Convergence (Winter Solstice Book 1)

by J. R. Rain

  I also feel crazy.

  After getting dressed and ready to go, I steal a few minutes to call Melodie. Things have been so crazy, I haven’t had a chance to go see her. With no idea what the heck that thing was that clawed her leg up, I’m worried she might catch some arcane infection.

  “Hey,” she says, sounding tired. My Melodie worry-meter shoots up. “Where’ve you been?”

  “It’s complicated. In a word, I’ve got a story that the government didn’t want going public, so I spent a few hours in a locked room. And yes, I’m okay. And yes again, I’ll spill everything the moment I see you, but look, I have to ask… how are you? Do you feel weird? Is the leg okay? Any unusual coloration, soreness, whatever?”

  “Naw.” She yawns. “Just partied last night. Leg’s fine. Few scratches left, but no worse than that time I stepped on Moody’s tail.”

  I chuckle.

  “That is not funny,” says Mr. Moody.

  Wow, he really can see into my head.

  “It’s a vast expanse,” he deadpans. “Actual thoughts stand out like a flashlight in a field at midnight.”

  I flip him off, grinning. “Okay, but if anything weird happens, call me, and I’ll take you to my parents’ place.”

  “Yeah sure, but I feel great. Oh, shit. Thanks for calling me. My alarm clock didn’t work.”

  “You mean you slept through it.” I know Mel. Especially Mel on booze.

  She replies with a sheepish, “Umm… Okay, gotta go.”

  I hang up. Well, at least there’s one worry off my mind.

  Fenton hands me a mocha latte with an extra espresso shot when I walk into his office around 8:20 a.m. He’s all smiles, so I stop bracing for an argument about being twenty minutes late. I’m here at all today; he should mark that in the win column. My ear-hiding hat came with me again. No telling how long I’m going to feel insecure, but sooner or later, people will notice. It might not be a bad idea to share it with the staff here first so I have a buffer against… whatever. Not right now though. Today, I’m starting out small: with Fenton. He already knows anyway, or at least guessed.

  He barely reacts when I pull the hat off. Perhaps a trace of an ‘I thought so’ smile shows on his lips. “Those pictures were excellent, by the way. I hope that camera’s all right.”

  “Yeah. They confiscated the memory card.” I fish out the DVD I burned last night with the griffon pictures and the video on it. “If you liked the faun, check this out.”

  Fenton loads the disc. I sit there sipping coffee while his jaw opens wider and wider.

  “Where was this?” he rasps in a creaking whisper.

  “Brooklyn. You remember me talking about my ghost hunter buddies? One of them lives in that building and called me. I think it’s nesting on the roof if that guy didn’t spook it off for good.”

  “Your friend?”

  “No.” I take a long sip. The coffee’s cooled enough to gulp. “This man followed me there.” I explain our meeting and the invite to the woods two and a half hours north.

  He stares at the griffon on his screen the whole time I talk, occasionally muttering things like ‘simply amazing,’ ‘beautiful,’ or ‘magnificent.’ I can picture him narrating one of those nature channel documentaries, if they featured mythological beasts. He’s got that kind of voice that can mesmerize anyone over fifty and knock young people straight out.

  “I think you should reconsider your intention to meet with them.” Fenton flicks his gaze to me. “I don’t like it.”

  I let off a dark chuckle. “Neither do I, but I want to get a story out of it.”

  “Moving up to a bigger paper or a major news outlet isn’t worth your life.”

  Wait… what? I stare at him for a second before asking, “My life? Do you know something here or are you being paranoid?”

  “Let’s just say I’m rather concerned about that bloke, and I think you’ll be better off forgetting them entirely. An exposé on a group like that isn’t worth anything unless you name names. And groups trying to keep themselves quiet don’t appreciate having attention drawn to them.”

  “Maybe the secrets they’re keeping ought not to be kept? Do you know something about them, or are you being overcautious?”

  Fenton sinks back into his chair, sighing. “I’m worried about you. What if they’re trying to take advantage of you? You’re the only Va―I mean elf to show up in our world.”

