Shadow Realms

by M K Mancos

  Doran witches are known to have several very interesting powers—and intellectually I knew one of those was the ability to speak to the dead, but I didn’t think my own sister would rat me out.

  “Here, why don’t we go to the garden and sit. You can get some fresh air and we can talk.” Kara literally took me in hand and guided me out through a hallway with a set of stairs going up to an apartment on the left and a door on the right that led to a garden.

  The little area was beautifully situated between a group of brownstones. Flower boxes were filled with fall blooms. Raised planters at the back and sides of the yard grew a variety of herbs. She sat me at a little table with a mosaic dragonfly on the top.

  I touched the tiles and a whisper of awareness moved through me. My Aunt Rallie made the tables and sold them at various craft stores and fairs around the county where we lived.

  I had no idea how or where Kara St. Ives had gotten one of the tables, and I wasn’t about to ask at that particular moment. If the table had come to her, she was worthy of it. Little known fact about my Aunt Rallie’s work—she keyed it so certain people could see it for purchase.

  An odd spell, but one that ensured her work went to places it would be appreciated. A look around the garden convinced me the table had gone to a good home.

  Kara took a place beside me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I raised my hand to stop her apology. “Look, I know how it is with the Doran blood. I have no problem with that. It was hearing that my sister was here, talking to you that surprised me.”

  Not only that, but it floored me completely. Venetia hated me. I don’t mean that in a superficial teenager, I-told-you-not-to-touch-my-stuff way. I mean it in a Downton Abbey, Lady Mary versus Lady Edith deep loathing kind of way.

  I scrubbed my face. If I’d lived to be a thousand, I never would have come up with this turn of events. It laid my vulnerabilities bare and made my heart raw. No one in my life before or since had gone after me with the single-minded venom my sister had. Her unending attempts to undermine my self-esteem continued to live in my soul until I knew I’d never be rid of them.

  “What all did she say?” No matter how much it hurt, I had to know. Curiosity, if nothing else.

  “That you were here doing research. She’s worried for you.”

  I laughed. Outright. With as much sarcasm and incredulous as I could muster for a stranger. “I doubt that very much.” I wagged my finger at Kara. “You did have me going there for a moment.”

  Kara sat back. Her eyes rounded. She put a hand to her chest. “It’s the truth. I wouldn’t lie about the words of a dead woman.”

  “Well, I happen to know she never once worried about me.” I screwed my face up as if searching for one time Venetia might have had cause to be concerned for me and came up with nada. “Yeah. Nope. None there. Her entire life was spent trying to discover new and insidious ways to torture me.”

  Kara canted her head and looked off, focusing on something I couldn’t see. After a moment she turned back. “She regrets her actions.”

  Call me heartless, but I didn’t believe that either. Venetia hadn’t done anything ever that didn’t serve her first and foremost. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until after she’d passed that our parents realized all the strife in our family had come from her and not me.

  They should have gotten clued in when I’d asked to live across town with my Aunt Rallie. But no, they’d continued to believe I was the instigator—that poor, sweet Venetia had done nothing to deserve my wrath.

  Bitter pain sliced me in two. Hard to imagine that sisters could hate each other so much. Well, for my part, I’d learned to hate her. I’d wanted her to love me, approve of me. She never did. And I never learned why.

  I sat silent as a dead log. What was I supposed to say? Kara might insist that Venetia said those things, but I was never going to be convinced my un-dearly departed sister had anything but animosity for me, even in death.

  Maddie came out into the garden carrying a tea tray with a pretty floral pot and cups with saucers. In the center was a plate with cakes. “I thought we could use a break and some calories. Elevate the blood sugar.”

  As far as I knew, hypoglycemia wasn’t my problem. Time wells were. Try to sell that one to the masses, and they’d see me locked up.

  I took a cup with quiet thanks and blew across the top. Autumn in New York was beautiful. The day was warm, but a cool breeze blew into the garden with startling frequency. I hugged the cup with both palms and brought it to my lips. Immediately, the scent of chamomile and cinnamon filled my head. I took a cautious sip and let it slide down, relaxing as it fueled me.

  “What did you want to know about our family?” Kara picked up her own cup and stared at me through the rising steam. I got the sense she wanted more to dig for information on me and used the pretense of cooperation to do so. I wasn’t fooled.

  “I’m sorry. I only came to touch base and check out the store today. I don’t have my notebook with me.” Not necessarily true. I always carried my notebook in my bag. However, the events coming into the city had turned me around and made it hard to focus on my reason for being there in the first place. At that moment, anyhow.

  Kara looked off into space again, her face a study in symmetry. This time she frowned. “I understand your family is thick in magic abilities as well.”

  Venetia needed to keep her dead mouth shut. Nothing worse than a ghost snitch.

  I gave a small shrug and tried to still my pounding heart. “Must be something in the water in North Carolina. I live the next mountain over from Cooper’s Millm in Cadence. The area is full of magic.”

  “That’s not much of an answer.” Maddie looked disappointed.

