by Carmen Caine
Panic began to form in me, deep in my stomach, but before it could really catch hold, a sudden gust of wind blew around me. The wet rhododendron leaves smacked me in the face and I shivered, glancing over my shoulder.
For the briefest of moments, I saw him. The man in the black top hat. He was standing behind me, close. And then he was gone, melting back into the shadows of the fence.
All other thoughts fled as I jumped back and whirled around with no other intent than to get home as fast as I could.
But Ajax didn’t let me leave.
With a sharp yipping bark, he announced our presence, and jamming his shoulder against my knee, I lost my balance and fell forward into the rhododendrons. Sharp sticks jabbed my hands, and my knees sank in the mud as wet rubbery leaves scratched my face.
“Thanks, Ajax,” I hissed at him in a shaky voice as I struggled to my feet.
Light flooded the backyard as Raven and Rafael both descended upon us.
“Sydney,” Rafael greeted me, extending a helping hand. I could see by the pulse in his neck that he wasn’t as calm as he appeared.
“I was just walking with Ajax when I tripped,” I said quickly, clearing my throat as I waved his offer of help aside.
But my footing was unsteady and losing my balance, I would have fallen right back into the shrubs if Rafael hadn’t caught me by the elbow and tipped me up straight.
“Thanks,” I muttered self-consciously.
I felt like an idiot. I should have known Ajax would have picked the worst possible time to rat me out. I shook my hands a little in the effort to clean them.
“Imbecile!” Raven exploded.
My eyebrows yanked up in surprise as I saw that I’d splattered a bit of mud on her immaculate red dress. I opened my mouth to apologize, but Rafael intercepted me.
“Such infantile displays of temper do not befit you, Raven,” he said calmly.
Raven’s mouth snapped shut and the look she sent him was a furious one.
“I’m sorry,” I quickly said anyway as her vicious eyes shifted to skewer me.
“What I have to share with Rafael is private,” Raven said, her voice thickening with anger. “You have no right to interfere.”
Feeling a tad guilty about eavesdropping, I took a step back, but Rafael’s strong fingers closed over my forearm. “I have no secrets from Sydney,” he told her.
“That’s really ok,” I said, wanting nothing more than to leave. I nodded at the back door. “I’ll just wait inside.”
Without waiting for a response, I dashed up the steps, across the back porch, and entered Rafael’s house.
I’d never been in that part of the house before. I stood in some kind of small den. A door to the right apparently led to the kitchen and straight ahead I could see into the living room. Or what had once been the living room, anyway. Now, it housed the Fae Command Center, filled with technology I was certain our government would drool over. Though, they’d probably never recognize it for what it was. It just looked like an art gallery filled with different-sized glowing, colored crystals that chimed at random intervals.
Not yet knowing exactly who I could trust amongst the Fae Protectors in the living room, I opted to wait for Rafael in the kitchen and pushed the door open.
I paused in the doorway.
It really wasn’t a kitchen. I guess someone had used one of those programmable atoms to create some kind of atrium, complete with a bubbling brook, tropical plants, and colonies of butterflies. It was so huge that I figured it had to be some kind of optical illusion, but an immensely relaxing one.
In the far corner, there was a modern bar made of glass with several tall, white-cushioned stools. And making my way there, I took a seat, heaved a loud sigh and closing my eyes, I dropped my head onto the bar’s cool surface. It chilled my cheek, and as the relaxing scent of roses and lilacs filled the air, I could feel the tension melting away from my neck and shoulders.
I don’t know how long I was there.
I was only gradually aware of a tapping sound. Drowsily, I lifted my lashes to see an inch-long red nail tapping next to my nose, and my eyes traveled up the hand and arm to look directly into Raven’s icy blue eyes locked onto mine.
She acted as if she could scarcely contain her disgust as her chilling gaze swept over me from head to toe. “If you truly have the power to destroy us all with that Blue Thread of yours, perhaps it is best you don’t exist,” she said softly, raising her trion to speculatively tap it against her chin.
