Born Again

by Adam Dark

  “Those things actually happened?” Ben asked.

  “Definitely. And those aren’t even the weirdest ones.”

  Hey, Ian, if we’re not careful, this guy might run you out of a job.

  For once, Ian kept quiet.

  Oh, what? You don’t think it’s funny?

  ‘Yeah, but can he actually see the things? No.’

  Ben tried to hide his smile and focused again on the list. “So those threat levels are just your best guess?” he asked.

  “Best educated guess.” Chase met his gaze with a little frown.

  Wow. The guy actually seemed pretty eager to please, now.

  “The first one that you… marked off,” Peter started, looking like he really wanted to comment on Chase turning this into a to-do list. “You put a two there.”

  Chase nodded. “Yeah. So far, it’s a scale from one to five.”

  “One being the highest threat?”

  “The lowest.”

  Ben barked out a laugh and quickly coughed to cover it up. The thing they’d gone up against at Buckley Playground had only been a two. Chase had a seriously warped sense of what passed as threatening. He hadn’t been there. Now Ben really hoped they’d get the chance to change the guy’s opinion on it. He sniffed and cleared his throat to try to redeem himself a little. “There aren’t any fives on here.”

  Chase shrugged. “Just leaving a little wiggle room.”

  “Wiggle room…” Peter muttered.

  “Okay, so it’s more of a sliding scale, at this point.” Chase grinned. “I figure we’ll know a five when we see it.”

  We. Awesome.

  “There are more things on this list than the first one,” Ben said, pointing to the extra three items at the bottom. He hadn’t been able to read any of them on the redacted list, but at least he knew how to count.

  “Makes it more impressive, right?” Chase nodded and looked back and forth between the two guys he was obviously trying way too hard to impress.

  “To someone who’s never actually gone after one of these things, then yeah. I guess,” Ben said. This wasn’t impressive. This was like looking at a refilled prescription bottle of his schizophrenia meds in high school and knowing he had to work his way through them one day at a time. Back then, before he’d refused to keep taking them and only one doctor had admitted to a misdiagnosis, Ben had thought he’d be emptying and refilling those pill bottles for the rest of his life.

  “There’s a lot more than this, too,” Chase added. “I could have used up a whole ink cartridge printing out every page.”

  “Christmas was four weeks ago,” Peter said. His voice had fallen entirely flat, but his eyes looked like they were about ready to pop out of his head.

  “Gift that keeps on giving,” Chase said with a peppy swivel of his head.

  So. Lame.

  “Okay.” Ben took a deep breath. “We said you could do two with us before we decided whether or not to keep going with this list.”

  “And you,” Peter added, glaring at Chase now.

  “Yeah, I know,” Chase replied quickly. He could try to brush it aside all he wanted, but he’d already made it perfectly clear with his over-the-top zeal how much he really wanted this. “You’ll want to keep going.”

  “And if you being there with us means anything goes wrong—”

  “You already told me. I’m out. I get it.” The guy jerked his shoulders like he had a particularly uncomfortable itch. Okay, so he also didn’t like things being repeated to him. Ben found himself taking notes for the future.

  “Same thing applies if either of the ones we pick from the list are duds,” Peter said. He placed his forearms on the table and leaned over them in what Ben guessed was his best attempt at intimidation. “We’re gonna trust that your information is good. Until it’s not.”

  Okay, he might be taking it a little too far.

  Chase stared at Peter for a minute, then said in a low, slow voice, “Got it.”

  It would be hard enough to juggle having Chase with them while they went after another demon. Now it looked like he and Peter were going to have this constant macho struggle going on between them. Ben wasn’t exactly looking forward to any of it.

  “So now we choose, right?” he said, trying to break up that idiotic tension.

  “Yeah, that number one,” Peter said, pointing to the fourth item on the list. There was only one number one. Chase opened his mouth to offer his opinion, but they’d kind of had enough of that.

  “And a number two, then,” Ben said. “Most recent?”

  Peter nodded. “Most recent.” That was the second item on the list, right below the one they couldn’t possibly forget they’d already bagged because it had a bright red line through it.

  Chase looked more than a little disappointed, but he was smart enough not to try to argue with them. Yes, now they were at the part where Ben and Peter called the shots, and all three of them knew it.

  “Cool. Let’s hit that number one first,” Ben said. “You know, ease you in nice and slow.” Chase almost rolled his eyes. Sure, Ben and Peter—and April—had only gone up against four demons in total. Facing the Guardian twice had to only count as one. And they’d been pretty big demons, too. At least it felt like it. But an unbroken winning streak of successfully facing and banishing four demons practically made them experts compared to Chase’s whopping zero. So Ben could pull rank a little.

  Chase stared at his list on the table, took a breath, and nodded. The man had accepted his place in this. Hopefully. “How ‘bout tomorrow, then?” he asked. It amazed Ben how effortlessly the guy could go from totally dissatisfied to pleasantly optimistic in two seconds flat. Maybe pleasantly was a bit too strong.

  Ben and Peter looked at each other for a minute, then Peter said, “We have to run it by April first.”

