CHANCED ERASURES: PART THIRTEEN

“It’s like a handheld Mattel electronic football game,” Alice chirped. “If it was the size of a large Christmas tree.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Usa muttered, as she went to inspect the device. “As far as I knew though, this invention was supposed to allow for mass transport of items between dimensions. Not shut down travel. Can you prove otherwise?”

“We… don’t actually know how it works,” Sam admitted. “I was kind of hoping it would be better labelled. Or that you would have more information.”

Usa shook her head. “Maybe someone’s been playing you. Feeding you misinformation.”

“Maybe someone’s been playing all of us,” Thred suggested. He glanced at Alice.

“Maybe someone got getting tired of playing rugby and invented this,” Alice quipped. “Want a quarter back?”

“Usa, hold on. You mentioned this place had increasingly crazy security,” Sue reminded. “This can’t be a simple case of misinformation. I mean, you must have had some suspicions of Shay and the Council before this, otherwise why give us this chance at all.”

Usa crossed her arms. “Even so, I still have a duty here. I need proof positive.”

“You know, there’s still that rift,” Marlin spoke up. “Could we maybe deal with that first?”

[caption id=“attachment_848” align=“alignright” width=“219”] PARA
Commission by Michelle Simpson[/caption]

Para got the distinct impression that Marlin was hoping to use ‘dealing with that’ as a chance to escape Usa, but he did have a point. She moved closer to Chartreuse. “I don’t suppose you’re able to get any useful impressions?” Para murmured. In response, Chartreuse nibbled her lower lip.

“How about this. If we activate the shutdown device for a short burst,” Sam suggested, “it could fix the rift as well as prove our point. Just bring one of the dimensional devices along and try to use it. If it doesn’t work, this device isn’t for mass transport.”

“Except what if, once we throw the switch, it never turns off again,” Sue cautioned.

“Okay,” Chartreuse said, stepping forwards. “Gonna, like, try something here now. Give me a moment?”

She took off the jade ring she’d been wearing to help acclimate her powers gradually to their surroundings, and reached out to give it to Para. Para took it, then watched as her mission commander moved to one of the unconscious scientists on the floor. Chartreuse passed a crystal around his head, and finally reached out to touch his forehead.

“Your mind to my mind,” Alice murmured. “Your thoughts to my thoughts.”

Usa took a step forwards. “What is she–”

“Chartreuse is learning about the device,” Para said, holding up her hand to prevent Usa’s advance. She was pretty sure it wasn’t through whatever means Alice had implied, but still.

“Or, you know, she’s flailing blindly in the dark,” Chartreuse admitted. She stood and moved on to another scientist. “I don’t control my impressions, but am kinda hoping one of them is thinking about using that thing, or would, like, have ended up using it in a possible future that I can then, you know, divert.”

“Look. There’s six buttons and a switch,” Marlin protested. “How hard can this be? We do this by trial and error.”

The young wizard reached out for the device, only to have Thred grab his arm. “You want to hit the button labelled ‘CANS’ or the one labelled ‘POTS’?” Thred said. “Because I feel like we need neither of those things in our dimension right now.”

“We’re not in a hurry,” Sam said. “Let’s let Chartreuse try again.”

“I kind of thought that guy running off for reinforcements was an issue,” Marlin groused. But other than shaking free of Thred, he made no further objection.

The third scientist Chartreuse touched made her sit up straighter and stare off into the distance. Then she turned towards Sue and Sam. “Okay, so, the TARTS/POTS button will, like, switch that thing on and off. Meaning we can turn it off, if things go badly. That’s, you know, about the best I can do.”

Sue searched Chartreuse’s expression, then nodded. “All right, so we activate it then,” she relented, looking towards Usa for confirmation. “And see what it does to the dimensions. After all, what have you got to lose?”

“My job?” Usa said dryly. She followed it up with a sigh and another shake of her head. “But, I haven’t been thrilled with what I’ve had to do lately. Hurry up, get me your proof.”

The device was large enough that both Thred and Sam were needed to carry it. Sue was the one who grabbed a couple of the portable dimensional devices from the back, Usa not wanting to let Marlin, Alice, Chartreuse or Para near them. Para could understand that.

They all headed back out to the entrance room, which by now had plush kittens littering floor everywhere. Para helped to clear a space on the ground underneath the rift, so that the device could be set down. Everyone stood back, leaving Sam standing next to it.

“Okay,” Sam said, taking a breath. “So we turn it on.” Sam hit the TARTS/POTS button. There was a pause. Another plush kitten fell to the floor. “…and nothing happens.” He crouched down for a closer look.

“Actually, a light came on,” Alice corrected. “I suspect that now, someone will need to dial in a dimension that matches the rift, so we can shut it down.”

“Dial? I thought when this thing was on, it would turn everything else off,” Thred grumbled.

“Then why have the buttons for CANS and NO ANTIDOTE?” Marlin sniped back.

Chartreuse toyed with her crystal. “Is anyone else worried about, like, poking around randomly with that thing?”

As she spoke, another plush kitten fell out of the rift. It bounced off Sam’s head, and knocked against the CANS button. More of the machine lit up, and pulses started to scroll across the rectangular box with the vertical lines.

“Oooh, he’s at the twenty, the ten, touchdown,” Alice murmured.

“Reminds me of a heart monitor,” Para observed. “Perhaps it’s doing a scan?”

“A cans scan… of COURSE!” Usa snapped her fingers. “That’s it. It makes sense now. Those plans I saw, they were encoded this way.”

“Plans?” Sam mused.

“Another part of why I was inclined to believe you,” Usa admitted. “The Council’s plans for this thing, they were written in a way I didn’t understand, and they wouldn’t explain it. But I see now it’s anagrams. Cans for scan. The same way in our school the ‘secret’ door can be read as ‘erects’, if you use the letters as ordered by room.”

“Ahh, anagrams. It’s how ‘Search and Rescue’ can become a phrase like ‘Chanced Erasures’,” Alice quipped. “Makes sense.”

“Fine, it’s a scan. What’s it scanning for?” Thred wondered.

“More to the point, I now know what ‘no antidote’ means,” Marlin said, frowning. “It’s not good.”

“Speaking of not good - security’s been activated for this room,” Sue shouted, pointing over at the nearby vent. “Hear that hissing? It’s knockout gas.”

“Dammit,” Usa muttered. She ran over to the main desk, and the console there. “Fortunately I have the codes to turn that off. Oh, hello Polsit,” she remarked, seeing the unconscious man there. She quickly typed in her codes.

Chartreuse looked over at Sue. “How much time do you think we have before Shay storms in here with more troops?” she wondered.

“Not long,” Sue admitted. “Surely there’s some way to get the proof we need without hitting random buttons. Usa, you said you saw plans?”

“Yes, but I didn’t take pictures.” Usa straightened. “I think we’d better head back to the interrogation room. Unless one of you has more dimensional knowledge than Shay.”

Para cleared her throat. “Ah, hello? It occurs to me that Alice probably has some experience.” After all, Alice’s time spent manning the Epsilon Station, coupled with her eidetic memory, had to count for something.

Everyone turned to look at Alice, who fired off a huge Cheshire-Cat smile. “Possible. I figured I wasn’t high on the trust list, after failing to convince Shay of anything. But hey, if you’re willing to give me a chance…”

“That’s not a good idea,” Thred protested.

“But we don’t have much of a choice at this point,” Sam yielded. “Okay Alice, let us know what you can come up with. Knowing that if you betray our trust, there will be consequences.”

Alice cracked her knuckles. “Of course! Now pop the back off of that thing and give me five minutes.”

Usa pulled a gun out of the main desk. “This only stuns,” she remarked. “But as Sam said, don’t try anything funny.” She trained it on Alice as Sam and Thred managed to unscrew the back, revealing all the electronics.

“Oooh, pretty,” Alice muttered. She both peered and felt around inside for a bit. Para spent the time looking at the reactions of everyone there. Only Usa didn’t seem tense, probably due to her security training. As they waiting, more plushies rained down from the rift near the ceiling.

“Okay,” Alice said at last, dusting off her hands. “So, pretty sure the scanner is, as we speak, locking in dimensional addresses - every ten yards. The ‘no antidote’ button will be the detonation, removing their link to this place. Interestingly, doesn’t matter how many addresses you lock in, so if we had more of a clue, we could seal only the rift while draining the device.”

“As interesting as that is, can you point to the bits that would be proof for Usa?” Sam wondered.

“Wait, back up to that detonation thing,” Marlin said, eyes widening. “Could this device torpedo other dimensions?”

Alice scratched her head, looking to Marlin first. “I doubt it? I’m good, but I’m not Mr. Wizard good. I’d need more time to - duck!”

Para spun to see where Alice was looking. In the entranceway stood Shay, and some woman who seemed to be part cat. They were pointing guns of the same type that Usa was holding. One was aimed at Sam, who was closest to the device, the other was aimed at… her. Para felt her bunny ears quiver.

Even as Para processed that her being a target was likely only because she was the one standing closest to the two arrivals, she was tackled to the floor. Somewhere, someone called out, “Sam!”. With that, there was the sound of three guns going off.

Para rolled to the side to take in the scene. Apparently Thred had jumped in front of Sam, and he now lay sprawled out on the ground. Shay, over by the entrance, was also unconscious, with the cat woman and Usa now pointing their guns at each other in a stand-off. And the one who had tackled Para… had been Chartreuse. She was also unconscious.

Para honestly wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. Wasn’t it the role of subordinates to protect their leaders, not the other way around? Yet Chartreuse had taken the hit for her. As such, Para resolved to make sure Chartreuse was kept safe. She reached out to brush her fingers against Chartreuse’s hair, only to pause as someone spoke.

“Mary-Lynn Emrys,” Usa said dryly. “So you’re the reason for heightened security here.”

“Usa Staling,” Mary-Lynn said evenly. “Have you become a traitor to the Council?”

“I’ve learned that there’s something shady going on,” Usa fired back. “Let’s lower our weapons and figure things out.”

The cat woman seemed to think about it. “I think not,” she said at last. Then she adjusted her aim, and shot at the dimensional shutdown device. Sparks flew from the ‘on/off’ switch. The stun field had to be electronic in nature. What had Mary-Lynn done?

“Okay,” Alice said, side-stepping towards Sue. “Unless I miss my guess, we can’t shut that down any more, and once the current scanning completes, it’s going to unlink completely from everything that got scanned. I can only assume that’s what you were hoping to do.”

Mary-Lynn smiled. “Yup. Stun me all you like now, there’s nothing you can do to stop the plan from succeeding.”

Well, that couldn’t be good. Para scanned over everyone present for their reactions one more time. She couldn’t be sure, but three people seemed like they were about to try something.

Marlin, surprisingly enough, had his hand twitching towards his wand. A final escape attempt? Or was there something magical he could do to repair the device? More interestingly, if a dimensional traveller were the key person behind foiling the plan, what would that say to someone like Shay?

Sam also seemed tense, as if he was about to make a jump… somewhere. To grab Usa’s gun? For Alice’s invulnerability item? Para wasn’t sure what he hoped to accomplish, but a success might cement his involvement with the group of dimensional investigators. Just as a failure could ruin his chances forever.

Then there was Sue, who seemed a bit translucent - as she had her invisibility power on her side. Could she use that to convince Mary-Lynn to fix things? On the plus side, it would mean that someone who had been involved with Council affairs would be cleaning up their own mess. But then, maybe that would simply perpetuate a system that needed to change.

As Para finally completed her movement to softly touch Chartreuse on the head, she wondered what was going to happen.

WHAT’S NEXT?

OPTIONS:

[polldaddy poll=10201648]

VOTING CLOSES 7am EST MONDAY JAN 7th

EXTRA ASIDE: A few things! First of all, yes, I’ve been playing with anagrams this whole story as far as names are concerned, Alice kind of lampshading the title itself. (See also, this entry title.) Only two names haven’t involved anagrams, did you catch them? Secondly, when this “Epsilon” ends, I will likely return to the follow-up Melissa Virga story from my archives, unless anyone has another preference (recall the options were in this post). Comments are open. Finally, a Happy New Year to you - here’s the results of the 2018 coins I received over the past 363 days. Namely 3 toonies, 9 loonies, 5 dimes, and 2 each of quarters and nickels, for a total of 21 - no differing designs. You may recall 2017 had 20 coins while 2016 had 37 coins and 2015 had 42 coins. I have no theories, merely the data. Wondering why this is a thing? Consider reading my Time & Tied story. That’s everything, hope you stay tuned for the conclusion of “Chanced Erasures”.

CHANCED ERASURES: PART TWELVE

“I’m not sure Alice should deliver a speech, to Shay or anyone else,” Thred remarked, adjusting the cowl of his borrowed robes. “She’s an invader from another dimension. Mentioned Para by name too.”

“Seriously?” Sue gasped. She turned towards Chartreuse, her eyes narrowing. “Ohhh. This is all making sense now. Alice is with you and Para, huh? That’s why you’re here. To get her.”

[caption id=“attachment_1093” align=“alignright” width=“222”] CHARTREUSE VERMILION
Commission by Ruuari[/caption]

Chartreuse rubbed the back of her neck. So much for maintaining their cover. “Is it, like, too late to pretend to be from some rival school?”

Alice sighed. “Okay, let’s not exaggerate. Look at me. Not invading. If I were, I’d have at least brought a change of clothes.”

“Yeah, seriously, I don’t even want to come back to this dimension,” Marlin broke in.

“Well, regardless of their origins, someone needs to motivate Shay into switching sides,” Sam decided. “Because our Council seems to want to mess with travel between the dimensions. So, decide fast about whether that’s Alice or not, I don’t think we’ve much time before that group leave the lab and jail all of us.”

“I swear, I’ve got a plan,” Alice said. “If you trust me. Also, if you let me work with Marlin for a moment, because it looks like he has his wand back.”

“We have no reason to trust you,” Thred protested.

“Even so, we should let her do it,” Sue said. Off the stares she got from everyone else, she shrugged. “Look. If these people are here to do us harm, there were easier ways to go about it. They seem to want to close that rift, and I’m guessing they don’t want the dimensions to be shut down any more than we do.”

“Then you believe Alice, over your Council, as to what’s going on?” Para mused.

Sue paused, then nodded. “Things have felt off tonight. I’m prepared to give the benefit of the doubt. In the worst case, I’ll claim Chartreuse here had brainwashing crystals and I wasn’t in control of myself.”

Chartreuse flinched. “Are crystals like that a, you know, real thing?”

“Who knows,” Sue said. “In fact, quick word with you,” she added, moving a couple of paces away and motioning for Chartreuse to follow.

“Sweet. With Marlin’s help I’ll need less than a minute,” Alice said, as Chartreuse moved off. Thred muttered something under his breath as Sam reached out to console his friend, Para keeping an eye on the situation. Chartreuse turned to Sue.

“Okay, so, sorry for, like, not being totally honest,” Chartreuse began.

Sue waved her off. “As if you could be. In fact, I wanted to personally say I’m sorry for getting all up in your face. I realize now that you had no way of knowing this, not being from here, but Sam’s newsletter is in danger of being shut down.”

Chartreuse stared. “It is? Does he, like, know?”

“Doubt it. I only know because, as I said, my dad’s a janitor. They hear things. I was going to tell Sam after all this.” Sue glanced back towards her friend. “See, I figured, giving him an in to this group would provide a new direction for his life. Or maybe he’d find a way for his publication go out in a blaze of glory. Either way, it was something.”

“That’s nice of you,” Chartreuse said, offering a tentative smile.

Sue turned back to her. “Thanks. I guess in some sense, we’ve all been looking out for our own interests tonight. Time to pull together now, what do you say?”

Chartreuse bobbed her head. “I’m so totally good for that.”

Sue gave her a slight smile, then looked down at Chartreuse’s legs. “Neon red stockings,” she muttered. “I should’ve figured only a dimension hopper could wear such cute accessories and manage to get away with it.”

“You like?” Chartreuse asked, extending her leg.

Sue jerked her gaze back up, eyes widening, possibly unaware she’d spoken loudly enough to be heard. Before she could say anything though, Alice stepped up next to them, fiddling with some device on her shirt.

“Sue, Sam says you can make invisibility,” Alice remarked. “Want to stealth me in there? Or should I just jump in the door and say ‘Heeere’s Johnny’?”

Sue jumped on the change in subject. “I can’t help, my power doesn’t work very well when I’m both extending my personal field, and moving.”

“Want me to, like, act as a distraction first then?” Chartreuse asked. “They might not shoot me on sight, having never, you know, seen me before.”

“Too risky,” Alice mused. “But, okay, derivative idea, let’s have you put on that cloak-” she motioned to Thred “-and take me in. If I look subdued, Shay may want answers first, unconsciousness later.”

“Hold on. Why should we trust that you and your friend won’t grab a dimension device and run off?” Thred countered, having approached with the others.

“Because Para’s staying with you, and Chartreuse can pick up impressions of people, which might come in handy,” Alice countered easily.

“It’s fine, Thred, I can invisibly tag along, if I’m not extending the field,” Sue added. “I’ll make sure they’re keeping up their end of the bargain.”

Thred glanced to Sam, who simply nodded, and with a roll of his eyes up to the ceiling, he began to remove his robe.

“Remember that magic charge will only work once,” Marlin remarked. Alice simply gave him a thumbs up.

Soon after, Chartreuse headed for the lab door, with the Council robe obscuring both her face and build. Still, she felt her heart beating a bit faster. Alice kept her hands behind her back, as if she was being restrained.

“Hey! Look who I, like, found,” Chartreuse announced as she walked in. Inwardly, she winced; she’d hoped to keep her remarks brief enough to not have valley girl speech creep in.

Fortunately, Shay was too interested in Alice to remark on Chartreuse’s dialect. His eyes widened from where he was addressing the small group of scientists. “You? Again?!” he sputtered.

“Here’s the thing though,” Alice said, smiling. “Me and Marlin just want out, while you’ve got a dimensional rift creating cats or something in your reception room. So, how about we work together on a solution? In the end, I’m out of your hair, and people like your brother don’t get stuck off world.”

Shay pointed at her, and began striding across the room. “You are not going home.”

Alice gave up on the pretence of her arms being restrained. “Why not?”

Shay glared. “I’ve read the Council texts, I know how that played out in the past.”

“Enlighten me then,” Alice said, standing her ground. She gestured at one of the scientists. “Not to mention some of your friends here, who are looking confused. What happened in the past?”

“As if you don’t know. People stumbling in here from other dimensions, who either wanted to stay, or return to bring their friends,” Shay said. “Such immigration would be the ruin of our society. Dimensional people coming and stealing our jobs… people on technologically inferior planes have to stay in their own lane. You’re not bringing anyone else over, not on my watch!”

“Oh-kay,” Alice said slowly. Chartreuse saw the brunette woman’s eyebrow twitch. “And you figure shutting down travel helps things… how? Because my being stuck here seems like the last thing you’d want.”

“You’ll have company,” Shay growled. “All our ancestors had wanted to do was erase the memory of dimensional travellers before sending them back, but the big magic war had made mind manipulation illegal. We couldn’t send your type back. We couldn’t keep you either. We’ve had to store your kind, and we’re almost out of space.”

Chartreuse hadn’t expected the truth of the situation to be more chilling than her earlier thought of erasing memories, but there it was. Where were they storing dimensional travellers? Hopefully not the morgue.

“Right,” Alice said. “Three points then. You’re worried about jobs? If you shut down travel, lots of people connected to dimensional research will lose their jobs. Like these scientists here, for instance.”

“Ooh, she’s got a point there,” one of the researchers in the room mumbled to his friend.

“Also,” Alice continued, “if someone’s trying to escape a hell dimension, you really don’t think anyone in your society would be willing to show them some compassion for a change? That strikes me as unnecessarily cruel. Maybe adoption is even happening off the books, ever heard of witness protection, or non disclosure agreements?”

“They do have those agreements,” Chartreuse put in, remembering what Sue had said earlier.

Alice nodded. “Bringing me to my final point, why are you so sure everyone on Council’s been storing dimension people on slabs? I bet there’s more mind erasures going on than you’re being told about. I’ve seen the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Workforce”. I know how memory tampering can create cheap manual labour.”

Shay had stopped a couple of paces away from Alice, fuming at her. He now frowned, seemingly pondering the arguments she was making. Without touching him, Chartreuse had no chance of picking up an impression, so all she could do was hope that he’d see the light.

“No,” Shay said at last. “I resist your temptations. How could a dimensional visitor ever understand our situation? Go to sleep.”

He snapped his hands up, and a series of sparkles erupted from his palms. Chartreuse partly turned away from the glare.

“Lyrical reflection,” Alice said simply, pointing back at him.

With that, the sparkles bounced back towards Shay. And then they bounced off of him, and started to careen around the room.

“Look out,” came Sue’s voice from out of nowhere. The next thing Chartreuse knew, she was being pulled down onto the floor.

“He’s getting away,” Alice called out. There was the sound of running footsteps.

It took a moment, but once she got her bearings, Chartreuse was able to piece events together. Shay’s ‘sleep sparkles’ had somehow targeted everyone else around them. Only she and Sue were unaffected, from lying down on the floor. Alice was also unaffected, and had run to the door, through which Shay had presumably escaped.

All the other occupants of the room were unconscious.

“Agh, I’d better not chase him,” Alice muttered. “Marlin only juiced up this personal shield for a duration of a few seconds.” She adjusted the device on her shirt.

“Okay, well, at least you got him out of the room,” Sam remarked, as he walked in. He pointed to the technology at the back. “We can take the dimensional devices now. They’ll have to let us go, because they need them to shut off the rift.”

“There’s also that thing,” Sue remarked. As she stood back up, she flashed Chartreuse a quick smile, which was returned. “Under the sheet there. A took a quick peek while Alice was talking, I think it’s relevant to all this.”

“The device for shutting down dimensional travel?” Para deduced, the rest of the group having filed into the room after Sam.

“Going with a strong maybe,” Sue affirmed. She glanced at the sleeping scientists. “Pity there’s no one we can ask to be sure.”

“We also won’t be able to ask them how any of this stuff works,” Marlin groaned. “Please don’t tell me we’re screwed.”

“What do you think?” said a voice that Chartreuse recognized, but couldn’t immediately place.

Getting back onto her own feet, Chartreuse looked again towards the door. A woman in uniform stood there. Of course, that was Usa Staling, the head of security, who had interrogated Alice in the holo-recording, and then more recently brought Thred into the facility.

“Sensibly,” Alice chirped at the woman.

Thred sighed. “Am I about to be knocked out and interrogated again?”

Usa leaned back against the door frame, crossing her arms. “I’ll give your group this. When Shay Milds increases security even before the dimensional visits from an enigmatic brunette and a stupid old wizard, I have to wonder. When I later see Shay himself actually fleeing across the area away from the lab, I have to wonder even more. Now, your turn, give me a very good reason not to lock down this room.”

Sam stood a little straighter. “We have reason to believe there’s a conspiracy to shut down dimensional travel. Possibly using that device,” he added, pointing towards the sheet that Sue had mentioned. “Also, there’s a rift in the other room, which we can seal, under condition that we go free.”

Usa chewed on her lower lip. “You have my attention. Show me the device.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

[polldaddy poll=10191733]

VOTING CLOSES 7am EST MONDAY DEC 24th

EXTRA ASIDE: I anticipate two more parts. That said, I didn’t anticipate it taking almost two full parts for Alice to boomerang Shay’s attack back at him (the vote for Alice’s idea at the end of part 10), so things can still change. Incidentally, thoughts on what the device looks like?

CHANCED ERASURES: PART ELEVEN

“That could’ve gone better,” the brunette mused. She slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position and looked around at her new accommodations.

It seemed to be some kind of interrogation room. The door behind her was the only way in or out. There was a table with two chairs on either side, a large mirror that probably led to a hidden observation room, and not much else. Also, sitting in one of the chairs was a tall guy with red hair, staring at her.

[caption id=“attachment_929” align=“alignright” width=“185”] ALICE VUNDERLANDE
Commission by Cherry Zong[/caption]

“Okay, state your name for the record,” she began.

The guy blinked. “Uh, well, like I said to the last guy, I’m Sir Thred. I’m a student here.”

Interesting. This was the guy that Shay and Cat-Woman had mentioned. Also, last guy? Did he think Alice was the next interrogator? Alice used one of the chairs to help pull herself up to her feet. She felt a bit woozy, having been smacked around during her second capture. “And I suppose you know why you’re here?”

“Of course not,” Thred said. “All I did was grab that security guy’s hat. Over-reaction much?”

“We know you weren’t acting alone though,” Alice said, leaning hard into the chair. That was what Shay had implied, right? “You came here with someone else.”

Thred now refused to meet her gaze. “Come on,” he muttered. “Why would anyone else have been at school after hours?”

“Well, either it’s the breakfast club, or because there’s a conspiracy,” Alice stated. She pointed dramatically. “Which you heard about from Beam.”

Thred turned back to face her. “From who now?” He seemed genuinely confused.

“From Fate, I meant,” Alice back-pedalled.

Thred frowned. “Are you saying I was fated to be here?”

Alice’s pointing finger started to waver. “You heard about the conspiracy from Alijda. Or Alison.”

Thred shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Alice dropped her arm. “Kat then. Or Para. Or- no, wait, got you with that one,” she declared, raising her hand again as he visibly flinched at Para’s name.

“Para’s an educational assistant at school, I’ve merely heard that name,” Thred said defensively.

“Oh, IS she now,” Alice mused, bringing her arm back in to rub her chin. “Good, good, we’re finally getting somewhere. Next question, do you remember how you got into this base?”

“Of course not,” Thred repeated. “You people knocked me out.”

“Pity. Okay, so how do you plan to get out?”

Thred sighed. “I don’t suppose asking politely would do it.”

“Probably not. All right, I’ve heard enough.” She pushed off from the chair, pleased to discover that she could stand on her own. “Okay, Thred, how about we move this table over and up against that mirror.”

Thred stared. “What?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Alice explained. “For getting out. You thought I was with the Conspiracy Council because I’m wearing one of their robes, right?”

“There’s also the fact that you’re, you know, here… wait, are you defecting or something?”

“Nope, robe’s from a wardrobe. I’m trapped, like you, and like Marlin,” Alice stated. “Speaking of which, they’re probably not watching us directly, because they locked us in. Bet they’re checking on Marlin’s status. So, a little help with the table?”

By now, she had moved to grab one end. And while she judged that she could push it into position, Thred’s assistance would make things go so much faster.

Obligingly, he went around to the other side, helping her to lift it. “What are you then, a substitute teacher? Did you solve the puzzle of those symbols in the rooms and end up stuck here? And who’s Marlin?”

“Oh, let’s say I’m more of a secretary,” Alice said. “I did solve a puzzle, but all it’s done is give me this new escape room puzzle to figure out. Er, not counting the puzzle of being stuck in a room under a cat woman. Failed that one. Also, Marlin’s his own story. Okay, up against the mirror?”

Thred helped her tilt the table, and they rested it against the majority of the mirror, cutting off the view from the adjacent room. Alice quickly began to pull off the mystical robe she was wearing.

“Whoa, um, hey, that’s not, uh…”

“If you think this is a strip tease, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Actually, do you know of the webcomic Striptease? Not what you think, but there is some lesbian romance, eventually. If you like that kinda thing.” She kicked the robe towards Thred as it hit the floor. “Put that on.”

“Look, whatever your name is, I’m… trying to draw the connections here. It’s not easy.”

“I’m Alice. Connection is Beam’s a lesbian. Look, don’t think too hard about how my mind works, just dress yourself in the robe, pound on the door saying the prisoners got out, and we’ll knock out whoever comes to check.”

“The prisoners got out?”

“No, no, say it by the door, and louder,” Alice insisted. She grabbed one of the chairs and went over the door herself, managing to continue moving in a straight line. The wooziness was almost gone.

“You think they’ll believe me?”

“Doesn’t matter, at this point they won’t be able to check by looking in the mirror. Also, keep the robe on so that you can pretend to be taking me to some other part of this facility after. But also, actually take me to some other part of this facility after. Ideally the part that contains my stuff.”

“I don’t know where that is,” Thred protested.

“Me neither, but based on what I saw out there, I’ve got a pretty good guess.”

Alice hefted the chair, standing so that a guard would need to lean inside before seeing her. She also hoped that Shay wouldn’t be the one who came back, given his ability to knock out with magic. She was pretty sure the only reason he hadn’t done that already was so that Alice was awake for questioning, once they’d determined whether Marlin had escaped too.

They were lucky. As a man poked his head in to check on the shouting, they were able to knock him out and drag him inside in under five seconds. Alice immediately noticed that he wasn’t wearing one of the robes - maybe they were for elites only? Alice rifled through his pockets for his keys.

“Looking for this?” Thred wondered, pulling out a small device and holding it up. “You need the morphing codes if you want to lock this room back up.”

“Perfect. Plan B then,” Alice sighed. “Or rather, Plan J at this point, I don’t know. Come along.” Alice slapped her hands to the back of her head and had Thred lead her out, with his cowl up. They simply closed the door behind them.

“What’s going on?” said another security guy (or was this one a scientist?), approaching them.

“Ha ha, my escape attempts keep failing,” Alice said, smiling. “They’re moving me again.”

She thought she heard him mutter, “Why is this all happening tonight,” as he moved away.

Alice continued to backtrack in the general direction that Shay had hauled her, reasoning that the mystery room was still near the prisoner area. Thred followed her lead, presumably because he didn’t have any better ideas. Fortunately, the room beyond the obvious entrance to the detention area, was ajar.

“Jackpot,” Alice muttered, as they walked in. It seemed to be some storage area for artifacts. It didn’t take long for her to find her Epsilon communicator. It took even less time for her to discover that it was either broken, or there was interference preventing her from using it.

Behind her, Thred let out a low whistle. “What IS all this stuff?” he muttered, looking in a drawer.

Alice turned her attention back to him, and what had caught his attention. “Huh. Laser screwdriver. The remains of a faster than light drive. Possibly part of a quadcorder. OH, personal shield. Yoink.” She picked it up. “I can put this to better use than Lucius or Rodney McKay.”

Thred stared. “Are you SURE you don’t work for these people?”

“Pretty sure,” Alice assured him. She pocketed her communicator and the shield, then went back to the door. Seconds after poking her head out, she pulled it back inside. “Whoops. Shay’s there now, and it looks like he’s rounding people up. Search party for Marlin, I presume. Means he removed his listening device, good.”

“Alice, seriously. Is Shay a pitcher for the Miami Marlins or something?” Thred said, throwing up his hands.

“No, Shay is the guy who’s bested me twice so far,” Alice explained. “The only positive he’s got in my books is that he didn’t hit me directly. He left that up to Cat-Woman. Who pulled my robe over my head, so I don’t even know how I even got out of that room, for the record. Bet you’re confusing Shay with Shea Stadium.”

“I wasn’t, that’s the Cubs, not the Marlins.”

“Ahh.” Alice shrugged. “I’ve never really tracked baseball though the dimensions.”

Thred flinched again. “Wait, you… you’re… from another dimension? Are you the one who put the campus on high alert??”

“Beats me, I’m just trying to get out of here,” Alice remarked. “This whole mission has been a major fail– oh, duh. Hey, are you part of the Clover Club?” She had been passing up an obvious source of local intelligence. Better late than never.

Thred shook his head. “I don’t have a special power.”

“Do you know if they’re behind shutting down dimensional travel for good?”

“I… kind of doubt that? Half their curriculum is rumoured to be about dimensional observations. Wait, someone’s shutting down travel?” He frowned. “Why am I even telling you all this stuff if you’re an invader?”

“I have a very trusting face,” Alice said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Besides, as I said, I’m more of a secretary.” She turned to peek out the door again. “Okay Thred, everyone’s going into that lab area. So either Marlin’s in there, or it’s a place he won’t be able to hear them plan, or it’s a place that needs protecting. Either way, we can make a dash for the… huh.”

“What now?” Thred said. He’d seemingly resigned himself to Alice’s whims, at least until he thought of his own plan. Which didn’t seem likely any time soon.

“Group of five. I think one’s Marlin. Passed their stealth check, they entered that big area right after the lab door closed. They’re headed that way.”

Thred came over to look for himself. His face brightened. “Sam!” Before Alice could stop him, Thred had hurried out the door and towards the other group.

“Plan K,” Alice muttered. She followed him out.

At least Thred had the sense to keep to the walls, which were more in shadow. He reached the group of five as the guy whom Alice judged to be their leader was saying something about checking the interrogation area.

“Hey Sam, Sue, you both come to rescue me?” Thred said, grinning ear to ear.

“Thred? Is that you?” said Sue. At least, Alice assumed the unknown female was Sue, as she’d met both Chartreuse and Para on their previous missions. “What’s going on?”

“We’re getting out of here,” Alice suggested.

“Except there’s, like, a dimensional rift in the other room that we’re on the hook for,” Chartreuse said. “We, you know, should fix that on the way out.”

“Related, Marlin here says there’s a plan to shut down dimensional travel,” Sam said. “And we need to get him home.”

“Yeah, Alice here said the same thing,” Thred agreed.

Alice sighed. “So, what, someone’ll need to make a motivational speech to Shay and his friends before we go?” she reflected, trying to spot the path of least resistance back to the Epsilon Station.

“Whatever we do, I don’t think it should be hanging around here talking,” Para said, wiggling two fingers in the air. “We need to act.”

Sam rubbed his forehead. “Okay, well, did you have a motivational speech in mind, Alice?”

WHAT’S NEXT?

Options:

[polldaddy poll=10180003]

VOTING CLOSES 7am EST MONDAY DEC 10th

EXTRA ASIDE: I spent November doing NaNo, more or less. You may be pleased to know that “Time Untied” is now over 75,000 words, and the halfway point (aka end of Book 5 and start of Book 6) for that story is kind of in view. So there will definitely be something with Carrie, at some point… but 2019 will start with more reruns. Any preference for more Virga, versus Rose, versus something else?

CHANCED ERASURES: PART TEN

The sparkles seemed to shimmer and disappear, rather than end up on the floor. Para looked around, wondering if anything had changed - something did feel off. She looked back up, at where the gun had exploded. That’s where she saw the crack. It wasn’t a crack in the ceiling though. It was a crack in reality.

“Okay, stay back!” the robed receptionist(?) called out, from where he was now sitting on the floor. He must have stumbled back and fallen down. He began to fumble about in his clothing, evidently looking for something.

“Again, pretty sure we’re on the same side here,” Sam said, clasping his hands behind his back. “Not Council. Not shutting down the dimensions.”

[caption id=“attachment_848” align=“alignright” width=“219”] PARA
Commission by Michelle Simpson[/caption]

“Speaking of,” Para began, lifting her finger, but Sue cut her off.

“That was Polsit’s gun,” Sue said, striding over the desk. A pair of legs was there; apparently the real receptionist had been knocked out and left back there. “He’s got it enchanted so that if anyone else fires it, he swaps consciousness with them. You’re lucky something nullified the effect, Mister - what is your name anyway?”

“Marlin,” the man on the floor said. He pulled a short stick with a star on the end out of his robe. “And I’m getting out of here, like it or not!”

“First, more information on the, you know, lady you said was caught, maybe?” Chartreuse requested.

“We should definitely compare notes,” Sam agreed. “Maybe Marlin’s seen Sir Thred too.”

“Also,” Para attempted again, “we had better–”

“Put that away,” Sue snapped at Marlin. “If a wand was really a weapon of choice for you, you wouldn’t have tried using the gun. Also, where did you even get that?”

Marlin, who had managed to stand back up, was now pointing his wand around at everyone in turn. He paused with it levelled in Sue’s direction. “It’s mine,” he retorted. “The other end of my escape passage opened into a room that contained a lot of stuff, including what had been taken from me. And my wand might be recharged, so don’t come any closer!”

Sue, who had taken a step forwards, now paused. She looked towards Sam. “Maybe you should handle this,” she suggested. “As a way of proving you can be one of the group.”

Sam cleared his throat. “At this point I’m not sure I’ll accept any offer I get, but yeah, I really do think Marlin should tell us everything. After that, he’s free to leave.”

Marlin frowned. “You expect me to take your word on that? What guarantee do I have?”

Chartreuse smiled. “How about the fact that we’re totally here to rescue someone ourselves? I mean, you saw you’re not the only prisoner here, yeah? Besides, do we look like a crack team of Council guys?”

He seemed to consider that. “Alright.”

That’s when the small plush kitten fell from the crack near the ceiling, startling everyone.

“It’s like I was trying to say,” Para said in the ensuing silence. “There’s a dimensional rift opening. Where the gun exploded.”

“Huh. That could be a problem,” Sue said. A mite redundantly, in Para’s opinion.

“That wasn’t me,” Marlin said. Para couldn’t tell if he was amused or concerned, but his tone implied he thought maybe it was his fault after all.

“How often does this sort of thing happen around here?” Sam asked.

“It doesn’t,” Sue said. “We’d better contact someone.”

“Thinking we should, you know, hear Marlin out first?” Chartreuse insisted. “Because otherwise we might, like, all get thrown in jail while they sort things out.”

“That’s… unlikely,” said Sue. Her tone that implied she wasn’t so sure.

A second plush kitten fell, landing next to the first. The first one had been black, this one was grey. Para clicked her metronome on.

“Fine, if it gets me out of here faster, I’ll explain,” Marlin said, eyeing the crack.

He quickly summarized his situation - how he’d been an initiate for a group of wizards, which led to participating in a form of “dimensional roulette”, which had dropped him into the school gym here. He’d been spirited away, questioned, left in a cell with a strange girl calling herself ‘Alice’, and the both of them had eventually escaped into a set of passages.

“I feel like I understand your situation very well,” Sam said dryly. Only then did it occur to Para that Sam being a possible candidate for the Dimensional Council here was an imperfect parallel to what Marlin had gone through to be an initiate.

“So, like, what happened to Alice?” Chartreuse said, nonchalantly.

“She put on a robe and went out into the mystery room on the other side of the wardrobe,” Marlin explained. “She must have hidden when a couple people arrived, as they didn’t mention Alice during their talk of shutting off dimensional travel. But when one of them left, I heard her make a break for it, and she got caught by the woman still in there.”

“What mystery room?” Sue demanded.

“The mysterious one,” Marlin shot back. “Do I look like I have a map? Anyway, I reversed course, come out of a shelving unit, found my stuff in the room I was in, and used a simple teleporting spell to get myself across that big open section on the other side. Which got me as far as the front desk here.”

Sam nodded and lifted his hand, as if to show someone’s height. “Did you see a guy, about this tall…” He went on to describe Sir Thred.

“I don’t know, I was fleeing for my– wait, yes. You know how the big section has those rooms off to the side?”

“They don’t know anything,” Sue sighed. “Fine, quick version of the layout, this reception area, leading to the big section, which has a lab, a couple classrooms, and an archive area on the left, then an interrogation room, prison section, and artifact area on the right.”

“Whatever,” Marlin grumbled. “Point is, as I was scouting the big area before teleporting, I saw Alice being taken into, I guess the interrogation room. Assuming I was in the artifact area. As she went in, I saw your guy was inside already.”

Which was helpful, Para mused. If Alice and Thred were in the same place, the group’s interests were still aligning. She glanced at her metronome as a fifth plush cat fell, joining the previous four. This one was rainbow coloured.

“Was Thred being interrogated?” Sam questioned.

Marlin simply shrugged. “Beats me. Look, my part is done now, so I can go, right?”

“Hmm. If you’re fine with leaving the only place that can access to your dimension, sure, leave,” Sam agreed.

Marlin’s nod became a narrowing of his eyes. “What?”

“Stands to reason that this place, which can open a rift to plush cats, can also open one to your home,” Sam observed. “In fact, if we find the devices that manipulate rifts inside the lab here, maybe we could use one to send you back at the same time as we seal this thing up. Assuming you’ve been behaving yourself.”

Marlin’s look became a full-on glare. “Is this blackmail?”

“This is me trying to use the tools I have available to get the best outcome,” Sam objected. “Including your wand. That said, whether you stay or go, it’s your choice.”

Marlin fumed, but he didn’t speak up again, nor did he attempt to go to the door.

“So, we, like, need a plan then,” Chartreuse decided. “How do we get to the interrogation room without being seen, to save Thred and stuff?”

“Hello? THAT thing is our priority,” Sue reminded, pointing at the rift near the ceiling. “We need to talk to someone back there, not sneak about like thieves. Usa’s a pretty understanding lady. If we look for her first, I don’t think she’d throw us in jail. Rather, she’d congratulate us for making her aware of the rift problem.”

“Would she?” Sam mused. “See, I think the best case is we fix the rift, while worst case, we get ahold of this place’s rift devices, and use them as a bargaining chip. To insist that Thred be set free. I mean, they can’t shut off this rift so long as we have their devices, right?”

“You want to blackmail the Council?” Sue boggled.

“Oh good, he’s an equal opportunity blackmailer,” Marlin remarked.

“Hey, like it or not, we’re tied to this dimensional rip,” Sam said. “As scapegoats, if nothing else. In that case, we need to be proactive, not reactive.”

