‘Maybe you can,’ I said seriously. ‘If you can change from wolf to kangaroo, maybe there’s more you can do.’
Jaya looked out into the ocean, her voice low and thoughtful. ‘I had just wanted to fit in so badly here. I had no friends at school and no one I could talk to about my situation. I hated looking different and every time I went home I was reminded of my difference. I started to resent my family. Then I started turning into a kangaroo instead of a wolf. And that was it,’ Jaya concluded flatly.
I was silent, sensing it was the best thing to do.
Jaya continued to stare at the ocean. ‘I’ve never tried to be anything else.’ She turned to look at me.
‘Maybe it’s time?’ I asked softly.
We heard a noise close to us from the ocean. We both turned and a large dorsal fin appeared not too far from the beach. Out of nowhere, a large grey shark flew out of the water, flipped and swum away. It was an eerie sight.
Jaya looked at me. ‘I don’t know how you did it, Shalini, but he really is the best thing that has happened to me.’
I grinned at her.
Jaya grinned back and gently discarded her electric blue jersey dress. Moonlight on her olive skin danced as she ran towards the ocean. Her long dark hair spun sinuously in the wind. I saw the air around Jaya’s body tremble as she plunged into the tide and was gone. I smiled and walked away, thinking about new beginnings. When I got home I sent Will a message with the warehouse address, asking him to visit. It was time for my own new beginnings.
***
The next day, Will arrived at the warehouse early. I was worried that like Doris he would not be able to see Roxanne. He said a cheery hello to her as soon as he walked in and I saw her relax.
I smiled at him. ‘Extra points for breaking through Greg’s protective spell!’
Will looked puzzled and I explained about Roxanne’s own “oddity”.
The three of us moved onto the sofas in my office and discussed the previous night. Roxanne had left soon after Doris’s departure. And I wanted to tell Will about Finn.
I stopped mid-sentence when I heard the main warehouse door creak open.
I heard a chirpy, ‘hello.’
Doris!
I braced myself. Roxanne stood up from her seat on the sofa and went to stand by the large bay window. I looked at Will who raised an eyebrow. Doris walked into the room and plonked herself on the sofa in a huff. ‘Well I had the most tiresome night. I went and checked nearly every beach on Corio Bay, which took me an awful lot of time I might add, and nothing! I saw nothing,’ she said grumpily. ‘Oh hello by the way.’ She smiled at Will, who returned it with a half grimace.
I feigned sympathy. ‘That’s a shame.’
Doris continued, ‘Yes it is. But then this morning I thought it might be because I was there that nothing happened.’ She paused and leaned forward in her chair. ‘Because of my powers, you know,’ she gave me a conspiratorial look, ‘whatever was supposed to happen didn’t. I might have controlled it unknowingly.’
This woman really had delusions of grandeur!
‘Well I came by to ask if anything happened at Williamstown.’
‘No, not a thing. In fact, I got bored and went home after about an hour,’ I said casually.
‘And the young couple? What happened to them?’ Doris asked.
‘They must have resolved things with their families I suppose. I’m not too sure.’ I tried to sound indifferent.
‘You’re not in trouble then, m’dear?’ Doris asked with forced concern.
‘No.’ Now go away, unbearable!
‘Good,’ Doris added pompously, ‘maybe they read my mind from afar and were afraid to cause any further trouble after they ascertained my powers.’
I wanted to gag. Instead I just nodded mutely.
‘So what should we do next?’ Doris asked.
We?
‘Do you still want to register with us? This is a matchmaking agency, and I thought you were here to find a match,’ I asked pointedly.
Doris waved her right arm in the air. ‘Oh that.’ She looked as if the idea had never crossed her mind. ‘Not interested anymore. I think it would be best if I started helping you here instead.’
My jaw dropped. I looked at Roxanne and Will who had equally stunned expressions. Doris seemed not to notice.
‘I don’t need any help here, thank you,’ I said curtly.
