I opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat. “So how do we do this?”
Wyatt turned the key and the car engine roared to life. “I need to stop by a bakery.”
I stared.
He winked. “Trust me.”
Chapter 10
55:20
I balanced the bakery box in both hands, careful to not drop and ruin the expensive treat inside as I ascended the rickety metal staircase. Wyatt led the way up, taking the steps two at a time. The interior of the service stairwell smelled of forgetfulness and disuse.
We had returned to downtown. Wyatt had left me in the running car while he ran into a bakery and, moments later, returned with a white box. I hadn’t opened it, but a sticker on the side said “CSCK—Cherry Top.” Given the shape and weight of the box, I silently translated that into “Cheesecake—Cherry Topping.” I had kept my questions to myself, even when Wyatt drove us back toward Mercy’s Lot.
Halfway there, he had said, “You know, you’re showing amazing restraint.”
“With what? The cheesecake?”
A tiny smile. “No, with not asking me about the night you died. And who else was in the room.”
“You’ll tell me when I need to know something.”
“Fair enough.”
After reaching the outskirts of Mercy’s Lot, he had parked in front of an abandoned potato chip factory and said we needed to head to the top level.
Six flights up I smelled it. Faint at first, and then gradually stronger—the eye-watering stench of fermented sugar. I felt like I was walking into a distillery, and that clued me in as to who we were visiting.
Gremlins are the cockroaches of Dregs. They live short lives in the dark (eight days is the record), reproduce like bunnies, and are hard to kill. They are also hermaphroditic. On the fourth day of their lives they produce and fertilize litters of twelve, which are fully grown within twenty-four hours. Gremlins are as notorious for causing havoc with machinery as they are for having a sweet tooth. Existing almost entirely on a sugar-based diet, their waste created the alcoholic smell that permeated the upper floors of the factory.
I’m still waiting for some brave soul to start marketing Gremlin Piss Schnapps.
Flexible as putty and ugly as sin, the eighteen-inch-tall creatures didn’t fear the Triads. Instead of death and destruction, they specialized in causing trouble and occasional mayhem. We had no reason to hunt them. Their only natural enemies were gargoyles—as a crunchy snack or sport hunting, I didn’t know—and their own brief life spans.
On the seventh level, I began to hear the scuffling sounds of small feet racing back and forth. They knew we were there; it was only a matter of seconds before they sent an emissary. Gremlins did not speak to outsiders en masse. They rarely showed their full strength, and given the size of the factory (and the stink), there could easily be thousands of gremlins breeding in the shadows.
We reached the eighth floor. A reinforced fire door blocked the top of the stairwell. Wyatt banged his open palm against it.
“Ballengee be blessed,” he shouted. His voice bounced off the enclosed space, and I clutched the bakery box closer. More scuffling preceded a single set of footsteps.
A lock turned on the other side of the door. Wyatt pushed. The tiny creature scrambled away and disappeared. I followed Wyatt into a haze of odor so thick my eyes watered. It felt heavy against my skin, like a fog of liquor fumes. I held my breath, but it did no good. The stink was everywhere, seeping into my pores, so strong I could taste it.
We stood on the upper balcony of a catwalk that overlooked a cavernous production area. To my left was a row of offices, the doors gone and glass broken out of every window. The open area below caught my immediate interest. Hundreds of gremlins scurried about on those multi level floors. Dozens of nests, made of cardboard and shredded debris, dotted nearly every available space. The din of their chatter and daily activity sounded like faint machine-gun fire—constant and sharp. Huge metal vats (likely old deep fryers) were filled with pools of amber liquid.
“They certainly took the term, ‘ piss pot’ to a literal level,” Wyatt said.
I snorted, but could not drum up laughter. The sight of so many Dregs in one place startled me. I had never seen such a gathering, nor been invited into the heart of this community. Whatever “Ballengee be blessed” meant, it worked to gain their trust.
“Why for come you?”
The tiny voice startled me. I spun around and nearly dropped the cheesecake. Barely twenty inches tall, an elderly gremlin gazed at us from the floor. Its long, apish arms and knob-kneed legs were wrinkled, with yellowish skin that seemed transparent in places. A round, distended belly hung low. Tall, rabbitlike ears stuck out from its oval-shaped head at perfect right angles, accented by tufts of green fur. More green fur covered the top of its flat head. The gremlin smiled, revealing two rows of tiny teeth in a mouth that seemed too small for the width of its head. Red eyes blinked, shifting from me to Wyatt.
“I would like to buy a favor,” Wyatt said.
The gremlin tilted its head, a very thoughtful (and human) gesture. “Payment?”
Wyatt nudged me. I opened the top of the box and squatted down. The gremlin peered into the box. A whistle of delight turned into a shriek, and it rubbed clawed hands together. I pulled the box away before the little critter could drool all over it.
“Favor?” it asked.
“A computer wipe,” Wyatt replied. “I need all traces and records for the name Chalice Frost erased. Every data source, every police file, all of it. After today, she doesn’t exist. We need paper copies of everything dropped at this address.”
“Chalice Frost,” it repeated. The tinny voice did not match its horrific appearance. It seemed better suited to a tiny human being than a creature of nightmare. It took a slip of paper from Wyatt. “Will done be. All is that?”
“That’s all, and I need it done in two hours.”
“Less.”
“Good.”
The gremlin extended its clawed hands toward me. I looked at Wyatt; he gestured toward the bakery box. I handed it over. The small creature grabbed it and hobbled off, probably to gorge its latest brood.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s it,” Wyatt said.
“How do you know it will keep its part of the deal?”
“How did you know before that Max wouldn’t spill his guts?”
“Point taken.”
Gremlins don’t understand deception. It’s a very human trait. For many of the Dregs, especially those who are more animal than others, things simply are. Gremlins need food. In return for food they don’t have to steal themselves, they will grant a favor. It doesn’t even occur to them to not hold up their end.
I followed him across the balcony, back toward the stairwell. “Too bad human beings aren’t more like gremlins,” I said. “Then we probably wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“I hear that.”
“So Chalice is almost taken care of.” My voice echoed around us, and I reminded myself to whisper. “What’s our next step, O Great Mastermind? Max was a dead end. Any other suspects on the list of people present the night I died?”
Wyatt stopped on the steps; I grabbed the rail to halt my own forward movement and avoid knocking him down to the next landing. He tugged back the sleeve of his shirt, twisting his wrist to check his watch. The glowing face lit up with the time—barely after ten. I watched the seconds click by, ticking away the last few days of my life. One, two, three seconds that I would never get back.
“I think it’s been long enough,” he said, breaking the silence.
“Long enough for what?”
He turned his head and looked up at me. Something hard and angry flickered in his eyes. “To talk to Rufus.”