  “Mostly because it’s not as prolific of a family as yours. At least in the talent area.” What I really didn’t want to give away was the family name. There had been rumors through the family tree of a feud with the Dorans. Kind of a magical version of the Hatfields and the McCoys. I wanted to add no fuel to that fire. My interest in the Dorans was purely academic.

  Actually, with my ancestors, it was a bit like looking into a mirror. I didn’t need that perspective because I knew how it worked. I wanted and needed another one for my dissertation. A broader view.

  Plus, I found their family much more fascinating than my own.

  Maddie took a seat at another small table. This one with a butterfly on the top. Also Rallie’s work. I smiled.

  “What is your talent?” Maddie hedged. Her eyes had narrowed a bit, and she kept her attention glued to my face.

  Might as well come clean with at least some of it. Maybe they’d be more apt to help me if they knew we were more alike than different.

  “Shifting realities, time wells. I can see a thousand and one possibilities moving in and around me. Horrible talent growing up. I kept seeing things happen and then realize it wasn’t my life here—it was another reality that I couldn’t effect.” Oh, I railed at that enough. Why show me such things if I had no ability to do anything to change the outcome? I’d never understood my power as being anything more than a curse.

  Kara took a sip of her tea and set the cup down. One brow was raised slightly higher than the other, as if evaluating the merits of my confession. Or looking for holes in it. “A very unusual talent, and I’m not even sure how to help you with it. At least not here in a place chaotic as New York. You said it’s worse here?”

  “Yes. Too many people. Too much history and future leaking over into the present. So much energy converged on a small island, plus all the rivers nearby.” I shuddered. A thought occurred to me that it hadn’t been like this the last time I visited New York.

  I mentioned that to both of them, then sat back against the chair. “What is different here than the last time?”

  Maddie lifted a shoulder. “How long ago was your last visit?”

  “About four years ago. I came up for a day or two, so I didn’t stay long, but the time wells were
n’t as abundant, or prominent.”

  The Doran sisters exchanged a look that might mean any of a hundred things, but they didn’t let me in on the subtext. A feeling of something that had gone terribly wrong hovered over the garden. I didn’t see the shifting realities around them, but more than gotten a fleeting brush of it. I likened the sensation to when someone walked too close and their clothing brushed my arm. Not enough for their body to touch, but enough to know they’d been there.

  “You know something that happened between now and then to change the pitch of New York?” I referred to the frequency of time and dimensions. Each reality had their own, and if it went out of whack, people like me had a greater tendency to see things.

  “Not that I can think of,” Kara frowned. “Though I have noticed a higher incident of ghosts who have been able to penetrate my shields. They seem…I don’t know. More desperate.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Not the feel of it either. Desperate ghosts made for bad neighbors. We finished our tea in relative silence. Each contemplating our own memories for anything that might have felt different in the world than it did four years ago. Now, I wasn’t talking about politics, or religion, or even weather. I was talking about the esoteric. Sure, a disturbance on the psychic or magical plane could disrupt the physical world and make people go off the rails. Cause and effect. But this was bigger than that. More profound.

  I thanked Maddie for the tea and both of them for the company. I felt bad leaving the shop without purchasing anything but promised to return after I’d had a good sleep and maybe a soak in the hotel tub.

  As I got ready to leave, Kara pressed a small sachet into my hand. I sniffed it. The pleasant scent of lavender filled my head. “Put it under your pillow. You’ll sleep better.”

  “Thank you.” A small sigil was printed on the front of the fabric. I didn’t recognize it. It might have been one associated with the Doran witches of old. A mandala of some sort.

  I stuck the offering down into my bag and stepped out of the shop. All the way to the subway station, I tried to shut out the bleed over from so many futures and pasts colliding. My power was low to begin with, so I had to simply push through and hope I didn’t step into a time portal without realizing it.

  I glanced around me, trying to see if anyone looked disturbed by the phenomenon. On the corner, the Don’t Walk sign lit and people stopped to wait for traffic to clear before disregarding the light. Nothing in their demeanor or actions suggested they weren’t as they appeared: people out enjoying a nice, fall day.

  As I stepped off the curb, tingles fired along my leg and a well opened and swallowed me. My foot came down in the 1920s.

  Five

  Malachi

  Colvin scratched at his soul patch and eyed me with a look that said he’d rather get back into the car and drive blindfold the rest of the way to the city than to go near the time well. “So, do we assume that the breach is expanding, or is this a random one?”

  I started around the portal, wanting to see how far back it stretched before cleaving to normal time-space and wasn’t surprised when it was flat as a mirror. If we looked through the aperture we saw depth to the well. However, the thickness if observing from a side view was not even a blip in reality.

  The physics of the magical world always seemed to escape me by a few steps. As if the one formula to bridge the gap between magic and science had yet to be written or proven.

  I stuck my arm through the front of the portal. The temperature was several degrees colder inside. Now, whether because of the time shift or because the day in the past it showed had actually been that cold, I had no way to tell without walking through. What I did notice was the soft scent of burnt wood from nearby fireplaces bleeding through into our time.

  “Are you going to investigate when this is?” Colvin snapped a few pictures to send to Astrid.

