Jane laughed quietly at some of the truly strange and unique gimmicks and toys and collectibles, interspersed with truly necessary things that she thought she would never be able to find again. Bottles of perfume that no one else carried, hand cream, cooking utensils, spices. Her favorite style of sleeveless shirt in ten different colors—she picked out one in emerald, one in gray and one in cobalt blue. Plus dozens of other things she would most likely regret not buying now, and would have to come back to fetch at a later date.
She wandered up and down aisles filled with unusual and strange items, all beautiful or just amusing. Things she hadn't ever expected to see in the same store. Didn't the sign out front promise whatever someone needed would be here? That meant everything had to be here.
Jane grinned and looked around, wondering if "everything" could indeed be jammed into this house.
Then she frowned, when it struck her that the room and the aisles certainly seemed longer than what could have fit into the house. At least, not the size of house she had glimpsed from the outside. Maybe it was just an optical illusion. With so much crammed in, it just seemed bigger than it really was.
It wasn't like space could be stretched to accommodate everything shoehorned in here. Could it? Sure, some of the guys at the Sanctum had managed to stretch space and even stretch time when they were under a great deal of pressure, but they couldn't make it last.
Jane snorted, muffling a bark of laughter, at the mental image of all the neat stuff at Divine's bulging out the walls of the house as the building went back to its normal size. Followed by the doors and windows popping open and everything bursting out like from a water balloon.
Just an optical illusion. Right?
Her wandering finally took her to the main room. Another sigh escaped her as she saw the tall, marble-topped counter with the big brass cash register and the shelves full of apothecary jars, just like she remembered them.
Where was the Wishing Ball? Panic shot through her, like the first time she somehow rose three feet off the ground without knowing quite how she did it.
"Welcome to Divine's Emporium." The woman stepped through the doorway behind her.
Jane turned around quickly.
This was Angela, the proprietor of the shop, unchanged in the dozen-plus years since Jane had left Neighborlee. The same long waterfall of hair in dozens of shades of gold, with a hint of strawberry. The same intense, crystalline blue eyes. The same granny-style dress in a blue handkerchief print. Angela had the kind of figure that looked good in the semi-shapeless dress, neither model skinny nor buxom. Just right.
"Uh, hi... I'm—"
"I know you."
Angela caught hold of Jane's hand and led her past the counter to a tall, skinny window. The Wishing Ball was right there on the corner, why hadn't Jane seen it?
Angela smiled wider, her expression lighting up as she studied Jane's face. "Yes, definitely. You were that quiet, pale little girl who kept trying to turn yourself invisible." She laughed.
Jane laughed with her. The way Angela said it, almost with a caress in her voice, made her attempts to fade into the wallpaper sound charming, and somehow reasonable.
"I still have that volume of The Jungle Book you loved to read whenever you visited. Jane Wilson. Or did you change your name when you became a legal adult? Did your adopted parents change your name? Never mind. That's your business." She waved her hand, brushing away the questions before Jane could feel invaded. "What brings you to Neighborlee?"
"Playing hooky." She almost clapped her hand over her mouth. It was the truth, though. The grinding stupidity of dealing with Fendersburg had driven her to flee, just for a day or two, to some place where every person around her didn't expect her to jump in and save them from a total lack of common sense.
"From what?"
For a moment, that familiar, crooked little knowing smile played across Angela's face, vanishing a heartbeat later. That specific smile that said loud and clear that she knew all the things Jane couldn't say, the things she was feeling and hadn't been able to put into words. She knew her secrets and would wait patiently until Jane was ready to spill them.
"I have a spa, back home. Facials, manicures, pedicures, massages, nails, sauna."
"You do all that? Multi-talented. And probably overworked." Angela gestured with a tip of her head toward a corner of the main room where Jane now saw a little white wrought iron bistro table and chairs.
Definitely overworked, but nothing I can admit to you.
Angela chuckled as she stepped around the table and went behind the counter. "Iced green tea with ginseng and honey?"
"That sounds lovely, thanks." Jane settled down at the little table. "Umm, actually, I don't do all those things. I have people who come in and provide most of the services. I have plenty of room in my store, so... Most of what I do is make appointments and sell all sorts of teas and creams and bath salts. The good kind, the legitimate kind," she hurried to add.
"Of course. I wouldn't expect anything else." Angela came back to the table with two glasses full of ice and two tall bottles of iced green tea in Jane's favorite brand.
Was there room behind the counter for a cooler and glasses and ice? A moment later, she shrugged away that consideration. Things happened at Divine's Emporium and it was wiser not to ask questions. Answers might destroy the wonder, the sense of "anything is possible."
"We could use a spa like yours. If you ever consider coming back home to Neighborlee, I know just the place. The old Spindelmutter building. Lots of room, three floors, an outside entrance for the third floor, which is set up as a separate apartment. You could add a whirlpool and expand your offerings to include exercise clothes and such."
Before she quite knew how, Jane had her notebook out and was taking directions to find the empty store, along with the name and phone number of the rental agent. She had been thinking about expanding her merchandise to include clothes and homeopathic treatments. After all, what was the use of cleaning up and detoxifying and making the outer person look younger if the person on the inside was still toxic and full of sludge?
