Convergence (Winter Solstice Book 1)

by J. R. Rain

  “Hi. I’m Solstice. Please thank your parents for helping me.”

  He speaks Russian to them, and they nod, smiling at me. Rada says something else.

  “My mother asking why you in the rain and not dressed.”

  I give him a quick and mostly true story about being kidnapped and brought overseas, but I leave out the portal, the whole Atlantis thing, and make it sound like I don’t know who dragged me into the sewers. I still have manacle bruises, which help prove my story. He translates to Rada and Motya, who gasp and give me sympathetic looks.

  “Do you have a phone I could use? I don’t have any money, but I can give you a number to call collect. I’m sure he’ll accept.”

  “I will try,” says Eugene.

  I jot down Fenton’s cell phone number. “Tell him it’s Solstice Winters.”

  “You have pretty name.” He pulls an Android phone from his coat. “I have not met an elf before. I see you on the TV the other day.”

  Oh, wow. My head spins.

  “Your first fan.” Mr. Moody rubs his head on my arm. “Maybe you should give him an autograph.”

  “Quiet, you.”

  Eugene blinks at the cat.

  Mr. Moody meows.

  It takes Eugene a few minutes of speaking Russian with a woman before Fenton’s voice says, “Hello, Sol? Where the bloody hell are you?!”

  Eugene smiles and hands me his phone.

  “Fenton!” I shout, before collecting myself down to normal volume. “I’m gonna be late for work.”

  My boss laughs, manic but relieved. “Where in the name of Hades are you?”

  “I’m not sure, other than Russia. I think.”

  “Yes. Russia. In Volgograd,” says Eugene.

  I relay that to Fenton.

  “All right. Sit tight. We’ll send help.”

  Uhh. I blink. “What? We? The paper doesn’t have that kind of budget.”

  “Sol, there’s more going on here than you’ve been aware of. Relax. Can you put your host on the phone for a sec?”

  “Sure.” I hold it out to Eugene. “He wants to talk to you.”

  Fenton’s voice speaks Russian. Eugene replies in kind. He glances at his mother, asks her something. Both of his parents nod and smile at me. Eugene says, “Da,” waits a tick, and adds, “Khorosho,” before handing me back the phone.

  “All right,” says Fenton. “The people you’re with will let you stay there for a few hours until an associate of ours shows up.”

  “An associate? What am I getting into here?”

  “Our mutual friend will explain when he arrives.” Fenton sounds pleased.

  “Are my parents all right? What happened to Eva?”

  “All fine, though your parents were quite worried about your sister. They woke up and she was gone from the house. She’d been missing for almost thirty hours before you located her. I guess I understand why you weren’t answering their calls now. I’ll let them know you’re okay too. Eva’s shaken up, but she seemed more worried about you.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” I hang up and give the phone back to Eugene. “So… I wait here for a friend, no idea how long. Is there some way I can maybe help out around here to thank them?”

  I wind up helping them in the kitchen stuffing knishes and more of those cabbage rolls. All the while, Mr. Moody lays curled up asleep on a chair next to the sink.

  Various locals arrive, order food, eat, and leave. While I’m collecting dirty dishes, Eugene tells me his parents’ food is legendary in the area, and we get into a friendly discussion comparing my growing up in the US to his teenage years.

  A little after dark, a small black car rolls up and parks out front. The lone occupant, a man in his late twenties in a dark shirt and pants, walks in, looking around. He strikes me as more Italian than Russian, with a light tan and a thin mustache, a sharp nose, and thick, black eyebrows. As soon as he spots me, he smiles.

  “Guess my ride’s here.”

  “Correct. I’m Cristiano. Fenton said you made a wrong turn at Piccadilly Circus.” He hands Rada a small wad of foreign-looking money, which she initially attempts to refuse, but he insists.

  I sigh. “Yeah. One sec.” I duck back into the kitchen, and through Eugene, re-thank his parents for all their help, hug everyone, and grab the stupid, skimpy elf-girl outfit.

  “Keep the clothes,” says Eugene. “My mother does not want you to freeze.”

