The comparison made the back of Somerset’s neck itch. It hadn’t, after all, ended well for anyone.
This was different.
“I’ll be with you,” Somerset said. “Whatever happens, you won’t be alone.”
Dylan’s mouth twisted. It was probably meant to be a smile. He grabbed Somerset’s hand. “That’ll be a first,” he said.
Somerset hung onto Dylan’s hand as they headed through the kitchen and out into the alley. The truck was parked there; Stúfur and Ket’s weapons were packed in the back.
Stúfur held his phone in one gloved hand, a frown on his face as he thumb-tapped out a reply to something. He hit send and then glanced over at Somerset, a scowl on his face as he looked at Dylan.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” he asked.
“No.” Somerset unlocked the truck and climbed up into the driver’s seat. “If you have a better idea, now’s the time.”
No-one did.
As they drove out of the alley and onto the street, a fat, mechanical Santa grinned and waved stoically from the store window across the street where the owner was rolling up the security shutters. That felt like adding insult to injury. Somerset reached out and caught his magic. He’d not used it so casually in years, the chill of it wrapped in and out of his knuckles, but the time to hide was gone.
He flicked it out as he passed the store. It splattered against the glass window, fingers of frost splayed out from the point of contact, and then spiked through the Santa. Cold seized its plastic joints and ground the mechanisms inside to a halt. The Santa froze mid-wave and stared at the street with blind, drunkenly mismatched eyes.
Stúfur leaned through from the back, elbows braced on the top of the seats. “Santa’s dead,” he said dryly as he checked out the shorted-out mechanism. Then he clapped a hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “Long live Santa.”
Somerset freed one hand from the wheel and used it to palm Stúfur’s face and shove him back into his own space.
“How are we going to drive to the North Pole?” Dylan asked as he put his seat belt on. That was probably a good idea.
“Fast,” Somerset said laconically as he pressed his foot down on the gas.
The engine growled raggedly as the heavy metal truck surged forward. People on the street turned to watch them pass, faces pinched with either envy or disapproval. A few kids, out on the snow in hoodies and sneakers, laughed and cheered as he peeled around a tight corner.
It was Ket who actually answered the question.
“How does Santa girdle the world in one night?” he asked. “How do reindeer fly? Magic, and a world that, unlike yours, doesn’t care much about geography.”
The key was not to be where the mortal world expected. Drive faster, corner sharper, and take the wrong turns until it lost track of where you were meant to be. Once that happened, you could find a fold in reality, a weak point in the weft, and get to where you needed to be.
There were other ways to find your way into the Otherworld. People got lost to find their way there or were stolen from one life and slipped away into the next.
None of those were as much fun.
Somerset took a corner onto Mountbrooke and mounted the sidewalk. The tires hit the curb hard enough to jolt everyone and then slid on the packed, high banks of ice.
Behind, Stúfur hung onto the headrest with both hands and laughed.
Somerset felt it as the world rucked up around him and then gave. It trailed over his face like a broken cobweb, thin and sticky. Next to him, Dylan shuddered without knowing why and wiped his face.
“This just looks like Belling,” Dylan said.
He was right. The world on the other side didn’t look much different.
It wasn’t much different here, at the anchors. The Otherworld was layered over the mortal world, like tissue paper over a map. There was still a Subway on the corner. Go in, and maybe the menu would be full of things you’d never heard of—rat meat, eyeballs, and ladyfingers… were they meant to be meat?—and the sandwich artist would have a smile an inch too wide.
You might get a meatball sub so good that you’d never enjoy food again.
Or maybe the worst that would happen is food poisoning.
It was chance. At least, it was if you were mortal.
