Pride and Poltergeists

  “Probably the portal generator,” I said, which was definitely big enough to create all the ephemeral fuss.

  Casey made a visible effort to suppress the groan that seized his body and called out, “Mom?”

  Nothing happened. The attendants continued to sniffle and glare, peering at us over their desks and casting furtive, protective glances at the metal disk in the floor. It seemed as though they were expecting us to whip out jackhammers and demolish their beloved project. Casey rolled his eyes at them and strode forward.

  “We need to get to parallel three,” Casey said to the nearest person. “Fast.”

  The technician adjusted his glasses and glowered at Casey. “I’m sorry, sir, but first, you will need proper clearance and permission …” blah, blah, blah, and bring out the red tape.

  “Hold up,” I whispered. “Are there other parallels?” It was common knowledge, at least in the collegiate arcana community, that an infinite number of habitable dimensions, as well as several massively unfriendly and uninhabitable ones, existed—but to claim that the government, any government, had ready access to them was … well, unnerving. Planet Earth isn’t great at drawing borderlines as a rule. If they could prance into the astral plane whenever they fancied, it was only a matter of time before a slew of ghosts with unfinished business came pouring back into our dimension.

  I blinked myself back to the present and saw Casey had moved. He was standing in the center of the metal disk, looking at someone. A woman.

  “Oh, boy,” said Kent, pocketing his little bomb and facing Casey and … his mom? Kent was clearly interested.

  “Hi, Mom,” Casey said sulkily.

  “Casey,” she answered, leaning forward to pinch his cheeks. He recoiled from the touch, but not far enough that she was forced to let go. The woman was short—shorter than Casey by a full head, despite the health-hazardous heels she was wearing. She was also pudgy with frazzled auburn hair and gold eyes. The color in her eyes was more urgent, like boiling magma, and much closer to a volcanic catastrophe than the soft chocolate in Casey’s gaze.

  Short, bright, and terrifying, she was wearing a skirt suit and a massive red rock on a gold chain, which, I guessed, must have been an amulet of some kind. The amulet’s magic was muffled by the overwhelming aura the metal plate was giving off. I’d have to get closer if I wanted to know what it did, if anything at all, but that would have been rude.

  “It’s so good to see you,” Margaret said, beaming at her handsome son. Casey sighed. “How are you?” she continued, looking up and noticing us for the first time. Her cookie dough-sweet smile got even bigger. “And who are these people? Your friends?” She clapped her hands together excitedly.

  “Not important,” Casey said, answering both questions flatly. “Mom, we need to get to parallel three. Now.”

  His mother tutted and shook her head, clasping her hands onto her waist. “Well, now, that’s not a very nice way to ask a favor, is it? And you’ve barely said hello, and I do so want to meet your friends, it’s been ages since you brought anyone home …”

  “We’re not at home,” Casey said. “We’re at work. I have work to do, understand? Really important work in parallel three.”

  His mother sighed. “Sweetheart, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say—”

  “Mom, we don’t have time for this! We really, really don’t.”

  “What kind of son doesn’t have time for his mother?” she asked, sashaying over to a slightly larger desk that must have been the primary terminal. She sighed dramatically, batting her eyes at Casey, and addressing the technician, “Do whatever you must to open the doors.”

  “Huh.” Marcus grunted, immediately frowning as he turned to face Kent who merely shrugged.

  “What?” I whispered to Judy, who also seemed surprised by Margaret’s choice of words. “What’s going on?” I continued in a hushed tone, making sure Margaret couldn’t hear me too.

  “She … it’s probably nothing, but Margaret knows how to open these doors. She can do it with her eyes closed,” Judy answered from the side of her mouth, her tone hushed.

  “Interesting,” I answered as I replayed Margaret’s words. Do whatever you must to open the doors. Yes, very interesting. I focused on Casey and noticed he had the same suspicious expression as the others did toward his mother. But no one seemed overly concerned because no one did or said anything more about it. I figured if they were letting it go, then I should too. Maybe Margaret didn’t drink enough coffee this morning.

