by Holley Trent
I want you to know this.
So, he took it all in and thanked them, even all the information he’d heard before, because they always told it in different ways.
Sometimes, it wasn’t the message itself that was elucidating, but the means in which it was delivered.
“No see you in a while, Master Claude,” Chang said. She greeted him at the portal—a typical office door, really—and bowed low. “Spirits restless. Won’t move on. Crowded here. You help clear?”
This place wasn’t quite Purgatory, but the idea was the same. It was sort of a waiting room between here and there. Most in it waited for direction. After a while, some figured out where they should be on their own and struck out en route to happiness. Others needed help. Chang was one of many “receptionists” in realm. She could move on, too, if she chose, but her happiness for the moment was in helping.
He always felt he had something heavy on his chest when he was in this place and that he needed to breathe, but that was just the energy around him. There were so many spirits milling about; some he could see, some he couldn’t. Even a medium as disciplined as him couldn’t see the weakest of them. He could hear their voices, though. The quiet whispers of every one, even if he couldn’t understand them.
Chang was strong, though. She’d be their megaphone, but right now he only wanted to speak to a couple in particular.
“I know. I’ve been busy,” he said, and fixated on a spirit trying and failing to materialize in front of him. He could feel their frustration. They had something to tell him.
“You get sick?”
“You heard?”
“Eh.” She shrugged and slipped her hands inside the sleeves of her opposite arms as if she were cold. Maybe she was. He’d never asked if spirits felt things humans did. Up until now, he’d never given it any thought. “Mathilde say so.”
“Oh.” Just like in life, his mother loved shooting the shit in death. Didn’t matter if it wasn’t her business to tell. “I don’t have a lot of time, Chang, but I can help clear away a few so they can move on from this place.”
“You need help, too,” she said, and she slipped her tiny reading glasses down her nose to peer at him over the rims.
“Can’t get anything past you, can I?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “We wait long time to help. You and Gail. Pretty girl. Good childbearing hips. You have fun, huh?” She wriggled her painted-on eyebrows.
If he were prone to blushing at all, and if he’d had a corporeal body at the moment, he likely would have been red as a tomato. He hated being so transparent in this place when in life, he was renowned for his secrecy. He’d started letting his brothers in on the more arcane aspects of his life only recently. He’d gone a long time having to keep his own counsel, and old habits were hard to break.
“I do need help. Information.”
“You help us. We help you.”
She waved over spirit after spirit, so many that he’d lost count, though he knew he wouldn’t forget their requests when he broke his trance. He couldn’t forget. Chang would make sure of it. Deep down, he knew Chang was taking advantage of him a bit for having been away so long, but he didn’t complain. There weren’t many who could do the job. Chang knew her role. He knew his.
Finally, the queue ebbed, and Chang ripped her fastidious notes from her pad and handed them over to him. “Now you.”
He rolled the papers into a tube and tucked them into his jeans. “Two requests, though I know you may not be able to help with either. First, I need to know if my nephew Ross’s mother is in this realm. I need to speak with her.”
“No. Sorry. You ask Mathilde?”
“If we haven’t found him by the next time I see her, I will. Second, could you ask if there’s anyone here associated with whoever is working with Ross? A relative or victim, maybe.”
“Don’t have to ask,” she said without hesitation. “Right beside you.”
Claude turned toward the waning energy pulse to his right—the same one from before who couldn’t get it together to communicate with him. Man or woman, he couldn’t tell. He turned to Chang. “They’re weak.”
She nodded again, a duh nod. “Too weak to raise hell.”
“How does he or she know this person?”
“She. Witch like Gail, but not held back. Knew of old ways. They took her magic. She try fight back.”
“And the person who did this is definitely the descendent of a newer god?”
“Yes. She see one like it once before, a mix. Norse, South Asian.”
“Shit.”
“Correct. She say—”
Claude didn’t hear whatever Chang was going to say because he found himself back in his body in the guest bedroom of Clarissa’s house, and Ellery was shaking him.
The jolt back to reality had him struggling to breathe or even feel sensation in his extremities. He managed to draw in a deep exhale. “What? What happened?”
“You stopped breathing.”
Oh. Of course she would have thought that. She’d probably never seen a proper trance before. He was really starting to worry that her and Gail’s ignorance were going to get them seriously harmed in the very near future.
“No. My heart rate drops precipitously when I go into trances. I breathe much less. It’s really no cause for concern unless my skin gets cold. Why are you in here? What happened?”
“Gail passed out.”
“Shit, I didn’t think the ring linked us there the same way it does here.” But of course it would. His mother had been the one to charm the damned thing. Served him right for taking her word for anything. Who knew what else that thing could do? Well, she did. He’d have to ask her. He hurried to the door. “Where is she?”
“On her bed.”
He brushed past Ellery and hurried down the hall and into the second guest room. Gail lay facedown with her limbs arranged haphazardly as if she’d been dragged there by someone who couldn’t quite bear her weight.
