The Everything Box (2 page)

Earth. The present.

ON A HOT MIDNIGHT IN LOS ANGELES, CHARLIE COO
PER
—Coop to his friends—hung suspended by a thin wire a few feet off the floor of Bellicose Manor's dining room, hoping he wasn't about to be eaten by a monster.

“Careful,” whispered Phil.

“Of what?”

“Just careful. Don't want you to break a nail.”

“That's really thoughtful. Now shut up.”

Phil Spectre, freelance poltergeist, continued scrabbling around inside Coop's head. It felt like rabid ferrets were using his frontal lobe for a scratching post.

“Cut it out,” said Coop.

“I can't help it. Your skull is so thick I get claustrophobic.”

Coop—tall, sandy haired, in his mid-thirties—pulled himself slowly and steadily along the wire, careful not to touch anything. To his relief, Phil was quiet for a minute. Those few seconds let Coop concentrate on the job at hand. He looked around, and while he couldn't see the wall safe yet, he knew where it was hidden.

Bellicose Manor didn't stand so much as flop on a hilltop, like a giant Gothic carbuncle, in Benedict Canyon. The house wasn't an
eyesore per se, but rather a soul-sucking nut punch to anyone who hung around the place too long without an invitation. This was by design, just one of the many magical defenses the Bellicose family paid for to keep the nice things they had in their house
in their house
. Anyone who was anyone had at least a few spells sprinkled around their place. How else would people know that they had things nice enough to steal? This idea had eventually trickled down to Hollywood hipsters and even some middle-class families. The kind that had a soft spot for government conspiracies and UFO conventions. You know the type, the ones crazy enough to believe that monsters and magicians actually existed and walked side by side with them down the Pop-Tarts aisle in Safeway. This paranoia led to a thriving industry in bogus wards and do-it-yourself witchproofing, proving once again that con men had been separating people from their cash since long before the first witch invited the first black cat for a ride along.

“Wendigos,” said Phil suddenly. “I bet they have a Wendigo. Big place like this. Family has money. A vampire would be gauche. A hungry Wendigo, that's the way they'd go. It's probably right past the dining room table.” He went quiet again. Then, “Or something with tentacles. Which do you hate more? I can't remember.”

“Yes, you can.”

“It's coming back to me. Is this a good time to discuss your fear of intimacy?”

Coop was sweating, and it wasn't just from exertion. His hand slipped and grazed the side of an antique wooden chair, one of several similar chairs surrounding an impressive dining room table. Bellicose Manor was stuffed to the ceiling with impressive bric-a-brac, most of which would kill you if you touched it the wrong way.

“Which part of you do you think the Wendigo will eat first?”

“Please. I'm asking you nicely,” said Coop.

When he was twelve, Coop had checked out a book on emergency medicine from the school library specifically to see how many organs a human body could lose and live. It turned out that people needed pretty much everything they had, inside and out. Worse, Coop knew that Phil knew it, and when the poltergeist got bored or nervous it was hard to shut him up.

“Too bad people aren't more like lizards, huh?” Phil said. “Just regrow a spare leg or lung. But you can't. No, humans are good at growing bones, toenails, and cancer. That's about it.”

The problem was, for all his pain-in-the-assness, Phil was actually good at his job. He'd pointed out many of the wards and electronic alarms protecting the mansion, and had even disabled a few so that Coop could break in. Now, if he'd just shut up, Coop would maybe get him an Employee of the Month cup.

Coop's fingers ached. The wire he was on was attached to the dining room's far wall with a claw made of cold iron, magicproof and cheaper than a silver one. Only Eurotrash and cowboys still used silver. What a waste of money, Coop thought. Still, someday it would be nice to have some extra cash to toss around on gear and a partner more reliable than a jumpy poltergeist.

“Please,”
said Phil. “If you had more money you'd still hire me, because you're too cheap to splash the cash for anyone else. Isn't that one of the reasons what's-her-name left you?”

“Leave my love life out of this and do your job. Look for traps.”

Phil scrambled around some more. “Man, it's hot in here. Are you hot, too?”

“Shut up.”

