“Ms. Shirakatsi, I promise you— it wasn’t werewolves you saw— how did you say it? Making puppies— in your backyard.”
Sammy closed his eyes, his fingers tightening around the slender handset of the phone.
“Because I know— that’s just— it’s not how it works.” He was silent for a moment, shaking his head. “I don’t know how it works, but— it’s not that.” I glanced up from where I bent over the pool table, held in mid-shot, a malevolent grin on my face. “Just trust me,” Sammy continued, “I have experts.”
“Experts on werewolf love making?” I turned toward Indigo and she shrugged and twisted chalk on the end of her stick.
“I volunteer as tribute?”
“Gross.”
“No, no, no— please— no, we don’t need a soil sample. Please—” Sammy’s frustrated voice broke off and he nodded softly. “Okay. Sure. Yes. Okay. Thank you.” Gingerly he lowered the phone back in its cradle and shot me a vicious glare. “If Ms. Shirakatsi sends us a package, I’m taking it straight to the damned incinerator.”
“Co-sign,” Indigo nodded.
I shot my stick forward, and the cue struck the eight, the black ball hugging the bumper all the way into the corner pocket. There was something about the sound and the feel of a good, solid strike. I hadn’t even started playing pool until I was cast out into the human world, but it had come naturally to me. Naturally enough that I’d actually played professionally, earning a decent chunk of cash, decent enough to get the paper started. But, as usual, my conscience got the better of me and somewhere along the way I abandoned the professional career so I could dip my toes back into the supernatural pool.
“Son of a bitch,” Indigo swore and stopped twisting the chalk. “Every damn time. I swear you’re using magic.” She walked to the wall and hung the stick back on the rack.
“Not using magic.”
Indigo shot me a suspicious glare, then walked to the kitchen.
“Hey, loser clears the table.”
“Then get to it, loser.”
“Such respect I get from my employees.” I made the executive decision to clear the table later and left the cue stick, then followed Indigo into the kitchen. While she rummaged through some of the cabinets, I walked to the island where a cutting board rested, a knife next to it.
“Oh, man— remember the last time Ms. Shirakatsi sent us a package? It was those delicious Armenian donuts. What if she sends us more Armenian donuts?” My palm pressed against the faux wood grain handle of the blade, balancing the knife with precision. The blade sat at an angle, the soft glow of yellow light gleamed along the chipped surface. I felt the gentle give as I pressed the knife down, the initial resistance as the blade edge pierced the skin. A fine split broke in its pale surface before pressing down and digging into the soft tissue beneath. My tongue touched my lips as the blade moved more freely, easing through the rest of the soft interior, sawing it as I applied pressure.
“What the hell, Gus? Have you never cut ciabatta before?”
“What did you call me?” I turned and looked at Indigo as she approached, her head shaking mournfully. She gave me a look as if she were a mother watching her incompetent child try to tie their shoes.
“I didn’t call you anything— ciabatta. It’s what you’re cutting.”
“I thought this was bread.”
“It is bread. Ciabatta is a type of bread, you uncultured swine.”
“Is that a Seattle thing?”
“No, it’s not a Seattle—” her voice broke off and she sighed, stepping past the island. Huffing, she gently pushed me away, gingerly plucking the knife from my fingers. “Step away from the bread before you hurt yourself or others.”
“I don’t know why we can’t just get breakfast from Side Pocket as usual.”
“We can’t eat every single meal from Side Pocket, Gus.” Indigo lowered her gaze toward my mid-section and jabbed a finger into the soft bulge above my belt. Side Pocket was my favorite restaurant in Boston, not just because of its great breakfast or its pool hall ambience, but also because it catered to my sort of clientele. The—supernatural sort of clientele.
“Don’t even say it.” I stepped back and pointed an accusatory finger.
“I don’t have to.” She smirked and turned back to the ci— ciaba— to the bread and resumed the work that I’d begun, though I had to admit— she was better at it. It was interesting, really— I was something of an expert with knives, having used them to defend the supernatural realm for a few hundred years. Even after the fact, those knives were my one link to the source of all magic. One of the few connections I still retained to the world that had jettisoned me from it against my own will.
“Can the two of you keep it down? Some of us are trying to keep this business afloat.” Sammy looked over, the phone clamped between his ear and shoulder, a broad hand covering the mouthpiece. At some point another call had come in after the one about werewolf fornication.
“Keep the business afloat?” I strode forward, leaving Indigo to the bread cutting. “We’ve never had more calls.”
“I noticed— I’m answering literally all of them.” Sammy actually sounded a little annoyed, which was unusual for him. Compared to the decade plus of years he had with the Boston PD I didn’t figure a little phone answering would be all that stressful. But then again, when he’d agreed to help me run this paper a few years back we’d been mostly dealing with a handful of calls a day. Something had clearly changed since the incident with Davit Sivaslian on George’s Island— people had noticed something strange and had been noticing those strange things ever since. Instead of calling the police— they’d started calling us.
