by Kate Danley
I kept my eyes focused forward. This sort of wishful thinking only caused heartache. In five months, my powers would be restored, and when they were, well... watch out world. It would be tea and crumpets for everyone! With an extra side of marmalade!
I walked across the drawbridge to the court fortress. It was a large, squat building made of grey stone and spite. Up in the turrets, the silver tips of arrows followed my every move, just waiting for me to sprout claws and start ripping into folks. What? And ruin this manicure? But when going up against the sorts of creatures one finds on the Other Side, the "law" has to out nasty the nasties.
I pushed open the heavy, ironbound door. A small bell tinkled overhead. Behind the front counter, the office was a wreck. It was filled with paperwork stacked from floor to ceiling. Oak filing cabinets were jammed shut and a desk was buried beneath multicolored forms in triplicate. But when I saw who was working, it all made sense. An ogre. Of course. Just my luck. Of all the creatures found on the Other Side, I had an ogre to deal with.
His back was to me as he sorted through a folder. He was shaped like a triangle. No neck, no waist, just a mass of flesh that coalesced in a little pom-pom of hair at the top of his pointy head. He was wearing a cream-colored shirt. It might have been white at some point. The pits were ringed with yellow and somehow he managed to get unidentifiable food stains between his shoulder blades. His ill-fitting brown polyester pants were held up with uneven, frayed suspenders. The elastic was on the verge of failing from the strain.
He was making snorting, snuffling noises, mumbling things under his breath that sounded suspiciously like Should grind their bones for this report...
"Excuse me?" I called, primly.
He swung his flabby body around and stared at me with his great big eye.
I squinted at his nametag. "Hello, Mr... Frank. I am here to report an abduction. Abductions. With an 's'."
He picked up a clipboard and hauled his heavy frame over. He licked the tip of his pencil.
"Name?"
"Miss Elle Spell."
He gave me a look like he didn't believe me. I gave him a look back to tell him to get to writing and not worry about my name.
"And you said there were multiple abductions?" he growled.
"Twenty. Approximately."
His big ogre eye narrowed with a bit more interest. "Approximately?"
"Someone put the whammy on me and we're just now putting the pieces together."
"Just like that? Just discovered it?" He put down his pencil like he was done with me and the cockamamie stories I was peddling.
"Yes," I explained. "These young women have been coming to my hotel for almost a month now."
"A month? And you didn't notice?" He let out a snort of disbelief.
"As I said, I have been under a charm. We didn't discover it until my dwarf reconciled the ledger and—" I was about to tell him about the windows, but he cut me off.
"Oh," said Frank, picking up his teeny pencil in his boulder-like hand. "A dwarf was involved."
Isn't that just rich? I'm just some hysterical witch out to ruin his day, but the moment a dwarf comes up, I suddenly had credibility.
"So, how did you discover the girls?" Frank huffed, turning back to filling out the form. The stench of his breath wafted across the counter.
Eyes watering, I coughed, "I saw them."
"And where exactly did you see the girls?"
"They're caught in my stained glass windows."
He sighed and put his pencil down again. "You'd be surprised how many complaints we get about these sorts of things."
I, personally, was shocked to find out this was some sort of an epidemic. "Shouldn't there have been a public notice if some magic maker is going around trapping girls in stained glass?"
The ogre shrugged. "We sort it out eventually."
"Well, I want you to go get them out of my stained glass. It's not natural."
He folded his arms and leaned against the counter. "You're a witch, right?"
I pulled my satin jacket a little tighter around my torso primly. "Yes."
"Well, then, why don't you fix it? Save us all a lot of trouble."
"I'm not..." I lowered my voice to make sure no one would overhear. "I'm not a 'practicing' witch."
"Well, that sure is dumb."
"How dare you, sir."
"Living here on the Other Side without a lick of magic to protect yourself? You should go hop over to Earth before you get eaten."
"It is a personal choice," I protested, not wanting to get into the fact it was not a personal choice at all.
"It is an idiotic choice."
"Are you going to help me and these young women or not?"
He waved me away. "Sure, sure... I'll send someone over. You said they were caught in the glass?"
"Yes."
"Like, a glass dimension or something?"
"I have no idea. I just know at one point they were three-dimensional and now they're two-dimensional and stuck in my window."
He took the papers off the clipboard and stabbed them through a receipt spike. "We'll get right on it."
"Thank you."
He didn't even respond, just lumbered to his desk and picked up a magazine to look at whatever ogres look at when it is a slow day at work and they don't want to deal with the filing. I managed to get an eyeful as I walked toward the door and all I can say is bonemeal bread recipes are not appropriate in a workplace setting.
Chapter Thirteen
A polite knock rang down the foyer and I wondered who it could be. Repeat customers feel right at home walking into the No Spell, but we're living on the Other Side, and if you step across a threshold without letting your host ascertain if you are a good guest or a bad guest, you're liable to get a house dumped on your head.
