I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy when I entered my house, Lily and Simon in tow, only to find Ben and Terri seated on the floor, the furniture pushed back to the walls. They sat across from each other inside a circle of salt, a small mountain of it so it wouldn’t simply seep into the carpet. Small white candles sat burning in front of them along with three others placed at intervals that would create the points of a star inside the circle. Next to the candles were small trinkets that I realized were meant to be symbolic representations of the five of us.
“This isn’t a tracking spell,” I said, coming to a halt outside the circle. Lily and Simon moved to stand on either side of me. “What are you doing?” I asked Ben.
He smiled up at me, creases settling in familiar patterns across his face. “We’ve got one thing to do before we start the tracking spell. And since Terri’s here I figured I’d teach her how to do it in case you need to use it again when I’m not around.” He waved the three of us to come forward. “This is a ritual summoning, but instead of raising something we’re contacting someone.” He looked over to Terri. “Think of this as a conference call with magic and no long-distance bill. Take your seats please,” he said to us without looking up. “I trust you won’t have trouble figuring out where your places are.”
After hanging my coat up in the hall closet, I stripped off my gun and the knife on my belt and placed them in the small desk that was now next to the front window. I stepped over the line of salt and looked around. At the head of the star, the spot pointing north, there were a pair of glasses that I knew instinctively were meant for me even though I didn’t wear glasses. I sat down and crossed my legs. Picking up the frames, I looked at Ben and arched an eyebrow.
“For my purposes here as an instructor, I’m showing Terri how to use a focus for each person.” Turning to her, he continued. “They don’t have to be an article of clothing or something the person owns; it just has to suit your image of the person. For Frank I’ve chosen glasses because he’s a psychic and has the ability to see things more clearly than the rest of us.” Lily giggled then, but Ben ignored her and pressed on. “For Simon I’ve chosen to use a shark’s tooth for obvious reasons.”
Simon held the tooth between a thumb and forefinger studying it. “Cute,” he said, and held it up to one of his now extended fangs. “Your sense of humor hasn’t improved since Frank and I first met you,” he said, but smiled despite himself.
“For me,” Ben continued, holding up a small fragment of wood, “I simply used a sliver of wood from my staff. Lily I gave an olive branch for the possibility of peace she brings with her.”
Holding the branch to her nose, Lily sniffed lightly and looked at Ben. “Laced with arsenic along its length.”
Ben nodded. He turned his gaze from Lily back to Terri, and with a low, serious voice said, “To represent the danger of making a deal with a devil, despite its fragile frame and seemingly benign intentions.”
Simon and I glanced at each other across the circle. He raised an eyebrow and shrugged casually.
“Clever wizard,” Lily said, setting the branch down.
I noticed then that she had left her stuffed bear outside the circle. It struck me as curious simply because I couldn’t remember a time when it had been out of her grasp. It was propped up against the couch behind her, black polished eyes shining with reflected candlelight. Perhaps it was just the Demon-girl’s affinity for the stuffed animal, but there was something about it sitting there watching us that made me nervous, as if its lifeless eyes were observing us, judging us. I shook the thought away and looked at the object that Terri was now holding.
“Okay,” she said. “I understand the reasoning behind them, but why do I need one if I’m leading the spell? And why this?” She held out the small necklace of twisted rope. A small jade sigil hung from the end of it.
Ben looked away from her for a moment as if embarrassed, then focused on the swinging piece of jade that burned like green fire when the light struck it just right. “That’s to keep the spell balanced. If everyone else has one then you have to have one. A witch I once knew used that.”
“But this is a Wiccan sigil for a priestess. I’m not a member of the religious sect.”
He waved her concerns away. “It’s as much for me as it is for you. Since I will be sharing the load of the spell I need something to connect you to, and you remind me of her.”
Something in the way he said those words, the barely concealed emotion behind them, made my arms break out in gooseflesh. I got one more brief glimpse of the jade piece before she set it back down next to the candle. I resolved to get a closer look at it, but it would have to wait until later.
Ben took a deep breath and turned to me. If I didn’t know him like I did I probably would have missed the pain written in the squint of his eyes, the set of his shoulders, but I did notice and he realized it. His face became a mask of indifference a moment later. “One thing I probably should have mentioned earlier, Frank, this is a mental communication so we need to borrow your brain for a few minutes.”
With wide eyes and a suddenly dry mouth, I asked, “Excuse me?”
He smirked. “We need you to be the mental focus for this. Our contact can reach out, but the distance between us is too great for him to establish a solid presence here, so I need you to be our anchor, our circuit board if you will.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Terri and I will do all of the heavy lifting, you just have to imagine a place where we can hold our meeting.”
Wiping away the sweat that suddenly beaded my forehead, I looked over at Lily and then to Ben. “Letting a Demon into my house is one thing, but inviting it into my head? That’s insane.”
