by Adam Dark
“Hold on a second,” Ben said, lifting a finger. Then he thought directly to the poorly timed objection of his friend’s disembodied spirit. Dude, whatever you do to keep yourself occupied when I’m sleeping, do that right now. I don’t care whether you like this or not. Keep your mouth shut. He waited just long enough for the ensuing silence to feel like an agreement from Ian, then he dropped his hand into his lap. “Just a little talk with Ian,” he told April with a nod. “We’re good now.”
She let out a quiet chuckle. “Good.”
“Good.” Ben took a deep breath. “So, the last thing I never told you. The night at the empty house, right after we put the Guardian into that first stone, and you kissed me—”
“That was Ian.” The mischief in April’s smile and behind her eyes took him completely off guard.
“You knew?” So much for having spent the whole afternoon and all through dinner building up for this one; the tension leaked out of him now like air from a punctured balloon.
April lifted one shoulder. “I put a few things together. I was pretty sure before. But now I actually know.”
“Pretty sure,” Ben repeated, blinking a bit because he still couldn’t believe how on top of everything April was all the time. “I totally didn’t expect that.” And he couldn’t help a sighing chuckle. “When were you pretty sure?”
“Mostly last night. With everything Richard said and then the whole…” She puffed out her cheeks and mimed an explosion, clearly referring to Ben’s newly discovered ability to create a spirit-realm-green shockwave. At least when he was super angry. That might be the closest he’d ever get to the Incredible Hulk.
“Yeah, that was definitely new,” he said.
“Seemed like it,” she teased. “I think I knew a little bit before that, though. At your place. The last time you kissed me.”
At least that had done exactly what he’d wanted it to at the time, which was to prove that kissing Ben-being-controlled-by-Ian was one-hundred-percent different than kissing Ben. Just Ben Robinson and nobody else. “I’m really glad you noticed the difference,” he told her. “It was definitely not the same for me, either.”
“What do you mean?” She drew her legs up from under the steering wheel and somehow managed to cross them beneath her in the driver’s seat.
Ben couldn’t believe she was this interested in everything and still not seriously creeped out. “When Ian… jumps up to take over, I guess, I get pushed way back into the back seat.” He jabbed a finger behind him. “It’s almost like dreaming. And then not at all.”
That made her laugh, and he joined her, because it sounded ridiculous and weird and it was so incredibly true. “He can do that whenever he wants?” April asked.
“Well, yeah, but we’re still working on some ground rules with that.”
“You are definitely the most interesting person I’ve ever met, Ben Robinson.” Her eyes lit up again, and hearing something he’d maybe wanted to hear from her forever made him suddenly feel like an idiot.
He made a face at her. “You sure it’s not just Ian, though?”
“Shut up. Ian wasn’t even around when we went to that frat-house demon barbeque.”
Ben snorted. He was pretty sure he’d referred to that night exactly the same way at least once. “Fair enough.”
“You know…” She tilted her head toward her lifted shoulder, grabbing her bent knees. “I didn’t actually know about Ian when you tried to tell me the other night. What if I said I didn’t believe you a hundred-percent?”
There it was; even in the light from the parking lot shining through the car windows, he was pretty sure he saw just a little blush there on her cheeks. Despite that, she’d been surprisingly smooth with her delivery. The blush just made it really cute. “Are you saying you need more convincing?”
April bit her lip through her smile and looked up at the car’s ceiling. “Probably.”
He’d imagined kissing her in a dozen other awkward places, when it had always been the right call not to actually attempt it. Somehow, when he leaned over the center console now to kiss her in her car, he didn’t screw up any of it. Then he was running a hand through her hair, feeling her sigh against his lips, completely able to acknowledge how much he loved kissing her because there wasn’t anything hiding between them anymore. Her hands were on his chest, and they stayed there the whole time until she gently pushed him away.
It wasn’t because something had gone wrong. He thought it was just so she could smile up at him and say, “Okay. I believe you now.”
16
None of that changed the fact that he still refused to go into his bedroom unless it was absolutely necessary. The sand was still in his bed, he had no doubt—unless the rag-demon had come back for that, too, and somehow, he doubted it.
But Ben could definitely lay sprawled out on the couch, going over the last few hours for as long as he liked and feeling better than he had in a long, long time. Right now, that only seemed a little weird, knowing that Peter was still pissed at him and that those clowns with this alleged Sectarian Circle were still waiting on him to join their ranks or give up on hunting demons. Because without their help, it was still highly likely that Ben would get himself killed.
Nope. Right now, all of that was just floating around in the background, totally ignored until he had to pay attention to it again.
‘Like me?’
Ben laughed. “You’re mad ‘cause I told you to butt out of somewhere you don’t belong in the first place?”
‘Just feeling a little left out.’
“Don’t. If you’re gonna be… with me for the rest of my life, you’re gonna have to get used to not being a part of it sometimes.”
‘Ouch.’
“Truth hurts, Ian.” Ben kicked off his shoes and left them there beside the couch. It was just a little after 9:00 p.m., but he was pretty sure he could fall asleep right now if he wanted. Then he got a text from April.
