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Blinking, I woke up to the sensation of movement. Someone or someones had put me on a rolling platform. My guess was they borrowed a bellman's cart from the front desk. Unfortunately, I seemed to be inside some sort of a heavy bag and I couldn't see shit. Also, my dress was so big, it felt like I had been stuffed inside like a down sleeping bag in a travel sack. Who needs restraints when you've got miles of tulle holding you down? I barely had enough room to wiggle my fingers.
I we went over a bump and the temperature changed. I think we were outside. I heard some angry parrots, and then the spirit creatures who lived in the bushes chattering worriedly about something. I was hoping it was me.
I tried to keep still, to get some sense of whom had walloped me. I mean, I knew it was the shadow elves, but I hoped to figure out who exactly and where we were going before they decided to put me to sleep again.
Unfortunately, they seemed to be able to tell.
"I believe she is waking up."
"Pull the car around!" said another voice.
"Put her to sleep."
But then one said, "She may know where the one Killian is in love..."
"SILENCE!" hissed the leader.
So far I had counted five. Not my favorite number but figured I had two hands, two legs, and my head. One for each.
"The Queen will not be understanding if we have chosen poorly..."
The cart rolled to a stop. And then there was a zipping sound and light poured in.
I was able to confirm I and all my petticoats were inside a massive duffle bag. The kind pro-athletes use to carry around their crap. We were still in the hotel parking lot, albeit, hiding behind a banana plant. I saw one of the spirits rustle through the branches and run away. I hoped he was going for help.
Fortunately, we hadn't gotten too far. There were four of them, plus the getaway driver who looked like he was trying to figure out how to get out of the self-parking when you don't have a credit card. Another perfect crime ruined by civil engineering.
Blinking, I stared up at my captor. While the tree-dwelling elves of the capitol had an ethereal beauty, the shadow elves had more of a working man's vibe. Rough, calloused, and not afraid to get their hands dirty if you know what I mean. But if I let myself look a little closer, I could see the corruption on their aura. There were a few pinpricks of light still able to peek through, which is probably why they hadn't clonked me on the head again, but those pinpricks were disappearing.
"Tell me, Maggie," said the leader, coming down to my level, "is Killian's heart true to you?"
I paused for a moment, incredulous. "Wait. What?"
"Is your love strong enough that he will sacrifice himself for you?"
I started laughing. "Oh no! You got it all wrong! Killian is my partner. He's in love with..." And that's when I shut my damned mouth.
"With who, Maggie?" he hissed. "Who is worth his life if not you?"
"I don't watch people kiss and tell."
Four of the elves surrounded me and then gripped the magic rocks hanging from their necks. A bubble formed around us, like they were forming a salt circle of protection, except with their own energy. And then, excruciating pain wracked through my body.
Listen, you punch enough vampires, you are used to your body just hurting. It's part of the job description.
But this? This felt like shit. It felt like high-voltage energy was searing through my veins. It felt like a thousand shards of glass being ripped through my body. And just when I thought it was done? It started back up again.
"Speak, Maggie..." the leader said.
I was barely able to register the world. A soft breeze combed through my bangs, as if to lull me back to sleep. I focused on the elves. "Fuck you," I spat.
They weren't about to take any of my guff. "Where is she?" he asked again.
The gentle windchimes in the distance seemed to give me something to hold onto as the whole world rocked. "How did you even get over here?" I groaned, trying to distract him from his question and stop him from shocking me again. "Because even if you had enough power to come to Earth, I sure as shit know you ain't getting back to the Other Side."
And that was when I saw just a glimmer of a nervous glance between them.
"Oh, fuck. You're stranded here..." I said, swimming my way through my dress's fabric to push myself into a sitting position.
"Since the blue one is beyond our reach, we will force Killian to bargain with us to save you."
"Wait... what the fuck happened to her?" I asked, shit getting serious now. I looked over at one of the shadow elf's hands. It was swollen and bright red like it had been bit by something.
"She was surrounded by life—"
Looks like Xiaoming's little basket of deadly houseplants had done exactly what they were supposed to do. Our friend truly did care enough to send the very best.
"Tell us where she is!" demanded the leader.
Another volt of pain jolted through my body. It hurt so fucking bad I was ready to tell them whatever the fuck they wanted.
They must have seen me cracking, however, because they stopped. I gasped, the air scraping my lungs like sandpaper. It felt like I was inhaling fire.
I looked at them. My hands were trapped inside the bag and I couldn't tear a hole in the boundary. They were too far away for me to open up a portal and drop them through.
Suddenly, though, there was a low, growling sound. I looked over and saw a shadow crawling through the shadows of the building. And the shadows passed over the faces of the shadow elves. In silhouette, an alligator mouth opened and closed.
