Other Places 1: Shortcuts

by P. S. Power

  The Greater Demon smiled, and then patted Kyle on the back gently.

  "There we go, all fixed. You can go back home and off to a normal college next fall. You owe me of course, but before you start freaking out, I'm not taking your soul or insisting you be my slave. I'll ask for favors from time to time. Mainly sex for friends of mine. Humans most of the time, I'm sure. Are you good with that?" There was a real smile that went with the words. She seemed sympathetic and kind about it even.

  The boy took a deep breath and then looked down at the floor.

  "Yeah. I can do that. It's kind of my thing. Are you really a Demon?"

  Keeley didn't answer, opening a bubble again, a node, just out of thin air.

  "I sure am. Now, I want to get Zack back to his place. We can drop you at your mom's work. It's on the way. Can you get that done for me Zack?"

  She didn't wait just vanishing, leaving him grab the kid, who was at least sixty pounds heavier than he was, and try to hustle him toward the hole in space as it started to shrink into nothingness. There was no way to make it. Not if he insisted on trying to use brute force. Grabbing an arm he leaped forward, and called out as he started to move through the vanishing rift.

  "Jump!" There was no time to explain, but for once in his life someone just trusted him and did what he said. They ended up in the back room of Candles and More, Keeley holding her hand out to Brad, looking over at them as they sprawled onto the cold hard floor. It hurt a lot, even as Kyle took the brunt of the fall for him, throwing himself between Zack and the floor, landing flat on his back.

  "There they are now!" She said it as if she couldn't be prouder for some reason.

  Then she laughed. It sounded happy, like little wind chimes.

  Chapter nineteen

  Then, as if they had an actual time schedule that Zack simply didn't know about, Keeley helped Kyle up and took him away, out through the front of the shop, presumably off to see his mother, who worked somewhere else in the mall. It was a decent outcome, compared to the death that was the other main option. That part had been so stupid that he had to stop himself from complaining about it out loud. There was nothing they could really do, after all. He did stare at his grandfather for a few seconds before shaking his head harder than was strictly wise, given how sore his neck muscles still were.

  "OK, just spread the word for me, I'm not working for the Alede. Not as a group at least. If anyone really needs my help, they can call in themselves. They were going to kill that kid. As far as I can tell it's some kind of political thing too, not even because they're a real threat. Not that I have proof of that, but I can't think of any other real reason yet."

  That got a really strange look from Brad, who seemed, not troubled really, but just a little perplexed by his words.

  "You know, most people don't turn the Alede down for anything. Then again, you aren't most people. I can send them a message, if you like? It might not do any good, but if they're going to kill a child over something that foolish, we should try to stop it."

  That got him to explain the whole thing, trying to do it quickly. He just finished up the part where Kyle now owed Keeley years of servitude, which would supposedly be sexual in nature, when she walked back in, smiling a bit.

  "That's right. I know it sounds a bit rough, to a human, but it's basically giving her a free pass to an all you can eat buffet. It isn't nearly as big a deal as you'd think. We both need to step up our price schedules soon, Zack, or people are going to think we're wimps. Anyway, I left your outfit with Troy. He seems nice. I'd invite him to Finias' party too, but it really isn't a brilliant idea to bring people that can't protect themselves to things like that. It won't be all Demons of course, but there will be a few. Small group that way, mainly people that you should meet. My sister, The Technician, The Pristine, who you've already met. Plus Finias and a few others. The rest of the people are more your speed. Very few Demons need your skills really, since we can all do it for ourselves, even the lesser ones. It's really one of the defining traits of a Demon. Still, it never hurts to meet people. Some of them might be future clients." She smiled very prettily and blinked a few times at them both, which was done well, but seemed like a little too much to Zack. It was clear manipulation, but he didn't know why.

  Maybe she really just wanted him to like her?

  Brad spoke gently, but with a bit of steel in the tone of his voice, even as he seemed to want to step away from the girl in front of him in fear. It would have been funny, except that that was what you did with Greater Demons. You got away from them, if you could.

  "I don't think this is a very good idea. Zack isn't... well, he's..." What he was trying to say exactly escaped Zack, but Keeley nodded.

  "I know. It's part of why he needs to talk to Finias. Plus, human Line Walkers are incredibly rare, so if he goes with me it will tell the others to back off a bit. It's kind of win-win really since I can send some beings to him for various things they might not otherwise feel comfortable dealing with me for personally, and still have them owing me. I'm not really looking to take slaves, to be honest with you Brad. I can pretty much have whoever I want that way, hence the name I was given. I'm just expanding my network of friends a bit. Zack should too. The better he does, the better we all look. That means keeping him safe and alive." She didn't wait for a response from the man, glancing at Zack instead, her eyes friendly, but not actually flirtatious. "Speaking of safe, has anyone killed Lazar for you yet?"

  There was a shrug in response, but she sighed and looked a tiny bit disappointed for some reason.

