Ghosts (The Girl in the Box Book 50), page 1
GHOSTS
The Girl in the Box, Book 50
ROBERT J. CRANE
Ostiagard Press
Ghosts
The Girl in the Box, Book 50
Robert J. Crane
copyright © 2022 Ostiagard Press
1st Edition.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Epilogue
Teaser
Author’s Note
Other Works by Robert J. Crane
Acknowledgments
PROLOGUE
“I've got you now, you little shit,” Anthony White crowed. The V4 bus rattled to a halt, brakes hissing, and he looked up in surprise; it was his stop. Anthony hustled for the exit, ambling down the steps onto Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue. He took that last step onto a cracked curb, the dark night having swallowed this Washington DC neighborhood thoroughly. Half the street lights were out, busted, and fully another quarter seemed to be flickering.
Around a quick corner and he was on 48th, tracing the northward path home. The smell of baking bread from the Subway sandwich shop on the corner infused the air, and after passing it for years he barely noticed it anymore. With book in hand, he made his way north. There was no one in sight, the streets silent except for the squeal of the bus's engine as it rattled down the street.
“Now I've got you all to myself, you bastard.” He grinned in triumph, lifting his book, a red pen in hand.
This was his life. He walked to and from the bus stop, he went to work, sat there for eight hours a day answering phones and then went home to do this, his true calling in life–
“It's 'there,' not 'their,” Anthony said, tsk-ing, his red pen descending upon the page of the book like a dagger toward an intended victim. “Hah!” He made a circling slice around the error; another one slayed. A red circle sliced like a bloody wound upon the page, another in a sea of them. “Idiot. Hah.”
The bus's engine noise had faded, and Anthony was left in the quiet valley of the neighborhood, two-story clapboard houses on small lots rising on either side of him. His scratching footsteps echoed down the street as he turned the page. He spied another victim, and his pen descended again, welling red springing up on the pristine white paper as he slashed viciously. “No, no, no. No comma!” He struck, merciless.
A car hummed by slowly, and Anthony gave it barely a glance. Just a sedan, the windows tinted dark. When it didn't stop, he turned back to the book, and – “Ah ha!” Then he swiftly frowned. “Why would you use a semi-colon there?” He struck, more inky red bloodletting. This was a massacre. “Fool.”
Shaking his head at these errors – so many, so many – he barely took notice of the sedan that had just rolled past him. It was parked on the street, sandwiched between an Acura and Hyundai. Normal for this neighborhood. “'It's,' you idiot,” he muttered, thinking of the author of this work, clearly some subhuman moron crouched around a fire in a cave wearing nothing but a loincloth and shaking his spear, “not 'its'–”
“Excuse me?”
The voice was soft, and Anthony turned, caught completely by surprise. He jerked his head up to look and–
Something hissed in his face, and he choked, unable to speak, unable to shout, unable to scream. He bent double and strong hands seized hold of him, dragging him forward. He felt the bite of cold metal around his wrists, and he was thrown headfirst into something cloth and roughspun. Unable to breathe, he passed out seconds later, gasping for air and finding none.
When he woke, it was to the sounds of his own screaming.
And soon – but not nearly soon enough for him – he died screaming.
CHAPTER ONE
Sienna Nealon
The White House
Washington DC
“I honestly thought,” I said, sitting numbly across from the president of the United States, and beside my brother, “at this point...I'll end up an old maid.” Reed arched an eyebrow. “Without maidenhood, yes, but – I mean, what do I really need a man for? I can reach the top shelves all by myself, I've never yet met a pickle jar I couldn't pop the lid off. But now I find that – seriously, what the actual eff – I'm married?” I was gesticulating wildly, hands flailing all about. “I don't even remember the guy's name, let alone the guy himself.”
“I hear that happens in Vegas all the time,” President Charlotte Mitchell said, deadpan.
Reed snorted, and I must have looked death at him, because he abruptly knocked that shit off. “Yes, very serious,” he said, then dissolved into giggles again. “But...also, a little funny? Maybe? Sorry.” He was unable to keep a straight face.
“Yes, it's hilarious that memories of a mysterious husband were ripped out of my unwilling mind like peanuts out of airplane kitchens when people started developing those damned allergies,” I said.
