Doorways to Infinity (28 page)

“Eric? I can’t imagine him leaving the agency.”

“You never know. Doesn’t hurt to ask. Are you okay with him?”

“Sure, I suppose. If you think it’s necessary, and that we’ll have the money to pay him.”

“We’ll have the money. We just have to make sure we’ve got the personnel lined up as we grow. Our little community is expanding, Jamie.”

Community
. Jamie had never looked at it that way before, but that’s what they were becoming. “I probably shouldn’t have given the oath to the whole track team. We might be getting too big.”

“Nah.” Pete pinched up his mouth and gave his head a tight shake. “Not if they can be useful. I like ’em. I’m glad you brought ’em into the fold.” He chuckled again and said, “Though I don’t know if
community
is the right word for it. After watching Uncle Charlie dance, I think we might turning into a tribe.”

“I kinda felt the same way. That’s so weird that you said that.”

“That old Cherokee has some sly magic, even if you can’t figure out what it is.”

“I don’t think I ever will, Granddaddy.”

Jamie shook Eric and Terry’s hands before making a doorway for them back to their house. “Next time,” Jamie said, “bring your kids.”

“My kids would’ve loved it,” Eric said. “My wife would’ve, too.”

“I’ll do the oath with them, if you want.”

“I thought you didn’t want to tell anybody else about the magic.”

Jamie shrugged, so Eric said, “Okay, I’ll think about it. When’s the next big event here?”

“The Founders’ Festival, but that’s not ’til April. But it’s a big one,
much
bigger than this. You should definitely bring them here for that.”

Terry’s chin fell slightly and then she looked away.

“How about you?” Jamie said. “Do you want to bring Stacey?”

She opened her mouth for a moment before answering. “We’ll see.”

“Okay,” Jamie said slowly. “Well, at least maybe we can figure out a way for you guys to spend Christmas with your families.”

“Doesn’t look likely,” Eric said. “Our boss wants us out in the field.”

“Even if you have magical intervention?” Jamie wiggled his eyebrows.

“Not unless you can figure out who Phillip Cage’s next target is and how to protect them.”

“Can’t you work out of your headquarters in Langley? You’d be staying at your own homes, at least, even if you had to go into the office.”

“If we went back to Langley, Cage could strike a target while we’re home and we’d be called back into the field immediately, even if it were Christmas Day. And our boss wants us to stay in Cullowhee so we can maintain contact with that so-called witch that Nova’s mother knows, the one who lives in Sylva.”

“We’ll get you home for Christmas, somehow. There’s got to be a way.”

“We’ll survive if we don’t make it,” Terry said. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Jamie regarded Eric and Terry, whose attempts at hard, stoic faces were betrayed by a subtle bitterness in their eyes, like faint light seeping under the bottom edge of a closed door.
I need to do something to help them
.

The group from Cullowhee was the last to leave that night. While they made a final check to make sure that they had everything, Jamie took Coach Dave aside and said, “If you want to see Miss Duffy, I’ll do what I can to help.”

The young coach smiled bleakly. “Thanks. I talked to John Paul and Brinna about it, and they said I should go for it, and Shauna said she’d like to see me.” He cleared his throat. “If I can get here.”

“Here’s what we can do. Since I might not be able to make a doorway when you need me to, you can drive to Hendersonville on your day off and go through the permanent one in my granddaddy’s warehouse. It comes out over there.” He pointed at the yellow building across the road. “It’s only about an hour-and-fifteen minute trip if traffic’s not bad. We’ll have to get Fred to make you a counter charm bracelet so you can get through it, though. It’s protected by a hex. That’s the best I can offer right now because I don’t want to make another permanent doorway unless I really have to.”

Coach Dave shook his head slowly. “It’s so weird to hear you say things like that and take them seriously. Magic doorway. Counter charm. Weird stuff, Jamie.”

“You’ll get used to it fast, especially when you see how convenient it is.”

“I guess it is pretty inconvenient trying to date a woman on another world, huh?” He blew out a long gust of air. “Am I crazy for trying this?”

“It worked out pretty well for John Paul and Brinna.”

“They seem really happy.”

“There’s a phone here at the school so you can call Miss Duffy when she’s at work.”

“Thanks. I’m going to pursue this. I like this woman and something tells me I should give this my best shot.”

