by K.N. Lee
“No, wait!” Irene cried, instinctively reaching out to grab the woman’s arm. Her hand passed through the image and splashed down in the water, splattering her own face. Irene sputtered, trying to shake off the water while still keeping the conversation going. “Look, please, I just need a few minutes—”
The woman reached for something out of sight of the crystal ball’s view, then her hand returned, holding a large square of navy blue fabric.
“Wait… no—”
The woman raised the fabric and then moved closer; the material obscured everything in the picture. Then the entire puddle went black.
“Hello?” Irene shouted. “HELLO? Come back! Please!”
There was no answer. Angrily, Irene slammed her hand into the water, sending it flying in all directions. “Damn it!”
She stared at the dark puddle in frustration. “I don’t believe this! How could she just hang up?”
Andras cleared his throat. Irene looked up at him. Silently, he pointed a short distance away—a spark of purple glittered briefly in the thick mossy carpet then winked out. He pointed three more times at varying distances—more glints.
Irene jumped to her feet. “Holy shit—there’s more of them?” Now, as she looked closer, she could see a variety of winking colors hidden in the undergrowth. If each puddle was a crystal ball, then each was a chance to reach someone who would talk to her.
What is it you hope to accomplish right now?
“A lot of things,” Irene said testily, annoyed that he didn’t understand how important this discovery was. “For starters, we’ve been attacked everywhere we’ve gone, and you have the only weapon. I can get one of these psychics to send me something that I can use to defend myself so I can survive long enough to actually get to the doorway home—"
I can protect you, Andras protested, and Irene thought he sounded angry, as if she had wounded his pride.
“That’s not the point. What if we get separated? What if you suddenly can’t materialize or you get too tired to stay materialized? What if you’re incapacitated? What if I need to protect you? I know your old-fashioned, ‘I’m the man’ issues probably make it inconceivable to you that you might need rescuing, but if three Nephilim all set on you at once, you would need my help to fight them off.” When Andras began to interject, she raised her voice, speaking over him. “And, I need to check that my friend Jonah is okay and get a message to him. So yeah, I think we need to stay here for a few minutes and figure these puddles out.”
Andras’s expression made it clear he was biting back a response. Fine, he said, sweeping an arm forward and gesturing for her to proceed.
As soon as they reached the next puddle, Irene dropped to her knees and peered into it. This one showed what appeared to be a quaint little tea shop—shelves and shelves of tins labeled things like “Lavender and Honey,” “Citrus Blend,” and “Soothing Mint,” lined the walls. In front of a pair of mullioned windows that looked out on a cobblestone street stood a small round table covered in a cream-colored cloth and topped with a white lace overlay. It was flanked by two chairs covered in floor-length covers—also cream colored—tied with lavender bows. The table was set with a tray, teapot, spoons, sugar bowl, and creamer—all in brightly polished silver. Beside the tea set, a three-tier cake stand held plates of assorted delectable-looking tea sandwiches and pastries that made Irene’s stomach rumble. Irene could practically smell—and taste—the overwhelming mix of black tea, honey, and flowery herbals that undoubtedly filled the tiny shop.
“Hello?” she called.
“Un moment, s’il vous plait,” called a man’s voice, deep but also raspy, as if from age. There was a shuffling sound, and then an elderly man appeared. His white hair was as smooth and neat as his finely-tailored, navy-colored suit. He peered into the crystal ball and then adjusted his dapper, plaid bowtie and shoved his wire spectacles higher up his nose.
“Bonjour,” he said, with the practiced obsequiousness of a shopkeeper. “Comment t’allez vous?”
“Hi,” Irene said brightly, pasting on her most winning smile. “Do you have a sec?”
“Comment puis-je vous aider, Madame?”
“Huh?”
“Eh, bien, je comprends. Vous ne parlez pas francais, n’est-ce pas?”
Irene’s heart sank. She didn’t understand the words, but she recognized his thick accent—French. Irene didn’t speak French.
“Do you speak English?” she asked.
“Comment?”
Irene might not speak the language, but the note of superciliousness creeping into the man’s tone was unmistakable.
“ENGLISH!” she said loudly and slowly, feeling like an idiot but unable to stop herself from at least trying to communicate.
“Non, Madame. Pas d’Anglais.”
“Is there anyone there who does speak English?”
“PAS D’ANGLAIS,” the man said loudly and slowly, mimicking Irene’s earlier tone.
“Yeah, okay. I suppose I deserved that. Thanks anyway.”
She rose to her feet. “This would be faster if we split up.”
As you said, I have the only weapon. We should stick together.
Irene raised a hand to silence him. “You’re not wrong; but that’s why speed is of the essence. The quicker we find one of these puddles that works, the faster I can send my message and we can get moving.”
Andras was silent for a moment. His eyes flicked to the blood on her dress and legs. He frowned, but his tone was neutral when he spoke.
‘You’re not wrong’—is that the same as ‘you are right?’
One corner of Irene’s mouth lifted. “You can think that if it helps you sleep at night.”
Andras grunted in amusement. Then, with a sigh, he straightened up. Fine. The light emanating from him dimmed, and then he flickered and disappeared. He didn’t need to be visible to move through the forest.
