Dance By Midnight

by Phaedra Weldon

  Then everything snapped into place and I sat up, once again naked, once again in the same bedroom.

  My wrists and chest were bandaged and my shoulder—

  Was smooth. I had to contort my neck into an uncomfortable position but I couldn't see any bandages. I got out of bed and stopped. No dizziness. No need to rush to the bathroom. In fact, I felt better than I had in weeks. I walked to the dresser and examined my shoulder in the mirror. It was whole. Not a mark.

  So…had her shredding it been my imagination?

  No it was messed up pretty bad. But Sam fixed it. She concentrated on it instead of the smaller stuff. That's why everything else is healing slowly.

  That voice had been in my head. And it was a girl's voice. But it wasn't one I'd heard in that tunnel. In the mirror I saw the wolf step into the doorway and sit, looking up at me.

  I narrowed my eyes at its reflection. No…couldn't be.

  Could it?

  Yeah, it's me. You can hear me now. You've been in a Cairn. In fact, you've been in her Cairn.

  I turned to face the talking wolf. "Who?"

  Maab. You're lucky you got out. Sam and Mike are downstairs. You guys really need to talk. With that, the wolf got up and loped off.

  I braced myself against the dresser and took a deep breath.

  I just heard a wolf talk to me.

  Yep, the Easter Bunny is real.

  * * *

  I smelled heaven the moment I stepped into the hall and all thoughts of a talking wolf disappeared.

  Food.

  My stomach roared. The craving nearly bent me over. My bags were in the closet; everything from my hotel room in Garden City was there. The gym bag that'd carried the Big Book of Everything was there, but the book wasn't inside. I hoped to hell the Brendi Monster hadn't taken it when she took me.

  I dressed in old jeans and a t-shirt and took the steps two at a time down, my nose leading me all the way.

  The table was set with meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots, and rolls. Sam was tossing a salad in a large wooden bowl on the far side of the table while Mike sat at the opposite end with my book in front of him. "Oh good…she didn't get the book."

  Mike looked up and smiled at me. "You have no idea how good it is to see you."

  "Oh?" I walked toward one of the table settings and looked at him and then Sam. "I slept a long time again?"

  Sam set the salads forks down and glanced at Mike. He nodded to her. "You've been in bed a day and a half. But that's actually pretty good for someone who's been in a Cairn. The stress of the middle world against ours is hard. Some people slip into comas and never come out of them."

  "Really?" The reality of the situation smacked me in the face. I ran a finger through my hair and realized I hadn't put a comb through it. "I guess if I'd have stayed longer, it would be worse? I was gone for what, a few hours maybe?" I ping-ponged between the two of them. "Why the creepy faces?"

  "You were gone for two weeks."

  Hear that sound? That was my jaw coming unhinged as it hit the ground. I gripped the back of the chair in front of me and had a flash of being tied to one like it. Every moment of what I believed was little more than a few hours had spanned…two weeks?

  "Dags sit down before you fall down. Thomas said you didn't eat anything while you were in the Cairn, which means you need to eat now." Sam grabbed a plate and started filling it up. "I'm not kidding. Sit or I'll sit you myself."

  I nodded absently as I pulled the chair out and sat. She fixed my plate the way my grandmother used to fix it with a large helping of everything on it. Before I could stop myself I grabbed a fork and dove into the food. The meatloaf was perfect, the way it melted in my mouth. The green beans still had a bit of snap to them, and the carrots weren't mushy but firm and lightly coated with cinnamon and butter.

  Sam poured me a tall glass of sweet tea and placed it in front of me.

  Mike continued staring at me. "Slow down."

  "He can't. His body needs everything it can find to flush out that nothingness."

  They let me eat in peace until the amount of food I'd been shoving in overwhelmed the true size of my stomach. Sam fixed Mike a plate and then one for herself. After several minutes of clinking silverware and my snarfing food, I sat back and grabbed my stomach. "There's no way I was gone for two weeks."

  "For us it was two weeks. But you thought it was a few hours?"

  I nodded.

