8.

Yara drove Brother Al and me to the CWC building. I was trying not to panic. Brother Al patted my hand gently.

“I wouldn’t overly worry,” he said. “It’s not as bad as everyone makes it out.”

“Have you ever been there?” I asked.

“Oh, well… no,” Brother Al said. “But I have read a lot on the subject.”

“How comforting,” I said. “And will you be coming with?”

“Afraid not,” he said. “The old darkness in these bones have yet to fulfill their duty.”

We got out. Evening had come on. We entered the building and were greeted by Brynholf, who wrung his hands and apologized the entire elevator ride up.

“I’m sorry,” Brynholf started. “The boys told me how much work you’d done for the investigation. I dismissed you over and over again, but I shouldn’t have.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“They called me and Vic for backup. I heard they were cornering a witch with a deadly serum she was distributing. Anyway. I thought maybe some paperwork would do us all good, to sort of think about the best way to handle it. Obviously, they disagreed and I was outnumbered. They went into the building, me following from a distance, and they cornered the young woman. Clemenza, I think her name was. Anyway. Things came to a head, and she activated the Dragon Eye to escape when she was outnumbered. The boys went in after her—Vic going after Eddie and Nagi went—and then a message came back from it. Asking for you.”

“I don’t know what I can do that three vampires can’t, especially against a witch,” I said. “And one I thought was a friend.”

“We all do what we have to do,” Brynholf said. “I don’t like it either.”

“Nor do I,” Brother Al said.

We made it to the Lab. It was totally in shambles. Broken beakers, glasses, and other equipment were strewn everywhere. Some interns were sweeping up some broken glass here and there. Dr. Kaz was leaning against a far open window, smoking a cigarette and staring into the distance.

In the next room, through an open door, a slice in the air like an oval pointed at the top, and the bottom was hovering. I could see misty orange energy flowing through it as if electricity moving through a series of open circuits.

“Dr. Kaz,” I said.

“Ah, Stacey. Summoned at last,” Dr. Kaz said.

“Did Clemenza explain herself?”

“No,” Dr. Kaz said. “She just said they didn’t understand—that none of us understood—and she activated the Dragon’s Eye in the next room after setting up a barrier. When she crossed over, the barrier fell, and they each decided they would go in rounds.”

“No word yet?” Brynholf asked, behind me.

“None, other than the initial ransom note,” Dr. Kaz said. She stubbed the cigarette out on the windowsill and sighed, frustrated. “This is ridiculous. If I’d had my druthers about me, I would have set up a two-way Communique incantation so we could hear what was going on.”

“Would that still be tenable?” Brother Al asked.

Dr. Kaz nodded.

“I’d prefer someone with more experience to head into this place, but I’m afraid Clemenza has more experience with interplanal travel than I ever gave her credit for. She’s keyed the Dragon’s Eye so that only Stacey can enter. Or someone with her general biological makeup.”

Something was sticking in my craw about all this.

“Why do you think she did all this?” I asked.

“Knowing her?” Dr. Kaz asked. “Clemenza has a good heart, but she’s very superstitious. I wonder how much whispers of The Imperium reviving has infected her sense of wonder. I still don’t see the point in distributing whatever rancid rot she was.”

“I don’t know what I can do when I’m in there,” I said. “I don’t want to go blind.”

“The Two-way Communique should allow us to communicate, yes?” Brother Al asked.

Dr. Kaz nodded.

“The topography of Topside is nonlinear, and non-spatial,” Dr. Kaz said. “Different areas have different rules. Generally speaking, thoughts are your most powerful weapon when you’re there. How good are you at Meditation?”

“Uhh…”

“Visualization?”

“Mmmmmm…”

“Can you obsess over an idea at will?”

“Well…”

Dr. Kaz closed her eyes and sighed.

“Well, you’re going to be toast,” she said. “Look. Real quick. Mind control is the most powerful weapon you can use in your arsenal. I want you to think about the thing that gives you the most happiness in the world.”

“Should I say it out loud?”

“No,” Dr. Kaz said. “Just think about it. What do you see when you bring it up? When you think about it? Do you see anything? How do you process it?”

“I’m seeing an iced coffee,” I said. “It’s the old kind I used to get.”

“You’re sick,” one of the interns said.

“I have a problem, I know,” I said. “I’m seeing a Starry-Eyes Sundae Frapp. It’s… okay. Plastic container. A straw. Half vanilla, half chocolate, two scoops of powder. It tastes like I imagine eighth grade tastes.”

“That’s a lot to unpack,” Brynholf said.

“Shut up,” I said. “It’s cold in my hands. It tastes like… cookies. Future. Hope.”

“Can you focus on that mental image? Is it fuzzy? Is it sharp?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s kinda. It fades if I don’t keep it moving and spinning.”

“As tends to happen,” Dr. Kaz said. “Alright. You seem prepared, at least a bit. Listen. Ideas become weapons in Topside. Anything you can imagine you can pluck from the aether around you. You just have to keep it active. Believe in it.”

“I’m not even a fighter,” I said.

“Well, you better imagine one next to you, then,” Dr. Kaz said.

“This might be safer if we just brute-forced the entryway,” Brother Al said.

“Could be, if you want to try. Or it could destabilize your molecular bonds at an atomic level and cause you to splatter.”

“I have the highest of faith in you, Stacey,” Brother Al said, patting me on the back.

