Blood Ghast Blues (Black Box Inc. Series Book 2) Read online

  She’d perked up at the mention of profit. Not that she was greedy, or even unethical when it came to our finances, but she simply worried a lot about us remaining solvent as an operation. At the moment, I was a unique entity that allowed us to offer a unique service, but who knew if one day someone else would be able to manipulate the Dim and offer the same services we did. Sharon had mentioned that worry on more than one occasion and mumbled about eroding market share.

  “What business relationship are you proposing?” Sharon asked the One Guy.

  Harper groaned and relaxed slightly as she switched it up and used the tip of her pistol’s barrel to push a stray, raven black dreadlock behind her ear. “Am I shooting or not?”

  A flush had darkened the deep brown of her cheekbones and I knew she really wanted to shoot. Only a couple weeks earlier, Harper had had to deceive us in order to protect us from a serious threat. We wound up in a world of shit. She was obviously overcompensating for any guilt or loss of trust by trying to be a good team player. And shooting shit to all Hell is Harper’s go-to move when it comes to overcompensation. Or stabbing shit to all Hell. She does like to stab things, too.

  “There is a lot of conflict in this room,” the One Guy said. “I don’t think we can have a meaningful nor productive conversation.” He pulled back the sleeve of his expensive suit jacket and studied an even more expensive watch. “I have an appointment at 4pm I cannot miss, but it won’t take long. Perhaps I can come back at five and bring some dinner as a show of my peaceful intentions? We can break bread while we talk.”

  “Chase?” Sharon asked.

  “Thai,” I said. “A lot of it.”

  “Excellent,” the One Guy replied, beaming.

  “You have got to be kidding,” Harper snapped.

  “Seriously, dude?” Lassa responded.

  He could have been castigating my decision to talk to One Guy or complaining about having to work overtime. It’s hard to tell with Lassa. The yeti is shaved, attractive as sin, and enjoys an “active” and busy omnisexual lifestyle. He’s in charge of transportation and knows a guy in every single dimension when we’re in need of wheels, wings, rotors, and motors. He might be a lovable, useful lug but he can and will rip someone limb from limb if they threaten his friends and/or family. But even when ripping off arms or expressing his doubt about doing business with One Guy, he’s still a laid back ski bum from a dimension made up of massive mountains and totally shreddable slopes.

  “Look, Lassa, he pays for dinner, we listen while we eat the dinner he’s paid for, then we reject him,” I said, locking my eyes with the One Guy’s. “Unless he tells us about the kobold head.”

  “We’ll discuss that over drunken noodles and massaman curry,” the One Guy said and snapped his fingers.

  The dopplers blinked, looked at their boss, then gave Chappy a hard shove out of the way and left the office, one holding the door for the One Guy.

  “See you all at five,” the One Guy said.

  “What about me?” Chappy asked.

  “You weren’t planning on going anywhere, were you, Chappy?” the One Guy asked.

  “I guess not,” Chappy replied.

  “Then have a seat and wait for my return.” The One Guy glared at the scumbag until Chappy shrugged and took a seat in one of the chairs in our waiting area. “Very nice. Chase, I look forward to talking more. Good day to you all.”

  Then he was gone and we were left with Chappy.

  “Can I shoot this prick, at least?” Harper asked, waving the pistol in Chappy’s direction.

  “Tempting,” I said as I left my desk and walked past the wooden railing to join Chappy. I sat in the chair next to him. “Time for the talk before the talk.”

  2.

  “YOU THINK HE’S been in there long enough?” I asked as I held a Dim key in my left palm. “He’s probably ready to talk now, yeah?”

  When I create a box out of Dim I can scratch off a piece and use it as a key to retrieve the box from the Dim. The key not only retrieves, but opens the box to reveal whatever is inside.

  I tune myself to the key in my hand then will the Chappy-in-a-box back to our dimension. The box is about the size of a coffin standing on end and constructed out of smoke that is the deepest black. Good ol’ Dim.

