The Fell Read online

  Then he felt April’s foot brush up against his beneath the table. So he took a deep breath instead, feeling only a little better that she hadn’t chosen to go stand in the timeout corner next to Peter through all this.

  Before he had a chance think of an answer that didn’t start with calling Richard Monday an asshole, Rufus chuckled and cleared his throat. “Whatever questions you might have, Ben, we’re more than happy to answer them. That’s why we’re all here.” Ben must have looked just as unconvinced as he felt, because the man in the tweed jacket sighed and shot Richard Monday something like a reproachful glance. “Most of the time, Richard means well. It’s just been a long time since we’ve brought in someone so new to the process. We wouldn’t have even considered it if you hadn’t shown us something we’ve never seen before.”

  Ian. Ben knew it. That was what they’d never seen before.

  When Richard stood abruptly from the table and turned to stalk off toward the other end of the lab, Ben figured the man was pissed at Rufus’ version of apologizing for him. But neither Rufus nor Anita reacted at all to their host leaving without a word.

  “You can start anywhere you like,” Rufus added with a nod. Why hadn’t he been the first person to meet them in this ridiculous house?

  Now that he had the go-ahead to fire away and get his five million questions answered, Ben couldn’t focus enough to just pick one. His knee bounced under the table.

  “Can we start with what the Sectarian Circle actually is?” April asked for him. Ben wanted to grab her hand and squeeze it as hard as he could, but he just nodded at Rufus.

  “Yes,” Rufus replied, and his smile widened. “That’s a good place to start. The Circle goes as far back as at least the fifth century BC. Some of our order enjoy the academic debate of its true origin, both in time and geographically. Personally, I like to stick to the facts, and right now, our complete records only go so far in history.”

  “That didn’t answer her question, Rufus,” Anita said without looking away from April, now. Behind them, Richard paced across the pristinely empty lab.

  Rufus shook his head and laughed. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t a lecture. The Sectarian Circle performs a… different version of what the three of you—ah, the four of you, after Mr. Bernadine came into the picture—have been attempting for the last few months.”

  Ben swallowed and seriously wished they had some water. “So… you’re—”

  “If you want to call it demon-hunting, Ben,” Rufus said, “then yes. That’s what we are. And we’ve been doing it for a long time.” The man laughed again and bounced a little in his seat.

  Okay, that definitely explained how Richard Monday had known what to do in Forwaithe Cemetery before that purple demon choked the life out of Ben completely—and the fact that the guy had been way more excited to hear about Ian than anyone else. Most people would have called the cops or tried to shove some pills down Ben’s throat or shoved him out into the street and slammed the door. Okay, most people had already done all that in one way or another. But Rufus and Anita hadn’t been here for Ben’s little ‘sharing his body with his undead friend’s spirit’ confession, and still the guy seemed to know about it already.

  “Okay, so you know what we call it,” he said; now he had some momentum going. “And you’ve obviously been watching us, which doesn’t really come across as a compliment.” Rufus’ mouth opened in a wider smile at that, which oddly enough made Ben feel a little less pissed and a little more confident about actually hearing something useful now. “We can talk about your super-secret society later—”

  “Secret society!” Richard shouted. He’d stopped pacing to stare at Ben, but his face was still completely blank. Rufus shrugged, like he was telling Ben to just humor the man’s outburst.

  “Uh… yeah,” Ben said, glancing back and forth from Richard Monday to Rufus in front of him. He didn’t know what line of Richard’s he seemed to have just crossed. “I don’t know. Like the Free Masons or something, right?”

  Richard barked out a laugh and returned to his pacing.

  Rufus dipped his head. “Something like that. Yes.”

  “We are the Free Masons,” Richard shouted.

  Taking a deep breath, Rufus offered Ben a weak smile and raised his eyebrows. “What Richard means is—”

  “I mean exactly what I say, Rufus. We’re not mincing words. Orange Order. Odd Fellows. Hui. Rosicrucian. Wicca.” Richard all but ran back and forth across the lab, his hands clasped behind his back as he stared at the floor. “Order of Elks. Yakuza. St. Hubertus. Osirica. Priory of Scion. Druids. Thule. Kongsi—”

  “Richard,” Rufus said, finally turning around to face the man who seriously looked like he’d just lost the one marble he’d had left. “That’s all a bit—”

  Their host pivoted toward them and thrust his finger into the air. “The Vatican!”