A soft growl sounded from my side and I glanced down to see Ajax standing there on alert, his glossy black fur bristling about his shoulders. His dark almond-shaped eyes were riveted upon Raven and his lips were pulled back to reveal every single one of his gleaming white teeth, down to the last millimeter of gum. He looked downright terrifying, and I was only glad that he wasn’t looking at me like that.
Raven stiffened, and then apparently changing her mind about even talking to me, she turned to shift in a burst of mist, leaving in her wake a cloud of perfume.
I swallowed, unsettled. There wasn’t any sign of Rafael. I sat alone in the atrium on the barstool, rattled.
What kind of thing was that to say? Even if she did have a bit of a point. I mean, if I looked at it analytically, she had one. If I could cause so much harm, perhaps it would be better if I were out of the picture. I wondered how many others would agree, were they to know the truth.
Something nudged my knee, and I looked into Ajax’s brown eyes boring into mine. He wasn’t exactly sympathetic, but his eyes did seem a bit concerned. He pushed his black nose in the palm of my hand and then down to my wrist, in effect forcing me to pet him.
I guess there was nothing like a common enemy to forge bonds.
Patting him a little, I murmured, “Don’t worry, Ajax. I’m not giving up on myself.”
“Nor should you,” Rafael’s soft voice murmured.
I jerked to see him standing behind me. Both of his hands dropped to my shoulders to give them an encouraging squeeze.
“Pay no mind to Raven,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “When someone tries so hard to tear you down, it only means that they think you are above them.”
I blinked at that. I highly doubted that Raven thought I was above her in any form or fashion, but I liked his compliment so I didn’t verbally disagree.
Rafael stood there, looking down at me through his eyeliner rimmed-eyes and the expression in them made my heart skip a beat. It also made me suddenly shy. I still wasn’t used to this ‘romance’ thing all the way, I guess.
I think he sensed my feelings, because he moved to lean backwards against the bar.
“Is she going to help you find Jareth?” I asked then.
“I truly hope she will,” he replied, heaving a sigh.
“Why is it so hard to locate him?” I asked. I still didn’t really understand how their light shifting and mirror technology worked. Waving my hand, I prodded, “Can’t you just use a mirror or something?”
“Melody has blocked light from penetrating where she is,” he answered, shaking his head. “Even I can’t tell where either of them are. I only know that they are alive.” He looked at me then, and one of his brows lifted. “That hand mirror,” he said, abruptly switching subjects. “The one I gave you months ago. Where is it?”
I’d shoved his small metal hand mirror into my dresser and hadn’t really thought much about it since. “In my room.”
“That isn’t just any mirror,” he said softly as a beginning of a smile played over his lips. “It is the last piece of the mirror that Jareth and I trained together on. That’s why it summoned us both before. If … if you were to do what you did in the coffee shop when you summoned Melody … maybe, just maybe, we might reach him.”
He didn’t wait for me to respond. Slipping his arm around my waist, he immediately shifted us to my room.
A little confused, I ran to my drawer and sifted through my socks to pull out the small metal mirror
with the engraved frame. As I held it, Rafael leaned over my shoulder, placing his cheek next to mine to peer into it.
“Think of him,” he whispered into my ear. “Help me reach him.”
I caught my breath as his skin brushed mine, thinking of anything but Jareth, but I quickly schooled my thoughts and tried my best to remember how I’d communicated with the mirror before. I’d kind of just zoned out, like you do sometimes during long car trips.
It took several tries. And I was almost ready to give up when for the briefest of moments, an image flashed on the mirror’s surface.
It was Jareth. And he was alive. His eyes were shut, his face was pale, and he was lying down on some sort of metallic bed. Bands of steel restrained him. Melody stood at his side, wearing a long white cloak. Behind her head, I could see an intricate symbol painted on the wall behind her, a series of intertwining circles. I didn’t recognize it.
