The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3 (10 page)

“I could have, you’re right. So what do you suspect might be the reason you’re still here?”

His odd smile and tone of voice caused the nerves up and down her back to tingle in the most unpleasant way. “You have something you need me to do,” she frowned.
This is not turning out to be a pleasant morning.
She grumbled silently to herself as she sipped her coffee, not wanting to say something off-mark again.

“That’s right again. You’re quite the intuitive young woman.” Charles’s smile opened up a bit to reveal a hint of his teeth. “Which probably means you are on edge, aren’t you?” He guessed correctly, drawing out a slow nod from Kass. “You are probably wondering, ‘What could he want from me when he could just as easily hire someone to do anything he needs,’ aren’t you?” Kass nodded again. “So, not being able to figure out what I can’t just pay for, you’re getting more and more nervous and hoping I will just come right out and cut to the chase, aren’t you?”

Kass just sighed and nodded again, taking another large gulp of coffee. It was hot and burned her throat going down, but she had already managed to drink almost half the cup without even noticing. “Yes . . . Yes, I do want to know what you want from me,” she admitted, the suspense driving her crazy.

“I’m sure you know by now that Darwin, Stephanie and Eve are all demons,” Charles said, ignoring her question. “With Darwin, it was very easy to recognize. After all, his horns had already been formed by the time we first met. But Eve,” --he paused, his eyes glazing over with a look she hadn’t seen before-- “well, that’s an entirely different story. If I hadn’t watched her materialize through a blue portal, I never would have guessed just from looking at her that she was anything but an incredibly beautiful young woman. She didn’t even have a foreign accent when she first spoke to me, and she very well sound as if she could have been raised in the States her entire life. It was as if she had thrown in a pair of red contact lenses and then tricked me with a fancy illusion into believing she was something other than human.”

“So demons are like people?” Kass didn’t understand the point of this story.
What does this have to do with me?

“Indeed. They are the spitting image of what might pass as a perfect person, but that’s not the point, Kass. You’re sharp. We’ve already established that. Surely my explanation leaves some doubt in your mind?” His grin returned.

“They spoke English . . . but they weren’t from here.” She put it together out loud, almost before the thoughts even had a chance to clearly form in her head.

“There you go.” His words were patronizing, but his tone was also congratulatory. “I must admit, I suspected that they were just from another part of our country when they first arrived, their accent perhaps blurred away by ages of television, but then they told me their story. It was a long and terrible tale of war and destruction where they fled a conflict zone in which their people were fighting against genocide in order to come here--and it didn’t fit. First, Eve told me one tale and then Stephanie told me another. They both seemed very close to the same mark, but neither seemed quite right, and something just didn’t make sense. I’ve never met a single person from another country, even in our time, that wasn’t plagued with some form of accent that deviated from native pronunciation.”

“So you didn’t believe them?” She still didn’t understand how this related to her.
Is he trying to make me distrust Darwin too?

“The question isn’t whether or not I believe them . . . It’s if you do.” His lips curled upwards in an even more sly and devious expression than before. He was clearly amused by wherever he was leading her. “Would you be content with their stories, satisfied knowing the conflicting facts of them?”

“No.” Kass shrugged. “Why would I? Have you ever just asked them?”

“I thought about it.” Charles looked down at his cup of tea for a moment before continuing. “But what would there be to gain from that? Even if the worst of cheaters are caught in the act, their first words are generally, ‘It’s not what it looks like’ or ‘I can explain.’ So if we assume that they are liars, we can also assume that they will try to explain it away--thus defeating the point of the confrontation. If they are honest, and their story matches up, then all we’ve done is planted the seed of distrust, making them now suspect our intentions.”

“So you hope to avoid them not trusting you by spying on them?” Kass almost laughed out loud at how comically silly her assumption sounded.

“That is one way to look at it, but no. I don’t plan to spy on them, I just don’t plan on trusting them entirely either.” He pushed his now empty teacup to the side and folded his hands in front of him.

“But that’s just one detail, isn’t it? It doesn’t seem like you should distrust them so easily. Have they given you other reasons?” Kass queried, honestly confused. Last night, Stephanie and Darwin were joking around with Charles as if they were long-time friends. Now, however, he was obviously trying to infect her with his doubt.

“Kass, the people that are still in some far off world trying to exterminate their race . . . They are human. They are human, and they are every single reason I need to assume that Stephanie's intentions for you and I are ill. When an individual spends centuries running from a bloodthirsty pack of wolves that slaughtered their family, friends and species, would they look at them with anything other than hatred and resentment? Eve, the younger of the two, is different. She’s loving, kind, and worried about the greater good to a fault. She gives everyone a chance on an individual basis--but not Stephanie. Stephanie has never mingled or mixed with humans. She even uses me as a sort of proxy for all of her endeavors that might force her to talk to people unless she has the opportunity to mess with them in the process. I have good reason to believe that she ultimately means us harm, and I already know that she is more than capable of scheming.

“I remember watching Stephanie work once. She was putting together a piece of technology, something simple, but the way she laid it all out, the way she methodically assembled each and every piece . . . It was different. I’ve seen hundreds of techies work. They move like ants assembling building blocks one at a time, stacking detail after detail in an effort to build their pyramids. When Stephanie worked, however, it was very similar to watching a spider weave a web.” Charles paused, his eyes flickering for a moment. “It inspired an odd feeling of terror and awe, as if the world she saw and the possibilities she considered were infinitely more complex than you or I could ever understand; yet, for her, they were almost tangible. Even after we are caught in her web, she’ll still keep spinning us around for her own purposes. She won’t sink her fangs in until she is good and ready.”

