Twenty-six

I called Skella and she agreed to come to the apartment. She said she would get here as quick as lightning once she walked over to the cave she kept the mirrors in—her little subway stop through the Sideways. It had taken me about thirty minutes to drive down to Kent, a drive I would be happy to never make again, frankly.

Traffic was not getting any better on the Eastside. We needed to find a place north, way north. I was thinking Marysville or the like. Maybe I’d start looking for a realtor. It was past time. Besides, living above a gun store had its charms, but the place was feeling less like home every time I walked through the door.

I had my gear, including Gram, stacked on the dining table, and I was stretching. I was a little stiff from not working out and a lot grumbly. Nothing food wouldn’t cure.

Of course, Skella only had to step through a mirror. She’d stopped to pick up Chinese takeout, which very likely made me love her more than before. I took that as a good opportunity to get down a couple of glasses of water, paper towels, and plates. I was afraid to open the fridge after all the time away.

“Thanks for calling me,” she said, pulling a pair of chopsticks from their paper wrapper and snapping them apart. I mimicked her and we both sat there rubbing our chopsticks together, worrying off the splinters.

“Unun is becoming despondent,” she said, sliding a box of steamed dumplings my way and nabbing the box of mu shu pork. “I keep telling her that Gletts will come home when he’s ready, but she’s losing hope.”

“How much longer can his body stay alive without his spirit being there?” I asked.

She shrugged. “There are signs that he’s beginning to fail now. He’s the last of the fallen in the great healing hall. The others have either passed on, or recovered enough to return to their families.” She shoveled a mass of pork into her mouth and paused to chew.

“I thought he was in some sort of stasis,” I said. “While he’s out wandering the spirit world.”

She drank half her water, wiped her mouth on her sleeve and grabbed a dumpling out of the box in front of me.

I dumped most of the remaining pork on my plate and sat back, watching her. I wanted to tell her about talking to Gletts, but I wanted to see if she’d tell me about her dreams first.

“Tell me about your sudden interest in Bellingham,” I said scooping rice into my face.

Skella shrugged, began digging the last vestiges of rice out of the take-out container.

“I was thinking about going to college. Learning new stuff, you know?”

“That’s cool. It’s a good school.” I watched her, waiting for some other reason.

“You’ve met some new folks, what did you call them? Hamsters?”

She laughed. “Yeah, Bellinghamsters, ya know? It’s punny.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “Great. Folks your age?”

She shrugged again. “Either in college or just out. They’ve got some strange ideas about the world, but they’re pretty cool.”

“College kids are all mostly strange,” I agreed. “But what made you go down there instead of one of the Vancouver schools?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

I wasn’t sure why I wanted her to broach the subject first, but that was failing, so I jumped in. “I spoke with Gletts.”

Her chopsticks clattered to the floor followed by the mostly empty takeout carton. Tiny grains of rice and bits of pork scattered across the floor.

“You what?” She leaned forward in her chair, reaching across the coffee table toward me. “Where? How?”

“Here, actually.” I stood, waved her to follow. She scrambled out of her chair, kicking the rice container across the room to bounce off the bar that divided the dining area from the kitchen. “Careful there,” I said, smiling.

“Right, sorry.” She composed herself and followed me into the bedroom. I pointed to the mirror hanging there.

“I came by this morning to pick up a few things for Jai Li and me when I heard him calling to me.”

She went over and touched the mirror causing the surface to shimmer like water, rolling back and forth in the frame.

“Gletts?” she asked, looking in the mirror like a window. “Gletts, where are you?”

He didn’t appear, not that I really thought he would. “Sorry,” I said when she stepped back dejectedly.

“That’s twice you’ve seen him,” she said, leaning against the wall, staring into the mirror.

Scenes flashed by at her touch. Black Briar, Monkey Shines, the bathrooms at the driving range near her home in Stanley park, on and on, faster and faster, like she was riffling the pages of a book.

“He said he’s been coming to you as well,” I said, quietly, placing my hand on her shoulder. “Told me he’s been talking to you in your dreams.”

She stiffened for a moment, then let her shoulders slump. “So those are real?” she asked, turning to me. Tears streaked her face. “I even went to Bellingham in the hopes they were real, but I haven’t found what he’s looking for. He scares me sometimes,” she said, taking a deep breath. “He sounds so desperate; like he’s running out of time.”

“Isn’t he?”

She turned back to the mirror and continued flipping the mirror from place to place.

“He was really happy,” I said. “Said that he’d found a way home, back to Álfheim.”

“Could be,” she said, shrugging. “Or he could be delusional. He’s been away from his body a long time. There is no way of telling if he’s lost his mind or not.”

Good point, that. But I didn’t think so. “He seemed lucid to me, even managed to get a comment in about my panties.”

She barked a laugh then, wiped her face with one hand, and turned away from the mirror, smiling. “He’s such a boy.”

I smiled back. “Always. So, what do we do? How do we proceed here?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “There’s something about the place my friends live—Sprocket and Dante. It’s a boarding house. The place is amazing. I’ve been there dozens of time. It’s safe, homey. But there is a power there. Something I can’t define.”

“Could it be the portal Gletts is looking for?”

She shook her head. “Not that I’ve been able to figure out. I’ve checked all the mirrors, snuck into all the rooms. Really the only thing odd is the woman who runs the place—an odd duck named Mimi who’s obsessed with karaoke.”

“She sounds charming.” I hated karaoke. Made my head hurt. Horrified me, really. Being up there with all those people staring at you. I shivered.

“All the Hamsters hang out over there,” she continued, ignoring my comment. “It’s a cool place. But I haven’t found anything out of the ordinary. I’m not sure it’s the place, but it’s close. I can feel it.”

“Maybe when Katie’s better we’ll head north and check it out.”

She smiled big at that, changing her face from sullen and pinched to open and pretty. I bet without all the heavy, dark makeup she’d be cute. Not that I was into changing people’s appearances. God knows I’d had enough of that as a kid.

She passed her hand over the mirror again, returning the reflection of us and the room. “Tell him to come home,” she said, quietly, staring into her own face. “I miss him so much.”

“I told him,” I said, sliding my hand across her shoulder and giving her a squeeze. “He said finding the way to Álfheim was more important than he was.”

“He’s a fool,” she said and walked out of the room.

We cleaned up the spilt food before Skella headed home through the hallway mirror since it was tall enough to walk through. She paused and stared at the bedroom mirror for a bit first, calling to Gletts, willing him to make an appearance, to no avail.

As she stepped through the mirror and back to Vancouver, she glanced back at me and waved. “Tell him I love him,” she said, and was gone.