Unknotted

The sight of a gremlin dressed in street clothes—dark plain hoodie, jeans, and a backpack that buckled around his narrow waist—stalled my attempt to answer. Jik had pushed to the front of the crowd that waited to cross the busy intersection in front of the Broshot factory. Being that this was Tredema, the crowd was full of only dynamist—a blanket term that included gremlins, enchanters, and gravitas. Though gravitas were a nearly extinct race, so spotting one walking down the street would be akin to seeing wings on a hybrid’s beasts form. So not impossible, just not likely.

One would think with how hybrids and dynamists insisted on living on separate hemispheres that there would be more differences between us. Okay, so it was easier to sort out a gremlin’s affiliation—with their average height of four feet, pointed ears, and bright, warmly hued hair that had a tendency to stick straight up—from an enchanter’s or gravitas’s or hybrid’s. That aside, all of the races came in skin colors from ebony black to pearly pale, hair that ranged from curly to pin straight, and body shapes that were curvy, round, scrawny, beefy, and everything in between. So, while hybrids had canine teeth a tad sharper and more pronounced, the only way to tell us apart really was by our magical abilities and the color of our eyes and sclera. My blasted eyes were the only physical characteristic that betrayed what I was and proved I was on the “wrong” hemisphere.

Dwarfed by the enchanters to either side of him, Jik tugged the hoodie lower, casting his face entirely in shadow. I would never admit it to him, but he was the best gremlin I’d met at sensing when a camera was on him. Standing at the corner of a Broshot facility, there would be dozens at the moment.

I, clicking the radio back on with two taps to my ear, nudged Peth with my toe. “You can breathe now. Your bestie is back.”

Peth smacked my foot away, mouthing as she reinserted her earpiece, I can’t stand the rat.

Clasping my hands over my heart, I silently replied, But he loves you.

Peth rolled her eyes, giving full view of the yellow sclera ringing her red irises.

I snorted back a laugh. What? Is Jik too short for you?

She pinched her fore finger and thumb together. Just a little.

Any gremlin compared to a troll would be considered small, but Jik, at four and a half feet, was quite tall among his kind and Peth, at six feet, was short among hers. Seemed like a match made in the Between to me.

Jik wove between the dynamists crowding the sidewalk, using them as cover from the cameras. The moment he cleared any recordings he pulled his hood back. His hair sprang up like a crooked flame on a match, and just as red. He had a large nose, another common trait among gremlins, and a wide mouth that was currently puckered into his usual sour expression. He kept his face clean-shaven, and his eyebrows immaculately manicured into sharp angles over rust-colored eyes.

As Jik neared, the signs of an ebbing tide pulled at me, much like the ocean pulled at swimmers in the shallows of its beaches. Finally, the Core was on board with the plan. I glanced skyward, checking for the millionth time for some visual signal of the shifting tide. Like every time before, the Core’s light and the portals beamed as strong as they did at high tide.

“Jik, the tide is changing,” I warned.

“Core between,” he mumbled through the earpiece, and vanished into the recess of a store front.

With a final pull, the magic dissipated. As if slurping up spaghetti, the Core drew back the portals. My senses grew muffled, as if someone had put a blanket over my head. My vision narrowed and shortened. The spicy scent of Bruce’s air freshener faded, along with the stench of the garbage behind the restaurant we were parked by. The dynamists filling the sidewalks seemed to simultaneously slump at the magic’s disappearance.

A large bug whizzed past my ear. The bug was actually Jik, shrunk down to the size of my pinkie. He landed on Peth’s book. Thin white smoke puffed from the jet pack strapped to his back until it folded inward, reverting into an ordinary backpack. The plans for that creation, he claimed, were a closely guarded secret. In reality, there wasn’t a market for flying inventions, not when Whisps could idly ground anyone who dared to enter their realm uninvited.

Jik planted his fists triumphantly on his hips. “Pudding pie, I return victorious.”

“Want me to throw you a parade?” Peth glared at him while he walked across the pages of her book. She patted his head, smooshing his hair down. “Good boy, Jik.”

Undeterred by her sarcasm, he flopped down in the book’s crease and stretched out as if it were a bed. “We made a deal. I shut down the whole factory, and you carry me through phase two.”

