by VK Fox
“One day? That seems extreme.”
“Come on, you’ve had one too, yes?” The Sana Baba accent sounded good on him. Zack tossed an arm around Dahl’s shoulders. “I’ll tell you all about my bad day on the walk back.”
Chapter Twelve
Jane and Ian were not the only ones investigating Eileen Kendle’s end-of-life weirdness. “No Trespassing” signs forested the lawn of her cream-colored suburban colonial, and yellow “Do Not Enter” tape crossed the driveway behind a dusty Honda sedan. A few lights shone from the windows, but the house was lonely. Nothing on the porch, no holiday decorations twinkling from the roof, scraggly, brown plant corpses in the garden; abandoned even though someone was clearly home.
Ian heaved a sigh. “I miss Dahl.”
“Yeah, he’d knock on the door, flash a smile, and whoever answered would find his new best friend.” Or he’d verbally flay them until they were reduced to a docile, sniveling heap. “What’s Eileen’s husband’s name again?”
“George Kendle.” Ian reopened the manilla folder, tracing a thick finger down a sparsely worded single sheet. There wasn’t a lot of information about the Kennett Square incident, and Jane was to blame. A combination of her being horribly, messily involved and activating a non-detection effect that shut out anyone seeking Jane-related information. Well, now the shit was on the bottom of her own shoe. Jane sighed and rubbed her breasts.
“Sorry.” She mumbled, catching Ian’s wide-eyed gaze. “It’s been like forty minutes since I nursed the babies and I’m dying. I might spring a leak.” Jane switched to crossing her arms for counter pressure. They needed to make this happen faster. Sister Isadora watching the twins was nice, but it turned out there were limiting biological factors.
“No apology needed. Please feel free to massage your breasts anytime you want, and if I’m in the other room, call me.” Ian chuckled, and Jane grinned and rolled her eyes. Poor Ian. He was probably dying: twenty-nine years a virgin for only a couple of months of bliss. As soon as Jane had found out she was pregnant with twins, her OB declared her off limits. Hopefully someday soon she could coax her libido fairy out from under its smothering rock of awkwardness and exhaustion.
Ian was still beaming at her. “Should we knock?”
“I’m willing to bet George doesn’t want to talk. Do we need to do this? Isn’t it enough that your animal friends say there are no monsters in the area?”
Ian ran a hand through his curly hair. “We should be thorough. My dreams have been murky, but I have a feeling about this. Eileen’s house may be a dead end, but I think we should check.”
Jane eyed the narrow walkway and encroaching signs.
Ian followed her gaze. “Okay, maybe I knock and you sneak in the back?”
Jane chewed her lip. “Last time we were here Dahl couldn’t pick the lock. It’s like a super high-end one. And they had security glass in the back windows. He had to shapeshift to get inside.”
“But if someone’s home, it might be open. Worst case, the door’s locked and we don’t find anything out. About where we are now, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Jane dropped her hands and discreetly checked to make sure her shirt was still dry. Good enough for a little breaking and entering. She probed her abdomen to confirm what the convent doctor had found yesterday: her surgical incision was healed. Recovering from a C-section in a matter of days was impossible, of course. Jane had never been able to heal herself, and besides, she hadn’t done anything. Maybe as she honed her talents she’d unlocked some kind of accelerated healing power? Maybe she’d accidentally prayed to St Philomena, her link to the impossible, when she was half awake and had slept through the side effects? Kudos, however it’d happened. It was really fucking nice not to have to limp and take it easy. “Alright, I’ll go around back. You chat with George.”
Eileen Kendle’s backyard was the same as it had been on Jane’s last visit. A strip of grass lay between the house and the tree line of mixed, naked deciduous species and long-needled green pines. Jane could hear Ian knocking and ringing the bell from the front of the house while she crept past a few patio flowerpots and tried the back door. Locked. Fuck.
Jane ambled over to the security window and checked for a way to open it from the outside, which would be abysmally stupid, but what else was she supposed to do? Ian’s big voice boomed cheerfully from the front of the house, and the clock was ticking on how long he could keep George engaged. Jane fruitlessly lifted the flowerpots, searching for a spare key, when movement above drew her eye.