  “Wait, she doesn’t know about this?” If Ben didn’t know better, he’d have thought Chase actually looked concerned.

  “She knows,” Ben replied. “We just have to wait for her to let us know when’s a good time for her.”

  “Her schedule’s a little busier than ours,” Peter added.

  “Why?” When Chase shook his head, his curly blond hair flopped on his head. It made him look like an idiot.

  “That’s her business,” Ben said. Then he clasped his hands together and set them on the table. “We’ll call you.” It was so hard not to laugh at the irritation bubbling behind Chase’s eyes. He knew they were screwing with him now, because they could. And because they’d have to put up with him shadowing them for the next two demons they put away.

  “Cool.” Chase stood from the table.

  “You want your list?” Ben asked.

  Snorting out a humorless chuckle, Chase just waved at the paper on the table. “No. That’s yours.” Then he turned and headed straight for the door of Speedy Joe’s. With his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his hoodie, the guy definitely looked a lot more dejected than when he’d arrived. He’d gotten what he wanted. It just clearly hadn’t looked the way he’d imagined it.

  They watched him until he disappeared from view through the coffee shop’s front windows. Then they looked at each other and grinned. Ben had the strongest urge to raise his hand for a high five, but that would have made this whole thing a lot less cool.

  ‘I’d high-five you,’ Ian said.

  You wish.

  15

  The satisfaction of finally putting Chase back in his place—which he’d definitely jumped out of way more aggressively than he should have to begin with—lasted only as long as it took for Ben to drive back to his apartment. Because now he had to relay everything to April and ask her when she could fit their next demon into her schedule.

  Once he’d kicked off his boots and tossed his jacket on the floor, he went right to the kitchen to make himself a massive bowl of cereal with way more milk than he’d actually use. Then he went right back to the couch and munched away for a while before taking out his phone.
>
  —Met with Chase.—

  It surprised him how quickly April texted him back.

  —List legit?—

  —So far. Gonna test two.— He pulled Chase’s list from his pocket, smoothed it out on the coffee table, and took a picture. Then he sent that to her and followed it with, —Number 2 and number 4. When’s good for you to do the next one?—

  Ben sat back against the couch and watched the three little dots on his phone blink on, off, and on again. He hated reading into anything completely reliant on tiny words on a tiny screen, but he couldn’t help thinking that meant she was hesitating. Man, he really did not want her to be backing out of this now. Then she sent another message.

  —Friday works. Pm.—

  —Cool.— That seemed like a really lame way to end the short conversation, even one this cut and dry. And he had to ask. —You doing okay?—

  It took her a lot longer this time to reply.

  —I will be. Got a lot on my plate right now. Projects.—

  And there it was again. Either she was drowning in schoolwork, or she was trying to brush him off and wanted him to just leave her alone until Friday. They both seemed possible at this point. Then he read back over her last text again and smiled a little.

  —Hey, we could use that. ‘Mission’ was good, but projects takes it to a whole new level.—

  It did, really. He liked it. Mission, objective, target, assignment—all of those had gone through his head at one point or another, and they sounded too much like playing at FBI or CIA. They weren’t playing, though.

  The three little dots came up at the bottom corner of his phone again, and they were there for a long time. Maybe, finally, he’d broken through whatever wall she’d put up in the last few days and April would give him more than choppy sentence fragments. Then her text came through.

  —Cool.—

  Ben huffed out a breath and tossed his phone on the couch. Fine. He could try talking to her again on Friday. But if he didn’t quit looking at his phone right now, he’d end up saying something he regretted. In a text.

  Ben used to think he enjoyed having whole days with nothing to do. He’d had plenty of those since starting at Boston University a little over three years ago, and before disembodied voices and demons had jolted their way back into his life, the empty days had only increased. Somehow, the closer he got to crunch time with his dissertation and the end of his undergraduate career coming up in just over three months, the less busy he became. It might have been procrastination on a very real level. It might have also been the fact that he had one of his best friends living in his head, a secret shopping list of demons spread out on his coffee table, and a girl who had every right to blow him off doing pretty much just that because she didn’t owe Ben anything and they weren’t … anything.

  The best he could bring himself to do Thursday morning was remind himself to pass April’s decree along down the line. Friday, p.m., their first project with Chase on board—the number-one threat level. He texted Peter, who only replied with a thumbs-up emoji, then forced himself to pull up Chase’s number and send the same information.

  —Meeting location?—

  The reply coming in from Chase almost made Ben wince. So he sent another text quickly and shoved his phone back into his pocket.

  —TBD.—

  Just the fact that the guy had his number and had replied made Ben feel more roped into their new arrangement even more. If Chase screwed anything up with either of the demons they’d picked from the list to go after, he was out, and all their hesitation would be justified. Hesitation was such an understatement. Ben wondered if he’d feel bad in any way about his response to Chase in general if everything worked out perfectly and he turned out to be a serious advantage to what they were doing. Probably not. The guy was lightyears away from an awesome person. And Ben refused to save Chase’s number in his phone.

