Hellebore’s Holiday (3 page)

“Are you waiting for a response?”

She scratched her nose. “I suppose I could check and see. If not, I told them I would check back in twelve hours.”

“Check now and I will bring you back tomorrow morning.”

She got out of the car and sang again, holding her phone up and hoping for a signal.

Hellebore checked when the light flashed, telling her that she had a text. Raven answered that she was looking into it, Laura stated that she was going to try to get through to the Matriarch, Max asked her if the drinks on vacation were really that good.

Hellebore quickly sent a text to Max.
I don’t know. I am not on vacation, I am in a prison you fat, blood-sucking moron. If that offended you, come find me and beat the crap out of me. Please.

She winced at the reaction that the sentence was going to provoke. She needed to get across to the Abomination that the situation was dire. Insulting a woman who could tear her apart was definitely a way to get her attention; it was the attention that might kill her.

Hellebore stopped her song and returned to the car. “Okay, that is all I can do for tonight.”

“You looked a little pissed there. Is something wrong?”

“Well, out of all the messages I sent, one friend thought I was doing it while drunk on vacation. I had to goad her into a fight to hopefully get her to take it seriously.” Hellebore smiled weakly. “If she gets in here, she is going to kill me. Possibly literally.”

Neer turned them around and headed back into town. “It must be nice to have friends you can count on.”

“Oh it is, but explaining this situation in one hundred and fifty characters is difficult.”

“Do you know any wolves?”

She chuckled. “I do. I have sung at many wolf weddings. I love the drum songs.”

He laughed and parked in front of the inn. “They are very compelling.”

Hellebore chortled and got out of the car. “I like them. They are complex to sing, but I always get a good response.”

“I don’t doubt. Your voice was compelling even from inside the car.”

She smiled. “I hear that a lot. Thank you for the ride. Can I get another tomorrow morning?”

He exited his car and talked to her over the hood. “Of course. Go on and get some sleep. I am sure that you will get some good news tomorrow.”

Hellebore snorted. “I doubt it, but any news is better than none.”

“That’s the spirit.”

She nodded and headed into the inn. She could hear the conversation still going on in the bar, but she took the stairs to her room instead. If this was a hallucination, spending time with eight men from a variety of species was right up her alley. If it was reality, it was too weird for words.

Hellebore slipped into her sleep shirt and crawled between the sheets of the bed. She checked her phone and reread the last messages she had from her family, holding onto it as she dozed off.

A polite knock woke her. “Hellebore? Neer is here to take you back to the barrier.”

She cleared her throat and sat up. “Thank you. I will be out in five minutes.”

Hellebore didn’t have time for a shower, so she stripped and hummed until her hair and skin gleamed with power. She would take a proper shower later.

She slithered into clean underwear and jeans, pulling out one of her t-shirts and yanking it on over her head. Her hair crackled, but she let it ripple around loose. She wasn’t a gorgon, but she needed to let her hair have a day out of the braid now and then.

Dressed and holding her phone, she left her room, heading down the stairs and out into the sunlight. It looked to be about ten in the morning, which was right at the twelve-hour mark. Officer Neer was standing in the open door of his car, and he nodded at her as she approached.

Once inside the car, she had to ask, “How did the squad car get here?”

“It came with me. I was actually a county sheriff when I was sent here. The odd thing is that the car changes with the advance of time. Weird, huh?”

“I only wish it was the weirdest thing I had seen.” She chuckled.

“So, how are you opening the barrier?”

“Oh, I have found its frequency, and I can jack a pinhole open. Wherever they put this bubble, it is overlapping with an area that has cell service.”

“Couldn’t you just open a hole large enough for you to walk through?”

“Nope. The frequency I am using would cause pain for anything it my path, and the moment I walked through, the edge of the barrier would close around me. It is about five feet thick. The moment I would pass the edge, I would be stuck.”

“And your voice would destroy anyone in front of you?”

“If not destroy, it would certainly knock them to their knees, and at that point, they wouldn’t be able to move anyway.”

He sighed. “Right. Well, I hope you get some answers today. At least we all know why we were sent here. Your mystery must be a little confusing.”

She couldn’t answer. She was trapped in a yawn. She covered her mouth and watched the scenery skim by.

Hellebore worked on a few texts but didn’t set them to send. She needed to know if she had any answers yet before she could ask more questions.

At the barrier, she got out of the car and walked forward. Now that she knew the frequency, it was much easier to make the pinhole to send the signal through.

She held her phone up and waited.

Light flashed and it updated her with text after text. She closed the pinhole and read the information.

Laura said,
Matriarch denies all knowledge. I am pursuing other avenues of enquiry.

Verne said,
We are in contact with the council heads that know about that bubble. We are going to get someone to you.

Abby said,
I am just waiting for a location. All efforts to find you using objects have not been successful. We need to get more information. I am consulting the archive if the elves don’t get their council in gear.

Seesee Montrose was the most helpful,
The creature council is petitioning for your release as you do not qualify under any of the other councils if you take your actual biology into account.

Max finally got the hint that Hellebore wasn’t kidding.
Sorry, Hells. Gregori has put a petition out somewhere to get you loose. Keep calm.

It was Raven Dexter’s text that made Hellebore exhale on a ragged breath. The words shouldn’t have given her hope, but they did.
I have an appointment to see Santa this afternoon to find out if we can’t get you out of there before Xmas.

Tears pricked her eyes as she sent responses to all of them, thanking them and encouraging them to help.

She opened the barrier and sent the messages.

Her phone immediately pinged with incoming information.

Abby sent,
It has been five days! Where have you been?

Hellebore jolted and closed the pinhole. She walked over to Neer and knocked on the door. “Does time move differently in here?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I have never had an opportunity to measure it. Are your friends telling you that it does?”

