Mission Improbable
Phoenix edition
Party prep? Yes, she checked the RSVP and left it for Rune to return to the Bog Witch. Witches, dragons & pixies were normal now here in Millcreek. How life had changed.
How could she welcome new neighbors in good conscious?
Rune watched the magnifying glass sparkle in the moonlight as she packed her gear. She packed her kayak like a woman who watched exactly one heist movie. Ocean's Eleven, Rat Pack Edition & then Clooney. Phoenix skipped the parts where they practiced. She knew exactly what she was doing.
Lockpicking book, wrapped in a dry bag. It was a library book & Jen would be upset if it was wet when she returned it. Flashlight. Phone/camera. Bartelby installed himself on the bow like a figurehead carved by someone with a grudge. His tail flicked with the precision of a metronome set to unimpressed.
Bartelby surveyed the water like he owned riparian rights to it. The paddle cut through glass-still lake waters. Rune dropped altitude in a lazy spiral and landed on the kayak's stern with the thud of a bird who considered gravity a suggestion.
“You're not invited Rune. The mission is top secret”
Rune tilted his head, unbothered.
The Mayor's house sat at the lake. Perfect manicured lawn but never a gardener. Its wraparound porch and its too-many windows, the kind of house built to be seen rather than lived in. The lights were on. They were always on. No one ever went in or out.
Phoenix crouched at the side door, book open to the chapter on pin tumblers. This looked like a puzzle. She loved puzzles.
The door swung open before she touched the lock.
Unlatched. Not even closed all the way. Curious. Her heart skipped a beat.
Bartelby slipped past her ankles and through the gap without ceremony. Tail high, the picture of a cat who expected doors to open for him. No surprise for him at all.
Inside: dust caught in low evening light. A study door standing open at the end of a hall. Fractured colored lights danced from the stained glass window.
Warmth bloomed against Phoenix's hip. Insistent. She startled before she remembered, the pink egg. Still riding in her jacket pocket where it always rode. Just in case. It pulsed now. Hard and urgent. Nothing like its usual slow drowsy glow.
She pressed a hand flat over the pocket. Warm going toward hot.
‘Not now’, she thought, absurdly. Like the egg could hear her and might consider waiting to hatch.
On the desk, a torn page. Edges rough. Ink smudged like it got wet and then dried. Phoenix picked it up. A few words survived the damage.
the frost line moves south
She photographed it. Tucked the original into her jacket, beside the egg. The moment paper met pocket the glow flared visible even through fabric. A soft pink wash bled out at the seams. Her jacket glowed.
Bartelby froze mid-step, every hair up, staring at her hip like it insulted him personally. This was a conundrum. Can't perform a proper heist glowing as she crept.
Phoenix pulled her phone back out to check the photo — and stopped.
The photo showed different words.
The frost moved south.
Past tense. The kind of difference a person invented out of exhaustion, except she read it twice. Now three times. Discrepancy held steady both ways. The page said one thing, the photograph of the same page said another. Both of them sat in her hands at the same time.
She thought of her mother and her ex, who never believed in anything without a receipt.
The whole visit took four minutes. Real heists, were probably not this easy. Thank goodness the glow subsided as she pressed the page inside her library book.
Rune waited on the porch railing. He watched her come out and made a sound low in his throat. Do crows laugh?
Blue Aspen Farm was next. Maple was rumored to have visited Bradley here on move in night. Bradley had not been seen in town since. Not a peep about the writer's retreat he had planned.
The farmhouse windows held light. One lamp, low, in the front room. Bradley lived alone out here. Everyone said so.
The shadow in that front window blinked.
Blinked — there, then gone, then there again. A half-second of nothing between each appearance. Steady as a heartbeat skipping the same beat over and over.
Phoenix crouched behind the fence line and watched it happen a third time. Then a fourth. The lamp behind the glass never flickered. Steady light, the shape blinked in and out like a signal losing reception.
The egg went incandescent against her hip again.
She pulled her jacket open. The egg, glowed bright enough to throw pink light across her own hands. It pulsed in a rhythm that landed exactly, unmistakably, in time with the blink at the window. On. Off. On. Off. Egg and shadow, breathed together across a hundred yards of dark field. They recognized each other.
Bartelby's low warning sound startled Phoenix. His spine a rigid line. Ears swiveled toward the house like the frequency itself hurt him.
“You feel it too,” she whispered. “This place is not normal. Even for Millcreek.”
Rune landed on her shoulder. Silent. The three of them watched the window blink through its broken rhythm. A person cast one continuous shadow. This wasn't continuous. This was a shadow that existed on a schedule. A pulse.
‘A projection’.
She thought about the map of Millcreek pinned in the Community Bulletin Board. When neighbors moved, it corrected itself in moments.
How do you miniaturize a place and have magic in the shrinking?
Or does the shrinking make the magic in the first place?
This heist was supposed to answer questions not raise more.
Characters mentioned,
Jenifer Jorgenson Our Librarian
Mina Howell Our ‘Bog Witch’
Bradley Ramsey Millcreek Missing person at the moment.
And Maple the Mysterious Mayor…
A bit of music to accompany Phoenix's caper….