"So there's a chance that Balthazar and the others will come back, too," Dave concluded. "But when, and where? I hope we don't have to wait for twelve years." The questions swirled in his head. He asked them aloud in the hope that the older sorcerers could provide an answer. "If it is dark magic, who could have cast it, and why? If it's not, if it's a natural phenomenon, then it's awfully coincidental that it showed up all three times near Miss Kolinsky. Balthazar never put much stock in coincidence, and I'm starting to agree with him."
Alvar muddied the waters further. "Who's to say that these were the only instances? There may have been other times, in other locations, that we don't know about."
After a moment's consideration, Dave had an idea. "Let's do a Google search. If this has been happening in other times and places, somebody's bound to have recorded it somewhere." He headed toward Alvar's room. "You don't mind if I use your computer, do you?"
Alvar followed, but his prisoner stayed seated at the table. He stopped. "Come on," he ordered. "I don't want you trying to escape while we're not paying attention."
"It's not that," she replied. "I'm just as curious about this thing as you are. The problem is, I don't think you want me near your computer. They don't work for me."
"Oh, we're not asking you to use it. Even I don't know how to do that yet. Dave will have to teach me." He took her arm, and she reluctantly rose.
"Hey, we made the national news!" Dave called from the desk where he was sitting. "They think somebody set off a bomb in the storm drain, probably the same ones who blew a hole in the UBS building. They want to have more hate crime legislation."
Chandra rolled her eyes at such idiocy. She and Alvar made their way over to the alcove.
The monitor was already full of search results when the pair approached. Dave was busily scrolling down, trying to find something that matched what he was looking for. The image froze, flickered, then flashed a brief error message. Dave was left staring at a blank blue screen.
"What?" Frustrated, Dave slammed his palms down on the desk.. "This is a brand-new computer! How can it crash already?"
"I warned you," Chandra said from behind his left shoulder. The men stared at her in amazement. Slowly, Dave asked, "What else gets messed up when you're near?"
She didn't want to tell him, but he obviously already suspected. "Anything electric."
"Anything..." His eyes narrowed. "I'm going to test that," he announced. He led them back to the main floor. Motioning Alvar to halt with the Morganian, he moved on for about twenty feet, then spun and sent a crackling blue ball of energy at the woman.
It sputtered and died before it had a chance to reach her.
He nodded. "Plasma," he explained. "It's a form of controlled electricity. My guess is, you can't create it, either, even with your ring. Am I right?"
She just pouted, which was answer enough. Her secret had been discovered.
Dave returned from the laundromat, carrying his booty in the same clothes hamper he'd taken it out in. Now the laundry was fresh and folded, with Chandra's clothing on top. She plucked it out without so much as a "thank you" and disappeared into the locker room to change. "You're welcome!" he shouted after her.
He took the hamper into Alvar's room and set it down. "Did you know it's already nighttime?" he informed the other. "We must have slept pretty much the whole day."
"I'm not surprised," Alvar replied. He put his clean clothes away. "So, if we want to get back to a normal schedule, we can either try to sleep some more now or stay awake for a lot longer than we're used to."
"Well, I'm not tired at all."
"Nor am I. I was thinking that we could go to Miss Kolinsky's apartment to pick up some of her things. We don't want you having to make a daily trip to the cleaner's just to keep her happy."
"Yeah." He sat down at the desk and fired up the computer again. This time, it worked just fine. "Something caught my eye last time, before it crashed. A lot of the search results came up 'wormhole.' I wonder..."
By the time Chandra reappeared and stood by the alcove entrance under Alvar's watchful eye, Dave was feeling a building excitement. "Everyone thinks it's only a theory, but it might just be more than that. It could be real!"
The Morganian inquired, "What? What could be real?"
He turned around in his chair. "A wormhole! From your description of what happened to you, and from what we saw for ourselves, we may have discovered the first real evidence that they exist. This is big–really big. It's a physicist's dream if we can prove it." He smiled ecstatically, forgetting for the moment the reason for his search.
Alvar looked utterly lost. "A wormhole? What is that? I assume you're not talking about the tunnels that earthworms dig."
Dave launched into a lengthy technical explanation about traversable wormholes, general relativity, exotic matter, and other terms his elders couldn't follow. He finally noticed the glazed look in their eyes and took pity on them. "Um, they're essentially bridges," he said. "Some connect two points in space, and others two points in time. There's no limit on how far apart those points can be. You can go from one part of the galaxy to another like that..." He snapped his fingers. "Or you can go from here to any point at all in the past and back again. They could be naturally occurring or manmade, but since the ones we saw were nowhere near a science lab, I'd have to say they were natural."
"But why were they all close to me?" asked Chandra. "Do I somehow attract them?"
That was a good question, one to which Dave had no immediate answer. He needed more information. "When did you say the first two showed up?"