It’s probably the Big Cosmic Whatever at work
, Jamie thought, but decided not to explain it to his coach. Jamie turned when he heard Rollie call his name. “We’re waiting on you,” Rollie said. “Time to go home.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Jamie and Coach Dave joined them, and Jamie started to outline a doorway.

“Wait!” Allison waved at the school grounds and said, “Bye-bye, Rivershire. We’ll see you soon.” Then she smiled at Jamie. “I’m gonna work here next year. Your grandfather already offered me a job.”

“Me, too,” Frankie said. “Or at least I’m thinking about it. Can I get an apartment here?”

“No, but you could live in Hendersonville and commute through my granddaddy’s warehouse.”

“He seems pretty cool,” DeSean said. “What’s he like to work for?”

Then the trickle of questions turned into a flood. Fred said, “Can this wait? Some of us would like to go home.”

Jamie opened the doorway back to Cullowhee, but before anyone stepped through it, Melanie said, “Jamie, aren’t you forgetting something? Don’t you need to turn off the lights?”

“What?”

Melanie pointed at the glowing suns that still floated overhead.

“I forgot.” Jamie snapped his fingers and they all winked out, leaving the school grounds awash in the ghostly light of the full moon.

Everyone looked up at the surreal disk that hung in the sky like a big dinner plate swirled with soft watercolors. No one spoke for a long moment until Lakshmi said, “It’s a different world all right. Beautiful, though.”

“Yes it is,” Coach Harrison said. “Let’s go back to Earth.” He stepped through the portal into his office.

Chapter 12

It was the Wednesday of finals week before Jamie thought of a way to help the two agents. He went to their house late that afternoon, alone.

“I think I know how to put a kink in Cage’s plans, so you might be able to go home for Christmas. I thought of this on my own and I haven’t told my friends yet because Fred won’t like it.” Jamie smiled fleetingly. “How about if we blow up Cage’s helicopter and airplane while they’re at his monastery stronghold? Then he wouldn’t be able to get to his next target, right? He’d be stuck.”

“We’ve already thought of that,” Eric said, “and ruled it out because it’s too dangerous. Someone would have to get in really close to destroy the aircraft, even if they used an RPG or shoulder-fired missile. We’ve never been able to come within two thousand yards of that place, not even with a drone, and the Romanians aren’t too keen on letting our bombers use their airspace.”

“What if I made a doorway for us right beside the runway and blew them up with my magic?” He smiled again and formed his hand into a pistol. “Boom—boom. Two blasts and they’d be nothing but slag heaps. We’d be done in a few seconds, and then we could pop right out of there.”

Eric rubbed his chin and stared at Jamie. “We’d have to know for certain that both he and his aircraft were there so that he’d be stranded.”

“That’s not all,” Terry said. “He might be able to replace one or both of them within days.”

“What if I blow a bunch of holes in his runway, too? Then he couldn’t fly unless he got a helicopter. Maybe I could blast his access road while I’m at it. He couldn’t drive or fly ’til it got fixed. Must be tough getting repair crews up into the mountains on short notice. I bet it’s snowy there, too. He probably couldn’t even climb down because it would be too dangerous.”

“Might work. It could buy us a few days’ rest, at least.” Eric continued to rub his chin and he nodded. “We’d have to make it look like it was done with real bombs instead of magic. I don’t want to tip our hand that we have you as an asset.”

“I’m an asset?”

“Of course. And, by the way, I just found out from a friend at the FBI that they are using someone they call a ‘magic consultant’ on an occult serial murder case.”

“What the heck is a magic consultant?”

“Supposedly, he can sense when other people are using magic. The FBI has hired psychics before on tough cases, but this is the first time they’ve ever used somebody like this, that I know of.”

“Well, he must not be very good, or they’d be knocking on my door by now. The spells I’ve been doing are really powerful, and they’re like a beacon to other sorcerers. Fred’s magic is like that, too, for witches.”

“Still,” Eric shrugged, “I thought you might want to know, in case anybody comes snooping around.”

“You mean, like you guys?”

“Yeah. Like us. I guess we were kinda clumsy about that.”

“You probably were following procedure, but you can throw that manual out the window when dealing with somebody who has magic.”