  “Not at the moment. Our assignment was to go to the City and see what’s up there. So much more potential for problems in a concentrated area of eight million than a country road.” Unfortunately, it had come down to a numbers game.

  I went back to the car and dug around in the trunk. Various boxes, bags, and chests held all manner of magical implements needed in case of emergency. I picked up a fatigue green messenger pack and unzipped the top flap.

  A series of disks about the size of my palm and embossed with a magical glyph were stuffed inside. I pulled one out and walked back to the portal.

  The neutralizer had to be primed by lifting the lid and giving it a twist, then seating it back on the base. For some reason, this one didn’t want to prime.

  “Damn it.” I had to pry the lid off and blow out the inside with puffs of air before putting it back together.

  “Want another one?” Colvin reached into his pocket and pulled out a similar device. Hell, if I’d known he’d armed his pockets before we left the office, I wouldn’t have wasted time walking back to the car.

  I waggled a finger between the two of us. “We need to communicate.”

  Colvin shrugged. “Sorry.”

  I had my doubts. I liked Colvin, he was my main bud in this business, but I also had the feeling he was constantly testing me. As if Astrid had given him a special assignment to see how I handled certain situations then report back. Or maybe I was just paranoid.

  I hit the button on the side of the device that armed the gadget and laid it down in front of the portal. Basically, the main function was to prevent someone from walking through the portal unaware. Or, given it was situated on a country road, driving through it.

  As I came back around to the front of the well, a wagon pulled down the dirt road heading away from the portal. I watched in fascination. The farmer who drove the wagon, loaded with fall vegetables, didn’t even notice us as he passed. The horse shifted a little in his harness, but the farmer gave a calm, firm hand on the reins and the nervous animal steadied.

  I exchanged a knowing look with Colvin. We had to make a stab at closing the portal before we left the area. Too chancy to leave it open, even with the shield generator in place.

  I call it a shield generator or neutralizer because it sounds more sci-fi than magical. To tell the truth, I’m not sure what the magical name for the device is. The Convention isn’t really big on naming the items they give to their agents. Names are power. If a particular item we use to bring down our enemies isn’t named, they can’t use it against us. That’s the thought behind it anyways. Short-sighted, I know, but there is a certain logic in it.

  The longer I studied the well, the more it appeared to be very old and established. In other words, this wasn’t the first time this particular one had been used. Not even in a time loop sense of the word.

  A Model T trundled down the road, heading the same way the wagon had gone. That put this particular time well sometime after October of 1908. One of my passions was old cars, so I knew a thing or two about the history of automobiles. Having such a varied interest away from magic helped keep me sane in a world that more often showed that sanity was a rare commodity.

  Chances were we would have a hard time taking down the well without a major ritual and full coven. Besides, no telling what might happen if we were to take it down without pulling it apart thread by thread. We simply didn’t have the time for that at the moment.

  “I hate to leave it here like this.” I rubbed my jaw in thought, hoping inspiration might strike. Or lightning. That was known to take down a well and permanently seal it.

  “I sent a text to Astrid along with a pic. She’ll either have another agent come out to deal with it or not. Either way, ball’s in her court.” Colvin slid his phone into his pocket.

  I put a hand to my heart. Ever since I talked with her on the phone, I had this odd feeling centered in the middle of my chest. It didn’t hurt, just tingled and pulled. I hadn’t felt anything like it since…

  “Come on, we have to go.” I started away from the scene. There wasn’t a moment to spare. Hell, we’d already s
pent more time at this well than we probably should have.

  Colvin’s eyes rounded. “What’s wrong, man? You look pale as shit.”

  What was I supposed to say? The woman I had a sneaking suspicion I was supposed to spend my life with had found trouble, and I had to protect her? Seeing her made her real, not just the material of prophecy. To me, that aspect was private. I wanted to keep it close to me for as long as possible.

  “Let’s just get out of here.” I opened the car door and got in.

  Colvin sat in the passenger side and put on his seatbelt. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I don’t see the point in keeping it from you.”

  I turned as dread crept up my body. “Keep what from me?”

  “Astrid thinks the shadow realms are coming here to steal witches and take them back. Use them to infiltrate.”

  Coming from a family of witches, this wasn’t good news.

  I turned the key in the ignition. My fingers had gone stiff with fear for my family. I had to repeat the action twice before I managed to get the job done. “Why didn’t she want me to know?”

  “She said she needs more information but hasn’t been able to get any.”

  That made sense, but we still—all of us who worked for the Convention—needed to at least be on the lookout for any cases of witches gone missing.

  Even one might be enough power for the shadow realms to feed on for a while. Also, the possibility remained they might be turned and used against us.

  I already wanted to lock my sisters in a box and make sure they stayed safe and out of the reach of the shadow beings. Hells bells. Maddie had been under attack already, and it had been a real stretch of my resources to try and find her each time she skipped time streams.

  And this wasn’t only about my sisters, but friends and colleagues. I knew so many people in the witching world who were vulnerable to abduction. Maybe that was one of the reasons most members of the Convention now worked in pairs. The days of the lone practitioner were a thing of the past.