharon preferred not to be the focus of attention. Iris was always the focus of attention. Always.

  “Does that need to be said?” Lassa asked. “Do humans have a habit of shitting where they eat?”

  “If they’re on the toilet,” Harper said.

  “People do that? Eat on the toilet?” Lassa replied. “Dude, that’s gross.”

  “You two! Sit the fuck down!” Iris yelled as she stormed over to our table. “I said sit!”

  Lassa and Harper looked at each other, confused.

  “We are sitting,” Harper said.

  “Stay that way!” she snarled. “Move an inch and I rip you a new one!”

  “Iris,” I said. “These guys were on their way out. I wasn’t going to do anything. Lassa and Harper weren’t going to do anything. I promise.”

  “Yeah, you were,” Harper said. “So were we.”

  “I was intending on splitting open at least one skull,” Lassa said. “Perhaps disembowel two of them. Maybe all of them. I haven’t performed a good disembowelment in weeks.”

  “What about the Boulder gig last Thursday?” Harper asked.

  “That was hardly a disembowelment,” Lassa said. “I barely cut into that man’s belly fat. Dude, a proper disembowelment has to include the ripping out of entrails.”

  “Good evening, Iris,” Sharon said. “My deepest apologies for all of this. Please add whatever you see as fair to our bill. We’ll invoice Chappy for extra.”

  “Me?” Chappy cried.

  “Really, Chappy?” I said. “You want to argue the point? Here?”

  “How much we talking?” Chappy asked.

  “I want these thugs out of my restaurant. Now,” Iris snarled. “Now, Chase.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I gave Iris my warmest smile. She gave me her coldest frown.

  “Guys, let Chappy go,” I said to the dopplers. “He doesn’t have what you want.”

  “He can get it,” the dopplers said.

  “Not right now, pal. I still have the key. I’m not going to give him the key unless I know he’s out of your hands. After that, if you can catch him, he’s all yours. Hand him over to the One Guy for all we care.”

  “Once he pays the invoice I’ll be sending him in the morning,” Sharon said.

  “Yes, we’d appreciate he pay that first,” I said. “But after that, you can rip him limb from limb or whatever your boss wants done to him.”

  Chappy made a sound between a yelp and a squeak. A squelp?

  The dopplers thought hard on what I’d said. Man, it looked like they were in agony as that one thought worked through them.

  Then they let Chappy go, turned, and stomped out of the place.

  “Sorry, folks,” I called out to the other patrons. “Round of drinks on me.”

  There was some cheering, a little bit of grumbling, and a raspberry noise in response. At least I knew one local was in the joint. Locals expected two rounds of drinks gratis. It was one of many unspoken rules locals have.

  “Chase?” Sharon asked.

  “We’ll bill Chappy for the round of drinks,” I said and decided what the hell. “Two rounds on us.”

  “Damn right,” a voice from the opposite end of the restaurant responded.

  “Excellent,” Sharon made a note in her phone to bill Chappy for the drinks.

  That only left Chappy to deal with. I held out the key.

  “They’re gonna grab me, man,” Chappy said.

  “Then run. Fast,” I said. Chappy looked like a lost puppy. A mangy, disgusting, creep of a lost puppy. “You want the key or not? We can hang on to it, but I’m pretty damn sure we will have to charge you.”

  “Let me calculate the amount,” Sharon said.

  Chappy’s hand shot across the table, and he snagged the key. “No more fucking charges.”

  “What do you say, Chappy?” I asked.

  “I ain’t saying thank you,” Chappy snarled, then fled. Out through the kitchen. Smart choice.

  “Owner lady is still here,” Lassa said sotto voce as we watched the kitchen door swing closed behind Chappy’s scrawny butt.

  I dig that term. Sotto voce. Pretty damn sure Iris didn’t. The glare she gave Lassa proved that. Not that the glare was on him long. Hard to stay too mad at Lassa. He had that casual ski-bum vibe going for him. So, she rounded on me pronto.

  “Right, Iris, I am so sorry for all of this,” I said as a busboy came up and started to clear away the mess.

  Yeah, not so much a boy as a ghoul. They were a short, hunched-over race. Gray skin, ropy muscles. Stank of carrion. Hard workers, though. You could pay them almost nothing, and they didn’t care. They pretty much worked for leftover rotten meat. The meat had to be at least two weeks old, so payday was a bit stinky, but you couldn’t beat kitchen scraps as wages.

  Iris was a master of the hard glare. Man, she was giving it to me good.

  “How about I make it up to you and take you out to dinner tomorrow night?” I said. “You name the place. Doesn’t have to be here in town. I can get us to Charlotte in ten minutes. I know a guy.”

  “He knows a guy,” Lassa said.

  Lassa was the guy. Transportation logistics and all that.

  “Kiss my ass, Chase,” Iris said and stormed off.

  “This is the time you pick to ask her out?” Harper said. “Chase, Chase, Chase.”

  “Oh, Chase, sweetie,” Sharon added.

  “Want me to go talk to her?” Lassa offered. “Warm her up a bit? I flash the pearly fangs and she’ll be a little more receptive.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I don’t mind, man,” Lassa said.

  “Drop it.”

  Our replacement food started showing up. The drinks were right behind, and I downed two stouts before the other four pints had been set on the table. Six pints wasn’t gonna cut it. I knew that already.

  2

  MORNING. FUZZY. Headache. Sticky.

  Sticky?

  Shit . . .

  “Guys?” I whispered because that was about all I could manage. Everything hurt.

  I didn’t remember getting that dru
nk. Yeah, I had a dozen plus pints of stout, but my metabolism could handle twice that without any hint of a hangover. Blackout drunk should never have entered the picture.

  “Guys?” I said, a little louder. I also opened my eyes. Both of those actions made the “everything hurting” hurt even more.