Shadow Realms

by M K Mancos

  "Arrest me? Like take me to jail?"

  "If you like."

  All right, the Convention probably had its own sense of justice and incarceration. I didn't want to get on their bad side, but I really wanted to see those books. How could I not? Research was my life or had been for the last several years. How much more advanced would magic be if we shared spells and techniques. Instead, most practitioners hoarded over their knowledge as a dragon does gold.

  Colvin continued to click on the keyboard in front of him. However, as I watched closely, I noticed it wasn't connected to the big screen in front of him, but a smaller one below that.

  "Which one is Gutenberg?" I assumed it would be a supercomputer with its own server. If it was, I didn't see any of the components in the chamber.

  "I am Gutenberg." The disembodied voice came from the larger screen.

  I stepped back and turned my head. It was a bigger, more resonant version of Alexa. It also had a man's voice and spoke with a decided accent.

  "Any luck finding Jane Porter?"

  Colvin glanced at the screen before looking back and me as if he was unsure if I spoke to the computer or him. I really didn't care, I just wanted to know.

  When neither answered, I gave Colvin a nod to indicate I spoke to him.

  He picked up one of the legal pads beside him. "I've been saving documents and writing down notes as I go, but the amount of information to sort through is rather astounding, considering I found nothing of note on the conventional net."

  I moved closer to look over his shoulder. "And?"

  "All through history there have been references to her in the Convention archives. She's been moving through time."

  Stunned, I reached out behind me and sat on a chair. "Poor Jane."

  Not a very eloquent or even helpful thing to say, but I had nothing else.

  Malachi moved forward and picked up another of the legal pads. His gaze scanned the lists before he set it aside again. "Tell me."

  "I haven't been able to pin down if she's moving herself or being pulled. No matter where she is, she's making waves. Not bad for a woman of her own time."

  I gave a slight snort. "Not only are you talking about a witch, but a suffragette. She was on the front lines, fighting for the right for women to vote. You don't get much tougher than that."

  And yet, Jane had an angel's face. Long dark hair, blue eyes, and a mix of what might have been Polynesian or Hispanic in her background. I didn't know, nor had I asked. To me it was immaterial. I was more fascinated by her ties to the craft. Of the odd writing and equations she'd placed in a book that was stuck in the damn bank vault with FBI agents dancing around it while they tried to solve a crime I was almost positive originated in another realm.

  "We need to find her notebook and try to crack the time wells. It might be the only way we can track her down and get her." Malachi spoke as the voice of reason and shade of the obvious.

  "Right." Colvin clacked on the keys a bit more. "While you're doing that, I'm going to keep working on narrowing down a time and place we can find her. Some points will be easier entry for the simple fact the walls between worlds are thinner at certain times."

  So many questions filled my head. I doubted it was going to be as easy as winding a watch. However, I'd leave the big-time spells to the professionals. I might be able to point them in the direction where the worlds thinned significantly, or where one had been located before, but I couldn't open one on my own.

  "The problem," Colvin continued, "is that I'm finding references from all over the world. I'm trying to sort through them at the moment to decide if they're all the same person or several people with the same name."

  "Are there physical descriptions?" I was pretty sure no one looked quite like Jane Porter. "Or only instances of encounters with her?"

  "Depends on who detailed the account. Some gave descriptions, others not so much. However, all of the ones I've found talk about her as a being of power."

  I gave a grunt. "Not even a woman?"

  "It seems more transcendent to call her a being, I guess." Colvin gave a shrug and went back to his work, transcribing notes into a separate database.

  I didn't like it. Not in the least little bit. She might be transcendent and a beautiful being of light, but she was still a woman. A very clever, brilliant, and wonderful woman.

  Malachi's phone rang, and he looked at the screen. "We're cleared to go into the bank."

  "That was fast." I expected them to comb over the inside of the building for hours.

  A quick glance down to my phone, and I realized we had been in the chamber for hours. A separate alternate bubble in time.

  I gave Gutenberg the side eye.

  No. Surely not.

  Twenty-Three

  Malachi

  Agent Cross met us outside on the sidewalk in front of the Fox Run Trust. If a man was able to tuck his tail between his legs that would describe the way Cross looked as he stood waiting.

  Of course, I hoped the reason was because he had caught hell from his higher up when Astrid let loose, but I doubted it. The Convention tended to give the governmental agencies a great amount of leeway. Not to mention space. As it should be. Though our cases overlapped more often than comfortable, the FBI was more than capable of solving their own crimes. And so was the Convention. However, when magic was involved they were better off leaving the situation for us to handle.

  I suspected that was what had Cross looking, well…cross.

  I approached him in a neutral frame of mind, trying to come off as if the incident in the diner hadn't happened and my breakfast hadn't been interrupted by his attempted arrest. In order to show how unconcerned I was with his presence, I slid my hands into my pockets and affected a casual pose. "Cross."

  "Mr. Sayer. If you and Ms. Holland will follow me." He indicated the door with a raised hand.

  Kells went ahead of me and I placed my hand at the small of her back, enjoying for a brief moment the spark that ignited every time we touched.

