| |
A polite knock rang down the foyer and I wondered who it could be. Repeat customers feel right at home walking into the No Spell, but we're living on the Other Side, and if you step across a threshold without letting your host ascertain if you are a good guest or a bad guest, you're liable to get a house dumped on your head.
I strode over to the door, the crinolines under my polka dot skirt swishing, and opened the door. Standing before me was the saddest, sorry sight I ever did see. He was a scrawny man in his early twenties. He wore a black leather jacket and a ratty concert t-shirt from a band called the Vetala Otherground. He was built like a scarecrow and his scraggly blond hair wasn't helping. His eyes and nose were far too big for his gaunt face, and his tight, faded jeans showed off his long, chicken legs. He made me want to feed him dinner with an extra slice of pie to get some meat on those bones.
But no matter what maternal sympathy I was feeling for him, it did not explain why he was on my doorstep.
Was this our John Doe? Would I remember him an hour from now?
"Can I help you?" I asked cautiously. After discovering our little issue with the glass girls, Ajax and I had made an executive decision to cancel all reservations, to heck with gold flow. "I'm afraid we're not letting rooms at the moment on account of... pest control problems."
"Oh! No! Sorry!" He took his hands out of his pockets and reached out in greeting. "I'm William MacKay. World Walker. Frank the Ogre sent me."
Frankly, I was shocked.
"Oh, Mr. MacKay. Forgive me. I didn't know you were coming!" I said. "And so soon!"
He waved away my apology. "For an ogre, Frank moves fast. Helps to keep the annoying calls from dissatisfied citizens from ringing his phone off the hook." He gazed at the pressed tin ceiling of the foyer. "Can I come in?"
I felt a right ninny for keeping him standing on the porch, especially with the sorts of scum walking down the street. "If you can." It was a poor man's excuse for a security system, but seeing if someone could cross a threshold without an invitation was an easy way to keep out the riffraff.
He stuck out his foot and took an exaggerated step inside. I smiled and then softly closed the door behind him, pleased he had passed the first test.
"Now that we've got that out of the way..." he commented good-naturedly. He ran his fingers through his hair, giving the sides a good feathering.
"One can never be too careful."
"Who's that?" Ajax snapped, stomping down the stairs. "We're closed! Go home!"
I motioned to my partner and apologized to William. "This is my partner, Ajax. He gets a little cranky when he's bored."
"I do not!"
"He's already polished the silver three times today."
"It needed polishing before it started pitting!"
"Thank you, Ajax!"
"And I'm going out to weed the garden!" He stormed into the office and then came storming out again in his galoshes carrying a hoe. "And don't go thinking I'm doing this because I'm in a foul mood. I'm doing it because I want to do it! And that is on me. And not you. Don't go reading into things that aren't there."
He stormed out the front door and slammed it behind him.
William gave a low whistle. "A real charmer."
"I suppose we balance each other out," I replied. I turned my attention back to William. "So..."
"Heard you had some young women trapped in an interdimensional prison of glass or something...?" He seemed like he really wanted me to tell him Frank had it all wrong.
Sadly, I couldn't do that for him. "Follow me."
I continued to chat as we walked toward the ballroom, informing him of all the features of the house – the history of when it was built, the portraits of all my dead ancestors, the plants to cuddle and the plants to avoid. I had to pull back William's finger before my flytrap gave him a nasty bite. He, evidently, was someone who enjoyed testing the facts being presented to him about boundaries.
Finally, we arrived in the ballroom as I explained, "And as if finding out guests you didn't know you had were trapped in glass, Ajax booked a haunted house for some VIGs—"
"VIGs?"
"Very important ghosts. I can't possibly keep the No Spell running under these circumstances..."
I pulled back the curtains. The girls were still there. Albeit, they had moved, but they were there. Ajax must have been trying out the glasses again. I really needed to see if I could get a second pair from that healer.
If only I could remember where she lived.
"Are they trying to spell something out for us?" William asked, squinting.
I studied it and then felt awful. "They are forming 'help' with their bodies. Oh, don't worry girls, we'll get you out of there." I reached up and pressed my hand against the glass in comfort. I have no idea if they could hear me or not, but I hoped.
William's face became thoughtful as he examined the window. It felt so good to have someone at least appear to take this seriously. He walked from one side to the other, pressing himself against the wall to get his eyes on the same plane as the pane. He crouched down, then decided that wasn't the way to diagnose this problem and grabbed a chair. He climbed up. I bit back my warning to be careful. I didn't have any magic to cushion his fall. But he just stood there with his arms folded, thinking serious thoughts. Finally, he jumped off. "Yep. You have girls in your glass."
William reached out and I could feel the air tingling around him as he felt the dimensional rift. Suddenly, he jerked back with a little yelp. "Ow!"
"What happened?" I asked with concern.
He stuck his fingertips in his mouth and then waved his hands like he had been burned. "There's a spell around it. A powerful one. Want to lift it for me?"
"Oh... I didn't put it there," I stammered, hoping that would be that.
"I thought you were a witch," he replied.
I shrugged apologetically. "Non-practicing."
"No chance you might want to start practicing?"
"It's... complicated," I stated.
He didn't give so much as a disappointed look, which made me like him even more. Instead, he just accepted it and moved on. "Well, this is a nasty piece of work. They created a pocket between the dimensions. Not many World Walkers can do that, so I'm thinking our perpetrator was a warlock. There's some nasty dark magic to get it to fold like that." William shook his head. While I could tell he didn't approve, I could also see that he was grudgingly impressed with what this person managed to do. "Any odd types hanging around?"
"A few." I shivered and rubbed my arms, as if somehow I could chase away the chill in my bones. "We know there was a man who signed himself in as 'John Doe.'"
"I could examine the signature and see if there are any remnants?" he offered.
"There's a spell on it. You'll forget what you just saw."
"Well, that's not very nice," he replied, his tone dripping with sardonic understatement. "So, we have a guy who knows what he's doing."
"And who targeted me," I replied. I rested my hands on my polka dot skirt expectantly. "I can see the wheels in your mind spinning."
"How long have you owned the No Spell Hotel?" he asked.
"It's been passed down through my matriarchal line for generations. Although, there's someone who is interested in buying."
"Right," he said. He turned and squinted at the ceiling.
I walked to his side and gazed up, trying to see what he was seeing. "I turned him down."
He held my arm, and I realized he didn't want me to look at the window for some reason. "Any chance he could be carrying a grudge?" he asked, his voice casual.
I tried to follow his lead, terrified of what he did not want me to see. "It was a nice man whose name I don't even remember, and I have not seen him since. He left me some paperwork, which is around here somewhere, and told me if I changed my mind to reach out to him, but I couldn't do that. Not with all those girls stuck in the glass."
"Good call. You'd have a wicked mess if someone busted up the glass before we got them out."
"What would happen?"
He turned back to the window and I followed. My throat became dry and I tried to swallow. The girls had rearranged themselves while we had faced the other way. Their bodies now spelled Please help! Now!
William shook his head. "All that magic released at one time? I don't exactly know, but I can take a wild guess that it won't be good."