Page 20 of No Charm Done
“Nothing to discuss. I only get one trip and I’m certainly not getting myself stuck in a time before cheeseburgers.”
“I insist you take me back to 1926.”
“Then prepare yourself for disappointment.”
Luna’s magic was already responding to her will, and a shimmering portal tore open in the center of the waiting room. But even as it formed, Elias could tell something was seriously wrong. Portals should be clean, steady. This thing was wobbling like a drunk.
“Sweetheart?” He squeezed her hand. “Your portal is looking a little—”
“Stop calling me that!”
The portal flickered between two different scenes—one showing a modern street with odd-looking cars Elias didn’t recognize, the other revealing a nighttime cityscape that might have been from his era, but hazier somehow. Both images kept shifting and blurring together like a photograph that couldn’t quite come into focus.
“Hey, portal!” Elias demanded. “Let’s go to Chicago, in my ’26!”
“No, to Oak Haven. In my ’26!”
The door that Elias hoped would never open now blasted apart. Three imposing figures in dark robes stepped through. “SHAW! Your many crimes, let me count the ways: attempting to breach dimensional barriers! Corrupting a fellow prisoner! Harboring an unauthorized visitor!”
Max leaped at Luna in blind panic. “Take me, too! Please!”
She shrugged him off. “You ratted us out before they even arrived! No chance.”
“Now that,” Elias said approvingly, “is cold.”
“Please, no,” Max begged. “Elias, come on! Get me out of here!”
“You made your bed, kid.”
The portal grew larger, and the guards backed away, their expressions alarmed. Even they knew better than to mess with unstable dimensional magic.
And there was something else. A smell drifted through the portal—a nauseating combination of sour garbage, stale urine, and hot tar baking in summer heat. Urban decay with a side of desperation.
“You smell that?” Elias wrinkled his nose.
“Oh God, yes. That’s not Oak Haven. That’s not anywhere good.” Sweat was beading on her forehead as she fought to control the spell. “The magic is pulling us somewhere else entirely. Somewhere . . . in between.”
In between. Elias didn’t like the sound of that. Nothing good ever happens in between.
The portal lurched violently, its edges becoming jagged. The smell got stronger, and now they could hear sounds—traffic, shouting, the distant wail of sirens.
“Whatever you’re gonna do, doll, you better do it fast.”
“There’s nothing I can do—the spell is collapsing!”
The portal gave another violent lurch and suddenly expanded with a sound like tearing fabric. As Elias was yanked forward, the last thing he heard was Max shouting, “Wait! I’m sorry! Please don’t leave me here!”
Then the sensation of falling through time itself, toward that nauseating smell and whatever was waiting for them in the space between their two worlds.
Well, Elias thought as reality dissolved around him, I’m not bored anymore.
Chapter 7
July 13
The portal spat them out onto damp grass. Elm trees overhead, humid, foul-smelling air all around, the steady thrum of traffic in the near distance. Luna rolled, sat up spitting dirt, and immediately turned on Elias.
“Typical. I try to help a magician, and this happens.” She pulled a stick from her hair. “One job—get us both to the twenty-first century—and you couldn’t hush long enough for me to focus.”