“Except you’ve forgotten about their, you know, dimensional travel shutdown thing,” Chartreuse reminded them. “Couldn’t they activate whatever they’ve, like, got for that to turn off the rift?”

“I still can’t believe anyone would prevent further travel,” Sue insisted.

Sam shrugged. “If they have a device for doing that, presumably it’s in the lab with everything else.”

“If it helps,” Para offered, as another plushie tumbled to the floor, “I estimate that this room will be completely full in less than two hours.” She turned off her metronome. “I can’t be more mathematically precise as the arrivals are random, but there is at least one every couple minutes.”

“We’re on the clock then,” Sam said, cracking his knuckles. “Let’s get to the lab. At that point, we can decide if this is something we can handle ourselves, if it’s better that we talk to somebody, or whether we need to resort to threats.”

The route to the lab turned out to be clear. Nobody was out in the large main area.

“There were only three guys there last time,” Marlin admitted. “And they might have been science people.”

“Guess security is largely in the main school,” Sue mused.

“Keep to the shadows anyway,” Sam muttered. The main lighting came from overhead; the walls were somewhat darker. They carefully made their way around in single file. Once they got to the door of the lab though, they each looked through the small window, and then kept going. Since Para was bringing up the rear, she was the last to know about the problem.

There were five people inside the room, near the door, including the Shay guy from Alice’s holo-interrogation. They weren’t going to be able to sneak in. They could, however, potentially get to the dimensional devices - Para was assuming that’s what was stacked at the back - before anyone could stop them. It would be five on five, and only Shay looked to be armed.

Para was sure that was foremost in Sam’s mind as he muttered to the rest of them, “Okay, hold up one finger for storming in and taking over, two fingers for checking the interrogation area in the hopes of talking to Usa.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

OPTIONS:

[polldaddy poll=10167813]

VOTING CLOSES 7am EST MONDAY NOV 26th

THE ORACLE PROPHESIED: The vote to end Part Eight, where “Alice gets caught”, involved her running for the plant/exit, and failing to get there (explained in this part by Marlin). Had Marlin been caught, Alice would have used yarn from her robe to distract the cat woman and escape, while Marlin would have been captured trying to get his wand. Had both of them been caught, it would be as Alice stayed put - but Marlin would have charged the cat woman, resulting in both of them being found.

CHANCED ERASURES: PART NINE

Chartreuse glanced down at the instrument she was clasping to her front, then back up at Sam. “I might not be able to throw it far, but, like, playing it could be enough,” she offered up.

“Right.” Sam still looked unsure.

Chartreuse cleared her throat. “It’s, you know, a fair point. Maybe I’ll stick to crystals.” She smiled and set the tuba aside.

Honestly, going back into the instrument storage area had been a ruse anyway. Chartreuse had wanted to contact Fate, at the Epsilon Project, to give her an update. After all, where they were headed, things could go very badly.

[caption id=“attachment_1093” align=“alignright” width=“222”] CHARTREUSE VERMILION
Commission by Ruuari[/caption]

On the communications channel, Chartreuse had quickly summed up the contents of the holo-disc that they’d seen, mentioned the presence of the secret area behind the music room wall where Alice was possibly being kept… and admitted that they were going in. They now knew the correct access sequence.

It was not because Sam had worked out the code, however. Rather, he had decided that it would be safer to lay low, and see if Usa Staling returned. She had. Sam had then watched her enter the hidden area, having pressed the symbols from the rooms they’d been in to spell out ‘SECRET’.

Upon hearing the - admittedly rushed - report, Fate had offered to pull them back. However, Chartreuse reasoned that vanishing at this point would simply raise alarms, plus despite all that they knew, there was still no guarantee that Alice remained on the premises.

And there was one other cause for concern. Usa hadn’t returned alone - she’d been leading a blindfolded Sir Thred. At least Chartreuse’s earlier bad feeling regarding Sam’s friend had apparently been justified.

That’s when Sue had suggested bringing possible weapons with them into the hidden area, which she’d further admitted was an elevator to an entire hidden part of the school.

“A tuba could make a good shield though,” Sue said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall.

“Now we’ll need a shield too?” Chartreuse mused, as she took her quartz crystal back out of her neon red stocking. “Will you ever get, you know, a little more specific about what we’re in for?”

“We may be facing defenders of the Council,” Sue elaborated, much to Chartreuse’s surprise.

“Council?” Para inquired. She’d grabbed a metronome. Chartreuse felt like that wouldn’t be of much use, but you never knew.

“The one Usa referred to during that holo-recording you saw of Alice,” Sue admitted. “Except, they shouldn’t have any interest in Thred, since all he did was grab that security guy’s hat. Unless… there’s things going on here that I don’t know about.”

Sam hefted his music stand. “You know, Sue, it might be helpful to know more about what you DO know about,” he stated. “And, I mean, apparently you wanted me to be part of this organization too, so does it really matter whether I find out now or later?”

Sue ran a hand through her short hair. “It’s not you I’m worried about. If only we’d done this alone…” She glanced sidelong towards Chartreuse.

“…then you, you know, wouldn’t have had the key to get into all the rooms,” Chartreuse pointed out. “Also, you’d have had the symbol for the gym, meaning Sam’s decision of hiding to learn the combination wouldn’t have, like, been a thing, and we wouldn’t know about Thred.”

“You are so amazingly shady,” Sue said, sullenly staring. “Damn it, crystal girl, every time I think I’ve figured you out, you say or do something that switches my theory.”

“Would it help if me and Chartreuse went into one of the soundproof practice rooms?” Para offered. “To let you two talk? If you think Sam would be better off knowing more, that is.”

“Bah, you can probably lipread,” Sue grumbled. She pushed off from the wall, and began to pace back and forth. “But know what? At this point, screw it. If you’re my enemy, I bet you’ll get information from me eventually, so by saying something now, we’re doing this on my terms. Because if you’re not my enemy, you should know what you’re up against too.”

Chartreuse wondered if she should insist that they weren’t enemies, but decided to simply see where the other girl was going with this.

With one final glare towards the pink haired mystic, Sue turned back to Sam. “See, those of us with abilities, like my invisibility? There’s a reason we come to this school. It’s because magic is possible here. On this site. Owing to the magic wars a couple centuries ago. It’s why Fenduro built the Academy.”

Sam seemed to consider that. “Your invisibility is a magic power then?”

Sue shook her head. “Not… inherently? But the magic can enhance it. I think. Actually, the Clover Club, they look into ways of integrating residual magic with science, and with me being kinda undercover, I don’t get to attend their meetings.”

Sam put his music stand down and leaned against it. “And why isn’t this magic stuff public knowledge?”

Sue shrugged. “The same quality that makes this place a great site for us to study magical effects also makes it a danger magnet. Would you want to send your kids to an actual dimensional observation hub? Plus there’s the ethics of the Council erasing the memories of people who find out.”

Sam flinched. “Whoa, whoa! Mind manipulation?! That’s strictly illegal.”

“Yeah, no idea who started doing that decades ago, but it’s pretty common practice now,” Sue sighed, rubbing the back of her head. “To keep everything under wraps. When word finally gets out, there might be hell to pay.”

“So, like, if I’m understanding you,” Chartreuse broke in, “if we fail here, your Council could tamper with our memories to make us forget any of this ever happened?”

“It’s possible,” Sue admitted. “I mean, they sure as heck won’t let Sam publish any of this in his newsletter. That’s kind of why I was hoping we’d get him inducted before he was inclined to say anything publicly.”

Chartreuse was abruptly reminded of the urban legend she and Sam had been talking about on the roof, after her arrival. About an otherworlder who had been brought to the school, and then ‘erased’ from existing. Could it be that only their memory had been erased? Leaving them as a member of this dimension, because they didn’t know any better? Perhaps it was even the reason for a genetic pool of ‘gifties’, if this sort of thing had been going on for decades.

Or maybe she was simply overthinking things.

“So,” Sam said, after a moment of thought, “maybe Thred saw something that he wasn’t supposed to. And the Council’s taking that memory away from him.”

“But all he saw was the security guy, right?” Sue objected. “A thing which could have been explained away easily enough. There’s simply no reason for Usa to have pulled Thred back in there. Unless they’re being extra paranoid tonight, and as such, plan to interrogate him and then wipe his memory of having done that.”

“An interrogation which may well bring our names into this,” Para realized.

Sue gestured in her direction. “Exactly. Between the drugs in the infirmary and all the security there’s some sort of epic cover up going on here, and I don’t like it. This is not what I signed up for when I came to this school. It’s almost like someone else is pulling the strings today. Someone shady.” She peered in Chartreuse’s direction again.

Sam pointed towards the wall. “Okay, so now we know. Sue, how do you propose we charge in and save Thred? You’ve been down there already.”

“To be clear, I haven’t seen all of it,” Sue admitted, looking back to him. “We only have access to the research lab area. Though, if you do get caught and thrown into the holding cells, there’s another puzzle on the walls there. It works the same as here on the music room wall. To see if you stumbled in by accident, or whether you really know what you’re doing.”

“You think that’s, like, where Thred got taken?” Chartreuse mused.

Sue shrugged. “I’d say no, but everything’s felt off tonight. Honestly, I’m kind of hoping that as soon as we get in there, we’ll learn this has all been one big misunderstanding.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“What can we expect to see first then?” Para asked.

Sue sighed. “Okay, so, there’ll just be the one guard on duty. Sam and I can explain about being here for solving the breadcrumbs puzzle, which will bump things up to Usa, or maybe even Shay, the local Council liaison. We’d then be held in a waiting room pending an emergency meeting about bringing Sam in, or making him forget about all this.”

“Maybe that room is where Thred is being held too?” Sam suggested.

“I’m hopeful,” Sue agreed.

“So what’s, like, the deal with the weapons then?” Chartreuse asked.

Sue pursed her lips. “Yeah, so, if the guard tries anything funny, we clock him, and I use my invisibility to go deeper and get Thred out of there. The Council’s not all about memory wiping, you know. There’s non-disclosure agreements. I’m hoping we can escape, lie low, and bargain for that outcome.”

Sam nodded. “Anything else we should watch out for?”

Sue shook her head. “No. Wait - yes. Don’t assume that anyone who’s unarmed isn’t a threat. Spells can get tossed around, and all the Council defenders need is a line of sight to you.”

“Aha, thanks for spelling that out,” Chartreuse said, nodding. Everyone turned to stare at her, Sue looking particularly annoyed. Chartreuse smiled back. “I’m, you know, defusing tension.”

“Let’s just do this,” Sam suggested.

“Please,” Sue muttered.

Sam picked his music stand back up and went to the wall, entering the SECRET code that Usa had used earlier. There was the sound of wind chimes, and the fifth door appeared. They all walked in.

Once the door was shut behind them, the elevator ran automatically down. Another door soon slid into position on the opposite side of the wall. Sam reached out and opened that one too, carefully poking his head around the corner first. “Oh. Um, hi,” he remarked.

Sam swung the door open wider, allowing Chartreuse to see a small reception area. There were even a couple of potted ferns near the one desk. At the desk, behind a panel of switches and dials, stood a nondescript twenty-year old with blond hair, wearing some sort of dark robe.

“Don’t come any closer!” the man said, bringing a gun into view.

Sam carefully set his music stand down and moved sideways along the wall, followed by everyone else.

“This student solved the entry puzzle,” Sue remarked, holding her hands up to show she was unarmed. “Albeit unconventionally. Also, are you new here?”

“Is that the way out then?” the man said, waggling his gun at the door.

This was when Chartreuse noticed the legs sticking out from underneath one side of the desk. Someone was unconscious back there. “You don’t, you know, work for the Council,” she realized.

The man shifted his aim towards Chartreuse. “Look, I don’t care about whatever your mystic Council is doing. Just let me out before you shut down dimensional travel!”

“Shut down… we wouldn’t do that,” Sue said, taken aback.

“Also, we’re not Council,” Para supplied helpfully. She waved her metronome in the air.

The blonde guy came around the desk. “Don’t con me,” he said, heading for the door that would lead back into the Academy. All the while motioning with his gun that they should continue to keep their distance. “I was in the wardrobe, I heard everything. You won’t catch me the way you caught that other lady.”

“Oh, caught who now?” Chartreuse asked, standing straighter.

“What wardrobe?” Sue said, frustration creeping into her tone.

“Could it be that we’re on the same side here?” Sam proposed.

“Just keep back,” the robed man said. He pointed at the ground in front of them and fired, presumably as some sort of warning shot. Except instead of the gun discharging, it let out a high pitched whine.

Sue’s eyes went wide. “Magic ownership override. Get rid of that,” she called out to him.

The man stared at the gun in surprise, and then perhaps more out of some self-preservation reflex than having heard Sue, threw it up into the air. The whine culminated in a “pop”, the gun raining a shower of sparkles down onto the entire area.

WHAT DO THE SPARKLES DO?

Options:

[polldaddy poll=10155123]

VOTING CLOSES 7am EST MONDAY NOV 12th

THE ORACLE PROPHESIED: When the vote at the end of Part Six resulted in “Sam doesn’t figure it out (cut to Alice)”, Thred’s fate was sealed. Sam was destined to eavesdrop on Usa bringing him in to learn the access code instead.

EXTRA ASIDE: I think I’ve covered all the loose plot threads by this point (aside from the shadow committee’s ‘shut down dimensional travel’ climax piece). Please let me know if you think I’ve missed something. Even though I’m making this up as I go along (seriously, that otherworld urban legend thing coming back wasn’t planned), I am trying to keep everything internally consistent. Thanks very much for reading!

CHANCED ERASURES: PART EIGHT

“Analogies work,” Alice agreed. She felt along the left hand passage of the T-Intersection, eventually coming to a dead end. Or what seemed at first to be a dead end. Alice was plenty suspicious of the faint light coming from a knothole in the large wood panel blocking the passage. But she wasn’t sure if she should bend down to peer through.

“You think there’s a coded door here too?” Marlin asked from behind her.

“Maaaaybe,” Alice mused. She poked her fingers tentatively into the knothole, found she could jiggle the entire panel, and soon the wooden barrier slid to the side, into the wall. She grinned. “Or maybe not.”

The faint light was now a vertical crack, as there was a visible set of doors in front of them. Though between them and those doors was hanging a number of dark robes. They had apparently found their way into the back of a wardrobe.

Alice reached out to grab one of the robes, and she started putting it on. They knew what she looked like, after all, so a disguise seemed sensible.

“It’s like we’re in that children’s book,” Marlin remarked, moving past her to peer out of the partly open wardrobe door. “That one about the lion.”

“Oh, I hope not,” Alice mused. “As if this is Narnia, I’m in real trouble for being rescued, what with the time discrepancy in that series. Also, this cloth itches, I hope I don’t have to wear it very long.”

“Why wear it at all?” Marlin asked, turning back to her.

Alice shrugged. “When in Rome, do as Romans do. Which, contrary to popular belief, is not roamin' around.”

Marlin blinked. “Pardon?”

Alice clucked her tongue. “So your Earth had C.S. Lewis but not St. Ambrose? That’s weird.”

She could now see Marlin shaking his head in the dim light. “I think you’re weird. Also, you do realize that being mistaken for one of their cabal could get you in more trouble?”

Alice grinned again. “I won’t make a… habit of it.” She flipped the cowl up onto her head. “Yeaaaaaah?”

Marlin sighed. “I’m going to stop talking to you now.”

“Oh, suit yourself. Or stay in those clothes, as the case may be.” With that remark, Alice edged her way out of the wardrobe, into the room itself.

It seemed to be a meeting room of some sort. There was only one overhead light, but that was enough to see a large table with about a dozen chairs around it, a hat rack and a potted plant against one wall… and no visible signs of other doorways.

Alice was just about to call out to Marlin, saying it was safe, when there was a flash of light behind the plant. She instinctively ducked down, and then edged under the table as she heard voices. Fortunately, the table had been decorated with an opaque cloth.

“All right, no one can hear us in here,” a female voice purred. “So explain it to me from the top.”

“Sure. How high is your top?” came a dry voice in response.

Alice recognized that second, male voice. It was sparkle-man, or rather Shay. The dark skinned man who had knocked her out following her interrogation the previous day. That is, it was either him, or it was someone wearing dark slacks who was very good at mimicking voices.

[caption id=“attachment_1916” align=“alignright” width=“150”] Alice’s Epsilon Logo[/caption]

The other pair of legs, by contrast, was sporting heeled boots, and a tail fell between them. The purr of the voice was very possibly feline in nature. In fact, Alice knew that this particular world was involved in genetic splicing - Epsilon had been able to turn up very rudimentary data - but she hadn’t expected to encounter anyone of that nature around the academy.

“The first arrival,” the cat-woman responded.

Shay reached out for a chair, spinning it around and straddling it as he sat. So, Alice reasoned, while the woman might have been his superior, he was at the least seeing this conversation as informal.

“Two women, as far as we can tell,” Shay began. “A blonde, and the brunette that we actually caught. We had this ‘Alice’ lady questioned by Usa Staling, since this is technically her jurisdiction, but that didn’t go anywhere useful.”

Alice couldn’t help but smile to herself.

“Standard so far. And the second incursion?”

“Some guy named Marlin, who is either exactly what he says he is, namely some guy who had bad luck with dimensional roulette, or he is a very clever plant who believes his story to the point where we couldn’t find any other reason for his appearance.”

The tail on the cat-woman swished back and forth. “So that’s why you didn’t transfer Alice right away.”

“And why we put them together in the same cell, yeah. I figure we give it another hour, then retrieve that listening device we hid under Marlin’s collar.

Oh, perfect, Alice thought, wincing. She should have been more careful. Though at least now there was a chance she could get the device and destroy it. Actually, Alice hoped to destroy all records of her ever being here. It would save the headache of Beam and Fate potentially having to send someone to this world again for cleanup.

“Fine. And NOW what’s happening?” the cat-woman asked.

The chair that Shay was sitting on rocked up onto two legs, and then back down. “We caught a student, a guy named Sir Thred, messing with security outside the bunker entrance. And we’re pretty sure he wasn’t acting alone. There’s a record of academy room accesses this evening that didn’t trip any alarms because they used valid morph codes.”

That was new and interesting information. Alice filed it away, wondering if she could use it to her advantage.

It also occurred to her that it made sense that all of this was happening now. The Epsilon Station had most of time and space available to it, so she and Beam had set their arrival to be a point that maximized the chances of blending in. Apparently, that meant right before a number of other events involving this shadow committee. They were simply one more event amid the chaos.

The cat-woman had been tapping a foot on the ground, as if in thought. At last, she decided, “Then it could be coincidence. Do you think we’re in danger of being exposed?”

Shay’s chair rocked again. “I doubt it. There’s a good chance this Thred guy simply had a lead on that trail of breadcrumbs we left on the campus. You know, the one that would allow us to recruit non-gifties for the cause? We can tease that out of him. And unless Marlin’s recording device shows some evidence of collusion, we can ship both arrivals off to you in processing before morning. No one even needs to know you showed up here.”

“Mmmm. Good. I must admit, the sooner we get this off-world nonsense away from where magic spells are possible, the safer I’ll feel,” the cat-woman muttered.

“Hah. Why, worried my power will put you to sleep?” Shay said, the grin on his face evident from his tone of voice.

“I rather wish your report had done that instead. As it is, I’m still on edge. We’re too close to shutting down dimensional travel for good to have things get messed up now.”

“We WILL wait until all teams are back though, right? Before enacting the plan?” Shay verified.

“Yes, yes, yes,” cat-woman muttered. “Your brother will be fine.” Her feet paced back and forth for a moment. “Very well. Bring me some biscuits, I’ll remain here until you get the listening device information.”

Inwardly, Alice groaned as Shay stood up. The woman’s boots quickly took the place of his slacks as she sat down, admittedly the proper way around this time. Facing the table.

“I’ll return shortly,” Shay said. He walked back to the potted plant - and his feet vanished in a flash of light. The cat-woman’s feet soon disappeared too, as Alice heard them hit the table. Only the tail of the woman remained visible, twitching back and forth.

So, Alice mused, how long was she going to be trapped in this room? Also, how much had Marlin heard from the wardrobe, and would he have the sense to effect an escape now, before their absence from the cell was remarked upon?

Alice certainly didn’t have much hope that Marlin would be able to avoid spilling the beans, if he were caught again. She’d be forced to go on the offensive.

So maybe she should do that pre-emptively, and take on the cat-woman? After all, she might be able to get her belongings back that way, and with any luck, Beam had devised a way to break the jamming fields and home in on her communicator. The only trouble was, once she’d used up the element of surprise, she’d probably be at a disadvantage in a fight.

Making a dash for the potted plant was questionable, as she wasn’t sure how to activate the magic which had let Shay in and out, and escaping via the wardrobe would let on about the hidden passages. Assuming they didn’t already know.

Was the best plan simply to stay put, and hope that an emergency somewhere else would cause cat-woman’s attention to wander?

WHAT’S NEXT?

OPTIONS:

[polldaddy poll=10142559]

VOTING CLOSES 7am EDT TUESDAY OCT 30th

EXTRA ASIDE: Sorry for the extra week of delay. I probably could have mashed something together for last Sunday, I even had a good idea of what I wanted here, but I couldn’t motivate myself. It felt like I’d get the same few votes no matter when I posted. (Thanks to Nebus though, for the shout-out in the MathEd Carnival #121!) This past week it was my wife’s birthday, my daughter turned four months old, and I had parent-teacher interviews, so no chance to write. I looked ahead though, and the extra week? Means I won’t be publishing the week of Christmas. Which is probably for the best. Incidentally, to see another vote-for-plot story that gets dozens of votes, Drew Hayes is doing his Halloween story 2018 again this year. It runs daily, go see.

CHANCED ERASURES: PART SEVEN

Alice processed the words, but by the time it fully registered what her companion had said, she had already murmured back, “Hmmmm?”

“See, I’m thinking maybe the other wizards wanted me to get captured,” the young man clarified for her. “Maybe they gave me a bunch of misinformation about their group, figuring that I would spill it under duress, like I did earlier. So this is all a trap that I’ve sprung! What do you think?”

Alice turned away from where she had been inspecting the wall of their cell. “Is that how your wizard group usually operates?”

The man shrugged. “I… don’t know. This trip was kind of an initiation to the group.”

“Then your rite of passage took a left turn,” Alice concluded, looking back at the wall. The strange bricks seemingly stared back at her, their strange symbols taunting.

[caption id=“attachment_929” align=“alignright” width=“185”] ALICE VUNDERLANDE
Commission by Cherry Zong[/caption]

Alice knew she had been in the cell for at least a day now. The first time she’d awoken here, she’d been alone. Her jailers had come and knocked her out before taking her to that medical interrogation area, then sparkle-man (aka Pepa, aka Shay) had knocked her out there to - presumably - bring her straight back here.

The second time she’d awoken here, she’d had company. So either someone else had decided to visit this dimension, or more likely, the young wizard in the cell was an attempt to attack her defences. They were giving her someone to confide in.

She hadn’t risen to the bait. Even when they had come to take him away for questioning, seemingly in much the same way she had been the previous day, she had assumed it to be part of the ruse. She hadn’t paid much attention to it.

Now, when he’d come back babbling about his “home Earth”, where wizards would send someone through a portal using “dimensional roulette”, she’d been less certain. It was certainly plausible that this was a common holding area, and that therefore they had a common enemy. He’d even said “no” when she’d asked him - presumably still under truth serum - if he was working with their captors.

Then again, Alice hadn’t been born yesterday.

Still, the guy could be a resource that she wasn’t properly tapping. And she felt like she was running out of time to decipher her escape route.

“What’s your name, anyway?” Alice asked, turning again to the wizard and sizing him up. He was pretty nondescript, with short blond hair, wearing some sort of dark robe to hide his physique. Alice might have guessed his age as being early twenties.

He looked back up at her, from where he sat on the only bench in the room. “Marlin. I did introduce myself when you first woke up, yes?”

Alice pressed a finger to her chin. That’s right, she’d simply retorted that his name sounded ‘fishy’. “Okay, Marlin, I’m Alice. Question, have you noticed everything wrong with this cell we’re in yet?”

Marlin looked around. “What, you mean the fact that there’s only one washroom area for the two of us, with no door?”

Alice pursed her lips. “I will grant that situation is also a problem. But I’m hopeful of getting out of here before it’s an issue. Go deeper.”

Marlin looked around again and adjusted his robe. “Well, the bars on the door look sturdy enough, I doubt we’ll be able to chisel out the bricks, we’ve got no windows… seems like a pretty foolproof place to me.”

“You see, but you do not observe,” Alice quoted. Or, he was a plant by the enemy, and not interested in observing. Still, one more try. “We’re in a society that’s technologically advanced enough to have holographic recordings and truth serums, and yet we’ve been left in the dungeons and dragons area,” she explained patiently. “Go deeper.”

Marlin frowned. “Oh. Then you think we’re in their magical prison? One for preventing spell casting? Not that I can do any without my wand…”

“Whereas I’m not magical,” Alice interrupted, flicking some hair back off her shoulder. “And they know that by now. So why not fix us up in a maximum security room with force fields and laser beams, hmmmm?”

Marlin shook his head in confusion. “I’ll bite, why not?”

Alice pointed at him. “Either they can’t do it, or they won’t do it. You observe yet?”

He stared at her. She could almost see the question marks forming around his head. “How exactly does that help us?”

Alice sighed. Still, the guy was her only sounding board, and talking to herself out loud might be helpful. She’d just talk quietly, to keep her voice from carrying, as she hadn’t seen any obvious listening devices during her explorations of the room.

“Options for why they can’t,” Alice began. “Whoever’s holding us, they’re not a sanctioned group, and don’t want a power drain to register on a grid. Or, there’s something about this area that prevents such high tech gizmos from working, perhaps tech even interferes with their magic. Or, there’s something about this day or time of year that makes their regular tech-tech cells unavailable.”

“I see where you’re going now,” Marlin said, standing up from the bench. “Whereas reasons for why they won’t, it might be that some higher-ups have made a decision for them, or they have certain red tape to cut through first, or they’ve fallen in love with us.”

Alice paused in mid-stride at Marlin’s last remark. Definitely not an option she would have considered. Maybe the guy would be useful after all?

She spun on her heel. “Precisely. More to the point, I feel like these symbols” - she pointed at an arrangement of the bricks on the far wall - “are in here with us for a reason. Do you recognize any of them?”

Marlin walked over to have a better look. Slowly he shook his head. “No - though, okay, that one there, it was in the gym of the campus I’d teleported into upon arrival. But I don’t know what it means.”

Alice tilted her head. “Hold the phone. Were you also investigating the Clover Club here?”

Marlin glanced at her. “The what now? Is that some group of leprechauns?”

“Never mind, never mind,” Alice said, waving him off. His story of dimensional roulette remained plausible. She then tilted her head the other way. “Thing is, you can press on those bricks,” she remarked after a second. “But don’t,” she added, as he reached out.

“Why not?”

“It takes a while for them to pop back out and reset. We need to find the right code. And with those six symbols, there’s 720 possible permutations, never mind that the code could be shorter, or have repetition included. So, thoughts?”

“Wait, how do you know all this? You’ve been pressing random bricks?”

“Yes, my calendar’s been clear the last day or so,” Alice said dryly. “Focus, please.”

“What if the wrong combination lets poisonous gas in here or something?!”

Alice raked her fingers back through her hair. “There’s easier ways for them to kill us. Moreover, I think maybe the reason why they won’t hold us elsewhere is because we’re being tested here. With that.”

Marlin seemed about to laugh, but he stopped himself, then crossed his arms. “Interesting. But even assuming that is a way out, what would we do from there? We’ll still be in this facility.”

Alice shrugged. “I have devices locked up somewhere, you have a wand, surely there’s some way to escape this dimension. Alternatively, if they do secretly love us, and learning the code makes us their Gods, we’re good.”

“Huh.” Marlin leaned in to look closer at the bricks. “I was semi-conscious as they were bringing me back. It looked like we were going through a music room. Do the bricks let out sounds as you push them?”

“No,” Alice replied. She pursed her lips. “But we can. How’s your karaoke?”

Marlin blinked. “Is that a type of sushi?”

“Yeah, no. Pity I don’t know Iron Maiden’s “The Prisoner”, it’d be topical. Though Adele once said ‘Rolling in the Deep’ helped her hit notes she didn’t know she could, so I’ll try that.”

“You’ll what now?”

“Sing, while you watch the bricks.”

He said something else, but Alice tuned him out, working to find her vocal centre. She knew she wasn’t the best vocalist, but it had been one of the things she’d tried out to fill time during her days on the Epsilon Station. When she finally started belting the tune out, it was with no reservations, no interest in what Marlin’s opinion as a music critic.

Fortunately, he had apparently been watching the bricks as requested, because as she finished and collapsed on the bench, he remarked, “Maybe I imagined it, but I think the symbols blurred into English letters a couple of times. Possibly letters from other languages too. That was weird.”

Alice leaned back. “What, no applause?”

“I’m trying not to lose track of what I saw,” he said. He then lifted his fingers to point at the bricks in turn. “E - C - R - T - E - S. What does it mean?”

Holding back a sigh at the lack of enthusiasm for her performance, Alice pushed herself back up. “Word jumble. Reset C? Erects? Secrete? No, too many E’s there… oh, duh.”

Alice slammed her palm rapid-fire into the bricks that Marlin had been pointing to. As the last one was pushed into place, there was a clicking sound, and a panel of the back wall swung out.

Marlin jumped back in shock. “Well done. What was that, ‘Set rec’?”

“Secret. As in secret door,” Alice explained. “Hard part’s obviously knowing the mapping of the symbols, particularly with two Es that don’t quite look the same. I gambled that I should move my hand in sort of a star pattern. Because I’m a pop STAR sensation.” She flashed Marlin a grin.

His smile was more hesitant. “So we go into this passage?”

Still no applause for the singing, fine. “You can stay here to be tortured,” Alice sighed. “I’m leaving. Also, if you come, still suspicious of you, for the record.”

“The record? Oh, you’re hoping for a record deal now, after that song?”

Alice lifted her eyebrow. “Better. A sense of humour serves you well when you’re with me.”

She headed into the passage, and after waiting a moment and having Marlin follow her, she reached out to pull the doorway shut.

“Uhm, it’s gonna be pitch dark in here,” he pointed out. The light they’d had in their cell had been filtering in from lamps in the corridor.

“Yup. If you use that as an excuse to grope me, I WILL kick you somewhere painful,” Alice assured him.

“That’s not what I… never mind,” Marlin sighed, as their light source was cut off.

Alice turned and started to walk. The walls of the passage itself weren’t jagged like rock, but neither were they brick. Perhaps the tunnel had been made using some futuristic carving tool, Alice reasoned, as the shape was pretty consistent all the way along. With it being about six feet high, she also didn’t have to worry about banging her head, and she could feel both walls as they went along.

Until she couldn’t.

Alice managed to stop herself before stepping face-first into the wall before her. They had reached some sort of T-shaped intersection. Marlin stumbled into her from behind.

“Don’t kick me,” he blurted.

“Sure, as long as you tell me left or right.”

She couldn’t see him, but imagined him frowning. “What makes you think I know?”

“I’m presuming that you were at least conscious for part of your time down here, and thus have some sense of which way might not lead to the guard house.”

Marlin sighed. “So, no pressure then.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

Options:

[polldaddy poll=10122864]

VOTING CLOSES 7am EDT TUESDAY OCT 9th

EXTRA ASIDE: I managed to get 30 consecutive days of decimal views on Wordpress here (as the stats revert to decimals when you’re under 10 page views). Is that an accomplishment?

[caption id=“attachment_2221” align=“aligncenter” width=“620”] Stats after 4+ years[/caption]

CHANCED ERASURES: PART SIX

Sam flashed her a smile in response. “All right then. Back out through the vent.”

“Of course you’d pick his side,” Sue muttered as she walked past Chartreuse. Thred simply shrugged his shoulders and thrust his hands in his pockets, apparently willing to go along with the majority.

For her part, Para wasn’t quite sure what to make of this “scavenger hunt”. The chain of room numbers that were leading them around - did they truly connect to the fact that Alice had been interrogated here in the infirmary? And to the fact that there was a guard in the hall? And if so, what would there be in the music room?

More to the point, if not, then what was the significance of these rooms to the school? That felt like a question that deserved a more immediate answer, whether it connected to their mission at this academy or not.

In particular, while the Clover Club inscription had been on the wall, the security office had used a filing cabinet, the infirmary had used a bed, and the roof apparently involved a sculpture. All items put in place after the building had been built. So, put in place by whom?

Wait, hadn’t this academy been built on a burial ground?

[caption id=“attachment_848” align=“alignright” width=“219”] PARA
Commission by Michelle Simpson[/caption]

Para approached Chartreuse as Sam and Thred stood on the desk to access the ventilation grate once again. “In your later reading, did you learn anything else about why this school had been built on this location, of all places?” Para murmured.

Chartreuse turned. “Hmm? Oh, right, I guess we never, like, compared notes after our history browsing. There wasn’t anything in your book?”

Para felt her bunny ears twitch. “Officially something about this being the cheapest place in the growing municipality. I was hoping you had more.”

Chartreuse bobbed her head. “Yeah, well, it was cheap because they’d buried the casualties of the magic wars here, or something.”

Para’s ears twitched again, but her depression remained at a minimum. “My reading was mostly confined to local government and the like. Elaborate on these wars?”

Chartreuse glanced towards Sue, whom Para noticed by now was looking back at them. Presumably wondering if they were going to travel ahead of her, as they had last time. When they didn’t immediately approach, Sue’s eyes narrowed, but she simply turned away and boosted herself up towards the vent. Perhaps hoping that they would be left behind.

“I hyperlinked around through, like, a bunch of books,” Chartreuse admitted, as she headed towards the vent herself. “But the gist of it, and, you know, the reason they don’t like dimensional travellers here, is because a couple hundred years ago, a magic dimension came in conflict with this Earth.”

Para nibbled on her lip. “And they buried the victims of it on this spot?”

“Yeah, but eventually there was a treaty or something, and I think the bodies were, you know, dug up and returned. Still, the whole area was kind of a dead zone until a few decades ago.” Chartreuse paused before climbing on the desk, cocking her head at Para. “Why, is that important?”

Para shrugged. “I’m not sure. Something about this hunt we’re on doesn’t make sense to me. I thought maybe that was it.”

“You think this whole rooms thing is, like, a trap?”

“I don’t know,” Para admitted. “Let’s just get going.”

As Chartreuse climbed up though the opening, Para noticed a map of the school sitting in a corner of the desk. She quickly pulled it over, tracing her finger on it as she recreated their path. The clubs area was in the east wing. Security was to the south, the infirmary was to the north, the roof access was south again, and the music room… was roughly central. Nearby, as Sam had said.

Para traced her finger again. If she were to go to the west wing at the end of her movements, instead of centrally, she could create a five pointed star. Coincidentally, the west was where the gymnasium was located. Was there a connection to Sue’s rantings about their equipment?

Para pushed the map away. Perhaps she was seeing patterns where there were none. Though if she wasn’t, at least the single point of the star was up, implying good, rather than down, for evil.

Para hurried to climb through the vent and rejoin the others.

There was another security guard outside the music room.

Sam shook his head. “It was Hypno vials in the infirmary, I wonder what’s in the music room. Anyone know of a convenient vent access?”

“No. Also, this is getting too dangerous,” Sue decided. “Why don’t we come back tomorrow?”

“Because we’ve got Para’s skeleton key now,” Thred reminded them.

Para winced. “I just happen to know some of the morphing codes. Which, I admit, might not work on another day.” After all, there was a good chance the combinations would be changed again, if the insertion and subsequent deletion of her and Chartreuse to the database was remarked upon.

Sam turned to look at Chartreuse. “You have any other good ideas, or crystal balls you can use?” he asked.

Chartreuse rocked on her heels. “Maybe? A reading’ll, like, take some time though.”

“I definitely would not trust whatever she comes up with,” Sue stated.

Sam turned to Sue and frowned. “Can you stop? Chartreuse has been nothing but helpful to me all day, you know.”

“Which means it’s my turn to help now.”

The voice had been that of Sir Thred, and as Para turned to look at him, he strode around the corner of the hallway and towards the guard.

“Damn it…!” Sam gasped.

Sue reached out to grasp Sam by the shoulder, preventing him from following. “Too late. Thred’s made his choice.”

“Hi there!” Sir Thred said, his voice carrying down the hall. “Forgot my trombone. Could you open the door?”

“The school is closed,” the guard growled. “Leave, before you get yourself in a heap of trouble.”

“What are you doing here anyway?” Thred said, continuing his approach. “Are you a new teach–”

“LEAVE.”

What happened next was a brief scuffle and the sound of Thred running, followed by the sound of the guard’s footsteps as he called out in anger.

“Thred just grabbed the security guy’s hat,” Sam whistled. “He’s pulling the guy away from his post - now’s our chance. Come on!”

“This reeeeally isn’t a good–” Sue cut her voice off and simply ran after Sam, who had already taken off around the corner, Chartreuse on his heels.

They all seemed to have forgotten that Para was the one with the morphing key; she hurried to catch up. It wasn’t until they were all actually in the music room that she was able to remark, “That guard is probably going to be all over us as soon as we try to leave, yes?”

“One problem at a time,” Sam said. “Come on, let’s look around for the next clue and room location.”

“Why are, you know, the lights already on in here?” Chartreuse remarked. Para didn’t have an answer for that, and neither Sam nor Sue even acknowledged the question.

Sam was the one who located the strange symbol and the letter “S”, carved into the bottom of the main podium, but there was no room number this time.

“I guess this is the end?” Sam mused, as he stood back up. “But what does the word RECTS signify? Rectangles?”

“Maybe the next room number is, you know, somewhere else in here,” Chartreuse suggested. “Along with a symbol.” She peered under the high hat for the drum kit.

“Unless the Clover Club wasn’t the first room?” Para murmured, tracing her star pattern in the air again. Maybe the gym hadn’t been their next stop - maybe it should have been their first. She looked over towards Sue, who seemed to be chewing on her lower lip in thought.

“Huh. So we’re trapped in the music room without knowing our next destination,” Sam realized. “That kind of sucks.”

That’s when there was a sound of wind chimes, and Para saw Sue’s eyes go wide.

“We have to hide, now,” the dark haired girl said, her gaze flitting around the room.

Rather than question the statement, Para quickly moved to the side, ducking down behind the upright piano. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chartreuse diving for the instrument storage room, one of four rooms that seemed to be self contained inside the music area. The other three looked like soundproof practice rooms.

Then there was the fifth room. The mystery room, the secret room, the one that hadn’t displayed a doorway until right at that very second. It was located just past the other four, in the corner. When it opened, Usa Staling, the academy head of security, strode out.

Para could only just hear Usa grumbling about a ‘stupid old wizard’ in the time it took Alice’s interrogator to march straight across the room and out the main door.

When Para looked back at the mystery doorway, it had disappeared again. Even so, she only stood up when she saw that Chartreuse, Sam and Sue had come out into the main area once again.

“How did Usa not see us?” Sam muttered. “Were we standing so still that we looked like music stands??”

“No,” Chartreuse said. “Somehow you two, you know, conveniently disappeared from sight in the time it took me to blink.” The mystic then looked pointedly at Sue.

Sue let out a breath through clenched teeth. “Fine. You want to hear this?” Her body went transparent, then she disappeared altogether, before slowly reappearing. “I’m a high level giftie.” She raised her finger to point at Chartreuse. “Which is how I know YOU are NOT one, hmmm?”

Chartreuse winced, as Sam took a couple steps backwards, ending up closer to Para. “This… this is impossible. Sue, you… you’re in classes with me.”

Sue lowered her arm, chewing her lower lip again as she looked at Sam. “Yeah. I’m kinda so gifted that even my peers aren’t sure about me, hence why I’m enrolled… undercover, if you will? Thing is, Sam, I see such potential in you. And there are people as high up as me who DON’T have extra abilities, aside from their intelligence. You could be one of them. I’m sure of it.”

“Then this WAS all a test,” Para concluded. “Starting at the gym and culminating at that mystery door here. A test for Sam.”

“I didn’t design it,” Sue was quick to point out. “I didn’t even know all the specifics, like where the clues were. But yes. Our group simply seems to have chosen the worst possible day to try this out, when SPIES and TRAITORS were in our midst.” She didn’t look directly at Chartreuse, but then, she didn’t have to.

Chartreuse shook her head. “Sue, please, I’m not… not those. Though I did, like, have my own reasons to be exploring the school, I guess.”

Sam held his head. “Okay, never thought I’d actually say this, but I can’t deal with this just now. Maybe I should go and give myself up to that security guy like Thred, figure it out tomorrow.”

Sue took a step closer to him. “You can’t. It’s too late for that now, it’d probably jeopardize any chance you’d have of getting in with the elites. Sam, you need to finish the puzzle tonight. Preferably before Usa comes back from… whatever SHE’S off doing.”

Sue advanced again, and Sam took another step away, almost bumping into Para.

“Can you tell him the missing pieces from the gym, Sue?” Para asked softly, bringing Sam up short.

