Into the Fire Page 14

  Staring, the newcomer smiled at me. My legs actually turned to rubber. Those eyes, that smile, they were the kind a woman would happily stare at for the rest of her life.

  However, the ill-fitting brown suit with dull, wide pinstripes, and large bowler hat? Um. No. The suit jacket and pants were both too short for him, sleeves ending midway between elbow and wrist, while the pants ended between knee and ankle. The hat, several sizes too big, covered the whole top of his head down to his eyebrows. In his right hand he held a lantern maybe three inches tall and half as wide. It gave off a soft glow, dimming as he worked a crank on the side to close the little shutters against the glass. He let it go and it swung to his hip, attached by a tiny gold chain to the waistband of his pants.

  As odd as a strange, beautiful man stepping through a door I knew firsthand opened to a solid wall of stone might be, seeing him standing there in a too-small suit and ridiculously large hat just made me giggle. In fact, I couldn’t seem to stop giggling.

  “Ronan,” Mayfair said without turning. “Wonderful timing. Meet Sam. She’s weird.”

  “Ah,” Ronan’s face lit up, and my heart fluttered in my chest.

  What the hell was wrong with me? Before I could figure it out, Ronan closed the distance between us. Taking my hand in a hand Dwarfing my own, he shook it fiercely. His skin was cool, smooth, and soft as silk. A fan of the double handshake, where one hand cups beneath yours while the other covers it, he continued to shake my hand. Vigorously. For a second, my hands tingled, and it moved up my arms and …

  I pulled my hands free and swallowed.

  “Sam,” said Mayfair. “Meet Ronan. He, too, is weird.”

  “Ah, hi.” I said it a little more breathless than I intended.

  “Hello! So glad to finally meet you.” His voice was creamy like velvet.

  My face flushed, and I had to turn away to try and compose myself. This was worse than middle school. My brain had a fog spreading over it. Breathe, Kane; just breathe. He is not that beautiful.

  I mumbled something incoherent.

  “He has an odd effect on some people,” Mayfair whispered into my ear, causing me to jump. “It takes a little time to get used to him.”

  When had Mayfair come into the room? And why did he look so damned amused?

  Wait. He’d been here all along, and … “He came through the door.”

  “Yes,” they both said.

  “The door that doesn’t go anywhere.”

  “Yes.” Again in stereo.

  I brushed past Ronan to open the door. Same stone blocks I’d seen previously. They looked real enough, so I pressed my hands against one, testing. Solid as a rock, no pun intended. Putting my shoulder against it, I tried harder. Didn’t budge. I took the time to slap, push, and shoulder every stone in the frame one by one. All solid. Was there some sort of pattern, like unlocking a puzzle? They did it in that Harry Potter movie.

  I heard Ronan whisper, “What is she doing?”

  “Trying to figure out how you came in through a solid wall,” Mayfair replied.

  “Oh. You have not covered Dwarf magic yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Mayfair said.

  I turned around. “You are not telling me this guy is a Dwarf!”

  Ronan’s jaw hit the floor. “Of course I am not a Dwarf. What a ridiculous thing to suggest.” He smiled brightly. “I am an elf.”

  * * *

  “Timmon and I faced each other across the battlefield,” Ronan said in a hushed, serious voice as he began telling his story a few minutes later. “Neither knew who would prove the victor, yet both held no illusions as to what the battle would bring.”

  Mayfair snatched the tiny lamp from Ronan’s hand and held it between us. “He won it on a bet from a Dwarf during a game of chance. It lets him walk through solid rock.” He dropped it to dangle at Ronan’s hip.

  For his part, Ronan couldn’t have been more hurt by this interruption. “Jack! You must build up to these things, not blurt them out.” To me he said, “These lamps are very rare. My good friend Timmon was beside himself to have lost it to me. Dwarves use them to hunt for veins of ore in rock.”

  “I see,” I said, even though I didn’t really see or care. If Ronan wanted to read the instruction manual for my Ford Tempo, I’d let him just to hear him speak.

