Gremlin Night

come out again when I next needed a double dose of guilt. “Where to?”
Tapping on the front door interrupted Tully’s answer. I opened the door a crack. Something flew through the gap trailing sparks--a messenger sprite. It hovered between Tully and me. It wore no clothes. Its little body was sexless, like a child’s doll. Sadness tugged at me for the previous sprite, now gone. That sprite had style and personality.
“Another gremlin outbreak is underway. At a financial bank in the northeast of Portland.” It spoke in a flat, matter-of-fact tone. It gave us the address.
That was just off Lombard.
“Great,” I repeated, this time with a drawn-out groan. “The other side of the river, again.”
“How many?”
“At this point, a single manifestation, level 2.”
We needed to stop dancing to the tune of events, and start playing our own music. “One. I can deal with one.” I turned to Tully. “Follow your trail while you still have it.” I tapped my fingers together. “I’ll take care of the little annoyance.”
“Splitting us up?” he asked.
“I know, never split the party. But sometimes you have to. You have to act while you still have the trail. And we also need to deal with this latest outbreak. But if we don’t get ahead of it, things are going to continue to spiral out of control.”
“But we haven’t arrived at a precise cause yet,” he said.
“Yeah, I know.” We were constantly putting out fires, but never finding the arsonist. The hooded figure, he had to be involved.
“I should go to the outbreak,” Tully said. “I have a better chance of locating the conjurer.”
There, he’d said conjurer. There was no way around it. This wasn’t some emotional turbulence from the collective subconscious. A spell caster was conjuring gremlins, somehow making super-charged versions, in the process.
“You have to find Sylvas. Someone went to great lengths to try and kill us here, twice.”
He rubbed his chin. “How are you going to get over to the bank?”
“I’ll teleportal to the Garage and pick up a ride there.”
“You sure you want to use your last teleportal?” He asked. There was an edge to his voice.
I’d already used two—Illinois to Brooklyn, then Brooklyn to Portland, leaving me with just one until daylight. “No choice,” I said. “We both have to act now.” This was my last teleportal. But splitting up was the necessary thing.
“Use your head,” I told him. “Don’t just knock down the door.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “That’s your style, not mine.”
“Very funny. Just find him. I don’t think he’s going to resist.”
“Understood,” he said, suddenly all military precision and no emotion, just cool, brisk efficiency. He faced the message sprite. It perched on a lamp shade, and had watched the whole back and forth without comment. “Please record that,” Tully told it.
“Affirmative,” the sprite said, and flew off, trailing golden sparks.
“I will report in when I find the great elf,” Tully said, still all cool, emotionless professionalism.
“Thanks,” I said. The set of his jaw betrayed his anger—he was angry at me for making him leave, but covering it with feigned detachment.
He nodded and opened the door.
“One second,” I said. He turned, eyebrow raised. What I was about to ask probably wouldn’t help his mood, but I needed to request it nonetheless.
“I need to borrow your wand.”
His face stiffened for a moment, then he relaxed and nodded. He didn’t argue, didn’t protest, he simply reached into his coat and handed over his wand. It had brass banding, with a gold tip, and trembled when I took it in my hand. This was an extraordinary wand. There was an ivory cap at the base. A multiplier of some kind, allowing for extra uses. Normally I’d ask a joking question about how he got such a wand when I just received run of the mill. I wanted to ask, curiosity filled me. How did you end up with such a wand? But, that would just be rubbing salt in his wounds.
“Thanks,” I said.
He didn’t answer. “Okay, well, good luck,” I said.
He turned and headed through the door.
“Be careful,” I called after him. The door closed with a heavy thump.
He was definitely not happy to we were going in different directions. A few hours ago, I would have chalked that up as a win, but now I felt like a jerk. But he was a rookie. We had to do this, and he had to roll with my judgement.
I just hoped I’d made the right decision.

11
The teleportal in Therese’s house was in the basement, in a side room. It was a one way. The easiest sort of teleportal. It went to the R.U.N.E. garage in Northwest. If it came from the garage, Farlance or another R.U.N.E. manager could have checked on Therese, only it wouldn’t have mattered. Protocol regarding sentinels was clear. They contacted you, not the other way around. They were tuned into the mana flux and the magical connections. Which made them vulnerable, but they needed space and isolation to sit, like arcane spiders, in their webs, waiting for a disturbance.
Not a life I’d have chosen.
I didn’t know anything about Therese Sprig, other than she obviously cared about a manifestation, had been good at her job, and had been dying of some sort of nasty cancer. And that she’d been smart and determined enough, despite the terminal illness, to make her death count.
The teleportal was a wooden blue door, set in a painted white frame, in the middle of a brick wall. It had been here for ages.
The thing about teleportals was, once they were created, they were permanent. You couldn’t just switch them off. No, you were stuck with them.
I grasped the glass door knob, and turned the handle. An ordinary person would not have been able to use the teleportal. An ordinary person would have seen only a bricked-up space, to match the brick wall.
In other words, it would have led nowhere.
Not so for me.
A midnight black corridor stretched beyond the portal, and, at the far end, a