Sue’s hands clenched into fists, and she slowly shook her head. “No. I’ve said too much already. Besides, you’ve already seen what you need to do here. So do your best, based on what you’ve got.” She peered back at Chartreuse. “And you? You can’t watch him. Even you,” she added, looking back at Para, “I’m a bit nervous about.”

“We can’t, what, watch him solve a puzzle?” Chartreuse asked, bemused.

“No, because solving the puzzle is what opens the door,” Para reasoned. “The mystery door we saw. That has to be it, as those symbols we saw from the other rooms, a lot of them are engraved on the wall, along with the more traditional musical notations as camouflage.”

“Definitely nervous about you now,” Sue decided.

Sam sighed. “So, what, I have to tap the wall over there in the order of the symbols we saw? When I don’t even know the first ones to use?”

Sue clenched her jaw, and said nothing more.

“Fun. Hey, anyone want to toss out words that end in -rects? Directs? Resurrects? Erects?”

Para reached out to touch him gently on the shoulder; he flinched very minimally. “Remember, Sam. Many of the rooms with clues are totally off limits to students,” she reminded. “Maybe this is something you CAN work out without having every piece.”

Sam frowned. “It WOULD be difficult to get every piece in order, the way we did,” he agreed. “And even then, it’d be more of a physical thing than a mental challenge.” He walked over to look more closely at the wall. “So perhaps it’s more about the locations within this scrambled jumble of symbols?”

Sue looked hopeful at that. Para still had her doubts.

WHAT’S NEXT? (Do you know what Sam needs to do?)

OPTIONS:

[polldaddy poll=10108440]

VOTING CLOSES 7am EDT MONDAY SEP 24th

CHANCED ERASURES: PART FIVE

Chartreuse felt a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. Why had Sue led them here, only to turn them around? “I thought you knew the janitor routes,” she reminded. “Isn’t this, you know, why you’ve been in the lead?”

“That is not a custodian,” she answered. “It’s Usa, or one of her people. Keeping watch over the corridor down to the infirmary.”

[caption id=“attachment_1093” align=“alignright” width=“222”] CHARTREUSE VERMILION Commission by Ruuari[/caption]

Which was a perfectly reasonable explanation, but then why was Chartreuse feeling uneasy about Sue once again? Though, she’d felt queasy in the afternoon, and there had been that unspecified reaction to Thred earlier. Perhaps her mystic systems were simply going a bit haywire, for whatever reason.

Sam crossed his arms. “They’re definitely hiding something, hmm? I wonder how we can get past that guy to check it out.”

Sue flashed her friend a smile. “Maybe our ‘giftie’ here could draw his or her attention away,” she said, jerking her thumb at Chartreuse.

Chartreuse shook her head. “Security has no reason to, like, treat me nicer than any of you.”

Sue smirked. “Oh, I know.”

Sue was definitely the most likely candidate for messing up their chances at locating Alice. Before Chartreuse could formulate an answer to the other girl’s remark though, Para spoke up.

“Couldn’t we get to the infirmary another way? Not through the corridors?” she proposed.

Thred clasped his hands together. “Yes! We get to do a ventilation shaft run, like in the movies. Cool.”

Para’s nose twitched. “I was thinking a window."

“Nah, they’ll be bolted. Thred’s right,” Sam agreed, snapping his fingers. “All we need to do is snip the wires on the grate in the bathroom around behind the infirmary and use the duct.” He cleared his throat as everyone turned to look at him. “Not… that… I’d… know…?"

“You’ve been, you know, planning this information gathering mission for a while, huh?” Chartreuse divined.

Sue hmmphed. “More like he already tried that scheme once. Except that’s when he was trying to get OUT of the infirmary.”

Sam winced. “Ahh, no, you heard about that?”

“Read it. You’re not the only newsletter in the region,” Sue remarked. She then shot another glare towards Chartreuse, though Chartreuse wasn’t sure why.

This time Thred spoke before Chartreuse could speak. “Oh, right! That time you got heatstroke, but wanted to capture footage of the sunbathing protest outside.”

“It was for my article, not to see the people,” Sam insisted. “Anyway, nothing was proven, I could have twisted my ankle any number of ways while in the infirmary itself… let’s just circle around and get on with this investigation, all right?”

“Good idea,” Para agreed, again jumping in before tempers could flare. “Because at this rate, we’ll still be here when the building gets locked up. Which could be a problem.”

It didn’t take them long to bypass the security man’s location and get into the restrooms. Chartreuse idly noticed that were marked gender neutral - yet there still seemed to be a couple of urinals? To help save water, maybe?

“This trash can should work for getting us up to the vent,” Thred said, grabbing the object by the door and flipping it upside-down. Paper towels spilled out. So that part of society was recognizable, at least.

“By all means, lead the way then,” Sue said, leaning back against the wall, clasping her hands behind her head.

Sam blinked at her. “Are you not coming with us?”

She half smiled. “Don’t worry, I am, but last. Nice try at having a chance to look up my skirt though.”

Sam opened his mouth, then simply closed it and rolled his eyes as he turned his attention to the vent. For her part, Chartreuse looked down at her pleated school authorized skirt. Good point. The skirt wasn’t short, but crawling through a vent… “Guys can totally go first,” she agreed with a nod.

Sue gave her another look. Chartreuse divined the intent - they were about to have it out. Sure enough, once Thred, Sam and Para had climbed in, the dark haired girl’s palm fell upon Chartreuse’s shoulder. “I’ve figured out your game, you know,” she murmured, eyes narrowing.

Chartreuse couldn’t prevent her natural instinct of darting her gaze from side to side, as if seeking an escape. Had Sue figured out that they were off-worlders? “Like, what?” she managed to say, smiling as sincerely as she could manage.

“Please. You’re not a real giftie,” Sue continued. “Not here, at least. I’d know. Trying to make a name for yourself with this school, are you? Think this ‘Alice’ affair is the way to do it? Think again. Sam’s the one who will be seeing things through to the end tonight. He’s earned it. You, not so much.”

Chartreuse felt a measure of relief at the accusation, though again she tried not to show it. It seemed like Sue had fingered her as someone from a rival newsletter, perhaps even a spy from a rival school… and while having her cover blown wasn’t great, there were worse alternatives.

“Got it,” Chartreuse assured the other girl. “No sweat, with any luck, you totally won’t hear from me ever again after, you know, tomorrow.” Likely not even in the student records, if Beam was to be believed.

Sue’s expression became a grimace, perhaps not liking the quick agreement. She jerked her thumb towards the vent. “Whatever, like, y’know, hurry up and get in,” she snarked. “I want to see what Sam finds in the infirmary.”

Chartreuse didn’t hesitate. When she crawled out the other end of the passage - which was easier thanks to a nurse’s desk up against the wall - she found everyone else still seemed to be getting their bearings. She took a quick look around herself.

They were near the back of the room, in fact the same area that had been pictured for Alice’s interrogation. Off to the side were a couple of beds for students to lie down on, with curtains that could be drawn for privacy. Towards the front of the room was a possible reception area, with another desk and some chairs. And there were a few cabinets in the room for supplies.

One of them was open. A number of bottles and vials were spread out on a small table.

“Yeah, that’s weird, huh?” Thred said, as Chartreuse stepped closer to see. “That guard out there isn’t doing a very good job, someone’s already ransacked the place for medicine.”

Sam turned his attention from a poster of the skeletal structure on the wall to the curious table. “Have they? Is it my imagination, or are these vials not school issue?” He pulled out a handkerchief and picked one up, peering. “This one actually reads Hypno– and the rest is torn off.”

“Well, that’s damn sloppy,” Sue grumbled as she hopped down from the desk. “I wonder why those were left out.”

“So is it even legal stuff?” Thred gaped, looking over Sam’s shoulder. “I mean, maybe it’s whatever they gave that Alice person, in order to make her more obedient or passive or something.”

“So someone left it here as, like, a frame up,” Chartreuse guessed.

“To incriminate a nurse? Why?” Sam asked. He wrapped the vial in his handkerchief and put it back in his pocket. “And why the guard outside, if not to guard this?”

“Maybe for a totally unrelated reason,” Para offered. “Possibly something the guards themselves weren’t even told about.”

“Right! Could be that Alice girl is being held nearby,” Thred proposed.

Chartreuse exchanged a quick glance with Para before speaking. “Let’s, you know, see if anything else was left behind from that interrogation.”

“More to the point, why the video feed here was on the fritz,” Sam reminded them. “That’s the main reason we came, yeah? It wasn’t for the stuff on that holo-disc, though it’s a nice secondary.”

“I’m starting to think a few events are connected,” Sue observed, throwing Chartreuse another look.

Chartreuse busied herself with checking out the floor where Alice’s chair had been. She didn’t spot anything though, and a pass over it with her quartz crystal didn’t yield her any mystic impressions. Thred was the one who located a microdot near the camera; he left it there, Sam taking a quick picture.

Para beckoned to Chartreuse, as the other three gave the room one more sweep.

“I think that recording we saw took place about twenty-four hours ago,” the bunny girl murmured. She gestured back towards the solitary window to the outside. It was dark, but there must have been a lamp in the courtyard, allowing some light in. “That shadow on the wall from the IV stand, it looks very similar to how things are now, whereas in daylight, it would have looked very different.”

“You think all those bottles and things were just, I dunno, left out here for a day then?” Chartreuse asked, scratching her head. Granted, it did seem more likely than the idea that they’d watched a video that had been recorded less than an hour ago. Because how could the disc have ended up in security so fast?

Para shrugged. “Maybe. Or we’re not the first ones here this evening.”

“Oh, yay.” That didn’t bode well. Though it might at least explain the guard.

“Hey, check this out,” Sam said, motioning to them. Everyone came to join him, where he seemed to be again looking at the poster of the skeleton. “Do you see what’s wrong?” Sam asked.

Chartreuse, Sue, Para and Thred all exchanged glances. “Bad colour scheme?” Thred proposed after a short silence.

Sam lifted his finger to point. “The ossicles. The bones in the ear. This poster lists a fourth bone, the torus. That’s nonsense.”

“Ooh, yeah, that’s totally an astrological sign instead,” Chartreuse agreed.

Sue mumbled something under her breath, then louder stated, “In latin, torus can refer to a bed. Did we check the beds thoroughly?”

Sam shifted his attention to the nearest bed, then got down on his hands and knees to look underneath. “It’s funny,” he remarked. “I’m sure I’ve looked at that poster a half dozen times before when I was in here, and it never registered. We’re being trolled by the nurses.”

“Yeah, um, I’m still stuck on our ears having icicles,” Thred said, frowning.

“I’ll be damned,” came Sam’s voice moments later. “Like the previous rooms, it’s another symbol, the letter “C”, and the word “roof”… I’d have thought it to be graffiti, but now we know better.”

“R-E-C?” Para spelled out. “Something to do with recreation?”

Chartreuse pursed her lips. “I’m not, you know, keen on heading up to the roof. It’s pretty open. And what if we get stuck up there?” It also didn’t feel like a useful step in locating Alice.

“Well, I HAVE been suggesting the gym since the beginning,” Sue offered, leaning back against the wall again. Which was true enough, and she seemed to have Sam’s welfare in mind - but that wouldn’t help them with Alice either. Would it?

Sam pushed himself back out from under the bed, dusting off his hands. “No problem - it all makes sense now! On the roof, when the sun hits that weird sculpture a little before noon - the shadow it makes gives the number for the music room. I always wondered about that. That has to be next.”

“Was there a letter and a symbol too?” Para wondered.

Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess? Maybe there was a “T”? I wasn’t looking for it.”

“Sounds like we might want to double check,” Thred decided. “To the roof, with a flashlight? You know how to get up there, right Sam?”

“Ugh, roof’s dangerous. I still say the gym,” Sue mumbled. “I know we can get THERE without being seen or getting in trouble.”

“No, no, I’m sure the music room would be our next stop after the roof, and it’s nearby,” Sam assured. “We don’t need either of those other places.”

“Sam, are you so keen on this scavenger hunt then?” Chartreuse wondered. “I mean, I thought you were in just this to, you know, go after the Clover Club.”

“Oh, we’ve stumbled on something far more interesting now, I’m sure of it,” Sam said. He grinned at her. “So, being one of the elite, which of those destinations do you think we should head for next?”

Chartreuse shifted her gaze towards the ventilation grate. Well, the roof was the more dangerous option, the music room the more logical one - assuming Sam’s memory held - and the gym… could it tell them more about Sue? She was becoming a problem, and maybe it would pacify her.

Either way, it seemed like none of the destinations related to Alice. Unless… well, which one was more likely to have more information about the security guys?

WHAT’S NEXT?

Options:

[polldaddy poll=10095877]

VOTING CLOSES 7am EDT MONDAY SEP 10th

EXTRA ASIDE: I now have a 2018 nickel. Also, the ConBravo commissions of Sherlock and Peaches (from “Time Untied”) are up in posts on my personal blog.

CHANCED ERASURES: PART FOUR

Having somehow realized that Alice had regained consciousness, a woman stepped into her field of view. The curves of the uniform she had on implied she was a woman, at any rate, her face was somewhat obscured by sunglasses and a shawl. Was she local security? She carried with her a clipboard, sitting down at the desk which Alice was facing. “Your name, for the record,” the woman said in a bored tone.

“Alison Vunderlande, but I go by Alice,” came the answer, before Alice really had a chance to think about it. A hint of a frown played about her features - she felt like she’d been compelled to speak there. Had she been drugged? “And what’s your name?” Alice added as a follow-up. So she could still speak freely, nice.

“None of your business,” the woman answered, still looking at her clipboard.

“Okay, I’ll call you Salt, as in Salt-n-Pepa,” Alice chirped in response.

[caption id=“attachment_929” align=“alignright” width=“185”] Alison Vunderlande As commissioned from: Cherry Zong[/caption]

The woman didn’t react, implying that either the singing group hadn’t recorded the ‘business’ song in this reality, or that Salt here wasn’t a fan of their music. Well, Alice was doubly pleased to learn that she could still free associate, that was useful. People often had trouble following her train of thought, so if this was about to be an interrogation… Alice let her mind drift.

Having written something on her clipboard, Salt looked back up. “Okay, Alice. Who sent you to this reality?”

“No, Who’s on first,” Alice chirped back. Again, it had happened before she’d had a chance to think, but here the ‘truthful’ answer had been on her terms.

The woman seemingly stared for a moment, from behind her sunglasses. “Pardon?”

“Oh, nice. If you’re granting me a pardon, I’m absolved of guilt. Can I leave?” Alice smiled hopefully.

“No,” Salt said, a hint of annoyance creeping into her voice. “Alice, tell me about your mission.”

“Oh, my mission’s impossible,” Alice asserted. “I’m like Tom Cruise, but better looking.”

Salt shifted her gaze to stare at someone behind Alice. “You gave her the treatment, right?” The unseen person out of Alice’s view must have made some sort of gesture in response, because Salt looked back down at her clipboard, and then back up. “I suppose Alice has been trained in resistance techniques. This a battle of wits, is it, Alice?”

Alice had no idea what resistance techniques that Salt was alluding to, and strapped into the chair as she was, she couldn’t turn around to look at Pepa. So she simply smiled back, saying “Wit’s up, Doc,” before she could stop herself.

“Mmmm. At least I understood that reference,” Salt said, setting her clipboard aside on the desk.

“Oooh, Captain America,” Alice murmured. She recognized the quote.

Salt slightly pulled down her sunglasses. “Does your world have an America then?”

Alice nodded. “Both North and South.” She wondered about bringing up Australia or Antarctica.

“Really…" Salt leaned back. “How did your civil war end?”

“Captain America had it out with Iron Man.” The movie had been okay.

“Iron… what?”

“Atomic number twenty-six,” Alice asserted. The second most common metal, at least for most dimensional Earths that she was aware of… she managed to avoid saying that.

“No, stop, who is Iron Man?”

“No, Who’s on first,” Alice said, pleased for the chance to reuse the phrase.

Someone cleared their throat. “You’re losing the thread here,” came a male voice (Pepa?) from somewhere behind her.

“Yes, thank you, I’m aware,” Salt snapped back. She pressed her fingers to her forehead, glanced again at her clipboard, and then resumed staring at Alice. “Are you acting alone?”

“Oh, I can’t be acting, I never saw the script,” Alice protested. She wasn’t that much like Tom Cruise, surely.

Salt grit her teeth. “Alice, is your world trying to steal our technology?”

“It’s in a hell dimension, so I doubt it.” Alice held back a sigh - she hadn’t really been able to tangent away from that part of her past. But Salt probably lacked context.

“Hm, so it was that sort of dimension… how did you get here, Alice?”

Alice made an effort to shrug. “Oh, well, I assume you brought me here.”

“You mean we pulled you into this dimension?”

“No, I meant you brought me in this room.”

“I didn’t mean the room, I meant how did you get to our dimension.”

“Carefully?” Salt hadn’t quite asked a question that time, which was why Alice felt like her non-answer was reasonable. Care had certainly been required.

Salt snickered back. “Not carefully enough.”

“We were a few emotions short of a full care bear stare,” Alice yielded. Great her free association was working again - those animated bears did care fully.

Salt straightened. “Wait, you know emotional magic?”

“Oh, I was never THAT invested in Magic: The Gathering,” Alice said dismissively. It was hard to get into a multi-player card game when you mostly spent time by yourself. Wow, rambling thoughts were easier when she had only a vague idea of what Salt was talking about anyway.

Salt seemed to grit her teeth. “Alice, is your world magic based, or technological?”

“Yes,” Alice hedged, given the ambiguity.

Salt leaned forwards. “It’s both?”

Alice frowned. “No, I think ‘Both’ is a Drake song.” Or maybe Drake was featured on the song? She honestly wasn’t sure.

“That’s a…" Salt pulled off her sunglasses. “Damn it Alice, WHAT is your DEAL?”

“Three green mana, a blue-eyes white dragon, and the jack of spades,” Alice fired back quickly. “Do I win?”

“No.” Salt leaned back again, crossing her arms and staring.

“She seems to have won so far,” came a mutter of the male Alice had dubbed ‘Pepa’ from behind.

“Shut it,” Salt snapped. “Let’s try this. Alice, tell me about your home.”

“It’s between my lungs, above my diaphragm.”

Salt stared. “…the hell?”

“Also an apt description of my home, a hell dimension, we discussed this earlier,” Alice agreed.

“She means home is where the heart is,” Pepa snickered.

“Look, are you going to help, or laugh at me?” Salt shot back at her partner.

“You said you had this,” Pepa remarked. “As long as she’d been treated.”

“Treated?” Alice gasped. “I think I was tricked. Is it October 31st?”

Salt slid her palm down her face, dislodging her sunglasses. “Listen, Alice,” she began anew. “Either you answer my questions, and probably get a simple memory wipe and a zap back to your own dimension, or you go with HIM,” - she gestured back towards the unseen Pepa - “back to the Council, and you are potentially never heard from again. Now, which will it be?”

Alice licked her lips. On the one hand, that was daunting, on the other, she really couldn’t let talk of Epsilon slip out. And who was this Council? Maybe she needed to know more about that. “I thought I was answering your questions,” she managed to say.

“Answer my questions SENSIBLY,” Salt clarified.

“Sensibly,” Alice repeated, swallowing.

Salt nodded. “Now, what was your mission to this school all about?”

“Sensibly.” It was the only answer Salt had seemed to want, right?

Salt seemed like she wanted to punch something. “Oh, you are good.”

“And you haven’t even seen me in the bedroom yet,” Alice said, stifling a giggle. There hadn’t hadn’t been a question there, after all, so she could speak freely. Though she did start to wonder if she was getting delirious.

Salt clenched her fist. “Good grief, Alice, how can you still be such a pain?!”

“Sensibly.” That had been a question.

Salt threw the sunglasses she was holding onto her clipboard and stood back up. “Fine. I give up. You win. Shay, take her away and do whatever you like.”

Pepa - or rather, Shay - stepped slowly into view as Salt stalked off. He was a dark skinned man with a moustache, also wearing shades. His clothing implied that he was a doctor of some sort, but for all Alice knew, that was a disguise to get him in the room.

“So you can handle a mental battle,” Shay remarked. “What about a magical one?”

Alice cleared her throat. “Vunderlande power, make up! Let’s play, pretty cure modulation! Raising Heart, onegai!” she fired off. Nothing happened. She hadn’t really expected any of those to work, but when in travelling in another dimension, you never knew.

“Mmm hmmm,” Shay concluded. He snapped his hands up. A series of sparkles erupted from his palms. The light was intense enough that Alice tried to turn her head, closing her eyes - only to find that she couldn’t open her eyes again. Moments later, she slumped back in the chair, unconscious.

That’s when the holo-recording turned off.

Para didn’t speak at first. She knew she needed a way to ask questions about the video (holo?) content they’d just witnessed, ones which didn’t reveal that she had no idea of the answers. After all, both she and Chartreuse were supposedly familiar with the school. Yet what had all that been about?

Sam spoke first. “Okay,” he mused. “Apparently the incident a couple days ago might have been a bigger deal than I thought. Was that Alice girl caught by Usa? And who was this Council she referred to, why wasn’t Usa at the top of the chain of command here?”

“Usa?” Chartreuse said, canting her head.

Sam turned to her. “Usa Staling, head of security?”

“Ohh, that Usa,” Chartreuse said, bobbing her head.

Apparently that had been the name of Alice’s interrogator. Para was tempted to ask why this school needed such a high level of security, but maybe it was related to the multiverse work of the “gifties”. She opted to take the conversation a different direction.

“I didn’t recognize the last guy, that Shay,” Para stated. Which was a bit of a gamble, but based on what Sam had said…

“Yeah, me neither,” Sam admitted. He shook his head. “Anyway, I’m going to get a copy of this, it could be a massive scoop…” He pulled a device out of his pocket and plugged it into the base of the disc.

“Are you done there then?” Thred asked, taking a step closer and jerking his thumb towards a corner of the room. “Because you might want to take a look at this next.”

The something that had caught the attention of Sam’s friend turned out to be on the far side of one of the security filing cabinets. When Para went to check it out, she saw that someone had engraved things there, much like on the wall of the Clover Club. And again, it was a symbol, the letter “E”, and a room number. Notably, it was hard to see unless you were peering into the corner at just the right angle.

“That’s the room number for…" Para paused, as if trying to recall.

“Yup, the infirmary,” Thred supplied. “Same place where that holo-recording was playing out.”

“Which is interesting,” Sue broke in, having turned from her scan of the video monitors. “Because I can’t seem to pull up anything from said infirmary. There’s interference. Weird, huh?”

“Our next stop is totally the infirmary then,” Chartreuse concluded.

Sue rolled her eyes. “Joy. Granted, we only have about five minutes before someone comes here for a systems check. So whatever our destination? We should get a move on.”

Sam put down the holo-disc as he uncoupled his device, glancing towards the filing cabinets with a sigh. “Agh, I really wanted to have time to go through those… but okay, it sounds like this story continues where the doctors hang out. I’m game if the rest of you are?”

“Lead on, great one,” Thred said, gesturing towards the door with a bit of a bow. Sue simply shrugged, while Chartreuse and Para simply nodded.

As the three students filed out, Para took a moment to exchange a glance with Chartreuse. For the moment, it seemed like their hunt for clues about Alice was aligning with the hunt that Sam and the others were on for conspiracies in the school - yet what were they to do if the two groups found themselves at cross-purposes?

WHAT’S NEXT?

[polldaddy poll=10083624]

VOTING CLOSES 7am EDT MONDAY AUG 27th

CHANCED ERASURES: PART THREE

Fortunately, most of the others in the cafeteria were focussed on eating or socializing with their own friends, only tending to give her a quizzical look. The one time someone had approached her with a snark, Chartreuse had been defended by someone with a bright flower in their hair - someone else seeking loopholes in the school uniform, apparently. Chartreuse had murmured a thanks and moved on.

[caption id=“attachment_1093” align=“alignright” width=“222”] CHARTREUSE VERMILION
Commission by Ruuari[/caption]

Unfortunately, the few conversations Chartreuse had been able to overhear were of no use towards her mission of tracking down Alice. She finally retreated to the library and sat quietly until she felt better.

“It’s not like my results were of any more use,” Para reassured, after they’d reunited at the end of the school day. “If the faculty know anything about recent dimensional encroachments or the Clover Club doing strange activities, they don’t talk about it openly.”

“You were, you know, able to get the room key though,” Chartreuse pointed out. “That’s something.”

Para smiled sheepishly. “One key fits all, as long as you know the morphing codes. We’re simply lucky they were updating the codes today.”

“Mmmm.” Chartreuse’s gaze drifted to the sky. “Unless the update matches, like, security upgrades from Alice coming here,” Chartreuse said, crossing her arms. She sighed. “At least my insides have quietened down.”

“You’re sure it’s more than just nerves? That the ring artifact’s not doing it’s job properly at acclimating you?” Para pressed.

Chartreuse shrugged. “Makes, like, the most sense. Anyway, the library was, you know, a nice place for down time too. Not many people in the stacks, they all just, like, e-book themselves or whatever. Hey, did you know this school was built on a burial ground?”

Para frowned. “No. That seems ominous.”

“History section seemed like it’d be helpful,” Chartreuse said, grinning. She produced a couple of paper books. “We might as well do some more light reading until it’s time to meet that Sam guy.”

Para nodded. “Okay.” The 8pm statue meeting could only have meant the statue of the school’s founder, a guy named Fenduro. “They do lock the building up after 9pm,” Para added. “So hopefully it doesn’t take long to find a lead.”

The two of them settled in to catch up on the local history and customs. Chartreuse didn’t find any mention of clovers.

When they reached the statue, they were met not only by Sam Depas, but also two other students. A girl with short, dark hair that Sam introduced as Sue Morts, and a tall boy with red hair who proudly proclaimed that he was Sir Thred.

“These are the two loons who convinced you to go up against the gifties, huh?” Sue said scornfully as she sized up Chartreuse and Para. “Seriously, we’d be SO much better off looking for evidence of corruption in the gym. There’s no WAY they buy that equipment on their budget.”

“Hey, what Sam says goes, the guy’s a genius,” Thred objected. “And the people who read his newsletter are counting on him.”

Sue simply rolled her eyes, realizing she’d be outvoted if she pushed her point. She looked sidelong again towards Para. Chartreuse decided that Sue was going to be the one to keep an eye on; Thred mostly had eyes for Sam.

Sam knotted his tie a little tighter. “Yes, well, if the Clover Club room doesn’t work, there’s still time to look elsewhere,” he asserted. “You two have the key?”

Para simply nodded.

“Okay then,” Sam said, taking a few steps towards the building.

“Ugh. Well, if you persist in your stubbornness, let’s at least go on a route that minimizes the chance of running into the automated janitor algorithms,” Sue said, jerking her thumb the other way.

Chartreuse blinked. “How do you know the janitor routes this late in the day?”

“Because my dad’s a janitor,” Sue shot back. And Chartreuse honestly couldn’t tell if that was a snark, or the truth. She’d thought ‘janitor algorithms’ meant they were artificial intelligences. Unless this was a world where AIs could give birth? After all, that holographic Beam girl had seemed pretty real…

“Good idea,” Sam said, quickly placing himself between the two girls. “Lead the way, Sue.”

Sam’s dark haired friend at least knew what she was talking about, as they had no issues reaching what Chartreuse divined to be the club area of the school, or the door of the Clover Club. The big four leaf clover on the door being something of a tip-off. After looking at the door number, Para tapped a combination into the device in her hand, and the end morphed into a key, which she inserted into the keyhole and turned.

The lock clicked open.

“Weiiiird. I’m surprised the gifties don’t have a better electronic lock,” Thred mused, leaning in to regard the mechanism as Para moved out of the way. “Like, with two factor authentication or something.”

“Which could trap anyone inside during a power failure?” Sue said. “I mean, have you forgotten what happened last time the weather grid went haywire? Not to mention the hacking issues if every individual club member had the access key…”

“Fine, fine,” Thred said, raising his hands. “Just, it seemed a bit too easy.”

“We did recruit someone on the inside,” Sam pointed out, motioning to Para.

“And if it helps, I do have, like, an uneasy feeling,” Chartreuse piped up. “Though it’s specific to Sir Thred.” She’d almost missed it, being so focussed on Sue, but he’d chanced to bump her slightly when stepping back from the lock.

Thred turned to look at her. “Is that good?”

Chartreuse tried to smile back. “No?” It had been hard to pinpoint. She wondered if she should have bothered to mention it.

“I’d have thought you needed to throw crystals at him or something, giftie,” Sue said, glaring.

Before Chartreuse could respond, Sam sighed. “Oh, stop. Look, anyone is welcome to stay out here, I’m going to at least pace the room, to see if it matches what the blueprints say.” He reached out to push the door open, then paused and looked back at Para.

Sensing Sam’s need for verification, Para reached out to open the door herself. Nothing happened.

Sam walked in and clicked on the light. “No one touch anything.”

The room looked like a typical club room, as far as Chartreuse could tell. There was a table in the middle with some chairs around it, a cabinet against the side wall that seemed to have it’s own lock, a video screen on the wall next to the door, an access point for a computer system on the table, and a few clovers posted up on the walls.

If this was the headquarters of an organization dedicated to inter-dimensional shenanigans, they weren’t being overt about it.

“Never easy,” Chartreuse murmured. As Sam paced the room taking occasional photos, with Thred and Para hanging back by the door and Sue ignoring Sam’s advice by moving the chairs to peer under the table, Chartreuse turned her attention to the cabinet. She knew there was probably no chance of opening the lock, but there was something tickling at her senses…

“The floor,” Para murmured.

Chartreuse saw it then. Scuff marks, as if someone had tried to move the cabinet to the side. She bent down to examine them, aware of Sue coming up next to her to look as well.

“Secret passage behind this?” Sue muttered.

Sam joined them. “Doubt it. The room sizing checks out. Unless there’s some sort of warp field back there, they probably just made a mess redecorating in here.”

“I dunno,” Chartreuse murmured. She reached into her stocking to pull out a small piece of quartz. Normally she’d need meditation for a future reading, but if there was enough of a vibe at the location… holding the crystal flat in her palm, she felt an urge to move her hand to the side. It gravitated towards one of the screws holding the cabinet together.

“What the heck is she–"

“Shhh,” Sam murmured, cutting Sue off.

Chartreuse pushed the screw. Which apparently wasn’t a screw at all, but a button, as it gave in. With a click, the cabinet slid slowly across the floor towards them, over the scuffed area. Thred led out a low whistle. Sue humphed, muttering, “Bet she’s a member of the Clover Club and knew about that all along.”

Sam went to the other side of the cabinet, to see what the movement had revealed. As Chartreuse replaced the quartz and came to join him in his crouch, she saw that the wall didn’t show anything resembling a passage. Merely a strange symbol, then the letter “R”, a room number, and a string of digits.

“That would be the room number for security,” Sam remarked. “Possibly with a valid combination to get us access. Impressive.”

“Oh, daaamn,” Thred said, jerking his gaze around the room. “Is the Clover Club spying on people? Are we being video recorded in here? Do we need to go there to erase the hologrid?!”

Sam pushed himself back to his feet. “That room’s definitely our next stop. Unlike the roof, I could never crack that code, and if there is a secret room linked to this Club, we’re sure to see it monitored there. We can also erase our presence from any recordings, if we chance to see them.”

“We are never getting to the gym,” Sue moaned.

Chartreuse and Para exchanged a glance. They both shrugged. If there was a way of locating Alice, being inside the school’s security room seemed like the best plan, so they might as well continue to play along.

The string of digits worked with Para’s key morph device, and gave them immediate access. Sam opened the door for the security room cautiously, half expecting a guard, but everything was automated. To a degree.

“Someone’s coming by here in about 20 minutes for a check, if I’m reading this sign-in sheet correctly,” Thred remarked, looking at the form next to the door.

“Okay,” Sam asserted. “Sue, you look at that bank of video monitors, see if you spot any room you don’t recognize, or any area that you should see, and don’t. Thred, have a look around for anything the Clover Club might be secretly doing in here, including a way of recording anyone being in their room. I’ll look through these file cabinets for any documents to photograph. And Chartreuse, you and your friend…"

“I totally need to view this disc,” Chartreuse broke in. Without even using the quartz, her eye had been drawn to what she recognized from her library readings was a holo-disc that had been left on the small end table underneath the sign-in form. She reached over and held it up so that Para could see the label, which simply read “Alice”.

WHAT’S NEXT? (Along with more school exploration, so feel free to suggest an area they should go to next by commenting or tweeting!)

[polldaddy poll=10074907]

VOTING CLOSES NOON EDT WEDNESDAY AUG 15th

EXTRA ASIDE: Sorry for the two day delay in posting; the voting period will still be about 8 days, as normal. The good news is it’s because I was spending the end of July doing more with “Time Untied”, finally concluding the pivotal scene I left hanging back in December (I’d done more edits in the meantime). Meanwhile, my 7-week-old daughter tends to take priority over everything else… I can only handle one creative endeavour in a day. In vaguely related news, I got my first 2018 coins recently, in late July (dimes). Followed by a loonie late last week. Thanks for reading!

CHANCED ERASURES: PART TWO

Fortunately, Chartreuse seemed fine with the situation, so Para decided to take most of her cues from the pink-haired girl who was leading the mission. Para rather hoped that the boy who emerged onto the school roof moments after their arrival would prove to be equally as easygoing.

“Aw, man, someone else figured out how to get up here?” the kid remarked.

He looked to be the same age as Chartreuse, meaning he’d be in his last year at this Multidimensional Academy. Or possibly part of their extended gifted program. Admittedly, from what Beam had been able to discern, everyone at this institution was gifted in some way, but the curriculum had some classes beyond the scope of what anyone might consider to be normal fare.

Actually, maybe these would be teenagers who liked parabolas after all?

“We’re pro,” Chartreuse answered. “But we, you know, won’t tell if you won’t.” She grinned back at him and winked.

[caption id=“attachment_848” align=“alignright” width=“219”] PARA
Commission by Michelle Simpson[/caption]

The boy was definitely a student, at the least, because he was wearing the blue blazer and tie for the school. Chartreuse herself had yielded to the necessity of blending in, and was similarly dressed, along with a pleated green/blue skirt to match the tie, and a set of sensible shoes. Only Para had been allowed to keep her usual attire of a pinkish skirt with the bow around her neck, under her guise as an educational assistant.

Chartreuse had insisted on one exception though, which the boy was now looking at. “Those stockings aren’t regulation,” he said, raising a finger to point at the neon red fabric adorning Chartreuse’s legs. The colour did match the large bow in her hair. “Are you even a student here?”

Chartreuse crossed her arms. “How could I, like, be here, and in the rest of this ridiculous getup if I wasn’t? Unless you’re, you know, implying that I’m a ghost haunting the school or something.”

His gaze returned to Chartreuse’s face after that. “Oh, you’ve heard those rumours too? Nice!” He stuck out his hand, as if to shake. “I’m Sam Depas. I think we might get along fine.”

Chartreuse stuck out her hand too. “Chartreuse Vermilion,” she said, glancing down at his palm as they shook. “And the educational assistant with me is Para.”

Para lifted her hand in a little wave. Sam released Chartreuse and turned closer attention to her.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s with the bunny ears?” he asked after a moment of scrutiny.

“They tell whether my depression is at a minimum or a maximum,” Para answered automatically.

Sam blinked. “Whether your… oh, OH, I get it. You help out THOSE gifted people.” He looked back at Chartreuse. “I suppose you’re one of them? Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen either of you around so far. You get the special classes.”

Para also looked back towards Chartreuse, not entirely sure whether they should agree to that option. Chartreuse simply beamed. “As long as you don’t mean that as a slur, sure, that’s totally it!”

Sam winced. “Right. Foot meet mouth. Sorry, I failed the test to work elsewhere in the multiverse, and I guess my friends and I see your type as their own exclusive club.”

“Oh, no offence taken,” Chartreuse assured. “Honestly, I don’t know most of the other gifted types in those classes myself.”

Sam nodded. “Hey, so, uh, what was your otherworld aptitude identified as?”

Chartreuse pursed her lips. “Euh, crystals.”

Sam hesitated, but seemed to take that in stride. “Interesting. So was Para getting you to use your crystals to access the roof? Or is it not off limits for you gifties?”

“Para was doing something like that,” Chartreuse said, coughing. “But let’s, you know, get back to those rumours. Because it’s something we have in common. Like, is your ghost story the same one that I’ve, you know, heard about?”

Sam shrugged. “Beats me. Which one had you heard?”

Para noticed Chartreuse begin fidgeting with the crystal around her neck. “Oh, you know. The… one… about… the…“ She gestured, but Sam didn’t seem about to jump in and finish her sentence. “Uh, the person from the other world who, like, came to campus,” Chartreuse finished at last.

Sam nodded. “Right. She was caught and killed, and now roams the halls looking for a way home? Same story then, no surprise.” He frowned. “Chartreuse, are you okay?”

Para took a step closer to Chartreuse, whose eyes had gone wide. “Chartreuse is not keen on the whole ‘killed’ aspect of that story,” Para explained, off Chartreuse’s continuing silence. And Para wasn’t really thrilled it it herself, if it was at all indicative of Alice’s fate. Or their own.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine, I suppose as the tale goes the otherworlder was ‘erased’ from existing. The moral of the story being that we don’t want any outsiders taking our advanced technology back with them. After all, who knows what sort of trouble that would cause, yeah?” He chuckled.

Chartreuse found her voice again. “Y-Yeah! But wait. Do you, like, believe it happened or not? Because earlier you seemed interested in ghosts, but now you’re, you know, dismissive.”

Sam gestured vaguely. “I love all urban legends. Doesn’t mean I necessarily believe every one of them. I mean, consider the story about some of the faculty being vampires. How that’s the reason for their youthfulness, and not de-aging treatments at all. I can appreciate the detail put into something like that without thinking it’s true.” He frowned again. “Do you believe all the rumours?”

Chartreuse toyed with her crystal. “I like to keep an open mind,” she murmured. “I mean, hey, surely there’s some rumours with a basis in fact. Don’t you think?”

Sam nodded. “Point. The idea that there’s some mystery room in this school, only accessible to those who are worthy? That strikes me as legit.” He leaned in a bit. “Maybe it’s even a secret door from inside your Clover Club’s meeting room. Hmm?”

Chartreuse blinked. “Clover Club?”

“Related to your otherworld gifted status,” Para murmured, deducing what Sam had implied. Though ‘clover’ also reminded her of what she’d read in the mission briefing, about what Alice and Beam had been investigating in the first place. Perhaps they’d stumbled onto something here.

“Are you not a member? I thought all of you giftie types were members,” Sam said, crossing his arms and eyeing her suspiciously.

Chartreuse glanced to the left and right. Para thought maybe she was looking for an escape, but then the pink haired girl leaned towards Sam, wiggling her eyebrows. “Promise not to tell anyone?” she whispered. “There’s, like, actually four clubs. Clovers, Diamonds, Hearts and Spades. I’m in Diamonds.”

Sam’s arms fell back to his sides. “Get out. You have secret clubs? Why don’t they all have club rooms?”

Chartreuse winked. “The meeting times and places are, you know, randomized.”

Sam peered closer at her. “Are you playing me?”

Chartreuse merely smiled and clasped her own hands behind her back. “Believe whichever rumours you, you know, like. But know that I’m totally as curious about the Clover group as you are. That’s fact.”

Sam’s gaze shifted from Chartreuse to Para to the surroundings before returning. “Hmmm. Okay then. If your EA works with all types, can she get us into the Clover Club room after dark tonight? Because that might tell you more about them while giving me a real scoop for my newsletter.”

So Sam had a newsletter? Para supposed that it made sense, given his interest in urban legends. How typical of a student was he? She hoped that they’d be able to check into his records before getting too deeply involved. Plus, this was at it’s heart, a surveillance mission only. No need to invite trouble.

“She, you know, might be able to,” Chartreuse answered enthusiastically, before Para could suggest otherwise.

Sam grinned. “Great. A couple of us will be by the statue at 8pm tonight. After that incident on campus a couple days ago, they’re focussed more on external security than internal. It’s a great time to do some explorations.”

Chartreuse exchanged a quick glance with Para. “Oooh, right, the incident. What do you, like, know about that?”

Sam gestured vaguely. “Only that I’m sure it’s not as big of a deal as they made it out to be. So, are you in?”

“We’ll see,” Para answered, before Chartreuse could speak. “This does seem highly irregular.”

Sam again looked them over, then nodded. “Well, doesn’t matter, I have a story either way. You two seem like the types who buck the status quo is all.” With another look at Chartreuse’s bright stockings, he turned away. “So, I came up here to check something about the school layout. See you ‘round, I hope?”

Without looking back, Sam walked over towards the fence at the edge of the roof. It was seemingly there to prevent anyone from falling, which seemed to Para to be an odd thing to have, if the roof was off limits. Though it could be standard on all buildings in the city.

Chartreuse motioned towards the door that Sam had come out of, and Para followed her through it.

