Grilled Cheese and Goblins: Adventures of a Supernatural Food Inspector

Grilled Cheese and Goblins

By Nicole Kimberling

Published by: Blind Eye Books

1141 Grant Street

Bellingham, WA. 98225

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reprduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

Cover Art by Dawn Kimberling

This book is a work of fiction and as such all characters and situations are fictional. Any resemblances to actual people or events are coincidental.

First Edition October 2018

Some of the material in this volume is reprinted by permission of the copyright holder.

Cherries Worth Getting from Irregulars (Bellingham, WA: Blind Eye Books, 2012). Copyright © Nicole Kimberling 2012. Reprinted by permission.

Magically Delicious from Charmed and Dangerous (Sheboygan, WI: JCP Books, 2015). Copyright © Nicole Kimberling 2015. Reprinted by permission.

ISBN: 978-1-935560-56-2

This book is dedicated to Tommy Jordan.

(Yeah, that checks out.)

Author’s Note

Special Agent Keith Curry of NIAD is only one of many, many characters in the shared-universe property of the Irregulars.

Several other wonderful creators have expanded and enriched the world. Ginn Hale, Josh Lanyon and Astrid Amara have all contributed novellas to the original volume (Irregulars, Blind Eye Books, 2012).

Tommy Jordan produced an audio-drama podcast featuring Special Agent Keith Curry’s daily case files—as explored by his twelve-year old cat sitter—called Lauren Proves Magic Is Real! (available for free on iTunes and SoundCloud). Tommy is also writing and producing the forthcoming podcast set in the Irregulars world, Silver-Tongued Cypher.

If you like what you read here then please check out my fellow creators’ amazing works.

Cherries Worth Getting

"We must not look at goblin men,

We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed

Their hungry thirsty roots?"

—Christina Rossetti, The Goblin Market

For reasons unknown to Agent Keith Curry, food carts proliferated on the mostly rainy streets of Portland, Oregon, like they did in no other city in North America. Their awnings sprang up like the chanterelles in the Pacific Northwest forest, sometimes filling an entire parking lot.

Keith preferred visiting these eateries because many had permanently rented parking spaces and settled down like oysters cementing themselves in place. The parking lot near his hotel supported one of these colonies, so he thought it might be as good a place as any to begin his investigation, though he didn’t expect to find much.

Rarely did venues like these serve human flesh.

Hidden places, places with concealed entrances, front businesses with makeshift kitchens, art galleries—he found contraband in places like these, but the average health-department-certified cart?

Probably clean as a whistle.

Keith stepped up to the cart—a converted Airstream that sold nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches—and ordered a Kindergartner—American cheese on white bread. A slight vibration came from his wrist and he glanced down at his watch. It was a prototype designed to alert a human wearer of the presence of extra-human beings. Now the numeral seven shone blue, which indicated that a faerie had come within fifty feet of him, setting off his proximity alarm. Briefly, he scanned the people queueing up to the food carts, wondering which customer hid a fae nature. Business heels lady? Sparkly hippie juggler, busking? Little blond kid eating a snow cone? It could be any of them—or maybe all of them. Probably more than one faerie was abroad, actually, this close to the upscale condos in the Pearl District. Faeries didn’t concern him this time around. What he needed to watch for was the red three that indicated the presence of goblins.

He returned his attention to the amiable, bearded guy currently buttering the bread that would shortly become his sandwich.

You mind if I ask you a question? Keith asked.

Go right ahead. The bearded guy slapped the bread down on the food cart’s small but impeccably clean flatiron and applied the cheese.

Do you know where a guy can find any flesh joints around here?

The cook laughed. There’re too many strip joints to count, man. Just google ‘stripper.’ You can get any kind you want.

I don’t mean naked ladies. I mean bloody protein.

The cook looked up at him in mild disdain. Not really my style.

Not that into meat? Keith asked casually.

Not into performance art shit, the cook replied. I believe in cooking food, not eating it raw in front of a smoke machine while some pretentious dick plays lame beats.

So you’ve never been to the Theater of Blood Carnivore Circus?

