Page 57 of Missing Moon
Anthony gives a pained laugh. “Don’t tempt her.”
I shift my gaze to the kids. “Pretty sure this amulet is also some kind of key.”
“It’s a lot more than that.” Anthony shakes his head. “We shouldn’t mess with it.”
“I have no intention to ‘mess with it.’” I walk over to them. “But if I can use a tiny bit of its power to help find Mom, I have to try. Problem is… I have no idea how to use it.”
Anthony folds his arms. “Probably not going to find instructions on Wikipedia.”
“No…” Tammy reaches out and gently takes the amulet. “But maybe there’s something onwitchy-pedia.”
“Be careful, Tam.”
“Chill, Ma. I’ve had more training with magic than you had with HUD.” She holds the amulet up to her face, studying it.
I smirk. It still blows my mind to think about her having gone through an entire second childhood. Well, most of one. Maple didn’t turn her into an infant.
We stand there for a bit watching her stare at the amulet. Anthony picks his sword up and walks around the room stab-checking a handful of intact corpses to make sure they aren’t in the process of turning into exploding vampires.
A wash of iciness falls over me, as if a blast of cold energy erupted in the middle of the room.
I turn to look at Tammy. She’s standing beside a glowing violet portal with black edges. The middle swirls in an array ofcolors; every imaginable shade of blue and violet emerge from the edges and whirl together at the center.
“What did you do, Tam?” I ask in a half whisper while stepping toward her.
“Turns out thereisan on button.” She smiles at me. “If you want to find Grandma, she’s through there somewhere.”
I brace myself. “What are the odds of us getting trapped in there, too?” I ask. Saving my mother’s soul is definitely important, but it’s not worth the cost of having my kids end up eternally trapped.
“Low. It’s not a dimensional trap, so you should be able to teleport out if I can’t reopen the door on the other side.” Tammy nods at me.
I look at Anthony as if he’d somehow know if she’s right.
He nods.
Hmm. Okay.
“All right. On three?” I ask.
“Sure.” Tammy faces the portal she opened. “One… two…”
On ‘three’, we step through together...
Chapter Twenty-four
Erratic is One Way to Put It
For an instant, it feels like I fell into an icy mountain lake.
Paralyzing cold, with needle pricks all over my body, grips me and then dissipates. Reality fades back in, revealing downtown Klamath… sort of. It’s deserted and the abandoned cars parked on the street are much older, being mostly from the seventies and eighties. Colors are a bit muted as well, almost like it should be pitch black, and I’m only able to see because of my vampy powers.
The ice cream shop is back. Empty, but back.
Oh, wow. Since I doubt we traveled across time, the only other explanation for what I’m seeing is that we’ve entered a place where time froze. Talk about haunting. The craziest part is how I hear nothing. No cars, no distant airplanes, no music playing from a half-dozen places in range of my crazy amped up senses. Most telling of all, there isn’t the slightest audible hint of any animal life. Zero bird chirps. Finally, the air is completely still, not even a tiny breeze.
It’s so dang quiet here that I become aware of our heartbeats, which I don’t usually notice since they’re so faint that any other sound in the environment willdrown them out.
On random impulse, I start walking down the street toward the Monarch Diner. Of course, I’m right in the middle of the road since there is no traffic.