  Margaret, meanwhile, hovered over the terminal.

  The technician didn’t look up. “Parallel three?”

  She nodded and looked up, but not at Casey—she looked at me and I felt my stomach plummet all the way to my toes. “Hello,” she said. Her smile trembled.

  She started walking towards me, and I heard Casey groan.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, taking my hand. She felt warm, her face was friendly, and maybe not so terrifying. Famous last words, I thought, but I smiled too, making sure I only looked at her nose and ears instead of her eyes. Just in case.

  “Sam,” I answered. It took me a moment to remember it!

  “Sam.” She laughed, like it was the most beautiful name she’d ever had the pleasure to utter. “Sam, Sam, Sam, it’s so lovely to meet you! How, may I ask, do you know my Casey, hmm?” She patted my hand, looking at me expectantly.

  I looked at Casey. His eyes were wide, and he was starting to walk forward, maybe intending to break up our conversation. I smiled at him and replied to his mother. “We work together,” I said, feeling sure I could handle an over-affectionate mother.

  “Work together?” She looked between us, appearing shocked but in a dramatic, theatrical way. “Casey, darling, you’ve never mentioned her before! And such a pretty thing too … Shame on you, boy! What became of your manners? Have you no thought for your dear mother?”

  “We’ve only worked together for a few days,” I answered.

  Margaret stopped in her tracks. Hades, she looked like the Pillsbury dough-boy, just a ball of sugar and sweetness and hugs. “Oh, I see, I see,” she said, tapping her chin, one hand still firmly clasped around mine. Her necklace, that peculiar amulet thunking against her sizeable chest, was pulsating now. The dimensional planes were things I could only just comprehend, and all at once, in a strange pattern, they came at me fast, quick as a rabbit in a firestorm, changing the beat every second or two …

  “Mother,” Casey said irritably. “Please. We don’t have time for this.”

  “Sir, please remove yourself from the generator,” said a technician, his nose buried in his console. Casey hurriedly abandoned the disk, walking towards me and his mother.

  “Sam, Sam,” she said, “Sam, Sam, Sam … Tell me, is that short for something? Samantha, maybe?”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. My tongue felt heavy, almost numb. “I, um … yeah, it is.”

  “Sam,” said Rowena. She was quiet, but very urgent. I barely heard her.

  “Ah, good, good.” Margaret patted my hand again, running her thumb across my knuckles. “Such soft skin, darling, do you moisturize? Sam, Sam … Samantha, dearest … do you cook, perhaps? Are you an avid reader?”

  “Yes …” Hades! The pulsing of the amulet was all I could comprehend now. Like a clock, a metronome set on fast-forward, the unsteady thumping of a flat tire shredding on asphalt …

  “What kind of work do you do?”

  I could barely think of an answer for her. The words came out of my mouth clumsily. “I … um … I’m in ANC …”

  From the corner of my eye, I could see Rowena looking at Casey, jerking her head towards me.

  “Ah, yes, of course! You look human enough. What is your arcane alignment, hmm? What do you do?”

  “I’m a … witch …” The room briefly spun before it melted, falling on its side, like the whole building were drunk.

  “A witch,” Margaret said, gasping. “Samantha the witch, how lovely. Do you
like dogs? You must like dogs, Casey adores dogs …”

  Casey reached us a split second after I realized what she was doing.

  I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second. The pulsating hum changed, the vibrations sounding like a distant song, which became a tendril, a fluttering ribbon in the blackness—something I could interact with. Something I could touch and strangle.

  So I grabbed it. I severed it with a burst of ephemeral fire—the spiritual equivalent of safety scissors. The humming, singing, and the droning stopped all at once.

  Margaret had been trying to weave a spell with no magic of her own, and no connection to the holy or the arcane, nothing that would give her sway over anything. The only thing she had was the amulet, the focus of her will, and desire, a wish-granter, a hypnotic aid. But whatever magic the amulet offered, it sputtered and died like a bad bulb. Margaret, however, didn’t seem to notice.

