Undeath and Taxes (16 page)

4.

It is with considerable shame that, when the lights burned away into the darkness and the doors shut on their own, my first thoughts were not ones of safety for those around me. Nor were they, I can say with a touch more pride, fear for my own safety. To be completely frank, as we sat there, steaks growing cold on our plates and fear blooming in the heart of my human companions, I only had one simple thought:

Not again.

If this seems callous, try to remember that the parahuman side of my life was one I had neither asked for, nor intentionally pursued, yet it had invaded all the same. While I accepted the weirdness and occasional bit of danger as a price for the friends I held dear, I also enjoyed keeping some parts of my life sectioned off from it. True, I undertook some risk of the unnatural with my parahuman clients, but such was not the case with Mr. Price. What had happened to us was more than just a threat; it was the supernatural invading a new territory of my fragile world, one I was not keen to give up easily.

“I won’t be unreasonable about this,” the waiter said. The others had vanished in the chaos of the door closing and lights flickering away, though I was likely the only one who could see that. There was enough light spilling through the windows that their eyes would adjust eventually, but mine needed no such accommodation. If anything, my senses were better in the dark.

“Locking us in seems pretty damn unreasonable,” Mr. Price choked out, finally getting his wind back after the shove.

“A detestable, but necessary, precaution. What I meant was that there’s no need for me to hold everyone here. Only you pose a threat, Mr. Price. Only you need stay.”

“You mean you’ll let us go as long as he stays?” Troy asked. The fear in his voice might have been the most genuine thing I’d heard from him all night.

“So you can go alert others and try to mount a rescue? Certainly not. But if Mr. Price is willing to permanently silence himself, to save me the trouble, then I see no reason to detain the rest of you.”

Asha stood up, her eyes scanning the dark for the waiter’s location. “You’re out of your mind. You can’t honestly expect him to kill himself over a few parlor tricks and a lame threat. There’s no way your entire staff will go along with this, and even if they do, we’ll still find a way to take them.”

“A very brave, but perfectly incorrect statement. There is only one of me, my dear guest, but I am so much bigger than the rest of you. Take your time and consider the offer. I’d rather not take matters upon myself, but if you wait too long . . . forgive me, I’ve kept you from your fourth course. Please, enjoy.”

The lights flared back on, blinding all of us. When our eyes readjusted, the waiter was gone, as if he’d never been there in the first place. Everyone else rose from their seats, save for myself and Cliff. He seemed to be overwhelmed by the situation, whilst I was merely trying a bit of the steak while it was still warm. I already had a plan for what to do; it started and ended with calling Krystal. A few nibbles of well-prepared meat wouldn’t affect the outcome of whatever siege she laid to the place.

“Windows are locked,” Asha called, pulling against the wooden-framed panes of glass as hard as she could. “It’s actually more like they’re painted shut or something; I can’t even get a wiggle.”

“Same for the kitchen.” Troy pushed against the door with all his might, which, in fairness, was muscular and considerable, yet it had no effect.

“Hall doors too,” Mr. Price confirmed. “I don’t how that kid is doing this, but it’s a hell of a trick. Someone must have gotten wind of the deal and set all this up.” He walked back over to the table, shaking his bearded head. “I really didn’t think the staff would object so much to raises and better facilities.”

“People can grow very fond of the familiar, even when change would be objectively better for them,” I said, setting down my utensils. “I loathe being the one to suggest wanton destruction, but since those who usually would aren’t with me today, I’ll take the burden. Perhaps we should try breaking one of the windows.”

“Hate to say it, but I’m with Fred.” Troy picked up the chair he’d been sitting in—a wooden piece with considerable heft—and headed toward the nearest windows. “These assholes think they’re going to trap Troy Warner that easy? They’ve got another thing coming!”

He reared back, then swung over his shoulder, slamming the chair into the clear pane of glass with considerable force. Unfortunately, that force sent him tumbling to the ground when the chair bounced off the window and twisted back over his shoulder. Both Troy and the chair hit the floor in a heap, though the chair seemed relatively unscathed by comparison.

“Fuck!” Troy was grabbing his left shoulder, rocking on the carpet from side to side. “Goddamnit, I think I tore something.”

“How the hell did they do that?” Cliff muttered next to me. “Are the windows plastic?”