“Like Phillip Cage,” Terry said.

“So I say we go against the manual and do something gutsy and aggressive, something that he wouldn’t expect. Like blow up his toys.”

Eric clamped his mouth tightly and held Jamie’s gaze for a few seconds. Then he said, “I’m for it, if we can work out the details. We’ll have to wait until the low-orbit satellite passes over his compound again before we finalize our plans. Then we can see if his aircraft are on the runway by the monastery.”

“I’ll be back in Hendersonville on Friday for winter break. Text me when you know something, and I’ll meet you here.” He started to outline a doorway to his dorm, but paused. “By the way, let’s keep this between us, okay? Don’t tell any of my friends.”

“We’re secret agents,” Eric said. “We know how to keep a secret.”

* * *

Jamie was in Hendersonville, working at his older cousin’s veterinary clinic on Saturday morning, when he got a text message from Terry:
We should hang out!!!

Jamie figured that the triple exclamation marks meant they needed to have a meeting right away. He glanced at the clock on the far wall.
My break is in twenty minutes
.

Jamie, still wearing his blue scrubs, stepped through a portal into Eric and Terry’s house. “What is it? I gotta make this fast ’cause I’m still on the clock at work.”

“Cage is at his mountain stronghold,” Terry said. “We just saw the most recent satellite image, and both of his aircraft are on the ground. It looks like a large contingent of visitors are there, too, judging by the number of vehicles parked at the monastery now.”

“He seems to be having guests for a Christmas celebration,” Eric said. “The phone traffic indicates something of the sort.”

“So what do we do?” Jamie asked eagerly, and a little anxiously, his heart rate kicking upward at the news.

“We need to attack at night, preferably really late, but there’s a seven hour time difference. If we leave at seven, it’ll be two in the morning there. Can you get away then?”

“Tonight? Um…maybe seven thirty. I’ll have to do the dishes after dinner. I can tell my parents I’m going out to do some Christmas shopping, so they won’t ask too many questions. Fred won’t, either, if I hint that I’m shopping for her.”

“We only have two bullet-proof vests. Can you borrow one from your dad?”

“Not without telling him what’s going on, and I’d rather not do that. He’ll insist on coming with us.”

“I think that we should keep this operation small,” Terry said. “Less chance of getting detected until it’s too late for Cage to do anything about it. But I’d feel better if you had a vest, too.”

“I won’t need one. I can use my shield.”

“While you’re destroying the aircraft?”

“Well, no. But I’ll only have to drop the shield for a couple of seconds at a time.”

“Then we’ll cover you,” Eric said. “Meet us here as soon as you finish the dishes, and we’ll go to Romania right away. Wear black. Even your socks.”

Jamie outlined a doorway back to the vet clinic and thought,
I wonder if other special ops people have to finish the dishes before they go on a mission?

* * *

Jamie returned to Eric and Terry’s house that evening for the raid in Romania and was greeted by a sobering sight. Both agents wore black, head to foot, with bulletproof vests and heavy boots. They were preparing military-style rifles, also black and menacing, and a black duffle bag lay unzipped on the floor. Black was definitely the theme color of the party.

“I only have a dark blue coat.” Jamie glanced down at his heavy winter jacket and suddenly felt inappropriate, like a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt to a formal dinner. “I hope that’s okay. I thought about borrowing my dad’s black leather jacket, but I didn’t want him to start asking questions.”

Eric looked at Jamie’s attire critically. “That coat will do, as long as you’re warm enough. There’s definitely snow in those mountains right now, and it’s bound to be cold. Do you have any black gloves?”

“I can’t wear gloves. The magic blast would burn them up.”

Eric turned to Terry. “What do you think?”

“We need to do something about it. There’s a sliver of moon out and his white hands will show. I can put eye black on them.” Terry reached into one of the extra pockets of her pants and pulled out a plastic tube, took off the cap and said, “Let me see your hands.” Jamie offered them to her and she began rubbing it over the backs of them, leaving dark smears as she worked.

“Where do you get stuff like that?” Jamie asked. “Spy World, or Spies-R-Us?”

“Sporting goods store,” she said without looking up. “Athletes use it under their eyes to cut down on glare. Now, turn them over so I can do your palms.”

“Is it flammable?” Jamie said.