He sat near her waist and pushed her hair back from her eyes. Her cheek was clammy and breathing labored.
“Chéri.” He chafed her back, up and down her spine, hoping to wake her gently.
When she didn’t wake immediately, he wondered if he’d gone too far into his trance and dragged her into it. It was possible with dreams. Sometimes, Marion slipped into Charles’s. The first time it’d happened, she’d been afraid to sleep for two days after. Charles was prone to nightmares. If Claude had accidentally tugged Gail along behind him to the spiritual waiting room, she may not have realized it wasn’t just a dream. She could walk out, but she had to know she could. She wasn’t a medium, so she may not have seen the realm in the same way he did.
“Fuck,” he said, dropping his hand.
“I haven’t known you very long, but I’ve known you long enough not to like the tone of voice you just used,” Ellery said.
“Well, you’re going to like me even less after I tell you this. She is where I was, and I need to go pull her out.”
Ellery narrowed her eyes. “Do what, now?”
He rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes and exhaled. “You need remedial education, the both of you. I hope Agatha’s up to it, because I’m sure as shit not.”
“You’d better be happy I like you more than Shaun, or else I probably would have already tried to break off my foot in your ass. I don’t do well with change.”
She hadn’t seen anything yet. She’d already been sucked into the sinkhole of Mortonville, and once in, no one really escaped from it. Their lives were all changed, whether for good or bad. She’d been exposed to the underbelly of the supernatural world and all its dirty politics. Did she really think she’d be able to go back to “real life” unscathed?
She’d be silly to think it wouldn’t catch up to her again. Like attracted like, and now that she was out in the open, she’d likely attract some romantic trouble of her own.
“I’m going back in. Please don’t try to wake m
e or her, no matter what you see. I assure you, we’re both fine.”
Ellery wrung her hands.
“Trust me.”
“I can’t.”
“And you probably shouldn’t, but right now, you have no choice. If I don’t go in, who knows how long it’ll take her to find her way out? It could be minutes, or it could be days. It’s easy to lose track of time in there.”
Ellery cringed. “Days wouldn’t be good.”
“No, not for people who need to eat and drink.” He closed his eyes, preparing to enter his trance yet again, but pushed them right back open. “Ellery?”
“What? What is it?” She hurried to the bedside and leaned over her unconscious sister. She’d started shaking her when Claude grabbed Ellery’s wrists and gave her a gentle, but firm, push back from her sister.
“She’s fine, that’s not the issue. Before I go in, I need to ask you this.”
“What? Go, go! Ask it.”
“Did you speak to anyone about your abduction? Did you call anyone at work or anyone in your family?”
Her forehead furrowed. “No. I still haven’t called anyone. I got here and with everything going on and that odd nap I took, I forgot. The folks at the hospital must think I flaked on my shift.”
“Let them think it, at least for now.”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’ll be right back.” He closed his eyes yet again and concentrated on freeing himself from the physical realm.
When he opened his eyes, he was in the waiting room, but this time it was nearly empty.
“Shift change,” Mimi said from behind the desk.
“Fuck.” He laced his fingers through his hair and tugged. It would have been pointless asking where Chang went. Wherever it was, she couldn’t be called. She’d be back when it was her time. “There was a spirit here earlier. I got pulled away before I could hear the rest of what she said,” he said to Mimi, who was now studying the form of her coif’s victory roll in her compact mirror. She looked the same she did when she died, probably, with not a single dark hair out of place and not a single smudge to her fire engine red lipstick. Checking was probably a habit she’d acquired in life, just like adjusting the silk scarf around her neck. Except now, that scarf covered two 9mm holes. Guns were such lazy, cowardly weapons. Mimi would likely agree. She’d been a Brit working with the French Resistance during World War II and was assassinated by a German officer because she wouldn’t put out.
Mimi snapped her compact closed and slipped it into her purse. “Oh. Right.”
“You saw her?”
“Briefly. Like I said, shift change.”
“Is she still here?”
Mimi clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Gone, gone, gone, and seemed happy at the prospect.”
“But she wasn’t done.”
“Well, she thought she was. You may not have heard what she said, but she said it.”
“Did Chang leave a note so I wouldn’t forget?”
“Um, let’s see here.” She shuffled the scads of lined notepad pages on the desktop and squinted at Chang’s spidery script. Mimi probably hadn’t been able to read Mandarin in life, but she probably didn’t see it as Mandarin, either. They were just words, and in death, language was inconsequential. She plucked one sheet of paper out of the pile and waved it at him. “How ’bout that? She did. Wise old broad.”
“Thank God.” Claude folded it and tucked it into his pocket.
Mimi squinted. “Which god?”
“Whichever one is feeling merciful today. Listen, I need one more thing. My girl, Gail, have you seen her? I may have tugged her in accidentally.”
She tipped her head toward the door behind her. “Water cooler. Chang found her wandering around out in the mist. She told her to wait and that you’d probably be back.”
