Page 65 of Dead Serious: Case 3 Mr Bruce Reyes

“Uh… and also with you…” I wave my hand in her direction, not really sure what I’m doing. She pulls her own hood up and, clutching a neatly wrapped package to her chest, she steps through the door and closes it behind her.

“Tristan?”

Turning around and pulling my hood back, I peer over the top of my foggy lenses to find Harrison watching me from behind the sales counter.

“Harrison, I need–”

“I’m here! Don’t panic, boo! Dusty’s got you!” Dusty’s voice rings out loudly, cutting off my sentence, and I cock my head to the side to see she’s appeared beside me.

“Dusty?” I frown. “I thought you were with Bruce. What are you doing here?”

“You sent up a bat signal.” She fists her hand on her hip and flips her hair, fixing me with a look that clearly states I should know exactly why she’s just appeared in the middle of Harrison’s shop, cutting me off mid-sentence in the process.

“I… what?”

“I’m your spirit guide, remember?” she states with an impliedDuh! “I can feel when there’s something wrong with you, and a short while ago you went into a panic the likes of which I’ve only ever seen when Ruby ate some bad sushi and almost couldn’t get her taping off in time. Then you got really mad about something, and that’s not like you. You’re one of the most placid little twinks I’ve ever known.”

“I’m not a twink.” My tone is flat.

“Sure, you’re not.” She smirks.

“Is there a reason I’m being subjected to the two of you cluttering up my shop with your inane bickering?” Harrison sighs.

“Yes. I–” Once again I’m cut off as the door opens behind me and bangs into my back. Without thinking, I spin around and grab the doorknob, poking my head around at the man trying to enter. “Sorry, we’re closed for a staff meeting. Please come back in an hour.”

The man blinks and then mutters an irritated, “Well, I never!” and walks away.

“Tristan!” Harrison scowls. “What the hell are you doing? I have a business to run, you know!”

“I’m sorry, Harrison,” I say in earnest. “I really am, but this is an emergency.”

“What is so important you felt the need to turn up with your sidekick and scare all my customers away?”

“Because there’s a chaos monster trying to get my dad,” I blurt out and Harrison stares at me silently.

Okay, that could have gone better.

“Pardon?”

“Death’s evil twin is a chaos monster with tentacles–”

“Tentacles?” Dusty interrupts, surprised, but I ignore her.

“He’s trying to cross through the magic doorway in the bookshop during a super weird eclipse, and he’s sucking up all the ghosts’ energy so he can make it rain, and he’s trying to scare my dad, plus I think he dropped a tree on my boyfriend.”

Harrison blinks slowly and the three of us stare at each other in silence. Finally, he edges out from behind the counter and crosses the shop to the door. He flips the sign toClosed, locks the door, and lowers the blinds. Turning around to face me and Dusty, he crosses his arms.

“I think you’d better start from the beginning.”

I draw in a breath. “Okay, so Death has an evil twin, which means that apparently Death is the good guy,” I begin.

“I wouldn’t saygoodexactly,” Harrison replies, “but he is necessary. Everything has its cycle—the seasons, all forms of life, whether it’s plant, animal or human. You’re born, you live, you die, your soul moves on, it evolves. It’s a delicate balance. Death takes souls whose time it is to move on, so he maintains the balance. It’s his entire purpose. So it stands to reason he’d have an opposite, a counterpart whose purpose is to disrupt that balance.”

“Exactly.” I nod, grateful we’re on the same wavelength. “Death’s opposite—we call him Chaos—is trapped on the other side of the portal in the bookshop. Bruce once told me the portal opens in shifts due to some sort of alignment.”

“Alignment,” Harrison muses as he taps his lip, deep in thought. “Which is what this upcoming eclipse is. Like you said, it’s rare, only occurring a few times a century, and it causes powerful shifts in psychic energy. No wonder Chaos wants to use it to open the portal enough to come through into our world.”

“You’ve been to the bookshop before so you know that–”