“Sweet!” Chartreuse said, as soon as they were in the stairwell and out of earshot. She made a victory sign in the air. “We’ve already got a seriously solid lead on Alice, what with this clover group.”

Para nodded. “I don’t have a key to their room though.”

Chartreuse waved her off. “Yet! Think positive. You were going to go and check out the teachers lounge or whatever, while I, like, went to the cafeteria. Maybe they’ve got some master keys in there. We can’t, you know, lose out on the prospect of Alice being held in some secret room that was erased from school records!”

Para supposed that there was something to be said for truth within a rumour - Fractal City had really existed in the mathematical network where she originated, after all - but Chartreuse seemed to be jumping the gun a little.

“For all we know, the ghost rumour is true instead, and being perpetuated with advanced holograms,” she observed. “Plus the longer we’re here, the greater the chance of being discovered, particularly with your neon stockings.”

“Which is all the more reason to investigate tonight,” Chartreuse insisted. “Our names are in the database for, like, at least the next 24 hours, and you know, for the record, the student handbook Beam found didn’t, like, specify clothing accessories. I gotta be me.”

“I’m just saying,” Para said, feeling the bunny ears on her hairband twitch. “Maybe us splitting up is a bad idea after all. Since I might be able to deflect student interest in you. And you might be able to bluff people better than me.”

Chartreuse lifted her arms up, smiling. “Oh, no worries there, I’ll be interesting to people no matter what. And if anything, you know, goes wrong, one of us fires off the record of everything to Epsilon, and they’ll pull us out.”

Para hesitated, but Chartreuse was the person in charge. Maybe this was more about her being nervous about teachers, for that matter - what if some of THEM didn’t like quadratics! “Okay. Meet again in a couple hours back here?”

Chartreuse nodded. “Oh, and I’ll tell you this before we, like, split - I got a bit of a sensation off of Sam. Like, the guy’s hiding something, but he was genuine in terms of not seeing us as a threat.” She glanced at her ring. “That is, assuming this thing’s actually working the way it should to, you know, calibrate my abilities.”

Para wasn’t exactly comforted, but it’s not like she could change the situation. Wishing Chartreuse luck, the two Epsilon Project members went their separate ways.

WHAT’S NEXT?

[polldaddy poll=10061671]

VOTING CLOSES MIDNIGHT EDT SUNDAY JULY 29th

CHANCED ERASURES: PART ONE

“Hello, like, Chartreuse speaking,” the pink haired teenager declared into the receiver.

“Hi,” the mystery female voice responded. “Epsilon Project here… can we summon you? Through a door or whatever? Is now a good time?”

Chartreuse frowned. “Not really? When you called my house this morning, I said around 4pm would be, you know, good. D’you need me earlier?”

“Oh! No, but I only just started synching with your world. I’ll go back and make that call now. Thanks.”

Chartreuse peered at the phone. “Is this, like, a prank? Did Carrie put you up to this?”

The woman had already hung up. Chartreuse slowly replaced the phone into its cradle, glancing around the parking lot of the local cafe. There didn’t seem to be anyone paying attention to her. More to the point, the female on the other end of the line had sounded like the same woman who had called before, and the ‘Epsilon Project’ was a weird extra-dimensional association - so perhaps it was legit?

Yeah, it probably was. Carrie wasn’t the type of girlfriend who would use her time travel abilities for something silly like this. Besides, only Chartreuse and her sister Azure even knew about ‘Epsilon’, from the affair two weeks ago. Alas, Chartreuse supposed she should have asked for more details during the first call, but her mom had wanted her to do a reading on the future, after which she’d planned on meeting Carrie for lunch.

Ah well. It was generally better to tackle the unknown at the end of a day regardless, versus first thing in the morning. That way you weren’t exhausted all day after dealing with it - you could go to bed.

“I’ll, you know, figure this out at 4pm,” Chartreuse declared aloud, the vocalization helping to push the Epsilon stuff out of her mind.

[caption id=“attachment_1093” align=“alignright” width=“222”] CHARTREUSE VERMILION
Commission by Ruuari[/caption]

Smoothing her hands down over her multicoloured dress, she continued on her way from her lunch date towards the library, to meet up with Lee. He’d turned up some information about Ottawa, which Chartreuse figured would be useful for when she and Carrie went to University in September.

It was a little after 4pm when Chartreuse remembered about the call. Still being a couple of blocks from her house, she walked over to a nearby parked car instead. It had doors, right? Finding the back unlocked, she opened it and got inside.

Nothing happened. Which included no one coming and asking her to get out of their car, so there was that.

After glancing around the interior, Chartreuse shrugged and got back out… only to now find herself standing in the large embarkation room of the Epsilon Project station. Shaped like a cylinder, the room had a set of computer banks on one portion of the curved wall, and it was there that a woman was standing. Her long blonde hair was pulled into a side ponytail, and she wore a plain black blouse, with a white skirt and thigh-high dark stockings.

“Hi!” Chartreuse chirped. “I thought you’d, you know, forgotten about me.”

The woman turned and smiled wryly. “No, but part of the point for the advance call was so you wouldn’t use a random door,” she remarked. “I realized I needed to recalibrate. Maybe this is why Alice always summoned people without bothering to warn them?”

“Oh. Oops?” Chartreuse glanced around. “Where is Alice anyway?”

The woman sighed and took a step closer. “Excellent question. That is, in fact, why you’re here. She and Beam were on a mission, and Alice was captured. My name is Fate, by the way, I’m currently in charge.”

Chartreuse widened her eyes. “Meaning you’ll need us to, like, go on a rescue mission?”

Fate shook her head. “More like a surveillance mission.” She pressed a finger to her cheek. “Though it might become a rescue mission? Eh, I suppose we’ll see what happens.”

Chartreuse nodded, then glanced around the room again. “So is Simon here?”

Fate blinked. “Who? Oh, wait, of course, the gentleman from your recruitment drive. No, retrieving him would be rather more complicated, and you’re well suited for what we want. Though if you want him on your team, that might be possible.”

Chartreuse clasped her hands. “I get a, like, team? Wow! And you’ve called for me owing to my ability to, you know, seamlessly blend into the background??”

“Eh heh. More like your ability to pick up impressions and read the future,” Fate remarked, scratching her forehead. “Leading the mission is voluntary though. Let’s go and have Beam fill you in. She’s down in the infirmary.”

Beam turned out to be a blonde girl in white dress, whom Fate introduced as being a sentient hologram. For her part, Chartreuse was becoming disconcerted by the number of pretty blondes she was encountering. At least they seemed a little too old for her to visualize them in a romantic way. Not that she’d ever consider cheating on Carrie, but it had the potential to be distracting.

“Did you hear what I said?” Beam asked, arcing an eyebrow.

“Hm? Oh, for sure,” Chartreuse said. “This project’s only lead on people who might be, you know, spreading dimensional knowledge was this mystery clover shape. You, like, followed up by going to a database from a way advanced reality, but, you know, got caught while trying to download information.”

Beam sat up a little in bed, but not so much as to jar the cable that was seemingly plugged into her blue hairband. She turned to look at Fate. “Girl’s smarter than she looks and sounds,” Beam remarked. “Is she single?”

“No, I am NOT,” Chartreuse said, a little louder than she’d intended. She quickly turned her own attention to Fate. “So when do I, like, pick my team?”

“Hold on,” Fate soothed. “Let Beam finish her story.”

Chartreuse looked back, to see Beam grinning. “Pardon my programming. Thing is, I got away from the place with enough information to hack the system. I can make you a member of this place’s academy, along with one other individual. You can decide who that will be.”

Chartreuse pursed her lips. “And so I, like, run around and try to learn as much as I can about what they’re doing, whether they’re connected to your clover people, and, you know, what happened to Alice?”

“Essentially,” Fate agreed. “We’d send Beam herself, but they might be able to detect her again, after what happened.”

“Um.” Chartreuse picked a random spot on the ceiling to look at as she rocked her body up onto her tiptoes and back down. “Seems harmless enough? Do I get, like, extra hazard pay?”

“I… oh.” Fate looked at Beam. “Wait, does the Project… pay people?”

“Not really,” Beam said. “Only in adventure, a better life, favours to be named later kind of deal. Or that’s how I understood it.”

Fate looked back at Chartreuse, rubbing the back of her neck. “No? You can back out though, if it’s a real issue. Or just not be the leader.”

Chartreuse refocussed, then smiled. “It’s fine. I should probably get more experience with crazy things anyway, given the direction my life has taken. So, I get to buddy with one other person out there?”

Fate nodded, and Beam added, “One thing I might suggest?”

“Sure,” Chartreuse chirped.

“Not Alijda, also known as Alison. Her close personal ties could be an issue. And I’m not only saying that because of how I made things awkward with Rose.”

Chartreuse adjusted one of the bows in her hair. “Since I don’t know who that is, or what you’re talking about, sure. Actually, someone logical would, you know, probably be a good counterpoint to me - got anyone in mind there, Fate?”

Fate half smiled. “Possibly. How do you feel about personified mathematics?”

Chartreuse was pretty sure that, despite her best efforts, she’d somehow lost the thread of the conversation. “Personified what now?”

Fate turned. “Let’s pull up her file, and if you’re okay with it, call her in.”

***

“So you’re a, like, personified parabola,” Chartreuse said slowly.

Para reached up with her hands to adjust the bunny ears on her hairband. She was another blonde, because of course she was. At least her pink dress seemed normal enough. “For the third time, yes?” the woman replied.

“Okay. Just, you know, still wrapping my head around it.” Chartreuse forced herself to change the topic. “Do you know any more about this advanced reality we’re going to than I do then? Like, math-wise?”

Para shook her head. “I only know what we both read in that report. There’s some sort of academy for multidimensional education, and they don’t like unauthorized people snooping around. But that Beam girl can give us IDs, and I’m pretty good at doing calculations on the fly, if need be.”

Chartreuse fingered the pendant hanging around her neck. “Right. Well, I know a thing or two about crystals, if that, you know, comes up.”

“We’re set then!” Para said, clasping her hands together. “I hope we can be friends.”

Chartreuse grinned. “Me too.” The bunny girl was nice enough, after all.

“Okay, I’m coming down,” came Fate’s voice from the circular opening in the ceiling. With a click, the gravity temporarily switched off, Fate bobbing down to join them back in the circular embarkation room. “Here,” she said, holding out a ring towards Chartreuse with one hand, as the other used a remote to reactivate the gravity.

“What’s that?” Para asked, as Chartreuse took the small ring and slid it onto her finger.

Fate looked towards Para. “There’s a note in Chartreuse’s file that says she needs time to acclimate her power when entering every new environment. However, that artifact should reduce any ill effects, if not fix things up for her entirely.”

“Should?” Chartreuse asked, holding her hand out at arm’s length. There was a small jewel inside the artifact, possibly jade.

Fate scratched her forehead. “Mysticism isn’t a fine science?” she offered. “But we can recall you if you hit the emergency button on your communicator. If things get bad.” She gestured towards the watches that Chartreuse and Para were already wearing.

“Meaning Alice could become trapped forever in, you know, their evil clutches,” Chartreuse sighed. “Okay, let’s do this thing. No point, you know, waiting.”

Fate seemed to look at her for a moment, as if judging her sincerity, then she walked over to the main computer. “I’ll try to avoid calling you, but feel free to call in at any time. Again, surveillance might be enough for us to get a read on the situation, you don’t need to rescue Alice yourself.”

Chartreuse nodded. “Gotcha.”

Para made a little salute. “Roger!” Then she leaned in towards Chartreuse. “That’s something humans say, right?”

Chartreuse bobbed her head. “For sures.”

Fate tapped away at the keyboard, and chevrons lit up on the floor as the portal system activated. Shortly after jumping in, Chartreuse found herself on what looked like the rooftop of a school campus. Seemed like she was headed back to school earlier than she’d anticipated.

OPTIONS:

[polldaddy poll=10050761]

VOTING CLOSES MIDNIGHT EDT SUNDAY JULY 15th

ɛ PROJECT

WB (Writing Bufferless) presents…

STORY 5: CHANCED ERASURES

[caption id=“attachment_1916” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Story 5 of ???[/caption]

STORY #5:

Following the apparent abduction of Alice, an elite squad is called in to investigate. Chartreuse and Para infiltrate a school on a tech-rich world, and after hours on campus, find a mysterious trail… and hints of there being a shadow council involved? Find out more by reading below.

CAST:

CHARTREUSE VERMILION … A mystic teenager (from T&T)

PARA BOLA … A personified quadratic function

ALICE VUNDERLANDE … A woman with eidetic memory and pop culture references

EPISODE INDEX:

1. Taken (Jul 8)

2. Room - or has it? (Jul 22)

3. Cabinet Shuffle (Aug 7)

4. Missing Links (Aug 19)

5. Medical Alert (Sept 2)

6. Strange Cymbals (Sept 16)

7. Jailbreak (Sept 30)

8. Shadow Cat? (Oct 14 Oct 21)

9. Spell Check (Nov 4)

10. Rip Tied (Nov 18)

11. Loose Thred (Dec 2)

12. Self Reflection (Dec 16)

13. A Sam Rang (Dec 30)

14. A Mew Sing (Jan 13)

Story #5 is Concluded.

A VIRGA MYSTERY Borderline: Case 3d

This had about as much dramatic impact as you might think - namely none - until she made a few gestures and heaved it in Melody’s direction.

(‘And I think she knew, just before it happened,’ Melissa explained to me later. ‘Of course, I’m not entirely sure how it played out, since I was immediately busy trying to pull you out of harm’s way.’ As such, I will now try to piece together what happened in a way that provides optimal dramatic effect.)

As the d10 came within a meter or so of the blonde witch, a form coalesced around it. “G-Gary?” Eric said in shock, recognizing the spectre even as it slammed into the one who had siphoned it’s spiritual power a short time ago. They both tumbled to the floor.

Eric spun back to look at Melissa, though she was now busy spilling a circle of salt onto the carpet. Always have some salt with you if you go away on a trip, by the way. Because you never know when you might need to conjure yourself back home.

“That was the die you asked for,” Eric said. “The one Gary leant me when we first started roleplaying… how could it have created…?”

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

Melissa didn’t answer, clapping her hands and muttering a spell she later would not give me word for word. She says it’s not terribly useful anyway, as just like any proper spell it requires consent… where one of the key reasons it worked was because I hadn’t really consented to the original teleport (merely mistimed a wishful thought), and subsequently would rather have been anywhere than upside down, with a flame burning through the rope that was keeping me from getting impaled, as monks chanted around me.

When Melissa stepped back out of the circle she had made, I appeared there in her place - disconcertingly still in the same position, and held up by the rope, but at least without the candle above or the nails dangling a short distance from my head.

I remember one of the first things I could focus on was Melody (inverted) as she grappled with Gary’s spirit. She’d managed to stand back up, but not do much more than that. Granted, the fight - if you can call it that - mostly consisted of Gary holding Melody’s arms, to prevent her from casting easily, while trying to throw off her centre of balance, so that she couldn’t do anything else.

That couldn’t last. But it didn’t have to. Melissa, still visibly shaking with the effort of what she had already done, was preparing one last counterattack. Pulling a paper from her pocket and scribbling on it, she then pressed it to her forehead while looking at Melody and intoned, “Lapsus memoriae!”

“Ultima ratio!”

Melody had pulled her arms free. Their two spells happened virtually simultaneously.

At this point, no one is sure how much - if any - of Melissa’s ‘Memory Lapse’ worked, but Melody’s ‘Last Resort’ obviously did, as she simply vanished. My witch roommate then proceeded to crumple down onto the ground, saved from landing on her face only by the actions of Eric. I wasn’t quite so lucky, as the frayed rope finally gave out, dumping me down onto the floor.

I took a moment to take some deep breaths, and attempted to process what had taken place in the last two minutes. “Right,” I concluded, understandably upset, and shifting to a slightly more upright position as I contemplated swearing. “Could someone PLEASE tell me what the HECK just…”

I stopped.

Melissa was crying.

She always acted so in control that I hadn’t ever conceived of that happening.

Her sobs were loud, and she curled up and buried her face into her own lap, turning away from Eric, who now sat next to her looking confused, angry, and as lost as I was. I looked at him, he looked at me, then his gaze shifted towards the spectral form of Gary, which was approaching, yet already fading, growing more transparent by the second. As Eric rose to meet the spectre, I instinctively moved towards my roommate, wanting to comfort her, but lacking context, having no idea how.

“I don’t understand,” Eric said. “Are you really Gary??”

“I … take some form around Melody … had my spiritual energy,” the spectral Gary said, sounding like he was at the bottom of a well. “Your friend Melissa knew … with my magick interest as well, an item … obviously couldn’t discuss … had to be done.”

“But this means that all this time, Melody and Melissa had the power to summon you?!”

Gary shook his head, even as Melissa grabbed two fistfuls of her hair and, among the choked sobs, wailed, “Gary’s tainted, I’ve tainted him, his spirit, his memory… oh Gods, I was only going to make a point, not actually call him forth, but when she forced my hand…”

“Hey, hey … not too tainted and … choice also,” Gary said, looking continuously more etherial now that Melody had vanished to wherever. He smiled(?) down at Melissa, not that she was looking up, or that his expression was clear. “… could have ignored your summons, but this … couldn’t be … to continue. You … the right thing.”

Melissa simply shook her head, her body pitching back and forth in her curled up position on the floor. As I reached her, I realized that there was a slight sheen of perspiration on her body, as if she had a fever, but when I moved my head to her forehead - and she flinched away - I didn’t feel any excess warmth. It was, it turned out, related to casting the fairly powerful spells.

I know Melissa didn’t cast again for at least twenty four hours following these events.

“This is it then,” Eric realized, slumping. “I’ve lost both Gary and Melody.”

Gary seemed to grimace. “Melody … not so good for you. I … better that you move on … better place … myself. Goodbye, friend.” His form was just a shadow by now.

Eric reached out slightly towards Gary, only to have his spectre vanish.

Eric turned to me. “Can you look after Melissa?” he asked. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t… I can’t deal with any of this right now.”

I acknowledged with a slight nod, and Melissa’s ex made a run out the door. I reached my hand out to touch Melissa’s shoulder. She didn’t flinch away this time, so I instinctively pulled her into an embrace. I ended up hugging her tightly. She didn’t stop crying for quite a while after we were left alone.

-

We returned to our university town by mundane means. I didn’t actually get the backstory until three days later.

Which isn’t to say that there weren’t a couple opportunities, mostly early in the morning. But I wasn’t sure how to bring it up, and Melissa didn’t say anything either. I began to worry that we might not speak of it at all, despite the explanation I figured I was owed for my part in it. But just when I had decided to address the matter the next morning no matter what, Melissa surprised me, arriving home just as I was about to change for bed, brandishing a pizza box and an apology.

“I’m sorry I got you involved with Melody, and I’m sorry, SO sorry for breaking down on you in her home,” she stated, lowering her gaze to the floor as she held out out the box like a peace offering. “It won’t happen again.”

“Oh, well… thanks,” was all I could think to say at first, both accepting the take-out box and the apology. “Though, it’s allowed to happen again,” I added. “Like, not the thing with the monks, but any time you need a shoulder, I’m here. You know that, right? In fact you’ve probably noticed that I… kind of care about you, Melissa.”

Melissa looked back up. “Because you think I have a nice ass,” she stated.

I felt my cheeks get warm. “It’s more than that,” I insisted.

Melissa seemed to pick up on my sincerity. She grimaced. “Right. Okay. Sorry again.”

To avoid looking at her, I peeked inside the pizza box. Rather nervously, knowing Melissa’s food preferences.

“I didn’t have them put peaches and broccoli on this one,” she reassured.

“Uh, right.” It seemed to be Canadian; perhaps she’d actually noticed that was my preference sometime during the previous weeks? I decided to ignore the fact that I’d had dinner about three hours ago and offered to get us some plates.

Melissa followed me to the kitchen doorway. “Did you want to hear the full story then?” she continued. “For one of your chronicles? Or do you think it’s better for us to forget all about it?”

I hesitated at that, because despite my earlier decision to confront her in the morning, I was now thinking of Melissa crying in my arms, an event which had shaken me more than I care to admit. “I… only if you’re willing to tell it.”

She nodded and gestured me over to the couch, before going and sitting in it herself. What followed was most of the story to this point, narrated with almost clinical detachment, though when it came to the part about summoning Gary, her body tensed and (unless it was my imagination), she spoke with a bit of a lump in her throat.

It was following those events, once Melissa had managed an emotional recovery in Melody’s residence, that she had immediately arranged for my transportation back to the university. Alone. She elected to stay the night. I naturally offered to stay too, but she was pretty insistent - plus I had a paper due for a class on creative writing. (Got a B, if you care.)

“So, did you hook up with Eric again during that last day?” I asked, declining the offer of a fourth slice of pizza.

“Good deduction,” Melissa said, also setting aside her plate.

She lifted her legs onto the couch, wrapping her arms around them. It was a position much like the one she’d had that day, except this time she was more composed. So it just looked remarkably cute. Particularly when she rested her cheek on her knees and some hair spilled out to the side.

“I thought he might not want to see me again,” Melissa admitted. “And I couldn’t have blamed him. But he let me in when I came to return the d10.”

-

“I want to hate you, Mel,” Eric said quietly, partly turned away and unable to meet her gaze. “But I can’t. You were just being you.” His fists clenched and unclenched. “If anything, I hate myself more, for pushing the point.”

“Oh, Eric, no,” Melissa protested. “You were just being… you. I mean, if I’d made more of an effort to understand you all those years ago, I might have realized…”

His eyes snapped to her. “Stop it. Just stop, Mel. What’s done is done, now I’ve got to live with it. Gary’s gone, his spirit is probably twisted, I have no spiritual advisor, and I’ll be stuck siphoning energy away from the recently deceased in that nursing home for the rest of my days.”

“That’s hyperbole.”

“Stop talking latin at me!”

“No, I meant…” Melissa waved her hand dismissively. “Never mind. Look, it’s not as bad as you say. Gary seemed glad to help you one last time, which can redeem him, and while you might not have Melody any more, I can help. With stopping the siphoning, at least. See, it’s your inability to allow people to pass on which makes you susceptible to such spiritual manipulation. That’s a trait which could be corrected.”

“Corrected? Mel, this is not a problem with my eyesight,” he protested, throwing his arms out. “The way I feel… I mean, it’s your lack of understanding these feelings I have which led me to Melody in the first place!”

Melissa winced. “Okay. So maybe reality is somewhere in the middle of us. What I meant though was I can tell you how to close off the energy flow, and Melody’s imprinting of her scent should still ensure that no one else tries to take advantage of you.”

“Imprinting…” Eric briefly lifted the collar of his shirt to sniff it. (Melissa’s fairly sure he wouldn’t have sensed the cinnamon.) “Is it possible she’ll come back for me? For good or ill?”

The young witch pursed her lips. “Hard to say. It was your name I scribbled on the paper when I cast my memory lapse spell, but I don’t know if it took, or if it did, to what degree.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry, it’s only occurring to me now that you two might have had more than a professional relationship. If I’ve screwed up your personal life here too, I’m real…”

“Oh, hey, what? Melody was twice my age!”

“Probably more than that. The magick she bled off helped her look youthful.”

“Okay, whatever… I wasn’t lying when I said we weren’t dating.”

“Okay. Good.”

An awkward silence fell. “Is that your way of asking if I’m available?” Eric finally asked.

Melissa blinked. “What? No.”

“Good, because I don’t think things would work out for us like that. Not any more.”

“Of course not.”

“James seems more your type any way. Good for you.”

“Right, he… whoa, whoa! I’m not seeing him either.” (She seemed to be blushing a bit relating this part to me, so maybe she was also a touch red at the time she said it to Eric. For all I know, I blushed upon hearing it.)

Eric chuckled. “Didn’t seem like it, but I couldn’t resist. Anyway…” He sighed. “Let’s close off my energy flow or whatever. Then you should go. I’ll call if I screw my life up again.” He smiled wryly. “Now that I’m pretty sure you’ll answer the phone, that is.”

Melissa nodded, started to turn away, then thought better of it.

“No,” she said, discovering that this time she couldn’t quite meet his gaze. She settled for a point over his shoulder. “You shouldn’t call. Something this case has shown me is that I’m more than capable of screwing up on an epic scale. Despite me trying to stay emotionally unattached, I lashed out at Melody for what she was doing. And while I maintain that her actions weren’t necessarily right… in the end, she did try to protect you, and she didn’t cause death, when she could have. I was the one who called forth a spirit. I crossed the borderline. Not her. Me. I’m the one who was in the wrong.”

Eric stared. “Melissa…”

She waved him off, drew in a long breath and continued. “Meaning you didn’t make a bad choice back then, after… after Cam. Also, you’re pretty good at fending for yourself. One personality hangup about death doesn’t change that. Thus you shouldn’t necessarily turn to me. Particularly since our history could complicate things again.”

Eric chuckled softly. “Not gonna get rid of me that easily. But I see your point.” He reached back out to pick up the d10 from the end table. “Don’t sell yourself short though,” he added. “I’m the one who dragged you in, you were only trying to help me, and the fact that you think you’re in the wrong here says a lot too.” He ran his palm back over his scalp. “But damn, girl, you need to communicate better, okay? In fact, how about if you agree to do that, I’ll see what I can do about accepting death.”

Melissa opened her mouth to reply, then simply nodded.

When she left Eric’s residence, she didn’t look back.

-

Melissa fidgeted a bit with her fingers before breaking her pose and releasing her legs. “So that’s the gist of it. Need anything else for your story?”

I rubbed my chin. “You really think Melody was in the right then? After suspending me over a bunch of spikes?”

My roommate shrugged. “Not entirely, obviously, but it’s hard to know her motives. She might not have let anything happen to you, James. She certainly seemed to have more ethics than me.”

“Don’t say that,” I objected. She opened her mouth to object, but I raised a finger to hold her off. “After all, you only made one rash decision in the heat of the moment. She spent YEARS with this siphoning - and who’s to say she didn’t damage a few spirits, accidentally or otherwise, on the way? Hmmm?”

Melissa squirmed a bit on the couch. “Maybe. I just feel so dirty now. Like I need a really long bath.” Before I could even think of a response to that, on account of the inappropriate images that flashed into my mind, she raised her gaze to look me in the eye.

“But more than that, I think I need your help, James. With my cases. With the human element, not to mention the technological one. Looking back, there’s at least three incidents I was involved with in the past month alone which I’m sure would have gone more smoothly if I’d consulted you on them. I… I know that this is not part of our original agreement, but can I take you on, as a partner? A sort of Watson to my Holmes?”

I blinked. So here it was, an opening into her life… one that those less naive than I surely saw coming, and one I might have been a bit more keen on before these prior two cases showed me the dangers of associating with a witch. Not to mention how it would unavoidably link me with ‘Weird Gal’ from this point forward.

(Incidentally, our situation wouldn’t even fit with her Holmes analogy, because I don’t think Watson ever admired the way Holmes looked in a shiny green nightgown. Or if he did, I’m glad we never heard about it.)

“If it helps,” Melissa continued, sensing the hesitation, “this more formal association would, in fact, attune me more to you, thus you’ll end up in less in danger than before. Probably. I’ll even scrap the chicken clause in our contract… so how about it? I mean, it’s… it’s not like we’d be dating, you know.”

“Oh, well, of course not,” I said quickly. Probably too quickly.

She briefly sucked her lower lip into her mouth. “So?”

“So… we can try it out at least, sure,” I found myself saying. Hey, it’s not like my parties with Adam had been about to lead me anywhere else. Anyway, I think I was finally realizing that both of us were naive, in different ways. Somehow, we complimented each other.

“Great!” she said brightly, and almost before I realized it, she’d leaned in to kiss my cheek.

I gasped. She turned away, either being dismissive of her act, or having been flustered by it - it was impossible to tell now that I could no longer see her expression. She stood up. “So, to make it official, I think I’ve got some Chicken Nut Brownies left in the fridge that could do for a dessert,” she finished. Her ass wiggled (accidentally?) as she headed into the kitchen.

Surprisingly, the chicken brownies weren’t half bad.

-

The epilogue here is once again brief, unless you’re counting the prior section to be part of it. Eric and Melissa have spoken on the phone at least once this month. So I know that Melody’s home is on the market, with all her belongings having been cleared out, no forwarding address.

I have also discovered a few things in offering to look over Melissa’s prior cases, to better understand her agency. The first being our wall clock, buried on the desk under all her papers. It needs batteries. (She really needs a better filing system.)

Second, I’ve found that the human nature aspect, which I’ll be helping Melissa handle, is liable to be helpful in my quest to become a better journalist. Admittedly, a good chunk of what I get is human reactions to supernatural forces, hardly mainstream, but it’s a start. (And yes, I’ve asked Melissa if my involvement means I’ll end up “imprinted”, and what scent I’ll give off to other witches. She manages to be charmingly enigmatic about it, so I don’t push the point.)

Finally, the bitter irony is, now that I am becoming involved more closely, I won’t be able to write about Melissa anymore. Partly owing to how I’m losing what little impartiality I previously had, but more than that, I’m rapidly sensing that the act of being involved in the cases is going to leave me with no time to write about them. Not if I want to pass first year classes too. It’s taken me a month just to finish up this account.

So, let me take the opportunity to thank you for reading to this point, and allow me to leave you with this final literary quote, which seems rather fitting given the nature of this third (and last?) chronicled case. There is something to be said for trilogies, is there not?

“Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t." -Richard Bach.

END REQUIESCAT IN PACE

The last part of the “University Witch”/“Virga Mysteries” cases runs tomorrow, finishing off June. So, as per usual, an “Epsilon” story will fill the void between pre-written stories. In theory, school will finally be out, giving me lots of time to write, but in practice, I now have a baby daughter, so she gets priority… meaning we’ll stick with updates every two weeks.

As far as plot voting, I’m tossing out some pretty generic plots here, because (as usual) the whole story gets made up on the fly, and I don’t have much of a scaffold in mind yet. (Very busy time of year.) Feel free to offer comments on why you picked what you did, in terms of anything you’d hope to see.

[polldaddy poll=10038258]

[caption id=“attachment_183” align=“alignright” width=“107”] CHARTREUSE[/caption]

As far as character voting goes, Chartreuse will return from “Wish Fulfilment”, now that all of “Time & Tied” has been put on the blog. She had the highest votes after first appearing, but I wanted to get her backstory out as a matter of record. This story would then take place after all previous stories involving the mystical bisexual teen, but before “Time Untied”.

Should she appear with someone else? Let me know!

[polldaddy poll=10038259]

Thanks for reading, do consider voting and following along. After almost four years of regular posts, it would be nice to keep more than four people interested. Helps with incentive and all that.

Polls will close at MIDNIGHT after Sunday, July 1st, or that’s the plan for now. Spread the word.

A VIRGA MYSTERY Borderline: Case 3c

“Every case is different,” the brunette murmured in reply, not looking up, but rather scanning up and down the street. The area was mostly residential, but Melissa spotted a few commercial shops encroaching from the west.

“Gary lived on the 9th floor,” Eric offered. “I still have a key if–”

“I don’t need to see the apartment,” Melissa cut in. “We’re really only confirming my suspicions at this point, the case is solved… I figure we go this way,” she concluded, and began walking towards the shops.

“Oh, uh… hey, you want to let me in on what happened?”

“If you haven’t already figured it out, you will soon enough,” was Melissa’s reply. (In a way, it’s nice to know that she doesn’t only pull that enigmatic routine with me.)

They got almost three blocks before discovering the carpet store. Melissa marched right in. “Ah, you’re wondering if they’re missing any merchandise?” Eric hypothesized as he followed after.

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

Melissa tried to ignore the ramblings of her old friend, instead seeking out the nearest employee. It turned out to be the person manning the main counter.

“Hi!” Melissa said, flashing the man a smile. “I want to know who bought a throw rug from you last week.”

The counter man (who, Melissa remarked to me, seemed to have a rug on his head as well) sized up both her and Eric before replying. “All sales are final. Who wants to know?”

“I do,” the brunette answered easily. “I can even describe the buyer for you if you like. He was… uh…” She turned to Eric. “Describe Gary.”

Eric blinked. “What?”

“Wait, did you want to buy a similar rug?” the salesman wondered.

Melissa sighed. “No, I’m not buying a rug. Just listen as Eric describes Gary.” She elbowed her associate.

“Oh, uh…” Eric went on to provide a basic description. It’s not really relevant, so picture Gary however you like.

“It would have been last week, late in the day,” Melissa added.

The salesman nodded slowly. “Oh, right, I remember him. In fact we still have a limited number of those throw rugs in stock, if you…”

“Wait, Gary bought a throw rug here?” Eric interjected.

“He had to have, since you said it was in his apartment,” Melissa said patiently.

“The killer made him buy the murder weapon then?” Eric gasped.

“Whoa! Killer? What do you mean?” the man at the counter asked warily. “Look, what people do with our carpets once they’ve been bought is out of our hands…”

Melissa’s selective hearing now began ignoring the store employee. “Eric, your friend was not murdered. Gary chose a bad time to buy a throw rug.”

Eric shook his head. “Mel, I know what I saw at the seance. Gary said himself that there was a killer. Unless… did the rug come alive and attack him?? Man, that’s some freaky Aladdin craziness!”

The witch palmed her forehead, and let out a long breath. “Eric. Are you at least with me as far as your friend buying the rug, or do you need to see the receipt?”

Eric paused, looking from her to the counterman, who in my mind had started edging away. “I’m with you on Gary buying the rug,” he yielded. “But he could have been coerced.”

“Fine.” Melissa turned and began to walk out of the store. “We have one quick stop to make first, then you can take me to Melody.”

Eric hurried to catch up. “Melody? You… you need to team up with her?”

Once again, Melissa chose not to respond. Eric could only grumble to himself.

(“I hope,” my roommate told me during the course of providing this backstory, “that you, at least, would have figured out Melody’s connection by now. Seeing as you don’t have Eric’s blind spot for death.” Trying to look intelligent, I told Melissa that I certainly couldn’t imagine her teaming up with this other witch. However, I suspect that at this point I’d be blaming Melody for Gary’s death - which wasn’t correct either.)

-

Melody Nedsen’s residence was rather different from mine and Melissa’s. For one, it was actually a house, and for another, it was separate from her “business”, which she ran out of a different place. However, given the time of day and Melissa’s insistence that things couldn’t wait until morning, Eric brought them there instead.

Picture, if you will, a typical two story building, with a small balcony wrapping around the second level. It had a small lawn and straight driveway, and there were two obvious entrances. One at the front, the other at the side, by the driveway. Eric brought them to this side entrance, and knocked in a distinctive rhythm.

Apparently, Melody had at least converted one room of her place to use for ‘spiritual emergencies’, and this was the way in. She answered the door herself. Which is a good time to describe her, much as I did with Eric. Bearing in mind that the only time I saw her firsthand was when I was being suspended upside down, I can offer the following.

She was beautiful. Long blonde hair, bright blue eyes and knowing smile. Perhaps in her early fifties, but could easily be mistaken for ten years younger. Taller than Melissa (though that’s not difficult), and apparently pretty sharp mentally. Given her first remark was “Eric? What… oh.” Her eyes narrowed upon spotting my brunette roommate. “I suppose it would do no good to send you away.”

“Nope,” Melissa countered.

“Uh, Melody, this is Melissa… Melissa, Melody… please try to get along?”

There was a pause, then Melody invited them in. The side entry room had some rugs on the floor and candles around on some dressers, along with what I presumed to be magickal draperies on the wall, but it was otherwise reasonably sparse.

I guess if you’re having a spiritual emergency, you don’t need a chair.

After closing the door, Melody sat down on a pillow in the middle of the central rug, gesturing at the others to do the same. Melissa did so, her posture tense. “Quanta de spe decidi,” Melissa began.

Melody ventured a smile. “Quae haec est fabula?”

“Dixi tibi. Quid in te fecit?”

A sigh. “Si id non fecissem, aliquis id fecisset. Volenti non fit iniuria…”

Melissa slammed her palm down onto the carpet. “Voluntarius?!”

“Whoa, hey, uh, ladies?” Eric interrupted. “I, um, er… re vera, linguam Latinam vix cognovi?”

The two witches turned to glance at him, and Melody half smiled. “Oh, Eric. How long have you been waiting to use that phrase?”

“Uh, not long. I tried to brush up before going to get Melissa,” he admitted. “But I meant it. I don’t really know all that much Latin. Who is volunteering for what here?”

“Voluntarius essentially means willing,” my roommate clarified, still looking at the other witch. “She’s saying you were a willing victim.”

“A… what?”

Melody sighed again. “Melissa dear, don’t be so dramatic.” She spelled things out at this point, gesturing first at Eric’s companion, then back at herself, as she reiterated the conversation. Melissa: “I am very disappointed.” Melody: “What’s that supposed to mean?” Melissa: “You know very well. What harm has he done to you?” Melody: “If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have. One who is willing suffers no injustice.”

“Eric’s not willing,” Melissa now broke back in, in English. “He doesn’t even know what you’re doing!”

“But the way Eric feels… wait. Doesn’t? As in, not even now? You haven’t explained it to him yet?”

“It’s pretty damn obvious, given how you imprinted yourself.”

Melody laughed lightly. “To you, perhaps. Not to people like him.” Again Melody looked to Eric, brushing some hair back off her shoulder. “In which case, I’ll come clean first then. Eric, I’m afraid that I have, in a very minor way, been using you.”

“Minor?! You…”

“Melissa? Shut up. Please,” Eric broke in.

The interruption brought her up short, and she looked back at Eric, as he clenched his jaw and continued.

“Obviously I’m missing something,” Eric said. “And have been for a while. But you two witches arguing is not helping me understand. So, Melody first. What do you mean by using me? Did you…” He swallowed. “Did you make me kill Gary or something?”

Melody’s eyes went wide. “Oh, God, no, nothing like that. I’ve just…” She tapped her index fingers together. “Well, for the last few years, I’ve been using you a bit like a sponge.”

Melissa snorted, her arms by now crossed back over her front, her standard angry pose. “That’s putting it mildly. Eric, Melody is amplifying her magick power by bleeding it from the dead. Through you. It must stop now.”

“It’s not like that,” Melody said, her eyes flashing as she looked back at the brunette. “Eric’s not just some conduit for me to use. Nor have I killed anyone directly with this act! All those whom I take energy from, they died of natural causes. You’re too young to understand.”

“I understand that Gary called you a killer.”

Melody’s hand was lightning quick, striking Melissa’s cheek even as the shorter witch started to raise her hand to try and block. Melissa tumbled to the side, more from shock at the speed of the act than the actual force of the blow.

“Gary was confused,” Melody said, angrily. “He didn’t understand what was happening, because I hadn’t anticipated Eric absorbing some of his friend’s spiritual energy. Interfering with my normal collection methods. It must have been owing to their close friendship, and the suddenness of Gary’s accidental death… which WAS an accident.”

“I am aware of his unfortunate death on account of the throw rug. I wasn’t blaming you directly, but it is you who has since tied his spirit here.”

“Temporarily. Since the seance with Eric, I’ve corrected the problem.”

Melissa gaped. “Corrected? You cannot be serious. This is not a problem you can correct so easily. I shudder to think of what might have happened with Cam back when you first met Eric, and started your…”

“Melissa, STOP IT!”

Melissa blinked in surprise as Eric now stood, looking down at her. His fists clenched and unclenched. The brunette righted herself back into a seating position, following her tumble due to Melody’s slap, still looking up at him. “What? Eric… don’t you get it? What she’s done?”

“Sure. I’m an energy sieve, am I? Fine, whatever. Setting that aside, Melissa, I asked you to be civil. Since it’s obvious you won’t be, and further, that Gary’s death was not, apparently, a murder, your involvement is now finished. So leave. NOW.”

Melissa swallowed. “Eric, listen. People who are associated with you who die, they’re not immediately able to pass on. They’re tied to this plane by Melody, who is bleeding spiritual energy through you - for however long she wants! She told you to volunteer your time at a retirement home for that reason.”

“I chose to volunteer my time,” Eric said. “To help people continue to live decent lives in their old age. Dammit Melissa, now who’s ‘theorizing without facts’? This is just like it was in high school. You still think you know everything, when really, you don’t have a clue. Because, guess what?”

He took in a deep breath before continuing. “You could have stopped all this. It was pure happenstance that I hooked up with Melody in a cafe, a week after Cam died. The only reason I pulled away from you then was because you were so dispassionate about the whole thing. I needed to talk to someone… if not to Cam, then to you… but you didn’t care, not the way I did! So Melody did what you wouldn’t - and I’m with her now.”

“But…” Melissa began, suddenly not sure what to say. She admitted to me after the fact that perhaps some of the conclusions she had drawn, while correct, had neglected to factor in the random human element.

“Melissa,” Melody broke in quietly. “You know as well as I do that for my siphoning to work without Eric’s direct awareness, he had to have a predisposition. In being a person who cannot accept the death of others, he can bind their spiritual energy here without conscious effort on my part. If I had not used that knowledge and imprinted upon him, someone else might have done much worse… even caused deaths, to exploit his weakness. Frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t realize we were associating from the start.”

