Shadow Realms

by M K Mancos

  Honestly, I didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended she’d pegged me so quickly as a tourist. I was pretty damn sure this wasn’t the first time someone from below the Mason-Dixon line had come up to these parts and took a look-see at what the City had to offer.

  I decided to take a gamble and discover how much this particular person knew about the powers that surrounded us on a daily basis. If she was in a shop owned by a Doran witch, she had to know at least a cursory taste of it.

  “No. That wasn’t it.” I twirled my hand in a manner of incorporating the entirety of the isle of Manhattan. “There are so many places where the walls between realties are thin. It takes a lot of energy to block it out and not stop and stare.”

  I wasn’t the only one who had gone pale. She leaned against the counter. Suspicion clouded her eyes. “You’re making fun of me.”

  I shook my head. “I wish I was.” I held out my hand. “Kells Holland.”

  “Maddie Sayer.” She took my hand and pumped it a few times.

  I’d found the third sibling. Another Doran witch, though I hadn’t heard of this one ever visiting Cooper’s Mill.

  “Are you here on vacation?” It seemed a reasonable question, but I was reluctant to reveal my reasons for coming into the store. That contradicted my mission, but I hadn’t thought to run into so much suspicion in this youngest of the sibling’s eyes.

  Maybe a half-truth was better than an outright lie. “Research for my dissertation.”

  “Wow. And you came all the way up here to do it? That’s dedication.”

  My smile was lame, and I had run out of things to say that didn’t sound like interview questions. “Why did you ask if I was making fun of you?”

  Maddie took a step back and shook her head. “No reason.”

  “Oh, come on. I open with a line suggesting rifts in a quantum field, and you ask if I’m making fun of you. That’s not exactly the reaction I’d expect. Calling for an escort to the local psych ward, maybe. But not the assumption that I’d made fun of you.” I rubbed my arms. Even in the warmth of the store, I was chilled. I needed something to warm me from the inside out.

  Maddie threw up a shield of protection I could have felt without magical powers. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “I bet I would.” I stood then and rubbed my arms again. “Is there a cafe or diner close to here. I could really use a cup of tea to warm up.”

  Maddie frowned and looked to the back of the store. “I can make you some tea.”

  “I don’t want to put you out,” I protested. It was the only right thing to do.

  “It’s no trouble. My sister will be back soon, and she’ll want a cup anyhow.” She turned to go into the back of the shop. “I’ll just put the kettle on.”

  As she left, I decided to move around the store and get some blood circulating through my arms and legs. Sitting in a chair in a corner was only going to increase the frozen feeling that came over me when there were too many pockets of realities bumping up against each other.

  The store was filled with so many treasures. My mind overloaded with crystals, incense, soaps, ritual candles, books, jewelry. I wanted to touch and smell everything. A pull to my left captured my attention. This wasn’t caused by a well, but more a display that created an energy field. I took a deep breath and tried to push the disturbing energy away.

  Let me clarify. It wasn’t disturbing as in evil or vile, but in a way that plucked at my talent like a cellist would while tuning their instrument. And yes, specifically a cellist because the notes were in the middle tones near the solar plexus. I let the notes fill me and resonate to settle in my manipura chakra. I knew if I turned my head, powerful crystals would be set out on display, waiting to snag any unsuspecting person with talent enough to feel their energy from across the room. Though, judging from the amount these were exuding, even a null would be able to feel them if they touched one.

  Maddie returned to the showroom and approached me with a sympathetic expression. “Are you feeling better?”

  I jerked my head in the direction of the display case I’d yet to brave. “I don’t think I could help it with the amount of energy those crystals are putting out.”

  She smiled. “You feel them?”

  “Understatement. They’re practically screaming at me.” I made a pact with myself to look at them later, when I wasn’t so jazzed by my walk through the city. I glanced around the store. “This place is amazing.”

  Maddie beamed. “My sister is pretty proud of it. She has a good little business going. And her customers know if she doesn’t have something they need, she’ll get it.”

  “So, your sister is a witch?” Of course, I already knew the answer to that, but I figured it might be better coming from her than to reveal I’d already done extensive research into her family.

  “She’s…well. She’s Kara. I don’t know how else to describe her.”

  It was my turn to smile.

  “That’s the best compliment anyone has ever given me.” The voice came from behind us. Kara, I assumed.

  I turned and placed the dragon’s egg incense holder I’d been inspecting back on the shelf. Kara was blond, like her siblings, but her nose was a bit different, and eyes a different shape. She was still beautiful. I imagined there was a lot of really good genes floating around that family tree.

  The most miraculous thing was that two of the three siblings were standing not three feet from me. It was a researcher’s dream come true, but I needed finesse. I wanted to broach the subject of their hereditary talents and Doran legacy without raising suspicions or giving offense. A very high tightrope to walk without a pole for balance.

  Kara looked over my left shoulder then narrowed her eyes. “Do I know you?”

  My heart skipped several beats. “I don’t see how. I’ve only arrived in town recently. I’ve been to New York before, but not this shop.”

  She shook her head. “No. This wasn’t here. But you look familiar.”

