Illusion Town

by Jayne Castle

  “Good to know. Thanks.” Hannah chucked the used tissue into an overflowing garbage can. “I’ve been thinking. We must have been in very bad shape last night.”

  Elias glanced at her. “To end up at the Enchanted Night Wedding Chapel, do you mean?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Probably knew we didn’t have much time before we crashed.” He stopped and looked at the broken neon sign overhead. “This is it, the Fog Café. With luck, Joe, the night guy, will still be eating breakfast.”

  He opened the door and did a quick reconnaissance of the establishment. It looked exactly as expected. There were a couple of patrons sitting on stools at the bar. Either they were early risers or they had never left last night.

  A bored-looking waitress was pouring coffee for the lone diner who occupied a booth. The place smelled of spilled beer, decades of greasy food, and whatever powerful disinfectant had been used to mop the floor the last time someone had bothered to clean.

  He kicked up his senses again, probing for the subtle vibes that warned of danger. He got nothing.

  “All clear,” he said.

  He stood back to usher Hannah inside but just as she moved across the threshold, Virgil chortled and jumped out of her arms.

  “Virgil,” Hannah said. “Come back here.”

  He ignored her to dash across the dingy room and vault up onto the one occupied table. The lone diner was a portly middle-aged man dressed in a white jumpsuit studded with crystals and styled with a high collar open at the throat. His hairpiece was a sleek, shiny black pompadour. There were some gold necklaces around his throat. A white cape embellished with more crystals was thrown over the back of the booth. Although the room was dark and there was a lot of fog on the other side of the window, he wore a pair of slick, wraparound sunglasses.

  He chuckled when he saw Virgil and offered a bite of what looked like fried potatoes.

  “Hey there, little guy,” he said in a deep, resonant voice. “How are you doing? Didn’t expect to see you again.”

  Virgil chortled and graciously accepted the fried offering.

  “Something tells me that’s Joe, the night guy,” Elias said.

  They walked toward the booth. The waitress narrowed her eyes.

  “Restrooms are for customers only,” she said.

  “Coffee, please,” Hannah said politely.

  It occurred to Elias that he was hungry. “And maybe some eggs.”

  The waitress relaxed. “You got it.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen.

  Elias followed Hannah across the room. They stopped at the booth where Virgil was holding court.

  “Joe from the Enchanted Night Wedding Chapel?” Elias said.

  “That’s me. My stage name is Elvis, though.”

  “Stage name?” Elias said.

  “Yeah, Enchanted Night hires me to put on a real nice show for couples who want a quickie MC. I take pride in my work. So, when I’m on the job, I’m Elvis. You can call me Joe, though. I’m off duty now.”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said.

  “Look, I’m sorry, but Enchanted Night doesn’t do refunds,” Joe said. “To be honest, I’m real surprised that you changed your minds so soon. You two were sure set on getting married last night. You could hardly wait. I would have bet good money that you knew what you were doing.”

  “You don’t understand,” Hannah said.

  “Sadly, I do understand.” Joe shook his head in a world-weary way. “You’re not the first couple to have morning-after regrets. But you’re gonna have to do what everyone else in your situation does. Go file the proper termination papers.”

  “We’re not looking for a refund,” Hannah said gently. “We just want to ask you a few questions. Do you mind if we sit down?”

  She slipped into the booth before Joe could respond. Admiring the slick move, Elias sat down beside her.

  “What kind of questions?” Joe asked. There was deep suspicion in his eyes but he fed Virgil another bite of fried potatoes.

  Elias folded his arms on the table. “To be honest, my wife and I are having a little trouble remembering what happened last night.”

  Joe snorted. “That’s no surprise. When you came through the door you looked like you were both exhausted. But I’m pretty sure neither of you had been drinking. Figured you’d hit the wrong nightclub or gone down a bad street and run into some hot energy. The vibes get weird around here after dark.”

  “What, exactly, did we say?” Elias asked.

  Joe waved his fork. “Not much. You just insisted on getting married as fast as possible. I went through the usual routine. Asked which song you wanted me to sing. I gave the lady the list of titles. She made her choice and I performed the service. You were in and out in under fifteen minutes.”

  “We wound up at the Shadow Zone Motel,” Elias said. “Was that your idea?”

  Joe shrugged. “You asked for directions to the nearest motel. I suggested the Shadow Zone on account of it’s cleaner than most of the short-stay places around here. Figured your wife would appreciate that.”

  Hannah smiled. “That was very kind of you.”

  “Sure. Part of the job.” Joe went back to his food.

  “You gave Virgil a cupcake,” Hannah added. “He remembers you fondly.”

  Joe’s expression softened. He looked at Virgil. “The cupcakes were delivered yesterday morning. They were getting a little stale. Figured the dust bunny wouldn’t mind.”

  The waitress emerged from the kitchen with two heaping platters of scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, and greasy sausage.

  “Oh, good,” Hannah said. “I’m really hungry for some reason.”

  “So am I,” Elias said. He forked up a healthy bite of eggs and looked at Joe. “Did we arrive at Enchanted Night in a cab?”

