Episode 62: Strange Quiet and Damp Smells

Aubrey Lance, S.S. (Supernatural Sleuth) -- Season 1, Episode 62: Strange Quiet & Damp Smells

I woke up on the floor of the orb room. 

The orb was no longer beeping, just slowly pulsing like at first. The haze over the room was gone. And it smelled again, like damp stone and mildew. 

My family and friends were all still there, unconscious on the floor. The five elementals were unconscious, too, still in their cells, and still connected to the orb. The barred door that trapped us in this room was still in one piece, blocking our way out.

I hurried to my mom, who was nearest me, and pressed my fingers to her throat. Her pulse was steady. I breathed a sigh of relief. 

I checked Collin, Lockley, and the others quickly, then hurried to the back cell behind the orb to check on Chloe. She was there, unconscious too, but she seemed okay. 

I turned to check on Emery through the crack in the orb—

There was no crack. 

I stared at it. “But why…” 

My mind raced through everything that had happened, what Trenchcoat Man and the others had said, what Emery had told me on the beach. 

I didn’t know how much of that was actual conversation or some kind of prophetic vision or even my own mind playing with me, but I knew there was information there.

Call it intuition or whatever, but I knew it wasn’t all just nonsense. I didn’t understand how dreamwalking worked, but I was sure I’d actually had the conversation with Emery.

I wasn’t sure if I’d actually had the interactions with the others, or if that had been my mind trying to show me information in a way I could receive it. 

But what information? What was I supposed to know?  

“Think, Aubrey, think,” I whispered, glancing back over the elementals, my parents, my friends, Trenchcoat Man and the cheer hawks, the barred doors, and the orb. 

I stared at the part of the orb where the crack had been in the dream. 

“What am I supposed to do, Emery?” I screamed at it—but nothing happened. 

Of course. 

I was just considering knocking myself out against the wall or something, so maybe I could dreamwalk and ask Emery to help me figure things out, when my gaze caught on my little pencil sharpener lid on the floor next to Trenchcoat Man. The tiny bit of blood he’d mixed from the elementals had spilled out, and was drying on the floor. 

The elements so mixed in him… 

If I was right, and mixing their blood had triggered some kind of protective ward on the orb that dropped us unconscious, then obviously, trying that again would do no good. But the dream had shown me a crack in the orb, after that happened. 

I stared at the orb again, muttering. “Think, Aubrey…” 

What if the dream had been showing me what could happen? 

A spark of excitement lit in my chest. “Okay, Aubrey, you can figure this out.” I wasn’t usually in the habit of talking out-loud to myself, but this seemed like a special situation. “Mixing the blood is a no-go, but how else could we mix powers to crack this—” I looked at the tube, and suddenly the solution hit me. 

Just mixing elementals’ blood right out in the open might have been enough to set off a protective trap, but it didn’t have enough power to do much else—the magic had probably escaped the moment it left the elementals’ systems, before it had a chance to mix. 

There was a reason Vorcos needed Emery in order to mix the elements. The magic needed a conduit. You couldn’t just extract magic and mix it in the open air. It needed a receptacle to mix in, like Emery. 

…Or me. 

My dad didn’t actually have a client who dealt in medical supplies, so attaching myself to the orb with a clean IV needle was out, and I wasn't sure if I could detach the others from it safely or if I really could reverse-flow the power from the orb and put some of it into me… which as my mom had said in the dream, was a lot of ifs. 

But there had to be some way to get some of the elemental power into me, so I could wield it to bust open the orb. 

I rotated, looking around the room for anything I could use. 

The tiny blade from the pencil sharpener was lying there next to Trenchcoat Man, the blade he had used to prick the elementals’ fingers. 

I wasn’t about to go mixing their blood with mine… the whole mixing blood thing had felt icky to me, even the first time. I was going for a different approach. 

If Emery was right about these elementals being siphoned only slightly, as a means of keeping her trapped within a ward, then disconnecting them from the orb could cut off the ward’s power source. Maybe then I could get her out, if she didn’t just break out herself.

Emery had also said the orb was keeping her from waking. Perhaps it was the same for the elementals, and now that I was reasonably sure their power wasn’t actively getting siphoned directly into her… 

I knew many of the things in my dream hadn’t really happened, but I was fairly certain, given what I’d learned, that even if unplugging the elementals didn’t do what I hoped, it also wouldn’t harm them.

I turned toward the cells. “Which one of you gets to get unplugged first?” 

I settled for the young, dark-haired guy, because he’d seemed nice enough in my dream, not that it necessarily counted for anything. 

Trenchcoat Man had left the guy’s hand resting between the bars when he pricked his finger, so it was easy enough to reach in and pull his arm toward me. 

I carefully extracted the tube from his arm, wincing the whole time. 

Reese’s eyes immediately popped open. “What—where—” he groaned.

I braced myself for the orb to go crazy, now that he was awake… but when a few seconds had passed and nothing happened, I exhaled. 

Once Reese got his bearings, his eyes locked on me. “Where am—Wait, I know you.” 

I stared at him. “You do?” 

“Yes,” he said, looking confused. “You woke me up, and… and I escaped…” He looked around, disoriented. “I remember trying to rescue a girl from the orb, and then you told us to run…” He looked back at me. “I don’t remember anything past that. How did I get back in here?” 

“That all happened,” I said, “but it was in a dream. You remember all of it?” 

He gaped at me. “Yes, like it was real. You remember it, too? How?”

I nodded. “It was a shared dream. I’ll explain more in a minute.”  

Well, that was interesting. So maybe everything else that happened with my parents and the others hadn’t just been in my head. We’d all been in each other’s heads… or something. Apparently, disconnecting the elementals from the orb was enough to disrupt whatever had them stuck in the dream, and didn’t harm them. That was good news. 

I could only hope that once the orb was destroyed, my parents and the others would wake up, too.  

…And that Emery wouldn’t be destroyed with it. 

I drew a steadying breath, then looked at the next cell over, the one that held the red-haired girl. “I’m waking her up next, then the other three,” I said—and got to work.

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