Shadow Realms

by M K Mancos

  She ended the call and turned to see me sitting on the porch stairs. She shook her head in annoyance then walked back to take a place next to me on the steps.

  “Do you have a good relationship with your parents?”

  I considered the question for a moment. “About average, I’d say. My mother is a real line walker, if you know what I mean? Never a rule broken, never a hair out of place. Always correct in the way she conducts herself. I think it’s her way to keep control in her life. And I don’t think she ever once talked about being a Doran descendant as long as I’ve been alive.”

  Kells looked up at me with large eyes. “For reals? If I had Doran blood, I’d be shouting that shit at the sky. ‘I’m a Doran witch, bitches.’”

  I laughed at her slide into vernacular and imagining my mother ever doing something so earthy. I gave a nod to the phone in her hand. “I take it that was one of your parents.”

  “Yes. They want me to come home. They just got back in country and heard all about me missing and are convinced that Rallie had something to do with it.” She shook her head. “Rallie? The one person in this whole world I know I can count on to love me and keep me safe.”

  I hit my shoulder against hers and nerves moved up into my throat, nearly making it close again. “You have me. You can count on me.”

  She let a skeptical laugh fill the air between us. “You didn’t even want to hear about my close calls with matrimony.”

  “I was kind of busy trying to keep from choking.”

  She narrowed her eyes, as if trying to decide if I told the truth or not. “Fair enough.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I’m glad you didn’t go through with it.”

  “So am I.” She rubbed her hands down her legs. “I don’t think I could marry anyone who doesn’t know about the hidden lives of witches. That magic exists, and isn’t something only in storybooks and movies.”

  The pain on her face told me more than I wanted to know in that moment. Those who’d gotten close had disappointed her. It surprised me that she trusted me as much as she did without ever having met me in person. But she knew me. Knew me the same way I knew her.

  “I take it you aren’t going home.”

  “Are you kidding? We haven’t even been to the bank to check the safe deposit box, and I believe breakfast was mentioned.”

  News at the diner wasn’t encouraging. We walked in to hear the servers and patrons all talking about the robbery overnight at the Fox Run Trust. I nearly hit the floor when I heard. Kells put her hand in mine and squeezed it as we waited to be seated.

  Truthfully, I’d lost my appetite. What I wanted more than food were details.

  Joanna, one of my regular servers, seated us in her section with eyes large and bottom lip poked out. She gave me an odd look as she placed our menus on the table and went to get our drinks.

  I had a really bad vibe going down my spine at her behavior. Very un-Joanna like. But then, I was with a woman who wasn’t my sister, and I’d never brought anyone here with me except family and Colvin. I half-hoped her reaction stemmed from jealousy and not suspicion. I’ll admit it, I was scared that someone might see the video of us walking up to the bank at closing time and then being told to leave. Most cops or feds would make the leap from being turned away to a little revenge B and E.

  Luckily, we left and had hit the municipal parking lot and were on camera there for a good chunk of time while the bugs from hell attacked. However, I wasn’t clear if the shadow beings were able to manipulate recordings.

  My gut told me not to bet against it. We were probably screwed. And Dora would be no kind of alibi.

  I figured if the police suspected us, they’d descend on the diner while we sat there and ate. We ordered and waited for our food. Sure enough, halfway through, two uniformed cops and two federal agents came into the diner and straight to our table.

  They flashed badges and introduced themselves as FBI Special Agents, Cross and Argent.

  “Malachi Sayer? Can you come with us, we’d like to talk to you about the robbery at the Fox Run Trust.” Cross put his hand in the small of his back as if about to pull his gun.

  Kells looked at me with large, frightened eyes. I put my hand over hers and patted it. “It’s all right. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She stood. “No. It’s not all right. I was with you, and if they’re going to question you, they’ll question me as well.”

  My heart swelled. She really was something else.

  Argent narrowed his cold gaze at Kells. “That’s not what we were told by the employee we interviewed.”

  “Well, the employee lied. We were both there. Pull the video from outside the bank and see for yourself.” Kells was all venom and righteous indignation. She was also going to get herself arrested if she didn’t cool down and let things play out. Man, was she a sight to behold.

  “We did. We only saw Mr. Sayer.”

  Now it was my turn to look at them with narrowed eyes. “No. She was with me. Show them your key, Kells.”

  Kells reached into her pocket and pulled out the key to the safety deposit box. “It’s to a box. We went there around closing time to collect something, but one of the employees, named Dora, told us to come back when the bank opened today. So, we left. Got attacked by bugs in the parking lot, then drove to a gas station over on that main street down the ways.”

  One of the uniformed cops raised a brow. “You’re that woman that went missing in New York City a few weeks ago.”

  “I wasn’t missing. I knew where I was the whole time,” she countered rather recklessly.

  The entire diner had turned to watch the scene unfold. I’m sure the officers and feds would have liked a more private scene to speak with us, but I kind of liked all the attention. More witnesses.

  The doors to the diner flew open and Astrid walked in. The energy in the room shifted, moved toward her as she raised her hand and swiped it in the air. The only people still moving were the two feds, us, and Astrid. Everything else ceased.