And by “us” I meant Bump in the Night, an independent periodical focused on the exploration of unexplained events— some might even say supernatural events. Though, as much as I might throw around the term “periodical” in truth, until recently, we’d fallen closer to tabloid status than legitimate newspaper. I had to wonder, given recent events, if that was poised to change— and if it was poised to change, was that change we were equipped to deal with?
Indigo had become, as much as I would never admit it to her face, an invaluable member of the team. I’d hired on the homeless young woman turned half vampire hybrid following the events at Fort Warren. Yes, half vampire hybrid—a long story, truth be told. She’d come on mostly as a blog writer and social media person, but in truth, she’d become a de facto assistant manager. Quite quickly she’d helped Sammy out with any number of things. Except, apparently, answering the phone.
“Yeah, sorry,” Sammy muttered, returning his attention to the handset clamped in the crick of his neck, “can you repeat that?” He jotted notes down in an old notepad, which was humorous considering he was sitting at a computer. But I wasn’t about to try and change his ways, not when he’d essentially put the business on his back and carried it for the past couple of years. “What color were his eyes?” Sammy rolled his own pupils and pointed to his own head, circling his index finger.
That was one of the problems we were faced with in our line of work— for every legitimate call we received, we had to wade through a few dozen crazy ones. People who were convinced their landlord was hiding a werewolf in their basement or that their local politician was a reptile wearing human skin. Not that the politician thing was so far-fetched— those pesky Kobolds had infiltrated any number of high ranking corporations and nothing would surprise me when it came to their twisted ambitions.
“See how easy this is?” Indigo held up a slice of bread and waved it like a checkered flag. “Egg sandwiches for everyone.” She stacked several slices of the bread and approached the toaster oven, easing the glass door open and carefully lining the metal shelf with four slices. A question rested on the tip of my tongue and while usually my complete lack of an internal filter would have just let it come spilling out, I was trying to be more courteous and respectful these days.
Trying, being the operative word.
“What?” Indigo glowered in my general direction. I shrugged in response.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that shit. I can see that look on your face— like you’re trying to hold in a poop.”
“That is so nasty.”
“Maybe— but it’s also true. Just say it before you have a stroke.”
“I was just curious, is all.” I walked over to the kitchen, eyeing the toaster, where the burners were glowing a soft orange, heating the toast. I lowered my voice, as if trying to keep a secret. “With your— changes and everything— is an egg sandwich going to have enough protein for you?”
“Protein? Is that some sort of code word?”
“You know what I mean, right?”
“Yes, Gus, I know what you mean. You want to know if there’s enough blood. Whether or not I’m getting enough blood or if I’m going to wait until you’re not looking and sink my fangs into your neck.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“You should be. That’s what I’m worried about. I can only eat so much rare steak, right?”
“Well, to be fair, you’re not a full-blood vampire.”
“You keep on telling me that, but you never seem to elaborate. I’m not as engrained in this weird world as you are. One of these days, you need to stop telling me what I’m not and start telling me what I am.”
“That’s fair. I owe you that much, for sure.” The truth was, I felt like I owed her far more than that. The moment we’d connected, what seemed like so long ago, I’d been trying to help her, but in a way, I felt like I’d failed her. Although I’d been ejected from the supernatural realm a long time ago, I still bore some brunt of responsibility for the protection of the human world. The moment Indigo had been— turned— it was like I’d failed in my mission. That failure had then cascaded into others. Government agents had been massacred by Davit shortly after, which had then spun out into a dozen other deaths as Davit’s twisted ambitions claimed more victims.
Hey— it had been a rough time for our strange little relationship— and it didn’t appear to be getting a whole lot better.
“Well?” She shrugged and turned up her palms.
“What? Now?” I gestured toward the haggard, hunched posture of Sammy, his knuckles white around the phone as he grumbled something unintelligible into the mouthpiece. The toaster oven dinged and I resisted the urge to exclaim saved by the bell. Indigo sighed and waved her hand at the stovetop.
“See what you did? I didn’t even start the eggs yet.” She ripped open the fridge, glass bottles clanking together as she did so and drew the carton of eggs from the second shelf. I leaned and glanced inside.
“Wow, there’s— food-- in there.”
“Imagine that.” Setting the eggs on the counter, she returned and took out some milk, setting it next to the eggs. “That’s what happens when someone actually bothers to go to the grocery store.”
“Oh. You— did that?”
“Yes. I did that. Had to go to one of the twenty-four hour places so I could avoid the sun, but—” her voice lowered to a frustrated growl.
“You spent your money on this?”
“No, I spent your money on this.”
