by Jen Ponce
I was alone in the alley.
Stumbling toward the street, I tried to make sense of the freak show that capered in my head. Problem was, my brain kept snagging on the strange bits: a ball of energy, a spider wearing a man like a costume, and my mind would skitter away to the next rational thing. The further I delved into those memories, the less rational the thoughts became, until I gripped my head in pain.
On the sidewalk I stopped and stared. Omaha. People walking by, the smell of alcohol in the air and the distant thump, thump of a club. I glanced at the street sign on the corner. A block away from Hidden Treasures, where it had all begun.
I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself. That was when I remembered I'd taken off my shirt to press against the woman's wounds. Damn. On the street in my bra. What a way to get molested or arrested.
Early morning sun peeked over the horizon. Wait a minute, what? I hadn't been gone for more than an hour. I checked my watch. Eleven thirty. And yet. I squinted at the pinkening sky. That looked like sunrise to me. Of course, I'd lived through an explosion and a magical nightmare. Why couldn't it be morning? I touched the necklace that still hung against my skin. If it were real, did that make everything else real too? I hurried to my car, thankful my car keys were still in my pocket and even more thankful that I didn't see anyone. I had a jacket on the backseat and I slipped into it gratefully.
The drive home was a blur. The alarm beeped at me when I let myself inside, a comforting sound of safety after the night's terrors. I dropped my keys in the bowl by the door and plucked a sticky note with Tom's handwriting off the mirror. “Maybe we can get naked together when I get back home. Love you, Tom.” The note settled me back into my body, provided me with a leveling sense of normalcy.
Upstairs, I tossed the jacket in the laundry basket by the bathroom. Tom's clothes, as usual, were strewn across his side of the room but instead of angering me it grounded me further. This was real. It was home and I was safe.
I needed a shower—I smelled like alley, which meant death and week-old fried food. After I stripped and put the necklace in my jewelry box, I slipped into the bathroom. Extra hot water and mint scented shampoo eased the rest of the tension from me and washed the dried blood from my skin. Maybe I'd experienced an extraordinarily vivid hallucination brought on by whatever that nutjob had slipped into his pretty wares. That's what I told myself, anyway, as my fingers worked the shampoo into my scalp.
What about the necklace, though? What about my hand that still ached from the punches I swung? “Maybe I bought it while I was high and worked the whole transaction into the delusion. And I could have hit my hand, hurt it, and my mind made up the punch.” I said this out loud, giving the idea weight, then shut my eyes and rinsed my hair, repeating to myself, “Just an illusion. Just a hallucination.”
By the time the water ran cold, I almost believed it.
And then I heard the voice. Oh my dear goddess, where am I?
I spun, slipped on a patch of soap and banged my head against the tile. My ears ringing, I stumbled out, water puddling at my feet as I glared at the shower.
You? From the fair? How did I get to be ... oh my goddess. It can't be.
I took two stiff-kneed steps to the toilet and threw up.
THREE
I'm so sorry. I had no idea what would happen.
I sat trembling on my bed, wrapped tight in my robe and listening to a stranger talk to me in my own head. My fingers were curled tight under my thighs so I wouldn't start digging at my scalp.
Are you okay? You took quite a knock to the head.
Not happening. No. I could not be hearing a voice inside my head. Not one so distinctly not my own. Damn bastard and his stupid magic sugar anyway.
He's not a bastard, the voice said. He didn't slip you anything. The sugar is from my world and is inherently magic. It affects humans because you lack it.
Lacked what? Magic? Of course. The most logical answer indeed. “And the spider, monster thing that came out of that man's head?” Shit. I just talked to her—it.
It’s a chythraul, pressed into service as Archaeon. Assassin for the Skriven.
Chythraul. Archaeon. Skriven. What the hell language did she speak?
The chythraul live in the swamps on my world. They are adept at camouflage. It wore a skin in order to blend in to its surroundings. That’s why the Skriven value them as Archaeon.