—Just talked to Peter. He said the dreams are weird and gave the thumbs up for a trial run with Rufus.—
—Is he still pissed?—
—Not at me.—
He was still in such a good mood, that actually made him laugh. Then she texted again.
—He still wants to come.—
—Good.—
And that was it. He debated whether or not to text her goodnight, too, but they hadn’t really ever done that. She didn’t do it either, so it felt like it worked.
Ben thought he would have been a little more upset by, or at least uncomfortable with, the fact that Peter was only talking to him now through April. Maybe the old Ben would have gotten jealous about it, or pissed off, or would have felt left out, somehow. After everything else in the last twenty-four hours, though, he really didn’t care. At least Peter was talking to someone and still wanted to be a part of their projects, even if he still wanted to wallow around in his anger. Now that everybody knew about Ian, Ben didn’t feel as bad about spending his time with April and being able to actually joke with her about all the things he could do. They’d gotten past a pretty big hurdle today, he thought. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any more gigantic steps backward in that. So whenever Peter decided he was ready to talk to Ben again like an adult, that would be a better time to try apologizing. Because he knew he still had to do that for real, and not in a panic while they were literally trapped inside Richard Monday’s basement lab for however long the guy wanted to keep them there.
And Ben had ended his night with April completely guilt-free and without once thinking about Peter’s feelings. That would have been really messed up.
“Hey, by the way,” he asked Ian, “where do you go when I’m sleeping?”
Ian let out a noncommittal hum. ‘Back to the spirit realm. Sometimes there’s stuff happening. You know, spirits walking around, mostly. Some of them stay for a chat. Not a lot, though. It’s not really the best place to go if you’re trying to make friends.’
“Not surprising.” Be
n put his hands behind his head and settled into the couch cushions. “That where you went when we were in the car?”
‘Yep.’
“See any friendly spirits?” Ben grinned—not that he found himself particularly funny right now. Maybe a little. He just felt good.
‘No, none of those. I’m not really sure what I saw.’
“Like…”
‘Bunch of blinking lights. I was just sitting there in the parking lot, nobody else around, and all these blinking lights all over. Like fireflies. Before you ask, no. There are no fireflies in the spirit realm. Nothing but dead people and demons.’
“Huh.” Ben felt his eyes growing heavy, and that was totally fine. Maybe he would just pass out right now, even through Ian’s voice carrying on in his head.
‘It was kinda weird, though, dude. I could’ve sworn they were trying to…’
When Ben woke up just after eight the next morning, the first thing he did was look at his phone, panicking just a little when he saw the battery was super low again. And why would he do that? Oh, right. Because he was so used to feeling automatically crappy about everything. Plus, he’d almost expected to have had another dream about the rag-demon, which didn’t happen, and he found himself maybe for the first time caring about whether or not his phone actually worked if he had to get in touch with somebody. Desperate times and all.
So he got up and realized with a growing sense of clearly overexaggerated dread that his phone charger was in his room.
‘Can’t be that bad,’ Ian said.
“Yeah, good morning to you too.”
Ben stood outside his bedroom now, staring at the white door and the brass doorknob, feeling ridiculous for being more than a little hesitant about this after all the way deadlier things he’d walked right into without a second thought. Okay, he’d had second thoughts; he just hadn’t let them slow him down. This felt way different.
‘Dude, it’s sand.’
Was it, though?
He looked at his phone again and confirmed that yes, the battery was down to two percent. So it was either suck it up and go in there like a sane adult or be completely stupid and force himself to buy a new charger.
‘And all new clothes, too?’
“You’re right,” Ben muttered. He stuck out a rigid arm, grabbed the doorknob, and slowly turned it. The door to his bedroom opened just like it always did—a normal door, in a normal apartment. And there was his normal bed. He took a few steps inside and scanned the piles of dirty clothes thrown everywhere and few scattered notebooks for his research, focusing more of his energy than he should have on not looking at his bed. This might have been the first time he’d ever actually understood the purpose of cleaning up one’s living space. “Where is it?”
He felt like a lunatic tiptoeing around his own bedroom, nudging random things aside with his foot. Then he crossed the room, still searching, and realized he’d left the charger plugged into the wall on the other side of his bed. Gritting his teeth, he headed that way, tripped on something, and found himself flying toward the foot of his bed. His hands caught the bedframe just in time to keep it from catching his face, and then he was staring right at the grains of sand sprinkled across his sheets.
Before he could even utter the curse in his throat, that same searing heat pierced through his brain again. The images flashed one right after the other—the green sand dunes, the sky studded with black-hole stars, the figure moving toward him from a distance and then not at all.
‘Woah, woah. Ben!’
Ian’s voice came from so far away, followed by Ben’s inability to see anything at all before the same howling of the wind from that spirit-realm desert careened through his head. Or was it in his ears? Either way, he definitely wasn’t asleep, and he definitely wasn’t about to let that thing take another stab at his brain or memories or whatever it wanted.
He thought he felt something cold and rough, like frozen sandpaper, wrap around his ankle and start to pull. Ben didn’t need any more than that to know he had to get whatever it was off of him.
