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The Samhain Gate

5/25/2009

The stacks of paperwork waiting on her desk Monday were at least two feet high.

Iris sighed, aware of how pathetic she sounded. At least she’d made it through the weekend without running into any more problems. She’d watched the news religiously for four days, hardly even leaving the house. Strangely, there hadn’t been any mention of the bodies in the park. Not a single snippet of information regarding a dead jogger, his dog, and the skinned-out headless body of an unknown species. Out of curiosity, Iris had driven by the park. The entire area was fenced off. Looking through the chain-link Iris could see at least three black sedans. Their conspicuous inconspicuousness screaming ‘government’. Iris smiled to herself; so there was a government cover up going on. That would make her life easier. The less of her adventures made it into the news the better. There was nothing at the park to link her to the events. Even if she’d left any fingerprints, she wasn’t in the legal system so they couldn’t trace them back to her. Besides, Iris couldn’t remember touching anything that would take a print, and her hands were so smeared with gore that anything would likely be smudged and unintelligible.

She turned her attention back to the tasks at hand. Sitting down she turned on her computer and opened her internet browser. If there was any hope of making it through the next three weeks, she was going to have to stay informed. So far everything seemed quiet, but the day was just getting started.

Iris knew she was just stalling, not wanting to start digging through the stack on her desk. She looked up with relief as Mina stuck her head into the cubicle.

“Hey!” Mina was always obscenely cheerful first thing in the morning, but Iris supposed talking to her was better than working.

“Hey. Enjoy your time off?”

“I’d’a liked it more if we were getting paid.”

“Did you talk to that geologist guy?”

“Yeah, first thing.” Something twisted in her stomach at the thought of Jason. She hadn’t seen him since the disaster on Tuesday, although they’d spoken a few times.

“He’s cu-te! I love those brainy types.”

Iris laughed, “You like every type.”

Mina’s curls bobbed as she giggled, “Maybe. That reminds me; one of my boyfriends is going to UTA and there’s going to be a Halloween party next weekend. You should come.”

Iris smiled a little wryly. Mina wasn’t kidding when she said ‘one of her boyfriends.’ Her bubbly self-confidence seemed to attract men in droves. Iris wondered if she’d ever be that comfortable with herself.

“Maybe I will.”

“You should. It’s going to be huge, pretty much the whole campus.” Mina glanced around then ducked back into her own cube. Iris smiled again; Sam must be on the prowl.

With nothing else to distract her, Iris turned to the stack of papers on her desk. It seemed like everyone and their uncle decided to send in their paperwork while she was gone. She’d been hounding some of these people for weeks or longer to get these forms filled out. Of course they would all send them in at once.

Looking up after getting them all sorted into piles to be scanned, filed, or sent on to other people and getting the piles organized and alphabetized, Iris realized it was after eleven. With a jolt of panic, she checked the internet news feed. Her breath hissed out when there was nothing unusual reported. Although, after seeing the cover up of what happened in the park, watching the news might not do her any good. However, Iris really didn’t think anything weird was happening. She didn’t know how she knew, she just did. She sat back in her chair and cracked her knuckles and her neck, stretching muscles stiff from sitting too long. Maybe she was getting some sort of sixth sense about rift openings; or maybe she was deluding herself. With all that had happened Iris figured both ideas were equally likely.

Her stomach rumbled and twisted. Apparently it was time for lunch. Iris stood up and stretched; her joints popped and cracked in protest of sitting still so long. The desk chair was obviously not designed for humans. Iris bent to get her purse out of her desk drawer.

“Excuse me.”

She looked up, “What’s up, Sam?”

“There’s someone here to see you.”

Iris frowned; there were several people who might be here for her, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with any of them.

“Who is it, do you know?”

“It’s that geologist, you remember him?”

She wondered what he wanted, “Okay, I’m heading out for lunch anyway. I’ll see what he wants.”

The lobby downstairs was tastefully decorated with abstract painting on the wall and black leather furniture. Jason stood up from one of the sofas when he saw her.

He kissed her, “Hey. How’s your first day back?”

“Busy, busy, busy. What’s up?”

“Nothing. I just thought I’d come by and see if you wanted to go to lunch.”

Iris smiled; no one had ever surprised her like that before, “Sure.”

“Can you take the time? You said you were busy.”

She shook her head, “I’m going to be here until midnight anyway, so taking an hour for lunch isn’t going to make a difference.”

“Let’s go.”

* * *

The speed with which Mina pounced on her cube told Iris she’d been waiting for her to get back.

“You’re dating the cute geologist?”

