There is a strong debate here inside the Beltway as to how many seasons exist, and what their names are. Slush, Mosquitoes and the Well-Known-Byproduct-of-Cattle-Ranching are my three choices. The last is whenever the idiots are in session over on the Hill, regardless of any overlap with the other two.
The office was quiet, it being one of the rare dull periods during Slush that the smell from Capitol Hill managed to thin out thanks to the long holiday recess. Such moments let those with vacations take a few days for a nice cruise, trip to Lost Wages, the Theme-parks down in Florida or a sanitarium rubber room, depending upon our needs. Even the office secretary Jennifer was out this day. Our titular boss (face it, Jen sets the schedules and normally routes incoming calls, so she is the boss), Mother Eunice Bethany, my ex-partner and now boss, had one of the youngsters out on a field evaluation. Raises matter more here as we can't quit. Or be fired. I know, I try getting canned at least twice a week.
Which left only Cathay, my succubus possessed nun current partner, and myself to hold down the fort. As Lindsey Weismann was in town for a review of threshold limits and protocols that some oversight committee just revised. Blair was supposed to be in too, but he's a law to himself in North-Central region. Probably either poaching some other district or planning a fishing trip.
With everyone else out, I get to be in charge. This rarely happens despite my seniority. Probably due to the embarrassing incidents that occur when I have the helm. Like training sessions held over a cribbage board surrounded by pizzas, cookies and other contraband substances in this health conscious administration's reign. As usual, I was losing, with Cathay in the lead past the first corner on two hands. Despite spending more time idly folding "while you were out" into erotic origami sculptures to decorate Jen's desk with.
After about three more hands of crap, two of them nineteen hands, I was really sucking dust, still not much beyond the first corner as Cathay and Lindsey raced to the skunk line.
For those not familiar with the game, nineteen is an impossible hand so it doubles as zero. Twenty-nine is the best hand, and score is kept on a board with up to four lanes of one hundred-twenty holes, with "corners" every thirty holes and a single socket for one-twenty-one and the first person to make that or more wins the game. Most of my lunch money for the rest of the month lay in the quarter a hole and five bucks a game, doubling each corner back, between me and the gals. It would be PB and J's for me for awhile, unless I raided one of my savings accounts or secret cash stashes.
When the phone rang, figuring it to be another losing ground hand, I tossed my cards onto the table face up. One other good thing about Beths being in the field, I could break my favorite chair out of her impound closet. This baby had rollers, so the glide across the tiles to Jen's switchboard just outside the office was swift, if filled with the scratch of bearings due for replacement decades ago. All the others in the office hated my baby. Until they discharged me though, I refused to sign it over, and took it home when I took one of my few days off, to prevent it being scrapped in my absence. I planned on using it until the boss came back to shove her back into that isolation cell called storage.
Jen's console is about the most modern thing in the whole division. Yet, its old enough to remember when the wheels on my rolling throne ran silently.
"CRAPP, this is Tanner." Most people hang up when I answer that way. It saves me the paperwork of their call. The environmentalists should give me a medal over the trees I have saved in the line of duty.
A familiar sigh at the other end, if a bit softer and weaker than normal warped my face into a grimace. "Troy, that is not a proper way to answer an official phone." The words were softer than since her return. Eunice Bethany worn out boded ill for my easy time. "Full division name, no acronyms." If she could lecture, I figured the flight roughed her up more than normal. Thermals in the Rocky Mountains peak about this time of year, when the monsoon surge can reach into Canada.
"Fine. Environmental Protection Agency, Cleanup, Remediation and Paranormal Protection Division, Remediation Specialist Tanner speaking. How may I divert your call?" Silence with no laugh at the last bit plummeted my guts below the floor. Bad news was coming.
"Round up any help you can find. Get out here." Beths was never a long-winded gal, but this was unusually terse for her.
"Sure thing. What reason do I tell folks for cancelling their days off?" Union rules required that. And here in CRAPP, the union was our only true benefit.
