by Jake Bible
“The One Guy was supposed to be part of this whole shebang,” I said. “How does that affect this mediation?”
“It doesn’t,” she replied. “This mediation is between the parties present only.”
“So the One Guy gets off scot free?”
“I would not say that. He cannot benefit from any decision we make. No matter the outcome this morning, the One Guy will be at a disadvantage from this moment forward when dealing with either of you.” She smiled at me then turned and smiled at Graille. “A curse, if you will.”
“He’s so fucked,” Harper whispered. “Dragon curses. Shit.”
She wasn’t kidding. Cursed by a dragon is bad mojo of the highest order. Wherever he went to ground, he would be wise to stay there. Plus, there was the fact I was going to rip him to pieces with the dullest Dim blade I could create. If Harper or the Exiles didn’t get to him first.
“Thank you, my love,” Edgar said and stood again while the old woman sat. They shared a look I couldn’t read. They were dragons. Their looks were an entire language in and of themselves. “I am going to ask this once, so please think well on your answer: Do you accept the terms of mediation?”
“We get to go along our way and conduct business as usual?” I asked. He nodded. “I’m cool with that, pal. Lassa? Harp? Company vote?”
“Company vote,” Graille scoffed.
“Mr. Graille,” Edgar growled and it was as if the center of the Earth had spoken.
“My apologies,” Graille said and sounded like he meant it.
“I’m good,” Lassa said.
“This decision is enforceable?” Harper asked Edgar. “The DEX will look for a loophole.”
“We expect they might, so let me assure you, Ms. Kyles, that there are no loopholes when dragons mediate,” Edgar replied. “Our decision is final once agreed upon. Any ideas of finding ways in and out will be met with extreme discipline.”
“I’m fine then,” Harper said.
“Excellent,” Edgar said. “Black Box Inc. agrees to the terms. How does the DEX respond?”
“This was far from a mediation,” Graille said. “I expected negotiations. A back and forth so we could come to a mutual agreement. Instead, I sit here and get handed an ultimatum that I know will not be acceptable to my superiors. I must decline.”
“That is unfortunate,” Edgar said. “Is there nothing that can be done to change your mind?”
“No,” Graille stated.
“Then we wait until you change your mind,” Edgar said and sat down. “While we wait, please, everyone, eat this food. I hate to see it go to waste. Mr. Lawter is putting quite the dent in the platters, but even he cannot finish all of this.”
“Try me, pal,” I said as I loaded my plate with scrambled eggs, dumped a half ton of shredded cheddar on top, then began looking about the restaurant.
“What are you doing?” Harper asked, annoyed.
“Looking for hot sauce,” I said. “I want some Texas Pete’s on my eggs and cheese.”
“Chase, you aren’t getting what has happened,” Harper said.
“I’m not?” I replied, spying the hot sauce in a booth across the room. I got up and walked over to the booth. “What am I not getting?”
“We’re here forever,” Harper said, addressing the entire table. “Right? Once a mediation has begun, it does not end until all parties agree to the terms. We’re in this diner for eternity.”
“Correct, Ms. Kyles,” Edgar said. “For dragons, that does not mean much as we are eternal. But for the likes of mortals such as yourselves, this could become quite unfortunate.”
“I’m only sort of mortal,” Lassa said. “I still got like, what? Five more centuries before I’m even thinking of my twilight years.”
“How nice for you, Lassa,” Edgar said. “Even still, you are mortal. You may outlive all present, but that only means you will know loneliness once all are gone.”
“Shit. That sucks, dude,” Lassa said.
“Quite.”
“Edgar, sir, how do we rectify this?” Ducheré asked.
“You agree to the mediation terms,” he replied.
“Yes, but as Mr. Graille has stated, we cannot agree to those terms.”
“Then we wait until you can.”
“So much for the fast of fair and fast,” I said.
34.
SIX DAYS WE SAT there. Six goddamn days.
The food was good, at least. The diner was much better at breakfast than they were at lunch or dinner, but I didn’t complain. I had a near bottomless pit in my belly to fill, so I filled it. Morning, noon, and night, I ate until finally, after everything, I began to feel somewhat like myself.
But not quite the same as before. There was something different going on and I had an idea about what it was. I kept that to myself, though. By the way the dragons kept looking at me, I knew they weren’t exactly ignorant of my situation. Edgar had alluded to it that first morning.
“Fine!” Mr. Graille shouted at exactly 4:35 pm on the sixth day. “We agree to the terms. I’ll handle the fallout this brings down on me. And I will handle it, I promise. Then I will decide how best to move forward.”
“An excellent outlook,” Edgar said. “We are pleased to hear this.”
“What do you mean by you’ll decide on how best to proceed?” I asked Graille. “That better not mean coming down on us. The whole point of this standoff was so you’d agree not to go after us.”
“Which is true,” he replied. “But going after you is not my only recourse.”
“Not digging how he’s saying that,” I said to Edgar. “This dick is planning on coming at us sideways.”