I strode over to the door, the crinolines under my polka dot skirt swishing, and opened the door. Standing before me was the saddest, sorry sight I ever did see. He was a scrawny man in his early twenties. He wore a black leather jacket and a ratty concert t-shirt from a band called the Vetala Otherground. He was built like a scarecrow and his scraggly blond hair wasn't helping. His eyes and nose were far too big for his gaunt face, and his tight, faded jeans showed off his long, chicken legs. He made me want to feed him dinner with an extra slice of pie to get some meat on those bones.
But no matter what maternal sympathy I was feeling for him, it did not explain why he was on my doorstep.
Was this our John Doe? Would I remember him an hour from now?
"Can I help you?" I asked cautiously. After discovering our little issue with the glass girls, Ajax and I had made an executive decision to cancel all reservations, to heck with gold flow. "I'm afraid we're not letting rooms at the moment on account of... pest control problems."
"Oh! No! Sorry!" He took his hands out of his pockets and reached out in greeting. "I'm William MacKay. World Walker. Frank the Ogre sent me."
Frankly, I was shocked.
"Oh, Mr. MacKay. Forgive me. I didn't know you were coming!" I said. "And so soon!"
He waved away my apology. "For an ogre, Frank moves fast. Helps to keep the annoying calls from dissatisfied citizens from ringing his phone off the hook." He gazed at the pressed tin ceiling of the foyer. "Can I come in?"
I felt a right ninny for keeping him standing on the porch, especially with the sorts of scum walking down the street. "If you can." It was a poor man's excuse for a security system, but seeing if someone could cross a threshold without an invitation was an easy way to keep out the riffraff.
He stuck out his foot and took an exaggerated step inside. I smiled and then softly closed the door behind him, pleased he had passed the first test.
"Now that we've got that out of the way..." he commented good-naturedly. He ran his fingers through his hair, giving the sides a good feathering.
"One can never be too careful."
"Who's that?" Ajax snapped, stomping down the stairs. "We're closed! Go home!"
<
br /> I motioned to my partner and apologized to William. "This is my partner, Ajax. He gets a little cranky when he's bored."
"I do not!"
"He's already polished the silver three times today."
"It needed polishing before it started pitting!"
"Thank you, Ajax!"
"And I'm going out to weed the garden!" He stormed into the office and then came storming out again in his galoshes carrying a hoe. "And don't go thinking I'm doing this because I'm in a foul mood. I'm doing it because I want to do it! And that is on me. And not you. Don't go reading into things that aren't there."
He stormed out the front door and slammed it behind him.
William gave a low whistle. "A real charmer."
"I suppose we balance each other out," I replied. I turned my attention back to William. "So..."
"Heard you had some young women trapped in an interdimensional prison of glass or something...?" He seemed like he really wanted me to tell him Frank had it all wrong.
Sadly, I couldn't do that for him. "Follow me."
I continued to chat as we walked toward the ballroom, informing him of all the features of the house – the history of when it was built, the portraits of all my dead ancestors, the plants to cuddle and the plants to avoid. I had to pull back William's finger before my flytrap gave him a nasty bite. He, evidently, was someone who enjoyed testing the facts being presented to him about boundaries.
Finally, we arrived in the ballroom as I explained, "And as if finding out guests you didn't know you had were trapped in glass, Ajax booked a haunted house for some VIGs—"
"VIGs?"
"Very important ghosts. I can't possibly keep the No Spell running under these circumstances..."
I pulled back the curtains. The girls were still there. Albeit, they had moved, but they were there. Ajax must have been trying out the glasses again. I really needed to see if I could get a second pair from that healer.
If only I could remember where she lived.
"Are they trying to spell something out for us?" William asked, squinting.
I studied it and then felt awful. "They are forming 'help' with their bodies. Oh, don't worry girls, we'll get you out of there." I reached up and pressed my hand against the glass in comfort. I have no idea if they could hear me or not, but I hoped.
William's face became thoughtful as he examined the window. It felt so good to have someone at least appear to take this seriously. He walked from one side to the other, pressing himself against the wall to get his eyes on the same plane as the pane. He crouched down, then decided that wasn't the way to diagnose this problem and grabbed a chair. He climbed up. I bit back my warning to be careful. I didn't have any magic to cushion his fall. But he just stood there with his arms folded, thinking serious thoughts. Finally, he jumped off. "Yep. You have girls in your glass."
William reached out and I could feel the air tingling around him as he felt the dimensional rift. Suddenly, he jerked back with a little yelp. "Ow!"
"What happened?" I asked with concern.
He stuck his fingertips in his mouth and then waved his hands like he had been burned. "There's a spell around it. A powerful one. Want to lift it for me?"
"Oh... I didn't put it there," I stammered, hoping that would be that.
"I thought you were a witch," he replied.
I shrugged apologetically. "Non-practicing."
"No chance you might want to start practicing?"
"It's... complicated," I stated.
He didn't give so much as a disappointed look, which made me like him even more. Instead, he just accepted it and moved on. "Well, this is a nasty piece of work. They created a pocket between the dimensions. Not many World Walkers can do that, so I'm thinking our perpetrator was a warlock. There's some nasty dark magic to get it to fold like that." William shook his head. While I could tell he didn't approve, I could also see that he was grudgingly impressed with what this person managed to do. "Any odd types hanging around?"