"Some kids summoned up a demon." That I knew, the initial incident report came from one of those civic minded folks who will tolerate all sorts of rudeness to file a report on a neighbor they dislike. Beths forgetting that she yanked it away meant worse yet. "We went to banish and cleanse the school gymnasium..." Her voice trailed off. She fought breaking down, and had lost.
"Beths." Cathay has been my partner for long enough to get jealous at that tone in my voice others rarely notice. Tendrils of smoke rose from my concern for "the ex-wife".
Sobs traveled the wires from a place three quarters of a continent away. My eyes closed. I did not want to know the answer to the questions I now had to ask. Speaking on my end would inform the others as I sought those answers though. Just to be safe, I put the call on speaker.
"Beths, where's Amber?" Lindsey's cards hit the crib board while the slice of pizza Cathay was making oral love to flew to the nearest trash can. Horns rose from my partner's forehead, amid crackling and darkening hair, forcing her wimple to rise, then fall to the ground behind her. Amber was one ex-partner Cathay could not be jealous of, the yongr kid she herself liked, and taken under her wing. As we all had.
No answer save soft crying noises. It was really bad. "Beths?"
Finally she found her voice. Faint, tired and broken still with her sorrow. "The demon took her."
Cathay rose from her reclined position, skin turning that deep crimson all demons have, as her powers manifested in anger. Lindsey merely turned white. They rarely lost folks out in LaLa Land, not like the other divisions.
Deep rasps broke the silence in the office, as our leader tried to gather herself for a moment. "Bring the troops, all you can catch."
Oh, I would bring them, and hell as well. She knew it. "On it, Beths. Panic Button and All Hands." Phrases the two of us joked about many years ago. They never got used, even when needed. Unless it was too late.
I thought she had lost it again, until her voice came, with that ring of authority and the strength from days gone by. "Troy, bring everything you have. Everything."
She wanted vengeance. But so did I. Sometimes the Lord understands you beating him to the punch. "Got it, breaking out the gun from your desk."
"No, bring everything. I mean it."
There was no curse strong enough in Hebrew, Armenian, Arabic, Russian, or English to express my shock. God have mercy on this demon. Mother Eunice Bethany just gave me permission to become an avenging angel, with no limits on my violence. For a peacenik like her, that was an about face of major proportions.
"Will do. ALL hands will come. Trust us. We'll get the kid back." Lindsey was already calling off the phone on my desk, summoning up the Western and Inter-mountain offices she worked most closely with. That was her turf, so she would have better luck cajoling them into moving.
There was one last thing I had to say. "Beths. I won't stop until we have Amber back. Okay?"
She was crying again. "God forgive me...."
Silence followed by disconnection's clicking noise. There is a fire axe above my desk on the wall. Two fast steps and it was in my hands, with a satisfying whistle before that wall became kindling. Amid the ruin, there was a cloth wrapped staff, covered in cobwebs and dust. More noise greeted my removing it from its abode. Beths told me to unleash all I had. This was not all, just the weapon of final choice, the one I saved for true emergencies.
While it felt good to have this item back, there was more needed. One such item was yet to be retrieved. Cathay was no longer crimson, but pink. What I held already was anathema to her kind. She could feel the power, even if she had no clue as to which relic I'd lain hands upon. She may be a nun, but the demon in her fears such things. For her, this was something far more scary than my guns.
Speaking of which, the axe went back with me to Beths' desk. The lower right hand drawer got eighty-sixed fast, freeing my peacemaker from its prison. And the rings of keys to my war lockers. Not that a lock would have kept me from any of them, they just kept me honest. Most times.
Cathay was making the East Coast and Southland calls, so I took the Midwest. Which contained the hardest call of them all. Amber was the Chicago District head's granddaughter. I took that one first, even as I saw my partner texting and calling at the same time to haul in the headquarters troops.
"EPA, Special Division, Region Five. How may I assist you?" Bubble-headed voice of some peroxide blonde. I gave her three months in the field. Tops.