I felt her shudder. In my head. I gave up and itched at my scalp, wishing I could pluck her out.
I don't wish to be here either, if it's any consolation.
Then how did you get in there? My voice sounded too loud in the quiet room. I curled up tighter against myself when another thought hit me. The man in the alley had said I'd stolen the rock and the spider. If the witch sat inside me …
I know the heart is here. It's around me, as if it fused to your essence. I don't know about the chythraul. I don't sense it but that doesn't mean it couldn't be lurking in here somewhere.
I jumped off the bed, brushing at my body, unable to consider the idea of that monster inside me. Would I know if the spider decided to split me open? Would I feel the pain? The thought propelled me out of the room and down the stairs before her shouted words stopped me.
You're not a skin. It's not inside you that way. If it wore you, you would be dead. Nothing more than a shell.
Not a shell. Not a banana split waiting to happen. “Are you sure?”
Yes. Quite sure.
My eyes closed and I leaned back against the wall. Thank heavens. One less thing to freak out about. “What can it do inside me? Anything?” Like mess with my wiring or something?
I have no idea. Perhaps it's dead.
Somehow, with my luck, I doubted it.
My stomach growled so I pushed myself off the wall and headed to the kitchen. The nagging in my gut was like one of those insistent “you haven't eaten in three days” urges. I pulled the leftover lasagna out of the fridge and stuck it in the oven to heat. While I waited I made a sandwich, on autopilot as I stuffed myself.
“So what is a Skriven? Why do I feel you shivering in fear when you think of it?”
A Skriven is something that lives between your world and mine. It is a meddler, a soulless creature without a conscience. I think you would call it a demon.
I choked on my sandwich, thinking of the man in the alley with the glowing red eyes. The woman inside me trembled again.
Yes. That was Tytan Serce.
“You made a deal with him,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach.
Shame flooded me. An odd feeling to have an emotion that originated inside me and yet didn't come from me. I bargained for a way to stop the decline of power protecting my people. I thought my intelligence and magical strength would protect me. My teacher always told me my arrogance would be my downfall. I never knew what she meant until now.
“What would be worth bargaining with a demon?”
Lives. Human lives. With our power waning, the duallies have made more headway into our cities. Attacks are getting more frequent. More and more of my people are advocating stealing humans to bolster our defenses.
“How the hell would that help you? And what are duallies?”
Our world is made of magic. In you, magic lies dormant. Whenever a human crosses into our world, the magic explodes into being. And duallies are those who live in the Wilds and have been mutated by the wild magic into things not witch-like at all.
My mind flashed to the strange people that had been part of the group that grabbed me, Yvonne, and Nikes. God. Yvonne and Nikes. “They're dead, aren't they?” I'd deliberately avoided thinking of them but now I couldn't stop the memory of them. They were dead and I'd promised I would get them out of there.
You couldn't have known.
“I know. It doesn't make it feel better.” I owed them a promise so I made a new one: I would find the bastards that took us and I would make sure they paid for their crimes. I couldn't vow to kill them, I wasn't made that way
, but I would do whatever I could to stop those assholes from doing it again.
I stood and stretched, feeling a strange weightiness in my mind. I didn't like it and wanted to scratch at my head again. Instead stared into the oven as if by strength of will alone I could get the damned stuff to heat up faster. To distract myself, I asked her, “So then what happened? The whole deal thing?”
I wanted power.
I thought of my vision, of yanking the power from the scary lady, how greedy I'd felt.
In exchange, he wanted me to make him a tool. I had no idea that the object he wanted me to make would allow him to walk in physical form in my world, or yours. I guess I shouldn't be surprised he tricked me.
I wanted to say, “You think?” but I didn't. Not that it mattered. She heard me and her shame and anger filled me. “We have to get you out of my head.”
If I knew how I would go.