One of my buddies went to it, but I don’t really remember where he said it was. Like I said, it’s not my thing.

Do you think I could convince you to call him and ask? I’m only in town for a few days and I want to experience the entire Portland food scene before I put up my report.

At this the bearded guy perked up.

You a food critic or blogger or something? He handed Keith the sandwich. It smelled amazing—like something his mom would have served alongside a bowl of canned tomato soup.

Or something. Keith winked. Generally speaking, restaurant reviewers did not reveal themselves to people whom they were to review. The grilled cheese guy understood this and nodded sagely.

If I call him, he might remember.

I’d appreciate it. Keith took a bite of his sandwich, made a show of savoring it before pronouncing, Delicious.

You should try it with our spiced turkey. The cook tilted a pan to show him half of a roasted bird, concave rib bones visible. Just roasted it with harissa and preserved lemon. Want a sample?

Keith’s stomach lurched slightly, as it always did these days when he saw a carcass.

He held up a hand in refusal. None for me, thanks. I’m a vegetarian.

Keith ate his sandwich and the grilled cheese guy phoned his friend, who came up blank. Too drunk, he said, to remember where he’d been. But he’d seen the poster for the show when he’d been clubbing downtown. Maybe, he said, it was still there. Keith thanked the cook and headed east, walking the length of the central business district to reach the Willamette River. Huge clubs of every persuasion, including gay clubs like CC Slaughters and Silverado, dominated the streets. Since it was lunchtime, few were open.

Portland’s old town, like every other urban center in the midst of being gentrified, was a perfect combination of swank and sleazy. Genuine homeless alcoholics loitered on sidewalks next to trust fund students merely posing as alcoholics. Wingtips mingled with Converse.

The combination of Portland’s art, music and food scenes made it the perfect place to hide a blood orgy. Even when civilians happened upon the carnage, they often simply believed it had to be some kind of performance. Keith had investigated orgy sites where there had been twenty or more witnesses all standing and watching some victim being dismembered just because a cameraman was filming it. The presence of a camera implied fiction and a sense that some authority was in control.

That was right, at least. But few spectators ever asked themselves who that authority might be.

Keith didn’t blame them—the spectators. They couldn’t know how many monsters existed in the world. Hell, his own agency, NIAD, went out of the way to make sure they didn’t know. The NATO Irregular Affairs Division, often simply called the Irregulars, had been tasked with the duty of policing other-realm traffic, beings and artifacts.

NIAD policed NATO territories, providing justice for the wronged and infrastructure for the hundreds of thousands of unearthly refugees, members of the diaspora and émigrés who now lived hidden within NATO borders.

The array of agents employed by the department included rumpled old magicians, witches in business suits and faerie lawyers as well as a wide variety of extra-human consultants. But the people who did most of the work were regular old human agents, like him.

Keith turned onto SW Stark Street and walked slowly, scanning the brick facades for arcane symbols hidden in the graffiti. He pulled his NIAD-issue glasses from their case and put them on. Through the enchanted lenses, he could now see that a few faint faerie signs marked the first building he passed. They were remarkably like hobo signs: circles, slashes and arrows indicating what a passing extra-human might encounter. The building directly in front of him was marked with symbols indicating that cream was left out.

Not surprising. It was an ice cream parlor. But Keith noted it all the same. If the owners left product out intentionally to feed passing extra-humans, they might have some other-realm connections. If this had been New York or Boston, the whole bottom six inches of the building would have been scribbled with vulgar Gaelic epithets left by leprechaun gangs. Here only a couple of marks had been left at ankle level, and they looked like elf work. Apparently one could find work with a shoemaker nearby. He walked up and down the street. Here and there other spirits had left their mark. He found some ancient Japanese cursive left by displaced yokai that had been overwritten in English by a local Native American salmon spirit.

At last he came to a telephone pole plastered with flyers and handbills for various shows, crudely taped and staple-gunned over one another. One caught Keith’s eye. Carefully, he peeled aside a flyer advertising a Dykes-n-Dogs singles meetup (canine companions welcome) to reveal the words:

Theater of Blood

Carnivore Circus

One Night Only!

