“Fine,” Claire growled, shoving a ten-dollar bill into Callie’s outstretched palm.
“Ye bet I’d say no?” I asked.
Callie shrugged, smirking. “Took a shot in the dark, that’s all.”
Claire grumbled something about insider trading but left it at that. If Starlight was bothered by my refusal, he certainly didn’t look it. In fact, the little stoner bear seemed content to watch us banter back and forth until the sun exploded. Of course, depending on the potency of his shit, I’d probably be cool with it, too. He burped, and a puff of smoke drifted out of his mouth. “Excuse me,” he said.
“So, what now?” Callie asked.
“Well,” Starlight said, staring up at me with a puzzled expression, like I was some sort of abstract painting, “there is another way. But it’ll hurt. A lot.”
“Another way?!” Callie interrupted. “Seriously? You felt me up, you little—”
“Callie!” Claire interjected. “He said it hurts. Didn’t you hear that part?”
Callie scowled at her best friend, but finally rolled her eyes. “Sure, I heard.”
I weighed my options. I sure as hell wasn’t about to get undressed and let Starlight cop a feel while he dosed me with whatever he was on—I didn’t give a shit whether Claire labeled it a “ritual” or not, it sounded an awful lot like date-rape to me. But the idea of putting myself through torture struck me as an equally shitty option. Hadn’t I gone through enough already, today? I realized they were all looking at me expectantly and sighed. “Alright, guess I’ll be takin’ the red pill,” I said. “Bring the pain.”
Because when asked to decide between sex and suffering, one would always trump the other.
I’d been raised Catholic, after all.
Chapter 25
Starlight led me to a grove and a patch of what he called wildflowers, but looked suspiciously like weeds, poking up through the snow. The grove itself was secluded, hemmed in on all sides by stone. I doubted I’d have found the place on my own, even if I’d had a year to look; forests were like that—a world unto themselves, full of hidden treasures. We’d left Claire and Callie behind with Kenai, who was still recovering. I could tell Callie was still caught up in her thoughts—Beckett, maybe, although there was no way to know for sure, what with everything else she had on her plate.
Like protecting an entire city.
Personally, I thought she was crazy for claiming jurisdiction over Kansas City; it was a major city, for Christ’s sake, not some military compound where you could impose strict rules and monitor ingress and egress. Her ambitions were bold, though, I had to give her that. If I was being honest with myself, I’d have loved to play Sheriff in my own hometown, but Boston had a long, bloody history of powerful figures—mostly mobsters like Barboza and Bulger—taking over the city under the pretense of “building a better tomorrow,” and I wasn’t keen to add to that legacy. See, I didn’t mind being put in the corner…no one can knife you in the back if you’re in the corner.
“So, what now?” I asked.
“Pick one that speaks to you,” Starlight said, showcasing the grove and its overgrowth.
I took a brief look around, found the wildflower nearest me, and plucked it from the ground. “Now what?”
Starlight looked nonplussed, which I found amusing. In my mind, a plant was a plant. Well, except for Eve—I wasn’t sure what the fuck she was, besides a receptacle of random facts and a total pain in my ass.
“Alright, now eat it,” Starlight said. He plopped down and put his back against a boulder, urging me to do the same with a wave of his paw. I frowned but did as he suggested. My ass would end up wet, but, considering I was about to go on some sort of drug-addled vision quest, it was probably the better alternative. I didn’t want to end up dancing off the edge of a cliff, mistakenly thinking I was out for a night on the town.
“What then?” I asked, dubiously eyeing the plant.
“Then you will find your answers,” Starlight replied.
“Not that part,” I clarified. “Like, how will it feel?”
Starlight shrugged a furry shoulder. “Usually? The experience is pleasant. But that’s if you consume it the way it was intended. In its raw state? Probably not so much. Do you want a list of the possible side effects?” Starlight asked.
I grimaced. “No, as long as none of ‘em are permanent, I’ll be fine.”
