Page 44 of Dead Vengeance

“No, I don’t need a badge. But I literally have no idea how to fire that thing. Or when. Or how to extract a spirit at all.”

“Okay, let’s make this fast.” His hands are shaky, and I wonder if it’s rage or lack of coffee, or both. And I don’t know why I feel guilty for that. I’m not the one who called me in here at this time of day.

Even if his hands shake, his movements are confident, emptying a packet of what looks like bullets onto the table, snapping open a side-compartment on the weapon. “These are your plasma pellets. Put them in with the tapered end facing the direction you want to shoot. Got it?”

“Um. Yep.”

He snaps the thing closed. “Point and shoot.”

“But—”

“See the cork board there?” He snaps his head towards a noticeboard hanging on the far wall, nothing but an ad for the ExorSquad job pinned there, which is kind of odd, because surely the only people who will see it are already employed here, but I’m not going to give that too much thought.

“I see it.”

“Point,” he says, with obnoxious insistence on the ‘t’, shoving the gun into my hand.

“But—”

“Point,” he repeats, louder.

“Um—”

He grabs my arm and whacks it up, so the gun is aimed at the wall. Surely he doesn’t actually want me to—

“And shoot.”

“But we’re inside!”

“Pull the trigger!”

He shouts it, and he’s bloody annoying, so I do. I click my finger back, and a bright blue-orange beam shoots across the room with a loud buzzing noise. Heat radiates from it. I feel it on my face, my arms. There’s a small wind that blows up around the office with the force of it.

I let go of the trigger in a fraction of a second, the shock of the powerful burst scaring the life out of me.

The board’s on fire, that advertisement going up in flames.

Ted sashays over like it’s absolutely nothing, picks up a fire extinguisher that’s randomly lying on the floor, and covers the wall in white foam. Then he throws it back down as if this is an everyday occurrence. “Not that hard, was it? Point and shoot.”

“But… but your office went on fire.”

He makes a dramatic shrug. “What am I supposed to do when the training room is broken? You’re the one who needs pointers on point and shoot.”

Please take me back to the Cotswolds.

Remembering why I’m doing this, which is obviously for the steady employment and not a morning with my hot client in the Cotswolds, I keep my irritation under wraps as best I can. “Okay. Sorry. Um. Thank you for the ‘training.’ And when should I—”

“Uh-uh!” In two strides he’s behind his desk again, snapping a fresh piece of paper down onto the desk. “Please sign here to say you’ve completed the advanced training module.”

“M-module? That was a module?”

“You’re going to be late,” he snipes. “Hurry up.”

I know I should probably read this before signing it. But it’s not like I haven’t signed about a thousand random work papers for about a thousand different companies over the last few years. So I give him my scribble, and just as I’m passing the pen back, the door opens behind me.

Someone new. He’s wearing the overalls, ghost logo and all. Another Spirit Extraction Specialist! My heart leaps, hoping this guy has some sense, can tell me any of what the hell is going on here.

But Ted’s already snapping out, “You’re late, Fabian. It’s six past.”