Running from angry villagers in the arms of a hungry troll made me a little nutty. I learned that about myself that day.
Chapter Twenty-Four
WE WENT FAR AND FAST enough to outrun even the most curious villager. The troll finally put us down in an area that was full of trees and had fewer of the scrubby bushes plentiful where Ish’s hut was. Those of us held in the arms of the troll weren’t nearly as breathless as our other friends, but we sure did have a special odor to us.
Tim was busy rubbing himself all over with needles from a pine tree, but I could have told him it was going to be about as effective as the air fresheners they used in the public restroom. Troll stink was seriously potent. I tried to ignore it and focus on our bigger problem instead.
“Ish, do you know where the entrances to your Otherworlds are?”
He was mopping his brow, his face beet red and his shoulders slumped. He’d done a great job of not losing sight of us or the girls and Finn who’d been trying to keep up with the surprisingly fast sprinting troll, but I could tell he’d spent more miles on dragonback than he had on his own feet for a long time by the way he was breathing.
“I do not, but I am willing to ask Othello for this information. He travels the world alone often. It is also possible I have flown over its location without knowing.”
I nodded, looking around at my friends. Jared was the only one who didn’t appear to be suffering the effects of either the run or the stink. Talk about cool. I walked over to him and waited for Tony to join us before sharing my thoughts.
“Operation Find the Entrance to One of the Otherwords. That’s my grand plan. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a good start.”
“Do you have any other ideas?” Tony asked Jared.
“I think we need to discuss our options.” He motioned for the others to join us, and we all sat down in a circle, some of us taking up ground space, and others finding logs or large rocks to sit on. The coolness offered by the tall trees and the slightly higher elevation was a very welcome change from the almost desert-like environment by the village.
“Here’s what I see as potential issues and options.” He pushed on his first finger, looking at me. “We have a prophecy or a hint of some sort, delivered by the witch to Jayne.”
“The one I can’t remember. Great.”
Jared looked at Sam. “I want you to try to get in her head and get that memory out of there.”
I looked around to see if any of my friends were as concerned by that idea as I was, but it appeared as if I was the only one thinking Sam as a brain surgeon was a non-starter. I raised my hand to complain, but I was cut off by Felicia.
“We were all there when she delivered the prophecy, right?”
Everyone looked at me for the answer. “Yes, but you were really out of it. The troll was there too.” Most of the heads in the circle swiveled over to look at the beast. He was on his back, snoring, apparently tired out from his run.
“Sam, do you think you could get the memory out of someone else who was there, even if they were totally out of it?” I asked.
“Why would I bother if you were fully awake and heard the whole thing?”
Hmmm, how to tell her without pissing her off that I don’t want her in my head because I’m afraid she’ll give me an aneurism …
Jared interrupted my train of thought, taking the heat off me. “I’m not exactly excited about the idea of anyone having their brain picked, so let’s see if we have other options before we decide.”
I nodded sagely, acting like I wasn’t just about to chicken out.
Jared ticked off another finger. “We have Tony who can walk the Gray.” He turned to face our wrathe. “We don’t know if it’s the same Gray that we’re familiar with, do we?”
Tony shook his head. “I don’t. But I think I could just step in for a moment and see what’s there. It wouldn’t take me long to find out.”
“What about astral projection?” Spike asked. “Isn’t that less risky?”
Tony nodded slowly. “Could be. If we assume that the metaphysical rules for this realm are identical to the ones in ours.”
“Which we can’t assume, can we?” I asked. I looked around at all the faces, but my friends didn’t seem as panicked as I was. “I mean, we can’t send Tony into a Gray where he gets stuck for all of eternity, can we?”
“We’re going to have to try something,” Spike said. “We can’t just sit here doing nothing.” Spike put his hand on my leg in an attempt to ease his sharp words, but I brushed him off.
“Is your dragon near here?” Finn asked Ish. “Maybe we could short cut this whole conversation by talkin’ to him.”