"The Taniwha..." I murmured.
The elves must have woken the guardian. I fiddled with the bag and managed to get the zipper open and kick myself out. Or flounder. I sort of flopped over like a fish as I fell off the luggage cart, bag on top of me so I couldn't see what was happening. Again. Their cries were so gruesome, though, I don't think I wanted to watch. It was bad enough that I would have felt bad if they hadn't been such assholes about coming after me and mine.
But suddenly, I heard the screech of wheels. Had the getaway elf figured out how to navigate the parking lot?
In a panic, I pulled up the edge of the duffle bag.
Sitting in a pink Ford Fairlane convertible was a woman with long, wild, red hair and a scarlet ball gown with enough ruffles and floof to make a cupcake jealous. Flanking her was a black girl with a two-foot natural afro from tip-to-tip riding on a custom purple chopper with pinstripes and chrome. A black cat with blinking golden eyes sat on her shoulder and meowed at me. Behind her riding pillion was an older dwarf. Sure hoped his psychedelic neck scarf didn't get caught in the wheels.
The woman in red smoothed out her windswept tresses and reached across the bench seat to fling open the passenger door. "I'm Miss Elle Spell. Are you alive?" she asked.
"Debatable."
"Are you injured?"
"Hope not," I said.
"Then get in."
Mama always taught me not to get in cars with strangers, but the stray shadow elf had figured out his way around the tollbooth and was circling back to passenger pickup to pick up my sorry ass. Plus, leaving the cat as the getaway driver, Elle's two partners leaped from their motorcycle and lifted me off the pavement before I could even figure my way out of the duffel bag. I would have fought them a bit more, but there was an alligator-shark statue monster eating up the elves next to me and I was ready to figure out if I was among friends or foes later.
"Thank you, Precious and Ajax," Elle said as they slid me onto the seat. She jerked her head toward our company. "See if you can uninvite that guest for us, would you?"
The cat jumped back onto her mistress's shoulder as Precious gave a wicked smile. She climbed back onto her bike and revved the engine, leaving Ajax to scramble up onto the seat behind her, and then she peeled away.
"Hi...?" I said awkwardly as Elle jammed her foot onto the gas and raced out of the parking lot, tires squealing.
I looked over my shoulder and Precious and Ajax were running circles around the shadow elf's car. He would inch forward, but then he'd have to jam on his brakes to keep from hitting them and his car would stall out. Gotta learn how to ride that clutch when you're in stop-and-go traffic.
"Now, we don't have a lot of time," Elle said, glancing in the rearview mirror as the shadow elf's car finally got past and began following us. "Hold tight." She turned the wheel and fishtailed a hard right turn. I gripped the door to keep from sliding across the white bench seat.
"We're from the Other Side," she said. "We're friends of your mom and dad. And Killian, too."
"Um... okay...?" I said, not entirely sure what to make of the whole name-dropping thing. Anyone who scanned an Other Side newspaper would know I had a mom and a dad, and ran a business with a dude named Killian. I had certainly never heard of her before.
"Heard you were in a spot of trouble from Carl and Wilfred," she continued, keeping one eye on the road, one on the rearview mirror.
"The otter-man and the groundhog?" I clarified, relaxing a little more. I mean, if you can relax in a car driving 80 miles-an-hour in a 25 mile-an-hour zone. Faking a relationship with my friends and family was easy. Knowing about a talking otter and groundhog that I had just pulled out of Fairy was insider's knowledge.
"Charming gentlemen," Elle replied with a smile. But as if she could read my musings, she restated, "And, yes, I really do know your mom and dad, and Killian and I go waaay back." She put her hand on her heart in a faux swoon. "That elf, amirite?"
"I gues...?" I said, still kind of reeling over the whole random-lady-in-a-convertible- saved-me-from-the-shadow-elves-and-knows-my-family thing.
She took a hard left through four lanes of traffic. At this point, I knew if the shadow elves didn't kill me, this one totally would. She reached into a silk purse on the floorboard and handed me a bottle of potion. "This will help with that energy of yours you've depleted. You're going to need it to keep from dying the next time you open a portal. Drink up."
Obediently, I lifted it to my lips and was rewarded with a better run of energy and healing I had ever gotten from a Coke. I looked at it in wonder. "Could I get a case of this?"
"All in due time," she said with a wink. She turned into a grocery store parking lot, barely missing the official dude who was hauling back a train of carts, and popped out on the other side of the block. The shadow elf was still on our tail, but Precious and Ajax kept harassing him.
