His vision going dark, Mike closed his hand around the hilt of the dagger, hoping that he was right and that this wasn’t actually Beth. With a single swipe, he sliced cleanly through Beth’s wrist and fell to the floor, gasping for air. Beth’s hand spasmed for a moment, then crumbled into a pile of sand before his eyes.
He hadn’t been expecting that.
“Oh shit!” he yelled, then got to his feet and slashed wildly at Beth’s other hand when she reached for him. The pile of sand on the floor moved toward her and merged with her foot. Beth’s hand now grew back, and she flexed it experimentally, her eyes never leaving his.
“Answer the door, Mr. Radley.” She moved toward him, her face expressionless and her hands reaching. Mike slashed again with the dagger, spilling sand everywhere. It climbed up his body and into his mouth and eyes, causing him to cough and stumble around until he fell to the floor. She grabbed him by his shoulders and lifted him free of the ground to slam him into a nearby wall.
Cecilia phased through the front door, hair billowing wildly behind her and her white eyes wide with rage. The temperature dropped, causing frost to form on the walls and floor. Mike dropped the dagger and stuck his fingers in his ears.
The banshee screamed, and Beth’s features rippled, sand blowing off her skin and filling the room like a miniature dust storm. Cecilia floated closer to Beth, her arms stretched wide and her body aglow with fey magic as she continued to scream.
Beth’s features blurred further, sand now flowing off her body in torrents. Her arms had thinned out to the point that Mike was able to break free and drop to the floor. Once there, he picked up the knife, his unprotected ears now ringing with Cecilia’s scream. He stumbled to his feet and made a run for the back door. He wasn’t going to win this fight on his own, and when he looked back, he saw Cecilia fade from view.
“Mike!” Naia stood on the edge of her fountain, lines of worry written on her face. Zel stood at the other edge of the fountain, a waterskin in one hand and a vial in the other. Several vials had been laid next to each other on the rim, and the centaur paused, concern on her face.
“She’s made of sand!” Mike shouted at them as the back door ripped free of its hinges. Beth walked out, a maelstrom of whirring sand following close behind to form up along the back of her body. “Someone made a copy of Beth out of sand. How do we stop sand?”
“That’s actually a homunculus,” Zel stated as she grabbed her vials, then galloped away around the back of the house. Mike circled the fountain, the dagger held in front of him. He needed a plan but couldn’t think straight. His ears were still ringing from Cecilia’s scream.
“Mike.” Naia was by his side, her hand on his wrist. “Get her in the water.”
He nodded and got in the fountain with her. Beth’s eyes were focused on Mike, her hands clenching and unclenching mindlessly as she approached. When she stepped into the fountain, tiny spheres of water rose into the air, circling the homunculus like angry birds. Beth swatted them away from her face, causing large chunks of her flesh to vanish into the magical, swirling orbs.
“Hold on to me,” Naia told him, then threw her arms around his torso. Already, he felt the swirling current on his legs, threatening to suck him under. He held on to the nymph, the waters of the fountain churning beneath his knees and forming a large vortex. Beth’s body thinned out, the water sucking away her sandy exterior. She fell apart like a sandcastle blasted by ocean waves and vanished beneath the surface. The brackish water circled the fountain, and a muddy pair of hands kept grabbing at the rim, the homunculus trying to pull itself to safety.
“What are you doing?” Mike asked, his shoes and socks ripped free of his feet by the current. If Naia hadn’t been holding him, he would have been sucked under as well.
“Getting rid of the trash,” she said, her eyes flashing. A large, watery orb formed at the fountain’s edge, the spinning waters pulling the contents of the fountain into the air. Multiple hands formed and emerged from the sphere but then were sucked back inside. A large, distorted face formed inside of the water, opening its sandy maw to scream silently at them.
