Bridgebreaker (The Echo Worlds Book 2) (3 page)

Jasmine shook her head.  They were just friends now.  That part of their relationship was long gone and buried.  And it was for the better.  Cendan was a nice guy, a great guy, but his total tone deafness on emotions and any connection to people really drove her to distraction.  There had been too many arguments about things that should have been obvious to anyone with any sort of awareness about feelings.

“Cendan.  Got a minute?”  Jasmine called out to him.  Cendan glanced behind him and smiled.

“Hey Jasmine!  Looks like you’re healing up well.”  And he meant it.  Her burns, once pretty bad looking, had really started to heal up.  Her hair was going to obviously take a lot longer to recover.  “Yeah, can you give me about fifteen minutes?  I want to finish transplanting this... Well whatever it is.”  He gestured towards the plant in front of him, some kind of fruit plant with a strange almost pure cylindrical fruit that was blue fading to near black.

Jasmine shook her head.  “Sorry, I kind of need you now.  And … I don’t want Marcus to find out what I need to talk to you about.  Or show you.”

________

Cendan gave her a much more appraising look.  Jasmine wasn’t one to hide things from anyone.  Hiding something from Marcus was as about as out of character as he could imagine.  Two things stood out to him now that he was paying attention: firstly, she was nervous.  Her feet were moving a bit, and her left hand was finger tapping on her thigh.  And secondly, her mouth was tight.  She was more than nervous he realized; almost apprehensive, anxious even.

“What’s going on, Jasmine?  You never hide anything from anyone.”  His voice betrayed his concern.  Things weren’t right here, and he wasn’t sure why.  “Why can’t Marcus know?”

Jasmine rolled her eyes and sighed.  “Look, just come with me and I’ll explain as we walk.  I don’t want to leave this going on longer than it needs to.”

Cendan hesitated.  This was all damn strange.

“Just trust me, ok Cendan.  I just need to show you…”  Jasmine trailed off, unsure of how to say that she needed him to come with her to meet a witch who can perform magic; who was here to warn them about Grellnot and the Slyph; and who had a special message just for him.  “Just come on.”  Jasmine whirled around and fast walked out of the Garden.

Cendan stood for a moment, at a loss for what to do.  This was odd. “EVA?  Do you know what’s going on?”  Cendan had slowly gotten more comfortable talking to the presence in his head that was EVA.  He still didn’t want her ‘there’, all the time.  He wasn’t sure he’d ever want that.

“
Not fully Cendan.  I know she just came back into the headquarters, and there is something odd about her.  There is a residue for the lack of a better term, of magic around her.  I’m trying to identify
.”

Magic?  Cendan startled.  He’d better follow her, something was going on.  He quickly walked after her, talking to EVA in his head as he chased after Jasmine.

“What do you mean magic?  Jasmine cast a spell or something?”  That would be beyond strange, as Jasmine, like Marcus, still at least nominally believed that Bridgefinders couldn’t do magic, even though Cendan knew that wasn’t the case at all.

“
No Cendan, I believe that someone cast a spell on her.  I don’t know what it did, but I can say with some certainty that it’s not in effect now.  It’s just residue, like fog on a mirror
.”

Cendan blanched a bit at this.  Someone cast a spell on Jasmine?  Who?  What?  How?  Too many questions, too many Branches.  He needed more information, and the only way he was going to get it was to find and follow her.

“Hey EVA, stay with me.  Not sure where this is going, but stay… aware, or whatever you want to call it when you’re actively inside my head.”  He was sure that EVA was amused by that thought,

“
Yes Cendan, I will.  I wouldn’t be too concerned, however, with Jasmine.  As I said, it was residue.  Not anything active
.”

“You say that, but someone casting a spell on us?  Using magic, on one of us?  And remember, we haven’t had a bridge form in weeks.”  Cendan spied Jasmine, pacing by the exit of the lair.  “Just stay aware, ok?”

EVA didn’t answer directly though a feeling of comfort washed over him.  Cendan still wasn’t sure exactly how he felt about EVA being in his head.  On one hand she was powerful, intensely so, and pretty much joined to him permanently.  Sometimes she was motherly and comforting.  Other times she was all business.

Though since EVA was pretty much unique in the world, a magic steam punk AI isn’t something you run down to the store and put on layaway.  Who knew what or how she would react to things.

Finally, he caught up to Jasmine, who was still pacing and agitated.  Pushing his inner conversation about EVA off to the side, Cendan tried to see the residue that EVA was talking about.  He was getting better with this skill, the seeing of magic.  And there it was, a faint covering of the multicolored dots that made up the magic of this world.  Jasmine herself could work magic, but this didn’t come from her.  It smelled wrong.