Lulu’s Flapjack Shack

A quick map search revealed that the restaurant was located on the city’s east side. The sun was setting now. As Keith predicted, his proximity alarm started to gently flash as more and more extra-humans emerged from their lairs, homes and office buildings. Blinking green nine: vampires. Yellow two: pixies. Red three: goblins.

Across the water, the city’s east side, with its hipster bars and award-winning restaurants, beckoned, but Keith’s days of gourmandizing were long gone. Besides, the east side of Portland was known to contain the largest naturalized goblin population in the world. If he was going to go asking questions there, he’d need backup. Preferably backup that both spoke the language and understood the treaties that existed between humans and goblins.

Because of the necessity for human flesh for certain historic goblin rituals, NIAD, in conjunction with other human governments, had struck a bargain: ten death row inmates sent to the goblin realm every year, no questions asked. In return for this, the goblins had agreed to an extradition treaty that had curbed the ability of goblin human-hunters to disappear on the wild white mountainsides of their snowy kingdom. Keith could see how, when the deal was made a century prior, it would have seemed like poetic justice to render up a sinner to the tortures of hell.

The program had been largely effective, but not completely. Certain goblins still chose to hunt human beings. The only time Keith had ever used his mage pistol against a hostile was when he’d neutralized a pair of goblin butchers in an abattoir in Chicago. He wasn’t excited about the prospect of using it again. Avoiding direct conflict, through use of the greater communication skills provided by a translator or community liaison, would provide the most desirable outcome.

At least that’s what the NIAD field operations manual assured him, and he was willing to give it a try, if only to sidestep filing the mountain of paperwork required by investigating agents who discharged even a single laser-etched incantation bullet.

He phoned the field office for backup, then headed returned to his hotel, stopping only briefly at a supermarket to purchase bread and cheese.

Keith’s room at the Mark Spencer Hotel was small and not at all hip, but it had the two things Keith needed most—a bed and a tiny kitchenette. He laid his mage pistol on the small square of counter next to the range and started dinner. He heated the warped nonstick skillet that had come with the room and laid one piece of buttered bread down in it, hearing an appealing sizzle. He added a couple of slices of Havarti and another slice of buttered bread and waited. He didn’t really watch his food so much as he listened to it—smelled it. Behind him the television let him know about events currently taking place in the Willamette Valley. There was a brewer’s festival and a triathlon, perfectly representing Portland’s twin obsessions: the culinary arts and outdoor recreation. The open window let in a pleasant summer breeze.

Keith was pondering his chances of still being in town for the brewer’s festival when he felt a slight vibration from his wrist. He glanced at his watch. The numeral three glowed red—goblins close by.

There was a knock at his door. Out of habit, Keith switched off the range and shifted his skillet off the electric element. Mage pistol in hand, he moved to peer through the fish-eye lens. Outside his door he saw a tall, well-muscled man wearing the standard black trench coat favored by their department, despite the fact that it was nearly eighty degrees outside. He had lustrous black hair and blue eyes and a jawline perfect enough to get him a job selling any men’s cologne on earth. The man smiled and held up his NIAD badge. The circular insignia of the Irregular Affairs Division gleamed dully in the yellow hallway light.

Gunther Heartman. Keith cracked his knuckles. It was a bad habit and also a tell, since he did it only when extremely irritated, but he found he couldn’t stop. Gunther worked in the San Francisco office as a field agent and member of the strike force. He also did do-gooder double duty as a community volunteer, coordinating the annual human returnee Christmas party. Held in San Francisco, this party was arranged for the benefit of humans who for whatever reason had been away from Earth for too long to be normal. Some had been hostages, others lost in amateur magic-using accidents only to be retrieved years later, addled and hopelessly out of sync with everyday human life. Still others had never lived on Earth at all and were dealing with the problem of having been repatriated against their will. It was a mixed bag of scratched and dented individuals who needed further socialization before being allowed to roam free in the general population.