  After thanking them all over again, I follow Cristiano out to the car and hop in. Mr. Moody springs into my lap and curls up.

  My chauffeur doesn’t say much at all. We drive in about a half hour into a residential area and park in front of a six- or seven-story apartment building. Cristiano waves for me to follow, and leads me to a fourth-floor unit at the corner overlooking the street where we parked. It’s clean but sparse, and all the furnishings look thirty years old. A single, naked lightbulb dangles from the skeletal remains of a ceiling fan that had its soul stolen by dark forces. Mr. Moody sets about exploring the place.

  The Ritz-Carlton it ain’t.

  “So… This isn’t an airport or an embassy.”

  Cristiano smiles. He leans past a narrow, red door, flicks a switch to turn on the light inside, and gestures at the room. “Home sweet home. I’ve arranged some clothes for you.”

  “Great. Thanks, but, I can’t move to Russia.”

  “You’re not staying here long. Couple of days, maybe a week at most.” He nods for me to follow and walks into a tiny kitchen. “Tea?”

  “Sure.” I flop in a rickety chair at a table someone stole from 1950s America.

  Mr. Moody startles me leaping into my lap, and curls up.

  “I’m sure you’ve got a bunch of questions.” Cristiano runs water into a kettle and sets it on the stove. “The Spiritualist is the public face of another group. We call ourselves the Keepers of the Verge. In one incarnation or another, we have existed for centuries as a buffer between humanity and numina. There’s been far more things going on in the shadows than anyone has been aware of. With the Convergence, our mission is shifting away from one of secrecy to one of efficiency and scope. It won’t be long before the world comes to accept the existence of magic and numina. For now, we are committed to dealing with the more dangerous infiltrators, creatures that the three-letter guys aren’t equipped to handle.”

  “Wait, you’re the MIBs that grabbed me?”

  “No.” He laughs. “They were CIA, I think. Something like that. No, we’re not that big, and mostly academics, a couple of practitioners as well. You need our protection, and we need your help. Since you’re already in Volgograd… there’s something we would like your assistance with. Of course, we will be happy to provide your transportation back to the States whether you help us or not. Fenton is part of The Keepers. He’s been scouting you for quite some time.”

  I lean back, dragging a creak out of my chair, and let a long exhale flutter my lips, then flash a coy smile. “Helping you isn’t going to involve metal bikinis, chains, or anything sharp piercing my flesh, is it?”

  Cristiano stands when the kettle begins to whistle. “Metal bikini optional. Flesh piercing only if you’re careless.”

  “Would I be getting thrown out there on my own?”

  “No.” He pours boiling water into mugs before spooning loose tea into metal mesh pods, which he drops in. “I will be working with you while you’re here. That is, of course, if you agree to help us.”

  That makes me feel a little better. He looks like he could handle himself in a rough spot, he’s not bad scenery, and I’ve caught him a few times checking me out from the corner of his eye. If I can at least call home and make sure everyone’s okay, I can handle a little work-related trip. I rub the bruise on my wrist. Maybe I’ll run into a few Ordo Sanguinem Aeternam idiots on the way. Payback’s a bitch, and she’s got pointy ears.

  I say, “You’ve got yourself a deal. But, I’m going to need a phone to call home.”

  He tosses me his cell. “Bu
t of course.”

  I snatch it out of the air and grin. Something tells me we’re going to make good partners.

  https://curiosityquills.com/kindle/nascent/

  nease haunts the back of my mind. It’s always there waiting to ambush me. It pounces during the lulls of calm in idle moments, and savages my emotions when I try to sleep. Ever since I’ve been a little girl, leaving me alone in a quiet place has been a bad idea, so I tend to distract myself by doing weird things―like levitating my seventy-inch television while watching Dead Like Me.

  I’m pissed it only lasted two seasons, but it’s from 2003. I was only nine when it came out, and I didn’t discover it until college, so it’s not as if I could’ve done much about it being canceled. At least I’ve got it on DVD. Found the box set on a table at some flea market my friend Natalie insisted on going to. Who’d have thought spending four bucks would’ve been so cool? Unfortunately, my dorm mate wound up loathing the show since I played it constantly.