  “Chase, I have to once again protest this kind of treatment of a client,” Sharon said as she wrung her hands over and over, nearly sloughing off the dead skin. “I do despise Chappy Reginue, but we cannot violate our professional ethics based on our personal feelings.”

  “It’s Chappy,” Harper said. “We should violate harder. Like with a baseball bat to the head.”

  “I still don’t get how people can breathe inside those boxes,” Lassa said. “Where does the air come from?”

  “Air happens, Lassa,” I replied. “No idea how, but Dim boxes have air. Limitless apparently. One more mystery to the process.”

  “Let him out, Chase,” Sharon said.

  I did.

  A quick wave of the key and the box disappeared into a cloud of smoke then was gone as if it had never been there. Chappy fell forward, but I caught him and set him back in the chair he’d been in an hour earlier.

  “You suck, Lawter,” Chappy said as he took several deep breaths. “I’m claustrophobic and that was not cool, man.”

  “I honestly didn’t know you were claustrophobic,” I replied. “So, that probably means you don’t want to go back in?” I held my hands out and smoke began to rise from my palms. Chappy’s eyes went huge.

  “No!” he cried. “Jesus, man, no. I’ll tell you all about the kobold head.”

  We waited as he sweated all over the chair. He was a mess. His shirt and hair were damp and I really hoped the stain on his pants was sweat too.

  “The kobold is royal blood. A prince or something,” Chappy said. “I was sent by someone, and I ain’t saying who, but I was sent by someone to pick it up a few weeks ago and deliver it to an address here in town.”

  “The night you interrupted our dinner at Taps & Tapas,” I said.

  Taps & Tapas was my favorite restaurant in town. Great food, great drinks, a little spendy, but well worth the cost. Mainly because I have a thing for the owner, Iris Penn. She does not have a thing for me. I got her accidentally involved in a plot to steal Lord Beelzebub’s soul and she ended up trapped inside a Dim box for two weeks.

  The box Iris had been in wasn’t like the one I stuck Chappy in. Hers was much larger and outfitted with many comforts of home. Comfy furniture. Plenty of food and water. A couple of books to read.

  And a rotting changeling corpse.

  That last point might have been why she was really ticked off at me. Also why I had a brief fling with a wrongful imprisonment charge. At least she changed her mind, so there may be hope for us yet.

  I’m not gonna hold my breath, though.

  “Yes, that night,” Chappy said. “I picked up the kobold head like I was supposed to then went straight to the address. Problem was, no one was there. I waited an hour at least. That’s when the dopplers showed up. They really wanted that head. So I took off running and happened to see you all eating in that joint and knew you’d help me.”

  “You saw us?” Harper asked. “From the front window?”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “Bullshit.” She smirked and pulled an eight-inch blade from her belt. One of many blades she kept on her at all times. She flicked the knife about her hand then pointed it at Chappy. “We sit at the same table every time. One that’s in the far corner so our backs are against the wall. None of the windows has a view of that table. Part of the reason we use it.”

  “Gotta agree with my head of security there, Chappy,” I said. “Your story is shit, pal.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Chappy swore. He looked up at the ce
iling and shook his head. “Okay, okay, I knew you’d be there. I called the restaurant.”

  “You called the restaurant while running from dopplers?” Lassa asked. “Really, dude?”

  “Chappy, I can make the Dim box smaller this time,” I said.

  “Shit no!” Chappy exclaimed. “Okay, and this is the truth. I was late to drop off the kobold head. Real late. Maybe four hours late. Dopplers were waiting there, so I ran. I came by here, but you were gone. I knew where you hung out, so I called the restaurant and the hostess said y’all were there eating. I knew that if I got you to hide the head in the Dim, it’d be secure and maybe I’d be able to save my ass when I got in touch with the guy that set up the gig.”

  “And the dopplers? How’d they track you down?”

  “I don’t know. Honest, man! I don’t. I was about to open the restaurant door and they came around the corner. The four that showed up and ruined your dinner”—

  “You ruined our dinner, Chappy.”

