Page 4 of The Other World

“Vucari,” he said, waving his phone at me. “He’s ready to talk to you.”

I grabbed my hoodie off the back of my chair and followed the two of them out, grumbling about bossy weirdos who interrupted naps.

“How will we get off the island?” I asked, after we left the house and I was a bit more awake.

“Magic!” said Hannah.

I thought she was joking until Nikolai explained. “We don’t need to meet him physically; we just need to get past the magical barriers around the island. We just need to follow the train tunnel until we’re far enough away for Hannah to conjure a portal.”

I didn’t like the idea of a portal, not after seeing Sam vanish through one, but it was probably a lot safer than a helicopter. I couldn’t exactly look up the statistics on that though, I supposed. It was funny how even after being a witch for a while and a werewolf, I didn’t know much about being either of those things.I mean, I hadn’t been either of those things for very long, so it was probably like the difference between reading the wiki on something versus studying it for a PhD. I’d only ever learned enough about anything to control my power, but I’d never be able to use it as a reference on an academic paper. It was enough, I figured. In the grand scheme of things, a wiki was probably a lot more useful than super specific knowledge. Unless you were a surgeon, which I wasn’t, so it was fine.

I’d been down the train tunnel a few times, when my old roomie Katie and I had snuck out of school, and then a few times for pack meetings the year before. It was dark and cold, and the sound of dripping water echoed around us.

“What do you think he wants?” I asked Nikolai, my words bouncing back from the tunnel walls.

Nikolai shrugged. “Probably just your Netflix password or something, who knows with that guy.”

I felt briefly reassured, until he continued talking.

“Either that or a human sacrifice. He’s got a lot of varied interests.”

It hadn’t really occurred to me before; how incredibly risky it was to promise a favor to someone I barely knew. A morally dubious, supernatural someone. I didn’t know what kind of magic bound me to keep my promise to him, but it seemed like more than just a matter of honor. There would be no take-backsies when it came to Vucari.

I didn’t even really know what the guy was. I knew he was down with the Dark Council, and Nikolai’s family had some dodgy connections, but apart from that and an unhelpful google search, I was going in blind.

“This should be far enough,” said Hannah.

We stopped walking and she started the ritual to open a portal. I watched as she sprinkled some silvery-black powder in a circle beside the tracks and chanted under her breath. Sheplaced a round mirror in the center of the circle and poured a few drops of liquid onto it. The surface of the mirror turned black and a cloud of smoke puffed up into the air. When the smoke had cleared, Vucari stood there. I stared at him for a moment, wondering what exactly it was about him that looked kind of wrong, then realized he was slightly transparent.

“It’s a projection,” Hannah explained.

“We couldn’t have just set up a Zoom meeting?” It seemed unnecessarily complicated to do this whole magic ritual instead of just using a laptop.

“This is the most secure method of communication,” Vucari said, unsmiling. “You trust far too easily.”

I shrugged. He wasn’t wrong.

“So, you’re ready to cash in your favor?” I asked him.

“I am,” he said. He stared at me as if he could look straight through me, which he probably could, since I could see through him.

I really hoped he wasn’t weighing up whether or not I’d make a good child bride for his demon overlord or something. Because I definitely wouldn’t.

“It is a favor that will also benefit you.” He paused. I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me to say something or just letting his words sink in.

I waited. Eventually, he continued.

“You have begun the next phase of your transition.” He wasn’t asking. “This is good. It will make my task much easier for you. There is a relic. An ancient relic of my family. It has been stolen and taken from this physical realm. I need to you retrieve it.”

“Right,” I said. There was a lot to unpack there and I didn’t even know where to start.

Vucari stared at me. After a few minutes of him staring, I realized he expected me to say something else.

“So…” I said. “I don’t really have any idea what you expect me to do.”

He gave a small smile, like I’d said something funny. “There is a ritual. It is complicated and you will need to progress along the path to Spirit before you will be successful in breaking through to the other world, but once you are there, I believe the plan will be straightforward.”

“Other world?” I repeated. I didn’t know what I’d thought he meant by “taken from this physical realm”, maybe like stuck in the spirit world or a dream or something, but this sounded like something entirely different. “Do you mean like an alternate reality?”

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