by J. R. Rain
“A rock in silk…” I stoop forward and pick it up with two fingers. It’s a common stone, no larger than an olive. “That’s the analogy he used to describe me going back in time. Is he trying to tell me something?”
I flip the page. There, he writes that some cultures believed ley line nexuses act as portals or gateways to other times and places. Though, in his opinion, the intersection of so much magical energy didn’t create a gateway in and of itself. He writes that they simply provided the power for the spells necessary to traverse time or distance that a practitioner could not draw out of thin air anywhere. In essence, he’s thinking of these ley lines as giant power cables, only they’re carrying magic instead of electrons.
“Why, my dear Mr. Delacroix… I do believe you’re trying to tell me something.”
I don’t know why he didn’t simply write Sam, go to this cave and use the ring. Or provide more detailed instructions like exactly how I’m supposed to use the ring. Did he think the “forces of evil” chased me around and might find this book before me? Or did he fear that Lanie or the Pinkhams might’ve read it and thought it the ramblings of a Satanist and burned it?
Hmm. Probably both.
I examine Delacroix’s ring, which still hangs around my neck on a tattered cloth. It might fit on my thumb. I’ve been using two alchemist’s rings more or less constantly for a while, but it’s not like I needed to learn how to use them. Merely wearing them makes them work. Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try.
After a brief shrug, I untie the cloth and jam my left thumb into the ring.
In seconds, my face, hands, and feet burst into flame.
“Yow!” I shout, yanking the ring off.
Okay, whoever said, “it won’t hurt to try” has clearly never messed around with alchemy.
And, all right, I lied. I didn’t shout ‘yow.’ I shouted something that rhymes with ‘trucking hell,’ likely the cause of Lanie dropping pots downstairs. Around here, it’d be shocking enough for a man to use such language. However, I stand by what I said. A feeling like I just went bobbing for apples in a deep fryer warrants a bad word—or six.
I get a momentary peek at the bones inside the tops of my feet and my hands. Sizzling and snapping strands of muscles crawl back over them like some creepy alien worms. They thicken, growing back into muscle, then turn milky as new skin forms. By the time Lanie skids to a stop in the doorway, I look fine—though there’s a noticeable haze of smoke hanging in the air.
“Miss Moon? What in tarnation happened? I thought I heard you say some right ungodly things.” She sniffs. “Is that steak?”
“No. Mr. Delacroix has some rather interesting items in his pack. One of them caught me off guard and nearly lit me on fire. I shall endeavor not to open another until I’m nowhere near the house.”
“Oh.” She covers her mouth with one hand. “Are you burned?”
I show off my intact hands. “No. The smell is whatever substance he used to power the device. I’m honestly not entirely sure what it is.”
She blinks, dazed. It’s clear I lost her, which is fine. “You may as well come down once you dress. I’m starting on some sandwiches.”
A tiny voice floats in the window, repeating “trucking hell.” Only the little girl didn’t exactly say that… she said what I said before.
Lanie damn near faints.
I give her a sheepish look. “Was that Ginny?”
She shakes her head, most of the color gone from her cheeks. “No… Violet.”
Great. I’m responsible for a five-year-old dropping the F-bomb. “I’ll deal with it.” I clap the book shut over the silk, stuff it in the pack, and head for the door.
“Miss Moon. Your boots?” She fans herself. “And mercy me. You’ve nothing on under that dress.”
Shoes I could’ve skipped but, the luck I’m having… yeah. I rush back to get the rest of the way dressed, then hurry outside in time to distract Violet from saying it again and again. She’s kneeling in a patch of wildflowers to the left side of the porch with a few dolls arranged around in front of her.
“Hello, Violet.” I say. “Are you having fun?”
She looks up at me. “Yes, ma’am. My dollies are having tea in the grass. It’s almost lunchtime, so we’ll have to go inside.”
“You heard someone say a bad word, didn’t you?”
She nods eagerly. “Two of them.”
“I know your mommy and daddy wouldn’t want you to use those words.”
“Well, someone yelled them. Why can’t I?”
It was a good argument, admittedly, but one that would get her in a lot of trouble, which I just can’t be responsible for.
