“I did it!” she said, smile returned. “I did it, I bloody did it! I can finally, finally open the portal myself!”
“That’s awesome, Tess, but seriously, we talked about this. You need to do this with Merlin around until you get it right. What if you’d opened it onto that horrible bat-realm?”
“Merlin made it possible to only open it onto to realms we’ve already had successful dealings with, so I couldn’t have. It’s perfectly safe. Look.”
I shrieked as she stepped through the doorway, onto the footpath outside it. A couple of passers-by looked at me oddly as they went, but one had the head of a Siberian Husky and the other a Cocker Spaniel, so they were in no place to judge. “Whoa! What the freaking hell?” Jez asked, obviously having just arrived. She quickly shut the door leading out to the shop behind her.
“Tess, please, come back in here,” I said.
“I don’t know what you’re worried about,” she said, doing as I asked and then shutting the portal down with a weird, twisting, flicking motion. “I’ve got this. I’ve worked bloody hard and now, I can do it. I can open the portals.”
“And what are you going to do with this hard-earned ability?”
She took a moment to consider it then replied, “Run the import business.”
She’s lying, I thought, without even a twitch of guilt. The pause was the giveaway; she had to think for a plausible excuse. I looked at the portal, looking for some kind of locking mechanism or linchpin that could deactivate the doorway until needed. Something I needed to talk to Merlin about. “Where’s Merlin tonight?” I asked.
“Not sure if he’s coming,” she said. “Arthur’s about to start the quest for the Grail, so it’s a busy time for him.”
“I always wondered what he was supposed to be doing off screen when reading the Arthurian legends. Now we know he was helping fair maidens open portals.”
“He’ll be around when he can,” she said with a shrug.
“We were thinking maybe he’d be coming by to see you,” Jez said.
She frowned, shook her head and then burst out laughing. It was a harsh sound. “Me? The man is part-faerie, the most powerful ma
gic user in the universe and is fulfilling this mentor kind of role in multiple dimensions. Believe me, he’s not doing so because he wants to play kissy face.”
I watched her say the words with a certainty that made me wonder if they were her words, or someone else’s. He was a gorgeous-looking guy, in that weird, otherworldly way, I could understand if she started seeing him as more than a teacher. Her eyes burned bright, she blinked in rapid succession, as if to keep tears back. Fuck.
"Tess–"
"It's fine. Let's go to the opening."
"OK, I'll meet you there, I just need to grab something."
I turned to Jez when I was sure Tess was gone. "Can you like, lock this thing or something?"
"Me? Look, Ash, I've never really been that strong in the magic department."
"But you're a witch."
"Hedgewitch more than anything, sex magic sometimes. I can brew a mean tincture and make a good poultice, but that’s about it.”
“So, you can either fuck the portal closed or patch it up with some soggy leaves you steeped in hot water. Shit.”
“You gotta talk to Merlin. He’s the all-powerful wizard.”
“Hmm, apparently he’s busy being part of the Arthurian Cycle.”
“He hasn’t been around much, I wasn’t sure why. Tess–”
“Yeah, I know. Let’s leave it, there’s nothing we can do right now. I should have thought this through, Merlin and the portal. It’s not like I shouldn’t have expected he’d have to take off and leave us with a proficient gatekeeper, dying to slip off to another dimension. Anyway, we can have a look through Nan’s books tomorrow. So, Shane?”
Jez’s face split into a wide grin, “He’s coming by tonight.”
“Nice! Tell me all about it.”