“I could call to him. If he is close, he will come.”
Everyone sat up straighter at this news.
“You can call him to you? That’s so cool.” Scrum was obviously a member of the Ish fan club now.
“The question is, do we want him to call the dragon?” I looked around at my friends, thinking they were kind of crazy. “I mean, not sure if you remember, but Tony and Finn lost some serious facial hair the last time they ran into a dragon who wasn’t too crazy about visitors.”
“You can protect us with the Earth or Water elements,” Felicia said. “So can Sam. We can prepare ourselves better than you did before.”
Jared turned to me. “Is there anything you can think of, anything at all, that might help? Something the witch said, something that happened in her house or before that?”
“What do you mean? I already told you about the poem or whatever.”
“Yes, I know, but you’ve time-slipped at least once that you know of.”
“At least twice, actually.”
He nodded. “Okay, so the fae responsible for those time slips either had to be there or had to have left some sort of trace of who they were behind. Think, Jayne. What do you see in your mind?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. I could try some kind of hypnosis thing with Sam maybe, but I’m pretty sure my elements can’t help me with this problem. I mean, normally they have a kind of memory. They keep track of everything and everyone that ever interacted with them in a weird kind of way. I mean, I sense memories there. But the Earth element here is not the same as the one in our realm. It’s younger. Wilder. Fresher in a way. I think this place is before our time, and so the Earth element here does not have the memory in place of what happened to me at the rest stop.” The faces around me were confused, no doubt about it. “I’m sorry if that makes no sense at all.”
“I don’t mind using a hypnosis spell on her.” Sam looked at me. “It’s not a strong incantation if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Who says I’m worried?”
Tim flew over and landed on my knee. “The unibrow you’re sporting on your forehead says it. Stop frowning so much, you’re going to give yourself permanent wrinkles.”
I acted like I was just resting my hands on my thighs, but at the last second, flicked Tim on the butt, sending him flying out of control across our circle into Scrum’s hair.
“Ahhhh! Incoming!” he screamed, his arms and legs flailing. Normally he would have been able to recover from one of my flicks, but that little crick in his wing made it hard for him to fly in a straight line, I guess.
Scrum rolled his eyes to look up at the pixie stuck in his hair, not moving a muscle otherwise. “Is he going to pixelate me?”
Tim flew out of Scrum’s greasy hair and hovered above him, glaring at me. “Do we have a problem, Elemental?!”
I wanted to laugh, but I was too worried about having Tim as a thorn in my side for the rest of this trip to go through with it. I shook my head and tried to look chagrined. “No. No problem here.”
He flew over cautiously. “You know I don’t like getting flicked. It’s disrespectful.”
“And you know I don’t like you mocking my eyebrows.”
He folded his arms and looked away for a second. Then he looked back at me. Our fri
ends were totally silent, waiting for us to find the resolution they saw coming. Even though they couldn’t hear a word Tim was saying, it was easy enough to read his body language.
“I’m sorry I mocked your face.” His chin went up.
“I’m sorry I flicked your butt.” I held out my hand. “Truce?”
He floated over and landed on my palm. “Truce.” His hand came up, and I gave him a high-one. It was silly, but knowing we were back on track made everything seem much better, and the idea of Sam getting into my skull not nearly as awful.
I raised my eyes to the group. “I’ll do the hypnosis thing. It’s our best option.”
“Great.” Jared stood. “Scrum, you and I will stand guard here and over there. Finn and Spike, I need you at the opposite corners. Becky, I want you checking all the spaces in between where we’ll be standing in an irregular pattern; I don’t want anyone who might be watching to know where you’re going to pop up next.
She nodded. “Stealth mode. Got it.” She got all serious and winked at him and then at me.
I smiled and kept my mouth shut about how this job suited her perfectly; she wouldn’t have to stay in one place for longer than three seconds, so there wasn’t any chance of her having to actually fight anyone. She would be eyeballs, that’s it.