"Well, the first one was in the Fall of '97. I don't remember the exact date, but I do know on which day I landed in the past. It was my birthday, literally; the very day I was born. I didn't know it at the time, but I remembered when I came back."
"Hmm, Fall of '97..." Dave tried to think back Had there been anything noteworthy going on then? He'd only been seven at the time, so the only thing he could think of had been personal. He shoved that memory to the back of his head. Move on, he told himself. Maybe there's a connection I can come up with if we can tie in the second instance. "Your birthday, huh?" he noted. "I don't know if that's significant, but it is interesting. Okay, so the second time was...?"
"Wednesday night, a week and a half ago."
A cold weight formed in the pit of Dave's stomach. Those two times, and then last night, were the most traumatic in his life, even more so than the incident at the Arcana Cabana. Coincidence? It couldn't be...could it? He tried one more possibility. "Did you...was anything happening when...?"
She shook her head in denial. "No, nothing special, at least those two times."
The weight expanded until it filled its host to his very fingertips. Dave couldn't move even if he wanted to.
"Dave?" Alvar's concern was evident. "Are you all right? Your face has gone pale." He took hold of the apprentice's wrist to check his pulse.
The Prime Merlinian looked the physician in the eye. "Alvar, I don't know how, and I'm not even sure if I'm right, but..."
"But...?"
"I think I'm the reason for the wormholes. I think I'm the one who created them."
"How is that possible?" Chandra was finding Dave's claim hard to accept. "We were either miles apart or years apart when it happened. Yes, the third time could have been you, but what about the first two? How do you explain them always popping up next to me?"
Dave had to concede he didn't know. "I do have a theory, though. I found out a lot of my capabilities through nothing more than instinct; self-preservation, to be precise. Fear is a powerful emotion. It brought out things in me I didn't know I had. But for those three times, it wasn't just fear. It was fear plus. Besides being scared for myself, I was losing, or had just lost, someone really important to me."
Alvar queried, "So you think these wormholes are manifestations of strong emotions?"
"Of mine, yes. As Prime Merlinian, I have no idea how far that can project. It may be that I'm sending out this whole huge aura of electrical energy, and nobody is even aware of it." He nodded toward the Morganian. "And that's where you come in. You have a strong electrostatic field, an electric charge imbalance, that's apparently permanent. My positive energy meets your negative energy, and Poof! We've got a disruption."
"All right," she allowed, "but what about Wednesday? I was stuck back in the '50s. How could my negative energy have any impact at all?"
"Yeah, that's something I haven't quite figured out yet. There's still a piece of the puzzle missing."
"Well," said Alvar, "why don't you think about it while we go retrieve some of Miss Kolinsky's things? I'd like to get her alcove entrance fitted like mine, too, so we don't have to use assorted lab equipment as a wall."
Chandra had her own suggestion. "You could just let me go. That would be much simpler, don't you think?"
The man beside her rolled his eyes. "Oh, yes, that would be much simpler. Then you could go find one of your Morganian friends to help you craft another ring, and then come back to cause us more trouble. I don't think so."
"Who could I find?" she wanted to know. "Horvath is gone, Abigail is dead, and Drake...well, I don't know where he is, if he even got out of the tunnels, but don't count on him to stick around and fight you. He's a coward at heart, that boy. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out he went to Vegas to headline his own magic show."
Dave chimed in, "That's not a very nice thing to say about your own apprentice."
She shrugged. "He's useless to me now unless he is still around, which I doubt. I was training him to help me take out Blake so we could release our leader from the Grimhold. Since Morgana was destroyed, that plan is over. Horvath isn't here to make us follow his plan, either, so we're free to do what we want."
"And what do you want?" asked a curious Alvar.
She pondered. "I'm not sure," she murmured at last. "Maybe be the queen of a little town somewhere, or a city, or whatever. I haven't decided. It was different, living as a human for all those years in the past. I've gotten used to it."
"So you don't really miss your ring that much now?"
"Of course I do. I've just learned how to live without it, that's all."
"Well, that's good, because you're not getting it back for a while, if ever. We can't trust you. Come on, let's go pick up some of your things. You'll have to stay with us for a while longer."
The three of them walked partway to where the X5 was still parked. At a certain intersection, Chandra halted. "My apartment is that way." She pointed and gave them the street address. "I'll have to walk there; vehicles don't work for me, either."
Dave was impressed. "Just how strong is your field?" he wondered. "Okay, I'll pick up the car and meet you both there." He grinned at Alvar. "Maybe we should have kept your horse."
At Chandra's place, Dave and Alvar were conscripted into loading up the SUV with clothes and furniture. They fit a dresser, a sofa, and a bed frame inside, and tied the mattress set to the roof for transportation. Chandra carried her personal items herself. They also claimed as much food as they could pack. Daylight was still an hour away when the older sorcerers arrived back at the subway turnaround. Dave had already unloaded the X5 by then and brought the cargo inside.
