by Gary Jonas
“Shower’s all yours,” she said.
“Tomorrow.”
“All the excitement has caught up to you.” She approached the bed. “Turn over.”
I struggled to comply. She tossed the covers aside and began to massage my shoulders. It hurt like hell.
“Ow!” I said.
“Crybaby.”
She didn’t ease up on the pressure. She massaged me hard and added extra pressure to certain points. I was being tortured, but fifteen minutes later, my stiff muscles felt much more supple, and the pain was mostly gone.
“Drink a lot of water,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Grab your shower.”
I got up and looked around. “Where’s Esther?”
“Keeping tabs on Ravenwood.”
“Cool.”
“You’d better hurry, though. She’s hoping to pop into the shower with you.”
“That would be a lot more fun if she weren’t a ghost.”
“Go,” Kelly said.
I showered without a ghostly voyeur then joined Kelly in the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Esther showed up as I was finishing my bacon and eggs.
“Ravenwood is at DGI,” Esther said. “Do we have a plan?”
“Yes,” I said. “I plan to get another serving of eggs from the buffet.”
“We’re waiting to hear back from Sharon,” Kelly said.
“I haven’t even met her, and she creeps me out,” Esther said.
Kelly nodded. “Me too.”
“Really?”
“She’s freaky,” Kelly said.
I laughed. “That is the technical term. She’s supposed to be clearing her schedule for this afternoon. I’m expecting her to call anytime now.”
“You’re banking on her helping us,” Kelly said.
“Without her, we’re screwed.”
“You don’t want to owe her.”
“I have the payment.”
“You haven’t used the tokens to get her to come out here, right?”
“I’m hoping she’ll want a different payment.”
“What are the tokens?” Esther asked.
I dug them out of my pocket and showed them to her. They were ancient, silver coins.
Esther marveled at them. “They must be worth a fortune.”
I shook my head. “Not here.”
“At the risk of being pushy, you should call her,” Kelly said.
I nodded, put the tokens back in my pocket, and took out my cell phone. I placed the call, and Sharon answered on the second ring.
“I was about to call you,” she said without a greeting.
“Were your ears burning?”
“I’d like to meet this Blake Ravenwood. It isn’t every day one gets to meet a mythological figure.”
“Ha! Speak for yourself. Shall we discuss payment?”
“Where are you?”
I told her.
“Be there in a minute.”
She was actually there in five seconds. I had time to flip my phone closed and stick it in my pocket before she entered the restaurant.
“How did she get here so fast?” Esther asked.
“She opened a rift,” I said, but Esther didn’t hear me because Sharon held her gaze.
“Hello, Esther Carmichael,” Sharon said as she approached the table. “You missed our appointment back in 1929.”
Esther’s eyes opened wide, and she staggered through the table. “Y-you’re Death?”
Sharon laughed. “Not exactly. I’ve been known to ferry souls to the afterlife. My name is Charon,” she said, pronouncing it with the hard K sound. “But these days I go by Sharon.”
Kelly and Sharon had met before. That had been a fun night with Kelly saying she thought Charon was a man. I expected them to come to blows, but Sharon had been amused and said sometimes she’s a man and sometimes she isn’t.
“You’re not worried about the other customers seeing and hearing you?” Esther asked, still standing in the center of the table.
“Not really.”
Of course, mundanes would simply see a sharply dressed woman joining friends for breakfast. If they tried to listen, they wouldn’t be able to understand the words. They’d sound like a foreign language unless she chose to include them in the conversation or they were within an hour of death.
“Thanks for coming,” I said.
Sharon sat down and nodded to Kelly.
“I have to know,” Kelly said. “Why do you want to be a librarian?”
“Librarians have more fun,” Sharon said. “Beyond that, I love having instant access to knowledge all around me.”
“About the payment,” I said. “I need to know what your help is going to cost me.”
“Not the tokens,” she said. “You may need them but hopefully not today. As for payment, I might not charge you.”
“That’s not good enough,” Kelly said. “Like the song says, don’t pay the ferryman.”
Sharon spread her hands. “As I don’t know what may be required of me, I can’t set a price just yet. I’ve not seen the spirit of a sorcerer in centuries. Sorcerers and wizards usually die horrible deaths that destroy their souls. Magic has a heavy price, after all.”
“So what happens if we get there and your price doesn’t work for us?”