‘Well after last night, it looks like you need a lot of help.’ Doris looked patronisingly at me. She continued to talk about how she could join the agency, how we could set it up as a “partnership”. Doris would handle some of the more sensitive cases. Her voice droned on and on. I looked helplessly at Will.
‘The nerve of this woman!’ Roxanne said loudly. I knew she was just as angry as me.
I felt my face grow hotter and hotter as Doris continued talking. She posed a huge risk to my agency. No supernaturals would come near me if this nut-job hung around!
The more I thought about it the angrier I became. My heart thumped loudly in my chest. Will took my hand in his, as he sensed my growing agitation.
‘Did you hear that?’ Doris asked looking bewildered. Had Doris heard my thumping heart?
Doris pointed at the clock. ‘That thing is making the most terrible racket.’
It was true. I turned to the clock, loud thuds emanated from its wooden casing. In my own rage, I had not noticed it. The loud twang was back. It reverberated around the room and in my head. The clock began to physically shake. Will was the first to jump up and move towards it. ‘Stand back!’ he said loudly.
But I felt pulled to it. Its arms were moving backwards very rapidly. Much faster than I had seen them, or any clock, move. I stood close to the clock and to Will, who tried to shield me from it. Doris jumped out of her seat and drew closer to us.
The clock’s thumping and shaking became louder and more violent. Will and Roxanne both exclaimed ‘be careful!’ In that instant I saw a blinding blue light emanate from the heavy bronze clock face, and could not look away. Will shielded his eyes with his right arm and tried to draw me away with his other. ‘Get back, Shalini, it looks dangerous!’
Behind the light, I saw a symbol appear. It was a six pointed star, encased in a circle, with a trident at the centre. It was the little insignia on the clock’s side that I had noticed ages ago when I tried to get rid of the damn thing!
The clock seemed to melt and change shape. As I watched, the symbol disappeared and a giant keyhole appeared. The light became brighter and the clock’s twanging and thumping was all I heard. I felt Doris touch my arm.
A violent shudder ran through the whole room as the blue light blinded me completely and I closed my eyes. I heard Will shout in the distance, ‘Shalini, no!’ Then everything immediately went very quiet.
When I felt a gentle breeze on my face I opened my eyes slowly. I was standing in a room that was not the warehouse office anymore. Doris was clutching my left arm. She looked as pale and terrified as I felt.
I scanned the room. It was a small clerical office. There was an old wooden table on the far end, bowing under the weight of piles of papers and files. The walls were brown and crusty. The stained floor had beautiful old rugs strewn around haphazardly. The air felt heavy and musty. I took a cautious step forward. Doris shuffled forward with me and whimpered. I wanted to shake her off, but she clung on for dear life.
I looked behind me and noticed a clock similar to the one in the warehouse, only this clock was ticking away politely, with no shaking or thunderous twangs.
Before I had time to investigate any further I heard footsteps. The door in the room opened and a short man with dark hair walked in. His face was covered by a rather large handlebar moustache and his clothes were of clean crisp linen. He had a general air of purpose about him. He stopped abruptly when he saw us.
‘Oh you’re here already?’ he asked.
I stared at him mutely, possibly mouth agape, it was hard to know what messages
my brain was sending my body. The whole jumping-through-a-clock situation had left me mute.
He looked at me impatiently. ‘Welcome, Shalini,’ he said calmly. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’
At that moment, Doris’s clutch on my arm loosened. There was a thud to my left as she fainted, face first, onto the grubby floor.
Chapter 36
I looked at Doris lying unconscious on a long low sofa. A slowly moving ceiling fan circulated the heavy air in the room. Once in a while a burst of fresh air wafted in from the window in the room in which we sat.
Harish Gulati was the man who had greeted us after our extraordinary jump, or leap, or travel? It was hard to label the events that had occurred in the last hour. Harish answered my questions.
‘So the clock is a portal?’ I asked unbelievingly when Harish explained how we had arrived in his office in Petersham, New South Wales. My first visit to Sydney and it had to be through a time warp clock portal thingy. Typical!
‘Most definitely.’ Harish nodded. ‘It connects us all together, wherever we are.’