  “Yeah, okay, fine, I ruined your dinner. But the ones that followed me into the restaurant may not have even been the same ones that were waiting at the drop-off address. Those thugs all look the same.”

  “Not really. And I hate them for that.” I sighed. “My problem now is that you still haven’t explained why the kobold head is so important.”

  “I don’t know. I got paid well to pick it up and drop it off. That’s all I know. And man, even telling you that could get my ass killed.”

  “Yes, Chappy, that’s totally my worry.” I glanced at my colleagues. “Guys? Thoughts?”

  “Hard to tell if he’s lying on that one,” Harper said. “But royal kobold heads are worth a lot to many different dimensions.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  I was probably the only one of us who needed a crash course in royal kobold. The extradimensional happening was only ten years past. I’d learned a lot, but Harper was abducted to the faerie dimension, Lassa was centuries old, and along with Sharon, from a different dimension than Earth. Their understanding of how the greater Universe worked was better than mine.

  “Magical properties,” Harper replied with a shrug. “Taking the fighting spirit from the royal blood and co-opting it for one’s own purposes. Hex booster. Dimensional ward. Food.”

  “Totally gross,” Lassa said.

  “I love some spare ribs, but pigs are worshipped in many dimensions,” Harper said. “I’d be gutted and strung up if I showed up with a bag of barbecue in any of those. So, to each their own culinary tastes.”

  “As the guy that has to eat constantly to stay alive, I say gross too,” I said.

  “Right? Yuck city, dude,” Lassa said.

  “If I may,” Sharon said, steering us back to the subject. “What is the address of the drop-off location?”

  “I like that question,” Harper said. “We can scope it”—

  “No. No scoping,” Sharon said, holding up a grey-fleshed finger.

  She did a great job with her many wigs and the makeup she applied to look less . . .undead, but she couldn’t hide it all. The finger she held up was not looking the best after all the hand wringing. She was going to need to eat a bushel of porcine brains to heal up that damage.

  “I simply want to do a real estate search and see who owns the building,” she continued. “That may give us insight into who the party is that Chappy is dealing with. And may I stress that part? Chappy is dealing with this, not us. We’re simply doing our due diligence to be sure we aren’t getting ourselves in the middle of anything that will bite us in the butt. Assuming there are no issues, when the One Guy returns, we will do as Chappy asks and release the kobold head into his hands. There has been too much chaos lately and we need to restore a semblance of order with our business.”

  She looked us all in the eye and smiled. “And we could use the money,” she added.

  “Can’t argue with any of that,” I said. “Getting paid is nice. And order would be a good thing after the couple of weeks we had.”

  “And your little stint in the pokey,” Lassa said.

  “Don’t call it a pokey,” Harper responded. “That’s lame. Don’t be lame.”

  “I like the word pokey.” Lassa grinned.

  “I bet you do.”

  “Jail. County jail. Let’s call it county jail,” I said.

  “What about the lockup?” Lassa asked. “The hoosegow?”

  “Is there some reason you want my stay in jail to sound like I’m a Wild West outlaw?” I asked.

  “You wish you were that cool,” Harper scoffed.

  “A semblance of order with our business . . .” Sharon sighed.

  “Did you all really go toe-to-toe with Daphne?” Chappy asked, interrupting our banter. “You took on the Fae and lived? Damn. Fighting the faerie mafia. I respect that.”

  “None ya biz,” Harper responded as she juggled three blades for half a second then made them disappear as if she hadn’t been doing a damn thing. Chappy gulped.

  “What Harper is saying, Mr. Reginue, is what we do or do not do as part of our business is none of your concern,” Sharon said. “What is our concern is the location of where you were paid to drop off the kobold head. Address, please?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Chappy replied and nodded. “It’s, uh, I don’t know. That building over on Lexington. The one they are gutting and turning into a bed and breakfast?”

  “You don’t know the address?” Harper asked. “You get more worthless with every new word that comes out of that trap of yours.”