I took a deep breath. “Sorry. I know you don't have a choice.” I buttered a couple slices of bread and left the kitchen to flop on the couch. Something poked me in the ass and I dug around in the cushions, pulling out one of Bethany's dolls. She hadn't played with them in months, not since turning ten. I straightened the doll's hair and tossed her onto the coffee table. One of Liam's soccer handbooks lay on the table, the remote holding the book open.
You're lucky to have children.
I stared up at the ceiling. I was lucky. “Don't you have kids?”
I chose not to have them so that I could help defend my people. Women who have children lose a lot of their power. A hard choice, between protecting our children and making them.
Hard choice indeed. I wondered what I would do if given the choice between having kids or protecting someone else's. I couldn't imagine my life without Liam and Bethany in it. But if I couldn't protect them, would it be responsible of me to have them? “What kind of world do you live in? And how is it you can even visit here?”
Hooks. Portals between our worlds. You were in one such place when you stumbled into that mess. We’ve used hooks since times past to interact with humans. As long as your kind stay in the hook you are safe. Weird how I could feel her thinking. You met Marantha.
I saw a picture of the woman with the gray hair who'd sold me the necklace and nodded. “What's your name?” I remembered the man saying it but the syllables wouldn't firm up for me.
Arsinua.
I spent the next few hours talking with the woman in my head and eating, polishing off the rest of the lasagna without much trouble. I had no idea why I craved more food but I blamed it on the trauma of the night.
I fell asleep on the couch, my cheek pressed against the arm. When the doorbell woke me, the material under my mouth was wet. Great. I'd been drooling. “Coming,” I shouted when Mister or Missus Impatient Pants rang the bell again.
“I heard you the first ti—” I stopped when I saw who it was on my front step. "Nate?" My heart dropped to my toes. "Is something wrong with Tom?"
Nate frowned. "No. Dev, no. Sorry. I haven't seen Tom." He hefted a dark green bag. "His tent. He dropped it off at the beginning of summer so I could fix it." He reached out and touched me lightly on my arm. "You okay?"
I nodded, struggling to keep the confusion off my face. "Tom's not with you?"
"No." An awkward silence filled the space between us. "Why? He said he was with me?"
A headache formed between my eyebrows. "He said you were going to Ames for the Nebraska game." Bile balled up at the back of my throat.
"No, he never said a word to me." He stepped back, fidgeting. "Maybe I should go?"
"Yeah. Thanks, Nate," I said absently, nudging the tent to one side so I could close the door. I chewed at a cuticle as I sat at our computer. I logged onto our cell phone account and clicked on the Locate Family button. In an eye blink, I stared at a map with a bright blue dot hovering above the Jack Trice stadium in Ames.
All right. He was at the game. Question was, who was he with?
My fingers curled into fists. “Please don't let this be what it looks like.” I stared at the computer screen, stared hard as if I might be able to look right into the screen at Tom. Maybe he'd said Nate but meant a friend from work. Maybe he went by himself.
Maybe he was cheating.
I picked up my phone and dialed Tom. It rang and rang then cut to voicemail. My thumbs shook as I texted him. “Urgent. Please answer ur phone.”
I waited a few minutes and called again. This time he answered. The roar of the crowd was muted—he must have headed out of the stands to the relative quiet of the halls near the bathrooms and concessions. “What's up, Dev? Are you okay?”
“No.” The word came out in that wavery way words did when I was trying not to cry. “Tom? Who are you there with?”
There was a long pause that punched the nails into the coffin.
“Nate came by.” Those words hung in the air between us. I wanted him to lie to me. I really did. I didn't want to know that he was having an affair. Torrid sex in a hotel room would be bad. Tom and another woman going to football games and spending relationship-time together was worse. So much worse. “Who are you there with?”
“A friend from work.”
I bit down on my knuckle to keep from screaming at him. “What's her name?”
“Who said it's a woman?”
“Why would you lie to me and say Nate was going with you if it wasn't?” I heard him sigh and squeezed my eyes shut. Tears slipped free anyway.
“It's just a friendship.”
A bitter laugh broke from me. “Friends with benefits?”