“The DEX will not go after you or anyone associated with Black Box Inc.,” Edgar replied, but I could hear the disclaimer in his voice. “However . . .”
“No, don’t,” I said and stood up from my chair. “I get it. Those not associated with Black Box Inc., our friends for instance, cannot be protected by this agreement. Good thing we have excellent lawyers. Come at anyone we care about, Graille, and I sic the banshees on your ass.”
“I look forward to it,” Graille said. He stood and bowed then walked out of the diner. Just like that.
“Mr. Lawter. Ms. Kyles. Lassa,” Ducheré said as she got up and strode past us. “Until next time.”
“Better bring something stronger than a stasis ward, bitch,” Harper spat at her.
“I will. I promise,” Ducheré said as she left.
The rest of the DEX agents vacated the diner, leaving us alone with eight dragons. The two from the kitchen had taken up residence in a corner booth to play cribbage while everyone waited. They didn’t look up from their game as I cleared my throat and focused on Edgar.
“Okay, pal, lay it on me,” I said.
“Excuse me?” Edgar asked.
“How much shit am I in for banishing blood ghasts to the Dim?”
Edgar and his dragon friends all shared several different looks that probably had a billion different meanings.
“We do not know,” Edgar said. “That is the dragon’s truth. You are the first of your kind, defiler of dimensions. You are certainly living up to that name.”
“So there’s a chance that nothing will go wrong and those blood ghasts are lost forever in the space between dimensions, right?”
“No, Mr. Lawter, there is no chance that nothing will go wrong in this scenario. What you have done will bring horrors down on this dimension. Possibly all dimensions, but our dragon instincts tell us that Earth alone will bear the brunt of your choices.”
“I didn’t have a lot of choices to make. I had to save myself and my friends. The One Guy summoned the blood ghasts. That’s the asshole that should bear the brunt of what happened.”
“We do not disagree, but he did not work the Dim. You did. The blame cannot be spread around, no matter how unjust that must feel.”
“Feeling pretty goddamn unjust.”
Edgar shrugged.
The two dragons stood up from their corner booth, leaving the cards and cribbage behind, and walked past us to the front door. They stood on either side as one by one each of the old men and old women that represented some of the most powerful beings in the Universe, stood and left.
Edgar was the last one out the door. He gave a slight wave then was followed out by the card-playing dragons.
We sat there for a few seconds before Lassa said, “What exactly happened to that blood ghast they had in the kitchen?”
We got the hell out of that diner. Fast.
There was a pay phone by a grocery market on the corner. Mars Hill was still country enough that pay phones existed within its sphere of influence.
After calling collect, and taking a few minutes to talk Sharon down, I finally got her to call us an Uber to take us home. Or take Lassa home. Harper refused to let me out of her sight, again.
A shower or ten later, my belly still happily full, I collapsed onto my couch and waited for Harper to get done with her own two-hour-long shower. She’d hexed the water heater as soon as we got home, so it was unlimited hot water for three days.
She came out of the bathroom with only a towel wrapped about her hair and pointed a finger at me.
“Time to stop improvising,” she said. “We’re finding you formal training for this Dim shit as of tomorrow.”
“You think I haven’t goddamn tried?” I responded with a frown at her tits. “Put a shirt on, Harp. Love you like a sister, but those are distracting.”
She flipped me off and stomped off to my bedroom where she had at least one bag of backup clothes.
“What the fuck, Lawter?” she screamed.
I bolted from the couch and rushed into my bedroom.
Harper was standing in front of my closed closet, still naked, but with her goblin sickle in hand. She glanced at me then slowly opened the closet, jumping backwards onto the bed as she did, the sickle out in front.
I had a shitty view from where I stood, so I moved a few feet farther into my bedroom. Then I froze in place.
“Like I need more shit in my life,” I said as I stared at two ghost kids. The same ghost kids from my nightmare before we left town. “What do you want?”
They mouthed words, but no sound came out.
“Shit,” Harper said, stepping off my bed and moving slightly closer to the closet. “I know these kids.”
Their attention turned to Harper and they began to speak faster, their hands flapping in the air with an urgency that made the lack of volume pretty goddamn frustrating.
“You read ghost lips?” I asked.
“Chase, these are the kids that were killed by that blood ghast all those years ago,” she said. “You don’t recognize them?”
“Oh, damn,” I said. “You’re right.”
She was. We’d seen the kids around downtown Asheville more than a few times before they disappeared then turned up as people paste all over the inside of that building. The same building where all of our blood ghast troubles had started.
“I don’t know what you are saying,” Harper shouted at them. “Can you write it down?”
They gave her the ghost kid equivalent of a “Are you fucking kidding me?” look.
“Who do we know that can help?” I asked.
It came to both of us at the same time. I activated one of the phones in my bedside table and called Sharon.
“Where’s Travis?” I asked when she picked up.
“Hello to you too, Chase,” Sharon replied, sounding sleepy.
“Shit, did I wake you up?”
