A Psychic with Catitude

by P. D. Workman

  Reg looked again at herself and then at Corvin. She looked out into the hall where Jessup was still looking lost and alone, but Starlight was gazing into the room watching them intently.

  “So you think Detective Jessup can’t see us because we are in the shadow world?”

  Corvin nodded.

  “How?”

  “A jinx in that doorway. So that anyone who entered would be sent to the shadow world. Not a problem for pixies, but for someone like you or me, unable to travel voluntarily between the two worlds…”

  “So how do we get out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She waited for him to start postulating ideas, but he didn’t. “As part of this world of shades, can we still interact with things in the real world?”

  “I believe that we can, in most cases. If we want to badly enough.”

  “And Starlight can still see us.”

  Corvin looked at the cat. “So it would appear.”

  “But not Calliopia?”

  Corvin studied the girl in the bed and pursed his lips. “I really have no idea. She looks pretty out of it.”

  “Did they drug her?”

  “They might have used a potion or a spell on her. I don’t imagine she’s staying here of her own free choice.”

  Reg got close to Calliopia, again calling her name and trying to rouse her from her stupor. Callie sang a few notes, and then was silent again. The unfinished song gave Reg goosebumps. Or maybe it was just the chill of the underground cave.

  “You have a psychic connection with Callie,” Corvin reminded her. “Why don’t you use that?”

  “Oh.” Reg flushed with embarrassment. “I guess I could try.”

  She closed her eyes and reached out to Calliopia. It seemed like she was far away, even though she was right there beside Reg. Callie stirred, and Reg was able to enter her thoughts, gently probing, trying to get some reaction out of her. But Calliopia seemed unaware that she was there, either in the room or in her mind. Reg focused, and looked around at the room through Calliopia’s eyes, as she had done before.

  The room seemed empty, just Calliopia lying on the bed alone. No one in the room; nothing but shadows.

  “We’re here,” Reg told Callie firmly, trying to impress the thought on her mind. “We’re here to help you.”

  Callie looked around the room more carefully. In the middle of the floor, she saw two large beetles.

  Reg jumped and looked down, her own eyes flying open. She didn’t see anything on the floor but her own feet and Corvin’s.

  “What is it?” Corvin asked, looking amused by her reaction.

  “There are two beetles. Really big ones. A red one and a green one. Calliopia can see them, but… I can’t.”

  “Maybe that’s how we manifest to her when we’re in the shadow world.”

  “But… what kind of sense does that make? We’re not beetles. Why would we look like beetles? And how will we interact with the physical world if we’re beetles and humans at the same time?”

  “Try talking to her now that she knows we’re here.” Corvin said a few words in a language that must have been fairy, but Calliopia didn’t react. “You try it. You have a connection with her. She’s more likely to hear and understand you.”

  “Callie. We’re here to help you. We came to rescue you.”

  Reg had no idea how two beetles were supposed to rescue Calliopia from the pixies, even if they were fairly large ones. It seemed like a ridiculous prospect.

  Calliopia continued to look intently at the floor where she saw them.

  “You want to go home,” Reg said, trying to connect with Callie’s emotions.

  The fairy licked dry, chapped lips. Her mouth formed the word ‘home.’ Corvin nodded at Reg encouragingly.

  “Yes,” Reg said. “Home. Back to the castle. We’re here to take you back to your family.”

  At these words, Callie’s hopeful look faded. She closed her eyes for a moment, and a wave of despair and exhaustion washed over Reg.

  “To the fairies,” Reg said urgently, realizing that Callie was associating ‘family’ with pixies. “We want to take you home to the fairies.”

  Callie raised her eyes again.

  “Yes. Yes, hang in there. We need you to tell us… what traps and spells are here. How are they keeping you here?”

  Calliopia pushed herself up a little, leaning on her elbow and looking down at the beetles she saw on the dirt floor.

  “What tricks be this?” she whispered.