  He stared at the list on his coffee table and finished the rest of the grilled cheese he’d made ten minutes ago. Best thing about grilled cheese—his whole apartment smelled like it for the rest of the day, which was almost like eating grilled cheese all day.

  “Guess we should probably check out this number one too, huh?”

  ‘I thought maybe you’d forgotten we could do that,’ Ian replied.

  “Really? Were you going to suggest it at any point or just let it ride?” Ben stood and went to the front door for his boots.

  ‘I mean, I would’ve been able to check once we got there tomorrow.’

  “Oh, good. And waste everyone’s time if it didn’t pan out.”

  ‘I can just go look right now, if you want.’

  “No. I need to take a walk anyway. Probably better to see it myself first too. Just to get rid of the whole surprise factor when we show up again tomorrow.”

  With his boots on now, Ben grabbed his keys and wallet from his last pair of jeans and shoved them into the pockets of the current ones. Then he shrugged into his coat and gave himself a minute to stretch his neck.

  ‘I think you’re starting to forget what it was like before having me around to do all the undercover work.’ Ian sounded like he was about to laugh.

  Ben paused. “Maybe.” He stepped out of his apartment, locked the door behind him, and headed down the stairs. “We can just call this paying your rent.”

  Chase’s list had reported this level-one demon in South Boston. It was a lower-income neighborhood, somewhere between Section 8 and the level of rent a new family could barely afford while both parents worked at least two jobs to cover daycare for their newborn and keep their fridge just short of completely empty. It made Ben wonder if they’d ever come across something terrorizing a townhome in South Dorchester or one of the giant mansions in Jamaica Plain. A little cliché that the lower-level demons prowled around in dark alleys more likely to have a few homeless people and discarded junk that hadn’t been touched in years. Or gangs. Were there even gangs in Boston anymore?

  He parked his car on the street beside another public park, this one much smaller and a little outdated; the jungle gym hadn’t been improved much from the hot metal and peeling wood he remembered playing on as a kid. Back then, burning yourself if you sat the wrong way on a metal slide or getting a few splinters in your knee didn’t make anybody freak out—kids or parents. But now, playgrounds had the added flavor of bully demons sucking the goodness out of lonely, depressed kids. He wondered if there were any other seriously messed-up beings lying in wait at this park too.

  ‘I can look,’ Ian offered.

  “Let’s just focus on one at a time,” Ben muttered. He locked his car and headed down the side street toward the incredibly vague location on Chase’s list—‘between Monk Street and Peters Street’. Super helpful.

  It was seriously cold today. He hadn’t checked the weather, but knowing the temperature wouldn’t have made it feel any better. It did make him wonder why he’d never bothered to buy a scarf.

  With his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, he walked quickly, both to warm himself as much as he could and to keep from drawing any attention to himself. It wasn’t like he was out here sightseeing just for the fun of it. Okay, maybe that kind of applied to what he was doing, but his business had nothing to do with anyone else’s here. He wanted to cross the street when he approached a group of three guys standing in the middle of a yard with brown grass, smoking cigarettes. They didn’t even seem to be talking at all, just huddling there like they were trying to keep some silent secret in the middle of their circle. But he didn’t want to make it look like he was trying to avoid a potentially dangerous group of dudes—which might or might not have been the case.

  When he passed them on the sidewalk, all three guys turned to stare at him. Didn’t say a word or acknowledge him in any way beyond mean-mugging him, but it was enough to get the message across. Get lost. Ben jerked his chin up at them in a half-assed nod before he realized he probably shouldn’t have. Nobody returned the gesture, but at least they didn’
t respond in a worse way, either.

  Does the glowing-green-hand thing work when there aren’t demons around?

  ‘Probably.’

  So reassuring. He needed to make a list of things he could easily get and carry around with him for protection. Just in case. Which was hilarious because the demons he’d put into stones were way more dangerous than these three dudes smoking on the lawn. Potentially.

  He reached Monk Street another block down and turned left into an alley between two apartment buildings. Great, so it was in an alley. When he didn’t see anyone else there, he finally let himself slow down a little. Then he stopped.

  No, there wasn’t anyone else here, but there was a gray cat lying on its side in the middle of the alley. Its fur was dirty and pretty matted, but not enough to hide the dark blood staining its ribs. Or at least, where its ribs should have been. Now there was just a gaping, jagged hole in the thing’s side, fully exposing the animal’s wet, glistening insides. And its broken ribs jutted straight up out of the thing’s flesh. His windshield wipers bent up in the same way when he replaced them. Either he was trying really hard to not compare this gruesome sight to another gruesome sight, or he was growing callous to the unusually disturbing.

  Then the breath was pulled from his lungs, and he felt like he was being sucked through a straw. When he blinked, he was standing in the disgusting green filter of the spirit realm, the apartment-building walls on either side of him oozing with whatever nasty stuff this place had splattered on everything.

  “No warning?” he said, turning to glare at Ian’s twelve-year-old self standing beside him.

  “What?” His friend spread his arms in genuine confusion. “I need permission even after we decided this was what we were coming to do?”

  Ben shook his head. “Permission and a little heads up are two totally different things. It doesn’t make sense to you that I don’t like surprises?”