“If you shut it down before the tide ebbed. The factory is still running.”

He startled to his feet and squinted toward the factory that continued to puff steam.

I leaned over her shoulder and dangled the detonator above him. “Can I push the button now?”

“Give me that.” He jumped for it.

I snatched it back. “My turn, remember? You promised.”

“Fine.” He dragged his hands down his face. Gremlins didn’t like anyone playing with their toys. Jik, in particular, wasn’t great at sharing. Must have missed that year in school where such things were taught.

Grinning, I pushed the button.

Nothing remarkable happened.

“Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake?” Peth asked him, glancing at the factory that chugged on without interruption.

“I don’t make mistakes, crumb cakes.” He crossed his arms and leaned against her thumb that held the book open. “Wait for it.”

A distant muffled alarm sounded down the street. Lights flashed through the factory’s long, high windows, drawing the stares of the dynamists on the streets.

The corner of Jik’s plump lips lifted into a cocky smirk.

“Still not impressed.” Peth snapped her book shut, Jik narrowly leaping free of its pages in time, and stuffed it into her coverall’s cargo pocket.

Jik landed on the rim of the truck bed, deflated.

“I still think you’re awesome.” I held out my palm for him to jump into and offered a fist bump with the other. He narrowed his eyes, and I wiggled my closed hand in front of his face until he lazily bumped his tiny fist against mine. My efforts to soothe Peth’s constant rejections helped little, I knew. What could I do though? I was short on advice but had fist bumps in infinite supply.

After putting Jik on Peth’s shoulder—it was her turn to carry him after all—I hopped out of Bruce’s bed and opened the rear door to the cab. Under the seat, I stored the bulk of my possessions. Minus my tools. Those I was willing to fork over money to house. I had a handful of shirts, a few pairs of jeans, socks, and unexciting underwear tightly folded and organized into compartments. Other compartments held toiletries and a few personal items, packs of food, extra water, and emergency supplies.

I grabbed coveralls with the same logo as the one on Peth’s. Once my crew had shown up representing three different businesses; it had ended with a close call with dynamists authorities. Exciting as that adventure had been, double-checking had become standard procedure. Tonight’s logo was a wrench under the company name “Wenches with Wrenches.” Jik hated it, but Peth found it hilarious.

In the minutes it took me to work off my shoes and slip into my coveralls, one of the five phones I kept in the middle compartment between the front seats buzzed. Peth, sliding her arms into her own coveralls by Bruce’s rear, quirked a brow in question.

I shook my head. “Wrong line.”

Another phone buzzed. Again, I didn’t answer, tucking my dark brown hair under a light blond wig and topping it with a cap. When the phone I had pulled out and set on the driver’s seat finally chimed, I hit the answer icon. “Wenches with Wrenches. When the magic is out the wenches go to work. How can I help you today?”

A snippy voice replied, “I need someone at the Broshot Factory on Dinvo Street immediately. The whole place has shut down.”

“Ma’am, the whole place?” I was grateful the woman couldn’t see my grin.

“Did I stutter? Yes, the whole place.”

I put the phone between my ear and shoulder and shrugged into my coveralls. “Could be there in an hour. I’m finishing up a job now.”

“An hour?” she exclaimed. “That’s unacceptable. I need someone now, or I’ll call—”

“Call who? A gremlin? They hardly know a wrench from a hammer when the tide is out. And there aren’t exactly a lot of other handyman businesses that operate when the tides are out.” In fact, I owned all five in this area, but she didn’t need to know that. I sighed as if I was about to grant this lady some great favor. “I’ll make you a deal, I’ll cut out of this job early for a price.”

“I’ll pay twice your rate,” the woman said through gritted teeth, “if you can fix whatever is wrong in the next half hour.”

“And you’ll leave a glowing review on Howl?” I slipped into the driver’s seat as Peth slammed the tailgate closed and approached the passenger side door. I glared at her through the window for her rough handling of Bruce.

The woman huffed. “Very well.”

“Be there in five.” I hit the end button, slid on a pair of black-framed glasses, handing another pair to Peth, and smiled. “We’re in.”