“Holy shit,” Mike muttered, watching the sphere float out over the backyard. A thin stream of water blasted itself into one of the nearby drains, and the high-pressure stream forced the remains of the homunculus into the small vent in the ground. The drain backed up, the sand trying once again to form into a human.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Naia told it, her face screwed up in concentration. Tendrils of water formed above them and blasted the drain with tremendous pressure, her fountain emptying itself at a rapid pace.
“That should buy us plenty of time,” Naia told him, her eyes on the drain. It was now bent in the middle, and not a single grain of sand could be seen nearby it. Zel reappeared, holding a large potted plant. Her muscles strained as she lowered it over the drain, plugging it from above.
“Is it gone?” Mike asked.
“Nope. It’s in the sewer system now and will probably clog up a waste treatment plant before coming back eventually.” Naia let out a sigh. “It was the only thing I could think of doing. I just hope it buys us some time.”
“Well, it was better than anything I had planned.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Thanks for saving me.”
She beamed. “Of course, lover. But the question you should be asking yourself right now is this: If someone made a homunculus that looks like Beth, what happened to Beth?”
The implication hit Mike in the chest like a truck, and he opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by the sound of screeching tires and splintering wood.
The stolen car slid sideways on the street, and Beth let out another scream, clutching the door handle for dear life. So far, the ride to Mike’s house from Beth’s apartment had been an utter nightmare, with Lily dodging through traffic, at one point taking a side street to avoid a cop that Beth never saw, all the while filling Beth in on a tale that was too fantastical to make any sort of sense.
Apparently, monsters were real and lived among mankind. That much she got, and for whatever reason, Mike’s home was full of them. Beth had been inside the home dozens of times over the last year and had never once spotted any sign of life. Every neuron in her brain told her to run from Lily the first chance she got, to flee the city and seek refuge somewhere where Lily, Mike, or even the Historical Preservation Society could never find her.
However, she had just escaped a mirror world where she had fucked a demon, had watched her intern grow a tail to shatter a window, and was currently screaming at the top of her lungs while Lily forced the car to slide sideways through an intersection, traffic narrowly missing them on both sides. One of the side mirrors was gone when Lily straightened the vehicle, shards of metal and plastic dangling from the car door.
“How?” It was all Beth could say, her heart beating so fast that she had one hand firmly planted on her own sternum. She was riding a rollercoaster of adrenaline, and her brain was officially numb.
“I have supernatural reflexes,” Lily answered with a smirk, taking the car onto the sidewalk and through a park. It was early enough that they crossed the large field with no trouble, the tires screeching when they met back up with pavement on the other side. Beth could see the long trail of mud streaked on the road behind them.
They were in the old part of town, steadily climbing the hill to where the Radley house awaited them. She could see its familiar turrets, make out the large stone walls at the end of the street. The neighbors rarely asked questions about the house, and it suddenly occurred to Beth that it was strange that they had never once dropped by, even out of curiosity. She knew she would have.
“Almost there,” Lily told her, yanking the wheel and making the car drift. The stone lions on top of the entryway stared stoically at the sky, and Lily pushed the pedal to the metal, tires screeching as they jumped the curb and climbed the sidewalk.
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“There’s a driveway!” Beth yelled, suddenly aware of the two figures standing in front of the house. A black woman in a white outfit and Sebastien, the society’s attorney. The black woman turned to look at them, mouth open in surprise, then she ran across the yard, something long and thick trailing behind her, to take refuge behind some bushes. Sebastien, however, tried to limp out of the way before Lily adjusted the car’s trajectory, slamming the car into him and sending him flying. Patches of dirt and grass flew into the air as the car spun out of control before slamming into the front porch. Beth’s face met the airbag that had deployed, and all she could see was a dark, narrow tunnel.
The whole world no longer seemed to make sense, not since last week when she had lost a day. She had heard of lucid dreaming before. Was it possible this was all a dream? In the distance, she heard her mother calling her. She was going to be late to school.