“It seems they prepared for us more thoroughly than we anticipated.” I patted his shoulder for comfort, though I myself had very little. This didn’t strike me as premeditated at all, if anything, it seemed to have come about in hurried response to Mr. Price’s proposal. I highly doubted those windows were made of anything besides glass, which made their imperviousness to damage all the more impressive. By wild conjecture, I guessed that we were dealing with a spirit of some kind, a type of parahuman that I knew precious little about. Luckily, there was a way to change that.

As casually as I could, I removed my cell phone from my pocket and looked for Krystal’s number. Before I’d even finished selecting her from the list of contacts, I realized my efforts were for naught. The icon at the top of my phone indicated that I had no service whatsoever. Still, I finished the attempt just in the case, but I wasn’t surprised to find that the call was unable to connect.

“Does anyone have a signal?” Asha asked. Glancing up, I saw that she had produced her own phone as well, apparently meeting with similar results. Cliff, Troy, and Mr. Price all tried theirs, and not a one of us had so much as a single bar.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Mr. Price said. “I’ve stayed here lots of times and never had a problem getting a signal.”

“They must have bought a cell-phone jammer,” Troy suggested.

“This is getting a little ridiculous.” Mr. Price walked back over to the table and retook his seat. “Indestructible windows, cell-phone jamming technology, automatic lights and doors . . . if someone had the kind of money and skill to turn this quaint place into a deathtrap, why wouldn’t they just decline my offer? It’s a free country; I couldn’t have made the guy sell.”

“If I were to wager a guess, I would say that the person keeping us locked up and the person who actually owns this property are entirely different people,” I said. “In fact, I daresay that if you finally found the technical owner, he’d have no idea such a place even existed or was tied to his name.”

It seemed prudent to keep them from probing too deeply into how all of this was being accomplished, so supplying some threads of reason, no matter how tenuous, would hopefully keep their ignorance aloft until we could get out of there. It helped that I really did believe my theory to be true; I was just leaving out the part about how I thought the bed and breakfast was being run by ghosts.

“I get it, you think this place is a front for some cartel or something,” Troy said. He and Asha walked back over to the table as well. “Like they put on this show for guests, but in the basement they’re cooking meth and dealing hookers. That’s why the place can be locked down like this.”

“Yes, I suppose, something along those lines.” Had I really been as gullible as these people before I was turned? Obviously, the answer was yes, but it was still strange to see the way they clung to the most absurd explanations in order to avoid the obvious ones right in front of them.

“Then why are they letting us live?” Cliff’s voice was growing slowly more erratic, the fear worming its way through him. I felt for the man; truly, I did. Had Krystal not gotten me acclimated to the unusual, or were the threats leveled at me instead of Mr. Price, I might very easily have been in his emotional state as well.

“I don’t know . . . it doesn’t make any sense,” Asha said. Her eyes had a distant gleam in them, her mind clearly far away from what was in front of her. “One body is easier to dispose of than five, but having witnesses would be much more trouble to deal with. If they were going to kill us, why not just do it? What point does asking Mr. Price to kill himself serve? None of this is adding up.”

“To be fair, you’re trying to ascribe sanity to the actions of a man who takes five innocent people prisoner in a booby-trapped house,” I pointed out. “A lack of logic might be something we have to make peace with.”

“Maybe . . .” Asha clearly wasn’t convinced, but since she didn’t have any better leads, she seemed content to concede the point to me.

“So, what we supposed to do?” Troy was staring down at his plate, the now lukewarm steak looking back up at him.

“For the moment, it seems like our best bet is to follow instructions,” I said. “The waiter mentioned the fourth course, so perhaps we should finish our dinner.”

“If I eat anything, I’m going to puke.” From the look on Cliff’s face, it seemed that might be a possibility whether he took a bite or not.

“Agreed,” Mr. Price said. “I don’t want to touch any more of this stuff. You hear that, whoever you are?” He tilted his head back and raised his voice, looking as though he were quite perturbed with the ceiling. “We’re done with dinner! Take it all ‘cause we aren’t eating another bite!”

The slight sound of a door whispering open came from behind him, and the empty cart rolled out along the carpet. There was no one steering it, yet it moved with immaculate precision. As it circled the table, our plates, napkins, and silverware floated away from us and onto the cart, as if being scooped up by an invisible hand. The others watched in slack-jawed shock, an expression I quickly mirrored as soon as I realized the need.