  My eyes narrow. “You almost said Val’nathiri, didn’t you? Where’d you hear that?”

  “Sol, I’m the head editor and owner of a news outlet specializing in things of a paranormal or magical nature. I don’t recall exactly where the term crossed my brain, but I’ve been doing this for thirty years.”

  Sigh. “Now I know you’re full of it. You’re saying you ran The Spiritualist when you were sixteen and living with your parents?”

  “I did… the office consisted of my bedroom at the time, but the paper existed. I still have the original computer that hosted the website upstairs.” He grins. “Bloody thing clapped out ages ago, but it’s sentimental. Look. All I’m asking you to do is be careful. Do some research before you charge headlong into something you don’t know about.”

  “All right.”

  He leans forward and snatches his coffee cup off his desk. “So, both of these stories could catapult you off. I mean the faun and that griffon. You really needn’t bother with this dangerous other stuff. Are you ready for the big time?”

  “I like it here… Really, I do. I met this guy who’s right where he means to be, and it got me thinking. Maybe I’ve got my head on wrong about things. But still, I want to be taken seriously as a journalist. Nothing I ever write in The Spiritualist is going to be anything more than supermarket check-out-line gossip or tinfoil hat crowd stuff.”

  “We do take you seriously… it’s the world that doesn’t.” He chuckles before sipping his caramel macchiato. The sugary smell overpowers my mocha. “Things are changing, Solstice… our little ‘rag’ may not be so fringe for very much longer.”

  “What―”

  I jump, fumbling my coffee at a tremendous bang from outside the door. Before it splats on the floor, I nab it out of midair. Yay for elf reflexes. Derek’s dark brown hand rises up from behind the giant printer/copier and grabs on. He pulls himself upright, staring in the window at me. Looks like he noticed my ears and walked straight into the printer fast enough to flip himself over it. Papers are everywhere.

  If I didn’t feel like crawling under a desk to hide, I’d probably have laughed. Fenton coughs to cover his sniggers.

  Derek dusts his pants off and pokes his head into the boss’ office. “Umm. Sol? Is that you?”

  “Might as well get it over with. Yeah. I’m having a strange couple of days.”

  He approaches, tilting his head. “What’s with the ear extensions and contacts?”

  Here goes. “Umm. It’s not fake. You know all that weird stuff going on? Yeah well…”

  Derek reaches toward my head. “May I?”

  “Sure, just don’t pinch.”

  His cool fingers close around the pointy end, the part way above where a human ear ought to stop.

  “Wow… You’re not kidding. They’re real.” Derek grins, shaking his head. “Not for nothin’, but your eyes are amazingly beautiful.”

  Warmth spreads out from inside my chest. I manage a smile up at him. “Thanks.” Wow. He didn’t flip out.

  Derek backs out of the office, pulling the door closed, and proceeds to gather the papers he threw all over the floor.

  “As I was saying. Things are changing.” Fenton flicks his thumb at his coffee cup, rotating it in tiny increments. “I believe the experiment they ran at the Large Hadron Collider had an unintended consequence. Their attempt to reach into another dimension and take a single particle wound up doing something much different. I’m not a physicist, so I cannot even begin to comprehend how, but it seems that… I’m getting ahead of myself.”

  “Clea
rly. I’m already lost.”

  He smiles. “Have you ever heard of The Echo?”

  “I’m guessing you’re not talking about acoustics here, or that Amazon thing?” My turn to tease him.

  “Not quite. It’s a shadow―”

  “I’ve heard a little.” I flick at the heat sleeve on my cup. “My parents mentioned it. It’s supposedly another realm where magic comes from. I guess ‘another realm’ is pre-scientific-understanding speak for alternate dimension.”

  “Oh, yes. Good. I don’t have to go that far back then. Yes, some believe that The Echo was once much closer to us than it has been. At some point during the Dark Ages, it drifted away, resulting in an almost complete absence of magical phenomena from our world. From what I understand of it, that realm’s layout is quite a bit different from our physical reality. The best way I can think to describe it is imagine vast floating islands in an ocean of enchanted gases. No one can say for certain if the concept of ‘planets’ exists there, but if it does, likely a gas giant with disparate land masses flying about.”