  I opened my eyes and found Margaret looking back at me. She seemed very concerned. The rock around her neck had lost much of its color—the brilliant amber was closer to the faded orange of an old car now. I’d only intended to block her will, snapping the web she was trying to catch me in, but I guess I broke the whole thing. She wouldn’t appreciate that, assuming she found out …

  “Are you all right, love? You look a bit faint,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” I said through my gnashing teeth. I looked at Casey. “You didn’t tell me your mom was a hypnotist.”

  Casey glared at his mom. Margaret paled.

  Kent started laughing. Hysterically.

  “Busted!” he cackled while Marcus rolled his eyes.

  Judy crossed her arms and sighed at Kent. “What are you, twelve years old?”

  “Oh,” Margaret said, flushing pink, looking down at the amulet like she’d never seen it before. “I, um. Oh. Oh, dear …”

  “Mom, you cannot just go around and hypnotize people!” Casey shouted at her. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  I was more interested in the reason she tried to hypnotize me. What information was she seeking from me?

  Margaret put her hands on her hips. “Oh? Says who?” She sighed. “You never can be too careful, especially with the world blowing up around us!” she added. “Sorry, dear, but we can’t trust the strangers around here,” she told me with a little shrug and a giggle. “I was just trying to get a read on you.”

  I didn’t say anything but nodded quickly as Margaret turned back to Casey. She continued pleading her case although he was clearly angry. I stepped back and leaned in to Judy. “Has she done this sort of thing before?”

  Judy waved her hand. “Eh … Sorta. She’s unpredictable, at best.”

  I frowned. “Do you know how long she’s had that necklace?”

  Judy shook her head. “No. I’ve never seen her wear it before, but I don’t see her very often.”

  Rowena was scowling now, biting her lip and staring with her stone eye at nothing in particular.

  “Just please get us to parallel three and we’ll talk about this later,” Casey insisted as Margaret plopped her hands on her fleshy hips and frowned at him. He pointed to the metal disk in the floor. “Now, can we please get back to work?”

  Margaret sighed. “Oh, all right. But it’s going to be a minute or so.”

  Casey groaned, fists clenching. Margaret gave him what might have been an admonishing look.

  “It takes time to warm up,” she explained—which was probably true, given its size and the number of other parallels it likely had access to. Ripping holes in the natural barriers between worlds and dimensions is a heavy task.

  Casey waved her off, visibly trying to contain himself. “Just fucking …” He exhaled slowly through his teeth, his eyes closed. He seemed to be struggling to breathe.

  Margaret turned to the technicians and started ordering them around. Kent kept laughing, and Judy glared daggers at him for it. Marcus watched it all with a troubled look on his face, fiddling with his cigar. He brought it to his lips every now and then, pretending it was lit, or maybe just forgetting that it wasn’t. Rowena watched silently.

  I walked over to Casey. “Well, then,” I said.

  Casey balked. “Well, then,” he responded, tightening his lips into a straight line.

  “It’s okay,” I said, taking his hand. “Breathe. We’re almost out of here.”

  “I’m sorry for what my mother did to you,” he started.

  “What she nearly did to me,” I corrected him. “I caught her before she did any permanent damage.” At Casey’s questioning glance, I continued. “Hypnosis is an art. The amulet was just a focus of mortality, something humans without magic can use to channel what little they’ve got. She was more intent on hypnotizing me than learning what I might have revealed under hypnosis.”

  “Ah,” he started before a secretive smile crept up along his lips. “You’re a special kind of girl, Sam,” he finished, his grin broadening.

  Then something else blew up, and I forgot what I meant to say.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sam

  The explosion was distant, muffled—a noise that sounded halfway like an earthquake, or a giant rock landing unceremoniously on something extremely fragile. Following the noise came a series of pops and bangs, soft enough to resemble little more than bursting bubbles, and loud enough to shake the floor.

  All the irritable, motherly affection instantly drained from Margaret’s face, and her eyes turned steely. “Oh, dear,” she said darkly as she pulled a small tablet from the pocket of her coat. She tapped away at it for a few seconds, then sucked in a breath. “Oh, dear.”