“Devany, sweetheart, I—”
I hung up, knowing it was a childish thing to do and being unable to stop myself. It rang again, Tom's face appearing on the screen. I ignored it and put my phone carefully on the counter so I wouldn't give into my next impulse, which was to throw it across the room.
My husband was cheating on me. With a friend from work. I thought I'd met everyone at his accounting firm and couldn't imagine who he'd destroy our marriage over. I pulled up their website and clicked through to the Featured Accountants page. There were several new staff members Tom hadn't told me about. Okay, I usually tuned out when he started talking amortization and capital gains. The only new female was Penelope Garza. I studied her, wondering if she was sitting in the stands with my husband, her black hair tucked under a Cornhusker cap. Did she know he was married? That he had kids?
Did she have kids?
I x'd out the screen and paced, not sure what to do with all of the emotions running through me. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run out of the house and keep going until my muscles wouldn't hold me anymore.
I grabbed my keys and slammed the door behind me, unwilling to stay where there were so many memories of us together.
How dare he ruin all that for a little tail on the side?
I wasn't sure where I was going to go. The park, maybe. I could hop on the swings and hope that they would carry me away from everything like I had when I was a kid and things hadn't gone my way for one reason or the other.
I crossed the street and walked by my neighbors' homes. We were on waving terms mostly. Kitty corner to my house lived a sweet old woman named Margery Culpepper. I sent the kids over to her house in the winter to scoop snow and she usually paid them in butterscotch candies. Margery was out in her lawn, very slowly stooping to pick a weed before straightening again with equal speed.
I nodded at her but kept moving, not willing to talk to anyone right then. I knew eventually I'd have to talk about it, to think about it, but right now I could only move. I walked without really seeing where I was going, pulling myself back to awareness to make sure I crossed the streets alive.
Langham Park was festooned with oaks and elms just beginning to turn colors for fall. I quickened my pace, making a beeline for the swings. A mother and her two little ones were playing on the equipment, the kids' shrieks biting holes in my resolve not to sob like a baby in public.
I'd forgotten, in my own pain, about the kids. Liam and Bethy had gone to soccer camp and a friend's house respectively, happy and content for the most part. They didn't even know their world had changed.
Maybe I could forgive Tom. Maybe he would have such a good explanation I would feel better when I talked to him. Then the kids would never have to know and their world would stay safe and happy and above all, normal.
“Shit.” I said it under my breath as I sat in the swing and pushed off hard with my feet. The movement felt good and as I fell into the rhythm of lean back, kick out, and sit up, pull in, I put my thoughts back on Tom. I could cry while swinging and the tears would be dried by the wind.
When had it started? When did I lose him? Did he love her? Why would he do this to me?
I swung higher, popping out of my seat a little at each end of the swing. One of the children had strayed from her mom and was playing near a bushed out lilac. That's when I saw the woman appear from behind the bush. I knew at once who she was even though I'd only seen her in a sugar hallucination. The woman was cloaked in green, vines twisted around her arms and legs. Her hair stood in grassy spikes on her head and she had the airy quality of a fairy. The little girl stared, wide-eyed.
I slammed my feet to the ground. One of my shoes flew off. The mother looked up at the noise then realized her daughter was too far away. She stood, shielding her eyes. I don't know if she saw the woman or not—it would have made me feel better in a way if she had—but she called out to her daughter in a sharper tone than was warranted for a little girl who'd wandered too far away in a public park. “Sophie! Come here right now.”
The woman garbed in green looked at me, then leaned over to the little girl, who didn't look enchanted so much as frozen in fear. She reached out one finger and touched the girl on the shoulder.
Sophie jerked and screamed as if burnt. The woman laughed then vanished in a flash of light. The mother and I were both running but I slowed when I realized she might not appreciate a total stranger rushing her kid. If the little girl was screaming then she wasn't dead, right? I stayed back near the boy, hoping the woman wouldn't come back to get him. Nervous because I had no idea what to do if she did come back. My inner companion was strangely silent.
