by C. P. Rider
"Oh." Samuel stood.
Holy crap he was tall—as tall as Laverne, at least. He had the kind of muscles you get when you spend a lot of time in the gym working with heavy weights. The guy looked like the teenage version of The Rock.
I'd have talked to him more, but I was pretty sure I was going to be busy now that I was smack in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Because, as I'd determined between bites of pancakes, if Bert was right and Toby and I weren't dead, that had to be what was happening. I'd been captured by the Kilshaw Agency and they'd drugged me, and this was all a hallucination.
Dad was right. I read too much urban fantasy, and it was starting to show.
Because there were no such things as dimensional doorways and cafés that went from condemned to pristine at the twist of a lock. Waitresses in cafés did not take orders from dogs, and they certainly did not serve them at the table, though they really should—at least the polite ones, like my Toby.
Samuel tossed a white card on the table. It looked like the one I had. The plastic rectangle lit up like a Christmas ornament, then went dark again. He shoved it into his jeans pocket. "Thanks for the coffee, Laverne. See you tomorrow."
Without a glance back, he walked out.
"No you don't, Samuel Bekker." Laverne burst out of the kitchen clutching a paper bag and hustled out the door after him. I watched through the glass as she handed him the sack and hugged him. He took the bag and the hug with a nod and a smile, then ducked his head down and jogged to the road.
I wondered why the café patrons seemed so worried about Samuel. I wondered why he'd left without even a polite goodbye to Toby and me. But most of all, I wondered how long it would be before the meds wore off and I was face-to-face with the monsters at the Kilshaw Agency.
That had me wondering. How long had my delusion been going on? Was Aedan real or was he part of my delusion?
I didn't know how I felt about that. On the one hand, I'd like to know I hadn't been hallucinating this entire time. On the other hand, if he was real, he was a giant liar, and I hated his stupid guts.
"Weird stuff going on, Toby."
My dog barked back at me, but I didn't speak dog, so I had no idea what he said. I giggled a little. Speak dog.
I finished my second glass of tea. It tasted real.
Laverne reentered the café, two men in their late sixties on her heels. One was tall and slim, with thick silver hair, dark olive skin, and what looked to be a permanent scowl etched into his face. The other was short, with pale white skin, graying auburn hair, and a wide happy grin that dimmed slightly when it landed on me.
The shorter one reached behind him for the taller one's hand, and they both stared at me as if I were a monkey on display at the zoo.
Finally, the short man approached my booth, cleared his throat. "You must be Maria."
In a blinding flash of clarity, I saw the truth.
I hadn't been drugged. I really was in another dimension, in a café that transcended space—and perhaps even time—in a town called Dead End.
And I was staring straight at my grandfathers.
6
After being introduced to my own grandfathers by Laverne, I paid for breakfast with the white card, gathered Toby and our stuff, and followed the men out of the café.
We all piled into their car and drove out of the gravel lot onto a dirt road with potholes like ditches, and then onto a smoother, unpaved road.
"You're Maria's child?" Abuelo Emilio, the more serious of the two, asked. He was seated in front on the passenger side with a neatly folded newspaper in his hand. The name of the paper, Track's End Tribune, was showing, as was a headline about a flash rainstorm that washed out Mare Road.
"Yes."
"Where is your mother?" He shuddered the words out like he didn't really want to hear the answer, but had forced himself to ask.
"She died." I swallowed. It still hurt to think about it, even after ten years. "Car accident. When I was seven years old."
Both grandfathers slumped in their seats. It was a full minute before anyone spoke again.
"We were afraid that might be the case," Grandpa Holli said, his voice soft and sad as he reached for Abuelo Emilio's hand. He'd told me what to call him when we were introduced, said "grandfather" was too formal and that everyone in town called him Holli instead of Hollister, so I might as well do so, too.
He was also the one who had told me what I should call my other grandfather. I was learning that Abuelo Emilio was a man of few words.
"I miss her very much," I said.
Abuelo Emilio nodded in response. He crushed the newspaper in his free hand.
