“It’s just a ploy to get another raise,” Karl Kormac said. “People at the bottom are always trying to get more than they deserve.”
Carrot Greyson accused Karl of being aligned with a certain political party, then people in the office took sides, and things progressed in the usual fashion for the rest of the morning, with passive-aggressive sniping and extra-loud file drawer openings and closings.
And, as per the usual fashion, the political dispute had all blown over by lunch time.
Shortly after twelve o’clock, Zinnia waited silently in her office. She listened as the exact same events she’d overheard the day before replayed. Xavier offered to take the key and go ahead. Liza refused to give up the key, and told him to wait five minutes while she went first. She left the office, stopping by the break room to announce she’d be out doing errands. Five minutes later, Xavier also left.
As soon as the door closed behind Xavier, Margaret crawled out from her hiding spot underneath Zinnia’s desk. She put her phone on top of the desk so the two of them could watch where the branch-shaped tracker went, using a custom app on Margaret’s phone.
“This is really quite sophisticated,” Zinnia said, admiring the app’s three-dimensional functionality. “This tracker is the real science-fiction, Stargate-meets-Dr.-Who, comic-book-movie stuff.”
“It’s okay,” Margaret said begrudgingly. “Shh. They’re in the elevator now.”
Both watched in tense anticipation.
“They’re moving up in the elevator,” Margaret said.
Zinnia could see that, thanks to the 3D visualization on the phone’s screen, but she let Margaret narrate anyway.
“Second floor,” Margaret said. “The elevator’s stopping, but they’re not getting off.”
“The elevator might be picking up someone else.”
“Good point. And now they’re traveling up. Up. Top floor. Number five.” The witches leaned in close enough to bump heads. “They’re still in the elevator, though. They didn’t get off on the fifth floor. Going down now.”
“Why wouldn’t they get off on the third floor? Why go all the way up just to go down again?”
“I don’t know.” Margaret frowned at the screen. “Do you think maybe we were wrong? It’s possible they just ride up and down the elevator for an hour.”
“That’s a strange way to spend lunch break.”
The app showed the tracker and the elevator stopping on the third floor. The glowing light that represented the tracker on Liza jiggled, almost imperceptibly, and then abruptly blinked off. The program on the phone flashed a yellow text alert: Signal lost.
Margaret made an angry rhino noise.
“We lost them,” Zinnia said. Unlike Margaret, she hated stating the obvious, but there it was. The signal was lost. Liza and Xavier were lost.
They would be back again before one o’clock, and the witches could try another tactic. They’d probably resort to questioning Liza directly with the help of a potion. They had more options, but it was still disappointing the tracker hadn’t worked.
Margaret shook her phone. “That gnome had better give me a full refund.”
Something bright in the corner of the office caught Zinnia’s eye. She elbowed Margaret and pointed at the surge detector. “Look! It’s brighter now.”
Margaret looked. Her face went slack. “It is brighter. And lemon yellow.”
“Chloe said it was meaningless, that it meant the glowfish were just phasing into their mating cycle, but I swear that thing surged at the exact same moment we lost the signal in the elevator.”
“It’s connected,” Margaret gasped. “Everything’s connected. It’s all a huge conspiracy.”
“As much as it pains me to admit this, you may be right. The Gilbert family. Mayor Paladini. The monsters. The time loop. It could all be related.”
“We have to get the truth out of the Gilbert girl. I don’t care if she finds out we’re onto her. We need to know what she’s doing. Lives are at risk!” Margaret dug into her purse and pulled out a vial of dark sludge. “We’re doing Trinada’s Confession Hex on her.”
Zinnia couldn’t shake her head hard enough. “No way! No! That’s a terrible plan.”
“Fine. I’ll do it myself.”
“Do I need to remind you of what happened the last time you performed Trinada’s Confession Hex? Karl still isn’t back to normal. He hasn’t mentioned his retirement date countdown since you forced that false confession out of him.”
Margaret stuck her nose in the air. “My spell was working perfectly fine, right up until you jinxed it with your sloppy syntax on that second spell.”
“No, it was not working perfectly fine. It wasn’t working at all. The only thing your spell did was give him the munchies, and even that’s debatable.”
Margaret shook the vial of dark sludge. It was not one of her better-disguised purse supplies. The vial had simply been labeled, by hand, as sourdough fudge starter. As far as Zinnia knew, there was no such thing as sourdough fudge starter. It looked more like a medical sample.
Margaret was still clutching the vial, her expression earnest. “We have to step up our game,” she said. “That darn perky Gilbert girl is hiding something, and now she’s got poor, sweet Xavier mixed up in it.”
“Since when do you care about Xavier?” Zinnia swiped the vial from Margaret and examined it. “And since when is half of your koodzuberry enzyme used up? This was full last month when you bought it from Tansy Wick. I knew I should have stopped her from selling it to you. What have you been up to?”
Margaret snatched the vial back and buried it in her purse. She hissed, “None of your business, witch.”
Zinnia raised her eyebrows. “Oh, no you didn’t.” Margaret did not just call her a witch. And after everything Zinnia had done for her over the years.