“I… I was sixteen when Cam died,” Melissa protested, deflating. “I just wanted to get on with my life. To hone my abilities.”

“So go, Melissa,” Eric said, turning away. “Get on with your life again. I’ll stop getting in touch.”

A pained look crossed Melissa’s face. “Eric…”

(‘Things were hitting too close to home,’ she told me during our later talk. ‘My plan here had been to make Eric stop trusting Melody, forcing her to break their link. But, seeing as I’d practically sent him to her, back in high school… I was at a loss. That was when I thought of you, James. Of how you might be able to handle this, using interpersonal skills or something. I realized then that perhaps I should have brought you along.’ Which made me feel good, until I realized it’s what led to my less than stellar arrival.)

Melissa took in a breath, and turned from Eric back to the older witch. “The thing is, you’re not going to stop this if I leave, are you.”

Melody slowly shook her head. “No. No, I’m not. I’m not doing anything wrong. Supernatural balance is being maintained.”

“It’s not wrong according to our rules. But it’s morally wrong. Plus, Eric knows now.”

“So he knows. There are spells that can make people forget, if necessary. Perhaps you can even accept the use of one on yourself too, if you’re that worked up about this.”

“THAT is wrong.”

Melody shrugged. “Necessitas caret lege.” (Now there’s one for you to look up.)

Melissa rose, as did Melody in tandem with her, so that the three of them were standing. “No,” Melissa whispered. “I’m not leaving Eric. I can’t. Not this time. Not again.”

Eric turned back. “Mel…!” His voice was pleading, but it was hard for her to say what it was he was hoping for.

The two witches remained staring at each other, as if sizing the other up, waiting to see who would make the first move.

Melody’s eyes narrowed. “Melissa… you leave me no choice. Semper paratus!”

-

This is when I came back into it. Of course, back at our apartment, all I knew was that my roommate had pulled a new vanishing act. Melissa hadn’t told me about leaving with Eric, and while I’d poked around briefly that evening to see if she’d left a message, there wasn’t one. (Though I did find another note advising me not to answer the phone, in the medicine cabinet of the bathroom.) Hence me doing my homework. Possibly wishing to be elsewhere. Which alas only made things easier for Melody.

Without warning, I was suspended upside down over a bed of nails, with people (monks?) chanting around me. Earlier, I said this was incredibly disorienting, yes? That bears repeating. At least I now know in retrospect that it was because Melody had pulled my identity from Melissa’s immediate thoughts, and transposed me into a position of peril. Supposedly a spell the elderly blonde witch kept on standby in her home, for use in such situations, given how she only had to say “Always prepared” to achieve that effect.

It happened so quickly that all Melissa knew was that a spell had been cast, doing something which gave her a feeling of dread in her gut related to me.

“Where is he?” Melissa gasped.

“In jeopardy. Now you must deal with that, effectively dividing your attention.”

“Giving you time to take control of the situation here, and bind my powers or steal Eric’s memory.”

“Only if I must. Understand, my dear girl, that I have been doing this for decades. There were others before Eric. I’m not going to allow you to change things.”

“Melody, what’s going on?” Eric broke back in. “Let’s just let bygones be bygones, okay? I’m sorry for bringing Melissa in. It’s my fault. Just let her leave, and stop all this jeopardy talk.”

Melody’s lips thinned. “Too late for that now.”

“Because the truth of it is,” Melissa said, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “This IS my fault, for not doing something sooner. I’m sorry.”

She half turned to Eric, while keeping an eye on Melody. “You know, you’re right. I’m dispassionate. I compartmentalize my emotions. Even when I’m supposed to be having fun, like on a date, I still do it. And back then, since I didn’t seem to care about what was going on around me, I guess to you, it looked like I didn’t care about Cam. But caring… Eric, that’s when people get hurt. I couldn’t deal with being hurt, not as a witch, not with my power - lest I do what Melody is doing, and get innocents involved in a personal matter.”

Melody placed her hands on her hips. “My my, Melissa, how you do overdramatize. Please grow up. No one is truly innocent, and necessitas caret…”

“…lege, you said that,” Melissa finished for her. She took in a deep breath, returning full attention to the elder blonde. “I’m sorry. Both of you, I’m so, SO sorry. This is going to hurt me more than anyone else. But perhaps, after all this, I deserve to be hurt.”

Melissa reached into the pocket of her jeans.

In May 2017 this blog got 1933 page views from 330 visitors. In May 2018 (last month) this blog got 75 page views from 48 visitors. Literally the highest and lowest monthly statistics we’ve ever seen for my serials.

Welcome to another deconstruction post, with a look at where we’re going. Maybe it will also make you feel better about your own statistics.

STATS + CONTEXT

[caption id=“attachment_2161” align=“aligncenter” width=“620”] MONTHLY STATS, June 2016-May 2018[/caption]

Caveats: There’s been only 35 new posts over the past year, after I shifted to posting every two weeks, following rather disheartening voting results in July 2017. (Viewership also declined when I started posting more frequently though, so who knows.) In addition, the entries haven’t been for “Time & Tied”, as that serial concluded at the end of May 2017. “Epsilon Delta” ran from June to December 2017, then “Virga Mysteries” took us from January 2018 to June.

The weakest performer of “Epsilon Delta” was Part 15, with 15 views. (Others earlier on reached 17 views - some even more than 30.) “Virga Mysteries” has had a cooler reception, only 10 people reaching the end of Case One, and only 4 people starting Case Three last month. And before you say it hasn’t been around as long, the latest views were the day of publishing, and no one’s looked at “Epsilon Delta” in 2018 (the “fave character” poll sits at 4 votes), so time doesn’t seem to be a factor. You either see me the week I publish, or never.

Rev Fitz has reminded me of people who have subscribed, and don’t visit the website. I do have 18 “followers” and 2 “email followers”, whatever that means. (I’m also constantly spammed by @outlook emails claiming someone’s followed my blog. Why do more spammers visit my page than actual people? I get 20 spam comments per week. Oh well.) So there may be something to those invisible readers.

In an attempt to find some silver lining, this HAS restored decimal progress to my two week statistics snapshots. You may recall these appeared back during the climax of “Time & Tied” Book 2, in November 2015. It a funny quirk I’ve been able to track. You can manage 10.0 if you have an 8 or 9 view day; as soon as you get 10, the scale jumps away from decimals.

[caption id=“attachment_2162” align=“aligncenter” width=“620”] TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER…[/caption]

I almost managed to get a full month of ALL less than 10 views. However, on May 15th, someone gave “Time & Tied” a try right up to Part 7, netting me 12 page views, which was my highest day. Zero view days were May 4, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26 and 31. Across 268+ posts, which include a number of completed serials. (I still tweet out every update and post it to my FB page.)

Now, I should conclude this section by pointing out that I haven’t done much in the way of outside publicity this year. I’ve been pretty busy (see below). I did participate in the WFG “April Fool” swap again (I fear Rev Fitz isn’t building much traffic from me), “Serial Fiction Digest” gave me a feature shoutout at the end of March (before apparently going under), and I still get high referrers (ie- 5 per month) from Top Web Fiction, The Chaos Beast, and Redwood Crossing. So maybe that… kept things from being worse?

WHAT NOW?

I also hope to poke around more with “Time Untied” - yes, it really is still a thing, the 40k+ words from November have been revisited a few times since, and I still know what I want to do with it. It’s only that the first big Carrie-Heather scene has kind of blocked me, not to mention the stress of the teaching job constantly pulling me away.

In the meantime, I’ve contributed monthly comic columns to “The Time Travel Nexus” and participate in weekly webcomic chats on Discord, so you can find me there. Oh, and no 2018 coins yet this year. Interesting. I’m guessing I’ll start to see them soon?

As always, I hope you enjoyed the read. Feel free to add your voice below about anything you were wondering about, how much better/worse your site is doing, or just to offer encouragement. I’ll leave you with this AMV of a time travel/pop culture mix that you didn’t know you needed. (It makes more sense if you’ve seen the anime.)

A VIRGA MYSTERY Borderline: Case 3b

“Um, Melissa,” I began cautiously, “Next time, if you don’t want me to answer the phone, maybe you can–”

“Look, if you want to know about my history with Eric, just ask, don’t dance around the subject,” the brunette said sharply, jabbing her spoon out in my direction.

Well, naturally I was curious. But a question and answer session honestly hadn’t been my intention here, I’d mostly been hoping to avoid messing up her weekend any further. So, since I do have SOME sense of self preservation, and five minutes obviously hadn’t been enough time for her to calm down, I turned to leave.

I’d just passed through the doorway when I heard her spoon clatter back into her bowl. “I’m… sorry,” she called out. “That was rude of me.”

I turned back, a little surprised at her admission. After all, even at the best of times Melissa barely seemed to take note of the effect her remarks had on others. She set her bowl aside, brushed some hair back off her shoulder and folded her arms again. “Moreover, Eric probably would have come by here anyway, so it’s not your fault,” she stated. “It’s just… him and his attitude, they bring out the worst in me.”

I edged back into the kitchen, not sure if it would be proper to agree with that sentiment or not. I settled for, “Ex-es know how to pull our strings.”

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

She half smiled at that. “Why James, are you speaking from experience?”

“Uh…” I’ve mentioned I’m a naive guy from out of town, right? I did have a date for the prom, but that was about it. I considered bringing up the experience of Frank, from the last case I’d set to paper, but fortunately, she didn’t seem to expect me to answer the question.

“It’s not like Eric was really my boyfriend anyway,” she continued, lips tightening. “We went out on dates a couple times in high school. The relationship ended badly. Since then, I’ve made sure people are aware that my work takes priority over any sort of emotionalism.”

I decided to press my luck a bit and continue the conversation. “You mean something bad happened with Eric because you had put your work secondary?”

Melissa’s half smile returned. “You’re theorizing without the facts again.”

I believe I looked appropriately sheepish. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, it’s kind of cute." She stared at me for a few more seconds, then reached back for her bowl again. “Anyway, relationships are just messy,” she declared. “Though for the record, the situation here was that a mutual friend of mine and Eric’s was diagnosed with a terminal illness.”

With that, she sighed and had another spoonful of jello. The fruit cubes (apples?) crunched as she bit down. I wasn’t sure how to react to her latest comment, so I said nothing in hopes that more information was forthcoming. It was.

“There was nothing I could do of course, magickly or otherwise,” Melissa continued after swallowing. “Even if it wasn’t against my principles surrounding death, keeping our friend alive would only have prolonged his suffering. However, you may have noticed that Eric has acceptance issues regarding death? He wanted to be able to communicate with our friend after he passed on. In fact, both of them seemed to be amenable to that idea.” She frowned. “I’d have thought that Cam, at the least, would have had more sense.”

I assumed correctly here that Cam was their mutual friend, and waited for Melissa to down another mouthful from her bowl. Her eyes narrowed after she swallowed.

“Of course, I think Eric may have talked him into it, and since they knew of my early dabblings in magick, they thought I could help. But of course, I strictly forbade it, and made it clear that if they tried something so idiotic, our friendship was over.” She paused. “Cam understood. But me and Eric didn’t speak after that.”

Her expression became wistful, and perhaps understandably, there was another pause at this point. Finally, I simply had to break the silence myself. “Why was their plan such a bad thing?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

Melissa’s jello bowl got tossed aside again. “Because trying to tie people to the mortal plane after their time has passed… it messes with the natural order of things.” There was anger in her tone once more, and she jabbed her spoon out at me. “Death is a natural consequence of life. Whether it’s an accident, a suicide, or simply a dramatic demonstration of man’s inhumanity to man, death is simply one of those things you have to live with.” (I’m fairly certain her pun was unintentional.)

“Furthermore,” she went on, pushing off the counter and beginning to pace, “attributing every death, no matter how unjust, to some malevolent spirit is the height of arrogance on our part. What Eric can’t seem to understand is that we’re not immortal beings, nor do we need the supernatural in order to seriously screw ourselves over. Furthermore, I’m a witch, not a scientist or a psychologist.”

I tried to reconcile this new information with what I knew of Melissa to this point. “Yet working on your cases, you have saved lives,” I pointed out. “Was that wrong?”

“Oh, of course not,” Melissa sighed. “I’m not saying that you should sit and watch if someone’s going to get hit by a bus. What I’m saying is that when somebody DOES pass on, any attempt by us to hold them to this plane does nobody any good. If anything, we make the victim even more susceptible to supernatural attack!” She frowned, and leaned back against the counter. “For instance, not all evil spirits were evil to begin with.”

I didn’t doubt her, but was still having some trouble. “Yet how can you be so sure there WASN’T something supernatural in the death of Eric’s friend? That something else isn’t holding him to this plane? You didn’t even hear him out.”

Melissa didn’t answer right away, and when she spoke, even I could tell she was being evasive. “Eric called me out of the blue last year,” she remarked. “His grandmother was dying. He was wondering if maybe I’d changed my mind about talking with the dead. Obviously, I hadn’t.”

“That doesn’t mean this friend didn’t die in a supernatural way,” I insisted. “And since the person’s already dead, what’s the harm in looking into it - using non-supernatural means if necessary? I think you’re smart enough to do it that way.”

Melissa chuckled. “Thanks. Thing is, I know Eric. Whatever he’s doing, it’s a job best left for the police. Besides, he obviously has some other witch he’s associating with."

“Oh.” I frowned, recalling that part of the conversation. “Were you serious about the scent thing then? Never mind, I’m sure you were,” I corrected myself immediately. (I know Melissa doesn’t like being asked if she’s serious.) “It’s only, Annie didn’t have a scent… or did she?”

Melissa gestured vaguely. “The smell is more tied to a witch’s associates than the witch herself, and has to build up over time when casting.” She frowned very slightly, but then gestured dismissively. “Another witch has to attune herself carefully to recognize it anyway, you shouldn’t worry about being around me.”

Which I thought might be Melissa’s attempt to put me at ease, given my natural follow up question was whether I was somehow being marked by my recent associations with her. Though her comment raised it’s own question. “Why did you attune yourself to pick it up on Eric then?” I asked.

That one seemed to catch her off guard, as Melissa opened and closed her mouth once before responding. “I… to be sure Eric has other resources,” she declared at last. And if I didn’t know better, I’d have said she was flustered. “Which he does,” Melissa added. “Which is good. Because I don’t want to have anything more to do with him!”

That said, she shoved herself away from the counter. “I’m heading back to my room now. Feel free to finish off the jello.”

Melissa stalked past me, and seeing as I was still assimilating all that she had told me, I let her go. However, with a passing glance at the bowl she had left behind, I did call out to her, “What’s the fruit you have in this?”

“Potatoes and turnips,” Melissa called back, before closing her bedroom door.

I left the jello for her.

-

My next involvement in this case involves me being suspended upside down over a bed of nails with people chanting all around me. Distressingly, this wasn’t even something I had a chance to prepare myself for - one moment I was typing an assignment on my computer in my bedroom, and the next, all the blood was suddenly rushing to my head as my world got turned upside-down.

Of course, I’m not sure how one would prepare for that sort of thing anyway… but that’s beside the point. Luckily for you, no matter how tempting it is for me to drop you into that puzzling situation as well, Melissa later provided me with some context that you might appreciate first.

You see, my little talk with her had had more of an effect than I’d realized. According to Melissa, the more she wondered about whether there really could have been a supernatural connection, the more something nagged at her.

“It felt like, in my casual dismissal of Eric, I had missed something,” she explained to me in the aftermath. “A feeling which persisted until, despite my better judgement, I got back in contact with Eric as he was leaving town…” She grimaced. “And went with him to investigate his friend’s death.”

What follows is a rough transcript based on what Melissa told me, and what I know of her and Eric’s personalities.

-

“I knew you would understand!” Eric said gleefully upon Melissa’s arrival at the bus stop/train station/airport. (Keeping it anonymous here. Pick your transportation of choice.) “I knew that finally you–”

“Look,” Melissa interrupted, poking him in the chest. “I’m not sure why I’m doing this. Maybe it’s because you’re an old friend. Maybe it’s in hopes of compensation. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing more interesting happening at the moment. However, if you push your luck, I’m GONE.”

Her tone and facial expression must have made it clear how serious she was, because Eric fell silent. He didn’t speak again until they were already on their way out of town.

“Did you want the particulars?” he voiced at last.

Melissa stopped staring out the window and turned back to him. “Alright,” she sighed.

“My friend’s name was Gary,” Eric began. “We met in college, through a role playing club.” He paused. “I think part of the reason that we became such good friends was that he also believed in magicks. It’s rare to find people like that, particularly where I live.”

Melissa raised an eyebrow. “Did this Gary consider himself a warlock?”

Eric frowned. “I thought you once told me that ‘warlock’ meant ‘traitor’.”

She grunted. “So you do remember that conversation.”

“Mel, just because I don’t usually like what you say, that doesn’t mean I don’t listen. So are you asking if Gary was a traitor?”

Melissa shook her head. “No. Thing is, you’d be surprised how much a person can learn by simply using that word instead of ‘wizard’. Both about the individual’s knowledge of magick, and about them as a person. I mean, I’m not sure when the history books got rewritten to change the ‘warlock’ definition, but male magick practicioners are an odd bunch.”

“Hm. Then to answer your question… no, he didn’t use either word. In fact he never even tried to do illusions. Gary thought it was too dangerous.”

“Smart guy.”

“Maybe if he’d known some spells, he’d still be alive.”

Melissa posture tightened. “Don’t start. Don’t even start.”

Eric’s jaw clenched in response. “Sorry.”

My roommate resumed her scrutiny of the window. There was another extended silence. “Fine, how did he die?” she asked at last.

Eric’s posture relaxed marginally. “The official story is that he slipped on a throw rug, banged his head on a corner of his end table, and had a lamp fall on him.”

“Ow.”

“Yeah.”

Melissa turned. “Still, seems straightforward.”

“Except Gary didn’t OWN a throw rug.”

“Oh.” The witch tugged on a lock of her hair. “Odd theory for the police to come up with then.”

Eric shot her a glare. “Are you taking this seriously??”

Melissa rolled her eyes. “Yes, Eric, I am being serious! But I still don’t know why I’m here. I mean, what, are you just using your friend’s death as an excuse to talk to me again?”

He flinched. “Wow, Mel, really?”

Melissa belatedly back-pedalled. “I mean… I am sorry that you… lost someone,” she offered. “It’s just, I’m not clear… look, Eric, how does the supernatural come into this?”

Eric continued to stare for a moment before returning his gaze forward. “Well, the way I see it, the rug was planted by someone. Someone who had probably been inside the apartment, and who, accidentally or otherwise, killed Gary.”

“Which is NOT necessarily supernatural,” Melissa said patiently. Then her eyes narrowed. “Eric, I hope, I really, truly hope that you don’t expect me to conjure up Gary’s spirit to ask him who did it.”

“No, I already… that is… ah, heck, you’d figure this out anyway,” Eric sighed. “Melody already said that Gary doesn’t know who it was.”

Melissa crossed her arms. “Melody,” she murmured, switching mental gears onto this new name. She exhaled slowly through her mouth, then inhaled sharply through her nose. “So that’s the witch I can smell on you?”

Eric cast her another sidelong glance. “What… literally smell? I thought you were joking.”

“Have you ever known me to joke? No, she’s actually either taken the effort to imprint herself on you, or you’ve known her for a couple of years at least.” (So I suppose I’m safe - for the moment.) Melissa’s nose twitched. “I’d say Melody’s sort of cinnamony.”

“Ah. Weird,” was her companion’s only remark. Eric then went quiet, yanking lightly on one of his earlobes.

Melissa began to get a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, as suddenly a couple of the pieces about the situation interlocked for her. “Eric, how long HAVE you known her?”

Her bald companion shrugged. “I don’t remember exactly…”

“Eric. HOW LONG?”

It seemed like he wasn’t going to answer, which itself was enough to confirm Melissa’s suspicions. She was just about to call him on it, when he provided the answer. “Since Cam.”

Melissa swore again, her fists clenching involuntarily. “That’s why you pulled away from me after he died? So that you could get this Melody girl to do what I strictly forbade? What is it with you and girls nicknamed Mel, huh?!”

“I didn’t go out with Melody!” Eric protested. “And I’m not proud of it, okay? But I couldn’t bear to lose Cam. Not like that. Anyway, it was just a seance or two, it’s not like me and Melody have been trying to raise the dead.”

The brunette witch somehow resisted the urge to slap him. “You’re even stupider than I thought,” she accused. “Even spells for talking to the dead, if not done properly, can act as a conduit for evil, or they can warp the morality of the spirit invoked, they’ll even–”

“Melody did what you refused to do,” Eric interrupted angrily. “Naturally she took precautions.”

“For Cam’s sake I bloody well hope she did.”

“He was my friend too, Mel!” Eric shouted at her; she met his renewed glare with one of her own.

Then she abruptly leaned in closer, to sniff at his neckline.

“Dammit, what is WITH you?” he said giving her a shove back into her seat. “I’m starting to regret ever contacting you again.”

“I’m not surprised,” she retorted, eyeing him more closely. “Tell me, when this Melody made a supernatural connection with your friend Gary, what exactly did his spirit have to say? Did he say that he’d been murdered?”

“Yes.”

“He used the word murder?”

“Yes!”

The brunette witch peered at him, using one of her ‘under the microscope’ gazes.

“Well, no, not exactly,” Eric amended. “But Gary said he was still partially tied to our world because the killer was hiding. Then our connection was broken. Melody wasn’t able to discern who Gary meant by ‘killer’. But his apartment door was locked from the inside, so this couldn’t have been a typical assailant. It had to be supernatural.”

“And that’s when you thought of me.”

“Yeah.”

Melissa almost leaned in to sniff at Eric again, but then thought better of it and wiggled herself back into a comfortable position on her seat instead. Meaning resting her feet up on the object in front of her, folding her body as she crossed her arms again. Her gaze became one of serious thought. “You trust Melody?” she asked after a moment, without looking at Eric.

“I do,” Eric replied. “So if you must talk with her, please don’t badmouth all the efforts she’s made on my behalf.”

“And how long have you been volunteering your time at a retirement home?”

“Ever since my grandmother went into… wait, how in the deuce did you know about that?”

“Because I know why I’m here now,” Melissa sighed. “Why I felt I had to come. But I wish I didn’t. Damn, damn… don’t talk to me any more, I have some things to sort out.”

Shooting her one final look, which Melissa caught out of the corner of her eye and said might best be described as a mixture of puzzlement and irritation, Eric did as she requested. And by the way, regardless of the form of public transportation you pictured, you can also assume that, by now, no one else was going to bother Melissa either.

The next event which has a bearing on this case occurred when Eric and Melissa arrived outside Gary’s apartment building. (I’ll spare you the intervening time - Melissa says that the only notable thing to happen was them having a meal together. I can only assume Eric ended up paying the bill.) So, let’s fast forward to that.

A VIRGA MYSTERY Borderline: Case 3a

Of course, she is still a second year university student living just off of campus, who is known by the nickname ‘Weird Gal’, primarily because of the agency she runs out of our apartment. (Similarly, I am still a somewhat naive freshman who moved into the place sight unseen.) But while Melissa kept what you might call a “professional distance” from the last two cases I’ve laid out, this one became rather more personal.

Allow me to begin at the start of my involvement, because to begin at the very beginning would necessitate tracking back a few years, and it’s best to let those events fill in as necessary. (Particularly given the need for me to keep Melissa’s true identity hidden.)

First, let me say that my participation was purely accidental. You may recall that, following the first case I witnessed, I became curious as to my roommate’s other cases - so I poked around in her papers, and talked with that one client, Annie. What followed from that was a dramatic demonstration of the dangers in pursing any sort of association with a witch.

This meant that, while I wasn’t exactly concerned about being possessed by an electrical entity, I wasn’t about to go looking for trouble. As such, I started to spend a number of evenings studying (okay, and partying) with my classmate Adam. Part of me was hoping that I might hook up with some other girl, to get me past the little “Melissa crush” which I’ve remarked on.

After all, if I’m not at home, not only am I staying clear of any dangerous cases, I’m also not liable to be tantalized by the way my roommate fills out a pair of jeans. Unfortunately, I never really clicked with anyone, and it was largely due to my absences that I rather missed the boat as far as Eric was concerned.

You see, Eric Hill (as I’ll call him) was a former classmate of Melissa’s back in high school. Their relationship was… well, for the moment, let me just say that they didn’t get along. All I knew on this particular Sunday morning in October though, was that Melissa’s phone kept ringing continuously for several minutes.

It wasn’t that Melissa hadn’t turned on her answering machine either - the phone would ring three times, stop before the machine had a chance to pick up, then resume ringing again. So, since Melissa was apparently out, and this person wasn’t about to leave a message, I decided to pick up. I actually made the decision to do so after the first minute of the caller’s persistence, but it took me some additional time to locate the phone inside of Melissa’s filing cabinet.

“Hello,” I said into the receiver, suddenly realizing I didn’t know how to refer to Melissa’s Agency. “Uh, can I help you?”

There was a response, but I completely missed it.

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

I became rather distracted by the sight of Melissa’s bedroom door being thrown open, and her jumping out and ordering me to “Hang up!”. I believe she was using that no-nonsense tone of voice too, the one that gets a person to obey without even thinking about it. Despite that, I didn’t respond immediately. She began to stalk towards me, repeating her command, but the problem - and the reason for my continuing hesitation - basically came down to the fact that she was wearing a nightgown.

Despite rooming together for over a month now, this was a sight I had never seen before.

As another brief digression, let me remind you that Melissa’s sleeping habits were highly irregular - you may recall that she’s been fully awake at 2am before. In fact, I had begun to believe that she simply slept in her clothes whenever she found herself in need of a recharge.

So, having her present herself to me in sleepwear, at 10am on a Sunday, caught me off guard to say the least. Add to my surprise the way that the material of her gown (which was a bright green) had a bit of a sheen to it, creating an overall effect that helped to bring out her green eyes, and the fact that her brown hair was rumpled in a rather fetching way, and you can (hopefully) understand why I simply stood dumbfounded, holding the phone receiver up to my ear.

But enough of that. The point is, it wasn’t until Melissa was two paces away from me that any words began to register, the first being those of the male voice on the other end of the line.

“Look, I’m coming right over,” he said, right before our connection was severed by Melissa punching the disconnect button.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” my roommate asked, angrier than I had ever seen her before. Which, admittedly, isn’t THAT angry, but it was a change from how unflappable she usually appeared. “I told you to hang up!”

“Oh, uh, sorry,” was my sheepish apology as I looked away. As much out of shame as to prevent further visual distraction. “I didn’t realize you were resting.”

“As if I could sleep with that incessant ringing,” Melissa snapped back at me. “James, I asked you several times NOT to answer the phone this weekend!”

I quickly searched my memory for such an event. I do have a semi-photographic memory (which is what helps me write these accounts), and had only been home for a short while the day before. I hadn’t seen Melissa then, and tracking back to before the weekend gave me no additional hints. When had she spoken to me about this?

Feeling even more chagrined, I realized I had no idea. “Uh, when was that?” I asked meekly.

Melissa let out a quick breath between her lips, then turned to her desk. She shuffled around a couple of sheets, plucking one from the mix and holding it out in front of my face. It read ‘James, seriously, do NOT answer the phone!!!’ and was signed ‘Virga’.

I blinked. It was about to dawn on me that her version of telling me had involved leaving me notices strewn around the apartment. “I… don’t make it a habit to search your desk,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “There’s another note in the textbook you left in the kitchen. And in the freezer next to your ice cream.”

“Why not on my bedroom door?”

“I couldn’t find any tape, and adhesive spells don’t work very well with paper.”

“Why didn’t you take the phone completely off the hook?”

“Legitimate clients would find it hard to get hold of me then, wouldn’t they?” Melissa fired back. “I did put the phone away in the filing cabinet, or had you not noticed that as well?”

Truth be told, I’d given up on understanding her filing system, but by now, I saw Melissa’s arms were folded and she was giving me a rather exasperated glare. Sensing that this was all perfectly logical to her, I thought it might be wiser to move on.

“Well, sorry,” I apologized again. “The guy did say he was coming over though, so you might want to chan–”

She grabbed me by the shirt. “Eric said he was coming here?”

“Um, yeah,” I affirmed, making the logical leap to the fact that it had been Eric on the phone.

“I’m not home, and you haven’t seen me,” she concluded. “This is my weekend off.”

With that, she released me, spun around, and vanished back into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

At this point, I figured that she was simply taking a few days away from her business to handle schoolwork, thus deferring any cases to Monday. Which was wrong, given how she’d talked about legitimate clients reaching her. Moreover, the fact that she had known Eric’s name just from the way he phoned should have been my first hint of a connection between them.

-

Eric showed up some ten minutes later. I used that time to try and think of a polite way to get rid of him. I had toyed with the idea of simply not answering the door, but given how insistent he’d been with the phone, such a tactic wasn’t likely to work very well.

So when he knocked, I opened the door, barring the way inside while holding a pencil and notepaper. “Hi!” I greeted pleasantly. “Miss Virga’s not available right now, but if you leave me the case particulars I’ll–”

“Where is she?” Eric interrupted, trying to peer around behind me.

I guess this is a good enough time to describe him… he was about my height, seemed reasonably fit, and was probably university student age - though it was a bit hard to tell, given that he was bald. His choice of attire was a T-shirt and jeans, mostly hidden by an overcoat. (If it helps, perhaps you can picture a shorter Kojak without the lollypop?) Anyway, not especially imposing, but as I found out, very stubborn.

“She’s unavailable,” I repeated. “If you’ll just tell me–”

“Who are you?” he demanded, shifting his attention from the room to me, the person obstructing his passage. “Melissa’s latest boyfriend?”

That one brought me up short. The idea of Melissa dating anyone had never seriously occurred to me, let alone me being her ‘latest’ boyfriend. What didn’t help either was how the idea might have crossed my mind once or twice.

Eric capitalized on my moment of confusion, pushing past me to enter the main room. I slipped around, back into his path. “I’m her secretary,” I offered up, not wishing to get caught up in the details of our rooming situation. Then, to try and turn the tables on his questioning, I fired back, “Who are YOU?”

“I’m Eric. Melissa’s ex-boyfriend,” he stated.

This constant string of surprises really wasn’t fair to me at all.

He got as far as looking around behind her desk this time, and was making a move for her bedroom, before I could head him off again. He sure as heck wasn’t getting in THERE, not with Melissa in her green nightgown.

“Well, as you can see, Melissa’s not here,” I reiterated. “Why don’t you come back tomorrow?”

“I’m only in town this weekend,” came his quick reply. “She knows that, from when I phoned her on Friday.”

His arm met my chest - but he wasn’t about to dodge past me a third time, not with that lame line. “Look, this is a place of business,” I said, raising my voice and ignoring for the moment how it was also my residence. “If you have a personal grudge with Melissa, this is hardly the–”

“I have a case for her, a friend of mine is dead!”

Okay, so, with that one he was able to get by me and knock at Melissa’s bedroom door.

“Hey!” I protested, resorting to grabbing at his arm by the overcoat so he couldn’t turn the doorknob. “I said leave the details with ME. Or come back later. Melissa isn’t–”

“Oh, nevermind, James,” came her voice from behind the door.

It swung open then, and Melissa slipped out. She closed the door behind her, leaning back on the wall with her arms folded, and glared at the both of us. Again, though I’ve said she’s only a little over five feet tall, comparatively, at that moment, it felt like I was only five inches in height. (Incidentally, she had changed into jeans and a sweatshirt.)

“Sorry,” I mumbled at her yet again, but her anger was swiftly zeroing in on Eric.

Melissa’s nose wrinkled slightly as she sniffed the air. “Interesting scent,” she observed. “Since you’ve apparently been seeing some other witch regularly, why not have her deal with your problems?”

“Because she only lets me talk with spirits, she doesn’t do detective work,” Eric answered. He also seemed a bit more deflated now that he was in Melissa’s presence. I chalked it up to her glare. “I need more than that. I need to know who killed him.”

Melissa’s jaw clenched. “I should have known.”

“Mel, listen…”

“I don’t… do… DEATH!” she stated, punctuating each word with jabs to Eric’s chest. “You of ALL people know that. If evil spirits are manipulating the living, that’s one thing. Once people are dead, that’s out of my hands. That’s a border I cannot cross! Whoever it is, you have to let them go, Eric.”

“I can’t.”

Melissa swore. My jaw dropped - I’d never seen her lose her cool that way. She then marched between us to lean against her desk, facing away, towards the window. Eric didn’t pursue her, apparently knowing enough to give her some time after that outburst.

“You’re a damn fool,” she reiterated after a moment, using slightly less colourful language. “Eric, you haven’t changed in three years.”

“And I won’t dispute that,” he answered. “But I still need your help.”

“So what,” Melissa inquired, still without turning, “makes you think I’ll help you this time, when I have never done so in the past?”

Eric shuffled his feet a bit. “I came in person?”

Melissa finally turned back. “Get out.”

“Look,” I piped up, aware that the smart thing to do here would be to retreat somewhere else. (Sometimes I do the smart thing, but this wasn’t one of those times.) “Obviously there’s a history here that I don’t know. But, setting that aside, if someone has died because of the supernatural, shouldn’t we do something to make sure it doesn’t happen again?” I mean, Melissa had always seemed pretty conscientious about preventing issues that might happen later.

“That’s not what this is about,” Melissa said, tight lipped. “Right, Eric?”

“It… might be,” he said, in a rather unconvincing way.

“It’s about using the supernatural to solve a routine death,” she explained, looking to me. “Eric is nothing if not predictable.”

“Oh,” I said, briefly taken aback. “And if we did that, it would mess with the supernatural balance on Earth?”

“Right,” Melissa asserted.

“That’s not a sure thing,” Eric protested. “Mel, you’re just twisting the facts here to get rid of me.”

“Is it working yet?”

Eric’s expression tightened. “Fine. Fine, have it your way,” he said after a moment. “I’ll investigate things on my own.” He turned and strode purposefully back towards the front door. “You know, you haven’t changed in three years either,” was his parting shot before he walked out and slammed the door behind him.

Melissa stood silently, face turned away from the door, not watching him leave. I fancied a bit more colour appeared in her cheeks when he spoke his last words, though whether it was anger or embarrassment, I don’t know.

She then breezed past me, not to her room, but to the kitchen.

I gave Melissa five minutes before I joined her.

A VIRGA MYSTERY Net Worth: Entry 2d

“Did you think that by not saying anything, I wasn’t hurting?” she challenged him. “Damn it Frank, you keep talking about yourself. Didn’t you learn anything about me during that time we spent together?”

“I could say the same,” Frank cut back. “I mean, I liked to think what we had was more than physical, but ever since April, it became harder and harder to figure you out. I kept wondering what was going wrong, and you wouldn’t tell me!”

“I didn’t know what was happening with me either! Not until…" Annie’s hands clenched into fists, glancing at Melissa out of the corner of her eye. She took in a deep breath. “Look, I think you’ve said enough,” she told Frank. “We’ve both moved on now, can we get to the banish–”

“Like HELL I’ve moved on,” Frank interrupted, a spark of electricity appearing at his fingertips. “The pain at being ignored, it’s still gnawing at me months later. Gosh, I was such a damn inconvenience to you, wasn’t I? You must have wondered why couldn’t I just leave you alone.”

“Frank…”

“After all, I was the last one to know it was done, wasn’t I? Everyone else we knew had it figured out, but no, not me.” His fingertips began to glow blue. “You know,” Annie’s former boyfriend continued, his body now shaking slightly. “You know, if you die, then at least I won’t have to keep hoping that some day, somehow, you’ll finally EXPLAIN yourself to me. Finally I’ll get SOME sort of closure!”

Annie took a half a step back, concern and worry on her face.

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

“This isn’t good,” Melissa muttered, a little redundantly.

Of course, Melissa’s major problem now was that she couldn’t act directly against the entity, not so long as Frank was at least partially accepting it’s control. The whole ‘performing magick on the unwilling’ situation. As to me, I was starting to wonder why I’d stuck around for this ceremony in the first place, as Melissa had suggested to me that I go elsewhere. (Oh, right, it was so I could write this story up for you.)

“Look, Frank…” Annie began again, but he didn’t seem to be listening anymore. I became aware of a scratching noise at my bedroom door.

“All you had to do was tell me WHY!” Frank practically screamed at her. A tear ran down his cheek, glowing electric blue. “Not even necessarily why we split apart, because yes, I could see there were differences, I wasn’t completely blind, but why cut me out of your life? Did I have absolutely ZERO net worth as far as you were concerned?!”

Annie took another step back, slipped on one of Melissa’s stray desk papers, and fell to the ground. Frank took a step forwards, raising one arm, a ball of blue energy forming within his palm. Melissa let out what I think was a latin curse and began making mystical gestures - which I suspect involved that backup plan of destroying our entire building.

And me? Well, I went to check out the scratching at my bedroom door. Why? Because it felt like someone should, and I was the least preoccupied person in the room.

It turned out to be the right thing to do.

Tabby shot out of my room and into Annie’s arms, without, it seemed to me, a paw even touching the floor. Frank froze upon seeing the cat, caught off guard - no one had mentioned to him about Melissa bringing Tabby here, along with all the other things Annie had wanted for her overnight stay. (No one had told me either, for that matter.)

In retrospect, closing Tabby up in my room in order to keep him safe might have been the luckiest mistake Annie made that night. Because it was at this point, when Annie blinked down at her pet, then back up at Frank, that the presence of the animal could give her a measure of inner strength.

It’s worth adding that her red barrette began to glow faintly. Something that makes more sense when you remember that it was the one item that Melissa’s illusion spell couldn’t duplicate. Remember how Annie’s witch powers were recent?

“All right,” Annie said quietly, staring up at her ex-boyfriend. “You want the truth? Then here it is.” She stumbled back to her feet, the rest of the room going deadly quiet. Even Avril had given up her crooning in the nearby apartment.

There was a boom of thunder, in my opinion a little late (or perhaps, early) for proper dramatic effect.

“Last April, I found that I was able to conjure objects," Annie said. “Nothing big. A pencil. A thumbtack. Water into a glass. It freaked me the heck out… and I found that I couldn’t talk to you about it. Because whenever I tried, you wouldn’t listen, or you changed the subject. Which is when I realized that you had started to take me for granted.”

The sparks flashing around Frank’s palm died down. Annie began to pet the cat in her arms, though her gaze remained fixed on him. I noticed a tear running down her cheek now too.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” Annie continued. “You felt like one of the good ones. But with that huge change in my life, all the other things became harder to ignore. I finally realized that the only way I could deal with my own issues was to cut things off with you completely. So that I wouldn’t be tempted to return to you, prolonging the inevitable. It was for both our sakes.”

“BOTH of us?” Frank said, a spark of electricity jumping about in his hair. “I–”

“Just LISTEN for once!” Annie shouted, and now it was Frank’s turn to take a step back. “Listen, and for that matter, think about what it means to be female in today’s society! To have ridiculous standards imposed on us. To have stupid terms like ‘friend zone’ bounced around. And then to add to all that the fact that apparently I can do magic and didn’t know why or if I might hurt you or someone else we knew. I needed time. So, I cut myself off. What would you have done in my place?”

There was a silence that seemed to stretch on forever, but in reality I’m sure it lasted only seconds. “All right,” Frank murmured, his voice sounding loud after the stillness. “In retrospect, I should have listened better.” He gestured at Annie’s glowing accessory. “And here I thought your new hairstyle was a symptom, rather than the barrette itself being the problem.”

“That’s a magick amplifier,” Melissa said idly. “Attuned to her family, or I might have realized sooner. Annie, for the record, if you take it off, you might not have to deal with the magick any more.”

Annie reached up to touch the object. “My mom found this in our attic. Gave it to me for my birthday. When I wear it, I feel some sort of connection… but yes, I think today’s the last day I will ever put it on.”

“Oh.” Frank half smiled. “In that case, do you think that our relationship might…”

“NO, Frank,” Annie said, putting Tabby down. “Because Melissa’s genealogy spell also showed me that we’re actually related. Turns out my father had an illicit affair, he was secretly your father, so things can truly never be between us.”

Frank’s eyes grew wide. “Wait, what? We’re siblings?”

Annie chuckled. “No. But I figured you were expecting some extra dramatic twist, like in those shows you liked to watch. So you can use that, if you want a more mundane explanation than a magical barrette. Or me not wanting to look back.”

Frank stared. Then he laughed. “Touché. Geez, I was so busy looking for one specific thing that I did. But it’s never as simple as that, huh?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Annie. It is time to move on. And as they said once on CSI, truth brings closure."

Annie nodded. “I’m sorry too, maybe I should have made more of an effort to get through to you.”

Frank shook his head. “You tried. A relationship takes two.” He then gasped and collapsed to his knees, slamming his hands up against his temples. “S-Speaking of… agh! It’s… still trying to control… quick, k-kill it already!"

“About time you asked us,” Melissa grumbled, quickly stepping forwards while holding the orb of hex out in the palm of her hand. “Annie?”

The dark haired woman turned to glance at Melissa, blinked then nodded. She reached out to place her palm overtop of the orb as well. The two witches then turned their attention to Frank, who returned their gaze, his panicked look somehow at odds with his posture, and his eye colour - which was that same electric blue from before.