"How old are you, Maria?" Grandpa Holli asked after an awkward pause.
"Seventeen. I'll be eighteen in a couple months."
"Are you still in school?"
"Yes. I should be, anyway. I haven't gone since middle school."
"You don't go to school?" Grandpa Holli peered at me through the rearview mirror. "Isn't it the law there?"
"Well, yes," I said, thinking that was an odd way to put it. The law there. He made it sound like I was from another planet. "I was on something called independent studies. I did my schoolwork alone on a computer."
"Oh. I hope you don't need a computer here. We have one, but it only works during an electrical storm, though we might get Mr. Planke to take a look at it, perhaps see if he can engineer it to function on moon phases instead of storms. Still, we'll have to send you to the high school. I don't believe there's an independent study program in Dead End. Or anywhere in Sanctum, really."
"I don't know how long I'll be here." I was reeling from the idea of life without a computer. Without the Internet. Without social media? "My dad's coming back for me."
My grandfathers looked at each other. "I'm sure he is," Grandpa Holli said, "but perhaps we should consider getting you in school anyway. That way, when he gets here, he won't have to rush back if he doesn't want to."
Abuelo Emilio frowned hard at Grandpa Holli. The look was the same one that had been on my mother's face the time I freed a family of lizards inside our house. Grandpa Holli nodded at Abuelo Emilio as if reassuring him.
"Umm, okay." That was probably a good plan. Dad and I might have to hide out in Dead End, or Sanctum, or whatever this place was called, to get away from the Kilshaw Agency. Might as well make the best of it.
Plus, I kind of did want to go to school, to at least experience it before my senior year was over. Maybe I could just try it out for a while.
I patted Toby, who was sitting like a tiny gentleman on the seat beside me. "Is Toby going to be a problem?"
"Why? Does he need to go to school, too?" Grandpa Holli asked.
Toby glanced at me and tilted his head as if to ask, "Do I?"
I scratched his furry chin. "No. I meant a problem for you. Some people don't like dogs."
"Is that so? I can't say I'd care to meet any of those people." Grandpa Holli shook his head. "To answer your question, Toby seems like a very nice canine. I'm sure we'll get along fine."
"Our Maria always had a dog." Abuelo Emilio dropped his newspaper on the floorboard and stared out the passenger side window. He and Grandpa Holli still held tightly to each other's hands.
We pulled off the smooth dirt road and onto a smoother paved one. Here, the landscape was no longer desert brush and pale flat sand. There were buildings and people and other cars. Old cars. Old-fashioned buildings. Like something out of this classic TV show Dad liked to watch where people whistled a lot because they were happy and went fishing to catch dinner and everyone greeted you with a smile.
The cars were familiar, but different, in strange and unusual ways. An old-fashioned buggy with gleaming white tires rolled past us with an enormous television antenna on the roof. A vehicle that was a cross between Dad's truck and a Mini Cooper puttered past, its small bed filled with a strange liquid that sloshed over the sides and hit the street in splashes of orange. A car the size of a little kid's ride-on
toy zipped past us with what were either very young children or very small adults inside.
The people were different, too. Some were human, but others were … not. What I estimated to be a man coasted down the sidewalk in front of a grocery store on an enormous curled fin, like a mermaid. His skin was blue, and he had green hair that hung down to his waist. Another person floated over the sidewalk—a delicate woman with pale pink skin, blonde pigtails, and the pastel-shaded wings of a butterfly sticking out of the back of her dress.
I pressed my nose to the window, tried to see it all. "What is this place?"
Grandpa Holli glanced up at me in the rearview mirror again. "This is Dead End, of course."
"Is that guy from another planet?"
"Who?" Grandpa Holli peered out the side window at the merman. "Dr. Pacifico?"
"His name is Dr. Pacifico?"
"Dr. Phineas Pacifico. As far as I know, he was born in Sanctum City. That's the largest city in Sanctum. He transferred here after graduating from dental school."
"He's a dentist? I thought he might be an alien."
