by Andrew Peed
“You can do the spell,” Kaylie said. shaking her head after Waylon voiced his concern. “It’s really easy. Hell, it’s mostly about intent here.” He leaned her against a lamppost that was near the stairs. She did her best to stand up straight, swaying like a drunk person in the wind.
With a heavy breath out of his nose, Waylon wished that he had paid more attention when she had cast the spell before. It wasn’t really that long ago, but he was having trouble remembering the movements that she had made. She couldn’t do anything to help him either, because she could hardly keep her eyes open.
The set of stairs seemed to be glaring at him menacingly as Waylon walked over and looked them over. It was like he and the set of stairs were in a staring match, which he felt was mildly ironic. He held out his palm and touched his finger to the line in the center. The idea of the stairs allowing them to pass through filled his mind as he pulled his fingers in a pinching motion away from his hand with his thumb.
Waylon looked back at Kaylie for confirmation, but she was looking at the ground, completely green, like she was about to barf again. He realized that the only way to figure out if it had worked was for him to attempt to walk into the building.
“What is going on with you?” Waylon asked in a concerned voice, walking over to pick her back up from the post where he had left her.
“I think I just need some rest,” she said but pushed Waylon’s arm out of the way and doubled over to spill her guts on the sidewalk. Straightening up, her eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, I think you might need a little more than some rest,” Waylon said with a sigh.
“Oh, what do you know?” she said weakly.
“Huge mountains of nothing,” Waylon said, moving to support as much of her weight as he could.
“Thank you very much,” she said as sassily as she could in a whisper.
Without even really noticing, they walked through the stairs and into the building. The waiting room was cleared out compared to the other night when they had brought the orc into the department. Waylon noticed as they crossed the room that the left wall was painted with the letters M.A.D., with the agents on either side. They stood proudly with their arms crossed.
“MAD?” Waylon asked.
“Mystical Authority Department,” Kaylie said offhandedly.
“Nice,” Waylon said with a chuckle and shook his head. “Wait. They are agents of MAD?” he added when he realized how cool it sounded.
“I guess. I think they go by MA of MAD,” she said, looking at Waylon with no focus in her eyes.
They crossed the room to the window, where the same old woman sat on her high stool, looking down at everyone in the waiting room. She looked down her nose at Waylon keeping Kaylie from falling to the ground.
“What is wrong with her?” the old woman asked, leaning up on her stool.
“We were attacked, and we would like to see Agent McKury,” Kaylie said, pulling the black card out from her pocket. There was something special about the card. All that Waylon could see was the words Agent McKury, but when the old woman saw it, she snapped to attention. She dropped down from her stool.
“Right away. Have a seat. I will return shortly,” the old woman said, vanishing into the shadows behind her desk.
Waylon put Kaylie down in the chair. She leaned forward on her knees and weaved around, unable to stay still. Waylon sat down and put his hand on her back, trying to offer some support. They didn’t have much time to get comfortable, because two agents came out from the back to retrieve them. They were escorted into a small room, where they found a table with two chairs on one side and a single chair on the other. There was only one door in or out of the room, and the three other walls were lined with tall mirrors looking in at them.
Once in her chair, Kaylie laid her head down on the table. She sighed in relief when her head touched the cold metal of the table. Waylon sat down in the chair next to her to wait for what came next. He kept his eyes locked on the door with the use of one of the mirrors. The feeling of being watched took over his mind.
When the door opened, an agent walked into the room and closed the door behind him. He was tall and had black hair that was perfectly trimmed and no facial hair. He wore a pair of black sunglasses, the lenses of which were cut very narrow, no more than an inch tall. His suit matched the glasses. All black with a white shirt underneath.
“Hello. Waylon, is it?” the man asked as he walked across the room. He took careful, calculated steps from the door to the remaining vacant chair.
“It is,” Kaylie said from under her arm.
“I am Agent McKury. I suppose that you are not too familiar with the MA?” He unbuttoned his jacket and sat down across from them. Slowly he adjusted the sleeves of his jacket, taking deliberate movements.
“No, sir,” Waylon said, deciding to err on the side of respect for the time. He was getting an unsettling vibe from McKury.
“It is only important that you understand that we uphold mystical law,” McKury said, placing his hands on the table in front of him, lacing his fingers together.
“Yes, sir,” Waylon said with an understanding nod.
“Good, so what brings you into my department this evening?” McKury asked with a very small grin. He turned his attention to Kaylie. “It appears that you’ve been cursed,” he said.
Under the lens of McKury’s glasses, Waylon could see things moving around, like it was some kind of heads-up display. He couldn’t make out what any of it was, but there was something there.
“We were attacked,” she said, then paused while she lifted her head off the table. “By Grymm,” she finished in a deep tone.
“I thought you didn’t know his whereabouts?” McKury said.
“I didn’t. I went to the broker on the north side of town, and he was already there when we got there. He kidnapped her,” Kaylie explained with a pained look on her face.
“Why would a reaper who has gone rogue kidnap a broker?” McKury asked.