  “Ingenious little invention,” Ronan said with a smile that lit up the whole wide world. “Has come in handy on more than one occasion.”

  “Why don’t you fall through the stone beneath your feet all the way to the core of the earth and out the other side?” I asked.

  Ronan blinked. “What an odd question. I have absolutely no idea.” He turned to Mayfair, who tried hard to hide a smile. “Jack?”

  “Magic,” Mayfair replied, as if that answered anything at all.

  Which brought my headache back. “Is there any whiskey left?” I asked. As if the word magic triggered it, the pressure behind my eyes came back in all its fury.

  “What’s wrong?” Mayfair asked.

  “Headache,” I answered.

  “Look what you’ve done,” Mayfair said to Ronan. “We talked about easing her into this. Like using the front door the way normal people do?”

  “Life is too short, Jack. Well, for you. Plus, normal is boring,” Ronan said with all the whine of a sixteen-year-old. “I have been called many things in my life, but boring has never been one of them. I can see someone calling you boring, though.”

  “Thanks,” he said. Walking over to the bench, Mayfair pulled the bottle of whiskey I’d seen the day before from the drawer. A bit less alcohol swirled in the bottom while he poured a couple of glasses, downed one quickly, refilled it, and handed me the other.

  He clinked his glass with mine and said, “Ronan is an elf. Yes, they’re real. So are dwarves. Cheers.”

  The whiskey burned on the way down. The throbbing behind my eyes dulled enough I could almost forget about it. Almost.

  “How do you put magic into something like the lantern?” I asked.

  So far, I’d only seen Mayfair doing spells. Even as I thought about it, I remembered the fence around Banba and the gargoyles. They were magic too. And the creepy skull cane thing Mayfair used, did that have magic in it somehow? Did he carry it around for that reason?

  “An ancient art,” Ronan answered before Mayfair could. “My people used to put magic into all sorts of things. You must infuse the object as you make it. Weapons, shields, jewelry, these were all particularly suited to being magical objects as they had to be forged. An Artisan could not only forge the metal but call upon magic to change it, make it stronger, give it power.” He sighed. “We made too many weapons. Remember all the trouble those swords we made caused?”

  “She’s just trying to change the subject,” Mayfair said. “Before you waltzed in, Ronan, we were in the middle of a discussion about how Sam has a habit of sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Look,” I began, only to be cut off.

  “No,” Mayfair said firmly. “You are going to get yourself killed if you stay on this path. I am trying to help you here, Sam.”

  “And what do you do here?” I asked Ronan.

  “God dammit,” Mayfair muttered before taking another shot.

  “Many things,” Ronan said with a laugh that made me think about something my mother once said about not trusting beautiful men. “It all began—”

  Mayfair talked over him. “My ancestor saved his life a thousand years ago, and he’s been watching after us ever since. He has a little cottage house on the property and likes to sneak in via his Dwarf lantern, which he practically stole from an inebriated Dwarf lamenting the breakup of his tenth—”

  “Twelfth,” Ronan corrected.

  “Twelfth marriage,” Mayfair finished. “Now, can we talk about your destructive streak?”

  “Twelfth marriage?” I sputtered. Wow. I had issues with the idea of one marriage. I couldn’t imagine twelve.

  “Jack.” Ronan
frowned. “Timmon was a grown Dwarf. He chose to make the wager. You are a terrible storyteller. It is no wonder she does not listen to you. And you really should have started at the beginning the moment you met, not waited until today. Now, give me a moment,” he said to me, then moved off into one of the darker cells. He returned with a wooden chair in each hand. Placing them in the center of the room, he offered one to me, which I took, and then he sat in the other.

  “Don’t mind me,” Mayfair muttered. “I’m only in charge around here.”

