As quickly as the vacuum of space sucked us through, we were on the other side, except something wasn't right. And not in a look we landed on a bed of hundred-dollar bills way.
Surprise, surprise.
Chapter Seven
The fog cleared and Cody and I were back, full-sized, but still wearing the tacky red snowsuits. Two out of three. I'd take it. Addy, Noelle, Camille, and Rae were staring back and forth between Cody and a little brown dog with a big heart-shaped patch of white hair over his left eye, eyes wide.
I frowned. Where did the dog come from? Some scruffy old guy—like forty-five or something—who I didn't recognize came up from behind me, scaring the bejezus out of me. He knelt and called to the mutt, who came running and tried to jump on him, but went right through him instead.
"I'm so sorry," he said to me when the dog sat down and cocked his head at us. "I think I might have thrown a wrench in the works."
My family moved in to hug Cody, but Addy was the first one to ask about me, probably because she couldn't actually hug him.
"It's all well and good you're back but where in the Sam Hill is Shelby? And where did the mutt come from?" She looked at him suspiciously.
"Oh dear sweet baby Jesus," Raeann, our cousin and Noelle’s best friend, gasped. "She done went and turned herself into a dog!"
Noelle and Addy did a double take at the pup and Addy swooped in to get a closer look. To his credit the little dog held his ground, even though he could obviously see her.
Aurora, a large woman who enjoyed wearing turtlenecks year-round—don't ask me why because they did nothing for her figure—pushed forward, nearly knocking Noe and Rae down. "Don't be ridiculous. Give me the beast."
The little dog hunkered down and growled at her.
"Don't try me, mutt, or I'll turn you into a cat." The dog seemed to understand, because he stopped growling. He didn't exactly look pleased, though.
Green light pooled at Aurora's fingertips and she wiggled them over the dog. "Reveal!" she commanded. Everybody stayed still and watched for a few seconds, until the pup poked his nose out and licked her hand.
Noelle shook her head. "Nope, definitely not Shelby. “She'd have bit her."
I stepped forward, irritated. "All right. HAHA. I get it. I was stupid. Again. But don't ignore me. Noelle, you know that makes me crazy." I was really starting to get ticked because that's what she used to do when we were kids and I was being annoying. Or she was being mean. Whichever.
The look of concern on her face was real, though.
"Noelle, can you sense her?" Addy demanded.
I started to get scared when my sister froze and schooled her face into the expression that I'd come to know all too well over the last few months. She was reaching out to me with her mind. She wouldn't be doing that for real just to mess with me. They really couldn't see me!
Usually, as soon as she started psychically knocking, I felt her familiar presence. Not this time.
I looked back at the man who, apparently, was only visible to me, and growled. "I'll ask you one time: What did you do? Why can't they see me? Why can't she talk to me? And why is your dog visible but we aren't? Are you some kind of crazy, evil spirit or something?" Hysterical laughter bubbled into my throat and I threw up my hands. "Like you'd admit to being an insane, evil spirit. God, Shelby," I said to myself. "Get a grip."
"I can explain—," he started.
I held my hand up, silencing him, and turned my attention back to Noelle. That little worry crease between her eyes was on full display. Lately it was there almost constantly because she sweated everything. Seriously. Like, she couldn't let anything go. It was irritating, because before Addy'd died, she'd been a different person.
She'd been carefree. She’d driven too fast. She laughed all the time. She ditched class sometimes—I know because I caught her a couple of times and blackmailed her for rides to the movies.
Now she was just ... a fun sponge. She had no concept of spontaneity or risk-taking. She'd gotten better at it since she started dating Hunter, the local sheriff, but she was still pretty buttoned up.
All eyes were back on Cody, but he was looking wildly around, calling my name. He held his hands out toward my family helplessly. "She was just here! She was holding my hand."
Rae's face lit up and she stepped back over to my window seat. "She's probably still in the snow globe. You know her magic is spotty at best sometimes. And that was a doozy of a spell she just tried to pull off."