  Mike poured himself a glass of tea. "What happened?"

  I finished off my tea before I regaled them with the adventurous and torturous tale of heading to the car to get that book and finding myself tied to a chair. When I got to the part about the old man in the top hat I stopped. "I…think you know the rest?"

  "It fits with what Thomas told us," Mike said. "He heard you yelling and screaming. You know you were damn lucky he was near the Cairn exit. Out of the population of this town, maybe six people could have heard you or even seen that entrance?"

  "How come he could?" I sat back, even though there was still a half plate of food in front of me. "He asked me about eating while I was in that tunnel, and then if I'd been hit with black dust. It's like he knew what could have happened."

  "That's because he's been there," Sam said. "Not just in the Cairn, but beyond it. He was once the unwitting guest of the Queen of the Faeries, and when he came out of that place, seven years had passed."

  I knew that story. Mom had read it to me several times when I was a kid. "You mean he's the Thomas the Rhymer?"

  "Yep." Sam picked up her glass of tea. "But now he's a prophet, because that was the gift he chose to take from Titania."

  "He mentioned Maab, not Titania." I put my hands on the table. "Why does everyone keep using these names? Maab? Titania? It's like the land Shakespeare created."

  "He didn't create the names." Mike shrugged. "He just used them. The Courts of the Faerie are pretty much the way we've read them. Only they're called Snow and Obsidian. Titania's Snow—"

  "And Maab's Obsidian. Right." I ran my tongue over my teeth. I needed my toothbrush. "Before I went to the car I was researching changelings. Spoke to a guy I've known a few years. He's the one that said Faeries weren't happy little creatures with wings."

  "They're not." Mike wiped his mouth with his napkin. "He tell you about real changelings?"

  I relayed what Cypher had said and what I'd observed about the Brendi Monster. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess you both already knew this?"

  "Parts of it." Sam pursed her lips. "Neither of us had seen the changeling to know for sure that's what attacked Teresa, but given my own experience with Maab, it all fit the profile."

  "You've dealt with her?" I blinked at Sam. I'd noticed earlier her face seemed brighter and realized she wasn't wearing any makeup. The heart was gone as well. Her hair was up in a ponytail that hung past her shoulders.

  "Oh…she and I have a long, nasty history. As a Witch I'm not partial to the Faerie kingdoms."

  "Witch? Or a Sentinel…and how does that work, exactly? Maab called me a Sentinel, but I figured she assumed that's what I was because you helped me."

  "No—Maab didn't assume you were a Sentinel. You are a Sentinel. You have the same vibration we all do."

  "You lost me."

  She sat back, her food barely touched. "We don't have time to go into details, but understand it like this; you know the five planes, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "And you assume that all these planes are held together by some sort of substance."

  I narrowed my eyes at her. "I hadn't really thought of that. I guess I sort of saw them as layers."

  "With the Physical on the bottom?"

  "Well no, with the Abysmal on the bottom."

  "Ah. That's an old religion based map. Truth is it's more of a sphere. Think of a planet with the Physical plane being the core. Add the plates and land mass as the Mental, and then the sky and atmosphere as the Astral. Now that planet is in a solar system that has
infinite sides, correct?"

  "We haven't mapped it all."

  "For the sake of this argument, we'll say yes. But imagine that mass, that void out there as the ever changing and morphing aspect of the Ethereal and Abysmal. Or Heaven and Hell for show. Our kind—Witches or Sentinels—call them the Light and Dark Worlds. So…what holds the solar system together? The universe?"

  I shook my head. "Glue?"

  "Yep. And we call that glue Mother Nature. I take it you've seen personifications of names you've only gathered in history lessons, right?"

  "Yes."

  "So what if the one thing, the one being, the one Creatrix of creation itself had once taken form for a purpose, but it was a vastly darker purpose than you could imagine. Mother Nature has never been the mature woman in white sitting on a mushroom with a tub of butter in her hand, Dags McConnell. She's infinitely more powerful than that. For illustration, let's say that purpose of hers burned and ripped a hole in the fabric of the order she'd hoped to create. And when she was finished, she was little more than a husk of herself, powerless, and dying."