“See, you chose a funny metaphor there,” President Mitchell said, “so I believe you're seeing at least a little humor in the situation. In spite of, obviously, the horrific nature of your memory loss.”
“I was resigned to what Rose took from me,” I said, unable to really refute her point. “Every now and again, something pops up in my life that I should know about, but don't. In spite of being intensely annoying, it at least keeps things fresh. But this shit right here?” I snatched the dossier off the Resolute desk. “This is more than a little extra spice added to my life. This is some asswipe Scot shitting in the ingredients and then pissing in it to top off the pot. Which I am fairly certain is how they make haggis, but that's neither here nor there.” I slumped back in my seat. “I'm married. How does that happen?”
“Well,” Reed said, still struggling to keep a straight face, “when two people love each other very much–” And he dissolved into snickers again, then stopped once more. “Sorry. Last time. I think.”
“You are the last person who should be telling me this,” I said. “How long have you been engaged? Round to the nearest decade, please.” That wiped the smirk off his face.
“I've got them working up your full dossier,” Mitchell said. “The one that doesn't run two pages. I don't remember it having any more detail, but I read a lot of briefing papers these days. While we wait...I was still hoping to have a discussion with you about another matter.”
“Uh, the world going right to hell?” I asked.
Mitchell froze. “You talking about your marriage or...?”
“No,” I said. “Well, yes, but no – I meant the US crime rates skyrocketing while I was away.” True story. In the six months I'd been burying myself in getting sober in the hinterlands of west Texas, the United States had been Fedexed to hell in a handcart. The serum that unlocked metahuman powers had been laced in with meth and fentanyl, the two most common drugs in circulation. Now, just about every addict in the country had super powers.
“Funnily enough,” President Mitchell said, her glasses catching the light, her eyes lively behind them and her chestnut hair glinting in the bright light of the Oval Office, “when I first intended to have this meeting back in January, that wasn't the topic I was going to bring up. Obviously.”
“So what was it?” I asked the president.
“Well,” she said, “I'd just had a conversation with President Gondry–”
“What? Barbour wasn't available for consultation?” Reed quipped. Ex-president Sarah Barbour was, by the grace of God, rotting away in the DC jail awaiting trial, which was widely expected to result in cheers and huzzahs from me when she ended up going to prison for the rest of her miserable life.
“–and he mentioned the special relationship you two had,” Mitchell finished, apparently undeterred by my brother the wiseacre. She laced her fingers together in front of her and placed them on the desk, leaning forward. “Sienna...you know by now that the US government is ill-equipped to deal effectively with metahuman problems. I'm trying to get Congress to pass a bill to authorize creation of a metahuman law enforcement unit that uses actual metahumans, but as the old saying goes, pro is to con as progress is to Congress.”
“And so say all of us,” I said. “Look...I know you're a private-sector solutions kind of person. And we're happy to provide assistance–”
“You misunderstand,” Mitchell said. “I'm talking about you, specifically, though I did want your brother here to talk about broader matters of your agency working for the government from time to time. But you, Sienna – you worked for the FBI–”
“Twice, and it was a disaster both times,” I said. “First time you people took my agency away and folded me in with the FBI unasked, and the second time I was a lowly agent. Also, both times? I caused chaos. Massive amounts of chaos. The kind most presidential administrations don't want to be associated with.”
“I am not generally in favor of chaos, that's true,” Mitchell said, “and I suspect most aren't, especially when it can lead to political wipeouts for the party in charge. But I have a higher calling here, and that's the protection of the American people.”
Reed was looking at me from the side, not daring to say a word. Finally. I stared at the president, unsure of how to respond to that. “Look,” I said, “I want to help, but I'm also, uhm...well, colloquially, I'm what's known as a 'hot mess'–”
“Yeah, it's not every day you're sitting in front of someone and they find out they've been married for three years,” she said.
“That feels like a personal problem, doesn't it?” I asked. “Kind of a big one, too. A red flag. Like the alcoholism, which is definitely something you don't want in the people you accord large quantities of power and responsibility to. Point is, me and government service go together about as well peanut butter and toxic waste.”