Starlight snorted. “You’re about to see into your own subconscious, and you think there won’t be permanent side effects?” He grinned. “There are no such things as safe words in your subconscious, you know.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever, ye know what I meant,” I said, holding the plant this way and that. “Which part do I eat?”
Starlight scratched his head. “The ritual helps bring out the flower’s natural properties,” he said. “So, I’m not sure. Probably best to eat the whole thing. I’ll get you another one if it doesn’t work.”
“You’ve never done this before?” I asked, eyes wide.
“Eaten a flower off the ground?” Starlight replied. “Please, I’m a bear. Of course, I have.”
“Aye, but this flower?” I asked, pointing at the glorified weed.
“Oh, absolutely not. That would be monumentally stupid. But you didn’t want to take part in the ritual, so…”
I stared at the bear, slack-jawed. He mimed an eating motion and flashed me a thumbs up with one dainty claw. “Fine,” I growled, and took a hefty bite of the cleanest part of the flower. It was rancid. Bitter. I swallowed and could feel it working its way down, destined to fester in my gut. I took another bite. And another.
Finally, it was gone.
I used snow to wash it all down and clean the dirt off my mouth. Starlight, meanwhile, looked at me in awe. I realized at some point he’d snuck forward, his eyes comically wide, like a child watching an adult light a cigarette. “Wow,” he admitted. “I didn’t really think you’d do it. You must really hate getting naked.”
I shot him a stern look. “How long before it takes effect?”
Starlight stared up at the sky, which had finally begun to darken, as if judging the time of day. “No idea.”
“Has anyone told ye that you’re useless?” I asked, clutching my stomach, which was already beginning to ache.
“Not to my face,” Starlight said, his tongue flapping loose in his mouth like a dog’s, grinning.
“Well ye are. Totally…completely…useless…” I managed, before the Earth spun on its axis and sent me flying off the edge of the world, colliding with clouds filled with mist, drifting past stars that shone like glittering jewels encased in flame, time a concept that had yet to be invented…
Guess the drugs were working.
Eventually, I landed. I lay on a cool surface, feeling…odd. I couldn’t describe the sensation, other than to say it wasn’t euphoric or painful. It just was. I rose onto all fours, then to one knee, and finally stood. Moving was hard, the air thick and heavy, as if gravity had been taken up a notch. I felt my joints complaining as I took one plodding step forward, and then another. And another.
Was this it? Was I doomed to wander around a dreamscape until I lost my mind? Or had that awful plant actually killed me? Did that make this Heaven? Or Hell? At that precise moment— almost as if wondering where I was triggered my ability to see my surroundings—I saw them.
Doors.
No, not doors. Windows, I realized. Windows so large I’d mistaken them for doors, anchored on nothing, they hung, suspended in thin air, in the hundreds. Maybe thousands, I realized; they hung as far as the eye could see in either direction, forming a hallway of sorts, a corridor in space. I took another lumbering step, this time towards one of the windows—an urge I couldn’t describe compelled me to open it, to see what was on the other side. Fast as thought, I had my fingers curled around a handle, moments from twisting and pulling it back to reveal another world.
“Stop,” a voice commanded.
I froze, unabl
e to move, trapped in a sliver of time—if this was a dream, it suddenly no longer felt like my own. My skin broke out in a cold sweat. Maybe this was Hell, after all; maybe it was my fate to stare at a window for all eternity, never to see what lies on the other side.
“Turn,” the voice said, the authority in it almost too much to take. I did as I was told, pivoting slightly, releasing the handle to look upon the speaker, and felt my legs turn to jelly.
My eyes burned, refusing to close, even to blink.
I knew that face.
I knew it almost as well as I knew my own—the slow curve of her cheek, the freckles that dotted her nose, the locks of auburn hair that fell freely over her shoulders. Only her eyes—a bluer, less green version of my own—were unrecognizable; instead they burned, smoke billowing out from her sockets as if a wildfire raged behind her eyelids.
