Page 4 of Lion's Share
Maybe he didn’t have any real background in this sort of thing, but the more I thought about it, the more his theory seemed to make sense. Everything that was being temperamental would be affected by fluctuations in those fields, although, like Ben, this was way outside my knowledge base. I’d taken a lot of math and chemistry and biology in preparation for getting my DVM degree, but physics hadn’t seemed like anything I needed, so I’d mostly skipped those courses except for a really introductory class during my sophomore year at Humboldt State.
“Is there anyone you can ask?” I said.
Ben set down his fork and reached for the glass of wine that waited at his place setting. “Not offhand, but because I’ve been emailing with Henry Ogilvy a good bit, I can see if he knows someone in the physics department at UC Davis who might be interested in coming up here to take some readings.”
“That’s a long way to go for something that might turn out to be nothing,” I said, knowing how doubtful I sounded. Since I’d made the drive plenty of times, I knew it took just a hair under five hours to get from Davis to Silver Hollow. Not insurmountable by a long shot, but also not a quickie afternoon trip, either.
He grinned. “Oh, you’d be surprised by what a researcher will do when they’re following an interesting lead. Not that I expect one of the professors to drop everything and come running up here, but I’m sure there are probably a couple of grad students in the physics department who’d be all too glad to take a break from teaching summer classes and come to Silver Hollow to investigate any electromagnetic anomalies we might be experiencing.”
Well, when he put it that way….
“All right,” I said. Whatever was going on, we needed to get to the bottom of it, and this wasn’t the sort of thing that either Ben or I could handle on our own. “Then make some calls, and I suppose we’ll see if this all turns out to be nothing.”
His smile didn’t fade. “This is Silver Hollow,” he replied, and took a sip of merlot. “I’m pretty sure it’ll turn out to be something.”
I had a feeling he was right.
Chapter Two
As usual, their evening ended with him saying goodbye and then heading down the porch steps so he could make his way back to his rented cottage. Ben might have allowed himself to experience just the slightest bit of frustration that once again there hadn’t been even the briefest moment when he could have reached out and taken Sidney’s hand, could have pulled her close so he could finally lean down and press his mouth against hers…but he knew there was no point in dwelling on might-have-beens. A kiss, if it ever happened at all, would need to occur on her terms, not his. With everything else she had on her plate, she might have decided that striking up a romance wasn’t a good idea.
Because worrying about whether something would happen between him and Sidney Lowell didn’t seem like a very good use of his time, Ben thought it better to mull over what they’d discussed at dinner, how the odd glitches in the electrical grid and the occasional hiccups of their cell phones might mean something bigger was going on than the usual malfunctions you almost always encountered in modern devices from time to time.
If it really was the portal affecting Silver Hollow and its environs, then it had to be a recent phenomenon, since Sidney had made it sound as if all of these electrical and electronic hiccups were fairly new and not anything she or the other people in town had been dealing with for years.
And if that was the case, then…what? Had something happened to destabilize the portal?
Ben didn’t want to contemplate that probability. He might not have been a professor of physics, but even he could understand that the implications of an interdimensional gateway becoming unstable were nothing less than cataclysmic.
That was why he went straight to his laptop when he got back to the cottage. The place was too small to have two bedrooms, but it had a little carve-out off the kitchen with a dropleaf table and a pair of chairs that had probably been intended as a breakfast nook, and which he’d turned into a makeshift office.
Sidney had mentioned making some phone calls, although that wasn’t Ben’s intention. All his communications with Henry Ogilvy had been via email, just because it was a lot easier to send the professor images of the Ogham letters they’d found in the forest that way rather than from his phone.
So he wrote a brief email explaining the possibility of odd electromagnetic interference in Silver Hollow and sent it off. He wasn’t expecting a reply until the following morning, just because by that point, it was after nine o’clock, so he was surprised to see an answer come through less than fifteen minutes later.
That’s an interesting conundrum. I’ll ask around tomorrow and see if anyone’s interested in investigating further. Is it all right if I pass along your contact information if it turns out someone wants to make the trek up there?
Ben wrote back quickly and said that was fine, and Henry replied by saying he hoped one of the physics grad students might want to come and check things out. That seemed to be the end of the exchange, but Ben found himself strangely hopeful as he closed the laptop.
For some reason, he was almost positive that someone would want to come and see exactly what was going on in Silver Hollow…and why.
The next day, Ben met Sidney at one of the trailheads that led into the forest, just as they did every Tuesday morning. Those were the days when she didn’t open the pet shop until noon or sometimes as late as one, allowing her time to go exploring or have a chance to get out and get some fresh air.
Or, as had been the case ever since he’d settled here a month ago, for the two of them to wander through the woods and see if they could detect any signs of interference within the forest, whether human or animal.
Today, they went back to the clearing where they’d first seen the portal, that strange grouping of standing stones like a miniature Stonehenge. It was nowhere near the new moon, but he and Sidney had already discussed how the little white flowers that looked so much like lilies of the valley were popping up all over the place, so as far as he could tell, the rules the portals used to abide by didn’t seem to be holding any longer.
Was that irregularity the source of the electromagnetic anomalies, or had the glitches somehow shorted out the portal’s routine?
He couldn’t begin to say, since it felt like a kind of “chicken or the egg” situation. And although he looked forward to having an expert come to town to take accurate measurements and let them know if there really was something haywire with the electromagnetic field surrounding Silver Hollow, he also knew he and Sidney would have to tread carefully. They couldn’t breathe even a hint that something otherworldly had been going on in these woods for more than a century.
No, they’d have to play this off as your usual garden-variety magnetic anomaly.
The sun was mostly out this morning, a nice change from what had started to feel like perpetual fog. However, the temperatures were cool enough that if he’d still been living in Southern California, he probably would have put on a long-sleeved shirt. He didn’t want Sidney to think he was a wimp, however, so he wore a regular T-shirt, although, as usual, he had a lightweight jacket balled up inside his backpack just in case they had an unexpected downpour.
Sidney was dressed much the same as he, with her long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail using a scrunchie that didn’t look as if it was quite up to the task of holding her thick locks in place. As they walked, he said, “Henry Ogilvy told me last night he would reach out to see if anyone was interested in investigating the glitches we’ve been experiencing, but I haven’t heard anything yet.”
She smiled. Even in the bright sunlight, her skin looked poreless and creamy. Maybe it was the constant humidity in this part of the world.