“Chase, it is one in the morning. Yes, you woke me up. Can this not wait until tomorrow? Or today, as the case is.”
“Kinda need Travis now. Harper and I are having trouble translating a conversation with a couple of ghost kids in my closet.”
Justifiably, there was a long silence on Sharon’s end.
“Travis is staying at the office for now,” Sharon said finally. “I paid for some extra hex protection after the front window was repaired. But Travis suggested he could be of help by remaining there during off hours. Just in case.”
“Good choice, Shar. Thanks,” I said. “I’ll call the office.”
“I will get dressed and meet you at your place,” Sharon said with a sigh.
“What? No, we’re good right now. If we need you, I’ll call you back after I talk to Travis.”
“I am already awake, Chase. I will be over shortly.”
She hung up before I could protest again.
“Mom on the way?” Harper asked.
“Yeah and Travis is staying at the office,” I replied. I dialed the office number.
“Chase?”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“Because shit hit the fan here and when that happens, odds are you’re involved.”
“Pot calling kettle black, pal. And by shit hitting the fan, what exactly are you bitching about?”
Harper raised her eyebrows and I shrugged.
“About thirty ghost children popped by to see me,” Travis said. His voice was even, but far from calm. “They have a lot to say. A lot to say.”
“So you can understand them? Awesome. That’s what I wanted to hear, pal.”
“What’s going on?” Harper asked.
I pulled the phone away from my mouth.
“Travis says there are about thirty ghost kids at the office. They’re talking to him.”
“Chase?” Travis yelled. “Why did you ask if I can understand them?”
“We’ve got two kids in my closet here,” I said. “They’re talking, but we ain’t hearing.”
“Oh, I can hear them, don’t worry about that. They are not happy.”
“Like how not happy?”
“Like wanting to know who murdered them not happy. And breaking shit not happy. Not all of them can pick things up, but some have a knack for the poltergeist impressions.”
“That’s what they want? To find out who murdered them?” I asked and looked at the two ghosts in the closet.
They nodded up and down so fast that their incorporeal faces blurred into streaks of light.
“Yeah,” Travis replied. “They’re really fucking insistent.”
“We’ll be right over,” I said and hung up.
I called Sharon back and told her to call Lassa to pick us up.
Then I left my room, went to my kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled out four cans of beer. I drank the first in one gulp and threw Harper one as I picked up my second.
“They still in the closet?” I asked.
“No. They took off as soon as you left the room.”
She downed her beer and I threw her a second one.
“Bet I know where they went,” I said as I sat down and we waited for Lassa and Sharon to show up.
35.
I WILL ADMIT THAT the front window looked great. The hexes on it were hidden perfectly.
“Huh. This is different,” Lassa said as we walked into the office.
Travis was sitting cross legged on my desk and staring at us with puppy dog eyes as way more than thirty ghost kids floated, flitted, shambled, coasted, and walked around the office. One of them picked up a stapler and threw it at us. Harper killed the stapler dead with the swipe of a blade.
“All right, kids, listen up,” I called.
Some of them stopped their movement and slowly turned to me. Most of them kept on being ghost kids oblivious to the world of the living.
“Hey!” I
shouted. “Listen up, you little dead shits!”
That got the attention of most of them, but there were still a few that couldn’t care less. Most was better than none.
“I’m Chase Lawter, defiler of dimensions, and de facto boss of Black Box Inc. You are dead kids come back as ghosts and y’all are haunting our office. Now, we have a couple of options here. You can leave, which I doubt you’ll do, or you can sit down and start telling me what the hell is going on. You get what I’m saying?”
Travis winced as several of the kids faced me and started waving their hands about as they shouted their dead faces bluer than they already were.
“They say you messed with something you weren’t supposed to and now they have nowhere to go,” Travis said. “They need our help to put that right or they plan on haunting all of us for the rest of our lives.”
“Good thing you’re dead, dude,” Lassa said.
“Which means they haunt me forever,” Travis said, not very happy with that prospect.
“Oh, shit, right. Sorry, dude,” Lassa apologized. “And, yeah, that means they’ll be on my ass for a long time too. Shit. This sucks.”
“What does this mean?” Harper asked. “Is this because of the blood ghasts in the Dim? Is the Dim where the souls of murdered children go?”
“Why are you asking me?” Travis snapped. “I’m the shapeshifter ghost that was busy reading the newspaper when all of a sudden a bunch of stupid ghost kids began showing up. Where do the souls of murdered children go? Right fucking here, apparently.”
“I believe we need coffee,” was Sharon’s response to it all. She wound her way through the crowd of ghost kids and back to the break room. “Who wants coffee?”
“Make a full pot,” I replied.
I studied the chaos and groaned.
“How do we help these kids?” I asked.
“We solve their murders,” Travis said as he hopped down from my desk. “All of them.”
There was a flash in the corner of the office and two more ghosts arrived. Then another flash by the waiting area chairs. Five more ghost kids.