Gunther had convinced Keith to come in from HQ to participate the previous year. And because Gunther was a good-looking man, Keith had been happy to oblige, on the notion that he might find opportunity to seduce him. He’d taken the red-eye from DC and six hours after landing he stood alongside Gunther, running a little table where he helped the human race’s long-lost weirdos create, decorate and ultimately eat the most disturbing Christmas cookies imaginable.

Still covered in sprinkles and colored sugar, they’d had sex for the first time. Keith had thought he was in love at the first taste of Gunther’s mouth, but he’d played it cool, returning to DC on the next flight.

Gunther had phoned him about a week later. He’d been in DC for some meeting. They’d met, screwed and parted that very night.

This pattern repeated itself a few times as the two of them casually entered each other’s orbits, only to be pulled away again the next day. That suited Keith fine for a while.

Then, just like that, Heartman had ended it.

He’d ended it just as Keith had been about to suggest that they try to see more of each other.

Keith pulled the door open, but not far enough to let Heartman enter. What are you doing here?

You called for me.

I called for a goblin linguist.

And here I am, Gunther replied. There was no one else available, so they sent me.

Keith gave a resigned sigh and pulled his NIAD-issue utility knife from his pocket. He folded the identification light out and focused the beam. Light verification please, Agent Heartman?

I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’d feel comfortable calling me Gunther. He offered his ID again.

Let’s just keep it professional. Keith shone his light across the plastic surface. Text previously invisible revealed itself, including Agent Heartman’s species: naturalized goblin.

Keith’s breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t known that, though he could see how Gunther would have failed to mention it.

Oddly, Gunther’s photograph didn’t shift under the light to show any other image. It looked just like he looked—like an actor who would have been cast to play a hot federal agent in some action film. The lean planes of his face would have photographed well from any angle. Probably even upside down.

There’s no secondary ID photo here, Keith remarked.

There wouldn’t be. I’m transmogrified. Gunther took a pack of Lucky Strike filterless from his inside pocket, folded one into his mouth, and began to chew.

It says naturalized here. Keith stared hard at the ID and then at Gunther. Was this some sort of trick? Another creature casting a masking spell to look like Gunther? Keith surreptitiously adjusted the light to pierce illusions and, without warning, flashed the light into the other agent’s face.

Gunther winced and held up a hand against the harsh white light, but his countenance remained exactly the same.

Although I am fully of snow goblin descent, I was transformed to be compatible with this world while still in utero. Gunther kept his voice low and glanced around the empty hallway as he spoke. This isn’t a glamour or masking spell or any other kind of illusion. My real body has been irrevocably reconfigured.

Right, Keith muttered. I’ve heard of that.

Gunther said, Do you think we could continue this conversation in private?

Oh, of course. Keith stepped aside.

Gunther sauntered through the doorway, sidestepped the bed and seated himself in a high-backed chair by the television. His eyes immediately homed in on the skillet.

Are you cooking grilled cheese?

I was. As Keith returned to the range and flipped his sandwich over, his deeply ingrained sense of hospitality took over and he found himself asking, Want one?

Sure. Gunther gave him a brilliant smile, showing his perfectly white teeth. I’m always hungry.

Chapter Two

Snow goblins were, for Keith’s money, the scariest looking of the species. Their pure white bodies seemed to be constructed entirely of bones, talons and teeth. Only red slits marked their eyes and nostrils. They spoke in growls. They drank pure kerosene on the rocks and called it moonshine.

Insofar as Keith knew, Gunther Heartman had never scared anyone. Not even accidentally. He was polite, well meaning and easygoing to a fault. Even when Gunther had ended his relationship with Keith—if you could describe a disjointed series of one-night stands a relationship—he’d been nice about it. I think you might still be struggling with some issues, Gunther had said, and I don’t think being with me is necessarily helping you. I don’t think I’m the right man for you. And I know you’re not the right man for me.

At the time, Keith had consoled himself by thinking that at least Gunther had had the guts to give him a real reason, instead of the old it’s not you, it’s me line. Keith had always wondered why Gunther thought he wasn’t the right man for Keith. Now he thought he knew. Not only was he not human, he was exactly the sort of extra-human American who had destroyed Keith’s previous life.