  Ronan shushed him. Turning to me, his eyes got wide. He raised his hand and cast his eyes up at the ceiling, hand slowly moving between us, up and towards the corner of the room at about a forty-five-degree angle, fingers spread. “The year was 642 AD, as your calendar recognizes it. I traveled in a strange, new land unfamiliar to my feet. Trapped here following the Great Healing, I had taken to wandering to familiarize myself with the nuanced differences between this world and my own home. I had begun my fourth millennia of such wandering when I came to a place now called Ireland—”

  “I’ll just get my own chair, shall I?” Mayfair grumbled. He thrust the whiskey bottle into my hand and disappeared into the same cell Ronan had pulled the chairs from. I splashed a little whiskey in my glass and swallowed it.

  “I still do not understand why you shoved everything into the cell in the first place!” Ronan shouted. “This is supposed to be a home. Homes have chairs.” In a conspiratorial tone, he said to me, “He never cleans, let alone declutters. This place bore a striking resemblance to a Benghar’s den just two days ago. I think he wanted to impress you. He dusted.”

  “What’s a Benghar?” I asked in a whisper.

  Ronan’s eyes went even wider than before.

  Mayfair shouted from the cell, “I haven’t covered the Great Healing yet. Nor the multiverse.”

  Ronan’s face drooped for just a moment before he gave me a wink that fluttered my heart.

  Ronan said in a loud voice, “Allow me.” He lowered his voice, eyes twinkling. “The immortal, ancient Wizards knew many things. Among them, how to travel between worlds. What they did not know is how this ripped holes in the fabric of all the universes.” He leaned forward. “The damage grew even once they ceased their traveling. Therefore, seven of their number sacrificed themselves to seal the rifts before all the universes could implode into each other, ending all existence across the multiverse. An unfortunate side effect of this process meant that I and several of my kind became stranded here on your world while many humans like yourself were trapped on mine.” He leaned back and shouted, “Took all of a minute!”

  Mayfair returned, chair in hand, and slammed it down. “We’ve been busy,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Too busy to start at the beginning?” Ronan asked, voice rising with each word.

  “Yes,” Mayfair replied. He sat down and waggled his fingers in my direction. “Whiskey.”

  I poured a couple of fingers full in my glass before handing the bottle to him. Watching him down another shot, I decided then and there that the man could probably drink me under the table.

  “I will just get my own glass, shall I?” Ronan grumbled in a fairly decent approximation of Mayfair’s voice.

  I nearly giggled.

  With a huff, Ronan stood and walked over to the table where Mayfair had gotten our glasses. He started digging through the drawers. Loudly. Glass clinked.

  Mayfair swallowed a generous amount of whiskey and said, “When he gets an idea in his head, he won’t be deterred. Sound like anybody you know?”

  “What’s a multiverse?” I asked instead of taking the bait.

  “Goes like this,” Mayfair said. “There is not just one universe, but an infinite number. Star Trek called them dimensions. Each one different from the next. Maybe there’s one where the dinosaurs never died out, or humans never evolved, or the Earth was too close to the sun and life never formed here.”

  “Or where elves were born,” Ronan interjected as he returned to his chair. He carried a mason jar in his hand, which he held out for Mayfair to fill.

  “That jar held red clover to the rim,” Mayfair said.

  “I piled it neatly on the counter,” Ronan said, shaking the jar.

  Mayfair obliged him with three fingers of whiskey.

  Ronan sipped the whiskey and took up the story, “Where I grew up, there were no humans, not for a very, very long time. Eventually they did appear, along with dwarves, dragons, trolls … the list is very long. Ours is a crowded world, all things considered.”

  “Some races evolved there,” said Mayfair. “Just as we evolved here. Others began crossing from one world to the next without knowing what they were doing.”

  “And,” said Ronan, “once on another world, many couldn’t find their way back.” He raised his mason jar in a toast. “To all lost travelers! May they find a place of safety to sleep in, and a warm meal!”

  Mayfair and I clinked glasses with the elf and downed our whiskey. Another splash in each glass. I could really feel the buzz growing. My headache droned like a static hum in my ear.

  “Natural connections existed between the worlds,” said Mayfair. “These pathways formed over the millennia as a place on one world became synced with its counterpart on another. Like the ebb and flow of ocean tides, these links moved back and forth, gaining and losing their synchronicity, which is how people got trapped.”