“Yes, and the dates on their replies were from five days ago.”

“Then, it must be five days to twelve hours or ten days per day.”

She closed her eyes and quickly composed a chirpy text to her mother.
Might not make it home for Christmas.
Was included.

She felt sick that she had been out of touch and included the time difference for the friends helping out.

Two sent an acknowledgement immediately and confirmed that they were still trying to go through channels.

Raven was surprisingly silent.

For her sake, Hells hoped that Raven was off delivering a baby somewhere. It had to be safer than confronting the male that seemed to be the warden of this entire debacle bubble.

“What did you learn?” Irgano was washing glasses.

He made a mean breakfast and Hellebore was halfway through it. “I learned that time is different for me and them. It is hours for me, days for them.”

“Ouch. That is unpleasant. Are you going to continue this enquiry?”

“Of course. I have no idea how I got here; it has to be figured out.”

He set his glass aside and poured her a cup of coffee. “Who do you have working on it?”

“Friends, family. The usual.” She didn’t want to tell him about the Nexus and her guard. She didn’t want anyone putting up a defence to finding her.

“Is your mother worried?”

She blinked. “No. I have not told her where I am. I don’t want her to worry.”

She took the coffee and sipped. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great.

“She needs to know, Hellebore. Amaryllis should be told that you are here.”

Hellebore froze and didn’t sip at her coffee but brought it to her lips. “That is a very caring attitude.”

“Well, your mother should know about your location. It is only right.”

“Irgano, how long have you been here?” She kept her tone conversational and set her cup down.

“Twenty-nine years.”

“Wow. That is a long time.”

“I am aware of that.”

She smiled. “Well, I am going to take a tour around my new territory.”

“Have fun.” He waved her off with a pleasant look.

Hellebore got to her feet and slid off the barstool. She kept herself calm with the ease of long practice. Shifters could tell if your heart sped up, so she used a light humming under her breath to mask her reactions.

When she had made it out of the inn, she crossed over to the general store and looked around. “If you are all men, why do you have girl stuff?”

She lifted one of the hangars with the blouse on it in her size.

Tino looked up from the book he was reading. “It appeared when you did.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“Every time there is a new arrival, new clothing that will fit them appears.” He looked back at his book and smiled.

She put the clothing back on the hangar and left the general store. She put her hands in her pockets and continued exploring until she arrived at the clinic.

Hellebore entered the clinic and whistled sharply.

Doc Larsen emerged from the back room, and he paused when he saw her. “Hellebore. What can I do for you?”

“I need to know how much you know about Irgano.”

He cocked his head. “Why do you want to know about him?”

She shivered. “Because I am almost confident that he is the one who brought me here.”

“How would he do that?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. What do you know about him? Who did he replace?”

Doc rubbed his forehead. “You know, I don’t remember.”

“I thought you had been here for four hundred years.”

“I have, but I don’t remember who preceded Irgano.”

“Well, let’s start with the basics. What do you know about why he is here?”

“He pursued a woman whose family was against the union. They had him sent here.”

Hellebore winced. That didn’t make sense. If Earnor was here, then the mer-folk had their own space filled. Someone else must have sent him. Something about him made her positive that he had been after her mother. For one thing, she had never mentioned her mother’s name and he should not have been that concerned for the situation of a woman he did not know.

“Did he mention what the woman was?”

“No. He merely said that she was above his station.”

Doc Larsen cocked his head. “Are you sure that he knows who your parents are?”

“He knows who my mother is, and if he is an eagle shifter, that is highly unlikely. So far, I know this is going to be hard to believe, this is the only thing that stands out to me as unusual.”

He laughed and leaned against the counter. “Why come to me about it?”

Hellebore blushed. “I don’t know. I had to tell someone, and it was either you or Officer Neer.”

Doc took a few steps toward her and gripped her arms. “So, I was the best option out of two?”

She bit her lip and looked up into his dark gaze. “You were my first impulse.”

“I am glad to hear it, but you should get your friends to look into all of us to see if our lives crossed yours at any point.”

He kissed her lightly and smiled. “Write on that device of yours and we will get Neer to take you to the barrier again.”

“Will you come along?”

“Of course. If you chose me to confide in, I will honour your choice and watch your back. If Irgano is up to something, it will not cause you to come to harm.”

She smiled in relief, but she knew her cheeks were on fire. The light brush of his kiss was enough to send her senses tumbling into confusion.

He let her go and went to his desk, flicking a small button next to the phone.

“Neer will show up after he finishes his rounds.”

“Why does all of the technology keep up?”

Doc smiled. “Because we do eventually leave this bubble. We need to keep up with the human world. We get modern magazines, books and samples of new technologies. Everything simply appears in the general store and we pick and choose.”

“Nice. How about cell phones?”

“No. None of us can manage your trick with the barrier. There would be no purpose unless we wanted to take selfies as we shifted.”

She giggled at his knowledge of the word
selfies
.

Hellebore worked out a message for Laura. If Irgano had anything to do with Hells’ mother, the Matriarch would know and Laura was the best one to ask the question.

Neer arrived with a smile. “Your chariot awaits.”

Doc Larsen got up and came around, gesturing for her to precede him.

Under guard, she was driven back to the barrier.

Her escort spoke in soft tones while she whistled the tiny pinhole open again. Her message zinged out, and she received a multitude of communications. Reading email on her phone was not her favourite pastime. She had to open each of the documents while the pinhole was open and multi-tasking was awkward when she couldn’t look down.

When she had all the data that had been sent, she closed the hole.

Her battery was down, so she whistled a charge into it before sitting where she had stood and flicking through the information.