“I don’t carry cash.” My brow furrowed as I bent over and looked through the refrigerator, staring at it as if I’d found nuggets of gold in my tray. “Yogurt? Butter. Eggs, milk, bacon— wait, are those vegetables?”
“Yes, those are vegetables. And I know you don’t carry cash, I looked. I used the company credit card.”
I jerked my head up and swiveled it around toward her. “I don’t have a company credit card.”
“You do now.” She couldn’t conceal the satisfied grin that creased her lips as she cracked a third egg into a bowl and set the shell aside. Butter hissed within the cast iron skillet, as narrow columns of pale smoke rose from the bubbles.
“Okay, now wait just a minute—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” She held a palm toward me, her head shaking. “You can’t pretend to be a legitimate business without some sort of line of credit.”
“I’m not pretending to be a legitimate business— at least I haven’t been.” The smell of fresh eggs rose to the air and I licked my lips, feeling the low, churning growl of hunger in my stomach. It gnarled together like a fist, squeezing tighter and tighter.
“You’d better start. The way those calls are coming in— it’s not going to be long before people are looking to you for answers. Hell, a bunch of them already are.”
“What? Me? I don’t even look to myself for answers.”
“You’re smarter than you look.” Using a spatula she folded the half cooked eggs in the skillet and I watched as they slowly solidified, browning ever so slightly at the edges. “But I’m being serious, Gus. I’m the one watching the web traffic, okay? Every new blog I write we’re getting more and more traction. That last Tweet I posted yesterday got nearly five thousand retweets and generated about six hundred new followers. People are becoming more aware of what’s around them— they’ve got cameras in their pockets and every piece of news is global. Something happening at George’s Island isn’t just a Boston problem because the moment someone with a hundred thousand eyeballs puts a video on TikTok— it’s hitting the world.”
“Tik what?”
“How old are you?”
“Haven’t we had this conversation?”
“It was a rhetorical question.” She folded the eggs again and pushed them around in the skillet, nodding in satisfaction. “Get me some toast, will you? Two slices on the finest China.”
I opened one of the cabinets and examined the first plate I touched, looking for signs of dishwasher residue. It looked relatively clean so I set it on the counter and flopped a couple of cool pieces of brown toast onto it. Indigo had returned to the refrigerator and pulled out some sliced cheese which I had never once bought before in my five centuries of life. She placed a slice on the egg and watched as it softened, gradually melting over the folded, yellow breakfast food. There was a clatter from the desk as Sammy hammered the phone down on its receiver, blowing out a thin gust of air.
“Well, apparently the Boston Mayor is a demonic Hellspawn according to Barb in Allston. She wants us to corner him and perform a ritual exorcism. Should I call his receptionist and pencil us in?” Sammy spun on his chair and leaned back slightly, hungry eyes searching the kitchen.
“Sure, why not. Maybe while we’re at it we can research the curse someone placed on the Red Sox.”
“Another curse? Didn’t they just win the World Series like four years ago for the love of God?”
“According to Leo in Brockton that’s three years too long.”
“How’s Leo’s fastball? Pitching is gonna be much more effective for a World Series drought than researching curses.” Sammy stood, his chair pushing back and colliding with the desk behind it.
“Hey, be careful— we just bought that desk.”
Sammy craned, looking over his shoulder. “Yeah, for like seventy bucks at Wal-Mart. It’s not a family heirloom.”
“I’d had that last desk for like thirty years—” I let my voice drift, realizing that I was starting to broach a potentially uncomfortable topic. Filter, dammit filter. While under the control of Davit, Indigo had ransacked the apartment, searching for a magical artifact that had belonged to my father. She’d found it— and had ended up destroying a desk and a coffee table in the process. I tried not to remind her of that fact if I could help it— well, unless I wanted to weaponize some guilt, that is. Sensing this brewing commentary, Indigo shot me a scathing look as she scraped the plate across the counter and scooped out half of the folded egg with a nicely melted slice of cheese on top. She placed the second slice of bread over it, then lifted it and walked toward me.
I reached for it, but she swept it out of my reach and circled around me, handing it to Sammy while she froze me with one of her trademark glares.
“This is for him.” She plastered a friendly grin on her face and handed him the plate and Sammy took it with a snide look lifted in my direction. I walked to the kitchen and picked up the spatula.
“Hey, hey,” Indigo chided, returning swiftly to the stove. “Second one’s mine.” She removed two more pieces of toast and dropped them on another plate, lifted the cheese-melted egg onto one slice of toast before placing the second on top. Grabbing the last two slices of untoasted bread, she slid them into the toaster oven and started the timer. “Eggs are on the counter.”
“Who’s the boss around here, anyway?”
Indigo jerked her head toward Sammy who was already stabbing a thumb in his own direction.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t remind me.” While the toaster oven ticked away, I walked to the stove to make myself some eggs. I just hoped I wouldn’t burn them.