“Mom, I’m tired.” Beth’s words were nothing more than grunts, but the sentiment was there.
“Beth! Get out!” Lily shouted, then slapped her across the face. The sting snapped Beth out of her trance, and she opened her eyes.
“You hit that guy…,” Beth replied, her words barely coherent. “With the car.”
“And if we were lucky, we killed him. Hurry up!” Lily unbuckled Beth, pulling her across the driver’s seat. Part of the porch’s roof had collapsed on top of the car, shingles sliding out onto the grass. Beth staggered in small circles before Lily’s steady hand pushed on her lower back.
“Are those sticks?” Beth asked, staring at the large number of squiggly lines that were coming to the surface of the yard. No, not sticks. These things hissed and had teeth. Definitely not sticks. Maybe she had fallen back asleep? She was going to be so late to class.
“Inside, now!” Lily shoved Beth up what was left of the stairs, the wood cracking beneath them. Together, they pushed open the front door and collapsed into the front entryway.
Panting on the hardwood floor, Beth heard footsteps coming toward her.
“Beth?” Mike knelt in her field of view, one hand behind his back. His face was full of both hope and doubt, and she noticed he was keeping his distance.
“This one’s the real deal,” Lily said, getting to her feet.
Mike stared at the intern, his mouth agape.
“Hey there, Romeo.”
“Lily?!” In an instant, Mike’s body language changed. He wrapped his arms around Lily, pulling her into a tight embrace. Beth noticed the hesitation, but Lily eventually gave in and returned the affection. “Oh my God, Lily, I’m so glad to see that you’re okay.”
“I’m okay too,” Beth groaned. Her head felt like it had cracked on the inside and her brains were starting to flow out her forehead. If enough fell out, she was going to fail her algebra test. She tried to stand, but the room dimmed, and she lost her balance and fell back on her butt. She looked at Mike, then Lily, then noticed movement by her own feet. She looked down and saw the creepy doll that Mike had given her.
The doll gave her a little wave.
“Oh, fuck it,” Beth muttered, letting the darkness in. She fell backward, dimly aware that someone was calling her name.
Kali stared at the car that had been rammed into the front porch of the house. Steam came from the hood, a mist that floated into the air and bounced off the protective spells on the home. She laughed, walking toward the wreckage. Her snake slithered behind her, curious if there would be something to eat.
“Clever boy,” she said, kicking at what was left of a pile of sand. Her phone rang, and she pulled it out of her pocket.
“Un-fucking-believable!” Sebastien screamed in her ear. “What just fucking happened?”
“You got hit by a car,” Kali said, trying to hide the mirth in her voice.
“How? By who?”
Kali wondered if Sebastien’s mustache was twitching, his face red like a cherry. “The estate agent. She got pulled out by someone else, and they are both inside now. I’m guessing that your homunculus failed?”
“I can’t fucking tell from here. It’s been so long since I’ve been in my own body that I’m all disoriented.” She heard the clatter of furniture being scattered. “I’ll be back as soon as I can get the necessary ingredients together to recompose myself. I need you to scoop as much of the sand back together as you can.”
“I’m sure you’ll be back soon enough.” Kali kicked lightly at the sand, scattering it even farther across the yard. “I guess I’m curious how you could have gotten so sloppy. You cloned the agent but left her alive?”
“I pushed her into the mirror demon’s prison,” Sebastien hissed. “There’s no way she should have escaped.”
“Then I guess Elizabeth was right. Mike Radley does possess the devil’s own luck.” Kali looked up at the house, suddenly hungry. “I’m going to enjoy taking him apart and finding out how he ticks.”
“Don’t you do anything without me!” Sebastien hung up.
Kali grinned at the sandy mess in front of her, then turned away. She had better things to do than gloat. Cracking her knuckles, she set to work once more on undoing the geas. Before Sebastien had arrived, she had found a particular flaw in the magic, a giant metaphorical crack that she felt like exploring. Focusing her magical energy, she drove it forward like a wedge, pushing hard against the fabric of reality itself.