But that didn’t bear thinking about. Keith turned his attention fully back to cooking. Almost casually, he remarked, I didn’t realize that you were of goblin descent.

There’s no reason you should have.

Except that we’ve slept together at least a dozen times, Keith thought. Aloud he said, I suppose there are quite a few of you on the West Coast.

Gunther nodded. About six thousand. More than half of them were reengineered while they were still in the womb, like myself.

It’s odd that you never brought that up before, Keith said.

Is it? Gunther gave him a meaningful look, though what meaning he intended Keith to take away was not clear.

Yes, it is. Keith flipped Gunther’s sandwich. So, you’ve always looked human?

I haven’t just looked human, I’ve been human. I went to public school, ran track and got my first job washing dishes at Kentucky Fried Chicken just like everybody else. Gunther popped another cigarette into his mouth and chewed slowly. He fished in his pocket for his slim, yellow tin of lighter fluid, popped open the red safety cap, and took a swig—something he’d never done in Keith’s presence before. Thin, flammable vapor floated from his breath as he said, I enjoy being human.

I bet you do, Keith said dryly.

The other man gazed at him with a mild, pleasant smile and then said, Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem slightly uncomfortable. Is it because you just found out I’m a goblin?

No, Keith said.

Is it because of our previous relationship?

Yes. Keith took his sandwich, cut it in half and offered one plate to Gunther, who accepted it with a strange half bow. Keith took his own plate and sat on the edge of the bed.

I really didn’t mean for you to feel awkward— Gunther began.

Let’s just focus on the task at hand. Keith cut him off before he could launch into another well-meaning speech. While they’d been seeing one another, Gunther’s reflexive urge toward humane action had been one of the qualities Keith admired. Now that same quality not only irked but confused him. Did you get much of a debriefing?

Not much, Gunther said, puffing around his first mouthful of hot, gooey cheese and bread.

We’ve had three dead, butchered human carcasses here in Portland in the last six months.

Any evidence of serial killing?

Keith shook his head. FBI says you can never rule that out completely, but our informants say that human protein has appeared in a couple of different goblin venues in the city. The summer holy days are coming up. I think some members of Portland’s extra-human American community might be stocking up their pantries.

For the goblin solstice feast, you mean?

That’s right, Keith said.

And so you’re thinking that this is the work of some reactionary cadre of old-time religion goblin butchers, therefore you requested a native speaker to assist when you go talk to the community?

In a nutshell. Keith thought he sensed a certain reluctance to comply emanating from Gunther but chose not to address it. Not yet, anyway. Clearly the two of them made for a less than ideal team. But if they could get through the next couple of days, they could both go back to their respective offices on opposite sides of the continent, no harm done.

What about other known predators of humans? Gunther asked.

There are three registered vampires in the area. I’m planning to interview them as well, because there was some exsanguination present, but there’s nothing to connect them to the crimes at this moment.

So what do you have to link this to goblins? Gunther asked.

The timing and the state of the bodies. It’s circumstantial, I know, but these really look like goblin killings, Keith said, and from Gunther’s brief expression of distaste he guessed Gunther understood what he meant.

I might have something more solid soon, Keith added.

Such as?

Maybe a venue. Lulu’s Flapjack Shack hosted a show recently that has all the hallmarks of a hide-in-plain-sight blood orgy. I’m heading over there in a few minutes and I’d like you to come along.

Yes, certainly. Gunther took his remaining sandwich triangle, folded it in half, and, despite the magma-like cheese, ate it in three bites. He then said, Do you mind if we stop to get another pack of cigarettes on the way? I’m out.

Lulu’s Flapjack Shack inhabited a space that had certainly been continuously used as a hospitality venue since linoleum had been invented. Mismatched vinyl booths lined the dining room walls and small tables filled the center space, creating the feeling of being in a pastiche of all diners that had ever existed anywhere. Keith couldn’t tell if this was sophisticated and subtle interior design or the result of buying fixtures piecemeal.

According to the sign, Lulu’s was open twenty-three hours a day—the one hour closure occurring between four and five a.m.

Presumably,