  I glanced at Mike. He was listening but watching me. I cleared my throat and looked back at Sam. "So what was this dark purpose?"

  Sam shrugged. "No one's really sure. We have our theories. Dags, all of those planes of existence aren't supposed to mesh. They're not meant to integrate. The Abysmal isn't supposed to spawn here in the Physical plane. You've seen the outcome of that. The First Borns? Revenants? Or as we call them, vampires?"

  I swallowed.

  "And look what the Ethereals have done by creating their servants? Powers? Possessed humans. Dead humans. And when the Mental bleeds on the Physical and the Astral mixes with the Abysmal… It's not meant to happen. There was a race once, created to stop this and guard those borders."

  "You mean the Irin."

  "Yes. They were destroyed in a terrible war that no human will ever remember."

  I knew this one. "The Bulwark, or the Great Massacre."

  "You know a lot more than I assumed you did."

  "Well, I was given a few lessons before I left. Basic knowledge my teacher wanted me to know. I'm sort of plugging in the holes." I sat forward. "But you haven't given me the Sentinel and Witches pieces."

  "Ever heard the saying Mother Nature abhors a vacuum? With no Irin, or Watchers, the borders were unguarded. No one knows when the God Mother set about on her dark purpose. Our theory is she wanted to create a new race; a new breed of children to patrol and defend those borders. Some call us Witches; others call us devils or demons. But the Planars, the ones that recognize us, call us Sentinels because we stand and guard. We have the blood of Mother Nature, or The God Mother, within us, disseminated throughout mankind at the moment of her fall."

  Given the reverence Sam used when she talked about all this, I expected someone to pass the donation plate around. Geez…she believed this stuff. I don't know why I didn't. I just…it wasn't what Nona had told me. "Sam—" I held out my hand. "That changeling called me a Sentinel. She said she didn't like having two Sentinels in the same place. I've been called a Guardian until I met you."

  "You were supposed to be a Sentinel. You have that blood inside of you and I'm betting it came from your mom. But your course went off track somewhere." She sat forward. "I'm guessing the moment you allowed the Cruorem to brand you with those portals is when it happened." She nodded to my hands. "And I'll bet you Bonville didn't come after you because you were a tool in his little cog-work of magical mayhem. I bet he went after you because he knew what you were and he wanted to harness your power."

  I rubbed at my face and glanced at Mike. "You got all this?"

  "Sort of. I just want Brendi back. And after the shit I've seen, I'm willing to believe anything that proves to me she's not dead."

  "Brendi is also a Sentinel," Sam said and I looked back at her. "And I'm more sure than ever that's why Maab fashioned a changeling to take her."

  "What for?"

  "Think about it. We can manipulate the Mental plane on the Physical. We can manifest events, items, and we can bend them. We are part of the Creatrix. Planars aren't able to do that. For a Faerie to create a Cairn takes over a hundred human souls. For an Ethereal or Angel to create a Power, they kill a human. For an Abysmal creature, or Demon, to obtain physical form, they have to kill their host, and don't tell me the Revenants aren't dead. Once those creatures are attached to those humans the humans can't survive without them. They're as good as dead. Do you see the pattern?"

  She leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. "If a Planar being can take control of a Sentinel, they would have the ability to create multiple openings between the planes with no restrictions. The very things we can close, we can open. As it is now, how easy do you think it is to make a Coyote Flame to enter another plane? I can see in your eyes you know the difficulty, but the real danger is placing it. There's no guarantee the flame is going to take you where you want to go. Planars want fixed gates, fixed doors to come and go as they please."

  "But aren't Cairns fixed?" I leaned forward as well, even though my stomach protested. I was really full. "The one I just came out of is always there, right? It's Maab's Cairn?"

  "Yes. The Faeries can make a fixed Cairn, but the problem for them are the Cairns themselves. As they are now, without the magic of a Sentinel, they trap the Faerie. The Cairn is the closest they can come to the Physical, our Material World, because of the safety protocols in place. But the Cairns are just as much of a trap to them as they are to us. What happened to you physically is just a shadow of what would happen to them if they entered those Cairns, and then returned home."