The image vanished.
“Well done,” Rafael whispered even as his eyes narrowed in calculation. “I was certain Raven must know where he is. That symbol on the wall is the rune of her family. She must be protecting Melody.”
Feeling unnerved, I shoved the mirror into my sweatshirt pocket, wondering how I’d actually gotten it to work.
“I must go,” Rafael said abruptly. “I will return as soon as I may, but I’ll summon Ajax here at once.”
Without even waiting for my response, he was gone, leaving me standing in my room, uncertain of what I should do next.
It was dark. Jerry was asleep. I’d just seen the Man in the Top Hat again. And I’d just heard my Blue Thread was coming up soon.
Suddenly not wanting to be alone in my room, I charged to the door and wrenched it open, intending to escape to the kitchen when a flashlight beam struck me square in the face.
I screamed at the same time as Grace and Ellison.
“What are you doing?” I gasped.
“What’s going on?” Ellison asked simultaneously, switching the flashlight off as he and Grace stared at me from the darkened hall. In the dim light creeping in faintly from the kitchen I could see his brows drawn in a puzzled line. The shadows gave his face an eerie cast.
“What do you mean?” I asked, fumbling for time. Had they been spying on me? “I’ve just been … taking Ajax for a walk.”
“We didn’t see you come inside,” Grace said, bewildered.
“Yeah, where did you come from?” Ellison asked, sounding just as confused. “We heard a noise in your room. Sounded like a cat or something was stuck in the ceiling.”
Mesmers. I couldn’t suppress a shiver. I joined Grace and Ellison in the hall, clicking the door shut behind me. “I’ve got to get Ajax,” I said, trying to adopt Rafael’s diversion technique.
It didn’t work as well for me as it did for him. They both just stared at me. And when, a moment later, Ajax barked from behind the closed door inside my room, they stared at me even harder.
Of course Ajax would mess it up.
“Oh,” I said, clearing my throat with a nervous laugh. “Guess he was in there after all. Probably hiding under the bed.”
I would have been better off not saying anything as Ajax bounded from my room, his fur slick and black with rain.
“Maybe Ajax made the noise then,” Ellison finally offered in the awkward silence that followed.
“Yeah,” I agreed lamely.
They nodded a couple of times and then, holding hands, proceeded to make their way to the family room.
I could hear Betty in the kitchen, humming tunelessly along with the radio. And down the other side of the hall, I could just make out Al’s voice booming inside the bedroom as he spoke with Jack.
Everyone seemed safe.
For now.
Expelling a long breath through my nose, I turned to check on Jerry only to run straight into the wispy-mustached Marquis.
“Sydney,” he gasped. “I need your help.”
At my side, Ajax curled his lip in a silent snarl. He was tense, ready to pounce as I stood rooted to the spot, staring at Marquis slumped against the wall opposite of my bed.
Marquis looked horrible. His face was white, even his lips, and his hands trembled as he dabbed at the sweat pouring down his face.
“I need your help, Sydney,” he repeated in a shaky voice. “I’m trying to break free of them. The Lizard People.”
I blinked, recalling the cords of light somehow stretching from the Second Dimension to both Earth and Avalon to possess various victims, controlling them like puppets. But how did I know it wasn’t a trick? In any case, I didn’t see how I could help.
“How can I help?” I asked, not in the promise that I would do it, but more because I didn’t really see what he expected me to do. I didn’t know how to sever the cords.
Apparently, he took it the first way, as an unspoken promise. Heaving a sigh, he smiled. But it was a shade too quickly and it heightened my suspicions at once.
“I knew you would come with me,” he babbled in such an over-friendly way that anyone could see it was a façade. “We must hurry. Rafael is waiting.” He checked himself. His face darkened with rage and his eyes morphed into reptilian slits.