“Then don’t pay. You can handle things for yourselves, and I’ll go back to my stacks.”
“Good enough for me,” I said, knowing Sharon would cut me some slack due to our history. “Esther, can you check on Ravenwood?”
“Sure.”
“I’d like to go with you,” Sharon said.
“Fuck that,” Esther said and popped away.
Sharon laughed. “Spunky. I like her.”
“She really had an appointment with you back in 1929?”
Sharon shrugged. “I don’t know. I only said that to get a reaction.”
“That’s not very nice,” Kelly said.
“This coming from you?”
Esther popped back and kept her distance from Sharon. “Ravenwood is still at DGI. He’s holding a meeting. Mike Endar is there, and Ravenwood told him to check the room. When Endar pulled out his glasses, I knew it was time to scram. I can hide behind one person, but if two can see me . . .”
“Good work, Esther.” I stood. “Would you three lovely ladies care to crash a party with me?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
When we reached my car, Kelly and Sharon both tried to get into the front seat.
“Hop in back,” Kelly said.
“Like hell,” Sharon said. “You get in back.”
“Ladies,” I said. “Is there a problem?”
“No,” Kelly said. “This silly tart thinks she’s the alpha bitch, but she’s going to get into the backseat like a good little puppy.”
“That little space hardly qualifies as a backseat. Ever heard the term respect your elders?”
“You’re everyone’s elder, but you look spry enough to get in the back to me.”
“Do you have any idea what I could do to you?” Sharon asked.
“Take your best shot.”
I shook my head. “Kelly?”
She stared daggers at me from across the roof of the car. “Don’t even think about giving her the front seat.”
I tossed her the keys. “I have a better solution. I’ll ride in back. You drive.”
Kelly snatched the keys out of the air and gave Sharon a look of superiority that practically shouted, Ha! I get to drive and you don’t. “Maybe we can draw down next time,” Kelly said with a smug grin.
“I look forward to it.”
I climbed into the backseat with Esther. It was incredibly cramped, but when I bought the car, I had no intention of ever riding back there. I stretched my legs across the seats, which meant they passed through Esther. She maneuvered herself to be seated facing me, with her legs intermingling with mine. She took the opportunity to play a bit of ghostly footsie and winked at me.
“I’ve been wanting to get you into a struggle buggy since I first met you.”
“Behave,” I said.
“Do I have to?”
“You’re such a tease. Would you be this bold if I could actually touch you?”
She gave me a serious look. “Bolder.”
Esther had always been something of a flirt, but she’d been stepping it up since Naomi showed up. I knew Esther liked me, but I didn’t think she liked me. Kelly had once told me that Esther had a crush on me. Of course, Kelly took it a step further to knock me down a peg by adding that I was the only guy Esther had been able to talk to in eighty years. Aren’t friends wonderful?
Kelly raced through traffic like Mario Andretti. I tried not to watch because her driving always scared the hell out of me.
“Can’t you go any faster?” Sharon asked.
“Sure,” Kelly said. “Fasten your seat belt.”
“I don’t need one.”
“She was talking to me,” I said.
I suspect that Kelly grinned, but I couldn’t be sure since I couldn’t see her in the mirror. She tromped on the accelerator and roared down the highway. The speedometer pegged at 125, but I knew we were going faster. Traffic cops weren’t high on our list of worries at the moment.
We made it to DGI in one piece and didn’t leave too much carnage in our wake.
Kelly parked near the Starbucks where we could see the DGI building without being visible on their security cameras. We remained in the car while we worked out a plan.
“We need to get Ravenwood to use vast amounts of magic,” Sharon said. “I can think of one thing that will get his attention.”
“You going to give him a lap dance?” Kelly asked.
“Okay,” Sharon said, “I can think of two things, but a lap dance won’t get him to use any magic. It would certainly distract him, though. Unless he’s gay.”
“You’d turn Don Juan gay.”
“I swing both ways, darling. Come to my place, and I’ll teach you a few things.”
Kelly looked her up and down. “I’ll admit I’ve always been a little curious, but—”
“We’re here to stop Ravenwood,” I said, slapping the back of the center console, “not get you two laid.”
Sharon shrugged. “Nobody’s ever slept with me and lived anyway.”
“Can we focus on the problem at hand? You said you had an idea.”
“You’re going to think I’m insane.”
“Already there, Sharon. Talk.”