  “It’s not a bed and breakfast. They’re building a boutique hotel. There’s a difference,” Lassa said and smirked as we glanced at him. “What? I went out with the construction manager and his wife a couple months ago. Talk about an epic threesome. That woman is fit and he certainly has kept in shape despite a desk job.”

  “That place. I know it,” Harper said, rolling her eyes at Lassa. “We should go have a look. Vibe the space out. See if there’s any lingering mojo.”

  “It’s the middle of the afternoon,” I said. “Not exactly the time for covert ops, Harp. And I’m a little beat from my stay in the hoosegow.”

  “Nice, dude,” Lassa said and gave me a thumbs up.

  “We don’t need covert when we have lover yeti here and his threesome connection.” Harper grinned. “Maybe we can get a personal tour.”

  “Ooh, good idea,” Lassa said and gave her a thumbs-up too. “I have been meaning to call them and see if they wanted another weekend hookup. Perfect excuse.”

  “You people are weird as shit,” Chappy said.

  “You want to go back in the Dim, asshole?” I asked. He blanched. “Don’t be a judgmental dick.”

  “A field trip is not a good idea,” Sharon said. “The One Guy will be returning in two hours.”

  “We’ll be back by then,” I said. “That building is only a couple blocks away.”

  “And One Guy is bringing Thai,” Lassa added.

  “Exactly,” I agreed as my stomach rumbled with hunger. Working the Dim, even an easy box like the one I had tucked Chappy in, upped my metabolism by a thousand percent. I was looking forward to Thai food.

  “We taking the scumbag with us or leaving him here?” Harper asked.

  “Shar? You mind?” I asked.

  “I do mind, since you were kind enough to ask. I am not a babysitter. But he should remain here,” Sharon replied. “Best not to lose track of a client who owes us a considerable amount.”

  “Thanks.” I turned and locked eyes with Chappy. “You make one goddamn move and the One Guy will be the least of your worries.”

  “Shit, Lawter, I ain’t going nowhere,” Chappy said. “This chair is the safest place in Asheville right now.”

  3.

  W
E LEFT CHAPPY with Sharon at the office and headed through downtown Asheville to Lexington Avenue. The building was actually more than a couple blocks away, but not by much. We walked the sidewalk, or tried to, unless we had to detour around mobs of tourists standing slack-jawed to watch the constant entertainment that was our wonderfully weird corner of the world.

  We were weird—and liked it that way, even before the portal. We had the ubiquitous tourist town street performers and buskers. But being Asheville, we also had plenty of hippies with their nightly drum circles, men dressed as nuns and riding ten-foot-high bicycles, free hugs and free love. A slice of the 1960s, reimagined in the 1990s then updated for the 21st century.

  All of that brought money. Tourism dollars which began to change the face of Asheville. Greed started to overtake weird, and everything was going south fast. The spirit of funky Asheville was being gentrified out of the town.

  Then the portals to other dimensions opened and the weird came back with a vengeance.

  If you’ve ever read about a creature in some fairy tale, it now exists and can probably be seen walking Pack Square or by the Flat Iron building. The monsters are real and they want to buy over-priced grilled cheese sandwiches and even more over-priced pints of craft brew, just like all the damned human tourists.

  Good ol’ Asheville.

  For millennia the dimensions remained strictly separate except for some weak spots here and there. Those weak spots were what allowed shamans, witch doctors, psychics, mediums, and other paranormal explorers to tap into and catch glimpses of other realms outside our own. Those weak spots also let magic, good and bad, seep into our reality now and again.

  Into places like Boulder, Austin, Portland and Eugene, Burlington, Santa Fe and Taos, the entire Bay Area, and other funky spots in the US and across the globe.

  Asheville.

  Then a shift occurred and the secret held by the religious elite, mad folk, and hippy-dippy cults was out.

  We were not alone. There were many dimensions. An infinite number. The veils had fallen and not only could we see into other worlds, we could travel to them. And they could see and travel into ours.