  “We are humans. Helping your parents. Trying to get you back to the fairies. Can you get up? Can we get you out of here?”

  Calliopia moved slowly, getting into a sitting position and sliding her feet off of the bed. When her feet touched the floor, her head sagged, as if it had suddenly become very heavy. Corvin instinctively took a step forward to steady her, but he jerked his hand back when he got close to her as if he’d been shocked.

  “Doesn’t feel so good, does it?” Reg asked.

  He nodded. “I’ve wondered why they don’t attack us while in their shadow form. They always reveal themselves first.” He stood near Calliopia, holding his hands out like he was warming them by a fire. She straightened up, gathering strength.

  “That’s a really handy talent,” Reg observed.

  “If you often find yourself rescuing ladies in distress,” he said dryly.

  He did seem to find himself in that position fairly regularly. Maybe Reg and Corvin needed to stop running into dangerous situations without first checking for traps. Assuming Corvin had the ability to check for magical traps. Reg didn’t think she herself did.

  Calliopia took a deeper breath and planted her feet more firmly in the dirt. She stood up. She looked around the little room.

  “How do I get out?”

  Reg gestured at the doorway. “I don’t know what spells there might be around the door, but…”

  Calliopia continued to gaze around vaguely. Reg reached out to Callie’s mind carefully, looking out through her eyes again. She hadn’t noticed before that there was no door. Just a room with four walls and beetles on the dirt floor. She directed Callie’s mind to the wall she knew the door was in.

  “Over there. I know you can’t see it, but the door is there.”

  Calliopia walked over to the wall. She reached out her hand and touched it. She was a couple of steps to the side of the doorway, so when she reached out she did touch solid wall.

  Jessup seemed to suddenly become aware of what was going on, turning her head to look at Calliopia, standing just a couple of feet away from her.

  “Well, hello! You’re up and around. Shall we see if we can get you out of here?”

  Staring at a blank rock wall, Calliopia did not see or hear her. Reg tried to guide her down to the open doorway. Calliopia shuffled along, doubtful, not seeing any changes to the solidity of the wall in front of her.

  “Right here. The door is right here.”

  Jessup watched Callie reach her hands out tentatively, feeling for the wall and finding only empty space. “That’s right,” she encouraged, even though as far as Calliopia was concerned, there was no one there.

  Callie stood there for a minute, hesitant. They all waited to see if she would take the leap of faith and walk into what appeared to her to be solid rock. Eventually, Callie did. She stepped out of the prison cell into the hallway.

  “There you go,” Jessup cheered.

  Calliopia startled at finding someone right in front of her, and threw her hands up in front of her face protectively.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry!”

  Callie lowered her hands and looked at Jessup, frowning and shaking her head.

  “Who are you?”

  “Police,” Jessup declared, pushing her jacket aside to show off her shield before remembering that she had lost it. She touched the bare place. “I’m with the police department. I’ve been looking for you, Calliopia.”


  “You were looking for me?”

  “Your parents have been very upset. They’ll be very glad to see you home safe.” Jessup touched Callie’s arm. “You’ll come with me?”

  Callie nodded hesitantly, looking around her. It was eerily quiet. Reg knew from her previous visit that there were plenty of pixies in the burrows, and it seemed beyond belief that they would leave Calliopia without guards, especially when they knew there were intruders in the tunnels.

  Jessup looked back into the empty cell.

  “What should we do?” Reg asked Corvin. “Just… walk out like this? Invisible? Will they be able to see us when we get out of here? Once we’re above ground?”

  “The shadow world doesn’t just exist underground. I don’t think it’s going to make any difference whether we’re down here or above ground. We’re still going to have to figure out how to get back to the physical world.”

  Reg felt sick. Being stuck forever as a shadow was a worse fate than when they had been trapped in a locked room facing the possibility of dying of heatstroke. To be able to see and hear everything but never participate in it…

  Corvin and Reg headed for the door to follow Jessup and Callie. Callie pointed to the ground.