He wasn’t sure why he thought it smelled, but it did.  It didn’t have a bad feeling, just foreign, not of who Jasmine was.

“Jasmine, what’s going on?  You’re acting strange,” Cendan asked.  His arms crossed, he looked at her face, trying to figure out where this was all going.  “You want me to see something outside?  And Marcus can’t know?  This is weird Jasmine, really weird.”

Her head tilted to one side, and she winced.  “I know Cendan, just come with me.  You need to come with me.”

Cendan paused, but nodded.  He trusted her, how could he not?  He’d followed her into the Red Orchid about a month ago, and here he was, member of a secret group tasked with protecting the world from magical creatures and their leader, who wanted to both drain all the Bridgefinders of magic, and merge the two worlds into one under the leadership of the Slyph.  A thin smile formed on his face.  Maybe it might be better not to trust Jasmine, considering how the last time worked out.  He was, however, as protected as he could be right now; EVA in his head and active, and his focus in his pocket.  He was loath to leave it in the Barrier room and had been ever since the attack.  One more point of contention with Marcus.

Jasmine took her focus out of her jacket pocket and held it up as the barrier that marked the exit melted away.  With a nod, they stepped through and were transported to the bottom of the stairs at the back of the Red Orchid restaurant.  Cendan still found himself holding his breath when he went through that thing.  It just still felt wrong to him.  Crossing who knows what amount of distance – if that was even the scale he should be using – in a blink of an eye was a weird feeling.

Jasmine hurried up the stairs, not looking back at him.  With a deep breath and release, Cendan followed.  There, at the top of the stairs, was one of their cars, and a young woman was leaning against it, bored.  She was playing with strange wooden circle that sort of looked twisted.  Her head jerked towards them when Cendan felt it.  Magic.  Strong magic.

The magic washed over him, coming from this woman!  Reacting more than thinking, Cendan drew through his focus and slammed back against the tide, assisted by the presence of EVA in his head.  The woman’s eyes widened, and just as suddenly the magic stopped flowing from her.  Cendan could see it, however, surrounding her, dense and flowing around the small hoop in her hand.  It was a focus! Or something like it.

“So you’re Cendan.  I’m surprised.  I didn’t think your kind knew magic or what to do with it..”  The woman’s voice was pleasant enough, but the mocking tone set his teeth on edge.

Cendan turned toward Jasmine, “Please tell me there is a good reason for this?”

Jasmine struggled for a moment before the other woman cut in.

“Oh don’t blame her.  She has, or I should say had, a light geas set upon her when I held her down at the supermarket.  She had to go get you.”  The woman held out a hand to shake Cendan’s.  “My name is Heather.  Heather Anston.  And I believe you know what I am.”

Cendan eyed her and her hand.  “You’re a witch.”

Heather nodded, her red hair making a halo in the breeze.

“Exactly that, Cendan Key.  Now don’t be rude, shake my hand.”

He felt it then; a pull; a tug.  An inner feeling started saying shake her hand, don’t be rude, you don’t want to be rude to her do you?  Before he knew it, his right hand was a quarter of the way up before EVA’s voice cut in, strong.

“
Cendan!  She’s trying to lay a compulsion on you
.”

Cendan shuddered, and slowly lowered his hand, making a fist to fight the urges.

“Stop that.  I will not be controlled, not by you.”

Heather gave him an appraising look.  “Very well.  But I wonder if you’d be able to do that without that machine in your head.  Oh don’t look so surprised, I can feel it in there.”

Cendan’s face betrayed his surprise at the witch’s apparent knowledge of EVA.

“How did you know about that?” he blurted out.

The witch, Heather, sighed and pushed her still unruly hair behind her ears.

“What is it with you Bridgefinders?  You think the rest of us with the gift don’t keep a very close eye on you all?  Your little club, running around, trying to stop the Slyph.  Instead of trying to win her over again, and have her like us, you run around poking your finger in her proverbial eye.  And now, you all pushed her too far, and she got angry.”

Heather paused and looked at Cendan square in the eye.  “More to the point you made her angry, Cendan.  She lost it, and she pushed too hard, and now something very bad has happened.  The Slyph and Grellnot are at war.  You all think that the worst that could ever happen is the Slyph winning.  She just wants the magic that’s all.  If you all could have worked with her, found a way, none of this would have happened.  Grellnot would have never been created; the Bridgefinders wouldn’t even be a thing.  Hell, magic itself could have been something the world celebrated.”  Her voice louder now, she pointed at Cendan.