“Hey, pal. I'm your partner, remember, and I don't like your tone.”

“You're fired.”

“Duck,” said Phil.

Coop lowered his head, just missing a nearly invisible glass needle hanging from a nearly invisible line right at eye level. “Okay. You're rehired.”

“Goody. Now I can finally get that place in the Bahamas.”

When he had his bearings again, Coop inched along the wire like a worm, in a skintight carbon-fiber suit that hid both his body heat and his breathing. Phil was right—the suit was hot as balls and smelled like sweat socks, but it did the trick. The room's heat and pressure sensors had no idea he was there.

Now if we could only finish this up and actually not be here, that'd be swell
.

Easier thought than done. Bellicose Manor was well known in the
criminal world for its curses and traps. That's why it was such a perfect place to rob. But it made things go slowly. And it was costing him a lot of money.

Phil charged by the hour.

“This better pay off big time,” Coop said.

“That would be a nice change,” said Phil.

After what felt like an eternity, Coop made it to the far wall. Before him was a large oil painting of a spectacularly ugly woman in a fuchsia ball gown. The Bellicose family claimed that it was a two-hundred-year-old portrait of the first Lady Bellicose back in Whereverthefuckland. Coop, however, had it on good authority that it was Grandpa Bellicose in a wig and party dress after losing a bar bet to Aleister Crowley. Coop touched the brass nameplate on the picture frame and the painting slid up into the ceiling to reveal a safe underneath.

“Well, that was disappointing,” said Phil.

“Missing your Wendigo already?”

“A little. I mean, we've been here half an hour and still no carnage. And we haven't stolen anything. It's nerve-racking, you know? Mind if I sing?”

“Don't you dare.”

Coop felt a tickling on the inside of his skull.

“It helps my nerves.”

“Please don't sing.”

“Fine,” said Phil in a huff. “I'll hum.”

Phil went into a hushed, tuneless free jazz number. Calling it noise would have given it too much credit. It sounded like claws on a blackboard, thought Coop, if the claws were chain saws and the blackboard was a busload of grizzly bears. Now that he was close enough, Coop could see why Phil had chosen this particular moment to turn his head into a karaoke bar.

In a darkly enchanted house like Bellicose Mansion, the term
wall safe
could mean a lot of things. In this case it meant a ten-foot reptilian snout with teeth the size of dragon fangs, which, in fact, was exactly what they were. The dragon growled at Coop uncertainly,
like it didn't know whether to roast him or invite him in for a nightcap. Coop didn't like dragons.

“Neither do I,” Phil said.

“Do you know what it is?”

“It's a dragon. Shit comes out one end and fire out the other.”

“I mean what kind of dragon.”

“Right. Sorry. It looks French. Rich jerks like French.”

“Why?”

“They're loyal and vicious. Plus, did I mention it's a dragon? You might want to shake a leg.”

“Good idea.”

He pulled the portable alchemy kit from the utility sack at his waist. On other occasions, Phil had called it Coop's wicked witch fanny pack, but now he was too busy being terrified to say a word, which suited Coop just fine.

The dragon's growling changed, like it had decided that Coop was more of a petit four than a drinking buddy. As it opened its mouth, sucking in air to stoke its internal furnace, Coop held up the potion so it got a good whiff of the brew.

The dragon sneezed. Once. Twice. Then it yawned, showing even more horrifying lawn-gnome-size teeth and a tongue like a meat Slip 'N Slide, at the far end of which were the boiling guts of a Parisian hell beast. The dragon's eyes slowly began to close and it relaxed. A few seconds later and it was sound asleep.

“Nicely done,” said Phil. “Too bad the critter's mouth is shut tight. You think you're going to Schwarzenegger those choppers open? You don't have the guns for it.”

“You might have mentioned that before.”

“I thought it was obvious.”

“You're getting old, Phil. It's making you shaky.”

“Yeah? And you're getting . . . shut up.”

Coop ignored him and snapped a couple of tools off his belt. He jammed a minijack between the dragon's jaws, slotted the handle into place, and began to crank the mouth open.

“There you go, sport,” said Phil. “Problem solved.”