“Tim, if you could hover above everything and help us out with a bird’s eye view, that would be great.”
Tim saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain!” He flew straight up in the air, tooting as he went, each burst of gas sending him faster and faster.
“Felicia, you stand guard by Jayne while Sam does her thing. Anyone who doesn’t belong gets close, you take ‘em out.”
Her smile looked way too fangy for my taste, but I was glad to have her on my side. I knew Spike would never let her suck me dry as long as he was alive, and with her super speed and super suck, no bad guy was going to get me with her nearby.
“And what of me?” Ish asked. “I would like to help.”
“Call your dragon, if you think he would be amenable to meeting with us and not setting us on fire.”
Ish’s exact expression was hard to read, but I got the impression he was holding something back. “I will do my best.” He began to walk off.
“Where are you going?” Jared asked.
Ish paused, but didn’t face us. “I am going to call him to a location that is not too near. Just to be safe.”
“Great,” I said after he left the immediate area. “Now I have to worry about being turned into a barbecued elemental while I’m under hypnosis?”
“You’ll be fine,” Sam said. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”
I knew she meant that and believed it too. The problem was, she had no idea whether her magic would work or be manageable in this realm. I’d already figured out that my control over the elements was haphazard at best, so there was no reason for me to believe it would be different for her. But there was no time to dance around the subject or have a debate about it; we had a portal to find and a dragon to hang out with in the Underworld, and every second I spent whining like a baby about what might happen was another second we moved closer to absolute doom. No way in hell was I going to go down in history as the girl who brought that down on our heads.
Chapter Twenty-Five
SAM REACHED INTO HER BRA and brought out several small sacks of dried herbs.
“What the hell, man … are we making spaghetti sauce, or what?” I laughed at my lame joke as she opened each one and put a sprinkle of each in a pile in front of her ankles on top of a leaf Felicia had retrieved for her. She was sitting cross-legged in front of me, with our knees almost touching. Felicia was standing next to us, looking around, and the guys were out of sight. Becky popped in once to say all was good, but then she was gone again, and we hadn’t seen her since.
“It works better if I have these things,” she mumbled.
“By all means, work your magic, girl. Don’t shortchange the spell on my account. You know I have no idea what the hell you’re doing.”
“It’s mostly homeopathy for you, not anything for me.”
“Homeopathy? Like medicine?” That didn’t sound good. My worry was back full force.
“Yes. There could be side effects like nausea that I assume you want to avoid.”
I nodded, rolling my eyes when she wasn’t looking. “Yeah, let’s avoid that.”
“I’m also putting a psychedelic in there.”
I smiled. “Sweet. I’m getting high while all of you are working. How’d I get so lucky?”
She glanced up at me, all seriousness. “It’s not like that. It just opens your mind, that’s it. It might not be as fun as you’re imagining.”
I sighed. “Well, thank you, Sam, for harshing the mellow I didn’t even get to have yet.”
A small bit of a grin appeared on her face and then disappeared just as quickly. “I don’t want you coming back and blaming me for any bad trips. Better you know up front what you’re getting into.”
My stomach got queasy over the whole thing. “You know what? I think I’m one of those people that does better not knowing anything … going in blind. Feel free to leave out all the details.”
She shrugged. “Okay, if you say so.”
My palms were sweaty and the faint idea of running away entered my mind when I heard a tiny voice from above. “You okay down there, roomie?”
I nodded and lifted my thumb up above my head. “Stellar.” Somehow he’d known I needed a little boost. Thank the heavens for pixies.
Sam lifted the herbs in front of her face, bringing them up to eye-level. She muttered some words at them, and I could swear I saw the herbs mixing themselves. When she was done, she folded the leaf all around them and handed me the little packet.
I held it in my hand and looked at her expectantly.
She said nothing.
“What do you want me to do with it? Stuff it in my bra?”
“No. Eat it.”
My eyebrows went up. “Eat it? Dry?”
“You want ketchup? Because I’m fresh out.”
