Chapter Thirteen
“Okay, but who stole the e’s from the Scrabble sets?”
A derisive snort broke the silence.
“The continued existence of life as we know it may depend on you,” Raphe said, disdain dripping from his words, “and that’s your question?”
Josie flushed. “It’s—people kept bringing it up during the tenants’ meeting, so I thought…never mind.”
The vampire rolled his eyes. Josie crossed her arms over her chest and returned his scowl.
“How should I know if stolen e’s are of less cosmic importance than the exit light burning out or pigeons disappearing?” she demanded.
Maybe the problem was a gas leak.
What if they were oxygen depleted and having a group hallucination?
They—Raphe, Maddy, and Naliti—sat in a semicircle of mismatched chairs in the common room. Josie sat facing the three of them like a woman accused of witchcraft brought before the Inquisition.
Pax hovered between the two “sides,” sometimes coming to rest at Josie’s shoulder, sometimes looming over his fellow…travelers? Tenants?
Co-delusioners?
“I bet Denis stole them because he’s a poor loser,” Naliti—Princess Naliti—offered.
“That is beside the point,” Maddy interjected. She wore an amethyst-colored raw silk pantsuit, black patent leather high heels, black-rimmed glasses, and a black fedora to cover her snakes.
Actual live snakes living on Maddy’s head. Snakes that if they weren’t covered turned to stone anyone who looked in Maddy’s eyes and lied. Because Maddy was a medusa. A monster!
One of the snakes poked out from beneath the brim of her hat right now, a tiny asp-like creature with yellow eyes and a flickering pink tongue.
Snakes!
“If it was Denis, I will cut off his balls,” said Raphe.
Raphe the vampire!
That the hot, sexy guy with the accent was a vampire was the easiest of all this for Josie to believe. Too bad he was so uptight. She’d made one teeny-tiny joke about sparkles, and he acted like she’d spit on him.
“The point is”—Maddy spoke louder, giving Raphe and Naliti a dirty look—”the occupants of this building are in a precarious position now we’ve been unwillingly exposed.”
Pax, who had been staring out the sliding glass doors at the back garden, swung around and put a hand to his hip as though expecting to grab something there.
A weapon?
“Number Five made the decision to tell her. How was I supposed to explain away appearing and disappearing furniture?” he asked.
“By ‘furniture,’ you mean ‘bed.’ Imagine that,” muttered Raphe. The vampire glared at Josie when he spoke and, yes, he was scary as hell, but it did nothing to diminish the hotness factor.
“Look,” Josie said. “Let’s forget the e’s.”
Raphe mouthed the word Never, but allowed Josie to continue.
“The four of you are telling me this apartment building is a sentient being traveling to different planets—”
“Not planets,” Maddy snapped.
The tenants’ association—the assistant hotel manager’s—anger at Pax when he told them about the apartment and the stuffed bear was what convinced Josie to take this seriously.
Maddy’s beauty and obvious intelligence had been intimidating enough but it was as if the truth had stripped away a mask she’d been wearing, and along with her amazing fashion sense, Maddy exuded an air of danger.
Menace.
Josie thought back to their conversation outside the clothing store the other week. Maddy never came out and said whether she and Pax were together or not.
Good God, what if a woman with snakes on her head thought Josie was moving in on her man? Did they bite? Were you turned to stone forever?
“Are you familiar with string theory and the quantum multiverse?” Maddy asked her.
“If we have to teach this human about superposition, we’ll be here all day,” Raphe complained.
“They’re not different planets, per se,” said Pax gently, once again serving as a buffer. “Think of them as different realities. In your reality there is only the slightest trace of magic. In other worlds, magic is as necessary as air.”
Pax had tried to explain the nature of Number Five Wayside Hotel and World Travel Hub in the elevator down from the sixth floor to the lobby. As he’d spoken, he’d run his palm down the wall of the elevator car, gentling his voice as though soothing an anxious toddler.
Whether it was Number Five or Josie whose anxiety he addressed, Josie couldn’t tell.
No matter how hard she tried to keep her focus on this question of reality—realities?
—that bed and what it meant kept intruding in her thoughts.
Had the bed been a product of Josie’s desires or Number Five’s?
When the bed changed shape, was that also Number Five’s doing, or had it been Pax’s idea?
Did this mean the building could read her mind?
Josie closed her eyes and wished for a dish of Abbot’s chocolate almond frozen custard, but nothing appeared.
Why a bed and not frozen custard?
“So, each of you comes from a different reality, or world,” Josie reiterated. “Princess Naliti, you are from a world where faery princesses are real.”