  Under the watchful eye of the bank manager, Kells put her key in the designated spot and turned at the same time the manager did. The box came open and inside was a journal, yellowed with age.

  "Thank you." She spoke so softly, I barely heard her.

  She clutched the book to her chest and turned. Since she seemed overcome with the moment and holding herself together by sheer will, I looked around in the box to make sure nothing was left behind. A sheaf of letters tied with string slid out and I picked them up then gave a parting nod to the manager.

  I had to admit, I had as much curiosity over Jane Porter's grimoire as I did the letters. I turned them to look at the addresses. They were sent to Gemma, but there was no return address on them. I flipped through the stack. Nope. Not a one.

  Great, another mystery. I knew without even showing them to Kells, she'd want to figure out who had sent them to her great-grandma. Of course, the contents would probably speak for them, but why not a return address?

  We went back to my house, since it was closer. I might not have my computer hooked up to Gutenberg, but I did have quite a few programs written by Convention programmers. Hopefully one of them would be able to decipher the equations. Though how was I to know the problems that would cause.

  We sat in my home office, the window shades closed for secrecy. Not because my neighbors cared what I did, but because of my own sense of paranoia. Intellectually, I knew the shadow realms weren’t peepers by that definition, but it still made me feel better to know I protected our activities from the eyes of any human agents they may have in the area.

  Page after page of the most unique and inexplicable equations filled the grimoire. No explanation accompanied the calculations. Jane Porter had to be found in order to do that in person. However, scanning the sheets into the program might at least give us an idea of what they were used for, if not how to manipulate them to our advantage.

  “I think she made these symbols up as she went along. This nom
enclature isn’t anything I’ve seen in any math class.” Kells leaned into me and turned a page as I studied it against what the computer had attempted to decipher. I got a whiff of her scented hair and tried to drag my concentration back to the task at hand.

  “I’ll admit the higher maths aren’t my forte, so I’ll have to take your word on that.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “I’m by no means a mathematician, but I did date one in undergrad. The guy had a use for every button on his scientific calculator app. It was rather intimidating.”

  And didn’t hearing her say that just unleash the little green monster of jealousy on me. I tried not to show how much it bothered me that she’d mentioned another man—well, one with which she’d had an intimate relationship. I wasn’t so much of a caveman that I thought she should stay away from all men and not speak to any member of the opposite sex.

  Still, as I sat there watching the program do its best to try and decipher the meaning behind Jane Porter’s symbols, I couldn’t help but feel we really needed to clear the air of whatever was between us. Had been between us since before we ever met.

  A frown grew between her brows. “What?”

  I shook my head trying to clear the cobwebs. “Nothing. Just thinking we really need to have a long talk.”

  A hint of suspicion filled the space between us, and she backed away a bit. “About what?”

  “You. Me. The multiverses.”

  She played with the charm I’d made for her and put it to her lips as if about to kiss it. The sweet, simple action hit me low in the gut. “Yeah. We do. I just don’t know how to start or what to say. It’s like you’ve always been there in my mind.”

  I blew out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “I know what you mean.”

  “What did you see in your visions?”

  The fact she was so sure I’d had them made me divert my attention from the screen. “The awful scene of you leaving me. The feeling of having my heart ripped out as I watched you go.”

  She blinked away gathering tears and nodded. “Same here.”

  “So, what does it mean?” The question was rhetorical. I really didn’t expect an answer because if either of us had one, we wouldn’t need to ask it in the first place.

  “I don’t know. Just promise me that we'll talk about everything. Don’t keep things from me, and I won’t keep them from you. We can change this timeline, this dimension, if we’re honest and open with each other.” She held out her hand, and I slid mine into hers.

  Then I couldn’t resist and gently tugged her forward until she was close enough for me to lean down and place my lips on hers.

  Her lips were soft, pliable. They molded to mine in the most perfect way, as if our mouths were made special for this activity. I pulled her closer. Skimmed my hand down her neck, shoulder, arm, then tucked it into the dip in her waist to pull her closer.

  A slight parting of her lips and I tucked my tongue inside. My heart pounded, and desire rose. With everything inside me, I wanted her.

  The computer beeped. Loud. Angry.

  I pulled away from the best kiss of my life and looked at the screen. My mind a bit dazed, I licked my lips and still tasted her there.

  “Holy shit.” Now this I hadn’t expected.

  Kells leaned into me to see the screen. “What does it mean?”

  She referred to the squiggly lines of code running up and down the screen. A cascade effect when the program latched onto something it could decipher and began to spin its wheels to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

  “It means it found something to latch onto. It means Jane Porter was writing in a very arcane script used by the Convention. One old enough I didn’t recognize it, but the program did.” A jolt of recognition hit me, and I closed my eyes for not realizing it sooner. “Fuck me running.”

  “What?” This time the word was accompanied by a hit on my bicep. “You have to tell me because I can’t read that shit scrolling across the screen.”

  “Jane Porter was…is…a medallion.”

  “Is that some kind of agent in the Convention?”