"A few." I shivered and rubbed my arms, as if somehow I could chase away the chill in my bones. "We know there was a man who signed himself in as 'John Doe.'"
"I could examine the signature and see if there are any remnants?" he offered.
"There's a spell on it. You'll forget what you just saw."
"Well, that's not very nice," he replied, his tone dripping with sardonic understatement. "So, we have a guy who knows what he's doing."
"And who targeted me," I replied. I rested my hands on my polka dot skirt expectantly. "I can see the wheels in your mind spinning."
"How long have you owned the No Spell Hotel?" he asked.
"It's been passed down through my matriarchal line for generations. Although, there's someone who is interested in buying."
"Right," he said. He turned and squinted at the ceiling.
I walked to his side and gazed up, trying to see what he was seeing. "I turned him down."
He held my arm, and I realized he didn't want me to look at the window for some reason. "Any chance he could be carrying a grudge?" he asked, his voice casual.
I tried to follow his lead, terrified of what he did not want me to see. "It was a nice man whose name I don't even remember, and I have not seen him since. He left me some paperwork, which is around here somewhere, and told me if I changed my mind to reach out to him, but I couldn't do that. Not with all those girls stuck in the glass."
"Good call. You'd have a wicked mess if someone busted up the glass before we got them out."
"What would happen?"
He turned back to the window and I followed. My throat became dry and I tried to swallow. The girls had rearranged themselves while we had faced the other way. Their bodies now spelled Please help! Now!
William shook his head. "All that magic released at one time? I don't exactly know, but I can take a wild guess that it won't be good."
Chapter Fourteen
"I'm headed out," I shouted to Ajax as I grabbed my purse from behind the front counter.
He was just coming in from the garden, carrying his hoe and gardening boots. He seemed surprised.
"William, our assigned World Walker, is still in the ballroom, attempting to free our girls," I continued, scampering down the foyer. "See to him, would you? He's working awfully hard."
Ajax put down all of his tools with a relieved sigh, so grateful to have direction and duties. "Gladly. And where are you off to?"
"My coven," I announced, pausing at the door for dramatic effect. "Miss Trudy told me I was pulling away from the sisterhood, so perhaps it is high time I get them all in the loop."
Ajax nodded in agreement. "Finally! Go fight for your powers! They were never theirs to take in the first place! To sisterhood or death!" He lifted his little fist to the sky in support as I stormed out, his battle cry ringing in my ears.
I headed down the street and caught the first horse-drawn hearse I could find, and gave the driver the directions to my coven's headquarters. After the young women's urgent message, I didn't feel like I had time to waste on hoofing it. I paid the imp as I stepped off the running board and stood before the building.
It used to be a second home, a place I came as a girl when my mother had official business. The gate's scrollwork with its iron bats and moons was as familiar as the paintings hanging in my hotel. The garden was brimming with herbs and deadly plants. A snapdragon took a nip at my ankles, bless. I had missed this place. The building itself was Victorian in style, filled with gables and pointed turrets and widow's walks. The tiles were laid out in glyphs, protection imbued everywhere you looked.
I walked up the steps to the wrap-around porch. The double doors opened for me before I even reached for the handle. Oh, to be able to use magic to open a door once again...
"Right this way, Sister Spell," came a male voice from inside.
"Is Miss Trudy here?" I called as I entered.
The man remained hidden. Perhaps he was a spirit or a ghost or something.
"She is waiting for you in her office. She knew you would be coming."
How strange, when I didn't even know that I would be here until just a few minutes ago.
I stepped into the parlor. The floor was covered in thick, paisley carpet that matched the wallpaper. Ferns and velvet-covered chairs littered the room. The ceiling was painted with the night sky.
I wished my ankle would stop itching. The weather outside was delightful and there was no excuse for it to flare up.
I reached down to give it a scratch when the doors shut behind me. I took that as my cue not to dally. I headed straight for Miss Trudy's office. The doors opened automatically for me there, too.
I was taken aback as I entered. Miss Trudy was sitting behind her desk but, fingers steepled, she watched me like a lion looks at a plate of steak tartare.
"I'm glad you finally came to talk," she said. Her voice was slow and her movements were like a snake. "I've been waiting for this moment for a long time."
I sat down and tried to remain composed. I told myself my job was just to get her to hear me out. It didn't matter that she was acting a little terrifying. After all, I didn't know her well. Perhaps this was the real her. I steeled my courage. "There is a situation. At my hotel."
"Oh, I know..." she said. The corners of her mouth quirked up into a sly smile.
My bones screamed at me that something was wrong. "You knew? Why didn't you come to do something?"
"I know that you are living in a house that we want. We have always wanted."
And then her eyes turned red.
I leaped out of my seat, knocking it over. Her face twisted and contorted. She made an inhumane gagging sound, like she was fighting whatever was going on, but was losing.
"What is happening?" I gasped. "Miss Trudy, please!"
She was deaf to my pleas. The possession became complete. The struggle ended. Whatever had taken control was now in power. And they had a very clear message specifically for me.
"Sell your hotel or DIE!" she screamed and then flew over her desk, pointy fingernails aimed at my throat.
