Escort For The Witch: The Mystery of Psyche's Ruby

“Bullseye!” Brenda shouted to Derek.

Not wasting a second, I jumped up to him and delivered a mighty kick to his jaw, knocking him out cold.

“Life never prepared me for this,” Sabrina panted, clutching my arm. “I’m gonna need therapy. A lot of therapy.”

“We need to help Derek,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. At that moment something we had expected the least, if at all, happened: a phone rang. Sabrina and I froze, staring at each other like idiots. Meanwhile, her phone kept going off in her robe pocket.

“Answer it!” I barked, before noticing another bandit appear behind her out of the corner of my eye.

“Hello?” Sabrina said nervously, her fingers trembling as she put the phone on speaker.

“What the hell, guys, where are you? Everyone’s freaking out here!” came Eric’s irritated voice. “If you decided to run off and get married without us, I’ll get you for this! Where are you anyway? The rehearsal started hours ago, and the bride and groom are missing! Are you out of your minds? Derek and Brenda are gone, too.”

Sabrina slowly sank to the ground next to the clucking backpack, her eyes wide and her mouth agape. Almost robotically, she switched the call to video. Eric’s annoyed face appeared on the screen.

Just then, I engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the biggest and ugliest of the bandits.

He looked tougher than the others and knew how to throw a punch. He even managed to hit me twice on the jaw. I howled in pain but kept going. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sabrina hold the phone up in our direction. Was she seriously live streaming the fight? Her face was pale, and her eyes were filled with terror. On the other end, Eric was equally shocked, his mouth agape as he flopped on the bed in my room. I turned around just in time to see a massive, grimy fist flying toward me. I ducked and jumped to the side.

Just then, Derek appeared beside me. His coughing had worsened, and he kept clutching his throat.

“Jack, remember what happened in Vegas?” he rasped.

“I do! And I’m not proud of it!” I replied, dodging another punch aimed at my head.

“I’m not talking about that! The other thing!”

“What happened in Vegas?” Sabrina asked, coming out of her fright coma.

“Trust me, sunshine, you don’t want to know!”

“Anyways, give him to me, buddy,” Derek commanded. I stepped aside, letting the big grimy guy approach. He bared his teeth in a vicious grin and spat on the ground.

He growled something in French and lunged forward.

I darted to the side, letting the attacker land right on Derek. The undead sank his claw-like fingers into the man’s shoulders and gave him a good yank before lowering his head over his prey’s neck. The bandit screamed and went limp in Derek’s arms. The fight was over.

I stood there, breathing heavily, my heart pounding and sweat pouring down my back. I looked around and saw two more bandits lying unconscious on the ground. The rest must have scampered. Slowly, I walked over to where Sabrina and Brenda were sitting quietly, clutching the precious backpack. Even Coco was quiet now. I took the phone from Sabrina’s trembling hands and stared at the screen. To my surprise, the room Eric was in looked the same as on the morning I woke up there the last time. The same burgundy red curtains, the same matching burgundy comforter thrown casually over the same messy king size bed, and the familiar limewashed furniture with delicate gold stencils.

Apparently, while Derek and I were busy manhandling the unfortunate bandit, Eric was joined in the room by my father and another man I didn’t recognize. The stranger was about my father’s age, stocky, with a shiny bald head and a sweaty upper lip. He kept wiping his face with a checkered handkerchief, his large brown eyes darting nervously around the room.

“What the hell, Eric! Is this a joke?” I barked. “If you thought this would be fun, then let me tell you, it’s not! We almost got killed just now!” I was pacing around, throwing nervous looks at the three bodies on the ground and trying to steady my nerves.

As if reading my mind, Sabrina took a pack of cigarettes from her robe pocket and handed me one. I looked lovingly at her. She was clearly putting on a brave face, but all the signs told me she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“Jack, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Eric said, scratching the back of his head. “We’ve been looking for you all morning. I felt like shooting hoops, but you and Derek were nowhere to be found. Sabi and Brenda vanished, too. We thought you were out on the castle grounds somewhere, but…”

“Oh, but we were there alright, having a blast!” Derek’s tired voice came from behind me. “We must now be about three or four hours away from the castle. On foot.”

I startled at the sound of Derek’s voice, recalling what he had done just a few minutes prior.

“I dragged the body into the thicket so the girls wouldn’t see it,” he answered my silent question.

I kept staring at him. He looked terrible. I might even say – downright terrifying. His hair was dishevelled, his eyes bloodshot, and sinister dark stains outlined his mouth.

Blood had splattered his hoodie, T-shirt, shorts, and the once-white sneakers. Bruises had started to form on his skin, and he looked slightly swollen – the aftermath of overindulging in blood. At least he wasn’t going to be hungry for a while now, and we could all breathe a sigh of relief. Feeling a bit self-conscious under my hard stare, Derek busied himself with looking for his sunglasses, which he eventually found on the ground, hidden from view by my backpack.

“Still intact, thank God,” he muttered. “But the ball’s done for.”

“Holy crap! How can it be so sunny where you are, if you’re not too far from us?” Eric asked, turning his phone to face the window. It was almost dark outside and pouring with rain.

“I don’t know,” I replied, taking a drag on my cigarette.

“But maybe I do,” the stranger chimed in. “My name is Armel Dumourier. And if my guess is correct, then I think it’s quite possible that…”

“Oh, just say it already!” my father cut in, clearly agitated.

“I think they are in trouble…” Armel muttered anxiously, scratching his chin.