“But No!  Your kind had to piss her off.  Grellnot is no longer under her control.  He’s absorbed too much magic; he’s grown.  And you think the Slyph is bad?  Grellnot is a thing of pure hunger; pure anger.  He’s the true threat.  I came to warn you all.  For all your blame in this fiasco, you Bridgefinders are users of the gift, even if you don’t acknowledge it.”  Heather dropped her hand and looked down.  “Fools you may be, but powerful ones nonetheless.”

Heather glanced at Cendan with hooded eyes.

“I also have a message for you, Cendan Key.  Lachnin sends his regards and reminds you; bargains made must be bargains kept.”  Silence enveloped them then; Jasmine, Cendan and the witch Heather.

Cendan felt one of those moments when time seemed to stop.  He could almost feel the air thicken as his mind went into overdrive.  Lachnin?  The Elf King?  How?  Glancing at Jasmine, she gave him a blank expression.  He wasn’t sure she even knew what to say at this point.  Her view of everything, what he assumed she had already started to question, had now been shattered.  Magic could be done, it worked, and she knew in her heart that everything they had been taught, everything that she’d grown up believing, wasn’t fully the truth.

He looked at Heather again.  The witch’s face had a smirk on it; she’d been waiting for this moment, to smack him with the fact that the Elves were waiting, watching.  He’d made the bargain, but that had been before he knew the truth; that the Elves needed humans, and in particular, human women.  There couldn’t be more Elves without them.  Forcing himself to take a deep breath, he stared-down Heather, careful not to let his momentary panic cross his face.

“I haven’t forgotten.”  Cendan replied, more bitterly than he meant to.  He opened his mouth to retort when a thought occurred to him.  How did she know?

There’d been no bridges formed anywhere, according to the map, for two weeks, so how could this witch know about his bargain?

“The more important question is how do you know about my bargain with Lachnin and the Elves?”  Cendan asked.  He could still feel EVA’s presence in the back of his mind; it was actually comforting to know that there was something or someone there to keep him protected.

“What do you mean?  They told me.  Well, they sent me a message at least.”  Heather looked confused.  “You know, through a Bridge.  They can’t come through due to the ban by the Slyph, but they can send messages.”  She took one look at his face and Jasmine’s, and knew something was off.  “Why does this surprise you?  Bridges form.  You know this.  Fewer outside this town thanks to that damn machine of yours, but they still form.”

Jasmine cleared her throat to answer.  “There’s been no Bridges formed in the last two weeks at all, not since the attack by the Slyph.  We’d know.”

Cendan nodded in agreement.  “Try again, Heather the Witch, how do you know?”

Heather laughed.  “You’ve got to be kidding me.  I was in contact with someone just last night.  Here in this city.”

Cendan and Jasmine exchanged looks of alarm.  Cendan could usually tell if someone was lying, and she didn’t appear to be.

“EVA, what do you think?”  He mentally reached out to the system.

“
Cendan, my abilities to detect Bridges and move them here is saying she’s wrong.  Everything I can sense says that no Bridges have formed from the Echo world at all.
”  There was a pause as if EVA was trying to figure this out.

Cendan queried her quickly.  “How does the detection work? I thought the map did that?”

“
It does, I’m connected to the map.
”  EVA answered back.  “
We are tied together, in a way.  Loosely tied.  I get the information from the map and use that to ‘steer’ the Bridges here
.”

Cendan mused as the others looked at him.  The map.  The leaves.  Leaves!

“EVA, when the attack happened, Sal, and I ran into the map room to see leaves all over the floor.  This was after the hounds got in...”

EVA answered back, “
Cendan there is a chance that the map has been compromised.  If so, we’ve been running blind for the last two weeks.  We literally don’t know what’s been happening
.”

Cendan ignored Heather and looked at Jasmine.  “Jasmine, we have a problem.  EVA thinks, and I agree, that the map may be broken.  Or at least compromised.”  Jasmine’s eyes shot up, but she nodded.  “If so, we’ve got problems.  But how would we know?”

Heather broke in.  “You people really do know nothing.  I can tell you if it’s been modified, someway.  Hell, I’ll even show your boy wonder here how to do it himself, since he at least seems to know a bit more about how magic actually works.”

Cendan waved Jasmine over to talk in confidence.  Heather rolled her eyes and leaned back against the car, feigning disgust.

“EVA, can you tell if she’s listening in?”  Cendan asked.

“
I’m not sure, but she’s doing something.  I can try to interfere, but I make no promises.  This is strange
.”  EVA responded.  A few seconds later, Heather’s hand shot up to her forehead, and just as quickly, she lowered it, shooting Cendan bird as she did so.

“I don’t think she’s listening in now, Jasmine.”  Cendan lowered his head until they were nearly touching.  “What do you think? You brought her here.”