It’s time for a memory overwrite. A moment later, she’s certain she heard “ducks and bells” which should save her from a childhood of whippings.
Smiling to myself, I head back inside to the kitchen where Lanie is busily cutting slices off a hunk of salted ham. “All taken care of,” I say.
Lanie looks at me. “Taken care of?”
“Yes. I informed Miss Violet that she misheard me and was not pronouncing the words correctly when she attempted to shout ‘ducks and bells.’”
Lanie giggles. “Oh, my. It’s lucky her ma and pa didn’t hear what she said before. Would’ve been heck to pay.”
I grin. “Yeah, I can imagine. My son overheard my former husband using some words that no four year old should repeat once.”
“Former husband?” Lanie’s eyebrows start to climb with the suggestion of impropriety.
“He’s deceased,” I say, faking a sorrowful face. Well, mostly faking. I did mourn Danny, but that happened long before his heart stopped beating.
We assemble sandwiches and set the table.
Burley walks in from the back, swatting dust off his pants with his hat. “Ahh, our guest is awake. Are you feeling any better, ma’am?”
“Yes, thank you. I was simply exhausted when I returned last night.” I fan myself. “Most kind of you to help me to bed.”
He nods and takes his place at the head of the table. “My deepest regrets about that friend of yours. Doc said infection had set in. Bunch of, ehh… what’d he call it?” Burley looks around the dining room as if the walls would give him the word he’s hunting for.
Susanna Pinkham glides in with the three girls in tow.
“Dear, what was it Doc Abernathy said ’bout that feller upstairs? Some sort o’ raging?”
“Hemorrhage,” mutters Susanna, clearly uncomfortable discussing such things around children.
Internal bleeding, which he could’ve survived in modern times. If I wasn’t immortal, I’d be terrified to even breathe back in this time period. Over lunch, Burley grills me a little about who I am and what, if any, plans I’ve got. I tell him I’m from California, having traveled east after my husband passed away. I’d been heading to New York to look after an offer of employment, but it didn’t pan out so now, I’m trying to get back to my children in California. Delacroix had been intending to help, but can’t now for obvious reasons. Though I do tell them that he left me a note in the pack to check with an associate of his around Roanoke, which I plan to do soon.
And to placate Lanie, I mention that if it doesn’t pan out, I’d be interested in maybe staying on here and helping out for a while. Lanie nods, smiling.
“What about your children?” asks Susanna. “Where are they now?”
“Still back in California, with my sister. I’m fixin’ to get back to them as soon as I can, so I’m hoping Mr. Delacroix’s associate works out.”
The three of them nod.
“Ducks and bells,” shouts Violet.
Susanna jumps and drops her sandwich. “What in tarnation?”
Her sisters giggle.
“That’s my fault,” I say. “I read the note and, well, it’s something my daughter yells when she’s happily surprised.”
“Aww. I’m sure she misses you dearly,” says Susanna, calming down.
I cross my
fingers under the table. Hopefully, Tammy doesn’t miss me at all—because, after all, she has no idea what’s happened to me. No one does. “I’m sure. I should leave for Roanoke soonish.”
“Heck of a trip,” says Burley. “All the way ’cross Virginia. How you fixin’ ta get there?”
“Oh, I’ll manage.” I smile and mentally nudge the conversation away from that topic. “This ham is quite good. Thank you so much again for your hospitality. I wish there was some way I could repay you.”
Burley chuckles. “If you could go convince that Thom Chase to leave us the hell alone.”
“Burl,” mutters Susanna. “That’s hardly something she need worry about.”
“Oh, I ain’t seriously thinkin’ she’d do nothin’ ’bout that fool.”
I lean forward over the table to look at him. “Who’s Thom Chase and why is he a problem?”
“Local busybody. Got wind of… well you know the help we provide to certain people in need. He might’a got wind of it. Least he thinks he did. Tryin’ ta stir up trouble.”
“Oh. Where is he?” I ask innocently enough. “Maybe I can try talking to him.”
Susanna shakes her head and waves me off. “None of your concern, missus.”
