The Arbiter
Copyright© 2025 by James Girvan
Chapter 42
We drove back to the camp in silence, Robbie’s knee bouncing with nervous or angry energy. With the ‘spare’ tire (donut) on, trying to get the shitbox up the gravel road was a bad idea, so I parked it at the turn-in and we walked the rest of the way.
Patty ran ahead, presumably to talk to Grace. Robbie was walking with Sarah and it was odd to see her comforting him for a change; reaching over to rub his back and neck while he rolled his shoulders like a fighter readying himself for a fight. Grace met us at the fire pit, her hands on her hips. “What the hell are you up to Albio?” She snapped out angrily.
“Just a coincidence, we went into town for lunch just to get away for a while and stumbled into a bar-b-cue at the local school.” I replied evenly, wondering what her issue was.
“Patty is all spun up over that little girl again. You told me it was nothing, what’s with all the interest all of a sudden?” Grace snarled. Patty was hanging back behind her leader, unconsciously touching her throat where a necklace would be if she was wearing one.
“Look, I just came across an open door with this guy working in a similar closet to what we found in the portal. I noticed some other ... things? ... they were similar to what we saw in the portal and it got us interested in this guy. Just by luck we ended up following him until he pulled over to his driveway. I assigned Footman here to go have a look, and you should have a look at what he found.
I motioned Robbie to continue. “He had this and other ... stuff from a kid in a bag by his couch. He was fondling it and himself at the same fucking time.” He cursed, pulling the necklace from his pocket. Tina snatched it up and pulled out the other one from earlier, comparing the two.
“They’re really similar, but these medallions at the clasp are different. This one is St.Nicholas, patron Saint of children,” she said, holding up the necklace Robbie had found at the house “ ... and this is St.Michael, patron Saint of Justice, and soldiers.” she finished, holding up the necklace from the Portal. The two were passed around the newly assembled crowd, popping into and out of inventories (well, one did) and eliciting comments on similarities and differences.
“You know your Saints then?” I asked, she didn’t seem the type.
“Yeah, all sorts of folk end up in Catholic school. Some of them are even well-behaved god-fearing Catholics!” She replied.
I bit back a reply about them probably not bare-backing it cowgirl style on a dick that didn’t belong to their boyfriend, but I was thinking it.
“It’s not the only thing that was similar enough to raise an eyebrow. There’s others.” I didn’t want to pass the dirty magazine over for some reason I couldn’t explain. “Footman has a reason to look in on him again, we just wanted to confirm that the necklaces were the same.”
“Well; they’re not, so where does that leave you?” she asked with a audible roll of the eyes.
“He’s still of interest here,” I clarified before turning back to Robbie. “ ... did we see flyers for this missing kid? Think we can see it clearly enough on one of those?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” was Robbie’s useless answer.
“You can’t just take action based on some jerk whacking off to a gold necklace. For all you know he just really gets off on St.Nick or even just gold.” Grace intoned, like she was delivering a verdict. The rest her Weapons suddenly lost interest and wandered off, the show being over for now (I guess)
“If I drove you to the gas station, say to pump up the flat tire do you think you could hoof it over to that place again?” I asked Robbie; personally unwilling to let this drop as quickly as Grace and the others had.
“Yeah, it’s about two miles but I could get there.” His voice had a cold edge, and I reminded myself that I didn’t know him all that well.
There wasn’t much to say at this point. I let it be known to Grace (through Tina) that we were driving back to town to get gas and pump up the flat tire. Grace’s only response was apparently “Don’t get involved...”
The three of us drove to the ‘Needham’s gas station’. Seems to be a trend about here with that name. When we were on the way there I started pulling things he might use.
“What’s this?” He asked, palming a small bottle that I had taken ages ago, it had a skull and crossbones on it and I’d swiped it a while back, thinking it was too dangerous-looking to leave behind with a convict. “ ... holy fuck...” he must have read the description.
As I recalled it read something like this: ‘Aqua Mortis: Life is short, make it shorter! Contains five doses: once cap is removed it cannot be replaced, but who would want to anyways! Contact sport friendly!’
“You want me to use this?” Robbie asked, incredulously.
“No, but I want you to have options.” I replied, and for some reason my mind jumped to how this would fit well with the ’Revenant’ Spell book I still had a hold of. “Honestly I think it’s too awful to leave out there in the wind, so I picked it up so I could control it.”