Harish described how, many centuries ago, these portals had been laid for supernaturals to travel or visit each other. But most crucially, for when they wanted a quick escape.
‘Why did the clock portal open for me?’ I was puzzled.
‘Do you have supernaturals in your family?’ Harish asked.
‘Well no, I don’t think so.’ I thought about Uncle Varun. ‘How did one of these portals end up in my warehouse?’ I wondered.
‘That’s simple,’ Harish said. ‘The clock portal in the warehouse office you own was left there to be used by supernaturals.’
Well that explained very little.
Had Uncle Varun known about this when he bought the warehouse? Did anyone else know about this?
And how did Harish Gulati fit into everything? This question was easier to answer. Harish was chief editor of the Sydney branch of The Associated Mythical Press.
‘So you’ve been sending me The Mythical Weekly newspapers?’ I asked excitedly.
‘Yes, I thought you knew.’ Harish sounded rather surprised. ‘When the connection between the portals was re-established, like it was between the clock in your office and here, we started delivering the newspaper to you. We assumed you wanted them.’
I was baffled. Could my occupying the warehouse have re-established the connection?
‘I thought it was only a matter of time till you yourself would arrive here,’ Harish said. ‘After all, that’s what the portals are for.’
‘But they’re used by supernaturals?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ Harish replied with a confused look.
‘But I’m not a spook,’ I sighed, ‘so how come I’m here?’
Harish’s brows furrowed deep into his forehead. ‘But you run the matchmaking agency in Melbourne?’
‘Yes I do! How did you know about that?’ I blurted, then immediately felt foolish. Of course he knew, his newspaper ran the ads for my service.
‘Everybody in our world knows about that. I wondered why it had taken so long for such an agency to start.’ Harish chuckled and looked at me with admiration.
Before I could say anything further, Doris stirred. She slowly began to gain consciousness. I reached her just as she opened her eyes.
She said weakly, ‘What happened to us?’
‘We’re in a newspaper office in Sydney,’ I said dryly. It sounded extremely ordinary, the opposite of what it really was.
‘What?’ Doris bolted up and held her head in her hands. ‘Are we really in Sydney?’
‘Harish tells me we are. Apparently the clock was a portal that brought us here.’ I looked at him.
‘Why?’ Doris asked.
‘I’m not sure.’ I shrugged.
Harish listened to our exchange silently.
‘Would you both like some tea?’ he asked.
Doris eyed him suspiciously and I nodded. ‘That would be lovely.’
***
‘Shalini, we have to be careful, we don’t know who these people are.’ Doris hissed as soon as Harish left the room.
I resisted the urge to slap her.
‘How long was I out?’ Doris asked. Her eyes narrowed as she inspected the room.
‘Not long,’ I replied. I walked to the only window in the room and gazed out. We were on the top floor of a building that looked out onto a quiet residential street lined with Victorian terraces. I heard the distant hum of traffic. The window overlooked a little park, with a few rusty benches, overgrown grass and an old fig tree.
Doris shuffled next to me.
‘What’s that smell?’ she asked sniffing the air.
It was a mixture of charcoal and spices.
‘Is it some kind of outdoor barbeque?’ I said sniffing as well. It reminded me of charcoal chicken of the most delicious variety. My stomach rumbled.
‘What do we do now?’ Doris asked turning away from the window.
I looked at her distastefully. Even if I knew the answer to that, Doris was the last person I wanted to discuss it with.
Before I was forced to answer, Harish walked into the room with three cups of tea in mismatched cups. I thanked him and picked up a cup. It was extremely sweet and delicious. We sat down cross legged on a colourful rug on the floor.
‘So, Doris,’ Harish turned to her, ‘how are you involved with Shalini?’
Doris took her time to answer.
‘My powers led me to Shalini and after helping her with a case, I’ve decided to join the agency.’ She sipped her tea odiously.
The sheer cheek! Talk about liberties with the truth.
‘We were discussing Doris’s request to join the agency when the clock portal opened,’ I said to Harish. He nodded gravely.
‘What powers do you have?’ Harish asked Doris.