Naliti cocked her head. “Yes, but not only on my world. Faery princesses are real on every other world as well.”
Ungh. Josie’s brain cramped.
“On my world, vampires are the apex predators. We rule all other species with a practical mix of stunning intelligence and piss-inducing terror.” Raphe smiled with pride.
Naliti coughed into her fist something that sounded suspiciously like “bullshit.”
“If I were to visit the faery home world,” he said dryly, “I would still be the apex predator, but it would take some effort to convince them of my superiority.”
Naliti scoffed. “Because you’re a dick.”
“Yes,” Raphe agreed with false humility. “A large, impressive dick. A very carnivorous and ruthless one as well.”
“Who needs his ass kicked,” Naliti countered.
Overhead, a bank of fluorescent lights blinked in and out of existence. Pax looked at Josie with a concerned expression.
“No ass kicking,” Pax said without a hint of a smile. “This is a Wayside.”
The lights steadied themselves.
“All guests must take the Wayside Oath,” he explained. “You cannot enter a Wayside without pledging not to kill. A broken pledge results in a considerable fee.”
Josie wanted relief at this revelation, but her history taught her promises were lies waiting to happen.
“If we could get off the subject of dicks, please?” Maddy asked, then turned to Josie. “Every time a choice is made, two different possibilities come into existence. In one world, you live with Outcome A, and in a different world, all you know is Outcome B.”
“So, there are an infinite number of worlds.” Josie felt confident saying that much. In fact, she thought she’d heard something like it the few times she’d tried to watch Doctor Who.
Pax nodded.
“And these worlds are full of magic and magical beings,” Josie continued.
“Like me,” Naliti said cheerfully.
“Okay. Okay, but…” Josie groped for words to explain the uncomfortable realization forming in her brain.
“I thought humans made up constructs like faeries and vampires to explain scientific phenomena. You’re telling me they exist. Do all our constructs exist?
Like the boogeyman? And do other worlds have constructs that exist in our world?
Like, does Donald Trump eat little children if they wander into the forests by themselves on another world out there? ”
Raphe shuddered while Pax stroked his chin in thought. “I…I’ve never heard of a Donald Trump before I came to this world.”
Maddy twisted her lips into a Crimson Kiss–colored whirl as she thought. “I don’t know for sure if the myths and legends from my world exist here or somewhere else. Simply because I’ve never encountered a ksmor’ginsta doesn’t mean there isn’t a world full of them.”
A slight tremble moved through her hands as she spoke.
Yikes. “What is a ksmor’ginsta?” Josie whispered.
Maddy’s shudder was more pronounced. “Imagine Barney the dinosaur but on meth, and he eats the children after he sings to them. And lives under your bed.”
“Oh shit,” said Raphe.
“Dude,” Naliti said. “How am I supposed to get that out of my brain?”
Maddy tipped her hand as though to wave away the image she’d conjured.
“The point is, the ksmor’ginsta serves the same purpose in my world the boogeyman serves in this world.
That both exist somewhere else doesn’t change their roles.
The same for the fantasy books about elves and faeries Miss Nekesa from the library is always reading.
They can continue to bring joy in an ugly world even if elves and faeries are right now fighting a pitched battle on another plane. ”
Whoa.
So much information. So much unwelcome information.
“Back up there. Elves and faeries are enemies?”
Naliti nodded. “Oh yeah. Those guys are pains in the ass and, for the record, none of them look like Orlando Bloom. Not a one.”
An even worse thought occurred to Josie.
“Are you saying the boogeyman is real, too?” she asked. “He doesn’t live here in Number Five, does he?”
“Even if he does,” Pax tried to assure her, “the Wayside Oath will bind him. We vow not to harm another being within the walls of a Wayside.”
He projected such certainty. Josie wanted to believe him but her brain deluged her with worst-case scenarios and her heart raced. What if the boogeyman lived beneath them and thought she and Amos made too much noise? Would he file a complaint or simply jump out at them?
“You said you were in the Army of Light,” Josie said to Pax. “The boogeyman is bad, so you would have to fight him.”
“Good and bad are absolutes for simpletons,” Raphe interjected. “In your world he might be bad because he scares young children, but on his world, he might be the heroic leader of an uprising to liberate enslaved people.”
Something wasn’t making sense.
“Do you mean to say Light isn’t the same as good?” she asked them.
The four of them looked to one another before any one person answered. No one spoke for so long it got uncomfortable, and a cold sweat sprang up on Josie’s neck.