As the cart finished its circle and began heading back toward the kitchen, Troy was struck with some sort of realization. He bolted up from the table and made a run for the kitchen door, no doubt assuming it was unlocked to let the cart through. Troy scarcely made it a single step before something gave way beneath his feet and he was sent crashing to the floor. By the time he recovered, the cart was gone and the kitchen door firmly shut.

Before we had the chance to comment on the strange occurrence, the waiter’s voice echoed out from an unseen location, bouncing off the walls at too many angles to trace.

“Now that dinner is done, please feel free to relax in our other facilities before bed. Mr. Price, the clock is ticking.”

Then the voice was gone, and we were plunged into a short-lived silence. It was broken by the least likely sound any of us had expected: one of our barriers being lifted. The dining room doors slid gently open, revealing the hallway we’d entered through.

Dinner was clearly over, though we had no idea what next lay in store.

5.

Everyone else made a mad dash for the hallway, but I forced myself to hang back. Despite seeing how Troy’s attempt at bashing through the window had yielded him nothing more than injury, I was curious to take my own crack at it. My vampire strength had cost me no less than six keyboards when I was first turned and before I learned to keep it under control. Tonight, it might be good for something other than tipping up the fridge when I swept my floors. The catch was that, unfortunately, I couldn’t very well go showing it off in front of my very human co-captives.

I’d been searching through my brain, trying to think of a method I could use to get them to leave me alone long enough to see if I could open us a door to freedom. As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered with the effort. Asha, the last of the bunch save for me, had no sooner crossed the door’s threshold when they slammed back together, separating me from the rest of the group.

“I can’t imagine this is a good sign,” I muttered softly. My eyes swept the room several times, coming up with nothing. Then, as suddenly as before, the waiter was simply there, standing in front of me with his hands raised.

“I’m glad you hung back. I was going to grab you so we could talk, anyway,” the waiter said. Unlike before, the dominance had slipped out of his voice. It was a strange effect, like speaking to an actor when he has just walked off stage and slipped out of his persona.

“Why? What could we have to talk about?”

“First off, I wanted to apologize. This really isn’t the sort of service standard I try to set here. Secondly, I wanted to let you go.” He gestured to the window, which opened soundlessly. When I thought about it, there didn’t seem to be any sound coming from outside the room either. Strange, I’d have expected the others to at least make a ruckus and bang on the door.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, but would you mind telling me why I get a pass?”

He stared at me for a few moments, brow furrowed and head tilted just a few degrees off center. “Because I obviously have a lot on my plate tonight, and I’d really rather not deal with an angry vampire on top of it. I love a supernatural throw down as much as anyone else, just not this evening.”

“Ah, right. Of course. We vampires are a fearsome, terrifying lot.” That was true in the sense that vampires as a whole were respected in the parahuman community, even if I didn’t precisely fit the expected mold. “Though I confess, I’m not sure how I’d even hurt a ghost.”

“A ghost? You haven’t been at this for very long, have you?”

“Turned only a couple of years ago,” I admitted.

“But still holding down a human job like accounting. That’s . . . interesting.” He shot me another curious look, then walked over to the dinner table. As he drew near, a chair pulled itself out and he took a seat. “They said you’re name was Fred, wasn’t it?”

“Fredrick Frankford Fletcher, though yes, most people do call me Fred.” I walked to the table and sat down across from him, keeping us eye to eye. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but it seemed that the longer we talked, the less chance he had to be threatening and killing my associates.

“Nice to meet you, Fred. I’m Charlotte.”

“Interesting. Should I assume there’s a reason behind the feminine name when you’re clearly male?”

He looked confused for a moment, then glanced down at himself and let out a small chuckle. “This? This is just a form I use for dinner service.” His whole body began to ripple, and when it ended, I was staring at the kindly old woman who’d greeted me at the entrance. Another ripple, and this time Charlotte was a lovely young woman wearing a conservative dress that looked to be from the turn of the century. “All just images I create to facilitate guest service. The truth is I don’t have a gender, Fred, because I’m not a ghost. I still have my body, and you’re in it right now.”

My mind flashed back to the sign I’d seen when entering, the placard that read “Charlotte Manor.”

“You’re a house?” I’d like to say that, after all I’d seen, I was able to keep my voice calm and show no signs of surprise, but I was unable to do any such thing. Even in the loose terms of what I associated with “normal,” this was stretching things.