“F,” Melissa began slowly. “E… D… C… B… A… 9…”

“Yaaaaggghhh!” Frank shouted, coiling up from the floor and jumping at Annie. “Your power is MINE, witch!”

“8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, ANNULLARE!” Annie finished rapidly in place of Melissa.

I caught my roommate smiling at the other woman as a wave of red light pulsed out from the orb of hex, rippling through the whole room, freezing Frank in mid-jump. (By the way, annullare here means destroy. Which leaves Melissa’s earlier latin remark at the light switch as the one for you to look up. After all, it’s important to be well educated.)

The air crackled at that point, everyone catching a bad case of electrostatic (including Tabby, poor thing), and from Frank’s throat there came the death scream of an evil internet entity. The creepiest part being how Frank’s mouth wasn’t open.

It was all rather hideous at the time, though the only way I can think to describe that sound now, after the fact, is to say it was like a 1200 baud modem connecting to a phone line. Assuming you’ve ever heard that. Maybe you’ve come across the sound by seeking out retro noises on the web.

At any rate, the scream soon died out. Blue sparks showered the area, then dispersed without a trace, and I was left with something of a tinny feeling in my mouth. I found out later that the power had cut out for the whole building.

Frank dropped to the floor, unconscious.

“Good,” Melissa concluded, letting out a sigh of relief. She raked her free hand back through her hair. Which, by the way, did not help to unfrizz the static at all. Predictably, it was kind of cute. “You handled that perfectly, Annie. Carry a small magical charm with you at all times, and use that latin phrase if you ever get attacked again,” she concluded.

Annie’s knuckles were white as she maintained a death grip on the orb I’d bought (little more than a small crystal ball, really). “Do you… do you think this sort of thing is LIKELY to happen again?” she inquired weakly.

“If you’re serious about taking off the barrette and not practicing magick in future, probably not,” Melissa admitted. “Particularly now that you have a way of defending yourself. After all, while fledgling witches are prime targets, they’re damn hard to pinpoint without help, and not worth the effort when they’re on their guard. Of course, to be on the safe side, if you’re ever running sensitive personal information though a computer, don’t have it hooked into anything else, hmmm?”

Melissa took a step towards her desk, and ended up partially pulling Annie with her. She stopped. “You can let go of the orb now,” the experienced witch added, glancing down at where their palms were joined.

“Oh…” With some effort, Annie lifted her hand away from the crystal. She looked down at the unconscious Frank, whose head was being pawed at gently by Tabby. “Will… will he be all right?”

“Oh, sure,” Melissa said easily, moving to put the orb of hex away in a file cabinet. “He’ll probably have a bad headache, but that’s all. Almost lost him, of course… really would have helped had he told us the full extent of his issues with you beforehand.”

Annie flushed a bit in the cheeks. “Our relationship was hardly your business. Though the things he was saying there… was that all the entity’s doing?”

Melissa made a vague gesture in the air. “Not entirely. The dialogue was him, though I doubt he would have spoken any of it aloud if it weren’t for the merging. Now, you’ll receive my bill for the orb in the mail. I’ll grant you a discount since I might have occasion to use it again. And on the bright side, the rain seems to be easing up, so you can head home now if you like!” She smiled.

A distant rumble added credence to the fact that the storm had begun moving off. I’d barely noticed the status of the weather what with all the excitement inside the apartment.

“I… home?” Annie said dubiously, turning to look out the window.

“No, no, it’s fine, you can stick around here,” I broke in quickly, reasoning Annie might not want to be alone just yet. “I don’t mind you and Tabby using my room. I mean, I’m too amped up to sleep now, and Frank may want someone to help him home when he comes to. Plus according to my watch it’s already…”

I paused, shaking my wrist. My watch had stopped working at 11:45. I suppose it was a good thing that my computer hadn’t been in the area. “Well, it’s at least midnight,” I ventured.

“Midnight?” Melissa said in surprise. “It can’t be that late, can it?” She paused to check her own wrist, then the desk and the wall. She still hadn’t put clocks in any of those places. “Though you could be right,” she yielded. “Hey, it’s awful dark in here too. James, do you know where I might have put our flashlight?”

“I left it in the fridge when I went there for a drink,” I remarked. “While we were waiting for Frank. I needed the light because of how said fridge was unplugged and I didn’t want to accidentally pour myself your beet and jalapeño juice.”

Annie looked from Melissa to me and back. “You two are very weird,” she decided.

Well, I could hardly argue with her there.

-

Again, there’s not a lot more to say in the epilogue. Frank came to reasonably quickly and bowed out of the apartment looking embarrassed. I accompanied him part of the way home, just to fill in the gaps, as Annie slept in my room. When I got back, Melissa actually did have the courtesy to offer me the use of her bed - she wanted to do some paperwork - but upon reflection, I decided I wasn’t ready for a look inside Melissa’s bedroom just yet. I dropped myself into a chair with a blanket.

Related, this little crush on Melissa that I’ve managed to not make subtle in the slightest? Well, given this look at how a relationship with a witch can turn out, I’ve decided I’ll be trying to curb my youthful enthusiasm as much as possible.

Still… I couldn’t help but grin like an idiot when Melissa belatedly thanked me the next morning for letting Tabby out, salvaging the whole situation and all. Knowing her, it was nice that she not only noticed that fact, but took the further step of acknowledging me. It also led to the following exchange, beginning with my remark, “Pretty soon, I bet you won’t even be able to forget that I’m living here.”

Melissa shook her head. “Please, James. I don’t ever forget about you,” she stated. “You’re simply not quite what I expected in a roommate. I’m having to adjust, that’s all.”

“You mean adjust to my interest in your cases?”

She eyed me. “Frankly, yes. I had expected teasing, hoped for tolerance, and somehow got acceptance. I may even be trying to provoke the more typical reactions, instead of what you’re giving me.” She put her hands on her hips. “On top of that, there’s also your interest in my appearance. The way you look at me sometimes, it’s… mmph, well, it’s time I was going to class.”

Melissa swiftly grasped her purse and philosophy textbook and hurried out of the apartment before I was able to pull myself together and ask for clarification. Was she saying my crush was jeopardizing everything? Or was she saying I had a chance with her? My heart beat faster. I tried to get it to slow down.

Perhaps it was time to find myself a study partner in first year who wasn’t Adam. A female one, that is, and one who wasn’t a witch, which might allow me to avoid things getting complicated in the apartment. It’s to my benefit that Melissa hasn’t shown any interest in reading these accounts thus far.

Either way, as far as the case is concerned, the electrical activity in our area that night was attributed to the storm, and it barely made the news. I got my laptop back, and have since taken to making sure I’m not on the net 24/7, as well as ensuring that the little trash bin icon is emptied regularly. As to Frank and Annie, I will say Frank got in touch with us a couple of days after the incident, thanking us for inadvertently providing him with closure.

I suppose one can hope that those two at least resumed talking with each other on occasion… after all, to believe such a thing gives a measure of hope to the messed up interpersonal relationships the rest of us manage to get ourselves involved in. Wouldn’t you say?

END CASE 2

A VIRGA MYSTERY Net Worth: Entry 2c

“Less wizard talk, more file talk,” Melissa insisted. “What was in it?”

Frank ran his fingers back through his hair. “Fine. It bugged me as to where I screwed up so seriously as to make Annie completely cut me out of her life. So I ran an analysis. Coded into my computer some stuff I knew about her, the main details of our relationship, and I tried to run an analysis. I hoped to identify the key moment, which would finally give me closure."

Melissa nodded, all the pieces now falling into place for her. Apparently. (I gave her a look, which she ignored.) “So what happened to the file?” she asked Frank.

“My program ran for the better part of a day, then crashed,” Frank answered, shrugging. “The file itself had become corrupt or something. I figured it was because I was running a torrent at the same time, decided that it was a sign that I’d asked the computer for too much, and tried to trash the thing. Only to find it had already been placed into my recycling folder. Or I THOUGHT it had been… maybe it was a copy? I never gave that file much thought again until now,” Frank admitted.

“Your computer was hooked up to the internet at the time you ran the program then?” Melissa chastised.

“Um, duh?” Annie’s ex replied. He cleared his throat, looking guilty. “Look, I honestly thought her file had been erased. I’m sorry if some personal information got out. That was never my intent. Annie… she’s not going to die on account of my program, is she?”

“Not if I can help it,” Melissa concluded.

Having learned everything from Frank that she needed, the supernatural detective spun on her heel and marched back out of his apartment. She was already working out the best way to solve the problem. Frank quietly watched her go.

-

“Or at least, if he said anything else, I wasn’t paying attention,” Melissa admitted.

“All right,” I said, parsing her conversation. “So what you’re saying is, Annie’s ex-boyfriend created a computer file on her, which gained sentience, became evil and is now trying to kill her?”

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

“More or less. The sentience thing was no doubt due to an external entity melding with it at just the wrong - or the right - time. Anyway, the male perspective thing I wanted to know from you–”

“Wait,” I protested. I rubbed my eyes, not that it helped me to process the situation any better, but it gave me more time to assimilate things. “Okay,” I continued at last. “So this ‘entity’ - is now being controlled by an an actual evil wizard running around campus?”

“Of course not,” Melissa scoffed. “James, keep up. For one thing, the issue here is that Annie’s a witch. Naturally.”

I’m not sure what bothered me more, the fact that Melissa said it so matter-of-factly, or the fact that I hadn’t been anywhere near reaching that conclusion yet. Had I missed the clues once more? I leaned in a little closer, finding it hard to read Melissa’s expression in the absence of proper lighting. “A witch. Like you,” I said, dumbfounded.

Melissa shrugged. “Well, Annie’s taller.”

I gave my roommate a look that said I wanted more, and she seemed to pick up on that after a half a minute or so. She reached back for the piece of paper she’d been staring at when I entered. “I got Annie’s permission to do a quick lineage spell before she went to lie down,” Melissa said. She pointed to a branch of the family tree pictured. “I think it comes from two generations back on Annie’s mother’s side.”

Apparently, I was still going to have to ask the obvious question. “Okay… and you realized this about Annie because, what, you witches can sense each other, like immortals in those TV shows?”

“Oh James, please don’t make this silly,” Melissa sighed, putting the paper down. “While it’s true that witch magick can leave a scent on others, as a general rule, we don’t send up beacons for other witches to trace. It would paint a target on us for less friendly supernatural beings to spot.”

Something finally clicked for me. “But that computer file. It could have been a beacon.”

“It was,” Melissa agreed. “And from what Frank said, I gather it was entangled with elements of Annie’s personality and her magick power, creating our problem. His program might have even worked out the truth. Pity Frank never got the results, now it will be up to me to explain about being a witch to Annie.”

At last, things began to make sense. “Because Annie doesn’t know. About the computer file, or even about her witch abilities.”

“No, and not consciously.”

“So Annie wasn’t here consulting you as one witch to another.”

“Oh, heck no,” Melissa said, with a delightful laugh. “Did you think that? In fact, I wouldn’t have even suspected her inherent ability, had Annie not told me that her cat had been hissing at the computer. After all, certain animals are often more drawn towards those with magick potential, to the point of becoming protective of them. So when Annie replied to my question about cats by saying they’d always been around her family, it added credence to the theory.”

“And the supernatural books at her house…”

“Glad you saw those. Yes, on some level, Annie may be aware. Maybe that’s why, like me, she isn’t keen on technology? Either way, it told me that I’d need to ask her friends about any magick links. Leading to the herbal remedies in her family history, mentioned by a couple people. A red flag, as sometimes magick users use those to disguise what’s really going on."

“Which is why you didn’t want me with you as you asked your questions,” I realized. “I might blurt out something awkward, like I did with the nail polish.”

Melissa patted my shoulder. “Yes, well, you do tend to react visibly, James, and I didn’t want to waste time on explanations. Though I really did need that orb you got me too.”

I pondered things. Something still didn’t quite add up. “Does anyone know about Annie being a witch?”

“I doubt it,” Melissa said. “Seems like a recent awakening.”

“Okay, so if Annie’s a witch, and there’s no one acting against her, why not simply teach her a spell she can use for protection against the entity?”

“Well, why can’t you simply make a green ball appear yellow?” Melissa fired back levelly. “Remember I said that’s simple illusion - anyone can do it, magick background or not.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. “Okay,” I yielded. “So doing the necessary spell isn’t simply a matter of rote repetition. It takes a lot of practice?”

“More than that,” Melissa said. “You have to be open to the very possibility. Supernatural balance. And Annie hasn’t seemed thrilled with what her subconscious has been trying to tell her. Of course, she’s STILL going to have to participate in our final spell so that she knows how to properly protect herself in the future… but even THAT is not my major problem right now.”

I rubbed my neck. “What’s the major problem then?”

“Oh, you mean I can finally get around to asking you what it is I wanted to know five minutes ago?” Melissa retorted.

Her tone wasn’t irritated exactly, but it wasn’t exactly calm, it was more dry and… the realization that she was attempting to be sarcastic hit me before I could get around to replying. As such, I didn’t say anything, because my mind became busy trying to remember if Melissa had ever used that particular tone with anyone else while I was around. Did she even know what sentiment the tone conveyed?

“I assume that’s a yes then,” Melissa decided, switching back to her more level tone. Wait, and was she blushing, or were the shadows of the room playing tricks on me? She turned to look out the window, so I couldn’t tell. Outside, the rain continued to fall.

“James, my problem is, I can’t think of a way to personally get rid of this entity in the time left to us. I’ll need Annie’s help, and to this point, my only viable plan also involves Frank, the unwitting originator of the base program.” She faced me again. “So I need you to tell me if his relationship with Annie is sufficiently ‘Odi et amo’ for my idea to work.”

I blinked. “Odie ate ammo?”

“I hate and I love,” Melissa translated. “Remind me to give you a latin phrasebook. See, we’ll need to get the entity inside of Frank, because once it has a physical form, me and Annie can use the orb of hex to wipe it out. However, for that plan to work, Frank can’t still be in love with Annie, or the entity will reject the merging. Yet he can’t outright hate her, or the entity will take over his persona completely.”

I tried not to boggle at my roommate. “This plan seems incredibly risky.”

“Yes. It’s always risky with emotions, they’re such a pain.”

“Not quite what I meant. Could Frank die? Or Annie?”

“Obviously,” Melissa snapped. She winced then, and marched over to her desk and leaned on it, staring towards my bedroom area.

“Sorry. I blame myself for this," she stated, visibly tense. “I didn’t realize the evil would be able to adapt to life outside of a computer so quickly. But it must have had contact with Annie this morning for long enough to snare a piece of her magical essence. I suspect that’s how it’s been able to survive as an independent force for this long as well… taking in other magicks to sustain itself, and to grow, in pursuit of its ultimate goal. That being to gain control over a fledgling witch.” She shook her head. “If only the balance were properly in place, this would never have been possible."

I moved closer to Melissa and reached up my hand, preparing to put it on her shoulder in a comforting way. I changed my mind at the last moment and used it to rub my chin. “Well, Frank sounds like he’s over their relationship. You’re sure he wasn’t feigning ignorance about knowing what his program was doing? Maybe he’s been behind things all along.”

Melissa shook her head, a shaft of light from a passing car briefly reflecting through the window and illuminating her long, chestnut brown hair in an inexplicably alluring way. “I can’t be certain, but I’m almost positive Frank never intended any harm. Thing is, that’s not enough to ensure he’d survive a connection to an evil electronic entity.” She glanced back my way. “James, tell me. Is involving him with Annie again the right thing to do?”

I turned that question around in my head a couple of times. The natural direction my thoughts took involved putting myself in the situation of being called in to help, were it Melissa in trouble. Given the witch parallel. But at this point any ‘love’ I was feeling for my roommate was probably only physical, and the ‘hate’ I felt at how she could do things like give up my living space without even asking permission didn’t exactly balance the scale. Also, we hadn’t yet spent a year dating.

For that matter, not knowing the details of Annie and Frank’s relationship, how could I properly compare my situation to theirs? I finally said the only thing that seemed to make sense, namely, “Why don’t you let Frank make that decision himself?”

Melissa blinked at me. “Mmmm. Just tell him Annie’s a witch, you mean?”

I coughed. “Maybe play up the ‘Annie is in trouble’ angle and downplay the ‘evil digital entity’ side of things. Thing is, if he really doesn’t want harm to come to her, he’ll help.”

“Mmmm,” she repeated. She then reached past me, opening the lower drawer of her desk and pulling out a phone. “I suppose that makes sense,” she decided. “Though I confess part of me hopes he’ll say no, as this outcome is becoming so hard to predict.” She untwisted the phone’s cable, plugging it into the wall. “Fortunately, the fact that this phone’s rotary should confound our evil incarnate, at least for as long as it takes me to phone Frank.”

I nodded. “And do we have a backup plan if Frank does say no?” I wondered.

Melissa grimaced. “Sure. We evacuate the building, I lure the entity in here, and then I destroy the whole apartment complex.”

“Ahh. Which kind of works better as a backup to a backup plan…”

“I know. I’m not keen on changing all my business cards,” Melissa remarked. “But it’s all I’ve got.” She finished dialling. Outside, there was a brief flash of lightning, then thunder rumbled again.

-

The four of us stood in the apartment building, aka Melissa’s office, a little later. All of us trying not to stare at each other. Which wasn’t too difficult, since it was still very dark.

“Well??” Melissa said at last, turning a glare first upon Annie, then Frank. “I explained the situation to you both individually, and you both agreed, however hesitantly, to go through with this. So, are you going to start talking to each other or not?”

I winced at Melissa’s blunt attitude, but she did have a point about needing to do something sooner rather than later. Even so, there was still a pause, broken only by another rumble of thunder - the rain was coming down harder now, tapping against the window.

“Is talking required then?” Frank said. “Because it’s obvious Annie’s no longer keen on speaking with me.”

“I speak to you,” Annie shot back.

“When there’s other people around,” Frank retorted. “You never called me back last month, or replied to those few emails I sent.”

“It was one phone call, I was busy that week. As to email, you know I’m not keen on computers.” Annie shuddered. “Hell, I’ll probably be even less thrilled with them after this nightmare is over.”

“Eh, okay, valid point,” Frank conceded. “Sorry for apparently about being the cause of this, by the way. I never should have made that program.”

Annie pursed her lips, but otherwise didn’t respond. Again, there was silence. Except for somewhere else in the building, I could just make out the sound of an Avril Lavigne song playing.

Melissa let out an exasperated sigh. “Look. If I let this entity in and you’re just staring morosely at each other, it’s going to go for Annie’s throat. It gains more power if it merges with you, Frank, but you’ve got to generate a more hospitable environment for evil inside you. So shout at her, or something.”

Frank turned to gave Melissa a dubious look.

“Perhaps if you explained to Annie why you created your program in the first place?” I jumped in, trying to help.

Frank now glanced in my direction before turning back to Annie. “Well, ah… basically, I was trying to work out why you broke up with me.”

Annie blinked back at him. “Wasn’t that obvious?”

Frank frowned. “Well, no, not really, that’s the whole point… you refused to talk to me about it, yeah?”

“I said we had differences. And I did answer your questions.”

“When I asked some, sure,” Frank granted. “But that was ME asking, you never showed initiative. So in order to avoid constantly berating you, I was left wondering to myself: Was it our different tastes in music? The fact that you enjoy cottage life more than I do? Was I not spending enough time with you? Was I that lousy in bed? I mean what, exactly, was the thing that caused you to cast me aside so easily?”

Annie flinched. “Easily? You think it was easy?!”

“I don’t KNOW!” Frank said in exasperation. “Anyway, don’t change the subject. Which of those things was it??”

“It… it wasn’t any one thing,” she stammered back. “It was all those things taken together which made me realize our relationship wasn’t going to go anywhere. In particular your inability to notice certain things that were happening.”

“In that case, why didn’t you TALK to me about these things?!” Frank said in exasperation. “Hell, you’re still avoiding me months later. What’s up with that?”

“Look, Frank, my concerns were pretty obvious,” Annie retorted, pointing at him. “And distancing myself from you, that seemed to me the best way for the both of us to get on with our lives.”

“Thank you, much better,” Melissa muttered off to my right. With one finger, she reached out and flipped the light switch while saying, “alea iacta est…”.

At this point, I suppose it would be fitting to say that there was a great crash of thunder, or a flash of lightning, marking the appearance of the evil net entity inside of the room. But while it might be fitting, it would be inaccurate - all that occurred was a bright light flooding the area, the filament in the bulb popping, and all of us being cast back into darkness. I had to rub my eyes at the afterimages, and as I did so I heard Frank speaking as if nothing had happened.

“Get on with our lives?” he was saying incredulously. “How could I get on with my so-called life when I wasn’t sure how to handle the relationship aspect of it any more? Damn it, Annie, did you forget that I can be a depressive? I was in a state of self-doubt for weeks!”

Annie pressed a hand to her forehead. “I didn’t forget. But telling you the truth, you would have thought I was making up stories. I was sure that would only make things even worse!”

“Oh, so you just decided for both us us then,” he fired back. “Being sure and all. Then you took the easy route, ignoring me whenever you got the chance.”

“Easy?! There you go again with that!”

I sidled over next to Melissa. “So, do we need to turn on another light or plug in another–”

She waved me off. “It’s there,” she said, the hushed tone of her voice managing to creep me out more than anything. “Look at his hair.”

I did. Frank’s hair was starting to stand on end, as if there was an excess of static electricity in the air. Then, when the lightning outside finally flashed in a suitably atmospheric way, I saw a spot of blue energy over Frank’s head. The image was only there for a moment, less than a second really, but I somehow I knew this thing was - and I know it sounds crazy - it was baring FANGS at Annie.

I think the only reason I didn’t run out of the room screaming was that I didn’t want to move, for fear of attracting the thing’s attention.

A VIRGA MYSTERY Net Worth: Entry 2b (really)

“James, can you look around back of that thing and disconnect any wires or cables that might be hooking it up directly to the net or a network or whatever the heck it is these computers hook into?” she requested as she got set up. “Saves me just pulling out everything."

“Um, sure,” I replied. I approached the machine a bit nervously, wondering if the blank monitor wasn’t somehow staring at me.

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

Observing my unease, Melissa made a ‘tch tch’ noise. “It’s perfectly safe as long as there’s no power to the thing,” she pointed out. “Unless it’s some whole new breed of entity, that is.”

“Oh, VERY reassuring,” I said sarcastically, before remembering that Melissa never seemed to recognize sarcasm.

With a sigh, I peered around the back of the tower. The only external connection that Annie’s computer seemed to have was an ethernet cable, so I disconnected that, tossing the end some distance away. So far, so good. I decided to unhook the webcam while I was back there too; there were a series of scorch marks on the casing beside it.

I then looked around the room for evidence of wireless fidelity. In the process, I found there were some books on the supernatural stacked on Annie’s coffee table. I guessed she had gone to the library before consulting with Melissa.

“Are we in trouble if the computer connects to the internet as soon as you log in?” I asked, after not spotting anything right away.

“Hmm. I suppose it could allow the entity to do a web search on how to escape from my clutches,” Melissa mused. “But no, it won’t leave via wifi. It’s the hard line that I was worried about.”

I gave up my search. “Okay, then you’re good to… ah, go.” I was momentarily taken aback by the sight of Melissa pouring what seemed to be a small ring of flour onto the floor.

Part of me wished she hadn’t worn those tight jeans today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to tell a woman how to dress, I know the problem is me, but it makes me think that helping Melissa more often might cause my mind to wander more often to the wrong places. I suppose that makes me shallow.

Melissa stood then, and turned. “Good,” she stated, ignoring any expression that might have been on my face. She moved to the computer, stuck a finger into a jar of what seemed to be face cream, traced a symbol on the monitor, and took a step back to admire her handiwork.

“Will that banish the entity?” I asked timidly, after a moment.

“No,” Melissa said absently. “It’s more to protect me.” She put the cream back into her purse. “Truth be told, I suspect the evil has already flown the coop, but if it IS still here, that makes this job easier. Might even mean you even get to sleep in your own bed tonight, instead of the couch."

Oh, right. “Um, actually, about that…”

“Hm? What about it?” Melissa wondered, looking back my way. “Come now James, you didn’t expect Annie to crawl into bed with ME tonight, did you?”

“Ah, no, ah, rrrgl…” The way she wiggled her eyebrows at me brought to mind an image of the two ladies cuddling, successfully trampling right over any other coherent thoughts I was having. It’s only in typing this up that I have to ask whether some of Melissa’s antics are done deliberately. To keep me off balance? Because of some subconscious interest in me? Well, I shouldn’t speculate.

At any rate, in the moment, I could no longer vocalize the protest that had been on my lips moments before. Melissa, as always, appeared to ignore any effect caused by her remarks, or was very politely choosing not to remark on my jaw dropping open.

“Okay James, stand back,” Melissa said, pulling out a candle and a lighter. “I’m about to do something here that’s a little more daring than changing the colour of our doorknob.”

She lit the candle and moved into the small circle of flour (circle of power?). I noticed that she also held Annie’s key in the palm of her hand.

I backed off towards the couch, exchanging a quick glance with Annie’s cat. Tabby seemed to have decided that our actions were more a source of amusement than any kind of threat, and had curled back up, observing us with half an eye.

As I watched, Melissa closed her eyes, murmured a few words I couldn’t hear, reopened her eyes and stated more loudly, “Mutatio!”. (Which is, as always, from the latin - it means a change or transformation.)

It wasn’t like what you’d see in the cartoons, with lots of flashing lights or Melissa spinning around on one foot, her long brown hair flying about her. Reality just seemed to stretch a bit, as if it were an elastic, and when it snapped back into place a half second later, Annie was standing in the living room instead of Melissa.

Annie looked almost exactly as she had in Melissa’s office not half an hour ago. Shirt, jeans, ankle boots, the whole deal. Only the red hair barrette was missing. Without hesitation, Annie blew out her candle, marched forwards to the computer, sat down and switched it on.

“Whoa, wait, what?” I protested, finally finding my voice and taking a step forwards.

Without turning, Annie raised a hand to motion me back. I paused, glancing again over at Tabby. The cat had gone to the effort of standing up, and was looking towards Annie in what seemed to be surprise. However, after a moment he curled his legs back under himself and settled for peering suspiciously.

Illusion, I realized. That was still Melissa over there in the chair, not Annie at all. She must have done something similar to appear as a janitor during her prior case, when visiting Dan/Danielle.

The computer completed the boot up process, and I watched as Melissa/Annie dragged the mouse around the screen, clicking randomly in a few places, even opening a file. Finally, my roommate shook her head and reached out to hit the power button. However, pushing the button had no effect.

“You have to hold it longer. Or select ‘Shut Down’ from the ‘Start’ menu,” I offered helpfully.

“Agh. Windows!” came Melissa’s exasperated voice from Annie’s body.

She shut the computer down properly, picked up a small device I hadn’t noticed next to the keyboard, then spun around in the chair, scrutinizing the thing. “Well, that should have garnered some response, if there was a response to garner,” my roommate stated. “Nothing registered, so as I surmised, the entity must have escaped earlier.”

Melissa/Annie pocketed her device, then sighed. “Guess I’ll have to start interviewing Annie’s friends and professors then. Damn it, I hate campus interviews, people never take me seriously.”

I shrugged. “Looking like that, they might react differently,” I pointed out.

Melissa/Annie smirked. “Until I speak. Which is all I’d be doing over the phone. Anyway, I don’t want to get Annie into more trouble, and illusion is one of the annoying spells. You have to constantly maintain it on some level. Even in person, it’s not worth it.” As if to confirm that fact, after the next time I blinked, I saw the more diminutive Melissa was sitting in front of me again.

“Okay, well, I could help you, if you like,” I found myself saying. I couldn’t tell if I’d spoken out of a desire to help Melissa, help Annie, or simply learn more about what was really going on.

Melissa fired off a smile. “You wouldn’t know the right questions to ask, and I suspect you’d want me to explain them to you if you heard me ask them. However, if you are keen on helping… I suspect I’ll be needing a orb of hex by morning. If I give you the address, could you pick that up for me? The store is my regular supplier, tell the owner to put it on my tab. Is that all right?”

I agreed. It didn’t seem like it would be that much of a problem.

-

At this point, I could go into certain details. I could explain how much difficulty I had in finding the shop in question, half hidden as it was atop a bookstore. I could tell you about all the very strange objects that I saw inside said shop, as if that school in ‘Harry Potter’ had decided to have a yard sale. I could even remark on the odd appearance of the white haired owner named Alicia, or go in detail about the little lecture she gave me about Melissa needing to pay her bills on time, before she handed over the orb of hex. Which, incidentally, she said has some connection to hexadecimal numbers.

But I believe I shall postpone on saying any more than I have already. After all, it’s not immediately relevant to this case, and I suspect I’ll end up back in that store at some point in the future.

Arriving back at our apartment after that trip, and not finding Melissa, I left her orb on the desk and took my laptop over to Adam’s place. He’s another first year student like me, who was in a couple of my classes. He didn’t have a problem with me leaving the computer there. In fact, we’d originally planned to get together to do a bit of homework, and we ended up going out for a bite to eat afterwards, so it wasn’t until well after 9 o’clock that I made it back home.

There was a gentle rain falling outside. The room itself was dark when I opened the door, so I reached out for the light switch.

“FREEZE!” came Melissa’s voice from the darkness.

I froze. It seemed the prudent course of action, given her tone. In other words, the one that makes you obey without thinking.

The front door swung shut behind me, and all was darkness.

“No lights,” came Melissa’s voice yet again. My eyes began to adjust, but I couldn’t see exactly where she was.

“What’s going on?” I asked, lowering my hand from the switch. I realized I was whispering.

“It’s outside,” Melissa muttered. Her voice seemed to be coming from behind her desk, so I headed in that direction.

“What is?” I murmured back. I managed to avoid bumping into anything as I rounded the desk, which was when a brief flash of lightning outside reminded me of the events of earlier today. Electronic entities. “You mean the thing tracking Annie?”

“Mmmm,” Melissa said as a form of agreement. I finally spotted her, sitting cross legged on the floor, staring down at a sheet of paper. “Didn’t you notice the streetlights had shorted out on our side of the street?” she added.

I blinked. “I thought that was just part of the rainstorm,” I said sheepishly.

Melissa looked up. “Much like the campus had a small earthquake earlier this month. No, this entity’s definitely after Annie - she’s in your room resting, by the way. The woman had every phone within a block radius suddenly ringing not two hours ago. Then a soda machine fired cans at her, a traffic light switched over while she was in the intersection, and finally there were electrical discharges from light fixtures pursuing her all the way here. Shorting out the streetlights.”

“Oh. Oh my,” I said, moving to glance nervously out the window. At present, it looked like all the houses on our street still had power, despite the problem with the streetlights. That probably should have tipped me off. I wondered where the thing was lurking. “How is Annie coping?”

“Resting, as I said,” Melissa replied distractedly, her tone suggesting to me that the mental state of our house guest had probably never entered her mind. She’d probably hustled Annie into my room and then started doing her pencil scribblings out here. Shaking my head, I switched gears.

“Okay, so, ringing phones - it can get into those now?”

“Apparently. It’s strength is growing exponentially.”

“Great. Is there any chance it has the power to destroy this building to get at Annie indirectly?”

“No. Not yet, anyway,” Melissa murmured. “See, I’ve isolated our apartment by unplugging every type of electrical device and setting up a ward. In return, our entity is being patient, reasoning that eventually Annie’ll have to leave here or plug in a hairdryer or something. I figure I have a couple of hours before it decides to escalate, and it will likely try to gain access through one of the neighbouring apartments first.”

“Perfect.” A thought struck me. “Did you unplug our fridge?”

“I unplugged everything.”

“I had ice cream in the freezer…”

Melissa rose. “Actually James, it’s a good thing you’re here. I’m stuck on something and could use a male opinion.”

I furrowed my brow. “Oh yes? About what, that family tree thing you’ve been looking at?” I gestured at the paper on the floor, my eyes having adjusted to the darkness by now.

“No, about an interview from this afternoon.” Melissa began pacing back and forth. “It was with an ex-boyfriend of Annie’s. Interestingly, she didn’t have him on her original list, I got the name from a mutual friend.”

“An ex… then you think he’s the one behind the attacks!”

Her head shook. “Not directly.”

I tried coming at the situation from the other side. “Then could Annie be evil, like Dan was, and setting this guy up? Hoping he’ll get in trouble for hurting her??”

There was a pause, as Melissa stopped pacing two steps away, then slowly turned around. Even in the dark, I could tell she was smiling at me.

“You know,” she said in amusement, “it might work better if I describe to you my conversation with this gentleman, before you theorize?”

I pulled at the collar of my shirt. “Uhm, yeah,” I agreed. “Go for it.”

-

His name was Frank Granges. He was in third year, like Annie, and Melissa had learned from this mutual friend of theirs (someone on Annie’s list) that they’d met back in first year. They’d dated for over twelve months, broken things off rather abruptly last May, and hadn’t spoken much in the four months since. Upon reflection, Melissa had elected to go see him in person, rather than simply call him on the phone.

“Yes?” Frank said warily, eyeing Melissa from behind his half closed door.

“Hello!” Melissa replied, smiling. “I’ve come to talk to you about Annie. Annie Potts,” she clarified, off his look of confusion.

“About…” His face clouded. “There’s not much I can tell you. We run into each other once a week because we attend the same class, outside of that we don’t speak these days. Why, what’s the problem?”

“Someone’s trying to kill her,” Melissa said bluntly.

She watched as expressions of shock, amusement and concern all fought for control of Frank’s features. Concern quickly won out. “All right, come in,” he decided, pulling the door open completely. Melissa walked in.

Frank’s off-campus place itself wasn’t very large - reminiscent of a suite in a hotel, minus the minibar, Melissa said in an attempt to describe it. She also said that the bedroom door was slightly ajar, and that in the bedroom she could see a computer had been set up. Frank himself was of average build and height, brown hair, glasses, wearing a T-shirt and dress pants.

“So,” Melissa began, glancing idly around the apartment. “You broke up with Annie last May?”

He hesitated. “Well, it might be more accurate to say she broke things off with me in April, then waited around until May to officially end the relationship,” Frank corrected. “But then, she’s a non-confrontational type. I don’t hate her, and I wouldn’t try to kill her. So cross me off your list of suspects.”

“If not you, any idea who would?” Melissa questioned.

Frank hesitated longer, moving to look out the window. “Not really,” he said at last. “She could be dating again for all I know… have you checked with any current boyfriends? They’d know more than me.” He turned back. “For that matter, who are you anyway? Are you with the police?”

“No.”

“I thought not. The blouse didn’t look regulation. Annie has a new circle of friends?”

“Hardly relevant. Tell me, how long has Annie been interested in the supernatural?”

Frank frowned. “She hasn’t been. I mean, aside from herbal remedies and the like, which I think is a family thing. Is Annie into the supernatural now?”

“What about computers, how long has Annie been into those?"

“She’s not into them, in fact she doesn’t like technology. She doesn’t avoid it though, everyone has to be at least a bit tech savvy these days. But she’s majoring in biology, like me… hey, surely if you know her, you know all this?” He glared. “Are you actually serious? About Annie’s life being in danger?”

“I wish people would stop asking me if I’m serious about things,” Melissa sighed, folding her arms across her chest. “Why would I bother making this sort of thing up?”

“I don’t know. But cruel pranks are popular on campus these days,” Frank pointed out. “Also, based on what you’ve asked so far, I’m half expecting you to tell me that the person trying to kill Annie is acting like an evil spell caster from a computer game.”

“Something like that, yes,” Melissa agreed. (Have I mentioned she doesn’t always recognize sarcasm?) “Do you do much computer programming yourself?”

Frank was, I believe, too dumbfounded to do anything but answer. “Er, it’s a hobby… has anyone ever told you that you need to work on your people skills?”

“Have you ever done computer programming for Annie?” Melissa pressed.

“No. You’re losing me here,” Frank added, exasperation creeping into his tone.

“Fine. The problem is that there’s a computer file out there that knows a lot of personal details about Annie,” Melissa stated. “The sort of file that someone in a relationship with her might know of. I’m tracking it’s origins.”

“You’re tracking a computer file on… oh. I see,” Frank replied, suddenly going quiet. He also, Melissa told me, looked uncomfortable.

“Would you happen to know of such a file then?” Melissa asked pointedly.

“Oh, well… I might’ve known of one?” Frank said uncertainly.

“Aha! So, you keep computer files on all your former girlfriends then,” Melissa decided. “Pictures too?”

“What?? Whoa, wait, back the pumpkin up!” Frank protested. “First of all, I am NOT some crazy stalker person who keeps computer files on girlfriends. Or any other kind of person! I mean, sure, I have this nasty habit of archiving all my email, but who doesn’t? Second of all, Annie was only my third girlfriend! And thirdly, well… thirdly, there wouldn’t be a file on Annie at all if I’d only had a clue as to why we broke up in the first place,” he grumbled.

There was a brief pause. Melissa folded her arms again. “Oh yes?” she said at last, deciding Frank needed a little more prodding.

A VIRGA MYSTERY Net Worth: Entry 2b

I know now that much of her doings while on a case seem fickle (even whimsical) at the moment, but that they usually have a longer game in mind. She is apt not to divulge her full set of thinkings to me (be they mystery or magical) and thus they can appear to be random decisions.

…Unless of course, they are random decisions.

I will leave it up to the judgment of the reader as to whether or not the following occurrence was the former or the later.

With Annie’s keys still in hand, Melissa and I marched quickly to our destination. Conversation faltered, not because of awkwardness, but from Melissa’s sudden disinterest in it. The petite brunette seemed suddenly deep in thought, possibly about the malfeasant machinations ahead of us. For an entire block or two of walking, it seemed to me that she had forgotten that I existed. We trekked on.

…And then on still.

It was only September then, and admittedly I was still getting my bearings straight on campus. I had been so busy with my own studies, not to mention dealing with the surprises that living with Melissa brought, that I had simply not had time to explore my surroundings to the extent that I would have liked. It was for this reason that I did not exactly know which part Annie could have possibly come from. This is why no red flags were initially raised.

We took a path I was unfamiliar with, and though my surroundings were new I thought nothing of it. Then we kept walking… and kept walking. Distracted by Melissa’s beauty I did not fully realize that we had left the campus until we were a good block away. We weren’t going to Annie’s room at all. Melissa had other things in mind.

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“151”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

“Where does Annie live?” I asked while the small framed brunette kept a faster pace than me.

“There is someplace we must stop first,” she said, “It’s important to the case, I’ll need your capable memory for this one James.”

I’ll admit that I did not mind the compliment.

So, we continued on, and as the old stonework of the university faded out into the more modern concrete walls of its neighbors the sun began to bleed out as it gave way to sunset.

Our silence was companionable, though I still had many questions for Melissa. How was magic produced through wire? Could evil travel by WIFI? I even dared to joke about a firmware update for evil intruders, but by the time I had gathered the courage to say something we were at our destination.

The coffee shop that we had come to was like a pimple on an otherwise pristine face. The shops surrounding it were chic, modern and new. Their full glass storefronts were lit by LED fixtures and were very inviting. The cafe, however, seemed somehow older than our very own university. Its brick structure was covered in soot as if the streets were still full of steam-powered locomotion. The windows were of a thick green glass seemed more fit for a pirate ship. If I did not see the large neon sign outside of it that read “cafe”, I would have mistaken it for a seedy Victorian era pub.

Melissa paused before the door and turned to me, her green eyes wide and serious. “James,” she said, “it is very important this man we are about to speak to does not know of our dealings with Annie.” She put Annie’s keys into her back pocket then. “Under no circumstances must he know that his case is related.” I nodded my understanding, and she breached the door.

The interior of the cafe was no less old than the outside. The newest electrical fixture, save for maybe the barista’s cash register, was an Edison bulb that may very well have been actually made by Edison. A handwritten sign posted to the back of the wall read:

sorry, no WIFI :(

In the very back of the cafe was a man at least a decade older than Melissa and I. My first impression of him was that there was nothing remarkable about him. My impression of him after the meeting was the same. He was average looking, wearing an unassuming collard shirt, and had nothing about himself that would cause him to stand out amongst a crowd. Before we could sit down at his table, a barista placed a large mug of coffee and a shaker filled with cinnamon opposite side of the man, near an empty spot on the table. Melissa sat there and thanked the barista. She must have known that we were coming. Was Melissa a regular here?

The man stood up as Melissa sat, preparing to introduce himself, then awkwardly sat back down. “Um, Hello,” said the man, “My name is Malcolm Steadman,” said Malcolm.

“What can I help you with Malcolm?” Melissa responded.

“Well,” continued Malcolm, “I have this toaster.”

Melissa began pouring cinnamon into her large mug of coffee, “Get this down James,” she said as the red powder fell from its shaker.

“I have this toaster,” Malcolm repeated, “I quite like it, it was a gift that was given to me when I was uh, your age and I have been using it diligently for the past decade…”

Melissa nodded, her green eyes fixed on his. The cinnamon kept pouring.