"The moment you're ready to make the move, do let me know," Angela said, resting her hand on Jane's wrist for a few seconds. "I know a good two, three dozen people who would be ecstatic to have a store just like yours come into town. In fact, if you started now, you could be open in time to take advantage of the Christmas rush."
"Oh... I... Well..." Jane fought not to yank her hand out from the soothing warmth of Angela's hand. There was no way Demetrius and Reginald would let her abandon Fendersburg.
"Anything is possible." She winked and tipped her head toward the counter. "You used to believe in the Wishing Ball. Why not make a wish now?" A chiming laugh escaped her when Jane's mouth dropped open and her face heated up.
"Wishes are for children." She regretted those words the moment they slipped between her lips.
"Adults need bigger magic, and around here we call that a miracle. Still, the basic principle holds. You have to admit what you want, you have to ask for it, and then you have to believe and keep watch for the right moment." Angela sat back and gestured with an almost regal wave of her hand. "Go on now, make that wish. You don't have to speak it aloud, if that would make you feel better."
Actually, it did. Jane stepped up to the counter and stared at the Wishing Ball, waiting for the colors to swirl gently in the reflective, black opal surface. They didn't move, and when she finally persuaded herself to put her hand flat on the top curve, she didn't feel that zip-tingle sensation she had always gotten as a child when she made her wish. The disappointment was thick enough to block any words she might have tried to speak.
Please... I want to get out of Fendersburg. Away from those lazy, greedy, totally oblivious people. I want to find a new place to live, where I don't have to be the Ghost because people take care of themselves. I want a spa even better than the one I have now, where people use common sense and don't expect a miracle to come out of a
jar. I want... I want real friends. People who know the truth. I want... I want there to be magic again. Something beyond me, bigger than me, stronger than me. Something mysterious and awesome.
A single spark leaped off the Wishing Ball as she removed her hand and Jane gasped, staring at her index finger where the spark had seemed to rest for a moment, a golden-green, swirling ball that seemed to have a core of black, just before it vanished.
She thought Angela frowned at her, but when she turned her head to look, her hostess wore her usual serene, slightly superior, slightly amused expression. What her friend Chloe had always called a "Vulcan smirk."
* * * *
Deep underground, a faint, poisonous green spark zipped along through the cracks and crevices in the bedrock below Neighborlee, following the drip of water and the shivering of crumbling stone. In a thin place in the rock, where a ripple of black light scraped and scratched from the other side of a dimensional doorway that shouldn't have been there, the spark came to a stop. It pulsed brightly once, caught in the vortex stronger than the gravity of a black hole, before the black light swallowed it.
Nevertheless, the path of the green-black spark had pierced a meandering tunnel through bedrock and the fabric of space/time. On the other side of the place where Earth and other realms met and clung together, something sniffed at the scent of power and shifted slightly in its years-long sleep.
Chapter Two
Jane couldn't sleep. She almost gave in to the urge to pack up and check out of her room, but training held. What could attract attention more than a stranger leaving the Neighborlee Arms, with no good reason for why she wouldn't stay the rest of the night in the room that was already paid for? Wasting money was near the top of the long list of precepts and rules Demetrius and Reginald had hammered into the heart and soul of every student. Waste of any kind was just as much a crime as attracting attention. The only way people like Jane could survive and flourish was to avoid notice of any kind, any hint that they were not ordinary people.
Wandering the streets of Neighborlee was also out. Unless she became invisible. If she was doing that, why not fly?
No sooner had she thought it than she decided to do it. Jane didn't even need to put on a sweatshirt or shoes, since the Ghost field protected her from the elements. She did change into sweatpants and a comfy T-shirt. Nobody would see her, but she would know she was flying over a strange town in her pajamas, and she was just inhibited enough not to feel comfortable doing it.
"Things might be different if they let us wear costumes," she grumbled for the millionth time since adolescence. A moment of concentration and the Ghost field went into effect. Phasing out so she essentially slid between multiple dimensions, Jane went invisible. She floated several inches off the floor as she walked to the outer wall of her hotel room, slid between the molecules, and out into the air. She was on the third floor. In moments she shot straight up to the equivalent height of the tenth floor. There were no buildings in Neighborlee taller than eight floors.
From this high up, on a clear summer night, she saw all the streets spread out before her. In one direction they fed into the Triangle in the center of town, opposite the city hall and police/fire station/courthouse complex. In the other direction, the residential district petered out into farmland. To the west and north of town, beyond the municipal buildings, were the quarries, dark blots of stone and moonlight and starlight shining on water. West and south were the Metroparks, with the fishing and swimming holes and the river meandering among the trees. East and south of her were all the Neighborlee schools and the administration building. Beyond that, a narrow strip of farmland and then the border with Darbyville.
Back home in Fendersburg, the village idiots would just be gearing up for a night of stupidity, starting with the search for some blank wall or abandoned building to spray paint with misspelled graffiti. Then if they hadn't already guzzled enough beer to drown in, they would race down the back roads and try some vandalism.