  I nodded. “Yes. A particular kind of agent. Medallions can manipulate time, flow through dimensions, and reset worlds. No wonder she showed up in deep archives from Gutenberg.”

  “Do you think she was taken because of her abilities?” Kells pointed at the screen. “The scene I walked into and the evidence of the floor suggested she didn’t go willingly.”

  “Hell, she might have been working on a case at the time you met her.” The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If the Convention had a medallion on the job, then she was trying to find the rifts and close them to prevent a ripple effect that we’d feel in this timeline and point in history.”

  “I thought…hell, I don’t know what I thought. I was kind of freaked out when I found myself in the past. My powers of observation were rather reduced to figuring out how I was going to get home.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry I’m not more helpful.”

  My phone vibrated. I looked at the screen and grimaced. Astrid.

  I hit the speaker feature when I opened the call.

  “Get to Manhattan. We have pop up time wells all over the city, and there are reports of dark shadows spreading.”

  “Shit!” I stood and picked up the phone. “On my way.”

  This was it. This was what I’d trained years for. The confrontation with the shadow realms that would either save or bury humanity.

  Help came from all the war mages living in the tri-state area that had relatively quick access to Manhattan. Not only did my mind flip over and over again about what happened in New York’s five boroughs, but also the fact my sisters were smack dead center of the multiple rifts.

  Kells sat beside me, silent, but her chin thrust out in a determined manner. From the look alone, I knew she was going to be trouble on this mission.

  Colvin had called before he left Gutenberg and said he was driving down with Astrid. Now there was a pair I didn’t want to tangle with if I was a member of the shadow realms. One had anger issues and the other too many secrets. The combination made for a very shaky team.

  On the other hand…

  I glanced at Kells as I barreled down the thruway. Unfortunately, nothing we learned had allowed us to open a portal for instant transportation to Midtown.

  She finally looked at me with her arms crossed and mutiny on her brow. “I know what you’re thinking and it’s not going to happen.”

  “I’m not thinking anything other than we need to be there faster than we’re getting there.”

  “Ha! You’re thinking of stuffing me in a taxi and shuffling me off to your sisters’ once we get there. Not going to happen. I can smell those portals opening before they do. I predicted the one that opened and sucked me into the twenties.” She waved her arms around as if we were having an argument.

  She’d be shocked if she knew I thought putting her at Kara’s house wasn’t a bad idea but didn’t serve our purposes. Not now.

  “You have on the amulet I gave you?”

  She reached into her shirt and pulled it out, showing me the proof. “You told me not to take it off.”

  “Just checking that you listened.” I'd admit, I liked knowing she wore it around her neck—something I made with my two hands and talent. "It will keep you shielded from the worst of it."

  She choked on an incredulous laugh. "Worst of what?"

  "Anything the shadow realms decide to dish out."

  "That's not reassuring."

  No, it wasn't, but then she hadn't been chasing the shadow realms for most of her adult life. Well, perhaps she had but didn't know the name or the source. Most sensitives or magical practitioners could feel the darkness when it spread. I doubted she was immune.

  The closer we drove the more Kells squirmed in her seat. She rubbed her chest with her right hand as if fighting off a bad case of indigestion.

  "This is really bad. The wells are strong." She grimac
ed. "I can feel them pulling at me."

  I reached over and took her hand. She—both of us—needed to keep our cool and pull on strength we'd never had before. Even though I wanted her miles away from the ground zero of darkness, I didn't think I'd be able to pull this off without her. The fates, ancestors, old ones, whatever one called them put us together for a reason. I felt that reason hinged on this point in time.

  We couldn't afford to separate. I wasn't about to let her out of my sight. An odd, uneasy feeling welled in me that made me want to stick her in the trunk until this was over. Hell, I'd have stuck her in the vault with Gutenberg if I thought I could protect her that way.

  Special reports came over the radio. Traffic was snarled in and out of the city at most approaches. The time wells, which were being reported as energy surges, had the cars and commuter buses all jacked up. We cut through Hoboken and to the PATH station to take the trains into Manhattan.

  I only hoped they were running and hadn't gotten caught in a well. At this point, no mode of transportation was guaranteed safe. Who wanted to turn a corner and drive into a horse and buggy, or a damn tree because the land hadn't been cleared or settled yet?

  Not even walking was safe as she'd already proved.

  Kells made a low sound in her throat and started to rock from side to side. "Too many."

  No kidding. Even as we pulled into a parking lot near the train station, I could see the shimmery edges of time wells trying to pop into being. I couldn't see anything behind the wavering veils, so they weren't fully formed, but I didn't like the way they effected Kells.

  I placed my hand on her arm. Tension radiated from her. “Are you all right?"

  She took a deep breath and let it out through her pursed lips. "I will be. Just give me a moment. The amount of them is a bit overwhelming."

  Even I felt the crackling of energy as it surrounded the car. I swallowed. I’d never felt so many in all my life, and damn sure not while working for the Convention. This was big. Massive. The shadow realms were going to overwhelm humanity by sheer numbers alone.