  “You see them?”

  Jessup looked down at the dirt and gave a little jump. “Oh! Ugh. Yes. I see them. Yuck. They’re not… your pets or something?”

  Callie shook her head. “Helpers. Like you. Did they not come with you?”

  Jessup stared at the beetles. She looked at Starlight. “Tell me that’s not Reg and Corvin.”

  Starlight blinked at her. Jessup groaned. “No…! Well, we can’t leave them here like that.” Jessup wisely didn’t go into the room to pick them up, still following Starlight’s lead.

  Reg and Corvin left the cell, joining the others in the hallway. Reg looked at herself, hoping that having left the cell, and Calliopia no longer being incarcerated there, she would suddenly rejoin the visible world. She and Corvin looked at each other hopefully, but of course neither of them could tell if the other had become visible. Seeing as there was no reaction from Jessup and Calliopia, and they were both still staring down at the ground, Reg had to assume that they were still not appearing in their usual forms.

  “Should I pick them up?” Jessup asked, looking repulsed at the thought.

  Calliopia shook her head. “They are not real bugs.”

  “Well, no. But if we need to run, and they get trampled…”

  Callie nudged Corvin’s foot with her bare toes, deflecting to the side and unable to move him or, Reg guessed, the beetle that the two of them saw.

  “Not bugs,” Callie repeated.

  Starlight sniffed at Reg’s shoe.

  “What’s the best way to get out of here, Starlight?” Jessup asked. “You brought us in, I assume you know the best way out.”

  Calliopia hadn’t paid any attention to the cat until that point. She looked at him when Jessup addressed him, and her lips drew back in a snarl.

  “None of that,” Jessup warned, putting out her hand to caution Callie before she could try to kick Starlight or do something else to harm him. “He’s the one who helped us to find you.”

  Callie dropped the snarl and folded her arms across her chest, looking the typical pouty teenager despite all that she had just been through.

  Jessup had the fairy knife, still in the plastic evidence bag, in her hand. Calliopia frowned at it.

  “My dagger.”

  “Yes. It’s police evidence. We just thought it might come in handy here, and so far it has.”

  They started as a group down the tunnel, Starlight moving ahead to take the lead again. He sniffed at the air and moved slowly, much more cautious than he had been on the way in.

  “This isn’t right,” Jessup said anxiously. “We shouldn’t be able to just walk in and walk out.” She looked down at the beetles. “Although… it’s not like we haven’t taken our losses.”

  “Where be the piskies?” Calliopia asked.

  “Exactly.”

  They advanced through a few more passages, and then were face to face with what they had both feared and expected.

  ⋆ Chapter Twenty-Eight ⋆

  T

  he mob of pixies faced Jessup, Calliopia, and the less-visible members of the party with sneers and shouts of anger. Ruan was at the front of the group and stared at Callie with an expression of pure hatred.

  “Let us pass. Police business,” Jessup said, acting as though she expected them to part and do as she said.

  They didn’t.

  “Humans have no business here,” one of the older pixie men said.

  “We’ve been through all of that. I do have business here, it falls under the treaty. We have found what we were looking for, so we are ready to leave.”

  “Not acceptable. Leave the prisoner.”

  “Your prisoner is the subject of our investigation. So, no, you’re not keeping her.”

  “She belongs here.” It was Demelza, the pixie woman they believed to be Callie’s biological mother.

  Reg felt a twinge of guilt at the knowledge that they were taking Demelza’s child away from her, in spite of the fact that Calliopia had been changed by her life with the fairies. It wasn’t Demelza’s fault that Callie had been kidnapped and she could do nothing about the fact that she had been turned into a fairy. They had done their best to take her and claim her back, but it was too late, the girl had already turned.

  “I know she’s a fairy now,” Reg said quietly to Corvin, “but does that mean they have to be enemies? She used to be a pixie. If her parents still care about her, we can’t take Calliopia away just because she’s been changed to something else… they still have a claim on her.”