Lily turned to look outside the circle. “I think he’s scared of us, Mr. Bear.” I looked at her silent companion, not expecting it to answer, yet worried it would. Had it moved its head? The light didn’t seem to be reflecting from its eyes like it was earlier. My nerves were suddenly shot and I was getting paranoid.
“She’s bound by her contract, Frank. She can’t posses you or harm you in any way,” Ben said. “And our friend on the other end of this connection can make sure she doesn’t wander around where she’s not wanted.”
Terri spoke then, “Who are we trying to contact anyway?”
“One of our bosses on the Supernatural Enforcement Committee. I’ll let him introduce himself.” Ben leveled a serious, measuring gaze on me. “That is if you’ll agree to it.” He spread his hands as if weighing something in each of them. “This isn’t something I can order you to do, Frank. You have to allow us in.”
I looked around at the group before me. Ben with his stoic visage, as if he could wait forever for my answer, even though I knew he was impatient to start the spell; Lily sitting as still and peaceful as an unseen werewolf in the middle of a group of lambs; Simon who had been content staying quiet through most of the proceedings, watching the war of emotions storm through me but ultimately trusting in my judgment as to how to proceed. And Terri, the worry written plainly on her face. Ben had obviously left out some things when he told her about how this would happen. She wanted to be a part of this, to live this life, but perhaps now she was wondering if she had made the right choice. If I refused to do this how would she react? What would she think of me?
I met Ben’s stare and nodded.
He smiled that familiar paternal smile. “Let’s begin, shall we?”
Terri gave me a strained smile. “If everyone would please close their eyes and place a hand on their respective totems.” Everyone did as they were told. “Frank, I need you to visualize a place for us. It can be anything you imagine. Will it into being in your mind’s eye and I’ll do the rest.” Her voice faded out as I concentrated on creating something appropriate, something safe. I was coming up blank. Terri’s voice came to me as the faintest of whispers as she chanted her spell, Ben adding his rumbling voice to the effort occasionally. My mind began to cloud with the ebb and flow
of the magic. Still nothing came to me. My house, where we were currently seated back in reality, no longer felt safe because of the Demon seated across from me. Howlerz was being run by an outsider until Eric returned, and STS headquarters had been attacked by a Demon trying to kill me and Lily. Nowhere felt safe for me anymore. The spell was trying to take hold but my brain balked at its attempts, knowing that anyplace that I made appear would in actuality be safer than its real-life counterpart, yet still not trusting it.
There was no place left on Earth that I felt secure and in control. It was a horrifying realization, and it also gave me the perfect idea.
The magic thrust into us as I provided the final element to the spell. My body took on a weightlessness as my consciousness was pulled free and brought to a new place. Then there was a dropping sensation, as if we had been on a boat cresting a large wave and now were falling back to the sea. Terri and Ben’s chanting fell away, the spell completed and self-sustaining. I opened my eyes and glanced around, a smile curving my lips as I did. It was perfect.
“My God,” Terri whispered. Lily whistled appreciatively.
Ben leaned over and patted me on the shoulder. “I was beginning to wonder if you were having second thoughts about this, but now I see why it took longer than I expected.”
We both pushed ourselves up, putting first our hands and then our knees on the gray dust-covered rock. I grabbed some of the loose debris off the ground, studied it for a moment, and then allowed it to sift between my fingers, the granules spreading and floating majestically in the lighter gravity. Free of our own corporeal bodies, the five of us were completely without weight, but we wouldn’t go spinning off into space either. Nothing could happen here unless I willed it to.
It was as barren a place as could be conceived of, and the only place where I felt in control—both consciously and otherwise. What that said about me I didn’t even want to think about. Everyone began walking around, trying to get a better feel of the place I imagined. But how does one adjust to suddenly finding themselves on the moon? The gray silt puffed out under my steps as I walked towards Terri, the environment mimicking what I believed would happen if we were here physically. I looked back to see neat footprints behind me that would last forever if nothing disturbed them. The normally airless void of space was filled with what I brought with us from my house, thus it was a nice toasty seventy degrees on this part of the moon. Off to my right about two miles away was a large crater, the edge raised above the horizon like puffed up scar tissue. The distant memory of a meteor impact.
“It’s beautiful,” Terri said as I came up next to her. She was staring at the earth, which hung above us filling the sky. A blue ball with tracks of green and brown, and swathed in bands of white. It was entirely possible that it was supposed to be smaller or larger, but I was going off of images I had seen on TV.
“This is what happens when you watch too many documentaries in your spare time,” I quipped. We stood there and watched our world revolve slowly, neither of us speaking for a time, before Terri wiped at the corners of her eyes. “Are you alright?”
She sniffed. “I’m fine. It’s just…” She let the thought trail off and turned back towards the earth.
Simon came up behind us, his shoes crunching on the pulverized stone. “Our guest is about to arrive.”
“Thanks,” I said, turning to him. “Could you give us one more minute?”
“Sure,” he said, and turned to leave.
I turned back to Terri. “What were you going to say?” I prompted as gently as I could.
“I don’t know if Ben knew what he was asking of you to bring us here.”