Elle didn't waste a minute. "Now, the king here is perforating the boundary to Fairy, and you tearing your portals through is not helping matters."
"Sorry? I was trying not to die."
"Glad to see you got the alligator statue—"
I blinked. How did this woman know about the alligator statue. "You mean the Taniwha?"
"Oh good! You know what it is."
"You brought it? But I thought my friend Jeff, from the studios, brought it."
"We've been setting this trap for many years, Maggie," she said.
A chill ran down my spine. "Trap?"
Suddenly, there was a floating fairy of some sort that zoomed by. In the middle of gawddamned San Diego. Its pink light glittered. I glanced back just as Precious pulled a wand from the top of her motorcycle boots and shot it outta the sky. It fell with a thud onto the seat beside me.
"The mawmets fly," Elle warned. "They're chewing their way through from Fairy."
I looked down at the corpse.
"Nice work," I shouted at our motorcycle escort.
As Precious flipped her wand through her fingers before holstering it, Elle explained with pride, "Did you know Killian made those wands for us? I told him to go into the magical arts and spell crafts after he and that queen broke up, but no one ever listens to the witches."
"Um... I'll make sure to rub in your 'I told you so' when you drop me off."
But Elle stopped me. Actually, she screeched to a stop as the light turned red, but seeing the shadow elf was closing in, flipped a U-turn, which stopped me.
However, Ajax, her dwarf friend, pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it into the convertible as we sped by going the opposite direction. It was a small sundial. "Tuck that someplace safe," she said. "It'll make sure you don't lose time in Fairy, because believe you me, you are going to be spending a LOT of time in Fairy."
"Again, not helping with the 'what the fuck is happening' creepy factor, ma'am," I said, even as I reached for it.
"I hope I have you suitably concerned," she said, "because whatever you're feeling is not even close to paranoid enough for what's going down. You need to hustle your bustle with that prophecy."
I glanced over my shoulder. Ajax and Precious had flanked the shadow elf's car and in a circus-like feat, Precious had managed to haul the elf out the driver's side window while Ajax crawled in and took control of the wheel.
"Prophecy?" I asked, watching as Precious tossed the elf over the side of the bridge into the bay below.
"The prophecy says that a World Walker will topple the mad king from his throne. You good with that?"
I shrugged. At this point I felt like I was down for anything. Who even knew what the fuck was going on anymore. "Yeah. That's sort of been a secondary goal of mine. I mean, the guy's a douche."
Miss Spell held up a delicate hand. "And beware the child born of the World Walker who is not she."
"Wait. Are you talking about my twin sister's baby?" I said leaning forward, a furrow creasing my brow. "What's wrong with the baby?"
Elle just gave me a knowing look, except I had no idea what she knew that I didn't.
"If there is something going down, why didn't my mom see this coming?" I pressed.
"Can't see your own future, m'dear, and I'm afraid this one has her woven into the fabric of it all."
"Whoa... whoa... whoa... This is a lot to drop on a girl who drops through dimensions."
Miss Spell hushed me. "The witches of the Other Side are with you. We are setting the wheels in motion to ensure your success, but you must remove King Cole from his throne." She then looked at the empty potion bottle on my lap. "Oh, and sorry to tell you but there was a little memory spell in there. You won't remember me."
Talk about your wastes of time. "So I've been taken on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride through San Diego while you've been dropping truth bombs on me, and I'm not going to remember this? Well that does fuckall to help this grand scheme of yours! Also, sidebar, don't go dosing people without their permission, witch. SERIOUS party foul."
"Don't you worry." She patted my knee like an encouraging big sister. "You'll remember the important stuff."
She screeched back into the parking lot of the resort and jerked to a stop next to where she picked me up. She reached over, opened her glove box, and pulled out a wand. She pointed it and my door flew open. Then, she blasted me and I went flying out and landed back on the luggage cart.
"Stop by my hotel sometime," she said with a smile.
Precious rode up on her bike and threw a glass bottle filled with some sort of liquid at the sidewalk in front of me. As it broke, I was overwhelmed by a purple haze.
I woke, sitting on a bellman's cart. There was an angry sounding motorcycle zipping down the road and a woman with long, red hair behind the wheel of a pink Ford Fairlane convertible driving away.
Fortunately, she hadn't spotted me. Small blessings, I guess. That said, I was feeling fantastic, and wondering how the fuck I got away from the shadow elves. They were gone.
All that remained was that towering Taniwha tiki pole.
"You better walk yourself back to poolside or some frat boys are going to come steal you," I warned him.
But as I looked closer, I realized it had changed. The alligator-shark creature was now standing on the heads of four terrified-looking elf men carved into the wood column beneath.
"What the hell..." I mused.