Kass stared at Charles blankly. It wasn’t illogical, and that made it even more horrifying to think about. This woman, the woman that was with Darwin, was the type of person that could both scare and impress Charles, one of the top businessmen in the world. It was almost enough to petrify Kass, but she still had questions that needed answering. “If she’s so terrifying, why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t you have her followed? Why do you help her with her schemes?”

“Why do I help her with her schemes? Because, at the moment, our goals line up. She wants something out of me, and I want something out of her. I’m safe for the moment because I’m useful--but I will not mistake that as an indefinite pass. As for why I haven’t tried to have her followed before: I have. I made that mistake once, and a well-decorated, good man went to an early grave for trying.”

“She . . . She killed a man?” Kass gulped.

“Kass, she spent lifetimes in a war zone. She’s probably killed more men than you or I could count in a year. Do you think she cares if she adds one more body to the kill count? I pretended like I had nothing to do with the man, and she never let on that she suspected me, but I won’t take that risk twice.”

“So, going back to the original topic, what do you want from me?” Kass was now exponentially more nervous about her situation than when she first sat down. “Why am I here? Why are you telling me this?”

              “I’m telling you this because your relationship with Darwin, and his relationship with Stephanie, puts you in a unique position. What I need you to do is to follow Darwin at all times, let me know if he slips up and lets out any details about Stephanie, or if she says anything in earshot of you. Anything. In exchange, I’ll take care of those money problems that seem to keep coming between you and your father so that you won’t need to appear on television again.” Charles leaned back in his seat a bit as if the conversation were near its end.

“So you just want me to stay close to Darwin and then snitch on Stephanie any chance I get?” Kass wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about this. “And in return I get paid?”

“Yes. The most important detail I need you to be listening for is anything related to my daughter. If Stephanie ever mentions her to Darwin, let me know immediately.”

“Wait . . . Your daughter? Is she a hostage? Is that why she isn’t around? Did Stephanie steal your daughter?”

“No, it’s not like that, but I am worried it is a very real possibility that Stephanie will try to take her from her current location.” Charles frowned again. “Anyway, do you think you can do this? I can guarantee you $10,000 a month, and all you will have to do is play video games with your current guild master.”

The money was probably an insignificantly small amount to Charles, but it made Kass’s eyes pop open instantly. The only hitch was that this was the second time she had been asked to divulge information about people close to her for money, and it was even more unsettling this time than it had been before. She didn’t like the idea of taking money to be a snitch, but on the other hand, what Charles had said seemed disconcerting. Stephanie’s background and the reality that she had somehow managed to scare someone even as powerful as Charles made her uncomfortable--both about snitching and letting Stephanie’s plans go on unhindered. “Can I have a moment think about it? Maybe call my dad first and let him know I’m okay?” she asked, still not sure what to do.

“Your dad knows that you are okay. I had Alfred notify him last night that you opted to skip out on the television interview and instead called me to discuss employment opportunities. He believes that the interview carried on much longer than either of us anticipated, and that you didn’t feel comfortable driving home. Alfred told him that we would have you call him first thing in the morning.” Charles’s eyes flashed with a smile, but his face stayed flat. “He’s not so much worried now as happy. I told him that you had the job if you chose to accept it and that you would fill him in on the details--like the salary--yourself.”

Kass frowned.
Now it’s going to be even harder to say no.
Charles had put her in a really uncomfortable spot. Before she had time to finish moping, however, the doors opened and the food came in.
Well, at least I can do my worrying about whether or not I’ll die at the hands of a vindictive demon on a full stomach,
she thought, staring at the delicious-looking omelet. Even the smell of it was mesmerizing.

Darwin
:

“Minx, Mclean, will you two stop eating our new minions?!” Daniel fussed for the fifth time during the walk home as the two continued to lick the yellow snow cones to death. Before they had left the indoor-ski-resort of a dungeon, the group had made it a point to farm dozens of the yellow snow cones so that they could use them as protection bots for the Demon army stationed at Lawlheima. Hopefully, the yellow shields would have the ability to almost entirely eliminate any casualties that future conflicts might bring. Knowing Tiqpa, there was a good chance that one or two players would eventually stumble across Lawlheima in the future thinking it was still an ordinary dungeon.

“I don’t know . . . We can always go get more, right?” Darwin shrugged. He didn’t see how one or two would make a difference. After all, players generally only travelled in groups of five to ten people at most. Any more than that and the item splitting would leave too many people either unhappy or simply under-geared for dungeons their level. It was the same reason why most game designers didn’t add raid-sized dungeons until players reached the level-cap: They’d have to run it multiple times just to satisfy the gear demands of each player.

“You know, this game is missing its true potential,” Mclean said, taking another bite of her helpless victim’s sugary corpse.

“How so?”

“Think about it: All you can eat of the most delicious sugary treats in the world, but no weight gain. Feeling hungry because of your diet? Hop on, spend hours eating the most delicious and delectable edibles imaginable and then log off in time for bed. Sure, you’ll still go to bed hungry, but at least when you crave cherry-glazed chocolate cheesecake, you can eat it without any health repercussions.” Mclean took another bite. By now, her lips were covered in the snowy yellow stuff.

“That’s not a bad selling point. I bet that would pull in more gullible housewives than organic stickers on bananas,” Kitchens added.

“You shouldn’t get organic bananas?” Minx looked surprised. “But mom used to always get them and you never said a thing.”

“Well, that’s because the couch really isn’t comfortable, Minx.” Kitchens patted her on the head.

The others may have laughed at the spectacle, but Darwin frowned as he remembered how the topic of Minx’s mom had impacted Kitchens before. Even though Kitchens was smiling right along with everyone else, he figured it would be best to get the conversation quickly moving again and away from that topic before it dug into the man further. “Well, the game might be missing its calling, but to be honest, some of the tavern food can be worse than a cheap diner that ran out of butter. It’s not surprising that no-one in the advertising department thought about it.”