  “She can choose to come back. But she probably won’t, because if she does, the pixies will kill her.”

  Reg’s heart pounded. “Why?”

  “Why do you think she was locked in that room with no food and no water and a spell that would steal her strength if she tried to step off the bed? Not all races have the same values as we do. Even amongst humanity, there are cultures and individuals who don’t have the respect for life that we would consider to be normal. The pixies will gladly kill anyone who is not of pixie blood. And that includes a fairy child, even one of their own.”

  “That’s horrible. How could they?”

  “There are humans who kills their own children for no logical reason. And this kind of death, starving her, that’s considered merciful. Pixies won’t think twice about tearing you to pieces.”

  “She doesn’t belong here,” Jessup asserted, facing Demelza and the mob of pixies head-on, as if she didn’t know what they could do to her. “I am taking her away. If you have a problem with that, you need to come to the police station and lodge a complaint there. Then those who are in charge will take a look at the accusations.”

  “If you try to take her away from here, you will be sorry,” Ruan threatened.

  Jessup looked down at him for a few long seconds, drawing out the silence before answering. Ruan shifted, his face dark with fury at her examination.

  “You are the one who enticed her here. If the police decide to lay charges, who do you think they’re going to be against?”

  His expression didn’t betray any guilt or shame, but Reg noticed he didn’t look directly at Calliopia, either. Had he known that what he had done was wrong? Or had he just intended to get his sister back, thinking she would be part of his family again?

  “We will leave,” Calliopia asserted. “Or we will fight.”

  They seemed to be expecting this. The pixies who were looking for a fight surged forward. Reg grabbed at Corvin. “How can we do anything when we’re not on the same plane?”

  “We are,” Corvin said calmly. “They live on both planes.”

  Reg wasn’t so sure she wanted to be able to fight the pixies. But she wasn’t going to get a choice. The pixies descended on Jessup and Callie. Reg grabbed the c
losest one and tried to pull him off. He struggled with her at first, and as Jessup had warned, he was incredibly strong; but then he started thrashing in Reg’s hands, howling in pain. She remembered the blood seeping through her bandage.

  No matter how many times they bandaged it, any time she used the psychic connection to Calliopia, the wound opened up again and started to bleed freely. She let the pixie go and reached for another. As soon as he started screaming and pulling away, she grabbed another. She didn’t have to hit them. She didn’t have to use a weapon. All she needed was her own blood, tainted with Calliopia’s.

  She ripped the bandage off and tossed it to Corvin. At first, his lip turned up in disgust, but then he realized what the unorthodox weapon was worth. He smeared both of his hands with blood and held it out in front of him, swiping at anyone he could get close to.

  Jessup had attempted to hold the pixies off as she had to begin with, using her combat skills to hit and push and take the pixies down, but while they were smaller and lighter than she was, they were hardy and laughed at her attempts to hurt them. Jessup was forced to defend herself with the fairy dagger.

  Calliopia was holding her own. Her blood might have turned to fairy blood, but she had the hardy body of a pixie. Fed by fairies, she was taller than any of her former family and had a longer reach. As with Reg, they had to be careful of cutting her, because her blood was another weapon against them.

  For a few minutes, all Reg could think about was protecting her friends and herself from the pixie attack. There were a lot of pixies, but Reg and Corvin didn’t have to do much to fend them off with the fairy blood, and the hall started to clear. Reg yelled and whooped.

  “You’d better run! You’d better!”

  Eventually, there were only a few attackers left. They held them at bay. Reg could see that the Rosdews were among the pixies still hanging on, and felt sorry both for them and for Callie. It wasn’t fair that they had lost their daughter. It wasn’t something that they could have done anything to prevent.

  “It’s over, Demelza. She’s not yours anymore. Let us take her out of here where you don’t have to think about her anymore. You can go on to other things, spoil Ruan and get him married and have baby pixies. Callie is never going to bring you anything.”