  April laughed. “What?”

  “If we look beyond that rather excitable list,” Rufus said, eyeing Richard for a moment longer before he turned around again to look at Chase, then Ben, then April, “what this comes down to—”

  “The Illuminati,” Chase interrupted, his eyes wide now above an excited smile. “The Illuminati fights demons too, right? That’s what this is?”

  Richard roared behind the table, the sound of it bouncing around in so much empty space. “I told you you are out of your league, here, Mr. Bernadine!”

  ‘Holy crap.’

  Yeah. Like Ben hadn’t already been hesitant about all this in the first place. This was Richard Monday and Mr. Hyde, and the fact that the guy had basically just screamed at Chase didn’t quite make up for it.

  Tipping his head back to stare at the steel ceiling, Rufus opened his mouth and took a deep breath. “Richard, is it possible for me to keep going without being interrupted? Because if not, I’d much rather wait till you’re done.” Beside him, Anita glanced down at the sleeve of her cardigan and smiled, picking at a piece of lint or hair or fuzz that might or might not have been there.

  Their host stopped his maniacal pacing and blinked with wide eyes, like he’d just woken up out of a nightmare, only to realize how dull everything around him actually was. He cocked his head, grunted, and muttered something nobody else could hear before going back to the pacing again. This time it was slower, more composed, and Ben prepared himself for another zealous explosion.

  “Thank you,” Rufus said. Then he looked down at Chase and smirked. “Mr. Bernadine, I want you to forget everything you think you know.” Chase snorted. “And don’t mention that last one again.” The man jerked his head just a little, obviously referring to Richard Monday’s unsettling display. “I want all of you to forget whatever you’ve heard about secret societies. Everything you’ve learned about religion, politics, history.”

  ‘Oh, great,’ Ian said. ‘Dude wants to take us back to first grade.’

  Yeah, because Ian had made it so much farther than first grade.

  ‘Hey, I learned what I know over three hundred thousand years with the Guardian. You, my friend, have spent your entire college career cramming your head with everything this guy thinks is totally worthless.’

  Well that sure didn’t make it sound any better.

  “That’s a big leap,” April said.

  “Yes, Miss Balcom.” Rufus grinned. “That’s exactly what it is. The largest leap in the history of this planet and our existence in only one of its realities. The Sectarian Circle spans across most if not all of it.”

  “You’re saying the Ill—” Chase cleared his throat. “You’re saying those other orders aren’t real? Just a joke? ‘Cause I know a lot of people who’d probably want to know that all their time and money was basically wasted.” That wasn’t a sincere question at all. It made Ben wonder if Chase was actually a part of any of these organizations. Trust-fund baby who apparently knew a lot about expensive art and all that. What kind of order would take him?

  ‘I mean, we kinda did.’

 
Fine.

  “Useless,” Richard muttered, but at least he wasn’t shouting again.

  “That is definitely not what I’m saying,” Rufus told Chase. “Each of those orders Richard was kind enough to list off for us, and countless others, are just small, individual pieces of the greater whole. A big picture none of them alone can see. The Circle extends in and around nearly all of them. With a few exceptions.”

  “There’s only one that matters, Rufus.” Richard’s flattened voice now came with a gravelly unease.

  “Hmm.” Rufus glanced at Anita, who turned to look at him with a rather unaffected blankness. Like she was telling him things were what they were. Except Ben had no idea what they were. “Like I said before, Ben, we think you have a… special ability, we’ll say, that could really come in handy with what we and the Sectarian Circle are trying to achieve.”

  “Oh, we don’t think,” Richard said, breaking away from the far side of the room to stalk toward the table again. “We have proof.” The man ripped the thick-rimmed glasses off his face and leaned over the table to place them between Rufus and Anita.