The designated (temporary) bedrooms occupied alcoves opposite each other, in the tunnel spaces once used by subway trains. Similarly opposite were the kitchen and locker room, leaving the last two spaces the only ones suitable to store clutter. The men packed as much into one as they could fit in order to leave some space open on the other side. Then they moved in Chandra's things. Once her alcove had been furnished, the new tenant seemed noticeably more at ease. She complained relatively little, though she made clear her continuing displeasure at being confined.
Dave tried to be positive about the whole situation. "Think of it this way," he offered. "You're living here rent-free. You have no expenses to pay. Besides, you always have at least one of us here, so there'll always be somebody to keep you company. It's not all bad."
"I'd rather live alone," she retorted, but the words lacked the sting she undoubtedly intended. She busied herself folding her clothes and putting them away.
Dave wandered back to the cot he'd reclaimed when their guest brought in her bed. The cot was wedged into the minimal platform area in front of the locker room, as much for security reasons as for anything else. He felt comfortable, here in the lab that had become his second home, and now it was home for two others. He sat on the cot, waiting for Alvar to emerge from the room beyond the door.
The master joined him shortly. "How is she?" he asked, nodding toward the alcove across the way.
"I think she's kind of okay with this set-up," Dave responded. "You know she's not going to admit it, but it almost seems like she doesn't mind staying here with us. Kinda weird, huh?"
Alvar was skeptical. "I still don't trust her. She's a Morganian, after all. And, we still don't have a real wall for the entrance."
"How about a fence and gate instead? Would that work?"
"Well, I suppose, as long as she can't climb over it."
"Okay, I can handle that. I just need to know how many feet to buy." He scratched his head, remembering his finances. "Um, I'm a little low right now. You wouldn't happen to have any money I could use, would you?"
"You're a sorcerer," Alvar reminded him. "How could you not have money?" He strode to his dresser and came back with a heavy-looking pouch. "Here."
Inside, the gleam of gold set the recipient agape. "I...I can't use this," he finally managed. "I meant regular money. You know, dollar bills and stuff. Do you have any idea how much this is worth?"
"Enough to buy a fence and gate?"
Dave peered at the older man as if he'd gone insane. "I think I'd better go online to find out the value of these coins," he said. "If I don't get arrested for suspected theft or something, I'd like to trade them in at a bank or gold dealership." He paused, uncertain. "Uh, you don't mind me updating your funds like this, do you? I can take just a couple if you'd rather keep the rest as gold."
Alvar looked rather amused. "No, you can use as much as you like. I can always make more."
"Make more...?" Uh-oh. Dave squirmed uncomfortably. Balthazar had impressed upon him that magic was not to be used for shortcuts, or for personal gain. This was definitely personal gain. "Alvar," he began cautiously, "isn't that...you know, against the rules?"
"What rules?"
"The first rule of sorcery. That's what Balthazar taught me."
"Ah, I see." Alvar smiled. "Maybe for Merlinians. You forget, though; I'm not a Merlinian. I can do what I please."
"And Balthazar's okay with that?"
"He accepts it. I'm his master. He has no authority over me except what I choose to give him."
Oh. It was a somewhat startling revelation, discovering other ways of thinking about sorcery that, even though they didn't quite match what he'd been taught, didn't fall into the enemy camp, either. He was intrigued enough to want to know more.
For now, though, he had an errand to run. Twenty feet of iron fencing and a four-foot wide gate, eight feet high, plus more wire mesh like that which protected Alvar's room, would suffice.
Monday evening saw an underground lab much altered from its original state, before any sorcerers came to stay there. The latest addition was the metal separating Chandra's room from the main floor, and more books in Alvar's bookcase. The top shelf held medical books, which he was using to update his knowledge as much as possible before having to brave an online deluge of information. The shelf below was Dave's, where he'd put the textbooks he'd retrieved from the penthouse, along with a few other things that didn't fit in his suitcase. He was especially glad for Alvar's company then, for the place still felt achingly empty without Balthazar and Veronica. Chandra's books about magic, both fiction and non-fiction, took up the third shelf of the bookcase. The bottom shelf was still empty.
The trio had been up for nearly twenty-four hours when Chandra decided it was time for bed. She took a nightgown from her dresser drawer and turned around to face the alcove entrance. Scowling, she announced, "I want curtains."
"Curtains?" Alvar repeated. "What for?"
"Well, number one, for privacy. It's terribly inconvenient for me to have to change in the locker room all the time. Number two, because I don't want to be looking at bars. It makes me feel like I'm in a cage. And number three, if I'm going to be stuck here with you men, I'd like at least a little space I can call my own. I want my own private room. Oh, and I want a rug, too. This stone floor is awfully cold on my bare feet."
"Will there be anything else, your majesty?" Alvar couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice, not that he was even trying to.
"I'll let you know if I think of something," she assured him.
He shook his head, exasperated. "Tomorrow. We're not going back out tonight."