  I had to keep my brain busy. Silence was my enemy.

  From my first moment in the school system, I felt like I didn’t fit in. The year I turned twelve, my mother’s house burned down. That’s when I knew I didn’t fit in. No, I didn’t cause the fire, but I almost died in it. In fact, I should have. No one could explain how I made it out, and I don’t remember.

  Those ‘friend’ things everyone keep telling me about are overrated. I didn’t resonate with any of the other kids in school, and now that I’ve been accused of being an adult, I jibe even less with people outside the framework of a job. Oh, sure, I can interact with them easily enough on a professional level, just not for fun. Kids, no problem. I can get along with them.

  On a lazy Tuesday night like this, I often wind up in a half-tee and sweatpants, lying on my couch and making random things float around. It keeps my mind off that creeping unease that likes to remind me about what could go wrong. Besides, I’m too old to get into trouble now. No more slap on the wrist from the cops.

  Let me walk that back a hair. I do have one friend―Natalie. Her bell rings at the same not-quite-in-tune-with-society frequency as mine. We met in college after my Dead Like Me hating roommate demanded a transfer. Natalie moved in and went past best friend into almost-sister pretty quick.

  Overall though, most Tuesday nights wind up with me on the couch like this. Tonight’s half-tee is violet, with a black and white anime girl in chibi style dressed like a grim reaper. I set the television back down on its stand, bored. So, yeah, I’m telekinetic. Born with it, but I didn’t figure it out until a couple days after the fire. I mean, really. Whoever expects to be telekinetic? It’s not the sort of thing that happens to people. And maybe some Star Wars junkies randomly try to use it, but none of them really expect it to work.

  It’s far more common for kids to develop magical abilities.

  No such luck for me. Oh yay, I can move crap with my mind. Meh. Anyone who can wield magic attracts a cluster of gawkers. I’d much rather be left to my own devices, alone, at home, on a Tuesday night, making my TV fly around the room.

  Really.

  I sigh.

  Maybe I should get a cat.

  I move some chairs back and forth with my mind, spinning them as they glide by. A chair happened to be the first thing I ever affected with telekinesis. Said article of furniture belonged to my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Straczynzki. She wasn’t necessarily a bad teacher, but she decided to take issue with my wearing the same dress four days in a row. After the fire, I had a pretty limited wardrobe for a while, and Mom couldn’t afford to replace it. The other kids laughed at me, and when Straczynzki went to sit down, her chair flew into the wall out from under her.

  When I realized she’d broken her hip, I stopped laughing… but I still smiled.

  Screaming in the next apartment to my left seeps into my living room, loud enough to drown out Ellen Muth’s existential crisis monologue. Did I mention my apartment is on the cheap side? Yeah. Thin walls. I think her name is Tracy. She’s older than me, like almost thirty. Has a kid, too. A little brown-haired girl, but I’m not sure what her name is. Feel sorry for her havin’ to listen to her mother and this month’s asshole go three rounds every damn night. Tracy seems to have a different flavor of jackass every six weeks or thereabouts. Almost all of them like screaming. Maybe it’s her that likes screaming and she rubs off on them. It’s a little after nine, so I’ve probably got an hour before shouting advances to full-contact MMA.

  I stretch out and put my heels up on the coffee table. Pale crescents on my toenails tell me it’s time for another coat of black. I like my nails to match my hair, but I can’t really paint my fingernails anymore. Not with the job. Argh! It drives me crazy that some prig behind a desk cares what color my nails are. Like some random dude I pull out of a building is gonna complain to the department ‘oh, that woman who saved my life had color on her nails. That’s not professional.’ Sigh. I have this deep-seated need to paint them all black. It started around ten or so, and I used to have to shoplift nail polish. It’s such a triviality, I couldn’t ask my mother to waste money on it. But, I skip the fingernail decoration now. It’s hard enough getting them to take me seriously as a woman, plus the job often gets dirty and rough. No point picking a useless fight. Despite it all, I love being a firefighter. I guess you could say it’s my calling.