“…Well ah, this Toaster of mine, I used it the other day when something peculiar happened.”

I wanted to quip about the toaster becoming alive when I suddenly remembered my previous attempts at joking with Annie about her own problems failing. I kept quiet. Melissa seemed undaunted by the sheer amount of cinnamon still being poured into her mug.

Malcolm cleared his throat, then continued on. “…Something peculiar happened. I popped in some toast while getting ready for work when it stopped working.”

“No!” Melissa said with genuine concern. “James! Get this down!” There was now an obscene amount of cinnamon in her coffee.

“Yes!” Malcolm cried, “The toaster stopped working! It was no big deal, at that moment but it got me thinking… It got me thinking about entropy."

Melissa shifted her weight at that last word. Confused as I was, I could at least infer that the last bit was important. There seemed to be no end to the amount of cinnamon Melissa was using.

“So it got me thinking about entropy,” Malcolm stated, “and how everything in this universe, everything has its end. EVEN THE UNIVERSE! Can you imagine that? Can you fully comprehend the weight of everything ending? The slow march of time eating away everything beautiful and pleasant, eating away at all of mankind’s accomplishments and trials, leaving nothing in its wake? Can you fully picture that not even our great pyramids will survive the heat death of the universe? Far far before even our own world burns out there will be not a speck left to commemorate the human race. This will all be for naught. At that moment, in that single moment when my toaster did not pop I saw the whole of creation slowly eaten away by entropy, a monster made of indifference. Not even cruelty or evil or malice. Indifference.”

Malcolm seemed drained then. His hands were sweaty, his eyes pin holed. He looked like a man that had just survive the entirety of the Vietnam war in seconds.

…It was ridiculous.

Melissa stirred her coffee then, a mixture I am sure was more mud than liquid. “How terrible!” she said.

“Yes,” Malcolm agreed, “It ruined my day. I was caught in a nihilistic fervor with a side of existential terror and all I could think about for the rest of that day was how everyone and everything around me was not just temporary, but infinitesimally unimportant and fleeting.”

Melissa placed her head between both of her hands as she leaned in closer. “Then what happened?” she asked.

“Oh, well then I got home and discovered that my toaster was unplugged,” said Malcolm. “It wasn’t even broken, just unplugged. I had made a big deal out of nothing.”

“I see…” said Melissa. “Was this the only time toast gave you any problems?”

I will admit that by that point I was incredulous to Melissa’s question. There was no way that this was important. But judging by Melissa’s body language and the genuine terror that leapt from Malcolm’s eyes, I kept my protestations to myself.

Malcolm’s voice became small, “No,” he said in a near whisper before finding his courage. “I didn’t even tell you about the time I burnt some.”

Melissa turned to me then, “Are you getting this down James?” and set her attention back to Malcolm before I could answer. She drank her “coffee”.

“How is this important?!” I blurted, now at the end of my patience.

“How is this important?” Melissa parroted, “We are talking about entropy James! The very killer of all things! The great equalizer that not even reality can escape! WHAT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ENTROPY?!!” Her’s was a naked rage. I mumbled an apology.

Just as quickly as her mood turned to fusion, it changed back to pleasant. “Please, go on Malcolm,” she said.

Malcolm nodded. “I burnt my toast once. It was covered in black soot… No, it was covered in carbon. Carbon! Do you know how many billion years it took our raging dead stars to chug out carbon? Do you know how many countless stars it took to live and die in an uncaring universe for carbon to be spat out from their corpses?”

“Did you panic?” Melissa asked.

“Boy howdy did I!” Malcolm responded. “But it wasn’t the length of time that got me terrified, it was what we do with that potential that stunned me into silence. Do you know that broadcasts of Reality TV will outlast even our solar system? I was like… whoah.”

“Then what happened?”

“I ate my toast.”

Melissa stood then. “I’m sorry Mr. Steadman, but I’m afraid that I can be of no service to you.” She said with a hint of sorrow. “These eldritch horrors you speak of are far grander than even I can handle. I deal with the balance of the universe, but even I cannot fight off the unraveling of it. The universe uncoils even as I speak, and no amount of effort will stop it. The sad truth is that the good fight that I wage is not only an uphill one but a Sysephean task that can never be finished. Entropy will win out.”

She turned her back then and marched toward the door. I was easily ten steps behind her. Before she opened the door she looked at Malcolm and said: “You still owe me for the consultation.” And just like that, we were gone.

She was too far ahead of me now that we were outside. I ran back to her side. Before I could ask about our meeting Melissa stopped in her tracks.

“We have to find a hospital,” she said. “I’m allergic to cinnamon.”

.

^.^ APRIL FOOL ^.^

To see more of the character Malcolm’s existential issues, you should definitely check out that site. (And funny enough, Rev Fitz also wrote the Time & Tied Apr 1 update last year, for more of his writing.) To see the entry that Gregory Taylor wrote, visit the serial Shatterbrain, where in 2043, Sophie is learning things about her uncle the hard way. What new take will you find there?

For a full list of all the Swappers and their stories, check out the Web Fiction Guide Forums and/or the Serial Novel Advocacy Group at The Leaking Pen. Thanks for reading, and remember, the best way to support your favourite serial novelist is to tell all your friends about them!

A VIRGA MYSTERY Net Worth: Entry 2a

If I don’t pay her on time, she could turn me into a chicken. I don’t think that’s a joke.

Fortunately, for the sake of my humanity, the two of us hit it off not too badly. In other words, I began finding ways of dealing with Melissa’s odd quirks, while she, well… she continued not paying much attention to me. I wondered how long she’d been living alone.

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

That’s the thing about Melissa, she prefers to spend her time inside her own private little world - a world which, by the way, allows her to violate some of the laws of physics. Perhaps that’s why she also piques the curiosity. Which leads into why, following the case involving Dan and Danielle, I began wondering just what other cases Melissa might end up working on.

Or what cases she’d taken on in the past.

It turned out that finding an answer by glancing over her papers and files was futile, mainly because any filing system itself seemed to be non-existent. When I scanned the stacks of paper on her desk one morning, a couple pages seemed to involve mathematical calculations, there were a few scrawlings in latin, some news clippings, notes containing mystical symbols, things written in unreadable shorthand, and what I gathered was a philosophy essay for one of her university classes.

There was also what I took at first to be a recipe for biscuits, until I read down to step five which stated “use mixture to lure poltergeist inside bottle”. I decided not to poke around inside her desk drawers, just in case.

Unfortunately, learning about Melissa’s cases by asking her about them directly didn’t seem prudent either. Mainly because I didn’t want Melissa to interpret that request as wanting more involvement. After all, there were still my first year university classes to worry about, and while I feel Melissa’s deeds should be credited, I was hardly going to commit myself towards her “balancing of supernatural forces on earth” crusade. Not at this point, anyway. In fact, twice in the evenings I saw our doorknob was fuchsia, and on those occasions, I didn’t enter the apartment.

Still… I was curious. To the point where there were days I started wondering if more involvement with someone as pretty as Melissa would really be such a bad thing, supernatural or otherwise. Please don’t judge me too harshly.

As such, when a female student came by the apartment late one afternoon (around the third week of September), looking for Melissa, I invited her in to wait. I even offered to make our visitor some tea, something which she took me up on. I wasn’t trying to flirt or anything (she looked like a senior), it’s more that, on some level, I sensed that she wanted to talk to someone. With the fringe benefit to me being my learning more about Melissa’s cases.

As we drank, I asked a few questions and learned the following: Her name was Annie Potts, she was in third year, she had consulted with Melissa already last week, and someone was trying to kill her.

This last point caught me off guard. I mean, as far as first impressions go, Annie didn’t seem like the sort of woman against whom you’d ever bear that much of a grudge.

A brief description is probably in order at this point, so I’ll say that Annie was tall (about six feet while in the heeled ankle boots she wore), had dark hair down to her shoulders, and that while she was not overly athletic looking, she certainly seemed well built. Her choice of attire was jeans and a T-shirt, her only notable accessory a red barrette holding back her bangs.

I also got the impression from looking into her eyes that it would be very unwise to ever get on her bad side, though as far as our conversation went she was pretty soft spoken.

“The thing is,” Annie explained to me, “there’s been a massive increase in the severity of the attacks. It’s gone beyond interfering in my schoolwork to downright creeping me out.”

“So why come to Melissa rather than go to the police?” I wondered.

Annie hesitated, uncrossed her legs, then recrossed them again the other way. “Well,” she admitted after a moment, “it’s that these attempts on my life, they’ve all been done… electronically.”

I frowned, putting my teacup back on the kitchen table. “You mean someone’s writing threatening email? Or is it that someone’s trying to electrocute you?”

“Neither,” Annie said, uneasily. “Or not exactly. For instance, when I turned on my home computer this morning, an incorporeal hand came out of the monitor and tried to pull me inside. Which sounds stupid, I know!” she went on quickly. “But it really happened. If I hadn’t managed to kick the power bar off with my foot, I’m not sure I’d even be here talking with you right now. And that’s not something I can tell the police.”

“Oh,” I answered, taking a moment to turn that around in my mind. Evil computers - not exactly the same thing as the Danielle case, so was it more typical of the things Melissa dealt with, or less so? “Well, I… I hope my roommate can help you,” I finished lamely. Where does one go after a story like that anyway?

An uncomfortable silence followed, during which time the two of us drank our tea.

“Look,” Annie said, rising at last. “If you can simply pass that message on to Melissa, I’ll come back later and–”

“Did someone mention my name?” Melissa said absently as she strolled into the apartment.

We both emerged from the kitchen. Melissa was holding a broom in one hand and scanning through the pages of a book in another. The book itself seemed normal, like something you’d read for an English class; the broom was the one Melissa normally kept in the closet. In fact, she put it back there and traveled around to the far side of her desk before looking up from her book quizzically.

“Er, we spoke last week,” Annie ventured. “Remember?” She appeared uncomfortable, either about her situation or Melissa’s demeanor, it was hard to tell.

Melissa, barely topping five feet, squinted up at Annie. “Yes. You were getting electrical shocks from all the computers on campus or something,” she replied. “Jolted you into a wall at one point. Hardly your typical static electric shock, hence talking to me.”

Annie let out a quick breath. “Yes,” she repeated back. “Well, you gave me that charm and said to come back if things got worse? It has. Gotten worse, I mean.” She outlined the experience with the hand she’d had earlier today, and added to it the fact that last night, her cat had been hissing at the computer. Which, Annie then recalled, had looked a little burnt around the ports at the back.

Melissa was quickly giving Annie her undivided attention. “Have you been near your computer since the incident?” the supernatural detective questioned, leaning forwards on the desk.

Annie shook her head. “I had to get to class this morning. After that I came right here.”

My roommate nodded. “Excellent. I recommend you don’t go back home then. Give me the key to your apartment. I’ll go, and I can pick you up a few things. Stay here tonight. I’ve got a spare room.” She started to gesture towards my bedroom, paused as she saw me, then snapped her fingers. “Well, I sort of have a spare room. It’s fine, with any luck I’ll get the case wrapped up within twenty-four hours. Annie can return back to her place then."

Annie looked back and forth between us, taking half a step back. “Oh, er… I don’t want to be a bother. Do you think it’s really that serious? Wait, what about Tabby, my cat, he’s at home, do you think he’s in any danger?”

Melissa shook her head. “Doubt it. You’re obviously the target here, Annie. The problem is that your residence has been traced. Hard to say where the entity will go from there… incidentally, I’ll need a list of anyone in the area who knows you particularly well, for questioning purposes.”

“A-All right,” Annie stammered out. “Should I still keep your charm with me? Will it help?” She fished an oddly shaped piece of metal out of her jeans pocket.

Melissa peered at the item in Annie’s hands, raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt,” she said, now rummaging around in her desk drawer. “Besides, no refunds.”

After a short time looking through two drawers, Melissa glanced back in my direction and mimed writing. Divining her intent, I went to grab a pencil.

“One more thing,” Melissa requested, looking back up at Annie. “Your cat, how long have you had it?”

“Him,” Annie corrected. “And I’ve had Tabby for three years now. My parents got him for me as a going away gift.”

“And have you ever had a cat before then?”

“Well, sure,” Annie said, seemingly unsure where Melissa was going with this. “Our family’s always had a cat or two. It’s why I could never have a place in residence, no pets allowed.”

“Mmmmm,” was Melissa’s only reply. She plucked the pencil from my hand as I approached, grabbed a page with what looked like a grocery list on it and, flipping it over, handed it to Annie. “Names,” she reiterated. “Include the name of any university professor you’ve had more than once, and phone numbers where I can reach everybody, if you have them. Oh, and jot down anything you want me to pick up for you tonight too.”

Annie dutifully began writing on the sheet. “I’m not sure this will really help,” she pointed out. “None of my friends go for this supernatural stuff… I mean, I probably wouldn’t have even come here myself if I weren’t desperate. How could any of them be behind the attacks?”

“Perhaps they were replaced by very lifelike robot duplicates who can now get technology to do their bidding, and they’re testing their skills out on you,” Melissa remarked.

Annie paused in her scribbling, looking up uncertainly.

Melissa rolled her eyes. “Kidding, duh. I do magic, not science fiction.”

“Uh. Right.” Annie resumed writing. “Is bringing my computer here an option? I’m supposed to type up an assignment for next week, and I’ll need a computer for that.”

“I doubt that’ll work,” Melissa said curtly.

“I’m sure your handwriting isn’t that that illegible," I quipped.

I failed to lighten the mood. Melissa ignored me, while Annie turned and gave me a little glare. Realizing I’d crossed the line with a comment on her penmanship (her list was a bit difficult to decipher, as it turned out), I decided to keep quiet as Annie exchanged final words with Melissa.

Melissa obtained Annie’s apartment key (like us, she lived off campus) and then bid our guest farewell. After watching Annie go, Melissa finally turned back towards me.

“James, you have a computer yourself, don’t you?”

I blinked and nodded. “A laptop, yes, not a tower. I use it for assignments mostly, though I also used it to type up your last case, the one with–”

“Shut it down. Don’t use it over the next couple days. Throw it out even, too risky to have it around here for very long.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. “Er, why?” I finally ventured as Melissa began stuffing some objects from her desk into her purse. “It did cost me a lot of money, you know.”

The petite brunette let out a quick sigh. “Because. Electronics, the internet, wires feeding into every home… the world wide web is a world wide nuisance if you ask me. Makes restoring supernatural balance just that much harder. Though, not your fault, of course, so maybe you could simply leave your laptop device with a friend overnight?”

She finished putting things away and reached out for Annie’s key, accidentally knocking it off the front of the desk. In moving around to pick it up, she managed a hip wiggle in the process. I wondered if she was trying to distract me, despite how the move seemed unintentional. She seemed to be wearing her tightest pair of jeans.

“I… I’ll see,” I said, lamely. “I guess witches aren’t keen on computers?” It might explain Melissa’s lack of a filing system.

Melissa spun back around, flicking some hair off her shoulder. “The new fangled techno-witches swear by them, but let’s not get into THAT discussion. Hey, how much do you know about computers anyway?"

I pulled my gaze back to her face. “Oh, um, enough to get by?”

“Then you’re welcome to come along too,” Melissa concluded with a smile. Annie’s key in hand, she marched to our apartment door before turning to meet my gaze again. “After all, I’ve never been too good with the damn things. Plus you should probably know why you’re giving up your bed tonight to a complete stranger. Let’s go.”

“Okay, but I’m hardly majoring in– wait, MY bed? Melissa, what do you… Melissa!"

She was already out of the apartment and I had to run in order to catch up.

-

The internet, Melissa explained to me as we walked to Annie Potts' place, is a fertile breeding ground for evil. “Not just because entities can use it to manipulate the downtrodden, the desperate and the general lowlifes of society either,” the brunette insisted. “The real problem happens when evils that normally only lurk on the fringes of our realm catch sight of it. This whole web thing, it lights the way for them, provides them with a gateway to Earth.”

“A… gateway? You mean, what, evil is constantly entering our world through the internet?”

“Well, sure,” Melissa said airily, gesturing vaguely at me. “Understand that spectres and entities have been trying to hook themselves into our plane of existence for decades. Now the internet makes it a hundred times easier for them to do that. You think all bots or whatever have a human at the other end? Fortunately for us, the evil has to morph itself into a data stream if it wants to directly affect the real world, and most of the time it can’t survive in that form for more than a millisecond. Its bits get all corrupted, which kills it.” She paused in mid-step. “Kind of an irony there, actually.”

I considered asking how techno-witches fit into this, but given Melissa’s earlier attitude, went for what I presumed was the safer question of, “So is this part of the supernatural imbalance that you’re trying to fix?”

Melissa shrugged and continued walking. “Humans create faster ways of communicating, they allow for faster ways of spreading evil. The supernatural balance hasn’t been broken here, it’s just the ten gram weights have been replaced with hundred kilogram ones. Who am I to stand in the way of such stupidi– I mean, progress?”

I frowned. “Okay, but then… if the electronics aren’t what’s causing your problem…”

“They nevertheless make it harder to pinpoint exactly where the unbalancing is occurring,” Melissa stated matter-of-factly. “Instead of searching for a needle in a haystack, you end up searching all of Saskatchewan. Honestly James, do try to keep up.”

“No, yes, I get that,” I breathed, managing to keep pace with her mentally, if not quite as well physically. For a short woman, Melissa can walk fast when she wants to. “It’s just… if the web itself isn’t the problem… where did this thing attacking Annie come from?”

Melissa pursed her lips. “THAT is a good question,” she admitted, stopping abruptly once again. I nearly smacked into her, and took a half step back, only to have to almost jog when I realized she’d immediately started walking again.

“Thing is, any random evil that the net generates for balancing purposes should have been deflected away by that little grounding charm I gave Annie,” Melissa continued. “Yet this entity seems to have become specifically attached to her. It had to have help in order to do that. Presumably by someone who knows, or knew her."

“Ah! Hence the list of names,” I deduced.

“Right,” Melissa affirmed. “The person wouldn’t even have to know anything about computers, just how to do a basic summoning. Or then again, they may know enough about computers to actually turn themselves into a malevolent digital entity. Or somewhere in between. Either way, I want to deal with this fast, before the thing hooks itself into other appliances and causes innocent people to get hurt in the crossfire.”

“Oh. Uh, you figure that’s possible?” I worried. I fired off a wan smile at a couple of people waiting at a bus stop as we passed. One of them had been raising their eyebrows. Melissa, of course, seemed all but oblivious to anyone else in the area.

“There’s always a chance,” she answered simply.

I guessed that’s why she was worried about my laptop. I considered the greater implications in my head for the rest of our walk, noting with some unease the number of devices in the area that involved electricity in some way. If someone got control of a traffic light, for example, it could cause real trouble!

I hoped the solution to all this would be found at Annie’s place.

To Virga - Entry 2b -->

A VIRGA MYSTERY The Invisible Girl: Entry 1d

“So, you figured that much out, did you?” he retorted. “Damn. You’re better at your work than others give you credit for. It was your last question of me on Friday that gave it away, I suppose?”

“It confirmed my suspicions,” Melissa acknowledged. “But even so, there were lots of little things I’d wondered about before. For instance, why such a vague description of Danielle to me that first time? You didn’t even mention her glasses, yet you could provide information about her nail polish when asked. And why would Danielle have a name so close to your own in the first place? It made me question what might be closer to the truth… a reasonably good looking boy creating a shy young girl to have someone to play with… or a shy young GIRL creating a tall, handsome man to help her feel safe.”

I looked from Melissa to Dan to Danielle. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I heard myself say. “You mean Dan is imaginary?”

“Right,” Dan grunted, seemingly more to Melissa than me. “So when you asked about my first bully, and I couldn’t answer…"

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

“Yes, well, even setting aside your lacklustre attitude through this case, and the way you seemed to base that answer on what would win me my bet… anyone with a memory for nail polish and blue blankets should have had a better recollection of their first tormentors. Unless, of course, the tormentee hadn’t existed yet, at that point in time. Those blue blankets, they really were Danielle’s, I presume.”

“I… I don’t understand,” Danielle murmured. “What’s she talking about, Dan?”

Dan rolled his eyes. “She means you’re real, dope. I centred in on you a long time ago, not that I’ve ever let you remember.” He smiled nastily. “You were the invisible girl, Danielle. The girl no one ever noticed. After appearing in the guise of your imaginary friend a few times, it was easy enough to switch places with you. My only concern was your parents, but it wasn’t hard to convert their minds. They’d always expected a son, blue blankets and all.”

“Hold on,” I cut in. “Does that mean that if Danielle becomes real again, Dan returns to… where, exactly?"

“The other side,” Melissa remarked. “Supernatural balance. Of course, this exchange shouldn’t have been possible in the first place, not without Danielle’s permission.”

Dan grimaced. “I should have simply eliminated the girl when I had the chance,” he grumbled. “If only her etherial form and childish nature hadn’t been so useful to me… and now I’ve been a human for so long, I can’t do the required magick to take care of things myself. So I gambled on being able to manipulate your agency. Still, I’ll be damned before I let anyone take me down after all this time!”

He lunged for Melissa then, but I think she’d been anticipating that, as she easily dodged to the side. Her size helped to make her a small target. I barely got out of the way myself, before Dan was at the door. I figured on him charging through, maybe locking us in, but instead he grabbed the block of wood Melissa had used to keep the door open. He heaved it back towards one of the upright mirrors.

Of course. If any of the mirrors were shattered, this realism ritual was toast.

“Declino!” Melissa cried out, extending her palm.

There was a small flash of light and the wood spun off course, smashing the overhead lightbulb instead. (Declino meaning essentially ‘deflect’, by the way. Like Melissa’s last name, “Virga”, she draws spells from the latin.) The door, no longer being propped open, now clanged shut.

Then Melissa’s flashlight clicked off, and the room went dark. If there was another light source, I hadn’t seen it. So, Dan was still in there with us. Ready to attack. Except, for right now no one was moving - it was taking all of our eyes a moment to adjust.

“He’s sizing me up,” I heard Melissa whisper during that moment. I jumped. It sounded as if she was leaning in right next to my ear, but when I put my arm out, it encountered nothing but air.

“James, I’m talking to you using a form of ventriloquism, so there’s no point whispering back,” she continued, as if reading my mind. “But listen very carefully to what I say next.”

Melissa began to speak a lot faster, yet still in hushed tones. “I can’t attack Dan directly while he’s in a human form, because I’d be forcing magick on him and would thus suffer consequences myself,” she explained. “There are related issues with casting on myself. So, Plan A, I’d like your permission to give you a quick burst of strength for about 10 seconds. That should allow you to take Dan out. Call out if you accept this!”

I was still trying to process that, when I heard Dan make his move just off to my right. Meaning no time to ask about Plan B. Fine, what the hell, you only live once, right? Besides, it may be that a part of me figured I had to do something to make it feel like the night hadn’t been a total wash.

“I accept,” I called out, jumping to intercept Dan.

“Convalesco!” Melissa shouted just before Dan plowed into me. (Another crude translation for you is ‘to gain strength’… personally, I’m now thinking I should pick up latin as an elective course.)

Anyway, Dan struck me, and more or less rebounded. Stumbling a bit myself, I heard an exclamation of surprise. To Dan’s credit, he not only stayed on his feet, when I next jabbed at him in the face, he must have seen my hand coming up because he was able to dodge back.

The next thing I knew, Dan’s fist connected with my gut, and I doubled over, falling to the ground, the wind knocked out of me. Great, whatever strength I’d received didn’t last long, I thought. But even on the floor I didn’t immediately give up, moving to sweep my leg out, in an attempt to take Dan down.

I put all the force I had into that move, knowing it would probably be my only chance, and to my surprise, when I connected with Dan’s lower legs it was like he’d been whacked with an iron bar. Whereas I hardly felt anything at all. He collapsed to the ground with a shout of surprise and I heard a thwacking noise as his head hit the floor, as he had not had enough time to break his fall.

“I’m still strong,” I blurted out in surprise. And then just like that, I knew I wasn’t, as the dull ache in my gut became an explosion of pain. I’m pretty sure I groaned.

Melissa’s flashlight clicked back on, illuminating both me and Dan’s unconscious form. “Knee jerk reaction of your body to fold when hit,” she observed matter-of-factly. “Just because you have increased strength, doesn’t mean you can disregard your natural instincts. Or your need to breathe. Still, you got the job done, that’s good. Now, can you help me with this mirror?”

“Geez, you’re welcome,” I wheezed back sarcastically, clutching at my sides.

She blinked at me with her gorgeous, yet at that point quite uncompassionate, green eyes. “You’ll be in a lot more pain in 56 seconds if we don’t get this mirror repositioned,” Melissa said after a few more moments of staring.

I blinked at her, then to where she was gesturing, namely where the timer was still counting down on the natural gas pipes. “Oh heck,” I groaned, stumbling to my feet.

“Danielle, where exactly does this need to be?” the brunette detective asked, turning the one mirror away from the wall. The short blonde didn’t respond, and I saw now that she had simply sat herself down on the floor mirror and was staring vacantly into space.

“This was meant to be a surprise… for our mutual birthdays…” Danielle murmured abstractedly. “And now… well, no wonder we have the same birthday…”

“Danielle?” I called out to her, even as I moved to help Melissa.

“Never mind, lost cause,” Melissa sighed. “She’ll get a good chunk of her memory back though, after the transition. Anyway, pretty sure I can figure out where this needs to be…”

“Pretty sure? Melissa, isn’t the fate of the physics building, not to mention our very lives, hanging on the line here?!”

“Panic isn’t helpful, James. Now, help me shift the glass a bit this way, and angle it thusly,” she replied calmly (obliviously??), after training her flashlight beam around the room. She then moved next to the timing device (27… 26… 25…) shining the light onto the mirror in question.

The angle was such that the beam reflected down onto the mirror beneath Danielle, back up to the second upright mirror, and then, seemingly impossibly, back to where the light was striking the first mirror. Like a bizarre never-ending triangle had been created - the glass on one mirror must have been warped in some way.

“Good enough,” Melissa decided. She scooped her purse back up and pulled out a necklace of some sort, which then she pulled over Dan’s head.

“Banishing amulet?” I wondered.

“Exiling spell,” Melissa said. “Cheaper, even if at sixty-three dollars, it still puts me in the red. But what can you do? Now let’s get out.”

The last she said in her firm, no-nonsense tone, so I was backtracking even before I noticed the timing device ticking down past 7 seconds. Melissa was hot on my heels, all the while chanting something in Latin which was pretty incomprehensible - I won’t bother to reproduce it.

I got to the door, we both charged through, and Melissa concluded her spell by spinning back towards the doorway, throwing out her arms in some mystic gesture. At that point I heard clearly, “Die dulci fruere!” (You can look that one up yourself.)

The papers Melissa had placed around the frame lit up with a bright glow just as the explosion went off. The door, which had been swinging closed again, was jarred off it’s hinges by the force of the blast, tongues of flame licking out from around the metal.

A few of Melissa’s paper wards caught fire. In fact, I could feel the whole building shake, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I probably screamed.

Then just like that, it was over.

Scorch marks were visible all around the remains of the doorway, and in fact when the little pieces of paper ceased their glowing, the smoking door itself collapsed right down onto the floor in front of me. As Melissa would have, had I not reacted quickly to catch her.

“Melissa! Are you all right?” I cried out.

She resembled a long distance runner who had just completed the marathon in record time. Her eyes were closed, she was breathing hard and there was a sheen of sweat causing some errant strands of hair to stick to her face in a bizarrely erotic manner. (Again, the sort of thing that would have worked better under different circumstances… I suppose you’ve gathered by now that I seem to have developed a bit of a crush on her.)

Melissa’s eyelids flickered open. “Geez, what in the devil did she use for the explosive?” the mystic detective muttered. “Containment spells shouldn’t be so hard to control.” With my help, she got back on her feet.

I was soon distracted by a quiet coughing, as Danielle stumbled out of the destroyed room. Her dress was in tatters, her glasses askew, and a bit of flying glass had apparently caught her in the arm - oh yes, the mirrors turned out to be quite destroyed - but otherwise she seemed none the worse for wear.

Danielle collapsed back against the wall. “I… I feel… I feel real again,” she murmured in a daze.

“You ARE real,” Melissa assured Danielle, wiping her arm across her own forehead. “Always were. What Dan took from you has been returned. In fact, no one outside of this limited area will even be aware of the switch back. You can live your life as if none of this had ever happened. Though there may be some questions as to how a female managed to get placed into the all male wing of a dorm.”

“Oh,” Danielle murmured quietly. Her brow furrowed. “Is that why I remember what he did now? That is, it feels like… like I did what he did. That is, everything he’s done since we were in grade school, I’ve done… that is…” She raised a hand to the side of her head. “I-I’ll need some time to figure this out…”

I peered back towards the scorched room, but didn’t see anyone else visible amid the carnage. “And Dan?” I mused aloud.

“He’s become spiritual again,” Melissa said absently as she set about retrieving the few mystic papers that remained undamaged. I wasn’t sure if it was so they could be reused, or simply to not have evidence of the supernatural lying around. “I’d have liked to banish him permanently, but the exiling spell - activated by his transition to a non-corporeal form - will at least keep him out of our realm for years,” Melissa explained. “If not decades. After all, nullifying it requires intelligence, and he didn’t seem to have too much of that.”

Danielle gave me an uncertain look, the confusion of her situation obviously becoming too much for her. I decided an explanation wouldn’t be of any help. “Let’s get your arm looked at, then you can go lie down,” I suggested to the blonde, venturing a reassuring smile.

“The sooner the better,” Melissa agreed, turning back to both of us. “After all, this building could still blow sky high. James, could you phone someone and tell them that there’s a natural gas leak here in the basement?”

“A… what?” I retorted. “But… your papers, the spell…”

“A containment spell won’t shut off a gas line, it just temporarily seals a room,” Melissa shot back, rolling her eyes. “The pipes themselves are now dangerously compromised. So, are you going to call it in, or will I?”

I think at this point I was opening and closing my mouth randomly, prompting Melissa’s sigh of, “Fine, I will. I suppose I would have anyway, if you hadn’t come along. Now, both of you, hurry up and get out of here!”

She physically pushed me and Danielle out towards the stairs. At that point our instincts took over, and we rushed outside. Once there, I turned around to say something else to my roommate, but she had already hurried off to parts unknown. Presumably to make the phone call.

-

There isn’t much more to tell, really.

I got Danielle to the campus centre for her arm, and when she arrived back at ‘her’ dorm, she found a room transfer notification on her door. I asked Melissa about this, and whether we should be doing something more for Danielle, but Melissa considered this case closed. Reality was just reasserting itself based on the supernatural events that had occurred, she explained idly. As to the explosion, the campus newspaper headlines read ‘small earthquake causes natural gas leak’, and it barely made local news.

That’s actually part of the reason I asked Melissa for permission to write this all down. It feels like there should be a record of what really happened somewhere.

Now, I’m not certain if I’ve done this case justice - in fact, I’m fairly sure I haven’t - but perhaps I’ll improve on that in time. If you’re willing to keep reading. I am only a first year student, after all. And, unless I want to become a chicken instead, I’m stuck rooming with Melissa too. At least her cases seem liable to be just as interesting as they are strange!

END CASE 1

A VIRGA MYSTERY The Invisible Girl: Entry 1c

It took me a moment to find my voice. “All right, wait, hold on, did I hear you right? Are you saying there’s some sort of bomb in the physics building that’s going to go off this weekend??”

Melissa nodded. “Probably in the evening on Saturday. Or rather, this evening, seeing as I guess it’s already early Saturday morning.”

“And you’re OKAY with that?” I demanded. I was incredulous.

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

“Of course not,” she sighed back. “Given your good memory, I’ll have to assume you weren’t listening. I DID say that altering the new residence plans and moving physics into engineering wasn’t an ideal situation.”

“But… but you told Dan we had too many buildings. And you didn’t want Danielle to tell you where this device was. Or even what she’d set the timer for!”

“Of course not. Not with Dan standing right there with us,” Melissa replied, saying it as if her reasoning was the most obvious thing in the universe.

She raised her arms over her head and stretched, an action which might have otherwise caused my gaze to wander, but I was so mixed up after what she’d been telling me that, at the time, I hardly noticed.

“I might as well go to bed,” my roommate concluded, lowering her arms again and rising from her chair. “Again, let me know if you hear anything about amulets, would you? Once your hearing improves? Though the point will be moot by about six o’clock this evening.”

“No. Melissa, you just stop right there,” I objected. “You can’t leave me hanging this way… what are you going to do about this situation? How will the amulet help? For that matter, what was the point to your question about Dan’s first tormentor?”

Melissa lifted an eyebrow. Then she smiled. “I like you, James. You’re not dismissive, you assume there’s method to my madness. And to be sure, there is.” She then waggled her finger at me. “But how do you ever expect to develop your problem solving skills if I simply give you all the answers? Anyway, I’m not a hundred percent sure about how it’s all going to wrap up, and I’d hate to look like a fool on the first case you’re witnessing. So sleep on it. Tell me what you think in the morning.”

With that, she retired to her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Feeling thoroughly exasperated, but not sure what else to do at this point, I turned off the office light and stumbled back into my own room. I glanced at my clock by the nightstand in passing. It was after three.

“Why did I let my curiosity get the better of me?” I recall groaning to myself. Surely any sane person wouldn’t have taken Melissa’s bait, no matter how pretty her smile was.

It must have taken me at least a half hour to fall asleep again.

-

Melissa was already gone by the time I woke up Saturday morning. (I slept in, no surprise there.) So I made myself some breakfast and tried to get some work done on one of my first university assignments.

However, my mind kept coming back to Dan, Danielle, and most of all, Melissa. What was the story with this case of hers? Ridiculous or not, it nagged at me. So, with the help of my memory, I sketched out some of the main points of the conversation from the previous night. Trying to understand where Melissa’s logic had been coming from.

I couldn’t make any sense of it. (Well, at least those notes proved useful for writing up this case.)

Exasperated, I tried approaching the conversation from Dan’s point of view, instead of Melissa’s. There, at last, I clicked into something. He really did know an awful lot about Danielle. He knew which of his friends she’d spoken to, had known of her goal to become real, knew how she’d planned on doing it, he even knew about the colour of her nail polish… yet he hadn’t seemed to know a thing about the actual setting of the explosives and the use of a timer device.

Why had that caught him off guard?

Danielle had often looked towards Dan before answering too, something Melissa had picked up on. Near the end, the supernatural detective had even asked Danielle not to think about his reaction. Could it be that Dan was still controlling her somehow? My pencil began tapping on the page.

See if you can follow my reasoning. Suppose that you have an imaginary friend who suddenly becomes real. Suppose further that he or she isn’t a mischievous spirit, but someone more like Danielle, who constantly looks to you for guidance. Would you or would you not take advantage of that fact? Ordering her to do things for your own amusement?

“Yet Danielle no longer needs his guidance,” I murmured aloud. “She set up these explosives by herself, in pursuit of a plan to become corporeal. So, if I were Dan, I might find that irritating.”

Also, he sure didn’t mention that goal of becoming real to Melissa up front. For that matter, we only had his word that Danielle’s reappearance was recent. And would a guy like that actually consult with any scientists, like he said? Again, we only had his word.

Just like that, I was seeing Dan in a whole new light.

What if Danielle wasn’t the dangerous one here? What if it was HIM? Granted, my reasoning didn’t explain everything, like why this guy was seeking to banish his imaginary companion rather than regain his control over her, or why he had chosen to come to Melissa for help in the first place.

Perhaps he’d suddenly had an attack of conscience? And was holding back information out of guilt? In which case, was Melissa trying to make him sweat a bit, to ensure that this lesson would stick? After all, she’d deduced the existence of the explosives. She might also know where they were already, and how to deal with them.

Resolving to ask my roommate about it, I finally found myself able to concentrate on my homework.

-

“Very nice,” Melissa said, after I outlined my thinking.

She was sitting behind her desk, leaning her chin on her palms and smiling broadly at me as we discussed the situation later that afternoon. And I know I should stop injecting this colour commentary, but she really does have a pretty smile.

“I like your reasoning, James, you’ve really thought about this. And doesn’t it feel a lot better, having worked through this problem by yourself?”

“Then I’m right?” I asked eagerly.

“Eh. You’re getting there,” Melissa countered. “I’ll admit up front that I don’t know exactly where the explosives are, nor exactly when they’ll go off. And there’s still the matter of the third question I asked of Dan, hm?”

My balloon deflated somewhat. “I thought maybe you were just trying to keep him off balance with that one,” I said.

“I suppose that could have been a side benefit. But don’t get discouraged, James. You’re on the right track with the way Danielle has been manipulated. Now, tell me, where do you think she originally came from?”

Again with the threads that I felt I should be able to follow, but couldn’t quite. “Came from? You mean, out of Dan’s imagination?”

“Children have imaginary friends all the time,” Melissa elaborated. “Most of them don’t manifest themselves and start interfering with our lives. Why is that happening here?”

“Yes, well… I suppose Dan’s been dabbling in your ever present supernatural forces?” I hypothesized. “That somehow he used them to create Danielle?”

“Could be,” Melissa replied, her voice suddenly quiet. “Though Danielle is very atypical - there aren’t many supernatural manifestations who would willingly take orders from a human. I don’t like to admit it, but this Dan… he does worry me. He worries me a great deal.”

She paused for a moment, as if to let the impact of that sentence settle over me. But it could equally be that she was thinking about whether she’d eaten lunch. Given how the next thing she did was ask me for the time.

I glanced down at my watch. “It’s five to six.”

She stood. “Time for me to go then. You’re welcome to come, though it may be dangerous.”

“Go?” I asked. “Go where?”

“To the physics building, of course,” she replied matter-of-factly, grabbing her purse and moving for the door.

“But I thought you said you didn’t know where or when the explosion was set to occur,” I protested.

“I don’t,” she acceded. “But Dan does, and I wager it will happen sometime soon. So it’s a matter of following him when he arrives.”

“But if Dan knew, why was he so surprised?”

She paused with her hand on the doorknob. “He didn’t know then. But it was inevitable that he learn of the location. After all, one warning by me to Danielle is hardly going to undo the months, perhaps even years of mental programming that Dan’s instilled into her. No, as soon as Dan knew that she was actually going ahead with her plan, he would stop at nothing to find out the details. And now that he knows, he is going to try to interfere. So it’s up to me to see that Danielle’s plan succeeds.”

I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. “Melissa… if Danielle succeeds, the physics building will blow up,” I reminded her.

Melissa pursed her lips. “Yes, well, I still hope it doesn’t come to that,” she remarked, opening the apartment door. “Now are you with me, or not?”

-

If you were to ask me now, I couldn’t tell you why I went with her. I had met a few other people while on campus, frosh like me, most of whom would have jumped at the invitation of a trip to a bar that Saturday night. Why give that up for the chance to hang around with ‘Weird-gal’, when I only had her word for it that an explosion might be involved?

I can say that it wasn’t because I believed all the supernatural stuff she’d been telling me, not then. I didn’t think it was a joke exactly, but I didn’t really believe it either. It also wasn’t because I found Melissa attractive. As that wouldn’t have been enough, and I hope I haven’t come across as being very shallow for my earlier remarks.

Thinking back, I suppose what it came down to was that, to hear Melissa tell it… well, if I didn’t go, I’d somehow be missing out. Even someone less naive than me would have felt this way, I’m sure.

However, after three hours of nothing, even I was starting to have my doubts.

“I thought you said it would happen soon,” I whispered to her, crouched as we were in the bushes only a short distance from the dread physics building. “Exactly what definition of ‘soon’ were you using?”

“I can’t be right all the time,” Melissa answered in a similarly low tone. “At least it’s a clear night. Look, even with all the light pollution you can still see lots of stars.”

“Some of them are there when I close my eyes,” I grumbled. “We should have eaten before we left.”

“I have a leftover candy cane in the pocket of my jeans if you’re desperate,” she offered. After peering at her face to verify that she was serious, I refused, on the obvious grounds that it was September.

Just then, a figure moved towards one of the side doors of the building. It wasn’t hard to identify Dan, given his build.

“We’re on,” Melissa asserted, moving out of the bushes to follow him. “Stay back and follow my lead.” I indicated agreement.

We proceeded through the door after him, down into the poorly lit basement area, to a door marked “Restricted Access”. Don’t ask me how Dan got a key to that room, but he had it.

The door was swinging shut ahead of us until Melissa grabbed a nearby block of wood and slid it into the path of the door. We both held our breath as the door rebounded slightly and remained ajar, but Dan did not investigate. Probably because he had been distracted by what was inside.

“Oh, please… please don’t do this,” came the voice of a girl behind the door. I could only assume it was Danielle. It sounded like she was practically in tears. “Please Dan, don’t stop the explosion.”

“You don’t understand,” Dan replied. His voice sounded like it had more of an edge to it, as compared to when I’d first heard him. “You’ve never understood.”

“But it’s so late at night that there’s not many people here,” Danielle pleaded. “Plus I scared a few away less than a half hour ago, and the rest might have time to evacuate before the building completely collapses. Doesn’t that make things all right?”