“Yet you've done great work for the government,” Mitchell said. “You saved us from Sovereign. Stopped Chicago from being annihilated by a meteor. Kept President Harmon from turning us all into mindless drones, like the rest of his party–” Reed's eye twitched slightly at this. “–stopped the Scottish woman from destroying – well, whatever she was trying to destroy, besides you–”
“Everything, eventually,” I said. “All that was good and right in the world. Freedom. Apple pie. Potato scones, probably.”
“I'm sure we could both go on,” Mitchell said. “Revelen. The Network. Fortune Renard. Minneapolis. When things go wrong in a way that no one else can fix – you fix them. I know you're having problems. But I also know that when the chips are down–”
“I will eat them all,” I said, “because I love chips. Especially if there's queso. Or French onion dip, if we're talking Lay's–”
Mitchell tried to hide a smile and failed. “You've got problems. We all do. Yours may be more dramatic than most–”
“You don't get to be the most powerful woman in the world without making a few powerful enemies,” Reed said. President Mitchell and I both looked at him. “Huh,” he said, frowning. “I guess that applies to both of you, doesn't it?”
“Forgive the cliché, our country needs you, Ms. Nealon,” President Mitchell said. “Things are worse than ever, and if there's any one person who can make a difference here...it's you. So I'm asking you...can you help us?”
It was only a second before I answered. “Of course,” I said. “But you're going to have to do something for me. Just a little, tiny, minuscule, Brian-Stelter-penis, almost insignificant thing...”
“Absolutely, if I can,” President Mitchell said. “What is it?”
I leaned on the Resolute desk with my most serious face on. “I need you to use all the considerable power of your office to find out...who the fuck am I married to?”
CHAPTER TWO
“Well, that's not where I pictured that conversation going,” Reed said once we were out of the Oval and back in the receptionist's office. He stuck his hands deep in his pockets, blinked a couple of times, as if trying to reboot his brain.
“You think it was a weird conversation for you? Try being in my shoes for it,” I said, my head still spinning. I stopped at the reception desk. “Um, yeah, the president said I could wait here for my file?”
The receptionist – different than the one who'd been here for Gondry and Barbour – smiled politely at me. “Yes, ma'am,” she said in a southern drawl. Deeper than Tennessee, not quite Texas. Alabama or Georgia, I guessed. “Archives is sending up our version, and I've also requested the unredacted originals belonging to both the FBI and CIA.” She smiled almost apologetically. “They'll be dramatically different, if experience is any guide.”
“Thank you, I'll just...” and I pointed at the chairs.
“Y'all can wait in the Roosevelt Room if you'd like,” she said. “Right around the corner. No one in there this time of night anyway, and the chairs are more comfortable.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Mind if I close the door and chew a strip off my brother while I'm at it?”
Her smile froze. “Uh...I suppose.”
“Great. Thanks.” I took Reed by the arm and steered him, unresisting, into the Roosevelt Room. It had a massive conference table down the middle, a really odd gray X carpet pattern, and a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt in Rough Rider attire atop a horse above the fire place. Once I had the door closed, I said, my eyes maybe literally on fire, since that was a thing I could do, “What the hell was that?”
He stared at me blankly. “You talking about your secret marriage? Or my childish reactions?”
“A bit of both, but mostly the latter.”
He paused, looking up for a second. “Oh. Sorry. I always take a second on 'latter' and 'former.' Why doesn't everybody just say 'the first thing' or 'the last thing' or even 'the middle thing,' y'know, if there's multiples?”
“Because it's a remnant of a bygone age,” I said, “full of grace and class, and brothers who supported their sisters when they've just been ambushed by the knowledge that they're married and don't even know it!”
“If I tell you to calm down it'll just make you angrier,” Reed said, seeming to think out loud, “so...why don't you start breaking some shit.” He pointed at the TR painting hanging on the wall behind me. “Probably start with that. He's kind of out of vogue now, anyway.”
I looked at him through thinly slitted eyes. “Don't tempt me. You know I'm not the type to exercise great gobs of restraint, especially when I'm particularly upset, and brother – I am particularly upset.”