  “Nope.” Joe drank some coffee. “You just showed up at the front door demanding to get married.”

  Elias ate some eggs and then slathered butter on a slice of toast. He really was hungry, he thought. So was Hannah. She was making big inroads into her eggs and potatoes.

  Elias took a large bite of the toast. “Did we mention where we were before we arrived at your door?”

  Joe shrugged. “You said something about having had a real thrill ride.”

  “A thrill ride,” Hannah repeated softly. She set her fork down very suddenly and reached into her purse. She took out the slip of paper with the fortune on it and handed it to Joe. “Do you know what that is?”

  He frowned at it. “‘You will find true love soon.’ It’s one of those fortunes you get from a machine. You know, like the kind they have at carnivals and amusement parks.”

  “A carnival,” Hannah whispered. She fixed Joe with an intent look. “Is there a carnival around here, by any chance?”

  “No,” Joe said.

  Elias could have sworn that Hannah looked relieved at that news. He turned back to Joe.

  “Did we give you any indication of where we had been just before we landed here?”

  Joe shrugged again. “You said something about having just come from a restaurant that was closed but still hotter than a Saturday night special. Figured maybe you’d wandered into Burning Street by accident.”

  “Burning Street?” Elias repeated carefully.

  “It happens now and again,” Joe said. “Tourists get too close to the scene of the old disaster and get singed. There are signs up everywhere on Burning Street but there’s always folks who don’t believe them.”

  “What kind of old disaster are we talking about?” Elias said.

  “It happened during the Colonial era,” Joe said. “There was a big explosion and fire underground—the paranormal kind. Happened at one of the entrances to the tunnels. No record of what caused the explosion but the fire burned for months. The place is still red-hot. T
he locals all stay clear but like I said, once in a while a tourist takes a wrong turn and ends up in Burning Street. In the old days no one worried about the occasional fried tourist, but a couple of decades ago the authorities decided to clean up the zone’s reputation. A special hazardous-psi team was brought in to install heavy mag-rez steel-and-glass doors to contain the para-radiation coming out of the tunnel entrance. Place is all locked up now. Hardly ever get a fried tourist.”

  “Can you give us directions?” Elias asked.

  “Sure, Burning Street is only a few blocks from here. But I’m telling you, you don’t want to go near the place.”

  “It’s important,” Hannah said.

  Joe heaved a sigh. “Okay, but be careful. It’s not what you’d call one of our local scenic attractions.”

  He rattled off the directions.

  “Appreciate it,” Elias said. He pulled out his wallet. “You’ve been very helpful. Breakfast is on us.”

  “Hey, thanks.” Joe relaxed. “You were real generous with the tip last night, too.”

  “You’re welcome,” Elias said. He finished the last of his eggs in a hurry, got to his feet, and looked at Hannah. “Ready?”

  She swallowed the last of her toast and slipped out of the booth. She plucked Virgil off the table and looked at Joe.

  “Just one more question,” she said.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Which song did I choose?”

  “‘One Night,’” Joe said.

  “Really? That’s a surprise.”

  “Not really,” Joe said. “It’s an Old World classic.”

  Elias took Hannah’s arm and steered her across the café and out into the misty street.

  “What was so surprising about choosing ‘One Night’ for our wedding song?” Elias asked.

  “I love the Old World classics, but that particular song is not one of my favorites,” Hannah said. “I always thought it was sort of depressing. Then again, I probably wasn’t in a real romantic mood last night. Or maybe—”

  She broke off.

  “Or maybe what?” he prompted.

  “Maybe I was trying to send a message to myself.”

  “What kind of message?”

  “That the marriage wasn’t real. That it was never meant to last. You know, good for one night only.”

  “Wow. And they say engineers aren’t romantic. You want to tell me why you were so shocked when Joe mentioned that your fortune might have come from a fortune-teller’s booth in a carnival?”

  “That Underworld find I told you about? The one I filed a claim on?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s a carnival. For a moment there, I was afraid that someone else had found it.”

  “Explain. Why would an old carnival be valuable?”

  “It’s not just any carnival. How much do you know about the Arcane Society?”

  “Some. Not a lot. The Coppersmiths and the Joneses have been friends for generations but my family never joined the Society.”

  “Ever heard of the Midnight Carnival?”

  He started to say that he hadn’t but his sleeping memories stirred and then awakened with such force he stopped in the middle of the street.

  “Damn,” he said softly. “That’s how we lost them last night.”

  “Lost who?”

  “The motorcycle gang. Remember? They were waiting for us when we left the restaurant to walk back to your place. There were at least four, maybe five. They were on motorcycles. Probably ex-Guild men because they tried to trap us in an alley using heavy ghost light. I think they intended to knock us unconscious with the ghost. We ran for a hole in the wall that you knew about and escaped into the tunnels.”

  “Yes. Yes.” Hannah brightened. “I remember now. We thought we would lose them once we were underground but they followed us.”

  “Must have had the frequency of your tuned amber. We grabbed your sled. That allowed us to stay ahead of them but we couldn’t shake them. They kept coming after us.”