"Periodontist, actually. The only one in Dead End. We aren't a very big town, dear." The look he gave me through the mirror was tinged with pity. "I wouldn't worry about the alien thing. Dead End is quite cosmopolitan. I'm sure no one will care where you come from."
It took me a moment to realize he considered me an alien.
We turned onto a street lined with neat little houses. Grandpa Holli parked the car—an older model that looked new and almost, but not quite, like a Chevy—on a cement driveway in front of one of them.
My grandfathers' house was small, single story, and painted a minty shade of green. A white picket fence surrounded the yard, and a white porch railing wrapped around the house. It was the sort of place where you imagined a mom in an apron would bring you a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies and a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade while you were doing your homework.
Looking at it made me miss my mom, but in a good way. For once I wasn't thinking about her death, but how lucky I'd been to get to eat her chocolate chip cookies. Mom's cookies were the best. None of the ones I'd eaten since compared.
We filed into the house, through the living room, and down a short hall. There were two bedrooms here, one on either end. Grandpa Holli led me to the one at the front of the house.
"It's not suited to a young lady," he said. "We use it as a guest room for when company comes over, which isn't often, so you're welcome to it. We can get some more, well, feminine things in here for you. Perhaps a dog bed."
I shook my head. I didn't want him to feel like he had to do anything special. I wasn't staying long, after all. Dad was coming back for me.
"It's very nice the way it is. Toby can sleep on a folded blanket at the foot of the bed." I searched for something else to say. "Um, thank you—for letting us stay here."
"You're our granddaughter and granddog. Where else would you stay?" His forehead wrinkled. He seemed truly perplexed.
"You didn't have to take Toby and me in at all. You don't even know us."
Grandpa Holli wandered out of the room, only to appear a minute later with a small dish of water that he set on the hardwood floor by the door.
"Please sit down." He perched on the bed and patted the bedspread.
Toby and I sat on either side of him.
"You must understand, Maria, that any reticence on our parts today has nothing to do with our happiness in meeting you. This has all been something of a shock to your abuelo and me. To know that you exist and that our daughter Maria … no longer does."
He smiled kindly. "You see, your mother has been gone for ten years, but our child has only been dead for a few minutes." His green eyes clouded with tears. "It's difficult for us to face."
I plucked at the bedspread. "When you heard a Maria was here, you assumed it was her." God, they must have been so disappointed.
"Yes." He cleared his throat. "Try to be patient with Abuelo Emilio. He loved Maria very much. He needs to mourn her." Something told me that also went for Grandpa Holli, though he hadn't included himself.
"I understand." I really did. I mourned her every day.
"Now then. I'll bet you'd love to take a nap. Interdimensional travel is a real pain in the backside. Wears you out like nobody's business." He gave me an around-the-shoulder hug and patted Toby on the head.
"We passed the bathroom on the way in if you care to freshen up. If you're bored, there's a television in the living room and the moon is waxing with 79% illumination tonight, so we should be able to watch. I'll fix lunch in a couple of hours, but if you're hungry before that, there's fruit on the counter and drinks in the refrigerator."
He hugged me again and stood. "You're welcome here, Maria. This is your home just as it would have been your mother's, had she been the one to twist the lock at the One Way Café. I'm glad you're here."
With another pat for Toby, who had curled into a ball in the center of the bed in preparation for his usual after-breakfast nap, Grandpa Holli walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
I reached for my backpack, unzipped the front pocket and pulled out a pile of urban fantasy paperbacks. Tucked into an Anne Bishop book was a photo of Toby, Dad, and me. I stacked the books by the lamp on my nightstand and propped the picture against them.
"Don't worry, Dad. I'll find a way to get back to you. I promise."
7
I'd never slept so much in my entire life.
The second my head hit the pillow, I fell into a coma-like slumber. My dreams were scary and vivid, and that jerk Aedan Sterling factored heavily in several. I wasn't much for memorizing faces, but I had his engraved in my brain, along with the last words he'd said to me: Be safe, Maria.