His body tensed, coiling like a compressed spring, and he lurched against the thing in his head and around his leg. “Get out!”
Ben heard his own voice well enough, and in the same instant, both the grip on his ankle and the pressure in his head disappeared. His room illuminated in a brilliant flash of sickly green, spreading out around him in waves until it just as quickly disappeared.
‘Yeah, we should do that too,’ Ian said.
Realizing he’d crouched down on the floor at the foot of his bed at some point, Ben stood, leapt toward the wall, and jerked his phone charger out of the socket. Then he pretty much flew back out into the living room and slammed the door shut behind him. He didn’t stop moving until he’d pressed himself up against the kitchen counter at the complete opposite side of his apartment, and it felt like he finally took a breath again since stepping into his room.
“What the hell…”
‘I would definitely like to know that answer. I thought you were gonna faint again.’
“I didn’t faint on the sidewalk,” Ben growled. “So everybody can quit saying that.” Getting his heaving breath back under control, he just stared at his closed bedroom door and couldn’t believe he had to deal with this crap in his own apartment. “Go check if there’s anything in there,” he told Ian. He didn’t have to explain that he was talking about the spirit realm. The tiny popping pressure and release of Ian slipping through realms on his own filled Ben’s head, and fortunately, that was the only thing he felt in his mind now. Almost instantly, Ian returned.
‘Nothing. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t here…’
“Yeah but you would have known if it was.”
‘I definitely would have known. If it was anything I recognized. Dude, I have no idea what that thing is.’
Well, that made two of them. Ben still felt that awful, scratching cold against his ankle. When he bent to lift up the leg of his jeans, it had to be a good sign that he didn’t see anything there at all—no red marks, no burns, no leftover sand. So maybe he was still freaking out just a little.
Then part of April’s dream came back to him—hands reaching up out of the ground, grabbing Ben, and dragging him back down with them to apparently plop him right in front of Richard Monday’s house in Charlestown. Obviously, he was still in his apartment, but the retrospective connection now made him shudder.
“I think I need to make that phone call,” he muttered.
‘Probably.’
Feeling like a zombie, Ben turned around to plug his phone into the wall above the counter, then pulled up Rufus’ number and listened to the ringing on the other end.
“Good morning, Ben.” The man sounded just as smiley as ever.
“Not really,” Ben replied. “Listen, I’m totally willing to do this trial run thing with you. That’s where we’ll start first.”
“Fantastic. I really think you’ll find a—”
“With a few conditions.”
Rufus paused for a moment. “Let’s hear ‘em.”
“First, April, Peter, and Chase are coming with us. And unless you know they’re about to do something they really shouldn’t, you’ll leave them alone and let them do their thing, too.”
“No problem,” Rufus replied. “What else?”
Ben swallowed and took a deep breath. “If I decide to take you guys up on your… offer, and I’m not saying I will, but if I do, you’ll answer every single one of my questions. No playing games. No waiting for me to pass another test or do something else for you first. Tell me everything I want to know, or I’ll turn around and walk right back out.”
Rufus’ inhale was sharp and clearly audible through the phone, like he’d just been insulted or stubbed his toe. “Ben, it doesn’t quite work like—”
“I need your word on that, Rufus, or we’re done.”
“Joining us has its own—”
“Do you want me to be a part of whatever you’re doing or
not?” Ben didn’t exactly yell it, but he was definitely close. He was done with letting any of them push back when all he wanted right now was a yes or no—answer all his questions and hold nothing back, or Ben would find another way to keep doing what he’d been doing with Ian and the others before the Sectarian Circle ever came into the picture.
Rufus’ sigh seemed to last forever. “Of course we do. If you decide to join us, Ben, then yes. We will explain everything to you, as much as you want to know and to the best of our capabilities. You have my word.”
There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? And yes, it definitely felt good to finally get a real answer. “Okay. So what do we do next?”
“Can I text you the information?”
“Sure, whatever.” Ben shrugged, feeling all that pressure release now that he’d actually gotten somewhere with this guy.
“Then I’ll do that. I’m looking forward to it, Ben.”
“Cool.” Then he actually hung up, because he didn’t want to get sucked into some kind of conversation about how exciting this whole thing was for Rufus and Anita Librarian and Richard Monday. It really felt like the guy had been right on the verge of doing just that. And it wasn’t like any of them had given him a good reason for being polite and saying thank you. Spying on people and sending anonymous packages and effectively locking them all in a basement weren’t exactly a great foundation for fostering courtesy and respect. Or trust of any kind. Still, Rufus had absolutely known what Gorafrim meant, and if Ben wanted that and his and April’s dreams answered—and a way to cut out this weird crap with the sand and the rag-demon—he could probably put up with the Sectarian Circle for a little longer.
About a minute later, he got the text, as promised.
—Meet at this address. 8:00 p.m. Tonight.—
And below that was the linked address Ben had to open just to figure out where it was.
“A movie theater,” he said, staring at his phone in disbelief. “Dude wants us to go fight some demon at a movie theater.” Then he double-checked it, because of course he would. Nope, that was definitely the address.