Camille and Noe joined her while Addy hovered over the top for a bird's eye view. They picked the globe up and turned it gently so that only a little bit of the snow poofed up.
When they realized I wasn't in there, Noe, Rae, and Addy started talking at once, throwing around ideas and what-ifs. Something felt off as I watched them, but it took me a couple of second to put my finger on what. I couldn’t sense any of their emotions.
Camille looked shaken, but she yelled over them. "Ladies! Panicking won't help. We need to calm down, and look at this rationally. We need to start with how they ended up in the snow globe to begin with. Cody?"
Cody stepped forward and gave the Reader's Digest version. Yes, I know what that means. I’m young, not illiterate or culturally delayed.
When he was finished, Camille pinched the bridge of her nose. "Okay, so when you left the globe what did you feel? Were you holding her hand the whole time? When did you stop feeling her hand?"
He concentrated. "I think I felt her hand right up to when we landed here. I was still holding it when I opened my eyes and saw you guys. Then, nothing. Oh, I do remember hearing the dog bark right as we got pulled away out of the globe and there was this huge flash of white light.
Throughout the whole story, the four women listened without interrupting.
"So after I said hello to you guys, I turned to congratulate her on a spell well done, but she was just gone."
Camille's eyes were troubled. "This is really not good."
Noelle, who always seemed to have a handle on pretty much everything, asked, "Why? What are you thinking? Do you know what happened? Do you know where she's at?"
"I'm not sure, but I think so, yes."
When she paused, Rae made the rolling, get-on-with-it gesture. "Spit it out. We ain't got all day to find her."
Camille cringed. "Actually, I don't know if you can find her. I think she's stuck between the two worlds."
Addy blew out a relieved sight. "Oh, the in-between. Well then, there's the answer. I'll just go looking for her. That's my world."
"No, it's not," Aurora said. "You're on an entirely separate plane from the one she's talking about. It's an earthly plane, or at least sort of. Imagine a page of a book. You open the book and there's page one. That's where we"—she motioned to all the living people in the room—"exist. You turn the page and there's page two. That's where you exist. But there's that tiny little sliver of paper between them. That is where I think Shelby is."
"Okay," Noelle asked. "So how do we get her back?"
Addy spoke up this time. "I've heard of this before but thought it was just a fairy tale to keep young kids entertained and to teach a small life lesson. I had no idea it was a real thing."
"Oh, it's real, all right. Rare, but real. It was a topic in one of my Magical Errors classes at the academy. The problem is that, according to all the documentation, you're not supposed to be able to come back from it. It's a void."
"Well," Noelle said. "That's kind of good news, then. If there's one thing Shelby's good at, it's doing things she's not supposed to. I just have to keep faith in that until she figures out a way to communicate with us."
I moved up to her to hug her and my arms just went right through her like Addy's do ours. I turned to the guy and sighed. Like it or not, we were in it together, so I needed all the information I could get in order to come up with a plan.
Cody and the girls shuffled out of my room with the little dog lagging behind, looking at us. "C'mon boy. I don't know
who you are, but you're staying with us for a while," Rae said, then flipped the light off behind her when he followed, still glancing over his shoulder. Noelle flipped the light back on and looked around my room as if she was searching for something—me.
"Leave it on please, just in case." With a final glance around, she pulled the door shut behind her.
Chapter Eight
As soon as the door closed, I spun on the man.
"Fan-flippin-tastic! What did you do? Whatever it was, you messed everything up. You heard her. Nobody's ever gotten out of this before. Tell me everything. How did you get in the snow globe to begin with? How did you know that Cody and I were going to port when we did? Why didn't you approach us when we first got there?"
He looked down at his toes as I fired off the questions, and the shadows of his face stirred my memory. I pointed my finger at him. "Wait just a doggone minute. You're the dude from the bench beside the pond."