  I’ve been drawn to it ever since my mother’s house burned.

  It happened eleven years ago, before Mom realized she had a little bit of magical talent and decided to try writing self-help books, or more accurately how-to books for seers. At the time of the fire, she waited tables at a shithole of a greasy spoon that stayed open until two in the morning. You know what kind of babysitter a single mother can afford when they’re working as a waitress? Mine was a small television and a whole bunch of hope that nothing bad happened before she came home.

  Mom tells me I’d always been a handful. When I was tiny, it took her forever to get me to keep my clothes on. I’d climb everything I got near, open any door I could reach, try to eat anything that came close to my mouth. If I got it in my head that I wanted something, I would stop at nothing to get it, at least until the next random ‘ooh, that looks cool’ thought came along. I’m honestly surprised Mom didn’t have multiple heart attacks.

  Those news stories about a four-year-old found wandering naked two miles from their house? Yeah, that was me. Like six times.

  Reports of a seven-year-old stealing their parent’s car and driving to get ice cream? Yep. Me.

  You hear the one about a nine-year-old girl in moon boots, a panda hat, and underpants riding a skateboard down the middle lane of the Pennsylvania Turnpike at oncoming traffic? Yep. Me.

  I’d been picked up by the police more times before age thirteen than some career criminals, though I didn’t technically get arrested until fourteen. Shoplifting. When I was little, they found me in places I didn’t belong and took me home. Mom was always working. It ultimately took her begging me not to do crazy shit again because they’d take me away from her to get me to stop.

  Back to that single-mother thing. I never knew my dad. Mom never talks about him. She gets all spacy and weird whenever anyone brings him up. I figured out pretty young that the man who fathered me probably raped my mother. There’s no pictures of him anywhere. My mother’s friends claim not to have known she’d been seeing anyone, and as a kid, I never found even one item belonging to a man in our home. Maybe she’ll tell me about it someday, if she can ever get over the pain of what happened.

  I love my mom. She’s the kindest, sweetest, most patient person in the world. While I’m sure lots of kids think that about their parents, I know for a fact there isn’t a single more patient person on the planet. My mom had to deal with me as a teenager, and she didn’t kick me out, surrender me for adoption, or give up. No matter how many times she had to pick me up from the police station, she never lost her temper with me.

  ‘Course, I never
really did anything that bad. Shoplifting, graffiti, underage drinking, staying out past curfew, trespassing in condemned buildings, that sort of thing. I never stole anything someone else needed, did any real property damage, or hurt anyone. Never stole a car either, but more out of fear of punishment. I wanted to have fun, not do something that would ruin my life. What can I say? I have weak impulse control.

  Okay, back that up. I did hurt that one guy who tried to lure me into a car when I was ten. I may have looked innocent, but the second I made eye contact with him, I knew exactly what he wanted to do to me. Let’s just say it involved duct tape, a few hours of an activity no ten-year-old child should ever participate in, and ultimately, a shallow grave for yours truly. Rather than terrify me, I wound up getting highly pissed off.

  I still don’t entirely understand what happened. One second, I’m staring at him, wanting him to suffer the most painful, slow death a little kid can think of, and the next, there’s a huge explosion of blood from his nose and he slumps over the wheel. That I didn’t feel anything other than ‘good, he needed to die’ kinda freaked me out, but I kept it to myself.

  When Mom’s house caught fire two years later in 2006, I figured the universe had decided payback was in order. I can’t remember every little detail of that night, and whenever I try to, my little anxiety goblin reminds he he’s still sitting in the back of my mind. Mom had a singlewide near the back corner of a trailer park. The area had its problems: drugs, gangs, alcoholic assholes, untrained mages who practiced their magic on who or whatever they could. Anyone too poor to get into one of the academies had to work stuff out for themselves.

  Anyway, after the perv in the car, I kinda wound up ‘patrolling’ my trailer park. I didn’t care about the drugs or gangs; mostly, I wanted to make sure no more strange cars or vans came rolling around in search of poor children no one would miss. Fortunately, I never did need to ‘nose-explode’ anyone else.