“That community Mr. Price talked about, the ones that used to live here, it was a cult of mages,” Charlotte told me. “Animating a domicile isn’t easy, but they had the time and persistence to keep trying until they got it right. Wanted a safe-house that would be impenetrable, a shelter in case things went awry. Thus, me.” Charlotte stretched out her . . . his . . . its . . . let’s just stick with her, since the house’s form was currently female. She stretched out her arms in a
ta-da
motion, and flashed on oversized grin. “Anyway, once they died off, it was just me, so I decided to use the magic they’d laid in me—the ability to create food, control of my interior, that stuff—to create a bed and breakfast. Nice, useful, and no one ever tries to tear them down . . . usually.”

“I see. May I ask what happened to those who animated you?” I didn’t want to pry, but finding out a cauldron (which is the proper term for a group of mages; I know, I was surprised too) had lived and died on the edge of my town provoked more than a touch of curiosity and concern.

Charlotte leaned her head back and looked up at the ceiling. “What do you think happened to a bunch of mages that lived apart from society, practiced crazy weird magic, and felt the need for a magical safe-house?”

“Agents?”

“Agents.” Charlotte nodded and looked back down at me. “Don’t get me wrong, I hear everything within my walls, and I’m glad the agents stepped in. Those folks were not planning anything pleasant. Still, it left me stranded here. I’ve been able to cover up the fact that the house was uninhabited all these years, but if Mr. Price finds the owner, he’ll sell in a heartbeat. You understand, don’t you? This is self-defense. I don’t want to be torn down.”

“I do understand.” As I spoke, I rose from the table, carefully pushing my chair back as I moved. “But, Charlotte, there must be another way. Mr. Price and the others are innocent of any malice; they had no way of knowing that destroying a building would cause a living thing harm. I’m sure there’s a reasonable, non-killing solution we can reach.”

“Like what? Tell them that I’m an animated house, oh and that the supernatural is all completely real? Even if they bought it, which would be a stretch for Mr. Price, it would open up a whole new can of issues. I realize that what I’m doing isn’t a permanent solution, but it buys me time.” Charlotte rose from her seat as well, the hem of her dress nearly dragging on the floor. “I’m sorry about the job opportunity and getting you involved in this. Maybe one day I can make it up to you. But for better or worse, I’ve set my course. Please leave, so I can see things through.”

“You are very kind to offer me freedom.” I stared at the open window, imagining myself leaping out of it. Once free, I could contact Krystal and the others, get the sort of help I knew could handle these problems. Of course, Charlotte had been built specifically to be a fortress and keep people out. While I was certain Krystal could find a way in, I was far less sure about whether the others would still be alive by the time she did. Maybe we’d be able to save some, but not all.

There was no excuse that let me skirt the simple truth of the situation: if I took my leave, people were going to die. Even knowing that, I was still deeply tempted to fool myself and accept Charlotte’s offer. After all, my being there didn’t guarantee their safety. I wasn’t Krystal; I didn’t know how to stop something like Charlotte. All hanging in would do was put me in danger as well. What would that possibly accomplish?

“As much as I appreciate your gesture, I have to decline it.” I stared at Charlotte, whose face was steadily darkening. “While I don’t mean to make war with you, I also can’t just leave these people alone. Maybe if I’m here, if I talk to them, we can find a solution that saves everyone.”

“You’re a nice man, Fred, but you really haven’t been a parahuman for very long.” Charlotte motioned to the doors behind me, which slid open to reveal an empty hallway. “Sooner or later, we all end up in a situation where our only choices are to kill or be killed. It’s unavoidable, and if you don’t face the reality of that before your time comes, then you’ll find yourself dead in the permanent fashion. You can’t save everyone, Fred. You’ll be lucky if you can even save yourself.”

Then she was gone, and I was alone. Except I wasn’t, not really. Everywhere I went, Charlotte would be watching me. I was, after all, treading around inside of her. Which meant I needed to find the others as soon as possible.

Scarce as time was, I still stopped to grab my briefcase from the floor where I’d set it. I had the barest inkling of an idea, and it would require my laptop to execute. Of course, first I’d have to try and make sure everyone was still alive.

I dearly missed the days when changes to the tax code were the most stressful parts of my job.