  Her red hair practically bristled with unused energy as it swarmed around her. Bright amber eyes glowed with the fires of many magical rites. She had her finger up and pointed at the agents. Who needed a wand when she wore her nails so damn long.

  “Do not even think about harassing one of my agents, Cross.” Astrid turned the words into a spell. Her stiletto heels made her seem taller than her shade under five feet.

  Cross pulled his lips back as if he was about to growl a warning like an angry dog. “Nice to see you again, Astrid.”

  Wait! They knew each other? Oh, this was rich.

  “He had nothing to do with that robbery. They were sent to retrieve a particular item left there by her grandmother.”

  “Who broke in, then? Little green fairies?” His snide remark had Astrid’s face turning red. Laser beams couldn’t have been as hot as the anger in her eyes.

  “They weren’t green and not so little.” She made a face that showed her teeth. Oh, she was going to take a bite out of him. "This is the Convention's case, not the Feds."

  Great, the shit was going to devolve into a pissing contest between the government and a world agency devoted to stopping the spread of dark magics and encroaching evil.

  Cross rolled his eyes. "The Convention isn't equipped to handle a robbery."

  She smiled as lethal as any venomous snake. "Shows how little you know of our organization."

  I didn't want to step on her toes when she was in the middle of a full-out posture, but I felt sorry for the folks she'd frozen. Cross and Argent didn't seem to give a shit either. They acted like they'd had the Astrid experience once too often to let it phase them.

  I took a breath and plunged into the mire of what appeared to be an on-going disagreement. "Look, the easiest thing to do is take us to the bank and let us get what we need out of the box then look for your culprit elsewhere. Go ahead and take my fingerprints, but I guarantee you won't find them in that particular bank. I use a c
redit union."

  Cross lifted a shoulder. "Not a bad idea, but it doesn't negate the fact we have you on tape breaking in and the vault smashed."

  Now I lifted a brow. "Smashed? Hardly the work of one man."

  Cross and Argent shared a glance. If they were willing to believe one single man could break a door to a vault, then either it was a defective door in the first place, or they actually did believe in magic.

  A look around the room, and they had all the proof they needed. None of the others in the diner had yet to move a muscle.

  "Have you ever stopped to think that maybe our cases have overlapped a bit?" Astrid's voice had gone way too sweet.

  "A bit?" Argent wasn't about to take the bait. He looked to be the harder-assed of the two. "More like manipulated to throw us off the track."

  "If we wanted to do that, we would have made sure someone else was seen on your surveillance cameras or erased the feed completely."

  An odd look came to Cross's face. His steel gray eyes considered Astrid as if seeing her for the first time. "You really do think it's one of those ghouls you're always chasing."

  "I think they wanted the grimoire in the box we were after."

  Cross let out a sigh and gave a nod. "We'll still work the scene in case you're wrong. But your grimoire is evidence."

  "You have no clue, Cross."

  Twenty-Two

  Kells

  Was it wrong of me to stand there and watch the scene unfold and think I was in a bad made-for-cable movie? My first instinct was to turn around and walk out of the diner while they all stood there discussing who got the grimoire. Evidence? I highly doubted it. Unless that was the thing the culprits were after.

  But if so, why wait until we made a play for it? Surely the shadow realms knew where the grimoire was all these years. No, I believed there was another purpose here. They might be able to bend time, but they didn't seem all that omnipotent.

  If they were, they'd have owned the human race by now.

  They needed something more from humans than a mere grimoire. If they fed off our emotions, then they did so by causing havoc and breaking through the barrier to make them stronger.

  If so, I didn't need that shit. But I'd already come this far. I had to see it to the end. Find out what was in that grimoire and if any of it could help to save Jane Porter.

  I folded my arms in front of me. "If that's it, then we have an investigation to get back to."

  As one, they looked at me as if I was going to sprout another head.

  "Stand here flapping your gums and holding your dicks all day if you want. I'm out." I made a peace sign and turned away.

  I went to get in the car. Damn, if I didn't get my breakfast, and as far as I reckoned, it was probably in the kitchen burning on the grill.

  The woman I was a year ago, hell, the one Rallie raised, would have never been so disrespectful to say what I did to federal agents, but damn they pissed me off. And if they knew Astrid and what she did, how she worked, they had no business questioning her or thinking for one moment that tape was legit.

  What kind of magic did they think Malachi possessed? And besides that, if he was strong enough to bend metal on a bank vault, why hadn't he done so before now? Their reasoning, or what I’d heard of it, made no sense. They were grasping at straws, and they knew it.

  Malachi came out of the diner. He gave me a smile, and his eyes twinkled as he put on his sunglasses. "Hell. I've never seen anything that made me want to laugh more than the looks on those feds' faces when you walked out."

  "Well, I'm mad. We need to find that grimoire and get it to your office. If it's one of the items taken, we might never get it back."

  He unlocked the car and we climbed inside.

  I turned to him, watching his profile as we left the parking lot. His brow was knit in concentration. "So, what do we do now?"

  "They agreed to check the box. If it's one of the ones left intact, they'll let us come and get the contents after the crime scene folks clear out."