“I get tense when you call me clever. I know it's a trick.”

“This is too nerve-racking. I hope you like Neil Diamond.”

“I don't like
your
Neil Diamond.”

Coop took out a flashlight and peered into the dragon's mouth as Phil hummed “I'm a Believer.” There were lots of goodies scattered around in the monster's gob—gold coins, piles of cash, jewelry, guns—but Coop looked past all of that junk for something more valuable. Finally, he saw what he had come here for: a green file folder, closed with a red wax seal. Unfortunately, the folder was back by the dragon's molars, between a pile of Euros and a stolen Picasso. To Coop, it looked like a portrait of a woman after someone dropped a refrigerator on her head. That probably meant it was expensive. Too bad he didn't have room for it in his suit.

The poltergeist stopped humming. “Please tell me you didn't cheap out on the jack. I'd hate to see it fail and for those teeth to snap you in half. Actually, it might be kind of funny, but not while I'm in your head.”

“I bought the best money could buy.”

That
my
money could buy, at least.

They peered around the dragon's mouth for other traps.

“So you finally admitted it,” Coop said. “You want me dead.”

Coop inched forward on the line until his head was almost touching the dragon's front fangs. He pulled a collapsible gripper from a pocket sewn into his suit. He tested the trigger a couple of times to make sure the claw on the extendable arm worked.

“Not at all,” Phil said. “I'm just saying that being eaten by a dragon might be karmic payback for being mean earlier. On your right. Near your elbow.”

Coop looked right. A human eye floating in a bubbling potion was attached to a spray gun full of acid. He crawled underneath the eye's gaze.

“Thanks,” he said.

“And the team is back together again!”

When he saw that the grip worked properly, Coop extended the arm and pushed it into the dragon's mouth as far as it would go. It
was a good two feet short of the folder. He let his head drop onto his arms, knowing what he had to do.

“I don't want to jinx anything,” said Phil, “but you're not really going to do this, are you?”

“I don't have any choice.”

“Of course you do. Pack up and we go for waffles. My treat.”

“Not tonight. I know I can do this. I have to.”

“Oh, man. I'm definitely going to have to sing.”

“Don't you dare.”

Phil broke into a full-throated chorus of “Sweet Caroline.”

Pushing himself off with his arms, Coop landed flat on the beast's tongue and slid forward, scattering piles of gold and diamonds, until he was knee deep in the dragon's mouth. Before he'd even stopped sliding, Coop thrust the claw forward and grabbed the folder, which he crammed into a Velcro pouch on the front of his suit.

“Are we dead yet?” said Phil.

“We're doing great.”

Phil went back to his song.

“Except for the singing.”

Moving backward out of the dragon's mouth was a lot harder than going in. He couldn't get a grip on the slippery tongue, so he had to worm his way back slowly, past the Bellicoses' other loot. He was almost out when he caught his leg on one of the dragon's front fangs and ripped through the suit, leaving a deep gash. The dragon growled sleepily as it tasted blood.

“Ah. I see what you meant.
Now
we're dead,” said Phil.

Coop gave one massive push and shot out of the dragon's mouth hard enough that he almost missed the wire, grabbing it just before he touched the floor.

Slick as a human Skittle covered in dragon spit, cut, and exhausted, Coop inched his way back across the wire to the dining room door. He wasn't going to sleep tonight. Not for a couple of nights, probably, not with the image of the dragon's gullet so fresh in his mind. He considered using the rest of the sleep potion to knock himself out tonight, but nixed that in favor of a drink. Many, many drinks.

“I thought we weren't drinking anymore,” said Phil. “Not after, you know. Which brings me back to your intimacy issues.”

“I didn't drink until after. And you're my intimacy issue right now.”

“Careful. I know some Sondheim, too, and I know how you love musicals.”

“How's this? Give me sixty seconds to feel good over a job well done, okay?”

“Okay. But can I say one thing?”

“What?”

“You forgot your jack,” said Phil.

Coop looked back at the dragon's mouth, where the jack glistened.

“Damn.” He glanced back toward the door and the way out. “Forget it. With this payout, I'll buy another. I'll get a dozen.”