Irene eyeballed the scenery, looking for the closest telltale mirror-like glint and spotted one a few feet to her left. That puddle, however, was dark—as were the next three.
The puddle after that, however, wasn’t. Irene dropped to her knees beside it and leaned forward, studying the image before her—some woods. And it was raining.
“Huh?” She peered at the image more closely, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. Was this crystal ball outside?
She peered around the edges of the picture, trying to see if there was anything that could help her identify where she was. She caught a couple of hints of green grass—maybe a lawn—and, if she looked down, there were some flowers.
She was outside—she was looking at a garden. Irene groaned in exasperation. She had connected with one of those gazing ball things people put in their yards. Only this person had gotten hold of a real crystal ball without realizing it.
So much for that.
I believe I have found what you are looking for.
Irene jumped. “Jesus, don’t sneak up on me like that!”
Andras frowned at her and then wordlessly pointed to the right. Irene quickly followed him. As he’d said, this puddle was active, looking into what appeared to be a dining room if Irene had to guess. She could see a large, round table flanked by chairs.
“Hello?” Irene called.
A face appeared—a woman about Irene’s own age, pretty, with curly brown hair down past her shoulders. She wore a cambric shirt, buttoned to the collar and no jewelry or makeup.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked.
“Oh, thank God,” Irene said. “You’re home and you speak English.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “You’re new to this, aren’t you?”
“Being dead? Not so much. But this—using crystal balls—yeah, this is my first time.”
“Well, what can I do for you?”
“I need help tracking someone down. I think he might be in trouble—”
“Someone who has passed?”
Irene shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfor
table position for her knees. “No, this person is still alive. At least, I hope he is. I just need someone to check on him. He’s in Salem, Massachusetts, or, at least, he was last time I talked to him. Are you anywhere near there?”
The woman shook her head. “Sorry, no, that’s not really local to me.”
“Well, that’s okay, there’s a psychic in Boston—Madame Majicka, if you could contact her—”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude by why are you contacting me; why don’t you contact her directly?”
“I don’t know how,” Irene said, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. “I came across all these puddles—links to crystal balls, I guess, but yours was the only one that was active. Please… I really need your help.”
The woman narrowed her eyes as if contemplating something, and tapped her lower lip with a finger. Then she seemed to reach a decision. “Hang on for a minute…”
The woman disappeared from view, then returned holding a thick, hardbound book about the size of a dictionary. She hefted it up to the crystal ball so Irene could read the cover: The Complete Book of Afterlife Myths 2500 BC to 2000 AD. “This might help explain a few things.”
Irene tried to conceal her disappointment. She did need information—where the hell she was, how to get off this plane, how to deal with Nephilim… And that was just for starters. So, a book wouldn’t be a complete waste, but it wasn’t quite the assistance that she was hoping for. On the other hand, if it explained how to use the puddles so she could contact Madame Majicka, then maybe it wasn’t a total loss.
“Okay, yeah, that will work,” Irene said. “But how are you going to send it to me?”
The woman smiled, revealing a row of even white teeth. “Oh, that’s easy. I can send it to you through the crystal ball. Just reach out to me, and I’ll pass it to you.”
“Really? That’s… that’s great! I mean, that is really nice of you, thank you. You have no idea what this means to me.”
Andras rumbled with concern.
Irene gave him a questioning look. “Now what?”
She is a witch.
Irene tsked with impatience. Andras considered himself a man of God and, as such, tended to mistrust anything vaguely “magical” as heretical and demonic.
“She’s a psychic. There’s a difference. Psychics just see dead people is all; it’s not devil worship.”
Andras growled again, deeper and longer. Irene shushed him with a frown and a wave of her hand. To the psychic she said, “So how do I ‘reach out’ to you to get the book?”
“Just reach through,” the woman said, a note of impatience creeping into her voice.
Irene frowned, not really sure what the woman meant, but gamely tried to hide her ignorance. If the woman got too impatient, she might leave without giving Irene the book—and Irene really needed that book.
She pulled up one sleeve of her suit coat jacket, took a deep breath, and plunged her hand into the puddle. Nothing happened, except that the water was freezing cold and her hand got wet. The puddle was only a few inches deep, and her fingers hit the silty bottom. She could see her fingers superimposed over the woman’s face.
“Uh…” said Irene
“You have to reach through,” the woman said.
Oh—not into the water. Through the water.
Irene let herself have a second of elation that she actually understood what the woman meant. Everything that existed in the universe existed in the same space—layer upon layer like atoms in blood, blood in veins, veins in skin. As with finding doorways between afterlife realms, she needed to ignore what her physical eyes saw and reach through the illusion to what was beneath. In this case, what was beneath was an opening to the physical realm. She needed to find that opening with her ghost eyes and reach through it.
Irene concentrated hard and reached into the puddle, ignoring the water and the sand at the bottom and reaching, instead, for the woman and the room behind her.
The woman stretched toward her, and for a second, Irene’s hand touched something solid. Then the icy cold of the water turned into the fiery pain of an inferno. Irene cried out.
