20. You’re a Mean One, Ms. Demain #2
“For what eldritch purpose do you breach the sanctity of my domain?” The air around her rippled with distortions, as if reality itself was struggling to contain her words. “Speak, you insignificant mote!”
Heart hammering in his chest, Jasper took an involuntary step backward.
He tried to remember all the advice Delilah had given him.
Don’t look directly in her eyes, but don’t look at the floor.
Focus on the earlobe. An earlobe that was, as promised, adorned with jewel-like tears, shed over something unspeakable.
“Right. Hello. I’m Jasper Hopkins, county archivist, and this is Delilah Melrose.”
“I am well acquainted with Melrose offspring.” Her clockmaker’s tools dropped to the floor with a clank, suggesting that her attention was now entirely focused on her visitors, whether they liked it or not.
(They very much did not.) “The void whispers of your maternal progenitor, suspended in a primordial abyss betwixt realities where time unspools as through the entrails of a gutted leviathan.”
Jasper blinked rapidly while his fight-or-flight response landed solidly on the latter. He’d faced down angry county commissioners, he’d gone to war with budget committees. Nothing had prepared him for the walking existential dread that was Louise Demain.
“That’s actually why we’re here,” Delilah said, and Jasper was relieved to note that her voice was impressively steady. Perhaps she’d get him out of here alive after all. “We were hoping you might have some insights about portal magic that could help us rescue my mother.”
“And why would I deign to assist in such a futile endeavor? All space between portals is the dominion of nightmares beyond your comprehension, where loathsome unnameables feast upon the dreams of the unwary. Your mother is but one lost soul among uncountable others, trapped within gnashing maws of infinity.”
“Sure...” Delilah said uncertainly. “I get that. But what do we do about it?”
“Nothing,” Louise confirmed with a sadistic glee.
“Magicians have claimed dominion over the spaces between. Much like the land upon which we stand at this very moment—once sacred hunting grounds of the proud Mashantucket people, before they were driven eastward by colonial avarice and the insatiable hunger of the pale-faced invaders.”
She paused, eyeing her visitors with a challenging stare, as if daring them to contradict her.
Jasper cleared his throat. Despite his every instinct screaming at him to agree with whatever this terrifying woman said, his professional integrity couldn’t allow such a mistake to go unchallenged.
“Actually,” he began, his gaze fixed on Louise’s ear, “these lands were historically occupied by the Schaghticoke. The Mashantucket lived along the Niantic River, a fair distance southeast of our current location.”
“Oh, Jasper...” Delilah covered her face with both hands. “You just ‘well actually’d’ a time witch.”
The temperature in the room plummeted, frost forming instantly on every surface.
The ticking of the clocks became erratic, some speeding up while others slowed to an ominous crawl.
A grandfather clock in one corner wept actual tears.
Louise stood, her eyes now glowing with an inner light that cast violet shadows across her features.
Her hair writhed like Medusa’s snakes, and Jasper was suddenly, viscerally certain that if he looked directly into those eyes, he would be instantly transformed into something unnatural and eternally suffering.
“You foolish mortal!” Her enraged breath was visible in the now-freezing air. “You, whose lifespan is but a fleeting instant in the cosmic tapestry. You, whose consciousness is confined to a single timeline like a worm trapped in a narrow tunnel of dirt?”
“No offense intended, I just... I mean... history is kind of my thing, is all.”
There was a terrible moment of silence during which Jasper genuinely believed he was about to discover what it felt like to be turned inside out while still alive. But then Louise’s expression shifted. The glow in her eyes dimmed slightly, and she tilted her head in grudging appreciation.
“Fascinating,” she said calmly, though the word still seemed to echo from multiple dimensions simultaneously. “Meatsack has a passing familiarity with his own unutterable history. How... refreshing.”
The temperature began to normalize, frost receding from the surfaces like in a time-lapse film.
Louise snapped her fingers and two spindly chairs appeared out of the air.
“Perhaps I shall entertain your queries after all. Approach and be seated, if you dare. But be warned—the knowledge you seek may unravel the very fabric of your sanity.”
Delilah shot Jasper a look as they cautiously took the offered seats. The chair beneath him felt unnervingly warm, as if it had just been occupied by someone (or something) else.
“So,” Louise said, her voice now almost conversational. “You seek knowledge of portal magic to liberate your mother. A noble yet ultimately doomed quest.”
“She was kidnapped by magicians. They’re holding her hostage until we agree to give them access to our grove.