He took a deep breath and released it, then motioned toward my window seat. He took a chair next to it. "Sit down if you want the entire story. It's gonna take a minute."
"Well, it appears as if time is the one thing we have more than enough of." I was probably a little more sarcastic than I should have been considering I was stuck in some in-between plane with a guy who might be a serial killer. But really, could I even die, anyway?
"Let's start with the basics. What town are we in?"
"You're kidding, right?" He just looked at me, waiting for the answer. "We're in Keyhole Lake, Georgia."
He puffed out a little sigh of relief. "Good. I thought so, but I needed to make sure. It's not like it's something you ever talk about. My name's Gary, by the way."
I held up a hand. "Hold up, there Gary, the way you said that kinda implies you know me."
He looked at me like I was a little slow. "I've lived in your snow globe for right at a year, if I've managed to keep track of the days right, though sometimes time skips around in there some. It's not exactly like I was eavesdropping, but if you were standing close to the ball, I could hear you. And man, no offense, but you're kind of a whiner."
I looked at him suspiciously, ignoring the jibe. "You could just hear me?"
He nodded. "Yes. Just hear. I mean, I could see you when you were looking into the globe, and it was a pain in the backside when you shook it, but the rest of the time, you were just a voice.
"Anyway," he continued, "I bought the snow globe originally for my wife Melody on our wedding day almost a decade ago. She collected them, but that was her favorite. I found it at a junk shop." His lips quirked up into a sad smile. "I think it was just sentimental value. She was diagnosed with leukemia a couple of years ago and passed away right before Thanksgiving last year."
He paused and looked at the globe, lost in memory. "All I could do was look at that stupid snow globe and wish that I had her back again and that we were one of those couples on the ice, together and happy. Looking back, I was so lost in my own grief that I didn't even stop to think about how horrible it was for our daughter."
Movement outside my window caught my eye; Cody was walking around in the yard, and he looked totally lost. I noticed it was daylight out instead of dark and Gary’s comment about time skipping around in there penetrated my brain.
I needed to hurry this along because we’d already lost at least one night. I rolled my finger at him. "Okay, skip the gooey parts and cut to the place where you got sucked into the globe so I can fix this, hopefully before Cody leaves."
"You know, that's one of your biggest problems. You're selfish. It's always about you. I'm sitting here telling you that I've been locked in your snow globe for a year and that my wife died just before that, and all you care about is that your boyfriend is leaving."
I sighed. "I'm sorry. I just don't see the relevance. How is that going to help me get us out of here?"
He just shook his head. "You really do have a lot of growing up to do."
Before I could protest, he started speaking again. "One day I was looking in the globe, pining and holding Levi—that’s my dog—and the next, I was sitting on the bench in the snow globe. I've been there ever since. How did you end up in there? I heard part of your conversation with your aunt Addy, but what were you actually thinking when you were zapped in? And how did Cody end up in there with you?"
It was weird to me that he knew so much about my life that he called the people close to me by name. He must have known what I was thinking because he raised his brows. "Hey, it was no picnic for me either. Seriously, I knew teenage girls were flighty and egocentric, but you gotta be the queen. You have no idea how glad I've been a few times when you finally quit woe-is-meing and turned off the lights.
My brain tends to focus on random details when it's working on something in the background, like it was doing now. "So how did you eat and shower and ... you know ... all of that while you were in there?"
He raised a brow. "Of all of the things that have to be rattlin' around in your head, that was the question you chose to ask first?" He scratched his nose. "The answer is that I didn't. It was like time was suspended, sort of. I didn't get hungry. I didn't sweat. I didn't even grow a beard."
I started to think how weird that was, but then remembered we were talking about being locked in a snow globe. Weird was subjective.
Let's go see what's going on with my family. Maybe they've thought of something."
I headed to the door and reached for the knob, but my hand passed right through it.