The world around her contracted, crushing her in the implosion, compressing her entire being into a tiny speck. Then she exploded outward, expanding like a super nova and shattering the world into a million glittering shards. The slivers hung suspended for a moment against a blank white slate, a disconnected jigsaw puzzle, and then rushed back together, reassembling themselves in a new and unfamiliar landscape around her.
The pain left as suddenly as it had come, and Irene was left gasping for air in its wake. Dizzy and disoriented, she stumbled and dropped to one knee. She reached out to steady herself against the ground; however, instead of landing on a soft carpet of moss, her hands touched something smooth and hard. Irene forced her eyes open.
Wooden boards—a floor. She looked up and then jumped to her feet in shock. She was standing in the room she’d seen through the crystal ball. The psychic stood before her, arms crossed, a smug expression on her face.
“Well, hello there,” the woman said.
2
“What…? Where am I?” Irene asked. She glanced around in confusion. The room was small but comfortable with white walls, dark wooden trim, and a wide-planked floor made of a dark wood that looked quite old. There was a rustic wooden workbench on one side of the room, up against the wall, that seemed to serve as some kind of mad-scientist work space. In addition to three large crystal balls, the table was covered with beakers, stones, crystals, large boxes each with a multitude of drawers, bits of chalk, and the like. There was even a hot plate, with something bubbling in a pot on it, and, incongruously, a laptop computer, open and on, though it was too far away for Irene to see the screen.
The rest of the room seemed more pedestrian. At the opposite side of the small room from the work bench stood a large, round table made of teak, covered with a decorative table cloth and a vase of flowers. Near it stood a tea cart with a small, square ceramic teapot covered in an ornate blue and gold geometric design with four matching handleless teacups.
The woman smiled at Irene. “Welcome, Illustrious One!”
Irene cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t know about the illustrious part.” She glanced around the room again, not quite believing that she was here.
“You must be; you came out of that third ball ,and no one has ever come out of there before. That’s a pretty elevated realm.”
Irene felt her shoulders straighten as a thread of pride snaked through her. Yeah, she thought. Elevated realm.
The woman hurried to the table and pulled out a chair for Irene. “Won’t you have a seat? Can I bring you some tea?”
Irene hesitated. What she really wanted was answers. Where the hell was she? And how had she gotten here? The woman had said Irene came out of the crystal ball—which seemed to indicate crystal balls could be used for more than just communication. However, Irene knew from experience that there was never any hurrying a psychic. Psychics did things on their own schedule. First there had to be tea—never mind that Irene hated tea; psychics were never to be gainsaid on the subject, and no business would be conducted until the tea had been served, so she might as well save her breath trying to argue the matter.
Irene tried to rein in her impatience, biting back the barrage of questions she was dying to release. Instead, she reluctantly took the proffered seat. The woman hurried out of the room, pushing the tea cart in front of her. Irene felt an urge to jiggle her foot impatiently as she waited. Andras was probably freaking out right about now, wondering where she had disappeared to. Without a ghost body, he couldn’t travel to the land of the living so he’d be unable to follow her, but she knew him: he’d try move heaven and earth to find her.
To Irene’s surprise, the woman returned almost instantaneously with a pot of tea and two cups. The woman smiled as she set the items on the table. “Luckily, I had just made a pot.”
Irene tried to keep the sarcas
m out of her voice. “Luckily.”
The woman poured the tea into both cups and then set one cup in front of Irene. Irene pasted a smile on her face, lifted the cup, and pretended to take a sip. “Yum,” she said.
The woman smiled in relief.
It had been so long since she had been in the land of the living—hell, since she’d been inside a building—that it had taken a moment for her brain to start registering the associated sensations, but now, things began filtering to her. She could feel the warmth of the tea cup in her hand and smell the strong, pungent aroma of the tea. The chair she sat on was hard and uncomfortable, the tablecloth brushing against her knees was soft. Irene fought down an urge to run around the room, rubbing everything in sight just to experience the feeling of tangible objects once more.
Instead, she smiled at the psychic, excitement bubbling up within her. “So—”
The woman cut her off. “So what’s it like on the other side?”
“Uh… well… it’s sorta hard to explain.”
“There are a lot of other ghosts, ghosts like you, there?”
Irene shrugged. “Uh, well, sorta. Well, not really, I guess. There’s not really anyone like me.”
The psychic frowned slightly as if she didn’t quite like this response but she nodded. Then she tilted her chin at Irene’s bloodied legs. “Your death—it was violent?”
“What? Oh, this? No. This happened in the land of the dead—some nasty razor grass.” Self-consciously Irene tucked one leg behind the other and shifted in her seat, trying to hide her legs under the table. She cringed as she imaged how the rest of her looked—hair tangled, face streaked with grime, hands dirty and bloody, jacket and dress torn. It was a wonder the psychic hadn’t run screaming from her when she’d first appeared in her crystal ball.
Irene took another faux sip of tea to cover her embarrassment, wondering how much time was required to pass for politeness’s sake before she could dive into real talk.
“My name is Zara, by the way,” the psychic said.