  "The shakes, the fever, the sickness?"

  "Much worse for them. Some of them die if they return to where they come from. And as for stepping through that gate to the Material World?" Sam snapped her fingers. "Ash."

  "But no ash if they make it using a Sentinel."

  "Right."

  "But, it's been what, months since Brendi vanished?" I looked at Mike. "Why hasn't she used your daughter to make one of these gates? Or has she?"

  Sam answered. "She hasn't. We're not sure why that is. Might be the changeling has to kill off everyone that knew her. Could be Brendi doesn't want to do it. I just don't have those answers."

  "You think Brendi's in a Cairn, or in…" I put my elbows on the table and folded my arms. "Where exactly do they come from? Are they Ethereal? Abysmal? Astral? What plane is Faerie in?"

  When neither of them answered me, I looked at the food cooling on my plate and realized why they hadn't been able to find Brendi.

  They had no idea where the actual land of Faerie was.

  THE BiG BOOK OF EVERYTHiNG

  After they retold my kidnapping from their point of view, I felt awful. Apparently Mike waited for me to come back in from the SUV. When I didn't, he ran outside, thinking I drove off.

  But the vehicle was still there, the door open and my gym bag on the ground. They locked the car, took the stuff in and started their own search. Sam tried scrying for me, having plenty of my hair to use.

  Nothing.

  And as the days went on and my body didn't turn up, Sam worried I'd been taken to the Faerie realm. Though they couldn't tell me what plane the Faeries lived in, she did know they called it Alfheim. Sam feared I'd been taken there and forced into servitude.

  "I had this nasty idea that if Brendi refused to help them, they'd take you and then threaten her life to force you to build the Cairn for them."

  We were cleaning up the dishes, still talking. It was just after seven in the evening and the garden in the back rested in shadows. She washed, I dried and Mike put things away, dishes and leftovers. The whole scene felt so surreal, given my past…year. I lowered the plate and towel in my hand. "Why didn't they?"

  Sam paused and looked at me. "Why didn't she what?"

  "Force me to build a Cairn like you said? She sensed the same thing about me that she apparently sensed in Brendi. She called me
Uncle Dags so I assume she knew that much about mine and Brendi's relationship. So, why not take me further in than the Cairn? Why not try and use me if I'm one of the Sentinels?"

  Sam's expression was hard to read as she stared at me. "That's a very good question. But I don't have an answer. She took you to a crossroads and tied you to a chair."

  "Yeah."

  When she grabbed a towel and dried her hands, I set the plate I was drying on the counter as Mike stood to her right.

  "What is it?" Mike asked.

  "It's just that…the symbol of the crossroad has an almost universal meaning. In most religions and faith based practices around the world, a crossroad represents a place where several worlds connect. Not so much like a Cairn door or gate, but more of a junction. Four paths converging at a single point."

  I looked past her to Mike, who shrugged.

  Sam caught the gesture and held out her hands. "It's symbolic meaning is that someone is standing on the threshold. They've come to a middle, a place where a decision must be made. It's not as eloquent say, as crossing the Rubicon, but the meaning's the same."

  I wasn't sure I knew what a Rubicon was. "I get the symbology—but why put me there?" I leaned against the counter. "You think the changeling did it on her own? Or was it something Maab told her to do?"

  "Changelings carry the essence of both their creator and the subject they're created from. Maybe…" Sam shrugged. "Maybe she sensed you're undecided. That you've not actually chosen one path over the other. Some call you a Guardian, I called you a Sentinel…the Grimoire inside of you might be causing interference. On a base level the changeling didn't know what you were so she placed you in the crossroads."

  I arched an eyebrow at her. "For?"

  She gave a long sigh. "I don't know. I'm not sure the actions of a changeling are relevant to finding Brendi. What we have to know more about is the Cairn you were in." Sam looked at me. "Are you familiar with Cairns?"