When All is Null and Void

Chapter Four

When those stars faded that Caleb's chest grew tight and his breathing halted. His arms were numb, his vision swooping. He vaguely realized Jacob's hand was not on his arm anymore, but it was also emanating heat in the way a burn would. Caleb gulped in air, but his lungs were tight.

His brain caught up with his eyes. Caleb was no longer in the midnight hours of the night, mere blocks from the Museum. No, now Caleb stood in a sunny, manicured garden. A table bedecked in peonies sat to his left, and the two men who'd accosted him were nowhere in sight. They'd simply gone as suddenly as they had appeared.

"What the f—"

"I sincerely hope you're not about to curse in my garden," came a woman's smooth voice.

Caleb nearly jumped from his skin. Twirling around, he saw Rhea James for the first time in his life. She was a tall, thin woman with tanned olive skin. Caleb could see the resemblance between her and Titus, but her son had quite a few characteristics that didn't align with her. Where her eyebrows swooped gracefully, Titus' were thicker, darker. Her nose was thin, and Titus's had been long and gracefully arced.

"Sorry," Caleb said, cheeks reddening as he looked away from Rhea James' solid gaze.

She gestured toward the table. "Please, sit," she said, though didn't come closer herself. She was a powerful sort of woman, and Caleb obliged simply because her eyes seemed to bore into the deepest recesses of his soul. When he did sit, Rhea came close and sat in the chair across from him. She had an incredible grace to her, as if she were somehow lounging in the chair while simultaneously maintaining a prim gentleness in the center of it.

Caleb stayed silent, overcome by the unnerving panic which had come from the reorientation of his world. He still couldn't quite figure out what had happened, and his brain swirled, foggy and confused. The peonies on the table wafted a cloying scent over him, and it was so different from wet concrete and trash that, for a moment, Caleb thought he might be sick. He ran a hand through his hair and breathed through his mouth.

"I bet you're wondering why I've brought you here," she said with a smile, sounding almost exactly as Titus had the other night. Her teeth shone bright in the morning sun. Rhea crossed her left leg over the right and folded her hands gently over her lap. The same golden ring the twins had was on her own finger.

"I'm wondering howI got here," Caleb said, hoping to God that his stomach wouldn't come flying from his mouth.

"That's a simple question to answer," she said. "Jacob and John Hopped with you to my home." Her left hand gestured to the garden. "I decided that we would conduct this meeting outside, since it is simply too beautiful to be cooped up inside."

"Hopped?" Caleb said, disregarding most of what she had said.

"Both spatially and temporally."

"I don't understand," Caleb said, rubbing at his eyes. The sun was awfully bright and warm, and he wondered if he'd somehow slipped on the floor at work, had somehow cracked his skull on the ground. Maybe he was hallucinating.

"That's fine," Rhea said. She lifted her hand, and three people dressed in tuxedos came forth from...somewhere. Maybe from the small spaces between the manicured arborvitaes. Then again, Caleb hadn't actually seen them walk from any direction. They'd simply slid into existence. "Since you were working," she said, as one of the three servants set a tea pot and cups on the table, removing the peonies and their sweetness at the same time, "you were unable to join me for dinner."

Caleb bit his lip, unsure whether he should retort that he'd purposefully chosen to ditch the meetingor if it was better to simply agree with her. He uttered a noncommittal grunt in return. "What's going on?" he asked while Rhea poured him a small cup of a mint scented green tea. He massaged the space between his eyebrows.