  The way she kept looking over my shoulder was beginning to creep me out. Just in case there was some knife-wielding crazy back there, I turned my head. Nothing. Not even a shimmer of a well in the vicinity. As a matter of fact, that was odd. With as many articles of magical origin as Kara had in her shop, I had not felt even one stir of that particular brand of magic. My talent hadn’t so much as belched with the exception what was excited by the crystals.

  So, what was different about this place than any other I’d been? Had she—Kara—placed some kind of dampening field in the area to hold the worlds stagnant? Hard to imagine it, but then Maddie had made that curious comment about teasing her when I’d entered.

  The tea kettle whistled, and Maddie excused herself. Kara continued to stare at me as if to compel me to talk. Fat chance. I had a dissertation to write and probably more than a few facts to check. But somehow, looking into her eyes, I got the distinct feeling that my plan was about to backfire and the reason I’d come to New York didn’t have anything to do with higher education or my degree.

  “Were you looking for anything in particular?” Her expression suggested I should find some area of interest and pursue it, preferably several miles away.

  “Not at the moment. I heard about this shop and wanted to come in to explore.” I tried to smile, but the scrutiny I was under had begun to give me a headache. That and the fact I was trying to ward off an attack from the crystals behind me.

  “You’re looking for Doran witches.” The charge came as a complete surprise and made me wonder if her main talent was as a mind reader.

  What was I supposed to do at that point? I’d already made a promise not to lie, but I hadn’t figured on being busted this early into the recon.

  I sighed, large and with a heart full of regret. “Yes, but nothing bad. I’m a doctoral candidate in anthropology and am writing a dissertation on hereditary witchcraft. I only need some interviews on your family history.”

  Kara gave a decisive nod. “That jibes
with what Venetia tells me.”

  My throat went tight, and my chest hurt.

  Venetia was my sister who died ten years ago.

  Three

  Malachi

  Something had changed. From the moment I’d seen her in the diner, I knew life was different, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Too many things had changed lately for me to put her appearance down to coincidence. Not when I’d seen her before. That face had come from out of a dream…turned nightmare.

  No, it wasn’t even that. Most of the time dreams didn’t bother me. It was the waking visions that shot fear through my veins.

  My office chair gave a squeak of protest as I sat back. I’m not a large man, but I am rather substantial. I tried not to use my size to intimidate, but I’m afraid that’s exactly what the Convention recruited me into their ranks to do. My job description had morphed over the years, from runner, to investigator, to now a full-blown war mage.

  A fact I kept hidden from my family.

  They didn't know what I really did for a living, and I liked it that way. Better for me to not have to pretend to answer questions I’m not supposed to even be asked. Confidentiality, even from those who possess talents, must be kept at all cost.

  But the woman. Oh, she worried me.

  Magic had glittered around her like a sequined scarf thrown over her face. It was all I could do to get my order and leave. Why had she been sitting there? That wasn’t how any of the visions had ever gone. Not once had they shown me meeting her in a diner of all places.

  How typically New York.

  Let me go back a bit before I tell the story at hand. Several years ago, the Convention—the full name of the organization is The Convention of the Rose Hand—discovered me quite by accident when one of my spelled amulets had fallen into their hands.

  Our motif was a palmistry chart sitting in the open petals of a rose. It’s an ancient order that dated back to before the time of Christ, in Babylonia, and gained steam during the Inquisition. We fought fools like Torquemada and his minions. Also, Hitler, Stalin, and many others. Try as we might, we fought to suppress the knowledge of magic and its practitioners from those who would use it for ill. The point of that entire sentence was using it for ill. Intent was everything when practicing magic.

  My darling sisters wouldn’t agree with me on this point. Both Kara and Maddie believe magic—especially as practiced by us Doran witches, needed to come out into the light so the world could see it was nothing to fear.

  Unfortunately, that’s not true for other species. And I meant that in the most literal sense.

  It wasn’t coincidence that I found myself in Cooper’s Mill, North Carolina to assist Kara with uncovering the mystery of what our Aunt Hattie had done to get run out of that picturesque town during the late 1950s. I’d actually been sent there by the Convention to investigate the mine. It might not have appeared that way, but it’s the truth.

  What Kara didn’t know, was I’d been in town a full week before she’d ever arrived. That mine was a doorway to the shadow realms—mystic worlds that had been written about since time immemorial.

  One of those beings from the shadow realms had escaped to torment Maddie and jerk her through the multiverses. Where Kara’s greatest talent is speaking with the dead, Maddie can see and speak with ether-beings. They’d both been mistaken in it being a guardian spirit. There was nothing protective about Rowena. She’d been sent to gauge the human response to stressful situations, and that didn’t sit well with the Convention. A bit of an advance force, so to speak. They'd made strides in the last few decades, learning from humans how to exist and live among us.

  I unrolled the fist I’d made. My knuckles blanched from the action. I’d fight any demon, vanquish any ghoul, or slay any sprite to save my sisters. More importantly to keep those practitioners with magic in their blood safe from those pouring into our world from the shadow realms.