“What do you mean? It’s not like I actually brought us to the moon. It’s just an incredibly elaborate illusion, right?” I smiled trying to break her out of her funk and failing miserably as she frowned back at me. “I mean we haven’t died of asphyxiation or frozen from hard vacuum, so that’s a plus. Besides, in the years that I’ve known Ben I’ve come to find that he almost always knows exactly what he’s doing. Just ask him, he’ll tell you how full of knowledge he is.”
“That’s what worries me,” she stated.
The smile I had been forcing finally slipped free. “You lost me.”
“Maybe he didn’t think I knew,” she mumbled. Before I could say anything, she continued on. “This spell we’re doing, using your mind as a focus, it requires you to give it form, substance. You’re right in that this is just an illusion, but like the totems Ben gave us it’s also a representation.” She paused for a moment to allow that to sink in. “For the spell to take shape properly it has to be something the focus is comfortable with. Some people would find themselves in the house they grew up in or another place where they have fond memories: a park, a beach, a library. Then the subconscious fills in all the little details that you didn’t know you wanted: your parents having dinner at the table, a garden of roses out front, or your first love walking on that beach.” She motioned to encompass the moonscape around us. “This is what your mind created for you. The five of us are the only ones here, and we’re not really here at all.” Reaching down, she scooped a handful of debris and held it out to me. “You see the whole of humanity across the void of empty space and walk on a planet of ashes.” She let the dust sift lazily back to the surface. “Nothing can grow here. Ever. Every crater on the surface of this place is a metaphor for some wound your psyche has taken, and there are thousands of them. I can feel them like hot needles in my skin.” Her lip quivered as she looked at me with wet eyes. “What happened to you to cause this?”
She waited for an answer, but I was at a loss for words. She had spoken aloud what I had feared was true for a long time. There was nothing I could say that she would understand or except, so I stayed silent and willed my pounding heart and roiling emotions back under control. It was an intense battle, but I had fought it before and would fight it again. The only difference this time was that I was staring into Terri’s eyes. It nearly broke me to do it. I looked away from her, toward the blue globe that hung in the distance. The streaks of clouds that had looked so much like cotton minutes ago had now coalesced into two tight spirals over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Flashes of lightning ripped through the newly formed hurricanes. So that’s what my mind did with repressed anger and frustration. I wondered if this was what God felt like on a bad day.
Not wanting to face any of this anymore, I said, “We should go,” and walked away.
She reached out for me, brushing a hand against my arm. “Frank, I’m sorry!” she called and started to weep openly. I almost stopped, my legs going weak at the sound, but I forced myself to keep moving forward, to not look back.
And as I moved to rejoin the group that stood a hundred yards off, I couldn’t help but wonder, not for the first time, what was wrong with me?
* * *
“My name is Jae Kwon,” the man stated without moving his lips. He stood facing the half-circle formed by Terri, Ben, Lily, Simon, and myself. He was a small elderly man who leaned heavily on a black, silver-tipped cane. I suppose I didn’t know what I had thought a council member should look like, but when you’re dealing with a group of the most powerful paras in the world you have certain expectations. All in all the bald Asian man filled none of those. Then again, that was probably how he had survived so long. “It is a pleasure to meet you all,” he said, moving his lips only to smile.
“Can you speak out loud, Jae?” Ben asked. “I’m used to it, but no one else here knows your proclivity for telepathy.”
“Of course,” Jae said, this time speaking aloud. “How rude of me. Thank you for reminding me of my manners. It’s been a long time since I’ve met new people.”
He shambled forward, his cane pounding shallow holes in the ground, and greeted each one of us in turn with a handshake starting with Terri. As he made his way down the line that ended with me, he spoke a few words to each person. While he did this I mentally prepared to meet the man who represented my ra
ce on the Council. Psychics were a small percentage of the paranormal races and were often overlooked when it came to humanity in general and the media in particular. We were human except for a couple of overactive parts of the brain. We didn’t have fangs or turn furry or wield earth-shattering magic. It was easy for the public at large to forget about us, and the Inquisition played a large part in keeping it that way. They liked the fact that we could move unmolested through human areas without setting off alarm bells. We made good spies, and that was how my people made their impact on the Vampire War. No one knew how General Briggs had come to find the exact location of the three ancient vampires who were manipulating the war from their lair in southern France, but rumors abounded about a secret cabal of psychics who had been aiding the military in secret. I often wondered if they knew that the General would disobey his commanders and launch a nuclear strike. Would they still have told him if they knew about all of the innocent people that would die in that atomic fire?
He stopped in front of me and extended his hand. Snapping out of my reverie, I shook it and immediately felt his intrusion into my mind. Not in the benign way that Terri and the rest were here, but a definitive push of his powers against my consciousness. My mind responded immediately by closing off access as soon as I knew what was happening. I could feel thousands of doors being slammed and barred shut as I fought to keep him out. A low buzzing sound filled my ears as I began to push back.
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