  Without turning to consider their host’s odd behavior, Anita picked up the glasses and settled them over her own frameless ones, holding them in place while her stupid little pinky finger stuck straight up in the air. And she looked at Ben. “Oh.” She said it like she’d just found a nice piece of cake in the fridge; at this point, it wouldn’t have surprised Ben if she’d licked her lips. Then she raised an eyebrow and delicately removed the larger pair of glasses before flicking her wrist toward Rufus.

  The man pursed his lips, clearly trying to hide his raging curiosity and a bit of a smirk, and slipped Richard’s glasses onto his face. He blinked at Ben, looked up and down over as much as he could see of Ben above the table, and shook his head. A chuckle rose inside him. It built and grew louder in his surprisingly deep voice, like a firetruck’s blaring sirens approaching from down the street. Then Rufus was really laughing—a deep, unrestrained guffaw that sounded like it should have come from a man three times his size with an actual gut and maybe a beard. He slowly removed the glasses and set them gently on the table while his laughter lessened, rose again, then died into another low chuckle. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  ‘How much you wanna bet those glasses are like night-vision goggles for spirits?’ Ian sounded about as amused as Ben felt, which was absolutely not at all, because he’d just been thinking the same thing.

  “Wanna tell me what’s so funny?” he asked Rufus instead, not really wanting to give the guy a lead here by asking something like, ‘Did you see my undead friend’s spirit just hangin’ out inside me like a chocolate Santa under the foil wrapping?’

  “I wouldn’t say any of this is funny, Ben,” Rufus replied, wiping a few tears from the corners of his eyes. He chuckled again, let out a long, loud sigh, and sniffed. “Awe and amusement, though… I tend to laugh when they overwhelm me. You’ve stumbled onto something truly amazing, there.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?” He wanted to make the guy say it—how remarkable it was that Ben was just carting around somebody else who’d lost their body to one of the biggest, baddest, deadliest, most totally screwed-up and masochistic demons any of them knew about, including Ian. Ben wasn’t going to feed these people any more lines, which he’d probably done too much of already.

  “He can jump between at will, too,” Richard added, leaning over the table again to retrieve his glasses and return them to his own face.

  Anita let out an intrigued little hum, and Rufus dipped his head at Ben, his lips twitching like this impressed him. “Would you mind showing us?” the man asked.

  ‘Dude, I’m not a monkey with cute little tricks.’

  Yeah, Ben wasn’t, either. “I do mind, actually,” Ben said, scowling at the New England members of the Sectarian Circle. “Whatever you think you saw with those special glasses, you still haven’t answered any of my questions.”

  “Benjamin,” Richard said, apparently returned to his normal, drab, ridiculously monotone self, “if you would only provide us with an opportunity to observe this shift into the spirit realm, as you so concisely put it, we may have a more comprehensive understanding of how to answer those questions.”

  “That’s not how it works,” Ben said. “And I’m not doing or saying anything else until you tell me what I want to know.” Yeah, at this point, he was pretty sure Rufus’ exaggerated laughing at his expense had tipped him over the edge of hesitation and into being really frickin’ irritated. He wasn’t a monkey. He wasn’t an experiment or some kind of performing act. He’d have Ian with him for the rest of his life, and he’d probably be fighting demons that whole time, too—unless he somehow survived long enough to get old and lose interest in it.

  ‘Huh. There’s a thought.’

  “I’d start taking Ben seriously now, if I were you,” Chase said, leaning back in his chair again folding his arms. All he was missing was the mic drop, which wasn’t even his in the first place.

  Ben frowned at the guy and quickly shook his head. Chase just shrugged again, but he seemed pretty proud of himself for at least knowing more than these society members about how well Ben could play the upper hand, if he had one.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I was the one who dug up all Chase’s dirt,’ Ian said.

  How about we call it a team effort and shut up about it?

  ‘Cool.’

  “It could be something small,” Richard pressed. “Some bit of knowledge only your friend would be capable of discovering or confirming for us.”

  No way.

  ‘But that would get them eating out of our hands, right?’

  Dude, they’re not—

  ‘Okay, your hands. Your hands.’

  Ben sighed. “Like what?”