Margaret bobbed her head from side to side. “Oh, yes I did.”
“Margaret Mills, do not make me take you into the office supply closet and whoop your butt again.”
The gray-haired witch closed her mouth, scrunched her face, and made a scolded-rhino sound.
“No more hexing,” Zinnia said, shaking a finger. “We need to stay cool and use our heads.” She pulled out the fake key that was a perfect copy of the one Liza had, and dropped it on the desk next to Margaret’s phone. “We’ve got an hour until they come back. Maybe we can use that time to find out more about this key.”
“Not that key. That one is the copy.”
“Even so... Hang on a minute.” Seeing the key next to Margaret’s phone gave Zinnia an idea. She used the phone to snap a photo of the key, and then used the photo to do an image-matching search on the internet.
A minute later, they had an answer, and not one single drop of koodzuberry enzyme had been used to force a confession.
It was so simple, so stunningly simple, the two actually stopped arguing.
“It’s an elevator key,” Zinnia said, stating the obvious and hating herself for it.
The two witches looked up from the diagram on the phone and stared into each other’s eyes.
“An elevator key,” Margaret repeated. “But according to this page, it only opens the control panel for that particular old model of elevator.” She jabbed her finger at the screen. “This doesn’t explain anything. It doesn’t explain where they went.”
“Doesn’t it? We searched the entire third floor for a keyhole that matched the key. But we didn’t find it, because it was inside the elevator the whole time.”
“Are you saying that Liza and Xavier opened the elevator control panel and crawled through to some hidden space within the building? Somewhere with enough solid material that it blocked the tracker signal?”
“That’s one possibility,” Zinnia said cryptically.
Margaret turned her head and gave Zinnia a sidelong look. “What’s the other possibility?”
Zinnia smiled knowingly. It had become so obvious, now that they had the right clue, thanks to Margaret’s h
igh-tech tracker.
Agent Rob had said the creatures infesting City Hall were from another world. And the glowfish in the surge detector were, according to Zinnia’s magic reference books, also not from Earth. And then there was the powerful Wakeful triplets’ grandmother, who’d appeared from “out of nowhere” back in 1955. That woman had been friends with the eldest Gilbert. Now the Gilbert family was in possession of a special key. It seemed the Gilberts were just as connected to the historical and current phenomena as the Wakeful family.
Most importantly, regardless of which family was behind the incursions, was the fact that if the creatures from another world were getting to Earth, they were coming in through some type of passageway. And, thanks to Margaret’s tracker, the witches had located the entry point to that passageway.
Zinnia could barely contain her excitement as she said, “The other possibility, which I believe the correct one, is that Liza’s key opens a portal to another world.”
Margaret’s eyes bulged. Portals were the domain of science fiction movies. And yet, to most people, witchcraft was also make-believe. If witches and gorgons and shifters were real, why not portals to other worlds?
They both looked down at the duplicate key.
After a long moment, Zinnia said, “We must be brave and do what ought to be done.”
Margaret swung one fist in a let’s-do-it gesture. “We must get the real key from Liza and destroy it before she releases hell on earth.”
“Actually, I had a different idea.”
Margaret’s eyes bulged again. “You’re just full of ideas, aren’t you?”
Zinnia grinned. “Like Karl Kormac is full of noxious gases, I am, indeed, full of ideas.”
Margaret rolled her eyes. “What?”
“Margaret Mills, do you have any fun plans for this evening?”
“No.” She pouted. “You know I don’t. Four kids, remember?”
“How would you like to accompany me on a research expedition to another plane of existence?”
Margaret’s mouth didn’t answer. Her eyes did.
Her eyes said yes.
Chapter 17
When Liza Gilbert and Xavier Batista returned at the end of the lunch break, neither gave any indication that they’d been up to anything exciting, let alone traveling to another plane of existence. That didn’t stop Margaret from watching them like a hawk instead of getting any work done.
With Zinnia’s assistance, Margaret switched Liza’s key again during afternoon coffee break. The two were getting very good at swapping out the key. The switcheroo went off without a hitch.
Five o’clock took forever to roll around. Even longer than it did on the Fridays that came before a long weekend.
At last, the office finally emptied out. The witches could get down to their secret business.
At 5:15 pm, Zinnia and Margaret stood in the elevator. Margaret clutched the key in her hand. The two rode up and down the elevator as it groaned between floors. What had they been thinking? There was no way they would get a moment alone in the single elevator that served the whole building, not at that time of day. Just when it seemed like they might get the elevator to themselves so they could test the key in the keyhole next to the control panel, the elevator would ding and rise again to get more passengers.
After twenty minutes of riding the elevator up and down, Zinnia was getting bored. Margaret’s stomach growled.
The two decided to leave the elevator, hit up the cafeteria for a wrapped sandwich and beverage, and then return to the elevator once the crowds had thinned.
While they ate cold sandwiches, left over from lunch time, and drank hot tea in the nearly-deserted cafeteria, Zinnia said, “I feel like we should be doing something to prepare for our trip.”