Jane sighed in satisfaction as she looked around, slowly rotating in her bubble of invisibility, and enjoyed the peace and quiet. The only movement she could detect was four police cars patrolling different portions of the town. One toured the downtown/shopping district, the other in the industrial park east and north of town, another meandered around the school buildings, and the fourth wove in and out of the wiggly lines of the main residential district. She caught a few dots of light on top of cars driving around the sprawling campus of Willis-Brooks College, and assumed that was the campus police, getting up to speed for the fall semester. She had seen a couple notices and overheard people talking as she wandered through town, and assumed that college would be starting up in a few days.
A truck drove down the slope behind the municipal complex, taking an access road into the Metroparks. Jane dropped down to take a closer look. That didn't look like a police car or a ranger's car, but what did she really know about how things were done around here? Her finely tuned sense of "something is about to happen" urged her to find out, even though whatever happened in Neighborlee really wasn't any of her business.
The truck stopped just within the edge of the park, among some clumps of bushes. That was a bad sign, no matter what town it took place in. Jane dropped a little closer, just enough to see three people in the truck when a door opened and the light inside turned on. The driver got out and walked around to the passenger side, to help another person get out, then the third slid out and closed the door and the three linked arms. Her fingertips tingled faintly, and a soft rainbow-tinted shimmering hovered in the air around the truck.
"Oh heck heck heck," Jane muttered, and threw herself backwards as the trio rose straight up in the air. She knew she couldn't be seen, but logic said if she could sense some vibrations of Gifted energy, then someone might just be strong enough, sensitive enough to sense her using her Gift. Shivering, she flew straight back to town, glancing over her shoulder, ready to change course if those three followed her.
Oddly, she felt vaguely disappointed when she got back to the airspace above the Neighborlee Arms and there was no one within sight of her. Shivering a little, though she hadn't been chilled by her rapid flight at all, she sank down through the roof, down through an empty room, into her hotel room. Distracted, she almost didn't phase back into solidity before undressing and taking a long, hot shower to try to relax. The water would have passed right through her, and she might even have phased through the bathtub and the floor, into the room below her.
"Get a grip," she scolded herself, and scrubbed hard to get her blood moving. Ordinarily, fresh oxygen in her brain would have cleared her head, but maybe she had had too much?
She stayed up until nearly three, curled up on the chaise lounge that she had pulled over in front of the balcony door, straining all her senses to try to feel the presence of the flying trio. Whoever they were, wherever they were, she didn't feel any Gifted energy being used. Oddly, she felt vaguely disappointed.
Her dreams, when she finally slept, were fragmented. She had the sensation that she had spent the night listening for a call. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say she had tried to find whoever had spoken, to get them to repeat themselves. She had a headache as she jumped into her car before breakfast, and headed back to Fendersburg. Two nights away from her post—there was no telling what had happened. If she was lucky, the town had burned itself down to the ground.
* * * *
As luck would have it—good or bad, Jane wasn't quite sure yet—Fendersburg had been quiet while she was away. The usual routine had gone on without her, and without the Ghost to pull people out of problems a little common sense could have prevented. Joe Conrad had run out of gas while picking up milk from the four small dairy farms that had formed a cooperative. He sat for two hours, yelling for the Ghost to hurry up and help him, before he used his cell phone to call his brother to come with the gas can. Georgie Tupper decided he could fly with just a blanket tied to his shoulders for a cape. This happened t
wice a month, regular as clockwork. Come to think of it, far more regular than the clock in the center of town. When he climbed up the tallest tree in the center of town, the blanket got tangled on a branch. He hung there for almost an hour, kicking and screaming, while his mother sat on a park bench a few dozen feet away, working on her nails. Someone finally got tired of hearing her complain about the Ghost taking so long to show up, and they called the fire department. When the fire department presented Mrs. Tupper with a bill for rescuing her son, she told them to charge the Ghost, since he was "shirking his responsibility."
Various assorted other foolishness happened. People ignored stop signs and ate food from swollen cans. When the Ghost didn't show up to stop them, they dented their cars or had to rush to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. Jane got to her spa in time to open the doors for business at ten, and by two that afternoon she had heard about every incident in the day-and-a-half since she had run off to visit Neighborlee. Mrs. Tupper was in such a snit because the Ghost "didn't take his duties seriously," she didn't snipe at Jane for leaving town when she wanted to buy another color of nail polish and replace more makeup that Georgie had destroyed in one of his science experiments.
The newspaper the next morning listed all the minor disasters on the front page. Jane nearly didn't read the story when she realized that someone had actually listened to the inane grumbling of all the people who expected the Ghost to watch every step they made. She supposed the horrified, incredulous fascination of people who rubbernecked at traffic accidents was what kept her reading. When she unfolded the newspaper, to continue reading down the double-wide column, the headline on the bottom half of the front page stopped her cold. She stared, blinked, shook her head, blinked again, and started to ball up the newspaper, intending to use the Ghost field to compress it down to the density of granite, then drop-kick it into orbit.
Hero Blues Page 2