Burley thinks about a scrawny, older guy who lives a mile or so down the dirt road that runs along the property’s western limit. Thom Chase has that sort of squinty-eyed sour expression that really does make him look like the irritating nosy neighbor you really want to punch. “Yeah, I only said it in jest, missus. No sense you getting’ anywhere involved with that man. He’s got his demons.”
“Yeah.” I lean back in the chair thinking about how that man’s demons could bring death down on the Pinkhams, and who knows what could happen to their three girls. ‘Loyal’ Southerners of this time didn’t take too kindly to anyone caught helping slaves escape to the North, and enraged mobs aren’t the most careful of things around children. “I know what that can be like. Demons, that is.”
I get a raised eyebrow or two, but the family soon makes idle chitchat over the rest of the meal, and I’m happy to see that Lanie acts more like a daughter than a hired servant. I get the feeling that Burley is a man of few outward emotions, but he does care for all four kids in his care. Though, fifteen isn’t really considered a child in 1862. My modern sentimentalities are showing.
After helping clean the plates and table, then sweeping the floor for crumbs (amazing how five-year-olds make the same-size messes in any era), I bid farewell to Lanie and head ‘off to Roanoke.’
I do, however, pay a visit to Thom Chase before leaving the area.
He lives in a rather small green house on an overgrown lot a bit over a mile down the road. From the looks of the place, he hasn’t put much care into things at all. If I were a kid, I’d think this is where the mean ol’ man lived who keeps any baseball that lands in his backyard—and possibly drags any trick or treaters into his basement, never to be seen again.
Thom’s reaction to my knocking is to shout, “Go away.”
“Mr. Chase?” I ask. “I just need a moment of your time for a few questions.”
Perhaps hearing a woman’s voice catches him off guard. After a minute or two of silence, the rickety front door swings open to reveal a sixtyish guy with wispy hair and beard, deep-set eyes, and a hook nose. He shifts his jaw side to side, unsure what to make of me.
I peer into his thoughts. His confusion and irritation morphs into an urge to start complaining about my dress being too airy for a woman to be wearing out and about town. He thinks I’ve gone outside in a slip, or as he thinks of it, my underwear.
“What in tarnation are you doing, girl? Runnin’ around out here like that. It’s indecent.”
Before he can launch into full-on rant mode, I steamroll over his brain. His posture slackens and he stares vacantly into space. No sense being seen here, so I guide him inside and plant him back in the cushioned chair he’d been in before, as evidenced by a little table with a tumbler of whiskey nearby.
The room stinks of tobacco and wet wood. I’m not entirely sure where that’s coming from as nothing appears to be soaked. But hey, I’m not looking to buy the place, nor am I doing a random property inspection. Wow… I haven’t thought of that in years. Speaking of which, I wonder what Chad Helling’s up to now?
Well, okay, not now. He’s not up to anything now since he doesn’t exist yet. I mean around the time before that spell threw me back here. I haven’t spoken to him in a long time, like at least six months. I should really call him when—if—I get home.
It takes a little longer than I expect to root around Chase’s mind—the man is damn stubborn—but I erase his memories about the Pinkhams helping slaves escape. Or at least his suspicions. He thought he saw a ‘pack of Negroes’ creeping around the property at night, but never did find any tangible proof. He’d been ready to run to the nearest law as soon as he had something. Ugh. You know, as a former HUD agent, I used to like people who did that. But I can’t help but want to bounce this guy’s face off the wall a few times. What bothers me isn’t that it’s technically the law here or that the law is immoral, it’s that this guy would take great glee in hurting those people.
While I’m in there, I leave a strong thought nugget about him owing Burley Pinkham $400 that he’s hoping the man forgot about. That seems to be a good way to keep him from going snooping without causing the bastard any permanent harm.
Chapter Twenty-two
Once again, I find myself wanting to fly and hesitating out of my fear of going up in broad daylight.