Halfway to the tree line stood a lone tulip poplar. Mounted on the trunk was a large silver dome mirror, the kind that gave a wide view of the driveway and the backyard. The reflection snagged Jane’s attention—a swirling pattern, like snow or tornado dust, beautifully disturbing. The exact color of crushed cherries and merlot and clotted blood seeped out a bit around the edges, staining the tree trunk and painting the sky with a premature sunset. All the shadows in the yard bent the wrong way.
Jane was yelling something, abandoning the cloak and dagger act. Ian bounded around the corner of the house, scanning the tree line before closing the gap to Jane.
“Jane! What’s happening?” Ian had scooped her up and was charging back the way they came. Jane’s eyes were tearing, and her vision blurred the scene to a Monet forest with spilled red paint.
“It’s the same mirror thing again, like in the mall!” The horrible, creepy knowledge of someone peering out from the mirror surface crawled down her spine. Jane pressed her eyelids closed against the red spectrum light—deep instinct pulling her away before her retinas cooked. “Is that a tear in the barrier?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” George could project for a smallish man, brandishing a cordless phone in his hand from the corner of the house. “The police are on the way, so don’t try any more funny business.”
Ian ignored him, casting a wary glance into the backyard. “I can see something, Jane, but it’s small. Like a spot where the color isn’t quite right, or the edges of things don’t line up exactly, right?”
“Yeah.” Jane didn’t want to look again. Maybe the reflection was gone, but maybe alien light would soak into her brain and the next time she opened her eyes she’d be someone else. “Don’t go near it, Ian. Please. Don’t look at it. We need to tell the sisters and find some way to keep people away—” Jane’s words were truncated by the blip, whoop of a police siren being flipped on and back off once. A friendly noise: we’re here, but this isn’t an emergency.
“Okay, sweet girl. Local law is often the quickest way to get things done, and I still know what to say from my agent days. George saved us some time by placing the call. Let me do the talking.”
There was a lot of talking. Then driving to the station and more talking in the sheriff’s office while Jane sat in the waiting area. She scowled from her fold-out chair as one of the deputies handed her a Styrofoam cup of coffee with an apologetic smile.
“Sorry for the wait, ma’am.”
“Call me ma’am again and see what happens.” Jane cradled the cup under her nose, inhaling rich steam.
The deputy flashed a gap-toothed grin. He was about her age, mid-twenties. “Sorry, miss. I’ll overlook the implied assault if you forgive my unfortunate choice of words.”
“Deal. Do you have sugar?”
“Sorry, no.” The deputy shrugged and glanced down the hall. “We’ve had a busy morning and we’re out.”
Jane took a sip, scalding her taste buds. Worth it. “Busy morning? Is everyone okay?”
“Yeah, just a bunch of tourists making noise. Trespassing and bothering the residents. We’ve had a run of unwanted attention since someone posted on the internet that we have monsters in the woods.” He grinned at her again and shifted his weight to the other foot, looking like a man with somewhere to be. “Who knew Mothman had so many groupies, huh? Did you need anything else, miss?”
“Nope, not unless you find more sugar. Th
anks!” Jane watched him stride into his office and close the door.
The sheriff’s department was small. An unmanned, faux wood reception desk, some filing cabinets, a bathroom, and two offices. One cinder-block-and-metal holding cell stood unoccupied in the corner. Jane had seen these kinds of operations before—a deputy might double as the receptionist sometimes. Most of the crimes were neighborly disputes. Whoever was trespassing in search of Mothman was probably given a stern talking to and cut loose.
Jane set her coffee on a side table and hauled herself to her feet. Was it safe to go out? The afterimage of the red desert swirled behind her eyelids, but outside the sky was a normal blue. This wasn’t the first time she’d run across a window out of their reality, and nothing truly bad had happened before. At any rate, she couldn’t help save the world from a small-town sheriff’s waiting room. Nabbing a pad of Post-It notes, she scrawled “Out for a walk” and stuck it to the back of the fold-out chair. Grabbing her denim jacket and slipping it over her flannel, Jane made tracks for the station door. She might even get back before Ian was done doing the talking.
