“Hey!  Hey you!  You forget fortune cookie.”

Aerin was already stepping outside and looking up the street, reviewing the directions in her head.  I turned back while holding the foggy glass door half open.  Granny was standing there with a crinkly red stamped plastic wrapper sealed around the tan clamshell shaped cookie in her outstretched hand.  I must have looked at her longer than I realized because she spoke again.

“Take cookie,” she prompted.

“I’m all set lady, thanks though.”

The combination of food and beer was starting to make my stomach feel like it was doing back-flips in my gut.
 
“You take cookie,” she said again, more firmly this time.

Whatever granny...

“Sure, yeah, I take cookie,” I stuffed it into my jacket pocket, feeling part of it break slightly, “thanks.”

The metal framed glass swung shut behind me as the Witch and I started our four block walk to some much needed sleep.

Seventeen
Bad Fortune

Forty dollars, thirteen hours, two cheap meals, one roach hotel and an expensive cab ride later we were sitting in the central floor area of the Boston Public Library’s main branch in Copley Square.  It was a huge room, reminiscent of an old English boarding school dining hall.  Just much more polished and welcoming.  There were large wood tables symmetrically located in a cleared out area surrounded by overflowing shelves with more sizes, shapes and varieties of printed bound books than I’d ever seen in one spot. 

Huge cathedral ceilings vaulted off large church-like clear windows set high above the floor, tall enough to let massive amounts of the dim evening light spill in but high enough that you felt isolated from the outside world by more than just a wall.  It was tomb quiet, save for the occasional scrape of wood against wood as someone moved a chair or the muffled whispers of conversations that floated by.  Overall, the massive room was another world for us, far removed from the hustle of city life and the insanity we’d fled the day before. 

The Witch and I had taken up occupancy at one of the larger tables and proceeded to flood it with large old books referencing every aspect of the scant few clues we had to go on.  There were numerous old volumes spread open and earmarked with yellow sticky notes, drawing attention to an odd passage, a phrase that seemed out of place, a name that sounded similar to Isis or Imus... anything and everything that seemed to relate to what we knew.  With neither of us able to discern a clear next move, gathering information seemed to be our best option.

I sat across from Aerin in a stiff wooden chair so shiny it was almost slippery and regarded her concentrated stare into a large Maine history book.  Something about our conversation at the Hungry Dragon was bothering me, something besides the connections I was starting to make.  Numerous cups of complimentary library coffee along with a much needed good night’s sleep had fueled my thinking, and my subconscious had processed everything we’d discussed and come to the conclusion that I just didn’t like it.  Not simply due to the disturbing news that the great and powerful Wizard of Oz in the sky had gone missing a hundred years ago, and also not because of the fact that I had learned I was some kind of integral part to the mysterious rift business – although these facts certainly didn’t do much to make me feel at ease.  But no, instead it was the simple discomfort I was experiencing from knowing that I still couldn’t get a full read on Aerin.  In fact, something in my gut told me she was being outright evasive. 

But if I can’t trust her, I wondered silently, who else is there?

“Aerin,” I said softly, “find anything?”

She took a moment to drag her eyes from the page then looked up at me slightly perplexed.

“Did you know Portland was practically destroyed four times?  There was even a huge fire in eighteen sixty-six that almost burned the whole city down.”

“You think that has something to do with this?”

“No clue,” she shrugged and sat back, “but everything’s connected to the same energy stream in the end.”

“Yeah, well... if you say so.”

She rubbed her eyes and glanced around the cavernous room, taking in our surroundings.  Her hair was tied behind her head again, this time more carefully than it had been when we fled Maine.  She did this whenever she had to read or use a computer.  Almost like a female equivalent to rolling up your sleeves.

“How about you?” she was looking back at me.

“Uh... a few things about Isis...”  Not now, idiot.  She’s only going to lie to you.  “Actually nothing really, but I was doing some thinking.”

“Oh yeah?  About what?” she said absently while shifting her position and leaning back over the history text with renewed focus.

“Not about this stuff.  Well, about this – but not what we’re reading.  What we talked about at the Chinese place.”

She looked up at me quizzically and waited for me to continue.  I drew a deep breath and leaned in, intent on putting my doubt to rest once and for all.

“Aerin, why didn’t you tell me about this before?  We were... together for two years, and I guess I just figured you would have told me something, ya know?”

She sighed and looked down.  I realized I was on to something and pressed a little further. 

“You said I’m tied to this and that I’m some kind of key or conduit... why keep that from me?  I mean, I almost got fucking killed back there.  Hell, more than once.”

Pale blue eyes looked back up at me, her expression betraying the slightest trace of some inner pain and conflict.

“I... I messed up, Jay.”

“What?  What do you mean?”

“I mean I messed up.  I screwed this whole thing up,” she said flatly, looking away for a moment and wiping her eyes with as much subtlety as she could manage. 

I waited patiently until she looked back, more calm and in control.

“You and I meeting all those years ago wasn’t an accident.  I was supposed to find you and prepare you for what was essentially a remote possibility.”

Goddamn it... this shit has taken my life from me, now it’s going to color every good memory I have with lies and secret agendas...  Son of a bitch.

“What the fuck are you talking about Aerin?  We met seven years ago in college, and then randomly bumped into each other again a few years after.  How the hell could that not be an accident?”

The sharp hiss of someone shushing me cut through the quiet in the hall.  I hadn’t realized I’d been raising my voice.  The pained look on the Witch’s face told me whatever was coming out next wasn’t going to be good news either.  I decided to beat her to the punch.

“So the whole relationship?  Everything?  All bullshit?”

“No!  Jay,” she reached across the table, putting her hands out as if she wanted to hold mine, “I never said that.  Everything between us was real.  It’s just that... it was wrong.  I was supposed to help you, not get involved with you.  And I... I didn’t...”

“Didn’t what?”

I reached out and took her hands, making eye contact and speaking very slowly so as to maintain control over volume and tone. 

“Tell me, Aerin.”

“There was...” she took a deep break and blinked at me with her slate blue eyes before continuing, “there was a fraction of a chance you could do something, something connected to... well, rifts in reality, which is why what you said surprised me.  Because you see, after getting to know you I made a bad call...  I- I didn’t think you were him.”

I had no clue why those words hit me so hard, but I sat there stunned for a good thirty seconds while she looked at me.  “...didn’t think you were him.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

I didn’t want her to answer, but I had to ask.  There were too many unknowns treading water in my head already.