  "The answer is no then. Well, anyway, I'll come to get you on the twentieth, at three in the afternoon. That will let us plan our entrance and all that. We can work from my house, if that's alright? I want you to meet my friends. It's so exciting, I can't wait!" The sincerity was almost a little over the top, but had a genuine feel to it as well, almost as if it was being projected to the world around them.

  His grandfather was nodding about the whole thing, even as Zack tried to figure out what the heck she was doing to them. He didn't even get the words out before she spoke.

  "Demon magic is different than human. It doesn't work on you half as well as it does on everyone else, of course. You should ask Finias about it, when you meet. I know that he's looking forward to it. Make sure to put the new outfit on when you get home and make certain Bente got it perfectly right. It won't take her long to fix it, if there's a problem, but waiting to the day of the party isn't fair."

  Then, with a single step, she vanished, not even moving toward the node at all. Nothing seemed to open up really, but the bubbles in the rifts around her pulsed as one for a few seconds first. He watched her do it, but it seemed so different than anything he could manage that his mind almost didn't want to process the whole thing. It was just strange.

  "Well. Hopefully I live through that. She seems nice. Of course it almost has to be a trap, doesn't it? Hot girls almost never act that friendly, not unless they want something. I doubt it's any different for Hot Demon girls." Something occurred to him then, and he thought of Kyle, who was apparently a girl named Kaitlyn too. "If she's a girl at all."

  That at least got a nod from his grandpa and had him quickly waved in to Lisa's office, since he was working out of there for right now.

  "It's not a wonderful thing, Zack. I'd tell you to try and pull back from her, but that doesn't seem an option. I guess all I can say is try to do the best you can, and don't agree to any bargains or deals with her. Any of that kind. Just agreeing to take out their trash, using the wrong wording, could have you being a lifelong slave. No matter how gentle she seems, that's never a good thing. Worse, I did some searching and asking around. This one is called the Mistress of Souls. She has that name for her ability to enslave anyone, against their will, she wasn't joking about that, or even bragging. Vampires, Hsreth and even other Demons."

  For only the second time in Zack's life he realized that his grandfather was actually frightened. Not scar
y movie jumping or anything like that, but actually terrified that something very bad was going to happen. Worse, from the look on his face, it was pretty certain that the man didn't think anything he did about it was going to be able to influence the outcome of events.

  It caused a strange reaction from Mirror Him, who snorted and started to chuckle just a little, as if he knew something that they didn't. He refused to explain it however, which just made the whole situation even more tense, as far as Zack went. Jerk.

  In his normal manner, calm and relatively friendly, Zack tried to reassure his grandfather. It came out all wrong, but there was no helping that, was there?

  "I'm sure the plan is something very different than making me a slave then. If she wanted that, it sounds like she could just do it." After a few seconds his mouth kept going, even though there was enough to worry about already. "It probably means that she wants me to do something for her, but doesn't want to bother with long term slavery. So, I don't know, maybe something she doesn't think I'll survive? It wouldn't be a good use of resources if that was the case, would it?"

  Brad looked horribly sad, but didn't say anything about it after that, letting him escape to the front, so that he could help with that part of things. There was a minor dispute over who had a right to set up shop along a specific street in town, but Jelly actually handled that pretty easily, simply looking up what the law said on the matter, which was that they weren't actually allowed to claim territory in shared spaces, so they had to get along. That or move.

  The woman whose ex had cursed her came back in. It was several days late, and Zack had pretty much forgotten about it, but she wasn't cursed anymore. Because she was the intern and that kind of work often got put on the new kids, Lynn helped Jenifer add some protective spells, just in case the man tried again. It was kind of cool to see the energy flowing out of the girl like that, organizing itself to her will, which reminded him to do his breathing exercises again and drink some of the grass flavored tea.

  It was kind of neat in a way, since the whole place was running so very smoothly that he didn't have to do much at all. On the other hand, he also started to feel like his job might be just a little bit threatened. It wasn't a rational thing, but it was kind of the pattern of his life to lose things like that, just when he thought they might be going well. M.H. chuckled at him from the reflection of the front glass near the door, since he was awkwardly cleaning it, since someone had touched it with greasy fingers.

  "Relax Zacko. You're pulling your weight and more. No one here wants you gone. You're the freaking Line Walker, for goodness sake. Just chill for a few minutes and someone or another will be in to beg for your help or something like that. Find their lost cat or something."

  The very eerie part was that the words were exactly right. Not ten minutes later the old woman that had the cats came in, and reported that the little cat had gotten past her and run away.

  "I'm very worried about him. I think he was trying to get away from Mr. Fancy... Poor little Snowie, it's so cold out. He's just a kitten."

  She had pictures on her cell phone, because old Mage or not, she wasn't nearly as far behind the times that way as Zack was. He'd never tried to find something that small before, but when he excused himself for a moment and went to the node to take a peek he located the tiny feline in about ten seconds, since it was actually pretty close to him in space. No more than a few miles away. The hard part was convincing the little guy that the strange human that appeared out of nowhere wasn't there to eat him, which took several minutes, and then he had to walk a few blocks carrying him to get back to the stores, using two shortcuts to do it, but the woman was still there when he came back through the front.