Jane slid into a booth at the Creekside Diner (Breakfast served all day!) across from a fifty-something man in a trucker hat leaning over a plate of country fried steak and a heavy-set goth guy with a smoothie and a manilla file.
“Hi! I’m Jane. I hear you were asking about the cryptids.” They stared at her across breakfast, and Jane noted she should ask Megan or Zack about their experiences as linked people in mainstream culture. Jane had her own run-ins, but healing powers made Jane the solution to life-or-death struggles for a huge number of people. Because she couldn’t risk desperate attention, Jane had refrained from discussing magic with anyone outside of Ian’s little circle. Except her mom, who had committed her, so not a roaring success. How would two people in a diner react to a candid conversation about the weird? Sana Baba didn’t have a hands-on policy about magical secrets, so the issue was likely self-containing. That did not bode well. But the twitchy hands and shifty eyes across the table belonged to men who either would take her at her word or no one would believe if they spilled her secrets. About as safe as things were likely to be.
“Jeremiah.” The goth man extended a thick hand. His voice was low and rumbly, reminding Jane of Ian, and she grinned at him. “And this is my friend Wythe. What’s your handle?”
“Ummm…” Jane glanced back and forth between the two of them. Fuck. Was this a code name? Password? Some colloquial Pennsylvania turn of phrase? Power inside Jane twanged like a rubber band. She didn’t really mean to shoot it off, but no sense crying over spilled donuts. The corner of her vision snagged on a line of glowing text peeking from the edge of Jeremiah’s folder. If either man noticed the tiny magical light, they didn’t react. “Guardian Angel 777.” The words leapt from her mouth without conscious thought, just ahead of piercing agony in her left foot. Jane’s combat boot went all warm and squishy. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about the grubby sock filling with blood and adhering to the nasty phantom wound. Don’t think about the hole in the arch of my foot oozing cherry red.
The name was having the desired effect. Jeremiah wore utter shock for a few seconds before wiping it from his face with the guise of being coolly accepting and Wythe pumped her hand with feeling.
He spoke with a small stutter. “You’re alive! We thought for sure you were the woman who went missing last year. We’ve been shaking the trees and trying to find out what happened. Hot damn, it’s such a relief to see you! I’m Informed Citizen and this is Vigilante.” Wythe jerked a thumb to Jeremiah. “Angel, why haven’t you been posting? We were worried it wasn’t safe since you stopped.”
Jane watched them intently for a few seconds to buy time, the way Everest did. Not like they were beneath her, exactly, but like she clearly wasn’t finished listening so they’d better say more.
Vigilante Jeremiah jumped in to fill the silence. “We can’t talk about it here.” His voice was muffled behind his pewter-adorned hands. “Let’s get the check and we can head to home base.”
Home base was an old-school camper van parked in the back lot: a converted gray Ford with serious tires. Getting in was going to be a cozy squeeze unless there was some kind of bigger-on-the-inside magic at work, which was probably beyond two guys in a diner.
“This is secure enough.” Jane double-dosed her voice with confidence as she crossed her arms and stood near the rear of the vehicle. “What have you found in Kennett Square?”
“Last year was the worst cryptid outbreak since we founded First Alert.” Informed Citizen Wythe spat on the ground. “By the time we broke our piggy banks and came out this way, everything was hushed up. A couple of local teenagers died, and a woman, Eileen Kendle, went missing. We were trying to find anything we could. Thought she might be you.” He shrugged a thermal-vest-clad shoulder.
“How long have you been in town?” Jane rubbed her upper arms and tried not to stand on her painful foot.
“A couple weeks. We were going to pack it in pretty soon, but I hated to leave without knowing if you’d been murdered or abducted. Now that we know you’re good though, I’ll probably take off. Don’t like to sit in the same spot too long, if you know what I mean.”