  "So, all that bravado was for nothing." That made me even angrier. “Douchebags.”

  “That about sums it up.” He pulled out of the lot and looked in the rearview mirror. “Kind of funny that Astrid not only knew the agents, but that I was in trouble and where. She’s scary sometimes.”

  “If she knew, she should have intervened before they cost us our breakfast.” I folded my arms under my breasts. “I feel a real hangry coming on.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get you fed.”

  Between my parents and the feds, I sincerely doubted if I was ever going to be allowed to eat again as long as I lived.

  I wasn’t usually a negative person, but my blood sugar was low, and I was grumpy as an old tom cat who had his last sardine stolen.

  We drove across town to a factory with a large sign that read: Wonder Toys. The catch phrase was even better. If it’s quality, it’s a Wonder.

  I pointed at the sign. “Who came up with that tagline?”

  “Colvin’s father. He started the company back in the seventies.” Malachi shot me a knowing smile. “Awesome, isn’t it?”

  “That’s one way to describe it.”

  He parked in a reserved spot and got out. We entered the employee entrance and wended our way through hallways until we came to a sizable cafeteria that looked as if it belonged in a food court at an upscale mall.

  I looked around. “Very nice.”

  “It will do in a pinch. It’s not diner food, but it’s pretty good.”

  I found a premade breakfast sandwich and some tater tots. It wasn’t my first choice, but it would do, and I was starving. Energy for magic had to come from some source. Of course, it could be pulled from other living things, people, animals, plants, insects, anything that had a life-force. No matter what was used, it had to be taken with principles and ethics guiding the usage, or the practitioner was no different from the shadow beings.

  I preferred to get my energy from food. Unfortunately, I’d used way too much energy that morning trying to keep my cool with my parents and feeling out my surroundings. Ever since the night before, I’d felt on the verge of a time well opening. I only hoped that wasn’t the case in the bank, but feared it was exactly that.

  Malachi sat across from me, his water bottle paused halfway to his mouth. “What?”

  I felt bad telling him. “I have that fizzy, shifty feeling I get right before a time well opens.”

  His face lost all expression. “Where?”

  “Closer to town. Not out this way. I’ve been better since we’ve been here.” I picked at my tots.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” He started to rise.

  I put my hand on his arm to stop him. "Doesn't matter. It was a fleeting thing. Like the residual scent from a fire. You know how it lingers on the air for a while after it's been put out?"

  He gave a nod. His eyes solemn. "I have the feeling, when we finally get into the bank, we'll find the place filled with the essence of a time well."

  I turned my head to study his face, the way his jaw ground and flexed. A thought had occurred to me: if my power can see time wells as they open, then could another witch be able to manipulate them at will? What if someone like that had fallen in with the shadow beings? If they wanted to use someone to enter the human realm, why not target one of them.

  Malachi stopped chewing, swallowed, then said, "What?"

  "Does the Convention keep files on all the magical practitioners?"

  "With the way they recruited me, yes." He raised a brow. "Why?"

  I shook my head as if to say it didn't matter or wasn't important at the moment. A very nervous and uneasy feeling came over me. I finished my brunch in quiet. Sometimes it was better for me to keep my thoughts to myself until I worked them out instead of spilling it all and stumbling around the topic.

  What I wanted to sound and appear like was thoughtful, competent, and intelligent. I had to admit, no matter how long I'd studied the lives of the Doran witches
, or the fabric of generational witchcraft in general, I was sincerely out of my depth.

  We left the cafeteria and walked down a long hallway to a suite of offices. Malachi stopped in front of a door with his name on the plate along with the designation of CEO. If a man was going to have a business as a front for his real life, that was the one to have.

  He let us in the door and then closed and locked it behind us.

  "Follow me." Malachi walked to the far wall where a large bookcase was filled with management manuals and prototype toys. He hit a button and a door clicked open.

  Colvin was inside the annex, sitting at a computer terminal.

  "I don't believe it." The cliché of the hidden chamber was enough to make me laugh out loud. I covered my mouth when an inelegant snort echoed in the small chamber. I mean really, it was a secret room inside Malachi's office. How typically storybook was that?

  As I stepped inside, I realized it was actually a sanctorum of the Convention. Awe filled me. This space had been used to help and hide practitioners of the craft from their detractors for generations.

  History shifted through my fingers as I loosened my arms and let my hands dangle. Energy tingled and tickled as I wiggled my digits. Bookshelves held saddle-stitched tomes—ancient grimoires hidden here from the world.

  "Is it safe to have so many books of power here without any kind of security?" I walked to the books and held out my hand. A buzz zapped me, and I stuck my fingers in my mouth as I spun and gave Malachi an accusing look.

  He chuckled. "Yeah. No security whatsoever."

  I took my fingers out of my mouth and shook them. They still tingled. "You're horrible."

  "No permanent damage done. Now if you'd have taken one of the books off the shelf without a proper access code, you'd have landed on your ass, knocked unconscious, and locked in here until someone came to arrest you." The stern look in Malachi's eyes told me he wasn't kidding in the least.