“I can’t open a Gate to Faerie,” he said.“I don’t know how.I’ve opened dimensional Gates to Hell before, and I could probably figure out how to tweak one of those to get to Heaven, or at least to the Pearly Gates.Not sure I could open a Gate that actually gotinsideHeaven.But I’ve never been to Faerie, and I haven’t read any rituals to open a portal there.Anything I tried would be a total shot in the dark, and that’s a good way to end up somewhere youreallydon’t want to be.”
“Like where?”I asked.
“Like nowhere,” he said simply.“Stuck between dimensions, with no anchor to get you home.I’m sorry, Bubba, I don’t know how to get to Faerie, and even if I did, I couldn’t open a passage there.I wouldn’t.”
“And why exactly would you not?”I asked, my voice low and slow.
He held up both hands, palms out.“Because Oberon wants to kill me, and if I opened a portal into his realm, even into Winter, he’d sense it, and come rip me limb from limb, along with anyone stupid enough to travel with me.”
“What did you do to Oberon?”I asked.
“Long story.I kinda shit on a plan he had last year to destroy all humanity, and he’s kinda pissed about it.I also got him in hot water with Titania about banging some of her handmaidens, which was like the worst-kept secret in Faerie, but I made a whole thing of it in front of a bunch of people and she got pissed.So basically, I embarrassed him on this plane and got him banished to a no-nookie zone with his wife, so hereallydoesn’t like me.”He paused for a second, cocking his head to the side.“Okay, maybe it wasn’t that long a story after all.”
There’s a pattern there.Harker has pissed off more powerful extra-dimensional beings than anyone I’ve ever met, and I’ve met somewildindividuals.“So how do we go after them?”I asked.
“Um, maybe we use that thing?”Ash said, pointing into the circle.They walked over and knelt by a mushroom at the top of the M’s center point.I got closer and could see that it wasn’t actually a mushroom, but an iridescent stone shaped like a toadstool.I knelt beside it and reached out a hand.
“Stop!”Harker shouted.
I froze and turned to look at him.“I can’t open a portal, but I can at least examine the magical stone and see if it’s a Gate or if it’s going to turn you into a toad.”
Okay, fair enough.I stood and backed away, careful not to stomp any of the mushrooms.I didn’t know what kind of crazy spores they’d let loose.Harker walked up, knelt by the magic mushrooms (not that kind, dammit), and muttered something under his breath.After a few seconds, he stood up and shook his head.
“It’s magic, alright, but it doesn’t seem tied to a portal.As far as I can tell, it’s just a trap.It seems like if you don’t have the right magical signature, it’ll blow you up if you touch it.And no, I can’t tell what the right magical signature is.It might be keyed to kill Bubba, or it might be keyed to kill anybodybutBubba.Either way, better not to screw with it,” he said.
“So let’s all back away from the exploding mushroom,” Skeeter said, mirroring his actions to his words.All of us knew Harker well enough to understand that ifhewas calling for caution, we needed to be careful.“Harker, do you know of any other portals to Faerie in the area?The last one we used was in Ruby Falls.”
“Um, can we hold on just a second?”Jarvis asked, raising his hand.Everyone turned to look at him, and he slowly put his hand down.
“What is it, Jarvis?”I asked.
He…exploded, for lack of a better word.Not in the spraying guts all over the grass kinda way that apparently the shiny mushroom would do, but verbally.“What thefuckare you all talking about?You’re just standing here staring at a bunch of mushrooms where abuildingused to be, and you’re acting like this is all normal!Are you peopleinsane?!?Do you even hear yourselves?What is all this bullshit about fairies and exploding mushrooms and magic portals and gates to Hell?If this is some kind of joke, and you drove me around to some kind of weird prank site to make me think that I got drunker than I thought I did last night, then ha ha, the joke’s on Jarvis, I get it.Now can we just go to the damned wedding so I can hit up the bar, get a little hair of the dog in me, and maybe knock this hangover down to reasonable proportions?Because whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.Joke’s over, let’s move on.”
I looked at Skeeter, who looked at me.Then I looked at Barry, who just shrugged.Father Matthew opened his mouth a couple times like he was going to say something, but then just closed it again, kinda like a trout.We all stood around trying to figure out how to address the magic elephant in the room until Harker solved the problem in a very Quincy Harker kinda way.
He threw a fireball at Jarvis’s feet.“Dance, shithead,” he said, and flicked a sphere of glowing purple magic at his toes.Jarvis jumped back, and Harker chucked another magic ball at him, green this time.They repeated this a few times until Harker walked over to my future brother-in-law, held up both hands wreathed in a crimson glow, and said, “You’re right, kid.Joke’s over.Now do you believe in magic?”
Jarvis opened his mouth, a belligerent expression on his face, and I stepped up to put a hand on Harker’s shoulder.“How about I handle this one?”I asked.
I turned Jarvis toward the woods and put my arm across his shoulders.I started walking, and he didn’t have much choice but to go with me, given how much I outweighed him.We walked a little bit away from the group, and I started talking.
“Jarvis, I know this is a lot to take in.I know most of this crap is so far outside your frame of reference as to feel like we’re pranking you, but I promise we ain’t.Magic is real, I’m part faerie, Barry is a Sasquatch, and my psychotic granny kidnapped your sister, your parents, and pretty much everybody I like in the world who isn’t standing around staring at a bunch of shrooms right now.”
Jarvis threw off my arm and glared up at me.“Stop.Lying.This bullshit stops right now, or I’ll?—”
“You’ll what, boy?”I asked, staring him down.“I’ve already lost one fiancée, a brother, and a father to this life, not to mention one of the best friends I’ve ever known.Now Amy’s in trouble, and you think you’ve got something to threaten me with?The person I care most about in the goddamned world is missing, and the only thing I can do to find her is go after her, and if that means I have to go to another dimension, then I’m going to another dimension.If you don’t want to believe any of this is real, I honestly don’t give a shit.What you believe does not matter one little bit to me.Becauseyoudon’t matter one little bit to me right now.All that matters is that somebody took the woman I love, and I’m going to go get her back.Now that woman happens to be your sister, so if you want to go with me, you’re welcome to ride along.But if you get in the way, or cause me the least little bit of trouble, I will ditch you faster than I droppedLOSTafter the damn polar bear showed up.You got that?”
He just stared for a long moment, then when he finally spoke again, his voice shook a little.“You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
“This isn’t a prank?”
“If it is, I’m going to beat the hell out of whoever thought this was funny.”
“Magic’s real?”
“One hundred percent.”