Jane was getting a little choked up. “Wow, so you guys pooled your money and came all the way out here to make sure I was okay?” Well, to make sure Eileen was okay. Jane’s stomach hurt and her hands were shaky.
“Yeah, of course we did. We’ve gotta have each other’s backs or no one will, right?” Jeremiah patted her shoulder gently for such a beefy guy before shoving his hands in his pleather pockets. “Look, Angel, I know you can’t say much here—but post sometime, okay? We miss you.”
“Yeah, I will. Hey, this is going to sound nuts.” A warm blush was creeping up her neck and her armpits were getting sweaty. Please God, let them believe for five more minutes. I still have a hole in my foot. That counts for something, right? “But my computer with my login info died. I’ll have to make a new account. Is that cool?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Wythe scuffed a cowboy boot on the gravel. “I’ll reset your password. Anything you want.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Ready for a test drive?” Standing next to the Mustang, Dahl couldn’t keep his excitement from bubbling over. They were safely secluded, hundreds of acres away from anyone, and prepared with ridiculous but functional tools. This was it—he was about to touch real magic again.
They drove to the location of the thinning and piled out, Everest’s arms clenched in a self-hug against the cold, his face pallid. Dahl narrowed his focus and studied the man for a minute: tense and freezing. Was this the right course of action? Dahl’s announcement that they would use music to investigate extranatural travel this afternoon had been met with more submission than enthusiasm.
Dahl took a step towards him and stalled out. Fuck, this was so hard. Should he offer reassurances? Explain his thought process? Was it fair to soften the blow of a command decision with affection? Dahl flexed his tingling fingers and wrist, the cold aching in his newly healed shoulder. This must be why Sana Baba didn’t allow romance in the chain of command.
In a perfect world Zack would be with them, but he’d arrived back from their walk exhausted and chilled. Megan had nixed him going anywhere but back to bed. In the end, Zack’s story had been short and sad. A twelve-year-old boy treasure hunting on the beach with a metal detector. He’d gotten a beep and dug with his hands. The treasure was an HIV-tainted hypodermic needle that had jammed half an inch into his thumb. Zack had held out the scar, tiny and white, for Dahl to inspect as he told the story in a tired monotone. It could have happened to anyone, but it hadn’t. It’d happened to him. Zack had shared his “one bad day” between normalcy and insanity, and Dahl’s immediate reaction had not been compassion, but a flood of relief that one of Adam’s passive powers had been immunity to illness, so Everest had not been exposed. He tried to push the shame aside and focus
on the task ahead.
Zack left them with an earful of advice and a clear course of action. Considering they were breaching reality, the whole process sounded alarmingly simple. Today the goal was to verify they could open a stable gateway and tolerate extranatual exposure. Zack had repeatedly recommended the three Bs ahead of time, but Dahl didn’t have beer and Everest was wearing a mask of forced nonchalance, so Dahl made them both sandwiches and called it good enough.
Everest collected himself and stepped up to the Mustang, empty acreage sprawling behind. He gave Dahl a curt nod. “I’m ready.”
“Good.” Dahl cracked his knuckles and, before he could talk himself out of it, kissed Everest’s cheek. Fuck it, if this didn’t work and something gruesome happened, he’d rather have his bets hedged. Everest’s mouth tugged into a frown. Dahl refocused on the Mustang’s side-view mirror as Everest lifted his fiddle.
A larger surface would have been better, but Dahl had been forbidden from taking the bathroom mirror. Blue, toting three kinds of eyeliner and a jumbo tube of mascara, had happened across him while he was unscrewing it from the wall after the morning meeting, and she’d said if he didn’t back away, she was going home.
Dahl was annoyed that he hadn’t been faster. Preserving Ian’s “Hello, beautiful” message on the surface had slowed him down, but he loved those notes from his father. When he was a child, Ian would write quotes, jokes, or affections on the bathroom mirror a few times a week. Seeing this message reminded Dahl of the time in his life when he was excited to look in the mirror each day instead of afraid. Now that Mordred was gone, he could face his reflection again. A lost sliver of his life reclaimed.