Iris sat down and put her purse away before looking up. “Yup.” There was something satisfying about being able to render the other woman speechless, however temporary it might be.

“He took me to dinner the night after the eruption, and we’ve been going out ever since.” Some perverse impulse made her add, “I’ll be sure to let him know you think he’s cute.” Iris never realized how jealous she’d been of Mina’s boyfriends until now, when the feeling was gone.

“Don’t you dare! Besides,” she leaned on the edge of Iris’ doorway, “if you do that, I might just steal him from you.” She laughed and Iris knew she wasn’t serious. Mina didn’t need to steal another woman’s man; she had enough of her own.

Iris shrugged, “It won’t last. He’ll be going back to Colorado in another week or two.”

Mina tilted her head, “I hope you don’t get too attached, then. Long-distance stuff is hard.”

“I’m not attached at all,” Iris wondered if she was trying to convince Mina or herself, “it’s like a practice boyfriend.”

Mina shook her head, “You’re weird, girl. I gotta get back to work.” She ducked back into her own cube, leaving Iris to continue attacking the stacks of paperwork.

* * *

Iris didn’t bother staying late that night. It would take until midnight to get everything finished. Somehow, the quiet office wasn’t as satisfying as it had been three weeks ago. At least the philandering Sanchez Jr. hadn’t been bothering her. As far as she knew he hadn’t been in at all. Iris smiled a little as she closed down her computer and packed up her stuff; he was probably still nursing his sprained wrist. It was strange to pass people as she headed towards the parking lot. How long had it been since she’d left on time? Iris couldn’t remember. Jason had told her earlier that he wasn’t going to be around—which was half the reason he’d picked her up for lunch. He had to do dinner with some people from the UTA geology department. Provided no dimensional rifts opened up, Iris figured she might be able to enjoy a quiet night.

Fighting her way through rush hour traffic made Iris want to punch someone in the head. She parked the car and headed toward the little playground before even going upstairs. She needed to work off some frustration. She’d been too busy today to notice how long she’d been sitting still, but the day of relative inactivity was starting to catch up to her. Iris felt stifled and cramped. She needed to move and stretch. There were a couple of kids on the equipment, but none on the monkey bars. Iris waved to the woman who was with them—probably their mom—set down her purse, and swung herself up onto the metal bars. Just the feel of the cool metal in her hands calmed her down. She spent a few minutes moving between the bars and ended up sitting on top of the structure.

“Wow.” Iris glanced down and saw the woman looking at her, “are you a gymnast?”

She smiled, “Something like that.” Iris slithered back down and picked up her purse. She didn’t need to be drawing attention to herself.

* * *

The rest of the evening passed quietly, as did the following day at work. She was starting to get caught up and Sanchez Jr. still hadn’t put in an appearance. Mina remarked on it, and they both agreed it was a lot easier to get work done without having to worry about being harassed. Iris stayed a little late, partially to finish up something, and partially to miss some of the traffic. Instead of working the playground equipment—the same two kids and their mother were there—Iris jogged a couple miles. She went past the park where she’d fought Klippi, just out of curiosity. It was still blocked off, but the government cars were all gone. There was nothing about the incident on the news, and Iris wondered what they’d concluded. It didn’t matter; they could think whatever they wanted as long as they didn’t manage to track her down. Iris jogged home, took a shower and made dinner before flopping on the couch and turning on the news.

At first there was nothing interesting and Iris watched the parade of murders, robberies, child abductions, foreign crises, and the occasional ‘human interest’ story with tepid interest. After an hour or more, a story about a fire broke into the usual news. It wasn’t anything unusual, until they went to their reporter ‘on the scene’. Iris sat up as the camera panned to the top of a Fort Worth hotel. The roof of the building was on fire, some ten or fifteen stories up, but Iris could see patterns in the smoke. The camera went back to the perfectly groomed face of the reporter as he continued to speak. Fire crews were on the scene, the building was being evacuated, and there were no injuries as of yet. The camera went back up to the fire on the roof, and Iris could see the patterns more clearly now. There were disturbances in the smoke, as though they had been cause by the sweep of a giant wing. As the camera panned back down, Iris could see movement out of the corner of the frame. She wondered why the reporters and rescue workers at the scene couldn’t see it. At least, no one seemed to be reacting to it. The reporter continued discussing the banalities of the disaster until they cut back to the studio.

Iris sighed; it might just be her imagination putting images in the smoke that weren’t really there, or it might be her Aesir-enhanced eyesight. Either way, she had to go check it out. Just when she was getting comfortable. Why did these things always have to happen at the least convenient time? With another sigh, Iris stood up. Time to get to work. At least it wasn’t three AM.

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