It was still light out when I awoke. Groggy, I patted around until I found the bedpost, using it to hoist myself into a seated position. Someone, I was guessing Grandpa Holli, had left my slippers on the rug beside the bed. I shoved my feet into them, stood—and promptly dropped to the floor like a cartoon anvil.
"Ouch." With my cheek smushed against the floor, I had a clear view under the bed. Not a single speck of dust. There was something seriously wrong with my grandpas. What sort of people didn't have a dust bunny or two under the bed?
I blinked a few times, wiped the drool from my mouth. Looked around for my dog. "Toby?"
"Did you sleep well?" Grandpa Holli asked from the doorway. I wondered how much of my graceful fall he'd seen.
I ran my hand through my hair, which was a nest of frizz and knots, the way it sometimes got when I didn't braid it before bed. But I was sure I'd braided it before going to sleep.
"Yes, thank you. How long was I asleep?"
He glanced at his wristwatch. "Oh, I believe it's been at least fifty-two hours. Not too long. It's probably because you're still young and can adapt faster."
"Fifty-two hours? That's not long?"
"Well, no." Grandpa Holli smiled. "Most first-timers sleep for a full week after interdimensional travel. It puts a lot of stress on the body."
"Oh. That makes sense, I guess. I mean, I've never traveled interdimensionally before. I didn't know there even was another dimension besides my own. I thought you and Abuelo Emilio lived in Europe."
"What's Europe?"
"Um, it's a continent on my, uh, planet."
"Only kidding, Maria." He chuckled. "I know what Europe is. Sanctum is not on another planet. It's on Earth … just in another dimension of it."
"Both you and Laverne from the café mentioned Sanctum. I thought we were in Dead End."
"We are. Dead End is in Sanctum in the same way that France is in Europe."
"Sanctum is the name of this continent?"
He tipped his head to the side, squinted. "Eh, close enough. Would you like me to help you up?"
"I've got it." I tried to push myself to my feet, but my legs still weren't having it. Grandpa Holli caught me before I fell again and sat with me on the bed. "Th
anks."
"Anytime, dear. Are you hungry? I was just about to fix dinner." He gave me a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made me want to return it. In that moment, he reminded me of Dad so much it made my chest hurt.
Was he safe? Was he hiding in some trashy motel or was he on the road, trying to outrun the Kilshaw Agency? I needed to get him here before they got to him. The sooner the better.
"Maria? Are you okay, dear?"
Blinking away my tears, I faked a smile. "I should probably get ready." I stood, holding the bedpost for support. "Have you seen Toby?"
"He's gone on a walk with your abuelo. Third one today. Earlier he and Abuelo Emilio stopped by the café. That pup of yours has really taken to Laverne."
"She gives him bacon." Abuelo Emilio was keeping an eye on Toby? Well, at least he seemed to like one of us. "Wait, why wasn't Toby sleeping? He wasn't tired from the trip, too?"
"Animals recover more quickly than humanoid life forms." Grandpa Holli stood as I tried not to think too hard about his casual usage of the term humanoid. "I should get started on dinner. Do you have any requests? I was thinking either lasagna or fried chicken."
"Lasagna sounds good." Actually, anything sounded good. I was starving.
"I was hoping you'd say that. It'll give me a chance to open a jar of your abuelo's homemade spaghetti sauce. Feel free to use the bathroom to freshen up." A hint if ever I heard one. I surreptitiously sniffed myself and gagged.
"There are some toiletries in the medicine cabinet. We can get more if you need them. I understand young ladies need certain items."
Oh. My. God. No. I so wasn't ready to think in that direction with him.
"Thanks, Grandpa Holli."
"You're welcome, sweetheart. Things aren't the same here as they are in your part of the world, but we usually have an alternative. We get supplies in from the urban and farming areas fortnightly, so let me know if you have requests."
Unconsciously, I reached for my phone to search for "fortnightly" then realized it was dead and would likely continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Even if I could power it up, it wasn't as if I could access the Internet here.