“Smart ass,” I mumbled, just before popping the whole thing into my mouth. “Mmm, delicious,” I said around the dry-as-dust herbs. I coughed when some of them hit the back of my throat, but kept them in with my hand against my mouth.
“Swallow them.”
I glared at her. “I am. Jevuff, gib me a mineh.” The whole thing crunched and crackled, getting stuck in every single crevice in my teeth capable of holding food bits. The smell of the herbs went up into my nasal passages. I caught the odors of lavender and mint and something very much like mildew. My eyes started to water and then my head started feeling like there was helium in it.
I swallowed the biggest part and then worked at removing the other bits from my teeth. Closing my eyes eased the lightheadedness. “Wow, that was gross. Yeckh. Stuck in my teeth.” My tongue was doing all kinds of gymnastics in its effort to get my mouth clean again.
“Hold my hands,” Sam instructed.
I started humming. I had no idea why, it just seemed like the thing to do. It was the theme of Rocky going through my head. I pictured myself running up the stairs of a big public monument and then cheering for myself at the top as I jogged in place. “Duh, duh, duh-duh-duh, dun-dun-dun, duh-duh…”
“Focus, Jayne. Listen to my voice.”
I giggled and tried to imitate her. “Listen to my voice.” My eyes went wide when the sound coming out of my mouth was exactly like the one that had come from Sam’s.
“Wow, that was freaky,” Felicia said.
“Wow, that was freaky,” I said, imitating her to perfection, too. I laughed at that one. She sounded scared. When I said it in her voice, I could feel her emotions too. Whoa. This is some good herb or mushrooms or whatever.
“Jayne,” Sam said, squeezing my fingers.
“Sam,” I said, squeezing hers back. My head was really going round and round now. Green and blue were the dominant colors I saw in a swirli
ng cloud that took up my entire vision. Sam was wrong; this wasn’t a bad trip at all. I was having fuuuuuunnnn.
“You are back in the bed and breakfast, in the ballroom with the witch.”
I frowned when the colors in my mind changed. Blue turned to gray and green turned to brown. Everything went dark and sinister. I shook my head, not happy about being in this new place. “Wanna go back to the village.”
Her hands squeezed mine again. “No. You stay in the ballroom.”
“No. You stay in the ballroom.” I mimicked her to perfection again, trying to show her how bossy she was being, but it didn’t seem to matter to her.
Felicia, on the other hand, was definitely bothered. “Did you hear that? She’s being you.”
“Did you hear that? She’s being you.” When I talked like Felicia, the panic I heard in her words welled up in me, making my chest feel tight.
“Stop talking, Felicia. You’re pulling her out of place. She needs to be herself in the ballroom and relive the moment.”
I was about to mock Sam, but she kept talking, throwing me off. “Jayne, you are standing near the troll. Your friends are not reachable. You are talking to the witch. What does she say to you?”
I shook my head. I could see the witch’s mouth moving, but the words were all jumbled. “I don’t know,” I said, getting annoyed. “It’s a mess in there.” I tried to pull away from Sam, but she wouldn’t let me go.
Sam mumbled under her breath and I didn’t catch what she said until a couple seconds after. Too late, I processed her words: “I didn’t want to have to do this but…”
The colors changed from gray and brown to black and red. There was anger there, and frustration. Maybe a hint of desperation. I was no longer Jayne, I was someone else. It took me a little while to figure out what Sam had done, but by then it was too late to resist. I was caught up in the emotion, the misery, the white-hot anger, and the need to control everything around me…
“Not all things can be fixed, child.” I was speaking in the voice of the witch. A very small piece of me, the only bit of Jayne left in my head, was freaking out. The other part of me that had become a temporary Fate and ugly ass witch felt something else entirely. Frustration. Urgency. Hope. Jealousy. Betrayal. I couldn’t compute all the messy emotions swimming around in my head, so I ignored them in favor of the message I was trying to deliver as the witch.