  “Dad never went that deep into it.”

  Fenton nods. “Each of those islands contains a unique diaspora of beings. Here and there, the Echo touches our world via a number of pinpoint gateways. The islands link to different parts of our world, allowing things to occasionally slip through, but nothing major enough to dent humanity’s collective perception of reality. The sorts of numina that trespass across the boundary in, say, Japan are nothing like the ones who farmers in Wales see racing across their fields at sundown or prowl the streets in Russia at night.”

  I rub my temples, trying to wrap my brain around this. “You’re saying the numina who appeared thousands of years ago also inspired folklore that resulted in vastly different mythologies in different cultures?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of the fragmented floating islands?”

  “That’s the theory, yes. In some cases where two cultures’ folkloric creatures bear resemblances, one can postulate that either two different regions had a remarkably similar being or a single sub-realm connected to more than one point in our world. In short, we think the LHC dragged The Echo closer, overlapping our respective dimensions in an event we’re calling the Convergence.”

  “In short, I think you’ve gotten your hands on some grade A LSD.”

  Fenton gives me a Cheshire smile. “Yet here I sit talking to an elf.”

  I tap out a rhythm on the lid of my mocha latte, trying, but unable to come up with a more reasonable explanation for what I’ve seen over the past two days. “Well, I’ve been turned into an elf, chased a faun through Central Park, and watched a griffon build a nest. I’d laugh at you, but I don’t have anything else to explain this.” I quirk an eyebrow at him. “Who’s this we you keep referring to?”

  “Oh, umm.” He waves his hand about. “The community.”

  “Community?”

  “Those fascinated by mystical things.”

  He’s got a secret, but I’ve been around him long enough to know trying to get him to say something he doesn’t want to say requires waterboarding or withholding of sexual favors. Since I’m not the CIA, nor am I in any way inclined to partake of the latter, I’m stuck.

  “I suppose I should get to work then.” I stand. Ugh. I so could’ve done this at home. I don’t need to be here to type up an article.

  Fenton nods. “All right. Just be careful. And in case you’re wondering why I didn’t suggest you work from home, I wanted to make sure you were all right.” He fights to keep from smiling. “And because I can’t be arsed to look for another photographer of your caliber who’d work for a pittance.”

  I roll my eyes, but wind up laughing. “Yeah. Noted. That’s kinda… cool of you. Overbearing, but cool. And getting in the door at big media isn’t worth my life, got it.” Halfway out his office, I spin to point at him. “I’m taking tomorrow as a research day.”

  “Done,” he says, while firing a finger gun at me.

  Tracee, Jim, Derek, and Jazmin appear at my desk within seconds of my ass meeting chair. Though their ‘I wanna touch the elf’ thing gets irritating fast, it also gives me hope that I’m not going to be ducking flying tomatoes or having rocks thrown in my windows. Their curiosity fades to intermittent staring after about an hour of telling everyone about my stay at Casa de MIB. I don’t bother mentioning my non-human registration card.

  Over the next few hours, I write up articles for the faun photos as well as the griffon sighting. True to my word, I give Ethan Peterson credit for finding it, and toss in his mugshot from Noah’s ghost hunting site. He’s got a bio page there for all of us.

  When I’m mostly done with the griffon article, Tracee runs around taking lunch orders (Italian today). When I pick an eggplant parmesan wrap, I set off a chat explosion. She’s trying to figure out if I’m a vegetarian because I’m an elf or if it’s some other reason. I should mention I’m not vegetarian, though now that I think about it, I do tend to eat quite a lot of meatless meals. I try to change my order to chicken parmesan, but she shakes her head.

  “I think you’re adorable! I can’t let you hurt animals against your nature.” She prances off.

  Shit. Am I that old already? People aren’t supposed to be called ‘adorable’ by people half their age until they’re wearing adult diapers.