“You got other stuff as bad as this?” He asked.
“Mr. Footman, you have no idea just how nasty some of the kit I have in my bag could be.” I sighed.
“You gotta tell me about it some time!” He replied with a face that looked like he going to enjoy this.
“I know you think you’d like it, but you won’t. I’d rather never have known that the portal system once gave someone a ‘fire spear’ but the ‘Fire’ property only works against other humans, or a ring that gives you +1 Strength, but you can never take it off; oh yeah, and it changes your gender too. Those aren’t even the weirdest or worst.”
“Huh...”
Robbie was processing this for a few moments so I added in “Want a fire shield that damages your opponent when they strike you, but but feels like it’s burning the F outta you the whole time you’re using it? Me neither and I already sold that one back to the Portal Store anyways.”
“Wait! You can sell things to the Portal Store? That interface doesn’t even show up for me!”
I glanced back at Sarah in the back seat; she was obviously listening but as usual for her, staying silent.
“Always could, maybe it only pops up if you’ve got something to sell? I dump a lot of trash for a Silver or two in there.” I replied, pulling in to the station near the compressed air pump. “This is your stop. Get there, gather information we’ll decide for ourselves what to do once we’re sure one way or the other.” I was using the Royal ’We’ here.
“Keep an eye on Sarah, she’s hungry but won’t mention it.” was his only response before blinking out of sight. I pulled his weapons out once he left the range of my Skill and they disappeared basically the moment I let go of them.
“Alright, air in the tire, then food.” We were missing curry night at the camp tonight. My mouth was sad but my guts were happy, that stuff really plays a number on me. Turning to the girl I held out two hands. “Alright, unknown mom’n pop eatery,” I shook my left hand, “ ... or boring chain steakhouse?” I continued while shaking my right. Sarah pointed to the right hand, probably the right choice.
If you’ve ever had a dinner with a silent woman, it’s an interesting experience. I had no issue with it, simply ordering two steaks as I would like them (but one just a bit more rare than the other) then letting her choose between them when they arrived. I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me but she went for the medium rare one over the rare. Even with a collar, she wasn’t all that different from most women. The fun part was the looks I got from the other diners. Universally the men looked over with a whistfull expression; no doubt this was because their own tablemates were talking a mile a minute while picking at small salads and chicken breasts. Mine (on the other hand) was silently demolishing an eighty dollar hunk of prime rib; Cap and all.
I drove us back to the gas station; a third meal purchased and sent along with us. I’d asked for it to be in a ‘doggy bag’, and then gotten the giggles for a full minute earning reproachful stares from the ladies around me who would never get the joke. Robbie was there, and I’d picked up on a sudden agitation in Sarah’s demeanour a fair bit before he popped up on my skill. The car didn’t need gas, but I stopped and went through the motions anyways, giving him the opportunity to climb into the car (after being disarmed, of course). He waited until I’d pulled away from the pumps before he reappeared, chewing on a hunk of meat he’d torn off with his teeth.
“I wasn’t wrong. He was there, talking with another guy we saw at the school. They were drinking and recalling it ... or maybe a different girl.” He chewed for a few seconds, looking off into space seeming to barely notice the food in his mouth, damn shame since it was a good meal. “She was buried out back on the property. She’s deep but I can smell her and his dogs can too, in fact they spend a lot of time in that area. She ain’t the only one either, there’s more smells there ... all female.” Sarah was stroking his back, trying to calm him.
“His dogs gonna be a problem?” I asked. I never really liked dogs ever since I was a kid. Two incidences tainted my view of them. One was a Cocker Spaniel that had an ear infection and left scars on my wrist when I’d tried to pull her out of the front hall closet. The other was a yellow Lab that was deaf (unbeknownst to me) and I’d approached that one from behind for a hug and gotten a scar on my collarbone for my efforts.
“Nah, he trained ‘em well but I dominated them when they approached and the whole pack slunk off to the other corner of the yard.” Robbie answered matter-of-factly using the bored tone that let me know that is was probably a pack thing.
“Ok, that’s enough for me.” I sighed, “Let’s pay them a visit.”
Dogs were barking in the house when we pulled up in the yard. A second car I didn’t recognize was there too, confirming that both of ‘em were here. At least I didn’t have to go to any other places tonight.
I pulled up with a jerk, positioning the shitbox in such a way as to prevent either car from easily passing it without having to go ‘off-road’.