  The woman from the diner was part of the problem and the puzzle. I just didn’t know how she fit in. The visions I’d had of her were murky things—like trying to see the fish at the bottom of a muddy pond. Swirling and moving, ever changeable.

  One look at that bright strawberry hair and creamy skin and I’d had the shock of my life. What had she been doing in the diner of all places?

  I laid my head on my desk at my stupidity. Instead of being my regular cool, charming self, I’d freaked and walked out of the damn diner. Later, I realized all I had to do was walk up to her and pretend I’d recognized her from high school or college and struck up a conversation. I might not have gotten all her information—and with me being a stranger, there was a good possibility she’d have given me none—but now I’d never know.

  Only I would.

  The vision told me I’d see her again.

  A knock on my office door made me look up. Colvin, my assistant, stuck his bleached head in the door. Bright blue eyes blinked like a bird that tried hard to assess its surroundings. “Boss, you might want to answer your phone. Astrid is pretty pissed at you right now.”

  I turned the cell phone I wore at my hip to face upward. Sure enough, I had a string of missed calls with Astrid’s number. I sighed and waved. “I got it.”

  By the Hand, I didn’t want to call Astrid when she was pissed. The woman was a right terror on a good day.

  Astrid was also the one who had recruited me into the order. Dumb me thought she’d been hitting on me in a little bar down near San Antonio. Nope. She’d smelled…that’s right…smelled the magic in the amulet I wore.

  She’d tracked my ass through that bar and sat herself at my table. When I went to buy her a drink, I found myself flat on my back with her finger shoved in my face, in a dark room that looked and smelled like a meat processing plant. Needless to say, we didn’t get off on the right foot.

  All she had to do was say no thank you, she wasn’t thirsty.

  I decided not to put off the inevitable.

  “About time you rang me back, Sayer.” Acid dripped from her words. Occasionally, I had to remind myself she was one of the good guys.

  “What’s so urgent that you called me seventeen times in the last twenty minutes?” I also found it necessary to not give her any quarter. As far as I was concerned, she still owed me for her methods of recruitment.

  “You’re needed down in the City. A disturbance in the multiverses is causing ripples throughout Manhattan.” Her words left me speechless.

  According to my visions, that’s the way it always started. The war between worlds. A catalyst of great power unlocked a key and set the multiverses to blaze.

  I stood from the desk. “I’m on it.”

  The call dropped from her end. Once I’d given her the reassurances she needed, there wasn’t more to say. Astrid had every confidence I’d get the job done once assigned. I’d not failed the Convention yet. Didn’t plan to on this occasion.

  Grabbing my jacket from the back of my chair, I headed out the door. “Colvin! Let’s go. We need to be in the City like yesterday.”

  A long hallway separated my office from the toy manufacturer Colvin fronted to keep our business a secret. Toys were made at the factory, and for the most part it was a highly lucrative enterprise, but it wasn’t how I spent my working days.

  Colvin met me at the employee entrance. His blond hair stood up as if he’d been sucked through a hurricane sideways. “She was pissed, right?”

  I hit the door with my hip and headed to the parking lot. “Worried more like.”

  Calculations rumbled through my brain. Normally, Fox Run was a two-hour car ride down the New York State Thruway to the City. It also required a bridge crossing and a nip through New Jersey.

  I tipped my phone up to look at the time. Given our starting point, we’d probably make the bridge crossings about time for rush hour to start.

  Why hadn’t she sent an agent that was stationed closer? In a case like this, proximity was everything.

  For the same reason she’d sent me to North Ca
rolina. My Doran blood gave me an edge. How much of an edge remained to be seen.

  We got out of Fox Run and headed to the thruway. Roads around Fox Run are typical Mid-Atlantic streets. They roll and fall and wind around hills, mountains, valleys, and the occasional forest. Very few of the local roads are a straight shot—not even state ones.

  As we came around a corner, Colvin put his feet up on the dashboard and looked at me with huge eyes. “What in the hell is that?”

  I slammed on my breaks and stared at the vision in front of us.

  Where a ribbon of asphalt should have wound through the tree line, a dirt track partially covered by leaves stood. That in itself wasn’t unusual in a grander sense of the spectacle. What was unusual was the fact that area of road was completely enveloped in a shimmery veil of undulating light. The edges expanded and contracted as if the entire construct breathed with unnatural life.

  I opened the car door and walked to the phenomenon. Hair raised on my head and arms—not from fear but from the sucking pressure of the vortex. Trees that stood tall and proud on the outside of the structure, appeared as mere saplings through the aperture.

  I rubbed a hand over my sternum where the greatest concentration of pressure centered. This was no joke, but a serious problem of messy proportions.

  I swallowed and turned to Colvin who had come up on my right side. Oh, this wasn’t good at all. As a matter of fact, it was probably the worst thing in the world given all that was in flux.

  Our jobs had become exponentially worse.

  “That, my friend, is a time well.”

  Four

  Kells

  I really needed to sit down. Beyond shocked and grief-stricken, I groped behind me for a chair. Stupid, I know. There wasn’t one behind me. I was in the middle of the store for crying out loud. Not in Maddie’s little corner. Still, it was what I did. Probably a natural response when I realized I was most likely on the verge of passing out.