  After I send the finished articles into the system for Fenton to review, I reach to close down Noah’s site and stare at my old portrait on the bio page. Wondering if I should update it makes me throw an hour or two into a story about my illegal arrest by a ‘shadowy government agency.’ I guess I’m still bitter about that because I make it sound worse than it was. Total fascist thing. Of course, I can’t release a ‘hi, I’m an elf’ story right away, and I can’t release a ‘detained by the government’ story without the hello story going hand in hand to explain why I got dragged underground.

  Meh. I backburner the article. I’ll reread it in a couple weeks and see how I feel about it.

  I catch Fenton on IM and let him know two things.

  One: the articles are done.

  Two: I’m going home.

  ednesday around nine in the morning, I head out into the world again. Did you know that talking cats hate the idea of carriers? Mr. Moody threatened to do unseemly and dark things to my unprotected flesh while I sleep if I stuffed him in a cage, so I decided to trust him not to run off. I suppose being able to ask him not to run off (and have him understand me) changes that whole paradigm.

  The first place I went to rent a car didn’t believe I was me. I tried to claim I’m all dressed up to go to one those ren fests, but they thought I looked too much younger than the photo on my normal ID card. At the second place, I threw a minor glamour on the ID to make it match. A little after ten, I’m on the way to New Hope in a tiny Nissan Versa hatchback, the cheapest option they had. Normally, visiting the parents involves either a train or bus to Trenton and having one of them pick me up. But this is spur of the moment and I’m in a hurry.

  At 12:28, I pull into the narrow driveway between my parents’ shop, Mystic Paths, and the next building over, a bookstore specializing in occult titles. A pair of sisters run the bookstore since their parents retired and moved to Florida. I babysat for them as a teen; they have to be in their mid-twenties by now. Haven’t seen them in ages. I doubt they’d even remember me, or recognize me.

  Mr. Moody follows me into my parents’ store-slash-my-childhood-home, which is still loaded with all the same stuff I can describe with my eyes closed. Makes me wonder if my parents ever actually sell anything, or if they’ve enchanted the town clerk to forget about them owing annual taxes. They own the building and live in the apartment above the shop, so there’s no rent. Maybe they’ll wind up selling it and moving to Florida someday too.

  Dad looks up from the counter when I emerge from between two shelves. The place is so dusty and haphazard, I feel like I’m in Diagon Alley to buy a wand for my first day of school. “He
y, sweet―” He stares at me, the color draining from his face. “Oh. Oh my. Ruth… Ruth, hon. Come down here.”

  My parents definitely fall into that ‘cute’ old people category. Not that they’re old yet. Dad’s fifty-five, and my mom’s turning fifty-three in a few months. Dad’s gone full grey, but a lot of auburn remains in Mom’s hair. Speaking of Mom, she’s up in the book section, a not-quite-second story overhang loft above shelves loaded with candles, incense, and beads. One of these days, she’s going to fall down that little brass ladder.

  She descends with way more grace than a woman her age ought to, though it’s either magic or merely practice from going up and down that thing for years. Mom starts to reach out to hug me, but her face freezes, as does the rest of her.

  “So, yeah, there’s this.” I hold my arms out a bit while glancing around, looking everywhere but directly at either one of them.

  Dad motions for me to go around behind the counter. I follow him into a back room, Mom taking the rear. The front door’s got a chime, so we’ll hear if a customer walks in. They’ve set up an old dining room table and some chairs in a space behind the counter. I used to do homework there in grade school when I was too little to be ‘alone’ upstairs. A grey laptop that looks older than me is sitting at one end next to a stack of papers. Mom does the financials for the store herself.

  We sit. Quiet, awkward staring takes up a few minutes. Mr. Moody springs into my lap and curls up. His weight reminds me I’ve been away from a bathroom for a while.

  “Just spent two hours on the road. Be right back.”

  The cat takes the chair while I leave. When I return, I interrupt whispering. They stop and stare at me with a mixture of guilt, apology, and relief.

  Oh boy. Guess I was right.

  “So, I’ve obviously been… whatever I am all along and I’m adopted.” I manage eye contact. “It doesn’t matter. You’re my parents and that little a-word isn’t going to change the past thirty-four years and all the love you’ve given me. I only want the truth. Please.”