Margaret gave her a quizzical look. “You mean pack a bag? With sunscreen, spending money, and extra socks and underwear?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of letting someone know where we’re going.” She paused. “Just in case we don’t make it back.”
Margaret shook her head. “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “If you call the DWM, they’ll confiscate our key, and—”
“It’s not our key.”
Margaret waved a hand. “They’ll confiscate the key, and you’ll never hear anything else about it ever again.”
“You’re probably right. What do you think about telling my niece? She’s not possessed by anything or anyone at the moment. It might be a good time to let her know more about what I do. What we both do.”
“No way.” Margaret shook her finger at Zinnia. “Don’t you dare invite her along with us tonight. No third wheels. This first trip for Monsterland is just for me and you. Just us. We don’t need a younger woman trying to horn in on what we have.”
Zinnia stared at her friend. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing,” Margaret said indignantly. “It’s just that some things are sacred. I’ve never gone through a magic portal before, and I want my first time to be with you. Only you.”
“And it will only be me,” Zinnia said. “Forget I dared to bring up the topic.”
Margaret chomped into her sandwich. “But we could leave a note. Just in case.” She looked thoughtful while she chewed her sandwich. “We could write a note and put it on Gavin’s desk.”
“Gavin? How would he be able to help us?”
“He’s a gnome. I know that doesn’t mean much, but it’s better than nothing. He’s the only one in the office who definitely has powers that he knows about.”
“Very well, then,” Zinnia said. “As much as I detest the idea of making Gavin Gorman our safety lifeline, you make a good point.”
Zinnia thought about it for a minute.
“I know,” Zinnia said. “In the note, we should mention that we’re going through the elevator portal on a quest for treasure. That’ll get him interested.”
“Ooh. Good idea.”
They borrowed a pen and paper from the cafeteria staff and worked on the note while they finished their sandwich dinner.
Zinnia and Margaret stood in the elevator alone. It was six o’clock now. The crowds had thinned, but someone was bound to press the call button sooner or later. For the time being, though, the cage wasn’t moving.
Margaret handed Zinnia the key. It was damp with sweat.
“You can do the honors,” Margaret said. “I’ll stand back and cover you.” She pulsed a thread of green plasma with one hand and wove it around her fingers.
The idea of needing backup gave Zinnia a nervous shiver, but she said with confidence, “I’m glad you have my back.”
Zinnia took one more look at the key. It looked so ordinary, the color of a bleached bone and the texture of hard plastic.
“I have a theory,” Zinnia said. “About the key.”
“The original is a copy and we made a copy of a copy,” Margaret said.
“Did you read my mind again?”
“No. I thought of that myself.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“At the same exact time I thought of it?”
“Actually, I thought about it in the cafeteria, when I was looking at the plastic utensils.”
Zinnia narrowed her eyes. “Really?”
“Stop stalling,” Margaret said. “It doesn’t matter if that key’s also a copy. Liza wouldn’t have been wearing it around her neck if it didn’t do anything.”
“She might have. It is rather pretty, as a decorative item.”
“Stop stalling,” Margaret repeated.
Zinnia sighed. She had been stalling. She carefully held the key by the bow and slid the bit into the elevator’s control panel. The key fit perfectly and slid in up to the shoulder. A tingle of magic wrapped around Zinnia’s arm. She swallowed the lump in her throat and turned the key.
The elevator made a ding sound that was both comforting and otherworldly at the same time. The cage began to move, though whether it was moving up or down,
Zinnia couldn’t tell.
The floor beneath their feet trembled.
And then, with another ding, the doors opened.
“Oh,” Zinnia said.
The green lightning twining around Margaret’s fingers blinked out as she dropped her hand to her side.
“Oh,” Margaret said. “That’s not what I expected.”
Chapter 18
“What were you expecting?” Zinnia asked.
Margaret said, “I was sort of hoping for an alien landscape with purple trees and triple moons.”
The view before them was anything but an alien landscape.
Zinnia said, “I know it’s not much at first glance, but if you look closely—”
Margaret cut her off. “This totally sucks!”
“If you look closely—”
“I’m paying for a babysitter tonight, too. Not worth it.” Margaret shook her head. “Are you sure we used the right key?”
Zinnia sighed. “Yes. The key worked. Don’t be so disappointed. I know it’s not an alien world, but look on the bright side. At least it’s not a burning hell dimension with lava bursting from fiery volcanoes, and little red demons poking tortured souls with pitchforks.”
Margaret grumbled that she’d like to have seen just a bit of soul-torturing for her money.
Zinnia said, for the third time, “If you look closely, you’ll see this is—”
“The third floor.” Margaret walked ahead, leaving the elevator. “It’s the third floor.”
“No. It’s similar to the third floor, but it isn’t the third floor that we know.”
They’d both been to the third floor just the day before. The third floor of City Hall had a hallway, offices, and a big boardroom with glass walls.
The space Margaret was now wandering through was what the third floor might look like if a renovation crew removed all the interior walls and furnishings, and stripped the carpet. This floor was just a vast, empty space. The ceiling didn’t have any lights installed, but there was enough light coming in from the windows for the witches to see clearly.
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