  For a few seconds the woman just stood, looking baffled at the white piece of fur and fluff he had cradled to his chest.

  "Here he is. I found him under a bush." Zack didn't mention the rest of it, going through the node, since it was just getting a cat. One that hadn't even gotten stuck in a tree or anything. There had to be some relative value to things like that. It wasn't her child after all, though from her excitement you really couldn't tell that at all. She gushed at him for nearly a minute, which was a little intense, when Lynn finally stepped in and smiled.

  "That's pretty special. It's not every day someone goes through a node to retrieve a pet." The words were gentle, but got the woman in front of them to go deathly silent.

  It was the common reaction to him doing things like that, he thought. That "oh shit" moment when people realized that they might be dealing with something a lot more expensive than they bargained for.

  Zack looked directly at little Snowie and smiled.

  "Right, so... Snowie... If I ever have a mouse problem, I expect you to come and give me a hand with that, sound fair?" It was cute, but after looking at him for a few seconds from the safety of the woman's arms, the little fuzz ball meowed once. He took that to mean yes.

  The woman didn't say a lot about it, but did thank him a few more times and left, seeming a little nervous then. He was satisfied by it all though. She had her cat back and if it came up, he could get help with rodent control.

  His grandma patted him gently on the back, which made his ribs ache a bit, but the move didn't have the sharp flare of pain that it would have even a few days before.

  "That was really nice of you, sweetie. A little bit like mobilizing a full search and rescue team to find her pet flea, but no one could doubt your good will. I'm proud of you." It seemed real enough, but then she said the same thing when he managed to finish all the food on his plate or dress himself properly, so it didn't mean all that much. It was kind of nice to hear anyway.

  "Yeah, well, might as well. I wasn't doing anything else and really, I'm kind of the fifth wheel around here today."

  It was just true even as the others all denied it. At about five, being a normal person, his grandfather left, trying to get him to leave for dinner with them. He needed to close though, since Hiram and Jelly both had better things to be doing.

  "Hey, I know it's not exactly exciting, but why don't we order in and eat here? Odds are no one will come in and if they do we can subdue their complaints with egg rolls or ravioli."

  His grandmother hated Chinese food, which meant that they ended up with an assortment of food that featured steamed rice and lightly fried bite sized Japanese dishes. They were apparently very well done, since she seemed happy with the effort. After a few bites she explained.

  "I went down to see who was running the food here. It's a combined effort. Elth, Hsreth and Bangnoy. I'd wondered how they kept managing to do everything so perfectly. It's nearly the best possible team set up for things like this."

  Talk of the people from the food court reminded him of the present he'd promised to Merry, which got the two people sitting at the front counter with him, both eating with chopsticks, even as Zack used a fork, since he couldn't manage it left handed otherwise, to stop mid-bite and stare at him.

  His grandfather recovered first, just nodding at him, but not trying to tell him it was too much or anything.

  "I can have some cards run up for it. For everyone that works at Westfield?"

  It didn't take long for them to come up with the basic outline for what he wanted, which was basically just letting people that wanted a trip home to come in and schedule it, though they needed to work out the specifics on a one by one basis. He realized that some of the places might be a little hard to find, but as long as it was along a node somewhere, he could do it, he thought.

  They lingered over the food a bit, so that they were just cleaning up at about seven. No one had come in and other than the fact that they had to clean up some dropped food around where he'd been sitting, the place was clean and tidy looking. After they left he just sat for a while, listening to the music coming from the speakers on the wall. It was an instrumental piece that had some great power chords. He closed his eyes for a few seconds to listen to it, jumping when he opened his eyes to find both Ni
kki and Bey standing in front of him.

  "Friend Zack!" The enthusiastic little Vampire beamed at him with a smile that got one in return. "We are closing in on Lazar the fiend, even as we speak. We found that he was near this area, so wished to inform you, lest he try to harm you again. We've moved his young army off to the forest, at a compound we hold in this area. It has its own lake and several small streams. You should go there sometime in the summer months, when you vacation."

  For some reason Nikki had to smother a laugh, hiding it behind her left hand. When she had control of herself, Bey glaring a little at her, she explained.

  "It really is lovely. Bey had just been suggesting that we give it to you and he wants to see if you'd like it. It used to be a summer camp, back in the fifties. It was a front for a blood farm. People would pay to have their kids taken away for three months and used as juice boxes by the Vamps that ran it. It was shut down after one of the campers died, while canoeing. It was kind of a sordid affair, which was covered up. I think one of the other campers killed the boy, to tell the truth. Held him under for some reason."

  That didn't bother Zack at all, but he didn't think he really had a use for a summer camp himself. Still if he could go camping there, that might be neat. He'd gone before, but not very often, not since he'd left home a few years before. There hadn't been enough money for it, or people to go with. Troy might go, but they needed a group, or it just wouldn't be any fun.