“I don’t know,” Kaylie said as she shook her head. “All I know is that his face was all messed up with tattoos or markings of some kind.”
Waylon could see the struggle on her face from the effort of keeping her head up.
“Look, we don’t know what’s going on,” Waylon blurted out trying to move things along. “We just wanted to make sure you knew about the kidnapping.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence following this outburst before the door opened. A short skinny woman came into the room. She was middle aged, had long red hair streaked with silver, and wore very old-fashioned glasses.
“This is our department’s curse examiner, Mrs. Tannis. She is extremely skilled, and she will help you. We need your mind clear so that we can finish this questioning,” McKury said, motioning to the woman.
“That is an H3 curse. It might take a little time,” Mrs. Tannis said, walking around Kaylie. She continuously adjusted the lenses on her glasses and changing the angle of how she was looking at her. With a little effort, she helped Kaylie up out of the chair.
“Excellent. That will give me some time to speak with the boy,” McKury said with a smile and turned his eyes on Waylon.
Once the room was empty and the door had shut, McKury took a deep breath. He waved his hands, and all of the mirrors around the room changed from being reflective to being windows. There were indeed observation rooms behind each window, but the rooms were all empty.
“Let me start by saying that you can relax. There aren’t people staring at you. It’s just you and me,” McKury said with a stern look on his face. Somehow, it was not relaxing at all.
Waylon didn’t say anything. He didn’t know where all of this was leading, so he just nodded his head, stating that he understood.
McKury reached into the air next to him. His hand vanished into nothing, and when he pulled it back, he was holding a folder. It wasn’t very thick. He set it down on the table and opened it to the first page.
“Waylon Dal
ton. Son of Marcus Dalton, who is the son of August Dalton. Only discovered that he was a warlock less than forty-eight hours ago. Is gifted in time manipulation magic. Father, missing. Mother, missing. Grandfather, missing. Grandmother, missing. You have a handful of family, but they all reside elsewhere in the country. It seems to me that you’ve got a lot of people disappearing around you,” McKury said as he crossed his arms over his chest and looked straight into Waylon’s eyes.
“I guess if when read my file like that, it does appear that way. But you are wrong about my grandfather—he died,” Waylon said. He wasn’t going to just roll over to some kind of intimidation.
“Oh, are we now?” McKury’s said, and Waylon noticed that his eye twitched.
“Yeah. I was there,” Waylon said, nodding his head. “He died in the hospital.”
“I guess we’ll have to update our files. It appears that looking at the events in a time stream just doesn’t cut it anymore.” The agent closed the folder.
“I guess not,” Waylon said with a shrug and leaned back in his chair. He was quickly getting angry. This Agent McKury was treating him like he was the bad guy when they’d come to the Mystical Authority to try and stop someone really bad.
“I know that you are new to all this, but that girl: She’s bad news. Or do you not know about her past infractions? Do you not know about her daughter and her husband? I guess her daughter would be about fifteen now.” McKury fixed his sleeves again. Waylon noticed it was a tell that showed when he was fishing for something.
“There is no way that Kaylie could have a fifteen-year-old daughter,” Waylon said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“You really don’t know anything about this world,” McKury said, cracking a smile and looking down at Waylon.
“No, I really don’t. And to be honest, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to research things. I’ve kind of been thrust into crap right away. Which wouldn’t be so bad except the people who ‘uphold the law’”—he made air quotes—“don’t even care about who is breaking it,” Waylon growled, finally reaching his breaking point.
McKury’s smile faded. “You should watch your tongue, boy. You don’t want to be on my bad side.”
“It kind of seems like I already am,” Waylon said, crossing his arms. “And I haven’t done anything.”
“You have no idea.” McKury slammed his hands on the table and stood up with the statement in true dramatic fashion. He fixed his tie and took a deep breath. The door opened behind Waylon.
Mrs. Tannis led Kaylie back into the room. She looked a million times better and was walking on her own. She crossed the room and sat down next to Waylon, who was still extremely aggravated.
“Thank you, Mrs. Tannis. We can finally begin the real questioning,” McKury said as he sat back down in his chair and pulled two more files from thin air.
After two hours of questioning that Waylon thought was completely pointless, they were allowed to leave the Mystical Authority. Most of the questions they asked pertained to Waylon and Kaylie, and only about two percent had anything to do with Grymm.
“Shall we?” Kaylie said, holding out her hand in the general direction of their house.
“Please!” Waylon said with a nod.
Kaylie put her hand on his shoulder, and in a bright flash and a whoosh of air, they were standing in Waylon’s living room.
Chapter 17: Mamma Artemis
Waylon dropped into the couch in his living room. With a deep sigh, he looked up at Kaylie and watched her as she walked across the room. She sat down on a chair, tucking her legs under her.
“So,” she said, clearing her throat, “I’m sure you have questions.”
“Sure, but like I told you,” he said as he held up his hand to stop her, “your business is your business. There is only one thing that plagues me.” He tapped his finger to his lip.