  “I imagine you both have a certain ability to see another presence,” Richard said, staring intently at Ben, like he didn’t even want to blink for fear of missing something amazing. “Even those that don’t normally choose to reveal themselves.”

  Ben said nothing.

  Rufus hummed and nodded a little, still smiling. “You could tell us how many other presences are here in this room with us. Or even in the house above us. Just share what you see.”

  ‘Aw, come on. Trick questions are so lame.’ But Ben felt that little popping, relieving pressure in the back of his mind and knew Ian had gone off to look for … something. His friend was back in less than a second. ‘Dude, I can’t even leave this bunker-room thing.’

  What?

  ‘Yeah, can’t get out. You should ask them about that too.’

  Wow, what a great idea. Ben stared at Rufus’ expectant smile, then glanced at Richard Monday and let them stew in their crackpot excitement for just a little longer. “I already knew there wasn’t anything in the house before we got here. So now what I want to know is how you’re keeping them out.” Okay, yeah, that was just a guess; if Ian couldn’t leave this lab in the spirit realm, it made sense that whatever made that impossible would also keep everything else—spirits or demons—from getting in. He hoped.

  Rufus slapped his hand down on the table and barked out a laugh. Anita jumped a little in surprise and turned to frown at him. One of Richard’s eyes twitched, and he muttered, “Remarkable.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Rufus said. Then he lifted a finger, looked up at the ceiling, and both his finger and his gaze circled around the top of the room before coming to rest on Ben again. “That’s how.”

  Ben and April both looked up at the blue track lighting lining the top of every wall where it met the ceiling. Then Chase snorted again. “Hey, we should have known blue light also makes the best demon repellent.”

  “It’s not just the light,” April muttered, then looked back down at Rufus and Anita and waited.

  ‘Chase is never going to score more points than this chick.’

  Yeah, and the guy sure was trying way too hard. “What is it?” Ben asked.

  “Tha
t’s something we can’t really get into until you’ve made your final decision,” Rufus said.

  “What final decision?” April sounded like herself again now—after walking through Richard Monday’s weird house, being creepily brought down here with no explanation, hearing about Ian, watching Ben send out a burst of spirit-realm green, forced into not enjoying the dinner served by Richard’s manservant, and watching these jerks string all of them along with super vague answers and ridiculous claims that didn’t even make sense. She sounded pissed.

  “No,” Ben said, making sure all three of these Sectarian Circle people looked him in the eye first. “I’m not making any decision right now. I’m just getting started.”

  8

  “By all means, Benjamin,” Richard Monday droned.

  Ben had to ignore him. “When did you start watching me?” His mind went first to the night he met April at the Phi Kappa Alpha house and the already lame frat party gone terribly wrong. Enter an unknown demon who liked to burn college kids alive. But when Anita smiled and briefly closed her eyes, as if he’d somehow just flattered her with the question, he knew his first guess was wrong.

  “At a more intimate level with far more interest than before? The day you asked about The Lesser Key of Solomon,” she replied, folding her hands on the table.

  “You mean when Peter checked it out.”

  “No, Ben. When you asked about it.”

  That didn’t make sense. Peter would have raised just as much of a red flag if wanting to check out that demon-summoning book from the Boston University library was what had caught these people’s attention. And Ben hadn’t even remotely started going after demons at that point; he hadn’t even found Ian. “Wait, what do you mean on a more intimate level?”

  “We’ve known—”

  A harsh, grating squeal interrupted Anita’s revelation, and Ben jumped. He hadn’t noticed Peter at all, who’d finally stepped away from his self-imposed isolation in the lab to join them at the table. Only instead of sitting between Ben and Chase, Peter just took the last empty chair and dragged it backward across the floor to where he’d been standing. He was obviously making all this noise on purpose, whether he just wanted to be sure everyone knew he was still pissed or whether he’d been compelled to interrupt them once the conversation had mentioned Peter pretty much for the first time. Ben thought it was probably both. And no, he couldn’t blame the guy for any of it. But the noise and Peter’s obvious animosity just added a little extra awkward to the giant discomfort sundae they were all enjoying together.