If this had been easy, I would have opened my eyes and I would have been in bed.  It would have all been like a dream, except for muddy shoes and the smell of doughnuts.

Or crumbs of cheese-puffs.  No one, except for me, is allowed to eat crackers in my bed.  I told Maggie it was a deal-breaker.  In retort, she offered to make s’mores.

I opened my eyes in time to see the portal draw into itself, like the reverse of unwrapping a package, I guess.  That would be wrapping it, of course, but I’m terrible at that.  I’m more likely to pay the nice lady in the festive scrubs the “donation” to get mine all pretty, or hand it to the kid still in a plastic sack from the store while their mom’s not looking.  (Of course I’ve been moving to cloth bags instead, but some of those crazy boutiques still hand out the plastic unless you cuss up a storm.  Which, I mentioned, I’m no weather worker, so I can’t even swear up more than a little bit of bubbles and spit.  Ahem.)

This was a nice, neat folding of the universe from the edges of where the gate was anchored into a localized center that imploded.  I’m sure it all has to do with some sort of interaction between magic and physics,  but I think the quantum theorists have to be even stronger practitioners than the heavy hitters, or quacks.  I still haven’t made up my mind.

It left me sitting next to a stone table, under the weak sun of a sithen hill where fortune was never my friend.  I looked for meaning in the table, or in the bread, but instead brought my eyes to the castle which loomed over us.  Why did my subconscious give it such pretty, sharp spires?  I would have sworn my opinions far more clear, my willpower to suggest it more an iron fortress, an asylum filled with despair.  But no, this was more Lisa Frank than Edgar Allen.  Poe.  You know.  Rainbows and kittens with halos and nary a  sharp word, ill thought, or bad habit.   Except for the cobwebs.

There was a guard at the gate.  The armor was white, and sharp.  I ignored it to climb back up to the cave.

Doloise stood there, a visible haze of anger around her.

“Shut it,” I said, before she could even begin to say whatever it was she was going to say.  A crackle of lightning crossed her amber sunglasses.  “I want back into my world.  More than anything else you can pay me, I just want to go home.”  I leaned over.  “I feel used.”

So, to make a long story short, she brought me back.  Not by the same route we used, although I remembered the promise of my heart.  It was dark and it was dark when I went into my house and she dismissed my simulacrum.  It was dark when I pulled off my pants and sat on my bed.

Her voice surprised me there in the darkness.

“You did not use your magics.”

“No, but I sure used my talents,” I said.  “Go away.  I uninvite you, if ever I invited you in the first place, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t.  Just go away.”

“We are…confused.”

I laughed.  I couldn’t help it.  Actually, it took me a few minutes to stop laughing, even there, without my pants on, which, really, is one of the best times to laugh.  Unless you’re on the toilet, at which point you’re a bit too vulnerable to enjoy it.

“Go away.  Two words.  Get out of here.  Four words.  Don’t come back.  Three words, if you don’t count the conjunction.  What part don’t you understand?”

“Why did he leave?”

I paused.  “That answer will cost you.”

“We are prepared to pay.”

“You don’t have enough.  Look.  I know what I’ll see if I look in a mirror.  I’ll see him.  Or rather, I’ll see myself, and I’ll see that you never come unscathed from dealing with a shadow lord.  He left because he marked me.  His will was done, so mote it be.  Jerk.”  Bleepin’ demons.  “I can’t make it any clearer for you.  Go ask the Questor.  He might be able to tell you how to find the answer.”  I wonder if he ever sends anyone to bark up the wrong tree.  Or to jump in a lake.

Why did he leave, E?  You felt something just as he left.  Like a shadow on the brow, a whisper on the soul, a sliver of what makes a whisker quiver.

I wanted Maggie.  I wanted somebody to hold.

But instead, I had a family of faerie arguing with itself about what a mortal could possibly mean, a cold bed, and no dinner.

I think I’ll get a cat.