Jasmine nodded.  “Mostly against my will it appears, with that geas of hers on me.  But it’s true, if the map was modified or broken in some way by the creatures that broke in, the same ones that killed Sal, we’ve got a huge issue.”

Cendan nodded.  “My issue is that I don’t know if we should let her, a self-professed witch, a user of magic, and a partner, if not servant, of creatures from the Echo World, look at the map.”  Jasmine kept speaking, quietly.  “Then there’s Marcus.  If he knew we were talking to her, even right now, he’d blow his top.  But bringing her into the headquarters?  Showing her the map?  That’s even more dangerous.”

Cendan knew she was right; they didn’t know Heather and her helpfulness was, at best, suspicious.  Marcus would go crazy if he found her in the lair, and after his earlier run in with Marcus, this would be one hell of an escalation of that fight.  Jasmine wasn’t aware of the run in that he’d had with Marcus earlier, but he wasn’t sure about telling her.  Marcus and Jasmine were close, not in a romantic way, but close.  Setting them against each other would not be helpful, or at least he thought so.  People; so damn strange to his way of thinking.  Always bringing emotions into decisions.

Emotions had their place of course, and it wasn’t like Cendan didn’t feel them.  Hell, he felt them quite strongly.  But his got in the way when it came to decisions.  People had asked if he was autistic or had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder at times, not really understanding what they were asking.  Cendan was neither; he just refused to let emotional responses get involved when he had to make up his mind.  He wasn’t some character out of a science fiction show either.  He’d heard that one more than once as-well.  He had feelings, but he seemed to be able to put them to the side.  So no, leave the more heated response he’d gotten from Marcus out of this for now.  Concentrate on this issue; this witch looking at the map.

They had the cons of letting her in, but the pros were simple.  Heather knew magic far better than he did.  He’d been piecing it together from various notebooks and mentions in the Maker wing, but didn’t understand half of it.  Heather, though, had grown up with magic.  She knew it the same way he knew the logical production methods for optimal efficiency.  It would take him a lot of study and time to get even close to where he could be with an actual tutor.  And the immediate problem; the map was super important.  If the map was in fact broken then flying blind, as they were, could be deadly.

“I know how dangerous it is.  I don’t know…”  Cendan paused and stared at the floor.

Jasmine jumped in.  “Cendan, we need proof first.  I’m willing to do this and start the fight of all fights with Marcus if you can prove to me the map is broken.”  Jasmine eyed Heather and Heather glared back.  “I don’t trust her.  I don’t even like her, but I’m not sure if that’s my bias talking or a gut instinct.  I’ll back you, but I want proof.”

Cendan nodded.  He had to keep in mind that Jasmine had been raised as Marcus had: to think nothing good of those who they called witches and wizards, warlocks, sorcerers, witch-doctors, and mediums.  Indeed, anyone who dealt with the Echo World, who used the creatures and the powers there for personal gain and prestige.  Add in the fact that this particular witch had very temporarily paralyzed her and then cast a geas – a magical compulsion to make Jasmine take her here - to the headquarters – and it was easy to understand where Jasmine was coming from.

Heather had been smart to use the geas.  Cendan vaguely remembered reading that in folklore you couldn’t force the person under a geas to go too far, which was why she hadn’t tried to force Jasmine to get her inside.  Push too hard and the geas breaks, like all those hypnotic suggestion things.  You could suggest they stop smoking, or overeating, but try to get them to attack someone and it wouldn’t work; pushed too far.

“Ok, we will make her prove it.  But how?  Form a Bridge here?  Can that even be done?  And then have us go look at the map?”  Cendan asked confused.

Jasmine shrugged.  “Yeah, I guess; I mean...”  Jasmine’s face lit up.  “Hey, our phones don’t work as phones in the headquarters, right?  But that doesn’t mean I can’t record the map while she’s doing whatever here.  That way, we can both see it live, and then see the footage of the map.  What about EVA?  Can it check as well?”

Cendan nodded.  “Yeah, she can.”  A quick mental ask – “Right?” – to EVA, followed up with only felt like a thumbs up, confirmed the thought.  Though, with a touch of amusement, as Jasmine continued to call EVA an ‘it’.

“Ok, we have a plan.  Let’s get proof first, and then if so, we can let her see the map, regardless of what the brooding boss has to say about it.”

Approaching Heather, Cendan noticed that, for all her attitude, she was a remarkably attractive woman.  Flaming natural red hair, except for that blue streak; grey eyes; pretty.

EVA poked him, “
Be careful, Cendan.  There’s enough magic swirling around her that I’m not sure what she’s doing.  I can’t tell if she even really looks that way.
”