Chapter 7

The Time Trap

Armel Dumourier was clearly very nervous. He undid a few top buttons of his shirt and swallowed loudly.

“Felix gave you a letter and a ring, correct?” he asked Jack, wiping sweat off his face and adjusting his tiny glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Do you have those artifacts, Mr. Cornell?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You didn’t handle them, did you?” Monsieur Dumourier asked seriously and gave me a hard stare.

“I never really had time to. I just left the pouch on the dressing table by the window and…”

And then I remembered Brenda and my telling her to get a chocolate bar from that very table. I shot a furious glance at the girl still sitting on the ground, her legs crossed, listening intently to our conversation. Our eyes met. Reading my murderous intent, Brenda pursed her lips and buried her face in her arms.

“I’m sorry! I don’t know what came over me, but that little pouch… It was calling to me! I was literally enchanted by it,” she suddenly exclaimed, bursting into tears.

“What did you do this time, Brenda?” my father asked quietly.

“I don’t really know what I did and what happened,” the girl muttered guiltily, shifting her gaze away from us. “I just took the ring out for a closer look, saw some letters on it, and the next thing I knew – the ring started to glow… Brighter and brighter… it felt as if the stone were coming to life in my hands! It was like holding a beating heart. I freaked out a little and accidentally dropped it… It rolled under the table. I bent over to pick it up and noticed the stone had cracked. And before I was even back up again, the room had started to change around me. I don’t know what happened. Oh God, what have I done?”

Brenda fell silent, sniffed pitifully and wept even harder. Slowly, I moved the phone from left to right to show our surroundings to the worried trio on the other side of the screen, pausing briefly on the two bandits still lying unconscious on the ground some way off.

“See those thugs? They were really after us.”

“I’m afraid, Mr. Cornell, I have bad news for you. Unbeknownst to yourselves, and quite accidentally, you managed to activate Psyche, the ruby, and transported yourselves into another time.” said Monsieur Dumourier, wiping his shiny bald head yet again.

I felt the ground move beneath my feet. My body went numb, and my hands started shaking. I sat down on the ground next to Sabrina. She looked at me so pitifully that my chest tightened, and a lump rose in my throat. I had to get her home. Get all of us home, no matter what it took. A million questions swirled in my head. But how was I to find the answers?

“It’s impossible!” I exclaimed. “It’s complete nonsense! I believe in a lot of things – but time travel? A pile of bullshit, sorry.”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” the man said resignedly. “Until now, all the stories about Psyche’s legendary powers had been dismissed as fairy tales… including its ability to move objects through time and space. And yet here we are…”

“Supposing that’s the case, and we have been transported through time – how do we know where we are and what time we’re in?! Well, we know where, that’s for sure – but not the epoque. Also, if we are not in the same time as you, how could we be video calling each other now? This is absurd! Five minutes ago, there wasn’t even signal here!”

“Are you saying the ruby can alter the structure and properties of space and time?

That’s awesome!” Eric cut in, turning to Monsieur Dumourier.

“Yes, exactly.”

“Which means they…”

“Eric, shut up!” Sabrina snapped at her brother. “Monsieur Dumourier, you still haven’t explained to us how we’re even able to talk,” Sabrina reminded him, wrapping her robe tighter around her.

“Oh, I’ve read about this!” Eric exclaimed, ignoring Sabrina. “You’ve probably fallen into a temporal pocket!”

Sabrina and I exchanged puzzled glances.

“Can you dumb it down, please?” asked Derek, wiping blood off his sword with his shorts.

“A temporal pocket is a rare and unproven phenomenon. At least it had been until now,” Eric said readily, glad to put his knowledge to use. “It’s a kind of place where time and space are distorted and merged into one, creating a point of intersection—in your case, a point where different centuries met. It’s like a portal. You’ve all heard of phantom places, right? Well, this is kind of similar, except temporal pockets are not so harmless. When a pocket opens, space is disturbed and becomes unstable, meaning radio waves and electromagnetic signals can slip through, enabling cell phone use.

Because, as you know, cell phones use electromagnetic frequencies and radio signals to work. Hence our talking. Although we may lose you any minute or even second now.

Temporal pockets only open up temporarily. We got really lucky a pocket opened up at the right time, and you answered the call. Damn, it’s great you have phones on you at all!”

“If the pocket is now open, can’t we just go home? Can we not go through some ethereal door or however it’s done? Why are we still here?” Sabrina asked impatiently.

She was starting to get nervous, her brow furrowing.

“Probably because you time travelled through a different pocket, one that had opened earlier by accident. ” Eric explained. “A more potent one, too, given how many people had gone through. Normal pockets don’t have that capacity. Applying Monsieur Dumourie’s ruby theory, turns out you managed to activate the stone in a way that caused it to open a time portal. So logically, to get back, you’d need to do the same manipulation with the stone… Something like that… But that’s just theory. Let’s test it, shall we? Where’s the ring? Do you have it on you?

“Brenda, where’s the ring?” I barked, staring at Brenda expectantly. Judging by her facial expression, she was about to pass out. She turned pale, her lips trembled, and her eyes grew even wider than usual. “Brenda, I asked you to take everything on that table and put it into my backpack. You did that, right? Tell me you did, because that damned ring was right there!” I hissed, reaching into my pocket for another cigarette.

“I was going to, I really was! I mean, I tried to,” Brenda whispered, and we knew then that we weren’t going home today, or maybe for a while.