“You stupid girl. Don’t you get it yet? I don’t care if you kill a hundred people,” Dan scoffed. “Hell, some of the things you’ve done for me have probably assisted in doing just that. I can’t let you go through with this because of what would happen to ME if you succeed.”

“But… how would you get in trouble?” Danielle protested. “A-And what do you mean when you say I’ve helped you to k-kill?”

“Nice mirrors,” was Dan’s only reply. “Wonder what would happen if I did this…?”

“Oh, stop!” Danielle shrieked. “It took me so long to set those up, because I had to concentrate so very hard to move them. And they have to be aligned just right. No, Dan, what are you doing?! If you turn it that way so many more people could be hurt. Even I could be killed!”

“Oh, I was hoping you’d say that,” Dan replied.

“Stop, stop, no, no, stop! There’s only five minutes left, I’ll never get them put back… Dan, you could die here too!”

“Oh no, not me,” he laughed. “I’m out of here.”

“I think not,” Melissa countered, now swinging the door open wide. During Dan and Danielle’s conversation, she’d been pulling labelled pieces of paper from her purse and pasting them up around the door frame. I couldn’t read them. I hoped they were meant to be protective wards, or some supernatural equivalent.

“You!” Dan said.

“Expecting someone else?” Melissa mused, stepping forwards into the room.

She had a flashlight with her. This was useful, given that the regular lighting was so dim. Admittedly not as useful as an offensive weapon might be, but Melissa’s said she’s not too fond of things like guns.

Anyway, it was by the light of her flashlight that I saw two mirrors in the room - or rather, three, if you counted the one on the ground. The others were standing upright in swivel frames, resting on what seemed to be several crates and boxes. One of the uprights was facing a wall. The other was angled down towards the floor mirror. Dan was standing by this one, with Danielle standing on the one on the floor.

I did wonder momentarily as to why access into the room was restricted, which was when I saw the pipes at the back reading ‘Natural Gas’, and the timing device on them counting down from 4 minutes, 45 seconds. My mouth went dry.

“Dan, what’s the reporter doing here?" Danielle asked in confusion.

I now knew it was Danielle, based on the description, right down to the glasses she wore. And for a moment, I thought that Danielle was asking about me, until I realized she was looking at Melissa. I suppose that’s why Danielle had consented to Friday’s interview. Dan hadn’t told her that Melissa was a detective.

For his part, Dan ignored his ‘imaginary friend’, glowering at Melissa instead. He didn’t even try to hide his emotions. He must have known the jig was up.

“I should never have involved you in this,” Dan growled angrily. “You with your insipid questions and devil-may-care attitude… why didn’t you just banish her like I asked you to in the first place?”

“Because,” Melissa stated simply. “Danielle’s supposed to exist. You’re not."

I knew I was definitely going to need some time to process that bombshell. Of course, in the moment, I was rather more concerned with the possibility that Dan would lunge forwards and try to knock us all unconscious.

A VIRGA MYSTERY The Invisible Girl: Entry 1b

Crawling out of bed and cracking open my door, I realized the shouter in question was Melissa herself, and that she was screaming at someone on the telephone.

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

“Look, I don’t care WHAT time it is!” she stated. “Do you or do you not have a banishing amulet in stock?? … Hello? HELLO…?!” She banged down the telephone into it’s cradle in disgust. “He’s not going to sell ANY merchandise that way! I wish it wasn’t against my ethics to turn him into a frog.”

Not quite sure what to do now, I cleared my throat uncertainly. Melissa turned and blinked at me, abruptly looking quite calm and collected. “Oh, you’re home?” she said with a half smile. There was no trace of anger left in her voice. She was also dressed normally, not for sleep at all.

“Yeah, well, it’s 2am,” I pointed out. “Where else would I be?”

“2am?” Melissa said in surprise. “It can’t be 2am…” She paused to check her wrist, the desk, and the wall, before finally admitting, “Though I guess that’s not out of the question. It would also explain some of that guy’s behaviour. I’m obviously not used to sharing this place yet… did I wake you?”

I gave her a ‘duh, no kidding' look. When she didn’t respond to that, I eventually replied, “Yes, but I can probably get back to sleep again.”

“I can help, if you like,” Melissa offered. “I know a sleep spell. How do you feel about raw onions?”

“No, look, it’s fine,” I assured her quickly. “Just, uhm, if you could keep the noise down for a bit, that would be great.”

Melissa nodded. “Sure. Suppose there wouldn’t be much point calling anyone else at this time of day. It’s a shame my regular supplier was out of amulets… she’s a lot more understanding when I call her at home, you know. I’m less shouty.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she is…"

“Still, it raises the problem of where I’m going to get one,” Melissa continued, tapping her foot on the floor. “I don’t suppose you’d have any leads? With that memory of yours?”

“Well, no,” I said blankly. “I’m not even sure what you’re talking about, so I think I should just…”

“Oh, it’s a banishing amulet,” Melissa interrupted, oblivious to my lack of enthusiasm. “Good for one shot at handling a supernatural manifestation out of control, and then the item has to be recharged by some mystical procedure I haven’t personally figured out. I know, I know, I should have some in stock, but they’re frightfully expensive. Lucky for me Dan’s footing the bill.”

On the verge of simply backing into my room, I paused, my curiosity once again getting the better of me. “Dan?” I inquired. “The tall, well proportioned guy who was here earlier in the week?”

“The same,” Melissa confirmed. “It’s all going to come to an end tomorrow you know. That’s why I need the amulet now.”

I blinked a bit more sleep from my eyes. “Tomorrow?” I questioned. “How do you know something’s going to happen then?”

“Well, it’s obvious isn’t it,” Melissa stated. “Based on what Danielle said.”

“Danielle…? When were you speaking with her?”

“Earlier tonight. Oh, that’s right, you weren’t there… did you want to hear about how it went?" Melissa inquired, now smiling at me invitingly.

It was the sort of smile that could take a man’s breath away under the right circumstances. Of course, a cluttered office at two in the morning, with the knowledge that Melissa was about to embark on a farfetched tale of mystical happenings, hardly made for the right circumstances. But unlike most, I quelled my first instinct to flee, in the hopes that this would let me understand the habits of my new roommate a little better.

“Sure,” I replied hesitantly.

“Have a seat,” she responded, moving back to sit in her own chair behind the desk. “It’ll probably be good for me to review the facts actually. Make sure I didn’t miss anything and all that.”

She stared at me patiently until I had grabbed my dressing gown (hung behind my door), shrugged it on over my pyjamas, and completely exited my room, sitting in the chair opposite her desk. Then this is what she told me.

-

There had been a call left on our answering machine that Melissa had picked up after her Friday afternoon class. In it, Dan had said that Danielle was willing to manifest herself for a talk between six and six thirty that day, during which time most of the other people at the residence would be having dinner.

However, Dan had only called at five, and Melissa had only retrieved the message at five forty-five, meaning it would be difficult to arrive in time. Melissa even hypothesized to me that Dan or Danielle had been counting on that. But, as it was, Melissa made it to the rendez-vous just after the stroke of six, her broom fitting in well with the janitor disguise she had adopted to get inside.

At this point I interrupted Melissa with the natural question as to whether she meant to imply she’d ridden a broom over to Dan’s place. She said of course not, that she’d only ride a broom a night. I couldn’t tell if she was joking. However, during the day she can get away with “gliding” her broom, which basically means using it like a skateboard… she holds the handle, stands upright on the bristles and basically propels herself along the ground with very little effort.

I have yet to see this, but according to Melissa it’s good for the environment while being faster and more maneuverable than a bicycle. She adds most people refuse to believe they’re seeing her on a broom anyway, believing it to be a segway.

So Melissa got to Dan’s room, dropping her janitor disguise once inside. It was little more than illusion and apparently took some effort to maintain. “Now, where’s Danielle?” was her first question as she leaned back against the door.

At this point the temperature of the room seemed to drop a couple of degrees and a shadowy figure appeared, sitting on Dan’s bed. “There she is,” Dan said, gesturing at her.

Danielle’s outward appearance filled in fairly rapidly, revealing a diminutive blonde, not much taller than Melissa herself, wearing a long dress with a rose pattern on it. Her hair was, as previously described, shoulder-length, she was wearing glasses, and her face was, as Melissa put it “strangely expressionless”. Melissa also wagered that Danielle had become more or less solid at the same time as she arrived, for she noticed creases appear on the bedsheets, implying the presence of actual weight.

“You wanted to speak with me?” Danielle said simply.

“Yes,” Melissa replied. “I’d like to know exactly what you’re doing here.”

“You… wanted to speak with me,” Danielle repeated by way of explanation.

“Mmm hmmmm. Now, what about before our encounter?” Melissa clarified. “Why have you been manifesting yourself over the last little while?”

“Well…” Danielle glanced over at Dan before returning her quiet gaze to Melissa. “Because I won’t be suppressed any longer,” she declared abruptly. “I’m going to run and jump and play out in the real world just like any other normal girl would!”

“Mmm hmmmm,” Melissa repeated. “Not a lot of jumping and playing happening on this university campus, except maybe in the bars. I think you’re a bit out of touch.”

“Am I?” Her gaze fell to the floor. “I’m sorry. It hasn’t been easy, trying to make this transition after so much time…”

“You see what I mean about her being detached from reality?” Dan broke in. “It’s like she’s still ten years old inside. That can’t be healthy.”

Melissa glanced over at him. “Perhaps not, but it doesn’t mean that she’s going to ‘hurt someone’, as you indicated.”

“H-Hurt someone?” Danielle gasped, again looking to Dan. “Oh, no, of course I wouldn’t!”

“Danielle, tell Melissa what it was you told me last weekend,” Dan prompted patiently.

Danielle’s feet kicked out nervously from her bedside perch. “Look, I… I only said that sometime in the near future it might be nice to blow up the physics building and put in a nice flowerbed instead. I mean, it would give me what I want, and make this campus look a whole lot nicer… and Dan’s friend Ron agreed with me!”

“Ron is an idiot,” Dan countered. “Besides, he told me that he thought you were some crazy joke of mine. No sane person would ever suggest such a thing.”

Danielle sighed. “But I know how to rig the proper explosives and everything. It’s one of the few useful things I came across during my research. I’ve even been able to determine the other supplies I need. And it’s not like those science types are really people. They’re all so cold hearted, denying my existence.”

“Okay, hold on now. Back up. What research is this?” Melissa questioned.

“Into how I can make myself fully real,” Danielle explained, the trace of a smile appearing for the first time. “I’ve spent a lot of time in the campus library at night, after it was closed. Finally, I came across a section in one book talking about how a large enough explosion could do the trick. All it requires is that the force of the blast be directed perpendicular to your physical plane.”

“Mmm hmmmmm. And these non-people scientists, what’s the story with them?” Melissa continued.

Danielle shrugged. “Well, they’re such idiots is all. They don’t pay attention to me when I try to contact them… not even Dan could make them understand, when he tried. I mean, why can’t they be more open minded? I just want to live the life I was always meant to have.”

“Danielle, let’s not get carried away,” Dan interjected quickly. He turned back to Melissa. “You see now of the danger I was telling you about, Ms. Virga? I think you know what’s required here.”

“Mmmmmm,” was Melissa’s only reply as she moved to look out the small available window. Silence followed as, according to Melissa, she pondered what the campus would really look like without a physics building.

She apparently concluded that administration would simply convert their current plans for a new residence into plans for a replacement building, the physics department partially taking over engineering in the meantime. Hardly an ideal situation, as she put it.

“Ms. Virga?” Dan prompted. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to look at Danielle’s nails,” came Melissa’s reply at last.

Danielle blinked in surprise as Melissa turned back to her. The blonde extended a hand, and Melissa moved forward to grasp it - however, the brunette’s palm passed through Danielle’s as if the girl was a ghost. The blonde immediately pulled her hand back. “I’m sorry, I forgot to concentrate… here try again.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Melissa assured her, ignoring the hand as it was offered once more. “I saw what I needed to. Tell me now, why blue, Danielle?”

Danielle pursed her lips, looking to Dan before replying. “I… I don’t know. I guess I just like blue,” she said. “I think it was the colour of my blankets when I was young.”

Melissa raised an eyebrow. “Young?”

“I had a blue blanket I carried around with me,” Dan clarified immediately. “I would ‘lend’ it to Danielle when we were together.”

“Ahhhh. Is that how you remember it, Danielle?” Melissa asked, cocking her head to the side.

Danielle let out a little shrug. “I guess it must be. My memory… it’s very spotty in a lot of places. I can only remember most of the recent stuff I’ve done with any clarity.”

“Mmm hmmmm.”

“So are you happy now?” Dan interjected. “I think you can see that I haven’t been lying to you. So shouldn’t you start taking this whole matter more seriously?”

“Oh, but I am,” Melissa countered. “In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there’s already been explosives planted somewhere in the physics building. Hooked up to a timer, set to go off very shortly. That’s the case, isn’t it, Danielle?”

The blonde jumped visibly and looked towards Dan, but Melissa interposed her body in between them. “Don’t think about how Dan will react, tell me, is it true or isn’t it?” she reiterated. I imagine she used that soft but firm tone of hers, while at the same time fixing her eyes on the short blonde.

“It… it might be,” Danielle admitted. “But I don’t think that many people will be hurt, since the timer is set for Saturday at…”

“Don’t tell me when!” Melissa interrupted. “Don’t tell anyone the time, Danielle, that’s your little secret. Okay? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few more questions to ask of Dan in private. Could you fade back into your astral plane, or wherever it is you go?”

Danielle blinked at Melissa uncertainly before nodding and beginning to disappear. The detective then turned to face an open mouthed Dan.

“Wh-Wh-What are you doing?!” he demanded, pointing. “If she’s really planted a bomb, we have to know where it is. And how to keep it from going off!”

“We’ll discuss that in a moment,” Melissa countered. “First, answer three questions.” She raised three fingers to emphasize the point. “Number one, what did Danielle mean when she said that you couldn’t make the scientists understand?”

Dan hesitated at that.

“The truth, please,” Melissa added. “Or I shant help you at all.”

“Oh, all right, I did speak with some of them back on the first day of classes,” Dan admitted reluctantly. “Before I came to see you.”

“Then you already knew about Danielle’s quest to join our real world.”

It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, but Dan nodded nonetheless. “She did tell me that was why she had come back,” he yielded. “But does the reason really matter though? She’s going to cause a lot of pain to a lot of people! Right?”

“Second question,” Melissa continued doggedly, “Would you be willing to fund the purchase of a banishing amulet? It can be used to remove manifestations from our physical plane, however, it’s a bit pricy.”

“Well, I’m not exactly rich… but if you think it’ll help…”

“A hundred dollars up front.”

“Euhhhh, geez. I can only manage sixty right now.”

Melissa sighed. “That will have to do then,” she stated. She waited expectantly as Dan fished out his wallet and handed over the money, which she pocketed. “Third question,” she concluded. “Could you name for me one of the first classmates who ever teased you at school?”

“I beg your pardon?” Dan said, exasperation returning to his tone.

“A little bet I have going with James,” Melissa shrugged. “He thinks it was a girl, I figure it was a guy. The money involved here can make up the difference in the purchase of the amulet, so what do you say?”

(I of course interjected here that we’d never made any bet, but Melissa told me to hold on, she was almost done with the story.)

“As a matter of fact, it was a guy,” Dan stated.

“Name?”

“Uhhhhh, Bob. Maybe Frank, I don’t really remember… look, how is that at all relevant to the situation at hand??” Dan said, throwing his arms up in the air.

“You never know,” Melissa responded. She moved to pick up her broom, then reached out for the doorknob.

“Whoa, hey, wait a moment!” her tall client protested. “You’re not leaving, are you? What about Danielle? What about her bomb?!”

“Oh, yes, that,” Melissa acknowledged. She shrugged. “Well, if you ask me, Danielle was right in one respect. We’ve got far too many buildings on campus. Call me again on Monday, I should have an amulet by then.”

She flashed him a smile, then quickly crafted her janitor illusion and left the room before Dan could vocalize any response.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

A VIRGA MYSTERY The Invisible Girl: Entry 1a

Anyway, Melissa has allowed me to write about her cases, under condition that I don’t identify specific names and places (since those would make it too easy to track her). Seeing as I’m in first year, working towards a career in journalism, and given that I can publish this on the internet under an anonymous name, I’ve accepted her terms. Therefore, you have no guarantee that my name is James Conway, or that hers is Melissa Virga, but they’ll suffice for the purposes of the chronicle.

Well, all right. That’s not entirely true. Her last name IS Virga, pronounced ‘Weer-gah’. She wanted that much preserved, seeing as she corrects anyone who gets it wrong. “It’s from the latin,” she told me when I first gave the ‘V’ too much emphasis. “Look it up sometime, educate yourself.” (I have - it means ‘twig’ or ‘broom’.)

Of course, there are also some undergraduates at the university who pronounce it ‘Weird-gal’ for, I suppose, obvious reasons, but Melissa takes it all in stride. At least, I think she does. At any given time, it’s hard for me to tell precisely what she’s feeling.

But on with the story at hand!

-

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

The first of Melissa’s cases which involved me begins after my return to our apartment on the first day of classes. I found Melissa talking with a large male in her office.

Of course, when I say her office, I mean our sitting room - Melissa had converted it to office use, since it happened to be not only the largest room, but also the one that you walk into when you first come in the front door. And when I say this was a large male, I mean LARGE - the guy was at least six feet tall and built like a truck. Even though he was sitting down and Melissa was standing, they were about the same height. He turned when I walked in.

“Ms. Virga’s busy,” he declared, giving me an angry look. “Come back later.”

“Now, now,” Melissa soothed, coming around to the front of her desk. “Don’t be rude, Dan. It’s just my roommate.”

The petite brunette fired off a quick smile, her physical beauty still managing to shine through for me, despite the plain purple blouse and faded jeans she was wearing. Melissa then leaned back against her desk, which caused a large stack of papers to slide sideways and collapse onto the floor. She didn’t even make a move to stop them.

“Roommate? Since when does a detective agency take borders?” Dan said, turning his irritated gaze away from me as he became distracted by the noise.

“Since business got slow over the summer and I couldn’t afford to pay the bills,” Melissa said matter-of-factly. “Don’t worry, he won’t interfere with the case.”

“That’s not the point,” Dan said. “I don’t want word of this… this problem getting out!”

“He’ll be discrete. You will be, right James?”

“Yeah, uh… I just came home to make myself some dinner,” I replied.

“Dinner?” Melissa said, furrowing her brow. “But it’s only…” She glanced at her wrist, saw she wasn’t wearing a watch, fumbled on her desk amongst the papers for a moment in search of a clock before realizing there wasn’t one, after which she glanced at the wall where there was also no clock before finally concluding, “Well, I’m sure it’s too early for dinner.”

“It’s after six,” I offered.

“Definitely too early then,” Melissa decided.

“Look,” Dan said, rising. “It’s obvious the two of you have some issues to discuss here, so I’ll just…”

“Sit down.”

Her voice was soft, but firm. Dan sat, probably without even thinking about it. Heck, I almost sat down too. For someone who only just tops five feet, Melissa can speak very authoritatively when she chooses.

“Thank you,” she finished. “Now, having established that my roommate will be discrete whether he bothers to listen to us or not, I believe you were in the process of explaining to me about your invisible friend.”

Dan shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes, well… look, you’re sure this information will be kept confidential?”

“Do you want my help or don’t you?”

“All right, all right,” Dan sighed, slumping back in his chair. Rather than going back behind her desk, Melissa boosted herself up to sit on it, onto it in order to listen. Another few paper stacks slid to the floor in the process.

“Her name was - is - Danielle,” Dan explained. “I invented her way back in grade school, to keep me company at recess, since none of the other kids wanted to play with me. Understand that I was a bit of a loner back then. Clumsy, uncoordinated, that sort of thing. So Danielle was, for me, the only person who saw through my faults, to the sort of person I truly was.”

Halfway to the kitchen, I paused, being drawn into this conversation despite myself. It was so strange, hearing someone of my age speaking in the way that Dan was. I almost laughed, but then I saw the serious expression on Melissa’s face. It was as if she would remain unfazed no matter what it was that was said in her presence.

I wondered then for the first time what sort of business my newfound roommate was really running.

“Of course, I grew out of that phase,” Dan continued hurriedly, now ignoring me completely as he focussed on Melissa. “Put Danielle and whole concept of invisible friends behind me, where such juvenile thoughts belong. At least, I thought that’s what I’d done.”

“Yet now Danielle’s back,” Melissa deduced.

“Yes, she seems to be,” Dan admitted. “Towards the end of last year I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. But now, I’m not the only one seeing her.”

Melissa leaned forward a bit. “Interesting. Who else has seen her lately?”

“A couple of other people in the residence,” Dan sighed. “The troubling thing is, I wasn’t even there at the time. I only know because word gets around when you’re supposed to be living in an all male wing.”

“And you’re sure this appearance is not simply some girl who resembled the one from your childhood?”

Dan shook his head. “No, no, it’s her, she’s even told me herself who she’s seen, after the fact. And it’s not some practical joke either. Danielle has this ability to appear in both a solid form and a transparent one, such that your hand can go right through her. That’s why I’m here consulting you. Consulting a supernatural expert. I want you to banish Danielle again! Or do something to get rid of her before things get out of control.”

“I see. Could be tricky, since you haven’t yet described to me what she looks like,” Melissa pointed out.

Dan blinked. “Well, she’s a girl. About my age, and I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s as if she’s grown up at the same rate as me. Her hair is blonde, shoulder length, she’s shorter than me but taller than you, wears a faded dress… look, can I simply point her out?” Dan said throwing up his hands. “She’s like any other girl, except she shouldn’t exist!”

“I see. And although you helped to create her, you think things will get out of control?”

“Yes. I mean, the few times I’ve seen her myself she’s seemed… different from how I remember,” Dan elaborated, now shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “For one thing, she seems less focussed on me, and more on the world in general. Despite the fact that she’s obviously detached from our reality. It worries me. I think she might hurt someone.”

“Hummmm,” came the reply, as Melissa pondered what had been said. At least, her eyes seemed to unfocus, so presumably she was thinking about it. Then, just before I thought Dan was about to interrupt the growing silence, her eyes suddenly fixated on him again. “Tell me, quickly, what colour nail polish does Danielle wear now?”

“What?”

That comment had come from me, though I quickly clapped a hand over my mouth as I realized I’d spoken aloud. Dan spared me only a brief glance before looking back at the so-called detective sitting on the edge of her desk. “Did you just ask about nail polish?” he wondered.

“I did, yes,” Melissa confirmed, staring at him intently. “Your answer?”

“It’s blue,” Dan said with more than a trace of exasperation in his tone. “How in the world is that important?”

“You never know,” Melissa replied. She hopped down off the desk and walked back around to the chair behind it, though she did not sit. “I’ll need to meet Danielle,” the brunette concluded. “Before she can be disposed of. Could you summon her for me now?”

“Summon? Well, no,” Dan said apologetically. “I don’t really control her that way, not anymore. She comes and goes when she wants. Which is another part of the problem.”

“Ah, I see. Nevertheless, I’ll need to speak with her,” Melissa insisted. “Perhaps you can convince her to come by here sometime?”

“I don’t think that’s likely.”

“Hummmm. Well, leave your address then. I’ll stop by tomorrow and see what I can turn up,” Melissa decided.

“Look, I said I’m in an all male wing!” Dan protested. “You’d be completely out of place, which would hardly help in keeping things confidential. Everyone would wonder why you were there!”

“It’s not as if I’d come looking as I do now,” Melissa said patiently. “You think I have no disguises?”

“But…”

“Look, if you’re real concerned I’ll send James instead,” Melissa said.

“Huh?” I spoke up again. “Since when am I…"

“The point,” Melissa continued, apparently ignoring me, “Is that I cannot do anything until I see this Danielle first hand. Understand?”

Dan grumbled something under his breath. “How about I see what I can do and give you a call,” he suggested at last.

“Fine,” Melissa concluded. “The answering machine is always here even if I’m not. I do look forward to hearing from you again.” She fired off a quick smile again before at last pulling out her chair to sit down. Picking up a pen, her attention became immediately caught by a few of the papers still cluttering her desk.

Dan hesitated briefly before standing, apparently not sure if there was anything else he should say. He glanced in my direction, to which I immediately raised my hands in the traditional ‘don’t look at me, I have no answers’ gesture.

“Okay, I’ll show myself out then?” the tall man finally said. Melissa didn’t even look up. I watched as Dan turned and strode back out the front door. Yet when I turned back towards my roommate, she was looking directly at me. I took a half step back in surprise.

“So, what do you make of him?” Melissa inquired.

“I think he’s crazy,” I said honestly.

She smiled, her green eyes twinkling invitingly. “In that case, what do you make of me?”

I blinked. “Well, I don’t know. Do you actually believe his story?”

“Parts of it,” Melissa admitted. “Some things, like the nail polish, I’ll need to see for myself.”

“Nail polish,” I repeated. “Right.”

Melissa laughed. “You look so tense, James. Relax. I wasn’t seriously going to send you out to Dan’s place, I merely wanted him to stop protesting. Remember what I said when we made these living arrangements - you can determine your own level of involvement in my business affairs. As long as you give me your rent on time and respect the confidentiality of my clients, there’s no problem.”

“Uh huh,” I said slowly. “Look, Melissa… how about you just leave out a warning when you have such strange types visiting. I can always eat out then.”

“If you like,” she said agreeably. “What sort of warning should I… oh, I know. How about I turn the doorknob fuchsia whenever there’s a client over?”

I blinked a few times. “Turn the doorknob… fuchsia?”

“Well, any colour would work, but fuchsia can signify ‘stop’, plus I have this silk scarf I can use for a reference,” Melissa explained, pulling open the top drawer of her desk. She paused to rummage around in it, finally closing it and opening the next drawer down. “Oh!” she then exclaimed in surprise. “I was wondering where that had got to.”

Melissa pulled out a half eaten sandwich, on a plate and everything. She took a quick bite. The contents seemed to be lettuce and tomato, yet that did not explain the dollop of raspberry jam I saw dribble out from between the bread slices. “Hum, still tastes good,” Melissa declared. “Maybe it should be dinner time after all. Anyway, I’m sure that scarf will turn up sometime, so is fuchsia good for you?”

It took a second before I realized she was talking to me again. “Sure,” I replied, starting to wonder whether I was actually on some hidden camera TV show. “Sure, tie the scarf on the doorknob when you’re busy.”

Melissa made a ‘tch tch’ noise, setting aside the sandwich as she stood back up. “James, James, James… I won’t be tying anything, I’ll be changing the appearance of the metal,” she said. “See, it’s harder for someone else to fake that. Other scarves exist out there, but I myself only know of one other person in the area who can convincingly distort reflected light with her magicks.”

At this point I felt at a complete loss for words.

Melissa grabbed something else from her desk drawer and approached me. “See, I really wasn’t kidding when we spoke on the phone, back before you decided to move here,” she continued. “Magick and the supernatural, they exist all around us. The forces are there, and anyone with the proper abilities can tap into them. I don’t mind if you ignore that fact, most people do. However, in my presence you’re going to have to at least acknowledge it.”

She held out her hand, in the palm of which there was a small ball. “What colour is the ball, James?” she inquired easily.

I looked at it. “Green,” I stated.

She closed her hand, then almost immediately re-opened it. “And now?”

I did a quick doubletake. “Euh, yellow?” Her slight of hand was very impressive.

Again her palm closed and opened. The ball now seemed to be plaid. As if sensing my skepticism, she reached out her other hand. It was completely empty.

“Simple illusion,” Melissa explained offhandedly. She tossed the plaid ball aside and it rolled under a nearby bookshelf. “Well, okay, not that last one, but the yellow you could learn to do yourself. Given time, if you tried hard enough. It comes pretty naturally to me is all, owing to my bloodline.”

“Riiiight.” There had to be something tucked in her jeans. “And how do I know you don’t simply have good slight of hand, with some identical yet different coloured balls hidden on your person?” I challenged.

Melissa shrugged. “I could repeat the process in the nude if you like, but I suspect your attention would wander more.”

I suspect I flinched. She didn’t seem to react. I know this because I made a point of not yielding to temptation, and keeping my gaze on her face.

“Suffice to say,” Melissa continued, “I am in tune with the supernatural. A witch, if you prefer. That’s why I can appear to change the colours of objects, that’s why people come to me when they have trouble with their imaginary friends, that’s why I can turn you into a chicken if you skip out on your lease.” She pivoted and walked back to her desk. “Of course, that last is a rather involved spell, so I hope to avoid using it.”

I frowned. “I thought the chicken clause was a joke.”

“The thing is,” Melissa continued, sitting down, looking back at her stacks of paper and retrieving her pen. “One shouldn’t be able to wield these magicks against another with the intent to cause harm. Not without the recipient’s consent anyway, the penalty for such misuse being severe karmic backlash. However, for some reason I can’t fathom, that supernatural balance on earth is falling out of whack. Individuals are abusing their powers and getting away with it. That’s where I come in. I’m attempting to restore the balance.”

“You mean you really could turn me into a chicken?”

“James, were you listening?”

“Yes, I heard every word,” I assured her. “You’re out to restore the balance of the supernatural on earth. Fine, good, I’m sure that’s a noble goal. However, I’m more than a little concerned about whether I accidentally signed my soul away in the last twenty four hours.”

“Relax,” Melissa sighed with a roll of her eyes. “You’re hardly the sort of person I’m after. As I indicated, don’t cross me and we’ll have no problems.” She paused. “Though you know, you could stand to be less naive. I don’t want anybody coming after me through you.”

“Gee, sorry,” I retorted sarcastically.

“It’s okay, we can work on that,” Melissa said obliviously, having already returned to studying her papers. “Simply let me know if anyone seems to ask you too many questions.” She reached out to take another bite of the mystery sandwich.

I was tempted then to simply beat a quick retreat back into the kitchen, but there was one little detail of Melissa’s prior conversation that still nagged at me. I knew it would bug me all night if I didn’t say anything. So I spoke up, having to ask my question twice before I even got Melissa’s attention once more.

“Nail polish what now?” she questioned.

“It’s just I really can’t understand what that had to do with Dan’s imaginary friend problem,” I repeated patiently.

“Oh, that. Simple really, though you almost destroyed the whole thing with your exclamation.” Melissa pulled her hands back out of sight, under her desk. “Tell me,” she continued easily, “what colour nail polish am I wearing?”

I blanked momentarily, then thought back to when she had been demonstrating the trick with the balls. “Clear polish,” I stated.

An eyebrow rose. “Could it be you’re a better observer than I thought?” Melissa mused aloud.

I shrugged. “I have a semi-photographic memory,” I explained to her. “Comes in handy when trying to describe a scene for an article some time after the fact.” (Incidentally, also true as far as writing about Melissa’s cases go.)

“That’s handy,” the brunette reflected. “Hope I’ll remember that. Though as a matter of fact, you’re wrong, I’m not wearing any nail polish today.” She put her hands back on the desk. “Thing is, most guys don’t key into those minor details of your appearance, not right away. Yet Dan was pretty quick with his response. Which means…” She let her voice trail off and stared at me expectantly.

“Which means… he was making it up?” I ventured.

Melissa shook her head. “The people who invent cases for the purposes of making fun of me wouldn’t have been upset at your presence. Try again.”

I couldn’t think of anything. Possibly because I was getting increasingly distracted looking at her. She really is attractive. “I don’t know.”

“I think Dan knows more about his ‘friend’ and her preferences than he was willing to tell me," Melissa concluded. “Hence the need to speak with Danielle myself.”

“Ah. But, er, won’t it be tricky, chatting with an someone who is imaginary?”

“Eh, I’ve done stranger,” my new roommate said dismissively. Again she bit into her sandwich, and this time I noticed the presence of a banana slice in amongst the lettuce.

“Okay, well, I’ll just be in the kitchen then,” I decided, attempting a smile as I inched further back from her desk.

Melissa didn’t even notice, having already returned to her paper shuffling. Something told me she didn’t spend much time in the kitchen herself. The knowledge that my current bedroom had previously been the dining room added credence to the thought. So it seemed unlikely that we would speak again that evening.

I tried to put it all out of my head.

That worked until late Friday night.

UNIVERSITY WITCH

Casefiles Introduction

In retrospect, perhaps I should have looked a little more closely into why her apartment, so close to campus, was still available that last week of August. But I was from out of town, and somewhat naive.

Oh, all right, very naive – I even took the place sight unseen, arranging everything over the phone. I mean, Melissa sounded nice enough, the apartment was depicted well, and the warnings she gave me about her curious habits struck me as being her way of screening male applicants. Thus when I showed up that Labour Day Monday, I had absolutely no idea of what I was really getting myself into.

I walked in through the front door of the building (kept open during the daytime), proceeding up to the top floor. From there, you couldn’t miss Melissa’s apartment. Underneath the ‘66’ on her door hangs the picture of an eye staring out from inside a triangle. I’ve since seen it in connection with mystical happenings, but at the time I only gave it a passing glance.

I knocked. From inside I heard a female voice call out “Sorry, we’re closed!”

Not certain what to make of that, but recognizing the voice as being that of the person I’d been talking with over the phone, I called back, “It’s James Conway!”

I heard the sound of rustling paper followed by approaching footsteps. Then the door opened, and there she was, peering at me over her reading glasses.

I suppose I should add here that Melissa is a very beautiful girl. I mean, sure, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but many who saw her would agree with my assessment. Long, wavy brown hair, piercing green eyes and, while a bit on the thin side, her body still has curves in all the right places. Turns out it’s not her appearance that bothers others, it’s her mannerisms. And since I had yet to see those, I was too busy picking my jaw up off the floor to hear the first words that she spoke to me.

After I sheepishly asked her to repeat herself, Melissa smiled quietly, as if used to this sort of initial reaction, and said simply, “Could you please give me this month’s rent right away? I need it to pay the phone bill.”

That was the start of our association.

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“aligncenter” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

CASE 1A NOW POSTED

Even though I transferred the “choices NOT taken” info to the end of individual posts for Story4, I’ve decided to do a roundup here with some extra commentary of things from my notes that didn’t make it in. It can also be a way of seeing how far we came. And, at the end of the post, my 2017 coins, and some final site stats. There are spoilers herein for “Epsilon Delta”, obviously.

FIRST HALF

1. WORLD CHOICE. Alijda’s world would have involved a teleport, Kat’s world would have kept him on the planet, we got Beam’s world. At this stage, my notes of “could be sabotage or some inter-dimensional being gambling on outcomes” also add in “could be some artifact Beam retrieved, or ‘Fate’ from Kat’s world”. Yeah, it was that early, but not in stone.

2. DAMAGED. Software problem would have been Alijda POV (point of view), Hardware would have been Kat’s POV, indirect choice was Rose POV where the problem fixes itself. My notes include “magnetic field”, “need an artifact to defeat Ziggy” and maybe it’s personal or “this isn’t personal, it’s a game”.

3. BEAMING. Had Beam been unfindable, we’d have had two entities (her and Ziggy). Had Beam included Ziggy, Ziggy would have been the entity. We got Beam with memory loss (unanimously, 5 votes) which locked one entity in place (Fate), and led to working out the artifact.

4. PLAN IT. Vault artifacts would have restored some station power, while a planet with advanced tech would have meant a magic artifact. We got the magic world (with the cyberarm artifact), plus the POV VOTE where Rose won, meaning more Beam. My notes started to consider the planet here, wondering about a racial divide. (Yeah, that went nowhere.)

5. CHAPERONE. If Rose had brought Alice, we’d have had Kat/Alijda on the station. If Rose had brought Alijda, we’d have had Kat/Alice on the station. Instead we had Kat/Rose on the planet. Which created backstory for Beam. Also, my notes now included “mage patrol” and “Fate captured? Brought here by abduction or rival organization of Epsilon?”

6. NEXT STEP. Talking to the local would have had them detained (see “mage patrol” above), while consulting with Alijda would have shifted POV to the station. We got the introduction of Firestorm and the diary, along with an explosion in my notes: “Fate is going by ‘Destiny’.” “Rose is remembering Angie, having to quash her feelings then for different reasons. Resents Beam?” and “mention ‘Epsilon’ pin”.

7. JUST WILD BEAT. Alice making contact sans cyberarm would have related to occult research. Making contact with the cyberarm would have involved it being caught, so we kind of followed that thread until Kat made contact (which is what won the vote). My notes started to explore more about Fate now: “Destiny had dreams of being here” and “Fate accidentally cracked open the doorway herself, that’s not an Epsilon thing. Do it to get the cyber arm, or was it a fluke?”

8. DESTINY. Destiny being arrested would have involved townspeople and Firestorm. Her being kidnapped (which won) would have involved police without Firestorm. Her fleeing would have fallen to the 2nd most popular option but reversed whether Firestorm came. The group “Wages for Mages” was scribbled in as a townspeople possibility, which I never mentioned back then.

9. POLICE. If police had been no help, someone from the underground would have come. With Firestorm as the deputy, Fate would have had some tech still with her to justify them staying. We got Rose as the deputy, which meant no tech, and I could use that “Angie” stuff from 6. I also noted for myself that they can’t track Beam while she’s insubstantial.

SECOND HALF

11. TRACKING CODE. Our first tied vote this story (2-2), where Rose picks up both Beam AND Firestorm, resulting in some stalling tactics to make it work. At least Destiny wasn’t chosen, which was intended to be the most dangerous path. My notes started to flesh out a LOT of Compton’s history here (even before he had a name) with “Son finds book after Dad’s death, wants to know more, and Destiny was always talking about people with other world stories. He goes to her, makes demands, is rebuffed.”

12. WHERE ARE THEY NOW. Ran with the 2-2 tie again. No one wanted Firestorm with the enemy, which would have had them meet Beam. Beam being caught meant meeting Firestorm, but it worked to have them working together by then too.

13. FATED. Left the vote open longer, and got 7 votes for the first time since Vote 4. Fate coming through voluntarily would have linked into dreams, her coming through involuntarily would have been backlash from this world, but we got abduction. A bit dark, but that’s fine. Compton finally got named (selected because a ton of Computer Science had been ruining my life).

14. COMPTON PLAN. Scaring him away with Gods wouldn’t have worked, and we’d see Compton’s plan. Closing the portal would have resulted in an evil wizard, meaning a possible team up. We got explosions and Compton’s power up. I was already working on the end game here, with “Work up to where Rose’s duplication power is effective. He boomerangs things back, so many Roses?” and “Somehow the personal history scrambling spell ends up back on Compton?”

15. IN CHARGE. As mentioned last week, Rose deciding on Beam in charge would have meant everyone back to their worlds, Alice in charge would have had Beam and Fate together, but instead we got Fate in charge. With Alice and Beam working for her. The “larger Big Bad” for them was in my head here even before the final part was written.

16. CHARACTER. I’ve done one of these each story. After Story1, it was Alijda unanimously, 4-0. (That vote is now 6-0.) After Story2, it was Chartreuse unanimously, 2-0. (That vote is now 4-2 for Chartreuse, with Alice taking second place.) After Story3, it was Kat 4-1-1 with Alijda and Alice getting votes. (That vote is now 4-2-1.) And here we are after Story4. After one week… Rose and Kat are tied 1-1. Yeah, only 2 votes. I guess it’s the holidays?

STATISTICS

[caption id=“attachment_2069” align=“alignright” width=“150”] 2017 Coins![/caption]

I think that’s partly due to it being Canada’s 150th, meaning people may be more inclined to hold onto them? Of note, there’s two different quarter designs, and the penny in the image isn’t 2017, it’s just WEIRD, since we don’t have them in Canada (I found it on the ground).

Now, a look at this website. The lowest viewed update of “Epsilon Delta” (not including the current month) is entry #8 from August, “The Arm of Fate”, which got 17 page views. The lowest viewed days in the past 6 months (when I stopped posting weekly) were ZERO views on August 4 and 8, September 8 and 9, October 26, November 4 and 7 and 18 and 23, December 31 (yeah, today). A total of ten times. Days with OVER FORTY views in the past 6 months were July 22, September 1 and 24, October 30. Oy, let’s get less granular.

The lowest month for 2017 overall, across the 250+ posts, was November, with 227 page views. The highest month was May, with 1,935 page views, this thanks to: (1) A review by Tartra at WFG on May 6. (2) A review of the site by Rev Fitz on May 21. (3) A guest post at Drew Hayes’ site the week of May 21.

Large numbers continued on a weekly basis into the start of June, at which point, well, you can see for yourself below. Most weeks since are below 100 page views, whether I published or not. (Again, I shifted to twice weekly in July.)

[caption id=“attachment_2070” align=“aligncenter” width=“620”] Last 30 weeks (7 months) of 2017[/caption]

What does this tell us? Well, apparently I still have no idea how to market. I did get 7 votes in three consecutive weeks towards the end of “Epsilon Delta” though, which is a new high. (Story3 came close, but it was 7-6-7.) So there’s that.

IN CONCLUSION

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this look behind the scenes. Thanks for voting/reading/commenting, and feel free to add your voice below about anyway which was unexpected, or anything else that jumps out at you. Happy New Year!