So much for trying to break Lizard control. Obviously, his lizard side had read my suspicions forming in the Second Dimension.
“You lie!” he accused in a low, menacing voice.
As he reached out to grab me, Ajax leapt, baring his teeth. But Marquis had already raised his trion to his lips and with a single word, the Doberman collapsed into an unconscious heap on the floor.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
But I was too late, too.
Marquis moved with lightning speed and before I’d scarcely gotten the words out of my mouth, his fingers closed around my throat. I fought like a madwoman, kicking, twisting, and biting. More than once, Marquis swore, signaling I’d succeeded in my goal.
He kept trying to hold my head down. It took several tries before he succeeded in clamping his hand over my forehead. At once, I experienced the odd sensation of being sucked inside out, like someone had shoved a vacuum cleaner inside me and turned it on.
From the corner of my eye, I saw I was no longer in my room.
I froze. I hadn’t been aware of shifting. I stood there, with Marquis twisting my arm behind my back.
I was in a white room with no windows, doors, or openings of any kind.
Slowly, I turned around.
It was then that I saw it wasn’t Marquis behind me at all.
It was a huge, dark-scaled, oily lizard balanced on his hind feet to stand like a man.
The white floor suddenly rose to greet me and my world went black.
Chapter Four – The White Room
I sat up groggily and looked around, completely disoriented. It took me several moments to remember Marquis had somehow dragged me here. Well, I guess it wasn’t Marquis. More like the lizard that possessed him. But then, he’d possessed Marquis for so long, I suppose he truly was the real Marquis, after all.
I winced. My head was pounding and I was completely alone, still in the door-less, windowless room with the ceiling, walls, and floor made of some kind of white shiny plastic.
Wondering where I was and how long I’d been unconscious, I rose to my feet.
A deeper inspection of the walls revealed there was no obvious way out. And no doors magically zipped open like they did in Avalon.
I was stuck.
Slowly, I returned to sit down in the very center of the room and for a time, entertained the idea that I was in some kind of Fae prison. Not for very long, though. The facts didn’t really fit. I knew I hadn’t shifted. I’d experienced some sort of vacuum effect.
And I’d seen a real Lizard Person, just as I had in the Hall of Mirrors when the Man in the Top Hat had forced them to leave Earth so long ago.
I swallowed.
I didn’t like admitting that because it just might mean that I was in the Second Dimension after all. And th
at meant I didn’t have a clue how to get home. Or if it was even possible.
I got up to examine the walls again, placing my ear against the smooth surface at random intervals. I held my breath and listened, but the there was only silence. Fighting a rising panic, I began to pace nervously and shoved my hands into my sweatshirt.
My fingers collided with the mini Lysol can and slid over the metal hand mirror. It calmed me immediately.
Perhaps I could contact Rafael and he could help me escape.
Apprehensive, I glanced around for any signs of lizards or other creatures as I returned to once again sit down cross-legged on the floor. Hunching over, I slipped the hand mirror out of my pocket and peeked into it. I was careful to hide it. I didn’t want any lizards rushing in to yank my only source of communication away.
For a moment, I studied my reflection. I still looked pretty haggard but the dark circles under my eyes had disappeared. Apparently, I’d slept a while. I wondered how long.
A scraping sound made me jump. And it underlined the fact that I was most likely being observed. I didn’t have much time. Hurriedly, I focused on the mirror, trying to zone out like I’d done before. The closest thing I can describe it to is the kind of state you have to achieve in order to see those Magic Eye pictures, somehow focusing and un-focusing at the same time. I stared into the mirror, letting my heart fill with my feelings for Rafael and hoping that somehow he’d get the message.
I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
I really don’t know if anything appeared in the mirror or not. I was too busy gaping at the swirling images forming around me. A golden feather, floating up from the floor. A shimmering cloud of pixie dust twinkling like Fourth of July sparklers.
And a door.
I didn’t hesitate.