  “Mom?” Casey asked, but she didn’t look up. Something powerful sounded with a mechanical exhale, and the light above the elevator went out. Margaret sighed.

  “I’m terribly sorry about this,” she said, smiling, “but it appears we are under attack.”

  “By whom?” said the technician beside her, but all of us knew. Or at least, we had a pretty good guess.

  “Think they’re here for us?” Judy asked.

  “No,” I said. “Definitely not! Anybody working for the Darkness probably thinks I’m dead, unless …” Oh shit. “Unless they’ve already toppled the Preternatural Division from the inside out, they have no idea your team is even a thing.”

  That wasn’t a fun thought. We all looked at Margaret, but she wasn’t looking at any of us. Her eyes were fastened on her tablet, which she squinted at with iron concentration.

  “They could be here for the portal. It’s the only other thing in the building,” Casey said.

  “Except …” I started, thinking of the dozens of floors we must have passed on our way up here.

  I was cut off by a horrific, groaning noise coming from the elevator shaft. We all turned toward it at once. Margaret sighed, pocketing her tablet, and walked behind the largest console, where she knelt down and opened a large drawer with a casual rumble.

  “Four minutes, ma’am,” said a technician, fiddling with more buttons and sliders, trying desperately to ignore the groaning.

  “Four minutes,” Margaret muttered, tapping and plugging at something hidden behind the console. “Four minutes …” she repeated as she looked at us and beamed. “You’ve got four minutes to spare, don’t you, darling?”

  Casey frowned at her—like something she said didn’t sit right in his head—but he did not reply to her question. “Can you see who’s in the elevator, Mom?”

  Margaret shook her head, rifling through her drawer with lots of shuffling and clattering. “I turned it off, darling,” she said. “Couldn’t tell you who it is, or how on earth they’re making the elevator move.”

  The groaning continued, a belly-deep, tearing sound, like metal being ripped in half, or mountains being shorn in two by giants with axes, fueled by suppressed rage. It swelled to a roar, growing even louder. Bump, bump, bump! went the doors, ready to receive whatever was about to enter, confused despite their robotics as to how it was possible
after the whole system had been shut down.

  “Brace yourself, darlings!” Margaret called out from behind us, and I heard a click and someone shuffling, like they were cocking a gun and aiming it.

  The doors opened, and a man came stumbling out, panting and sweating—the silver-blue glow of his magic dancing around his hand. He was straining to keep the elevator from plummeting back into the shaft. Tall and lanky, with the monochrome-grey skin of a drow. They were the nocturnal, reclusive, and far less friendly cousins of the more common high elves. Drows were native to the expansive caves and mines that tunneled underground through most of the Netherworld.

  “Casey!” he shouted, releasing the magic the second he was free of the elevator. The doors remained open, and the carrier box fell away, thundering down the long, dark tunnel from whence it had come.

  “Silas!” Casey answered, aghast. “What are you doing here?”

  “Tabetha’s been compromised,” Silas answered breathlessly, looking over Casey’s shoulder at Margaret—now glaring vehemently at him and holding the black body of a weapon just behind the terminal.

  “Yes,” she said darkly. “It has.”

  Silas’s eyes widened as he dropped his voice and said, “Casey, listen to me! That’s not your mother!”

  Casey’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Margaret’s still in Brokenview,” Silas answered quickly, “She—”

  Then he stopped abruptly, his mouth hanging open, his next words stayed lodged in the back of his throat. His eyes glazed over before he gagged. His magic flared in his stomach, shrinking into itself, desperately pushing outward. Like he was trying to fend something dangerous off.

  Shit.

  “Silas?” Casey asked with obvious concern as he took a few steps closer to him.

  Silas didn’t move. His soul was at war now, thrashing wildly, and rendered blind. Slowly, the color of the offender took shape, the outside magic pressing down on him—an orange haze, grey, yellow and gold, a cloud of sour influence. More power than he could contend with alone.