  “You hardly knew one by sight alone,” Ronan offered. He pointed to the door he’d come through earlier. “No door, for example. I remember a path in the form of a very large oak tree. Nothing about it said one should be cautious. In fact, walk around it left to right, nothing happened. Walk right to left, though, and you found your feet on foreign ground. Most disconcerting, I can tell you.”

  “A stone arch?” I asked.

  Ronan slapped his knee. “A most famous path, Samantha. The only one to Avalon from this world. Many were saddened by its destruction.”

  “How do you know about Avalon?” Mayfair asked.

  “One of Nevil’s books,” I replied.

  Mayfair grunted. “The paths were natural. Part of the grand plan of the creator, if you believe in that sort of thing. The artificial paths were the ones causing problems. So the Wizards did what they could to fix it.”

  “The Great Healing,” Ronan said with a smile. “Which created the Nexus point.”

  Before I could even ask, Mayfair said, “Think of the Nexus as a crossroads. In that one place, that one spot, all of reality comes together and is bound by magic. The Nexus keeps everything in balance so we never see anything like what trapped Ronan here ever again.”

  “Okay,” I said with a nod. “I have questions.”

  “Please,” said Ronan.

  “Of course you do,” said Mayfair.

  I pointed to Ronan. “You said ‘immortal Wizards’ had sacrificed themselves. Are Wizards immortal, then?” Would I outlive my family? Would I be some lonely old woman in a cave somewhere, driven mad by immortality? I don’t know why I went there in my head, but I did.

  “Nine immortal Wizards,” Ronan said. “Born of magic itself. An extension of what we understand as magic given form and sentience. Seven returned to the ether, lending their very essence to the last two, who used the power to seal the rifts and create the Nexus. And it is they who remain to this day, maintaining the balance.”

  “How do you know they’re still around?” I asked.

  “Because,” Mayfair said, emptying his glass, “the world hasn’t ended.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  So. Let me recap. There is not one world, but a bunch. More than I could count if I had to. Probably. And, somehow, magic is keeping them all from destroying each other.

  “I’m gonna need more alcohol,” I said.

  Ronan laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit!”

  Mayfair held the bottle up and frowned. “I think we’ve all had enough.” He set it down on the groun
d.

  “Do not mind Jack,” Ronan said. “He is under a lot of pressure.”

  “I’m not.” Mayfair stopped and rubbed his forehead. “We just have a lot of work to do.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Jack and I have a case.”

  “No,” Mayfair said. “You don’t have a case. You have to learn about magic.”

  “The info-dump from the elf doesn’t count?” I asked.

  “No,” Mayfair said.

  “What’s an info-dump?” asked Ronan.

  “Think about this,” I said. “I can help you. I’m a cop, born and raised. You have an investigation? Investigator standing right here.”

  “You’re sitting in a chair, Samantha,” Ronan offered.

  “The point is,” I said, “I’m on board with learning the magic because the idea of accidentally burning down my apartment complex from farting in my sleep terrifies me. But I have skills. Skills you can use.”

  “She makes several valid points,” Ronan said. “Neither you nor your father were trained as investigators, not like Samantha.”

  “Why not run your investigation like a cop would?” I asked. “I haven’t seen anything around here even remotely resembling police procedure.”

  “You want to quote me on procedure?” Mayfair laughed. He laughed, but I could see the gears moving behind his eyes.

  Time to bring this home.

  “I’m saying I haven’t seen any,” I said. “I’m a detective. I solve crimes. You have one that needs solving. Let me help.”

  “You were a detective for all of two weeks,” Mayfair said.

  Okay, true, but also not the point.

  “Jack, if I may offer another perspective?” Ronan asked.

  Mayfair nodded.

  “This case of yours,” Ronan continued. “You have been working on it for several days now.”

  “Almost a year,” Mayfair interjected.

  Ronan blinked. “A year? Are you certain?”