Her phone rang. Letting out an exasperated sigh, Kali answered it. “Yes?”
“Did it work?” Daryl asked. It sounded like he was inside a car. Daryl typically rode in the back of a town car, his driver a zombie. Where Sebastien was gifted in making life from nothing, Daryl was equally gifted in returning life to dead flesh.
“Of course not.”
A soft chuckle over the phone. “Well, then I guess I will move ahead with a plan of my own.”
“Do what you must. If you don’t mind, I’m busy.” Kali hung up the phone and slid it into her pocket. She had no idea what his plan was and didn’t care. She focused her attention on the magical crack once more.
This time, when she struck it, it sounded like thunder.
THE LABYRINTH
Daryl stood outside the apartment, staring up at the windows above the garage door. A quick phone call had gotten him Mike Radley’s phone records, which showed that he had ordered pizza from a local place. It had been no easy matter tracking down the delivery girl. Luckily, she worked several jobs around town and was well known by name at more than a few establishments.
Those who knew her also knew her story. Apparently, her girlfriend had died in a terrible motorcycle accident. They had scraped what was left of Alex Winters off the highway, leaving behind grieving parents and a closed-casket funeral. It had been easy enough to delve into Alex’s records to learn that her bike had been purchased at a scrapyard and then delivered here. Seeing the car registered to her parked in the driveway, he was thrilled that his search was over.
He wasn’t a hundred-percent certain that Dana had even been inside the Radley house, but he had to try. Kali was determined to dismantle the geas herself, and Sebastien had already gone rogue with some scheme regarding the attorney. Neither of them had been willing to accept help, so he was here on a hunch, hoping that Mike had been naive enough to allow her in during those first couple of days in his new home.
He didn’t bother knocking—a quick flick of the wrist and the locked door allowed him entry. His movements were quiet, his soft footfalls barely registering on the concrete floor. Early light leaking through the windows provided the only illumination.
For him, it was enough. He could see everything clearly in shades of gray, even in the darkest shadows of the garage.
Daryl pondered the mostly finished motorcycle in the middle of the bay. It was nearing completion as far as he could tell, and he touched the exposed chrome with his fingertips.
The sudden chill throu
gh his hand caused him to yank it away. Crouching, he examined the bike. It had been meticulously restored, but he could see the areas where the metal had been pounded out, paint reapplied, and new parts installed. He let his hand hover over the bike, feeling the shift in temperature once more.
It was the signature of a young life cut short, a remnant of Alex Winters’ abrupt departure from this world. Fascinated, Daryl allowed his fingers to roam, brief flashes of a wet highway and bright headlights filling his mind. He traced the sensations, wondering if he could somehow find the soul of Alex Winters.
No. At the edge of the spiritual imprint, he felt the severed thread left behind by a soul that had crossed over. Once Death cut that thread, the departed were beyond Daryl’s ability to revive.
Standing, Daryl looked around. He had seen Dana’s car in the driveway so had assumed she would be home. The loft looked like a great place to start. Before climbing the stairs, he reinforced the spell that muted his movements, the shadows gathering beneath his feet. The last thing he wanted was to let the girl know he was in her home and scare her off.
Putting his weight on the stairs, he felt them creak beneath his feet. The spell absorbed the sound nicely, the apartment filled only with the sounds of songbirds waking up outside. Climbing the stairs, he kept a careful watch for any movement from up above. He held his wand behind him, the magical energy gathering in his wrists, begging to be released.
The loft had some furniture, a fridge, and a bathroom. Daryl walked into the bedroom area and frowned at the bed. A large footlocker had been placed on her mattress, and he tried to open it, but it was locked. He sliced his finger on something sharp and stuck it in his mouth. Unless she’d locked herself inside, she wasn’t there either. He knelt to look under the bed. Nope, not there either.
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