“Show me the Dragon Gate,” she said.
Fifteen minutes later, we stood in the catacombs, staring at the Dragon Gate. The wards struggled to keep the flames at bay. The corridors were a lot brighter due to Sharon’s casting a simple lighting spell.
“So Naomi’s initial plan is the winner?” I asked. “We get Ravenwood down here and toss him into the gate?”
“How would you lure him down here?” Kelly asked.
“I could tell him we’re having a pizza party in his honor.”
“I don’t think they had pizza in his day.”
As we talked, Sharon approached the gate. The flames moved away from her. I held up a finger to Kelly and stepped toward the gate. The flames tried to reach me as I moved closer, but Sharon moved closer to me, and the flames ran away from her. She reached up, took down a ward and tossed it through the gate into the fire.
“What are you doing?” Kelly asked.
“Opening the gate.”
“Isn’t that a bad thing?” I asked.
“I’ve got it under control for now, but yes, it will be a very bad thing in about twenty minutes.”
“But you can stop it, right?” Esther asked. She kept her distance from the gate.
“I don’t know but I think Ravenwood can.”
“You don’t know?”
“That’s right,” she said and tossed another ward into the gate. “I’m not a wizard. I can do a few tricks but nothing major that doesn’t apply to my former office.”
“So you can open this, but you can’t close it. Are you sure this is the way to go?”
“No,” she said. “You have something better?”
“What is this thing exactly?”
“There are a number of gates scattered around the world. According to legend, they lead to an alternate dimension, and it’s where the dragons went when they left your world.”
“Right. What is it really?”
She smiled at me. “Doorways to other worlds.”
“Who built them?”
“Warp slaves, probably.”
“What?”
She took another ward and tossed it into the fire. “I’m not here to give you a dimensional history lesson. I’m going to need all of my concentration to control this until Ravenwood gets here. Understand that when he arrives, I won’t be able to help you with him. I’ll have to make sure nothing comes out of here.”
“Things can come out of there?”
She nodded and tossed another ward into the gate. “That’s why I need to monitor it. The odds of a dimensional army being ready to jump through are rather slim, but there are some creatures that are incredibly patient and will wait by a gate for millennia if necessary.”
“They need to get a life,” I said. “Need some help with the wards?”
“No,” Sharon said and pushed me back. “The fire is drawn to you, Jonathan. It’s not magic, so you will get burned. I’m making good progress here. A few more and I suspect we’ll be triggering alarms upstairs.”
“I think we already triggered it,” Kelly said.
Four wizards clad in business suits approached. One of them took the lead. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Opening the gate, of course,” Sharon said.
“Desist immediately!” His hands started to glow.
“Five-second rule,” I said.
Kelly knew what I meant, and we rushed forward. Kelly decked two wizards while I smacked down the other two before they could pull up their magic enough to use against us. I hit the wizard who had already started summoning his magic, and when he struck the ground, bursts of light shot from his hands and moved dust particles around in little puffs.
Kelly pulled a few zip-ties out of her pocket. I looked a question at her.
“They come in handy more often than you’d expect,” she said as she bound the wizards.
“You know, maybe we should just call Ravenwood down here. With the alarms going off, he might keep sending flunkies.”
“Call him how?” Kelly asked. “There’s no way you can get a cell signal down here.”
“I could pop up and let him see me,” Esther said.
I nodded down the hallway. “That’s all right, Esther. There’s a lab over there. They probably have an intercom or a phone.”
“You just want to rile him up,” Esther said.
I grinned. “I like to play to my strengths.”
I moved down the hall to the room with the smashed crystals. Kelly and Esther followed. Sure enough, there was an intercom on one of the counters. I scanned the buttons. They were numbered but didn’t have names.
“All right, Esther, I’ll take you up on your offer. Pop up and see where Ravenwood is hiding out.”
“Okay,” she said and popped away. She reappeared a few seconds later.
“What’s the good word?” I asked.
“He’s in an office, but it’s a big one. Since he’s standing by the window, I can’t make it to the hallway to see which room he’s in. Sorry.”
“That’s all right. We’ll do this the old-fashioned way.”
I punched a button at random.
“Hello?” I said.
Nothing.
I tried three more buttons before I got a response.
“Who is this?” a woman’s voice said.
“This is the psychic hotline,” I said. “I understand you’re having relationship troubles.”