‘Well,’ Doris sat up a little straighter, ‘I’m a powerful Wiccan,’ she pronounced theatrically.
‘What’s that?’ he asked with mild interest.
‘Well I,’ Doris stumbled over her words, ‘I have magical powers, I’m a witch.’
Harish looked impressed. He gave her a pleasant smile. Doris, to my amazement, smiled back tentatively.
‘I can prove it you know,’ Doris said nonchalantly, ‘that I’m powerful.’
I looked at her. ‘There is no need to do that.’ I wished she would just shut up. There were so many things I needed to ask Harish.
She ignored me and started chanting in gibberish. Harish stared at her curiously. Doris’s chanting became louder and she looked fixedly at the cup of tea in front of her.
Nothing happened.
Finally Doris, face almost red from concentration, stopped chanting. ‘It must have been the journey here. I’m so tired, my powers have been depleted.’ She flicked her blonde hair back as she said this.
At that moment, the cup of tea toppled over. I noticed that Harish squirmed a little in his seat.
‘Oh it worked!’ Doris said excitedly.
‘Do it again please,’ he said with glowing eyes.
I stared at the cup and then at Doris.
Doris, with renewed enthusiasm, chanted ooga booga.
And right there, before my very own eyes, the previously inanimate cup of tea, started to hover above the ground. It swayed in the air as I stared dumbstruck.
Harish clapped. ‘Well done, powerful witch!’
Doris beamed and chanted, as the cup continued to hover.
I noticed Harish’s mouth move slightly below his large moustache. The cup settled gracefully on the floor. Doris beamed at it and smirked at Harish.
Then, my bladder, as if realising that it had not been emptied in ages, sent me a short sharp signal. I excused myself and walked out of the room to the toilet outside the office that Harish directed me to. It was compact, clean and smelt like Air Wick.
I sat in there for a while, thinking. How had Doris suddenly discovered teacup hovering powers? I’m sure Harish had something to do with
that. But why was he making teacups levitate for Doris?
But more importantly, what the hell was I doing in Sydney and what in the world, or rather supernatural world, would be next?
Chapter 37
When I walked back into the room, Harish and Doris were deep in conversation. I almost felt like I was intruding.
‘I was telling your friend here about the newspaper business we run,’ Harish said quickly.
I looked at him and then at Doris. Was that a flush I detected on her face?
‘Would you like to look around?’ he asked.
Doris jumped to her feet and said ‘yes’ loudly. I nodded too. I had never visited a supernatural printing press before.
We made our way from the room on the third floor, descending in single file down a narrow wooden staircase. The floor beneath buzzed with activity. People were shouting and talking to each other very loudly. We stopped as Harish explained that this was the heart of the establishment. I could almost see the words pulsing through the air in the cacophony. It sure was a noisy heart.
When we descended further downstairs I heard announcements blare from a radio. We stopped and stood in a large room on the first floor. I glanced at the ordinary looking young men and women typing away busily on electronic keyboards that were not connected to any computers! I could see no monitors or CPUs. Cables ran from the keyboards straight into the faded orange brick walls.
‘How do they know what they’re typing?’ I asked Harish curiously.
‘Oh they just listen to instructions from upstairs,’ he replied.
I gave him a confused look.
‘The journalists upstairs send instructions to the typists on this floor,’ Harish said as if it was the most sensible thing in the world to do.
‘How marvellous!’ Doris exclaimed.
I looked at her distastefully. Why was she so chipper?
Harish extended his arm to her. ‘Follow me downstairs and I’ll show you the most marvellous thing of all.’
He led her down the stairs. I noticed she held onto his arm the entire way. They chatted incessantly. I followed a short distance behind, somewhat bewildered at their developing friendliness.
The ground floor rooms we finally stopped in reverberated with the sounds of clattering machinery. I guessed this was the printery, with machines that looked like relics from the time of Gutenberg. Slow, mechanical noises emanated from deep within their bowels. It was magnificent! Like an ancient literary creature, churning out words, glorious words.
The Lost Souls Dating Agency Page 14
