Chapter Sixty-Two

I T TOOK AN extra bit of cash to get the cab driver to ignore Travis, but Bo and Brittany managed to get the unconscious man into the hotel without too much trouble. Once there, they set him up on his bed and tried to make him comfortable.

"This is fucked," Bo said.

Brittany shrugged, and turned on the television. She watched it from a standing position for a few moments before pulling the minibar open.

"Want snacks?" she asked.

Bo shook his head, and moved across the room to stare out of the window.

"On the government's dime…" she sang, waggling an overpriced Toblerone in Bo's direction.

Bo shook his head again. If he leaned, he could kind of see Chelsea Market. He'd dated a woman who worked there, at one of the companies that was housed there. Something to do with food, he remembered. And a website. It hadn't gone well. Outside was another cold night in Bo's hometown, but Bo felt the cold was somehow deeper. More implanted within himself.

"You doing okay over there?" Brittany asked.

Bo looked to the side, able to see Brittany in the reflection on the window. She was draped over one of the armchairs, a beer in one hand, Toblerone in the other.

"Sure," Bo said.

"You know, there's a reason we work in partnerships," Brittany said. "Sometimes we need to talk about the shit we see and do."

"Do you need to talk?" Bo asked, turning around to lean against the window. Neither of the BEA agents was willing to sit on the bed with Travis.

"Yeah," she said through a mouth full of chocolate. "But I think you do, too."

"I'm fine."

"Like hell you are."

"You don't know the first thing about me," Bo said. "You don't—"

"Fine. Then listen to me."

"I am listening to you."

"What happened today was bad."

"You think?"

Brittany glared at Bo, and Bo immediately knew he'd been too much of an asshole. His back was cold against the glass window, and his feet hurt. He needed new shoes. He could tell because he was busy staring at down at the ground instead of meeting Brittany's wrathful gaze.

"You don't even know the half of it," she said quietly.

"Is this going to happen often?" Bo asked, using his head to gesture in the general direction of Travis.

Brittany looked over at the unconscious form, and her eyes traveled up and down the body a few times, as if she was searching for the answer on him.

"Depends," she finally replied. "I don't have many of the answers. Certainly not the number I'd like to have. And every case is different. Every day is different. We're thrown into impossible situations where there's no rule book beyond containment. Don't let the bad guys win. Don't let the bad guys out. Some days it's easy to see who's good and who's bad. Some days the monsters are monsters—"

"Like actual literal monsters with teeth and shit?" Bo asked.

Brittany nodded.

"Some days the monsters are human. Wholly human. Evil and murderous, but ultimately just bad people. And those days are difficult because there's no way to tell who is who or what. We just have to guess."

Bo sighed, and pushed his head into his hands before asking, "Why did you burn the place down?"

"I don't think the whole building burnt," Brittany replied.

He frowned at her.

"Something came through—"

Bo held up his hands, interrupting Brittany. "Wait," he said, "something came through? What the—"

"If you let me finish," Brittany interrupted right back, "I'll fucking tell you. Some entity used her body as a portal, some sort of blood magic thing, and it came into our world and attacked Travis and me. Travis couldn't handle it, and he checked out. I got in touch with Robert, which is something I should have told you, and he made a guess as to the entity's identity and how I could kill it. This time, I could kill it with fire. So I made do with the elements at hand, and that kind of resulted in the rest of the apartment going up in flames as well. Trust me, it wasn't exactly my first choice for the interview to go that way. I'm pretty sure she was hiding something underneath her bed, and that's pretty much gone forever now."

"Robert," Bo said.

"He's, uh," Brittany struggled to find the right word, "I mean, he's our researcher. And librarian. He's the one you call when you find something you don't know about. Which, in our line of work, is like, all the damn time."

"So someone has, like, dealt with this stuff before?"

"Sometimes. Other times, it's something totally new. There's a whole lot of shit out there. Just, well, I mean, when you talk to Robert, he can explain it a lot better than me. He's a really smart guy. Annoying, but smart. The way he explained it to me is that despite there being an infinite number of things in the, uh, multiverse, or whatever, the things that have come here before are likely to return because they've got a connection to this plane of existence already."

"They know the way."

"Yeah, something like that. Or, in some cases, it's because someone here, on Earth, they've got the means to get in contact with those, uh, things. I'm sorry I keep saying things — it's just that there's not, uh, I just don't have the right words to name all this stuff, you know? I usually, in the past I mean, it's been Dulce who dealt with the books, and I did the, uh, killing I guess. I was Action Barbie, she was LibraBarbie. I'm just not really used to working like this."

"It's fine," Bo replied. "I'm not used to working like this either."

"Shit," Brittany said. "I forgot to call Robert back. There's every chance he'll think we're dead. Fuck."

She patted her pants down, pulling the tiny pockets inside out as best she could. Then she went through Travis's pockets, and got up—

"Are you okay?" Bo asked.

"I can't find my phone."

Bo held out his, "Not a big deal, you can use mine."

"You don't have Robert's number."

"He works for the government. Call information."

Britt snatched the phone from his hand. Bo was right. She didn't want to admit it, but he was right.

A little bit of Internet sleuthing and she had the number for the Bureau of External Affairs main desk. She also realized that the BEA website was both hideous and hideously out-of-date. She filed that away, and called the number.

It rang.

And rang.

Finally, someone picked up.

"Uh," someone who was definitely not Robert answered. "Hello?"

"Who is this?" Brittany asked, sitting up straight.

"Brittany?" the voice asked back.

"Yeah—"

"Nate."

"Where's Robert?"

"In with Joseph. They're, uh, yelling."

"Can you tell them that I'm fine, that the, uh, thing this afternoon was successful."

"Yeah. No problem. Things are fine up there?"

"Sure. Totally fine."