“What is that?” she asked curiously.
“How old are you?” Waylon asked.
“I’m going on forty years old,” she said after a moment of contemplation.
“What?” Waylon cried out loudly. “You don’t look a day over nineteen!”
“Yeah, well, I already looked young, but when I became a reaper, it sort of halted the aging process,” she said with a shrug.
“Wow, that is freaking awesome!” Waylon said in amazement.
“That is really all you’re curious about?” she asked in astonishment.
“If you want to tell me, you will in your own time,” Waylon said with a smile and nodded his head.
“That is a refreshing change of pace,” she said with a slight nod. “I’ve got to go to the Reaping Council and report all this,” she added with a tone of apprehension in her voice.
“Has anything like this happened before?” Waylon asked, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms.
“Not that I know of,” she said, shaking her head.
“Should I go with you?” Waylon asked, wondering if he should be ready to give a statement.
“You don’t have to,” she said with a sigh and shook her head.
“Hey, I’ve got your back,” Waylon said, looking at her with a smile.
“It will be easier with a witness,” she said, standing up from the chair. She walked across the room and reached out her hand for Waylon to take it.
Waylon picked himself up before he touched her hand. In a flash, they were standing next to a stone bench outside of a huge ancient castle. There were a dozen towers that Waylon could see, and there was a small village within the walls of the lower section of the castle. The center was a massive stone building with five towers of its own.
“This is the closest we can port to the repository.” Kaylie smiled.
“Where are we?” Waylon asked, looking around.
“It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s like a small pocket dimension where the Reapers have total dominion,” Kaylie said, moving her hands around when she spoke. She started walking on the path toward the wall’s main entrance. Waylon followed, taking in every inch of everything he saw.
There were people of all kinds in all different directions. The massive gate that led into the castle walls spilled into a bazaar, where the people were moving around shoulder to shoulder.
“This is one of the best places for magical shopping. If you can get an invitation to come here,” she said, putting emphasis on the word if.
“This is kind of amazing!” Waylon said with a smile on his face. The sun was lower in the sky, making it late afternoon, depending on how time worked in the pocket dimension.
“Yeah, I remember my first time to the Grim Market,” Kaylie said, leading him through the crowd.
They didn’t have time to stop and shop, however. The main tower entrance was a huge marble door inset in a stone at the top of a massive staircase. They had a grid of glass that made them look like something out of a dream.
Inside, the walls and floors were made of a polished gray stone, but there were white marble and gold accents all around the room around the edges. There was a smoky texture on the white stone that seemed to be moving when Waylon watched it.
Kaylie led him through a room that was far less crowded than the outside in the bazaar. Their footsteps echoed around the room against marble floors constructed with the same moving texture.
At the rear of the massive entryway, there was bank of doors made of what looked like gold. Kaylie pressed a button on the wall with an extravagant up arrow carved into it. Despite the fact that it didn’t look like there was any glass on the arrow, it began to glow.
After a short wait, the door in front of them opened up, and Waylon realized that it was indeed an elevator. Waylon was relieved after having seen how tall the tower was from the outside.
“We are magic folk,” Kaylie said with an accent when she noticed Waylon’s expression.
Next to the door, where the control panel would have been, there was a painting. An oil painting that was moving like it was a touch screen for a computer
or a phone. Kaylie pressed her finger and swiped down so that they could see an oil-painted representation of the top of the tower. She pressed her finger onto the topmost floor that she could. It flashed blue, and the elevator started to move upward.
“I love this!” Waylon blurted out, looking at the oil painting. He couldn’t take his eyes off the painting as it moved while the elevator made its way up.
The elevator stopped on the 159th level. Waylon noticed that there was another level in the image on the oil painting panel, but there was no blue border around it, so it wasn’t selectable. He thought maybe there was some magic code that had to be inputted before it would open.
The landing on the 159th level was very large. It seemed to Waylon that it was at least three stories tall. There was a desk in the center of the room, right in front of the elevator door, which had three exits on this level. The main floor, where they had gotten on the elevator, only had one. Behind the desk were three massive silver doors carved with extremely intricate white metal.
A beautiful woman sat behind the desk. As they walked toward her, she smiled widely. “How may I help you today?” she asked.
“I need to speak with Artemis,” Kaylie said, returning the woman’s smile.
“One moment,” the woman said with a curt nod. “Um, who may I ask is calling?”
“Kaylie,” she said with a nod.
“I have a Kaylie here to see you, ma’am,” the woman said, looking off into space.
“What is she doing?” Waylon whispered into Kaylie’s ear.
“She is talking with Artemis. You know, like you would call back to someone’s office on a phone,” she explained.
“Ahh, got it,” Waylon said with a nod.
“You’re in luck. She was about to leave for the day, but you’ve managed to catch her,” the woman said with a smile.
They were led into a hallway behind the desk where there were twelve doors. Waylon followed Kaylie to one of the farthest doors. The woman from the desk opened the door for them but ducked out of the way and did not follow them in.