“Ma…” I whispered, disbelieving, recalling the pictures Dez had shown me of her. Why was she here? Was this my subconscious trying to tell me something about my mother? What kind of sick joke was that? Except, it wasn’t a joke. I realized this didn’t even feel like a dream, really—it felt like I had wandered into another realm, a corridor that existed outside time and space, filled with gravity-defying windows.
The woman with my mother’s face scowled and shook her head. She approached in a white gown, the edges of her dress trailing across an invisible floor, the cosmos visible far beneath her feet. I saw comets go soaring past planets I didn’t recognize. Planets of all different colors which spun, ever so slowly. I lost sense of time as meteors drifted lazily along currents I couldn’t see. Her hand at my chin brought my head up, and I realized I’d been staring—literally—into space.
She locked her gaze on my face, her eyes still smoldering. I marveled to see that her frown, like mine, turned her face into something bratty and petulant. For some reason, that made me smile.
“What are ye?” I asked. “Where are we?”
“You’ve come too soon,” she replied, finally. She stepped away. “Leave.”
I felt her will tug at me, like someone had hooked a finger in my belly button and yanked it towards my spine. But, despite that, I stayed rooted to the cosmic floor. Her forehead crinkled. “What did you do?” she demanded.
“I’ve been havin’ dreams,” I explained. “I couldn’t sleep. A…friend, offered to help, so I ate a nasty plant and came here. Wherever this is…” I drifted off, staring at the window I’d almost opened, again feeling that strange compulsion to peer through to the other side.
“The dreams should not have begun, yet,” she replied, stepping forward once more. She passed her hands along my body, not touching me, but close.
And that’s when I saw my anti-magic field for the first time.
No longer invisible, it hovered over me, glowing faintly, encasing me in an aura of dim light. She ran her hands along it, and—wherever her fingers trailed—the light grew brighter, the field more perceptible. Soon, it was practically opaque, which was when I first noticed them.
The cracks.
“This is how the dreams got through,” she hissed, staring at the cracks as if they were some sort of vermin, or infestation. “What have you done?” she asked, pointing at them in accusation.
“Nothin’!” I insisted. But deep down, I suspected that wasn’t true. Brief flashes of not-so-distant memories—an angel’s power smashing against my field, Johnny Appleseed’s hand in mine, Hemingway repulsed and perched on the rear legs of his chair, Gladstone staring at his perfectly ordinary hands, and more—assaulted me. Meaning the cracks weren’t cracks at all, but fissures—pieces of my field that no longer aligned after having been pulled apart and shoved back together over and over again.
Which meant the dreams were my fault.
“I see,” she said, reading my guilty expression. She sighed and reached out, resting her hand on one of the smaller fractures. She pinched the edges of my field together, then drew back; it looked good as new.
“How d’ye do that?” I gasped.
She scoffed. “Who do you think put it there in the first place?”
I frowned, wondering yet again who this woman was. And, more importantly, what she wanted. I pulled away. “If you’re not me Ma, tell me who ye are,” I demanded. “What are ye doin’ here?”
She frowned, staring at nothing before returning her attention to me—almost as if she were looking at something I couldn’t see. “It’s too soon to have this conversation. Let me fix your cage, and your dreams will cease.”
“Me cage?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself.
The woman frowned harder. “Never mind that. Come.”
I refused to move. “No, I want answers,” I said, heatedly. I took a step forward, prepared to confront her. Or at least I thought that’s what I intended. Instead, I found myself at the window, clutching the handle once more.
“Stop,” she commanded.
I froze a second time. Talk about déjà vu. What the hell was going on? I saw her approach out of the corner of my eye, only this time all her attention was fixated on the window, not me. She rested her hand against it, eyes closed. “Why this?” she muttered. “Why do your dreams bring you here?”
I tried to speak but couldn’t. I couldn’t stop her as she began remolding my field, either. She took her time securing it, pressing the shattered sections back together until they were a seamless whole. “It is not yet time,” she said enigmatically as she worked. “If they find you now, you will not be free to choose.” Once finished, she folded her arms across her chest, glowering at the window as if it had presented her with an unsolvable math equation. “Move,” she demanded.