  “That’s when I came up with the plan to lose them by ducking into the Midnight Carnival,” Hannah said. “I knew they couldn’t follow us through the dreamlight gate.”

  “You got us inside,” he said. “And you were right. They couldn’t follow us. But we also knew we couldn’t exit by that gate because the gang would be waiting on the other side.”

  “We escaped through another gate but we ran into a terrible psi-storm,” Hannah said. “We had to turn back but we got burned in the process. We knew then that we were going to crash. Found a third gate and made it out.”

  “By then we knew we were headed for a very hard crash,” Elias said. “So I came up with the plan to get married first.”

  She looked at him. “I need to get back inside the Midnight Carnival.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I remember what I did with my necklace.”

  Elias felt the last of his memories click into place. “Oh, yeah. Right. There’s just one problem. We were having a hard time holding it together by the time we hit that third gate last night. We weren’t thinking clearly. We didn’t record the coordinates.”

  Chapter 5

  The dark energy seeping out around the edges of the thick mag-steel-and-glass barrier stirred the hair on the back of Hannah’s neck. Perched on her shoulder, Virgil muttered softly.

  The old tunnel entrance was a small, windowless Colonial-era structure that resembled a short, squat stone tower.

  The faded green sign above the entrance read HIGH-PSI LOCATION. DO NOT ENTER.

  “Obviously we didn’t come up from the Underworld through this exit,” Hannah said.

  “No, but I think this is the first route we tried,” Elias said. “This is where we got psi-fried. I remember the energy.”

  “I’ll bet it was the original entrance to the Midnight Carnival,” Hannah said. “I don’t think the explosion and fire was an accident. It was probably set to block the aboveground route that led directly to that particular gate.”

  “Joe said the fire dates back to the Colonial era.” Elias shook his head in awe. “That means someone back in the day knew a hell of a lot about paranormal energy.”

  “That someone was a Jones,” Hannah said.

  “Okay, that explains the expertise.”

  “After we were forced to turn back we found a third gate,” Hannah said. “Virgil led us to it, remember? It dumped us out in this very same street.”

  “Which means the other tunnel entrance has to be around here somewhere,” Elias said.

  They both looked at Virgil. He fluffed up, basking in the attention.

  “Hmm,” Hannah said.

  Elias glanced at her. “What?”

  “You and I don’t know where the third dreamlight gate is located but Virgil does,” she said. “He led us out of the catacombs last night.”

  Upon hearing his name Virgil blinked his baby blues.

  “Can you actually communicate well enough with him to ask him a question like that?” Elias asked.

  “I can’t expect him to understand a complicated question but he loves to play games like hide-and-seek.”

  She took Virgil down off her shoulder and held him in the crook of her arm. With her free hand, she took the fortune out of her evening bag and held it up directly in front of his face.

  “Where did I get this?” she asked. “Can you find the fortune-teller? Find, Virgil. Please.”

  She tried to infuse a psychic plea into her words.

  Virgil chortled gleefully, sensing a game. He sleeked out a little. His ears appeared out of his fur and his second set of eyes snapped open.

  She put him down on the pavement. He immediately took off, dashing across the lane to a doorway vestibule.

  Hannah and Elias hurried after him. Virgil st
opped in front of a door and bounced up and down impatiently.

  Cautiously, Elias pushed the door open. Shadows seethed in the unlit interior. The windows had been boarded up long ago.

  Virgil zipped inside.

  Hannah followed Elias into the space. She picked up a whisper of disturbing energy.

  “It’s hot in here, too,” she said.

  “But not nearly as hot as whatever is behind those steel doors across the street,” Elias said. “This place was close to the scene of the explosion and fire, though, so it absorbed some of the paranormal radiation. It’s safe enough. I’m pretty sure we came through here last night.”

  He moved deeper into the darkness. Hannah followed close behind.

  The darkened space looked as if it had once been a fast-food restaurant. There was a long counter topped with some old-fashioned cash registers and a number of plastic tables and chairs.

  “No one bothered to salvage the tables and chairs,” Hannah said. “I guess they weren’t valuable enough to make someone push through this hot zone.”

  A muffled chortle sounded from the kitchen area. Hannah moved around the end of the sales counter. Elias followed. They were both rezzed now, using their talent to suppress the surrounding currents of energy so they could continue to move deeper into the restaurant.

  They went through an opening into an even darker space. Thanks to her other senses, Hannah could see the objects around her but the scene was bathed in an eerie, spectral light. The place looked as if it had been abandoned in a hurry. Pots and pans were scattered across the floor. The fryer basket was tipped on its side. Large knives and other utensils had been tossed aside in a chaotic manner.

  “Looks like they didn’t get any warning,” Elias said. “They just ran for their lives.” He paused. “I think we were running, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take a look at the floor.”

  She glanced down. There was a thick layer of grime and dust on the tile flooring, but in the ghost light she could make out two sets of murky footprints that appeared to be fresh. Familiar dreamlight burned in both tracks.

  “Those are our prints, all right,” she said. “And we were really burned. I can see it in the dreamlight currents. It’s a wonder we lasted long enough to get to the wedding chapel and the motel.”