Page 83 of Aberrant Monsters
Celine took Archie’s seat. “It looks like we’ll be waiting for our coffee, then?”
* * *
A new coffeemachine gurgled away on the counter while Dottie, now unplugged, had a new home on Nandi’s desk. She was making the most of her ability to be heard by being excessively vocal.
At one point she burst into song. Archie made a growling sound, got up, stalked over to her, and began rubbing the side of the machine as if he was trying to summon a genie.
“Get off me,” Dottie cried.
“What are you doing?” Nandi asked him.
“Getting the damn amplification mark off so she can shut the hell up again.”
“Get off me, you spectral monstrosity!” Dottie said. “I told you he was mean, didn’t I, Nandi? Selfish and mean, that’s what you are.”
“Enough!” I slammed my palms on the table. “Archie is not selfish and mean, he just has less of a threshold than us when it comes to Celine Dion tracks, okay.”
Nandi gave me a wide-eyed look and then rolled her lips into her mouth to stifle her laughter.
“You don’t like my singing?” Dottie asked in a small voice.
I would not be made to feel guilty for saving my eardrums from abuse. “We’re trying to work. It’s distracting.”
“But you have the radio on sometimes, and—”
“Your voice sucks,” Archie said. “Okay, there, I said what everyone else in the room is thinking.”
Dottie went quiet.
Nandi glared at Archie.
I covered my face with my hands. Dottie was part of the team, whether I liked it or not, and Archie was invaluable. I had to make this work.
I dropped my hands from my face and beamed at Dottie. “I get it. You’ve been cooped up in here alone most of the time, unable to communicate with anyone but Nandi. You need to let off some steam, so come out with us tonight.”
“What?” Nandi and Archie said in unison.
“Out?” Dottie’s voice trembled. “Out, out. As in, to the club with you guys out?”
“Yes. You can talk as much as you want, sing along to the tracks they play, maybe even make some new friends.”
“This is insane,” Archie said. “You can’t take a coffee machine to a club.”
“Why not?” Nandi asked. “You think anyone at Underdog would bar a ghost trapped in a machine? I guarantee they’ve seen worse.”
We all looked at one another.
“So I can come?” Dottie’s voice trembled with hope and excitement.
“Fuck it.” Archie threw up his hands. “I’ll carry you.”
* * *
And that’show we ended up at Underdog with a coffee machine jiggling about to the latest track while Archie did his invisible thing and held her aloft so it looked like she was dancing.
The club was two stories of epic. Several small bars dotted the building, and the stairs were backlit to avoid people falling on their faces when intoxicated. The music was a mix of the latest tracks interspersed with golden oldies, which meant there was something for everyone. No one batted an eye at the creature with extra arms, or the disembodied head with only one eye that was floating about. No one shied away from the girl with hair that looked like snakes, or the boy with crusty lizard hands. And people gravitated to the possessed coffee machine with the cool dance moves and a voice that didn’t sound half as bad when drowned out by loud music.
Everyone was welcome here and it felt good to let my hair down, to just have fun for a bit instead of worrying about Telarion or the next case, or the eldritch that was still loose in the city. Nope, not thinking about it.