I got out of her way as she reached up and yanked on the handle, freeing the window. It opened to reveal another world, as I’d suspected—a murky, desolate place smothered in fog and despair.
“London, November 9th, 1888,” she intoned, ignoring the slight chill in the air now that the window was open. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “The Whitechapel District. The hunting grounds of the man known as Jack the Ripper. This, for whatever reason, is what your dreams were trying to show you.”
That’s funny, I thought to myself.
Because that sounded like the prelude to a nightmare to me.
Chapter 26
A woman came tearing out onto the street, singing an Irish ballad at the top of her lungs, clearly drunk. She didn’t, or couldn’t see us—but, given the oppressive fog that swirled about her feet and drifted in the morning air, that wasn’t particularly surprising. The fog was so thick, in fact, that I could barely make out her features. Her hair seemed dark one moment, and light the next, especially as she passed beneath the gas lamps, the glow around each warped and hazy. And yet, no matter how surreal the setting, I knew the truth.
What I was seeing was real.
Because that’s the thing with simulations; you always know you’re in one. No matter how high resolution the graphics, no matter how accurate the representation, reality has an intangible quality you can’t fake—the sights, smells, and sounds that your brain processes in an instant. But I could see, smell, and hear everything through the window—the acrid stench of coal and the blast of fog horns—which meant I really was looking at London in the 1800s.
Unfortunately, that meant the woman dancing her way between run-down buildings under the cover of fog was going to die. Because, if the woman next to me didn’t have her dates mixed up, and this was the Whitechapel District, then I was likely looking at Black Mary on the morning she met Jack the Ripper.
Part of me wanted to reach through the window and warn her, but for some reason I knew that wouldn’t work. I was looking through a window, not a doorway. What lay on the other side had already happened, long before I was born; nothing I did could save her.
And so Black Mary, as she would later be known, continued to stumble through the street. She passed by one or two figures in the gloom, emerging from the fog like wraiths, only to be swallowed
up again. It was a nightmarish landscape, fit for monsters and men alike. Which, a moment later, is exactly what I saw.
A man stepped out between two buildings, appearing as if from thin air, dressed in a thick coat, the lip of his top hat obscuring most of his face. Black Mary tried to skirt around him, but he sidled sideways to stay in front of her, then again when she dipped the other direction. Black Mary’s song died out as she laughed. She rested her hand on the man’s chest, using him to stay upright.
They spoke, the fog doing strange things to their voices, bouncing sound around so all I could make out were individual words, like “price” and “come.” Black Mary offered her arm, slipping it between his as the two turned, about to walk away. But then a fierce gust of wind blew, forcing Black Mary to pin her dress down with one hand, shielding her eyes with the other, and the man’s top hat soared into the air. I was sure he was going to lose it in the fog, but then his hand shot out—impossibly fast—snatching it from the air and returning it to his head. But not before I’d seen the briefest glimpse of what lie beneath.
Lips like black ice.
And electric blue eyes.
“What is he doin’ there?” I asked, struggling to put two and two together.
The woman next to me whirled, then slammed the window shut, sealing Black Mary’s fate in an instant. “You met the Frost child? When?”
I fumbled for words, still trying to process what I’d seen. Jack Frost in London, escorting Black Mary the morning she was found in her bedroom, mutilated. I didn’t know many of the victims, or even that much about Jack the Ripper, but Black Mary’s story had always held fascination for me; hers was easily the most confounding murder, drawing speculation from a host of scholars.
The woman reached out and shook me. “Tell me.”
I pulled away. “Ye seem to know so much, why don’t ye tell me?” I replied, heatedly.
She closed her eyes and the smoke stopped spewing from them, cut off as if she’d shut the chute of a chimney. I saw her eyeballs flicker and dance beneath her lids. She pursed her lips. “You’re at a crossroads,” she said, finally. “I cannot see beyond that. What I’ve done in restoring your…”
Old Fashioned_A Temple Verse Series Page 16