The dragon-head knocker clonked against the aviary’s door as Lanya pries it open after a millennium. A velvet moss coats the jagged rocks lining nests that once cradled hatchlings. It feels too soft for the fierce beasts that once roosted there. Even the air smells different, she thought. No sharp tang of ozone or cloying musk scents the breeze warns of what lies behind that door.

The air distorted, curving outward, warping the walls until they were convex. The people and furniture stretched and thinned until Kaitlyn hung inside a spherical image of the room where the debate had raged a moment before. She had never imagined this when she insisted their decision would create a new world.

As the librarian, Chanakya traveled the multiverse to help those looking for answers. She put her life in her pocket. The capsule held the entire Library Solaris, Chana’s house key, and an inscription ripped from a book gifted to her. The vast library weighed nothing, compared to that six-word inscription.

The tattered remains of the ship’s sail fluttered. Ropes moaned, and buckles clattered. The hull listed toward starboard. The intruder stumbled across the sloped deck. Another historian sought the truth...about how she had been murdered, all legendary, all glorious. Ava, the most notorious pirate on the Emerald Seas, knew better, and the irony galled her.

The butler had a limp as he led me through the foyer, but his impeccable dress and manner assured me of a well-run household. He gestured to the front parlor when an earsplitting howl erupted from the far end of the hall. Another answered. The back door burst open, and two feral dogs launched through and attached themselves to the stately butler’s trousers. I was doubly shocked to realize they were not dogs but wolves!

Wrinkled hands patted the graying whiskers and smoothed wrinkles from the merchant’s vest beneath. A “Quark” from the top shelf preceded by the shop bell in giving warning as the ruddy snout of a wolf entered.

The dried sage turned green under Agnes’s knife. Fresh stems sprouted across the scarred cutting board. Her familiar, a smoky-gray feline, yowled as basil bloomed between his paws. Agnes cut her eyes to the open door. “Keep your magic out of my house.”

The drus’s bark scraped the doorframe as he entered the witch’s hut. “Life blooming offends you?”

“Will there be dragons?” The child asked, his face full of anticipation and dread as he gripped Mīkāl’s calloused hand. The little boy’s idea of Heaven contained a mixture of awesome and fearful creatures living amongst long-dead relatives he’d never known.

The silver-eyed daemon studied him from her perch atop the scaffolding erected for the reconstruction of Casino City. The enormous project encompassed both river bridges and the rail line. A corner of her mouth turned up as if she were amused when she told him he looked a lot like his father.

“I want to be there when you get what’s coming to you.” PJ the satyr gaffawed as the half-fae May held Alley the Hellcat aloft by the scruff of its neck. It narrowed it eyes at her but obediently coughed up a pixie. The poor creature, weighed down with phlegm, darted away.

PJ offered a series of tools until the hand withdrew. He blew on his singed finger and tried another tactic. “I’d offer you moral support, but I have questionable morals. So, I’m just going to say, if you need to get rid of a body, the trunk of a car is not your best option. You remember last time.”

A lone cry breaks against the silence of the forest. Another follows. The ylgr joins her mournful cry to the song. Muzzles raised skyward, their lamentation fills the space beneath the tree canopy. The great Úlfr blessed each pup with his far sight, yet that night even the imaginative ones do not see the way forward with their mentor lost.

Only one creature rode around Vicksburg in that car, the succubus who ran Casino City, my mother. She’d left town after we tore the casino’s island apart and the prisons underneath it. I’d prayed never to see her again.

Hemel poured a mound of salt onto his palm, tucked the blue cardboard container into the pocket of his duster, and scattered the crystals across the cracked earth. Holding his hands out, he tilted his head back and eyed the buzzards perched on the leafless tree above.

“Thou shalt see that it is barren!” he bellowed.“

Wearing one wing while working on the other, the half-fae unrolled copper mesh over the torn webbing. It sprang back, slicing her hand. Cursing, she knocked it to the floor.

I’d never met an angel before, but I ran into one tonight. She didn’t look too happy about it.

Lydia removed her jeweler’s lens and rubbed her eye. “He demanded a clock that ran backwards. So I invented it, then he departed.” Towers fell. Ships cracked apart and sank. Parents, with children in arms, fled. The prince looked to her beseechingly, and she sighed. “He wished to go back and fix it.”

“Upper Earth bird--sticks its head in the ground--probably wondering why we’re trapped here. No wonder last night I dreamt I was an ostrich again.” Ayletha leaned against the rough cavern wall, arms cradling the heavy bundle as she waited for the acolyte to arrange bunting.

May patted the embers off the child’s jumper and sent him on his way before turning back to the row of azaleas. The red eyes appeared in the bush followed by a menacing rumble. Undaunted, May thrust her arms, elbow deep, into the foliage and dragged out the hissing Hell Cat. She tucked it under her arm and headed back into the workshop.