What and why would two grown men—me at six and a half feet, him much shorter but bulkier—go into a small square room of janitorial supplies? “Uh.”
Showing the first signs of impatience, he frowned. “Come on. We don’t have all day.”
“Uh, okay.” I stepped in. It wasn’t like this was the weirdest thing that I’d done before. Hell, it wasn’t the strangest thing in the last twenty-four hours.
Malcolm stared at me hard. “Aren’t you going to shut the door?”
“Shut the… yeah, sure.” Reaching behind me, I pulled it closed, expecting it to be awkward as fuck being squashed in this little box of a room with my boss, but…
The back wall glowed softly like a pale blue nightlight as Malcolm pressed his palm onto it.
“What the…?”
He grinned at me over his shoulder. “Cool, right?” Then he gave a little push, and the wall just…disappeared. Honest to the deities of old, vanished.Poof. Gone.
“How did you…? Wait. What?” My brain felt scrambled. Had someone slipped something in my coffee this morning? Or maybe yesterday? First, Sky and I were confronted with abodyless voice, and now this? What was next? Did I even want to know?
“Come on, then.” Malcolm stepped out and turned right, so I obediently followed.
Before us was what looked like a never-ending hallway. One that made no sense given the size of the historic house our office was located in. We hadn’t gone downstairs or walked up any, for that matter, so where did this even exist?
Malcolm walked quickly down toward the end, and I followed, looking all around me. The walls, ceiling, and floors were all white, but there were no lights that I could see. How was this area lit up with no lights? I kept tilting my head up to check the ceiling, expecting to see recessed lighting of some kind, but nope.
After what had to have been a ten-minute walk, I finally saw the end of the hall, and there was nothing there. Like absolutely nothing. Like the inside of the closet, it looked like any other wall. Malcolm continued toward it without a word to me, and I was helpless but to follow him. What kind of new mindfuck had I been pulled into? Had I fallen asleep at my desk, and maybe I was in his dream? Was that even possible?
When we reached the end, he pointed at the spot directly beside him. “Stand there.” I did, and he laid both hands against the bare, unblemished wall. It didn’t glow at his touch until he began to chant, “Secrets hidden that I hide. Ancestors and all your pride. I seek to check, I seek to guide. Let me in where you reside.”
Nothing happened the first couple of times he said it, but after the third time, a door appeared. A big, thick, brown, wood-slatted door like in movies set in another time, another world, in palaces of old. “Ahh.” Malcolm patted the door. “Hello, old friend.”
Did he mean the door? Was it sentient? That went right out the window when Malcolm reached into his pocket and pulled out an old-fashioned, brass skeleton key with the head of a…well, skeleton. He slid it into the keyhole and turned it. The whirling sounds of gears rolling and clicking into place echoed down the hall before a final click.
“Yes, now, this is good.” Malcolm stepped back and pointed at the ornate gold and ebony handle. “Go on, then.”
Cautiously, I came up alongside him and, with an unsteady hand, pushed it down. Next to me, he hummed, somehow sounding both somber and happy at the same time. My heart raced—not with anticipation or fear—but a knowing that my life was taking another unexpected turn.
Glancing back down at the hallway we’d just traversed, I knew it was true. The not-a-door, this place that couldn’t possibly exist in the building our offices were housed, the brass key…all of it. Allother, just like Sky and my dreamwalking, my gran’s gifts, Chance’s, and Elyse’s. All of us different. All of us knowing things the average person didn’t. And now that list included Malcolm with whatever was behind this door.
“Go ahead, Kingston. Open the door,” Malcolm whispered.
Blowing out a breath, I held on to the small handle like it could support my weight, and I stepped in.
As I wandered around, inhaling the scent of paper and ink and…as I drew in a deeper breath, Malcolm chuckled. The candlelight sconces on the walls flared to life as I shuffled into the room, illuminating short rustic wood bookshelves and cabinets lining the walls, stuffed with books. So many books. Some were even stacked on the ground with the spines turned out so you could see them. And were those…scrolls? There were. Baskets of rolled parchment sealed with twine or the press of a seal. The scent of magic.
My brow furrowed. None of the magical people in my life carried this smell. The scents of herbs and florals surrounded those in my life. Which I got, but there were undertones of sulfur and fire, and yet, something clean.
“Close your eyes, Kingston. Feel it all.”
Like his voice put me under a spell, my body stopped moving, and my eyelids closed. All the conflicting smells overwhelmed me as they mingled in my nose. What should have made a noxious order somehow didn’t—instead, they were like a symphony. If we could bottle this or capture it as a picture?—
And then I was on a voyage, much like the one I’d been used to growing up and walked above the normal world, drawn to a location and looking down on it. But this was different. My body moved quickly, but it didn’t feel rushed, more like long enough to study the snapshots in a photo album. One place to another.
I stood on the cap of a snow-covered mountain, then in the heat of a desert. The open plains of lands teaming with lions languishing in the sun, to the middle of woods, and the roar of a bear in the distance. Then there were villages and cities, filled with inhabitants who were dressed in old-time wear, and then fashionable, trendy now. As I went, different scents became sharper in my nose. It was like they were leading me on this journey.
The motion stopped, and I was on a beach. Scanning the horizon, I recognized this as home. Willowhope Beach. Malcolm appeared beside me. “Many a ritual happens near these waters.”
I didn’t know if he meant near the Atlantic Ocean, or right in this spot specifically, but before I could ask, in a blink, we were beside the Beckoning Pond on Chance’s property. Buck fished while hanging out with a couple of the ghosts who resided out here, all of them hovering in the air. They didn’t do that when I was with them. We took normal seated positions on logs or theground, and I wondered curiously if the spirits did that for me. To make me comfortable? Was floating more their natural state?
Off to the side, leaning against the Hallowed Tree like a couple of young adults would if they were still alive and hanging out, sat Stevie and Trixie. It was nice to see Trixie smile as the young man teased her. She was still relatively new to this afterlife business, so I tried to spend a little time with her every other day or so. It was nice to see that Stevie had taken an interest in reassuring her, as well.