“Remember,” Dr. Kaz said. She waved a hand between me and Brother Al, and I felt something thick and sticky wind itself up around my head and into my ear. “Your mind is your greatest weapon.”

The portal sucked at me, air from behind me seemingly pulled inside.

“How am I even going to breathe in there?” I asked.

“Imagine you can,” Dr. Kaz said.

“Should I take it at a run, or what?” I asked.

I felt someone shove me in the small of my back, and then suddenly, I felt the world around me spinning. Colors faded—something was screaming—a magnificent strobe of light in orange and blue lit up, concurrently, like neon signs in a tunnel, as if I were falling down, down, down into some cartoon, and then I found myself smashing into the soft soil of an island, staring up at where I had come from.

A heart-shaped hole in the sky pulsing with orange and blue concentric rings. Like the oval that Porky Pig stared out of at the end of all those old Saturday morning cartoons. I stared around me. I was on a plateau of some sort, with blank space all around me in every direction.

“Stacey?” I heard, in my ear.

“I’m here,” I said.

“Oh, good,” Brother Al said. “Describe where you’re at.”

“The sky around me is cerulean blue. I landed on a floating island. I don’t see anything else around me other than a big full moon in the sky.”

“You may have landed in the Outers,” Brother Al said. “There are no other landmasses near you?”

“No,” I said.

“Stacey, this is going to sound ironic coming from me, but have you considered jumping off the rock you’re on?”

“No,” I said. “Should I?”

“It wouldn’t hurt,” Brother Al said. “Just avoid the moon.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Just do as I say,” he said, voice snapping.

“It looks really far away anyway,” I said.

“Don’t look at it, either!” Brother Al snapped. “Jump to the next island, Stacey.”

“There’s not one,” I said.

“Then make one,” he said.

“How do I find where I’m going, though?” I asked out loud.

Brother Al’s voice was crisp in my ear: “You’re there already. Pick your path, Stacey.”

I closed my eyes.

I thought hard about another island next to mine. And then another island past that. A series of islands that connected down to another cleft in the air. A cleft in the air that would lead me to where I needed to go.

I opened my eyes. Blinked.

Sure enough, a whole series of islands rose from the void below, hovering over the blank sky backdrop. At the far end of them, connected by a rickety bridge, a portal was shimmering.

“Okay, that’s actually pretty cool,” I said.

“Just keep going,” Brother Al said.

The portal hummed. I could see a forest and a white tower in it, through the edge. I hopped from island to island, thankful I’d worn flats, and then found myself jumping into this far portal. The world contorted around me, and I found myself falling down another slide chute that fed me out into a pile of glittering fireflies. My butt hit grass with a soft ‘whumph.’

I got to my feet. Gravity here was stable enough. I wiped off my knees and looked around. Thick trees and heavy woods on every side of me. In the distance, vast monuments loomed high into the sky.

“Brother Al,” I said. “This place looks different.”

Silence, then. Of course, my connection would break.

An air of weird familiarity washed over me. What was it Dr. Kaz had said? I needed to use my mind as my weapons.

I’d been waiting for this moment most of my life if I were being completely honest. I think a normal part of every teenage girl’s development is the crushing realization that she cannot create a fireball to incinerate her foes or wave a wand and cause sparks to shoot out. Nevertheless, this may have been my shot.

I closed my eyes. Imagine a blue floating ball, flickering like a showering fountain, a globe of water hanging in the air between my hands. I opened my eyes again. Sure enough, there was a globe floating in the air, with water surging up and down its round surface.

“Find them,” I said to it.

It bobbed, flickering this way and that, and then sped off into the trees. I ran after it, barely keeping up as it zipped through the groves. Creatures I had only seen in fairytales flickered in my view briefly, here and there, but I didn’t have time to stop and look at them. Only had time to follow the ball of water as it tracked the people I loved.

Soon it paused as if panting and then dissolved entirely. I guess I was here. I was standing in front of a tall white tower that seemingly extended into the sky. There was a door with a locked brass knob gilt in gold overlay facing me. I thought about a perfect key for it—and felt it solidify in my hand. The door opened wide, creaking, onto a narrow staircase that wound up and up beyond where I could see.

I praised everything and everyone that I had worn flats, again, and started my trek up the stairs. Sconces on the wall lit as I passed by, in pairs, though there was no heat from the blue flames. One by one, as I hit every new bend and turn, another set of sconces lit. Murals carved into the stone wall spiraled up with me—and I realized after a while that it was a journey I was seeing.

A young woman in a bridal dress. She met four different men, each wearing a different colored suit. As the tower steps crawled up, so too the woman crawled up. She and the men did a delicate dance. Sometimes she was with one of them, sometimes with all of them, sometimes only a few. They faced gruesome beasts and terrible creatures as I went forward, and then, when I had hit a plateau in the stairs, the carvings changed. The woman was standing outside of a white tower on this final wall, and past the carving opening was the doorway to the next room.

I stepped through, carefully, and found myself in another torch-lit chamber. A woman in rags was stirring a pot. It smelled putrid. Bones swam as she moved her wooden spoon through the mixture.

“Hello, dearie,” the woman said. “We have been waiting ever-so-long for you.”

“We?” I asked.

“Of course. We ourselves, and of course, the new one that’s arrived.”

Clemenza was sitting at the table. She looked as if it was painful to see me.

“Let us all have some bone broth, and sit a while,” the old hag said.