"Get James Blair. This is Tanner in Washington."
"I'm sorry, Mister Blair is in an important meeting...." That adjusted my estimate downwards. I like to think I am a bit of a legend. Or infamous, at least.
"Ring him anyway." Abrupt interruptions tend not to frazzle new comers, she was no exception.
"Sir, there is a very important meeting today, and he left instructions not to be disturbed." She then made her deadly mistake. "You will have to wait."
I counted to five, which only made me think she might last a minute in the field before her partner fed her to some undead thing.
I took a new course to blow through her. "This is TROY Tanner, his ex-partner. I am in HEADQUARTERS, and am thinking of requesting you as my next partner."
Losing three partners in one week gives you a reputation that even new hires and draftees hear about during orientation.
She'd heard of me, alright. The stammer of fear was there now. "I'm so so.. so.. sorry...sir. He... He .. is in a mee mee meeting with the Eff... efff..."
Oh, Hell. "Break in, tell Sowa and Blair I'm on the horn. Better still, just slide the phone into the room and yell that, then run. That is the office SOP, right?"
"I I I can't. Its an im im important meh meh meeting." If her partner was wise, she'd be shot before they left the office.
"Girl, Mother Eunice Bethany is in trouble. Tell them that. Then duck and cover."
That name got a bell rung. She had to be very new to remember who was in charge that fast. "Yes sir. But Mister Blair said..."
"Girl, you cannot be fired from CRAPP. Its a life sentence. Just break in, and pray I don't file your transfer paperwork." It was cruel, but I had to educate her fast this time. Normally, I break that news to them gently, over a beer and lunch, with a psychiatrist on standby.
Took only two minutes, most of which was either her screwing up her courage or James Blair tearing her a new one. Then the old man's gravel voice rumbled from the earpiece. "You better be dead, dying, or will be soon."
"Cancel the vacation planning. All hands to Boise. Beths took Amber on an Eval trip, it went south. Big time. Amber is MIA and I think Beths is tore up pretty bad." Knowing James, getting the news over fast was best.
"My granddaughter is missing?" Stunned softness, with the slam of a chair in the background. Alec Sowa is our FBI liaison agent. And Amber's fiancee. That bit set him off, and he was normally a cool customer. Unless he had a demon gnawing on his leg.
"Demon they went after took her, that's all I know. I'm fast tracking the response in from here. Grab your pickups, all the ammo you can and bust your butts getting to Boise. All Hands, per Beths." The mention of the pickup got his mind going again.
"You remember the last time we took my pickup out? All that paperwork?"
"Good times. Worth every tree we killed." Technically, James is both my senior and not under my command. I gave him the order anyway. "Get the other Midwest offices rolling west. Spin up that medical crew we have in Denver, I'm not sure how bad Beths is..."
Nice thing about Blair, once he moves, you can fire and forget him. "Well, there goes our fishing trip. Alec call Denver and Boise, I need info, now." Ignoring me was his way of signing off. "I know, I really wanted to get that Volkswagen eating catfish too. Now shut up, and lets get Amber back."
God help him if Beths recovered and found out he was poaching on the New Orleans office's cases again. I hung up. James sounded more upset over the fishing trip lost, but I knew him better than that. The old man would come ready to hunt bears, if needed to get Amber back.
Beth's notes were on the desk, so I took a look over them, and faxed them to James. As each sheet came out, Jen's hand grabbed it to fax to other offices. I never noticed when she showed, but she is a kind of psychic. She had to be that or psycho to deal with our crew and the jobs we get. Amber was her friend as well, and as the leader of the fashionista squad, her, Amber and Cathay, the gal would feel the need to be here for her friend. Those ladies aimed to have us be the sharpest dressed offices in all of government. I just wished they would let me be about jeans and flannel shirts. I like my comfort.
About that moment, Jim Young wandered in. He was our last boss, and another of my former partners. Some days, I think that the brass uses surviving me as the test to see who gets to be boss. At least for the last decade or so. Before that, things were more obscure.