We need to get her back; we just have to .
..” Delilah’s voice broke a little, although she was trying so hard to be strong.
“Our family basically collapsed when we lost Papa. I can’t imagine what would happen if?—”
Louise cut off Delilah’s speech with a single terrifyingly arched eyebrow. “And you believe I possess a solution to your picayune familial drama?”
“We were hoping,” Jasper ventured, “that you might know something about the spaces between portals. Is there any way to... I don’t know, to navigate them?”
Louise’s eyes glittered with malicious amusement.
“The modern witch’s understanding of portal magic is pathetically limited.
Protozoa attempting to comprehend Olympus.
Portals were not always just doorways between two points.
They were conduits of near-infinite power, capable of rending reality asunder and reshaping the cosmic order according to whim.
Entire structures could be transported across the yawning abyss of space and time.
Mountains could be moved. The very stars could be rearranged. ”
Delilah sat up straighter. “Wait... Entire structures? You mean we could potentially move something very large? Large as, say, a casino?”
Jasper turned to stare at Delilah with undisguised hunger in his eyes. My God, she’s so smart.
“Theoretically,” Louise conceded. “But such knowledge has been sealed away in the forbidden archives of antiquity, guarded by entities whose names would cause your tongue to wither and your eyes to liquefy should you attempt to speak them.”
“But that’s exactly what we need! If we could move the casino somewhere else, somewhere far away from Oak Haven, we could force the magicians to return my mother.”
Louise laughed, if you could call it that.
Better to say she emitted a sound like breaking glass and the distant screams of the damned.
“You? Master bygone arts of grand portal magic? Impossible. Such knowledge died centuries ago, along with those wise enough to comprehend the terrifying implications of their power.”
“Hold on...” Jasper felt a tingle of recognition at the back of his neck. “What about Agnes Bartlett? Would she have known these spells? I mean, I’m just spitballing obviously. But perhaps she might have documented this magic before it was lost?”
Louise’s expression shifted subtly. Was that respect in those eyes? “Agnes Bartlett was the last to wield grand portal magic. But Bartlett has been naught but dust and echoes for centuries. Her secrets died with her, scattered to the winds of oblivion.”
“Not necessarily,” Delilah argued. “My mother found a letter of hers recently. Maybe there’s other things squirreled away in the inn somewhere.”
Jasper nodded encouragingly. “Epsilon said he found all sorts of things up in the attic. Perhaps we should see what he was referring to. Or maybe the town records would have something?”
Louise abruptly stood, and when she spoke, her voice once again reached a thunderous volume. “You have become tedious to me.” She raised her hands, fingers splayed in an intricate pattern that somehow bent light into painful angles.
“Wait!” Jasper cried. “We’re not finished?—”
But it was too late. With a gesture resembling a conductor ending a particularly violent symphony, Louise sent Delilah and Jasper spinning into nothingness. His last sensation was a feeling of falling through infinite layers of reality, each one more eldritch than the last.
The last thing he heard was Louise’s voice, oddly normal and almost appreciative: “Nice-looking fella.”
Jasper’s stomach lurched as reality reassembled itself around them. He stumbled forward, grabbing on to the nearest solid object, which turned out to be a tree trunk, to steady himself.
“What just—” he began, then stopped as he realized something was very wrong.
They were no longer downtown. In fact, they weren’t in town at all.
They stood in a small clearing surrounded by dense forest. No buildings, no streets, no enchanted decorations.
Just trees stretching in every direction, their bare winter branches forming a complex lattice against the late afternoon sky.
Jasper turned in a slow circle, trying to orient himself. The only sounds were occasional chirps of brave winter birds and the soft whisper of the wind through the trees. Gone were the singing snowmen, the magical tinsel, and all traces of civilization.
“Where are we?” His voice felt unnaturally loud against the stillness. “Why would Louise teleport us to the middle of the woods?”
Delilah was staring at the angle of the sun, which hung low in the western sky, casting long shadows across the clearing. Her expression had gone from confusion to a sort of grim resignation. “Yeah no. That’s not it.”
“What do you mean? We’re clearly in some forest. Did she send us to a whole different part of the county?
” He gazed around again, searching for any landmark that might help him determine their location.
“Well, wherever we are, I suppose we should try to make our way to some sort of civilization before dark.”
Delilah just sighed and gave him a look that was equal parts pity and disbelief. “Jasper, listen to me. It’s not a question of where we are. It’s a question of when.”