Wise old broad, indeed.
He walked around the desk, turned the knob, and nodded back at Mimi before opening the door. “Thanks.”
“Don’t be a stranger. Next time, bring one of your pretty brothers and leave him for a while. We’re low on eye candy.”
“I don’t think their wives would like that.”
She gave him the long blink treatment. “You’ve got other brothers, and most of them you don’t even like, you clod.”
“Oh yes, I forgot. I have no secrets from you all.”
Mimi shrugged. “Blame your mother. She bears the news. I merely exploit it. Bring that stocky Irish one. He’s mean. I like ’em good and mean. The last Irishman I—”
He closed the door on her words and gave the break room a quick scan. It wasn’t very big, so it didn’t take him very long. Gail sat on the armrest of the sofa with her back to the door and was turned toward a monitor. Some scene played out on the screen, and while it might have seemed like any other television, the people she watched were real. The tuner she held didn’t flip from channel to channel, but from person to person.
People she knew.
“They let you use it,” he said quietly so as not to startle her. “They must like you.”
She turned slowly, and her eyes were wide. “This is crazy. I can’t even wrap my mind around this. You come here all the time? This is part of your magic?”
He stared at the monitor for a long moment, watching Ellery watch their still forms on the bed. She paced at the bedside, wringing her hands. She really cared about her sister, and he wondered what it must have been like growing up and having that support system built in. His upbringing had been so solitary. He’d felt isolated—like a freak. People feared his mother, and it seemed many more feared him, although none knew what he was. They knew enough to guess he was an abomination, though.
“All the time would be an exaggeration,” he said finally. “I come when I feel the pull or when I have some extra time and energy. It takes a lot out of me, receiving all those messages.”
“And you always pass them on and do the things they ask?”
“They trust me to do that, and I would never intentionally breach that trust. I’m known to keep my word.”
“You’re incapable of lying, aren’t you?”
He chuckled. “Not in the same way as Mark, no. Lying rarely suits my purposes and it often requires more energy in the long run than being truthful in the first place.”
“I see.”
Now they both stared at the screen. Marion had walked into the room holding Ruby, and Ruby was kicking and screaming to get down, reaching for Claude. But he was dead still, and not reaching back.
She must have thought he didn’t want her, especially since his eyes on that end had opened. It was some involuntary reaction, but there was no way Ruby could have known that. They needed to get back.
“She likes you,” Gail said, and tapped Ruby on the screen.
“I was there when she was born. Right in that room, actually. I took a liberty I had no right to, but, thankfully, Charles and Marion forgave me for it.”
“What sort of liberty?”
“We were … well, I was afraid of what she’d be. Afraid she’d be like Ross. I can sense power even when I can’t detect the type, and she had a little. I was scared.”
“Why?”
“Because I love my brother and didn’t want to have to hurt her later if she turned out to be …”
He didn’t want to say it. Even to him, it seemed cold and callous, but it was a hard truth and he’d do what needed to be done if it meant protecting the greater good. As a young man, he hadn’t given a shit about the greater good—the greater good was everyone else’s problem. Now, he cared, because just like Gail and Ellery were being pulled into the supernatural world, he was being pulled ever more into the real one. The real world meant that his well being was tied in tight with those of the people around him.
“If she turned out to be what, Claude?”
“Dark. Unredeemable. I didn’t know what Marion was then or how the magic she had would mix with that of a demon demigod. I just knew that Ruby was an innocent an
d she should never have to struggle to control gifts she didn’t ask for.”
Ruby, on the monitor, was still squirming to get to Claude. Marion tried backing away, but Ruby tipped her head back and shrieked. If the monitor had had sound, they probably would have been hurrying to plug their ears. That little girl had some lungs.
Gail tugged at his sleeve, and when he turned to her, her expression was inscrutable. “What did you do to her?”
“We’re all born a bit dark, chéri, those of us born from demons. It’s like a seed that’s been planted, and under the right conditions, it’ll sprout. Once it does, it becomes an invasive weed that’s nearly impossible to cut back. That’s why Jason is in a panic about getting rid of his mark before it’s too late. It brings to light what’s already there, and once its roots burrow in deep, fighting it becomes half your life. Me and Charles, we always have to think twice to act once to make sure what we’re doing is the human thing and not the monster one. I just took the seed from her. I didn’t ask. I just took it.”
Gail looked down at her hands and toyed with her ring’s stone. Her lips parted, but when no words came out after a few seconds, he pressed his hand to her knee and squeezed.
“We should head back,” she said quietly.
“Yes, we should. Before Candy Corn tries to follow.”
She laughed, but it was nervous. “Will you show me how?”
He wanted to press her for the thing that was really weighing heavy on her mind, but maybe it wasn’t the time. Maybe it’d never be the time.
He took her right hand into his. “You don’t need to know how. Your magic is meant for other things. Just hold my hand, then close your eyes and keep them closed until I tell you to open them.”