"Holy crap,” he said. “For a kid who's so book-smart, you ain't got much common sense sometimes. We don't have a form on this plane." He pushed past me and walked right through the door.
I scowled. "I'd have figured it out."
"Sure you would have." He stopped to let me pass, then followed me to the kitchen. Noelle and Rae were sitting at the table with their heads in their hands and Addy was floating above them.
"Well," he said. “It doesn't look like any mountains are getting moved in the next half hour. I'm going to go see my daughter."
"And how exactly do you reckon you're gonna do that? We can't exactly drive, you know."
"Yeah, I do know. I also know we're not on the physical plane, so those laws probably don't apply to us." He was still smirking as he faded out of site.
Chapter Nine
A short while later, Addy's friend Belle showed up and the four of them spent two hours tossing suggestions back and forth. The problem was obvious. I wasn't alive or dead. I was just ... I don't know what I was, but I wasn't on a plane where either side could reach me.
Suddenly, Noelle dropped her head in her hands and began to sob. I rushed over to her, but wasn't able to do anything other than stand there helplessly.
"This is all my fault! I should have taken more time and found a way to make her understand how dangerous magic can be. She just kept pushing the boundaries and—"
Rae frowned and put her hand on Noelle's shoulder and I was glad. She'd make her feel better. Tell her it wasn't her fault she had to work and that I was almost a grown woman who could fend for myself.
"You did everything you could, sugar. Don't you dare beat yourself up. You've worked two jobs to manage this place and take care of her. We all tried to get her to understand magic is no joke, but she's so hell-bent on proving how big and bad she is that it didn't matter what any of us said to her. In her mind, she knew more than any of us did."
Hey! That wasn't true all! I looked to Addy.
She hovered over Noelle, frowning. "Raeann's right, honey." Wait, what? "Shelby's a good girl. She's just headstrong and hasn't matured enough yet to appreciate what others do for her, or understand that we have her best interests at heart. I blame myself for spoiling her."
Camille snorted as she pulled open the fridge to refill her tea glass. "You two need some perspective. Shelby makes her own choices. She's no dummy. She knows exactly how dangerous magic is," she said as she filled her glass. "She just thinks the rules don't apply to
her. I don't know how she got them sucked into the globe to begin with, but she had the four most powerful witches in Keyhole here to find a way to safely get them both out, but as usual, she was damned and determined to prove she knew more than we did."
Rae nodded. "I love her, but Camille's right. We were right there, but before we had a chance to find the best way to do it, she had to show off. It doesn't make her a bad kid, just an immature one that, so far, has been lucky enough that her pranks haven't hurt anybody."
I felt like somebody'd hit me in the forehead with an axe handle, but at the same time, I hung my head. If I was honest with myself, I knew they were right. That stung.
I started to feel sorry for myself, but Gary's words about my woe-is-meing drifted unbidden through my head. I'd been such a bratty jerk. And now it might be too late to make a change.
Gary popped back in right then. "Hey princess. You look like somebody just took your favorite teddy bear."
I relayed what they'd just said about me.
He hmphed. "It's the absolute truth. You're way too big for your britches. They molly-coddled you and didn't let you learn your own lessons. That's how people learn humility, consideration for others, and consequences. Oh, and how to respect your elders." He waited a few seconds then added, "And my trip to see my daughter was a flop, thanks for asking. Apparently they've moved."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said automatically, not really paying attention to what he was saying. Tears welled up in my eyes. Was he right? Were they all right? I thought back over the last year or so since my magical problems had started. I didn't get full use of them until I was sixteen, and everybody was so far ahead of me. Em already knew how to use hers, though she was still finding new talents.
When my powers were unbound, I was already taking classes with Camille because sometimes they would break through the binding, and things would go sideways. Glasses would break, I'd swing my hand and the dishes would fly from the table, or some other disaster would happen. Then when I got full control, they still made me take lessons even though things came easy for me. But was I really that bad? I thought to the incident last night with Em.
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