Damn nerve of people being freaked out by giant half-dragons, right? A girl ought to be able to get her shapeshift on any time of the day or night. So, instead, I wind up walking. I might not be going fast, but at least it lets me feel like I’m making progress. It also leaves me gazing around at the magnificence of nature in a time before freeways, billboards, jet planes, and so on. That I’m even able to appreciate this sight with the sun high in the sky reminds me how thin a line I’m really traveling here.
I mean, I’m a vampire walking across a grassy field in the middle of the damn day. There’s no such thing as sunblock in this place. One little alchemist’s trinket is keeping me alive right now. Maybe it’s reckless of me to risk being out in the wide open after all. I’m getting too casual about the whole sunlight deal, like I’ve almost forgotten how easily it can really kill me.
Which brings me back to Delacroix’s ring. Why did putting it on cause me to spontaneously combust? Well, the ones I have on now constantly apply their “effect” to whoever wears them. That tells me that his ring has some “manner of effect” when worn, too. Still, I’m pretty sure that effect is not supposed to be lighting my ass on fire. Delacroix wore it just fine, no smoldering there.
He also mentioned its magic is in negation. Oh. That makes sense. I’ve got three magic effects active on me at once: tolerating sunlight, tolerating food, and being in 1862. Since only the time catapult required a human sacrifice to power, it’s likely that wearing Delacroix’s negation ring suppressed the effects of the other two, making me vulnerable to sunlight.
It also shielded him from my charm. Though, as best as I’ve come to understand my mental manipulation, they’re not constant effects, more like a semi-permanent change. Think of magic like a hologram making an illusion. As long as the hologram exists, the thing appears there. Me playing with someone’s memory is like digging a hole in the ground. If I stop digging, there’s still a hole in the ground. But perhaps having the ring on prevented my proverbial shovel from scratching the surface.
Under most circumstances, I wouldn’t really give much of a damn how this thing works, but since Delacroix had been inconsiderate enough to die, I’ve got to figure this out myself. I wonder if it could be as simple as just putting the ring on when I’m standing on this ley line nexus thing. At night, of course.
And that thought gets me panicking that the ley lines aren’t going to do a damn thing.
Holy shit.
I stop walking, flop down, and pull open Delacroix’s bag, grabbing the book and whipping it open to those ley line notes. My hands tremble from excitement as I scan over the shaky handwriting of a dying man. Roanoke has a nexus where five ley lines intersect.
Well, damn.
I stare into space and flip the book closed.
Five paths.
That woman told me the same thing Delacroix did, though I suspect I would’ve needed this ring. Or at least someone to teach me how to work a dispelling ritual. Well, that makes me feel somewhat better at not understanding the significance of what she told me days ago. I set the book back in the bag and, since I’ve got daylight to burn, decide to check out the pockets to see what else he might’ve had in here.
I pop open the buttons on the first one my gaze settles on. Inside a pocket barely big enough to hold a man’s hand sits a scrap of lavender fabric. Snot rag or something I guess. I snatch it and pull, and wind up holding a friggin’ top hat. The same one Delacroix had been wearing when I first saw him—which should in no way have fit inside that pocket.
After staring dubiously back and forth between said hat and said too-small pocket, I gingerly attempt to reinsert the hat where it came from. With a schlurp noise, the hat melts into a blur of pale purple and once again resembles a scrap of handkerchief tucked in a small, buttoned storage pouch.
“Well, shit. Don’t see that every day.”
I spend the next hour and change searching all twenty openings. He’s got a few full suits, two pairs of nice shoes, undergarments, smoked fish, ink, quills, paper, several dozen esoteric books, and about $1,200 in paper money. The topmost pouch on the row closest to me holds a note written in the same shaky penmanship that detailed his research on ley lines.
“Dear Miss Moon,” I read aloud. “I have come to realize I am soon to begin exploring the world after this one. I wanted to bequeath my travel pouch to you, though I will say a small part of me hopes you may, in turn, give it to either another alchemist or one who walks in the Light.” I nibble on my lip, thinking of Anthony. “To someone whose mind has not been opened to greater possibilities than the humdrum, they will see twenty plain pockets too terribly small to be of much use. Those who know that greater things exist will see this bag as it truly is. I wish you luck in returning home. Regards, Jean Delacroix.”