It's all in a name

Bracken bolted up on the bed like a man who’d seen a ghost. He had – sorta. Elvira had that effect when people saw her the first time. Maybe it was her Mick Jagger styled hair; maybe it was the voluminous flower print moo-moo, or the bangled sets of large loop earrings and up-the-calf drawstring sandals. Bottom line, Tasha’s fairy godmother was a hold over from the 60s, the bad version of too much drugs, sex and rock and roll.

As Bracken climbed from the four-poster monstrosity, placing distance between the amorous tangle of their bodies, his glance never leaving Elvira's bad tangerine dye job, he seemed to think Tasha, er, Poppy needed his safe-keeping. With little more than a snag of his strong hands, he pulled her with him, securing her, tucking her behind his broad shoulders and standing between her and what had to be drop-your-drawers frightening for someone of the 19th century. “You know this . . . creature?”

Tasha had to give credit where credit was due. Bracken’s steady voice and quietly spoken question gave more than ample credence that he could hold up to a massive amount of shock. Either that or he was simply exercising good ole fashioned common sense and not startling what had to be a strange apparition to him. She didn’t fault his caution. Elvira could grimace with the best of them, and right now, she looked primed for reprisal.

But her trickster fairy godmother could just swallow a chill pill, and choke on it. “Elvira, can the smoldering eye routine . . . it’s way overdone. And that mountain of baby blue eyeshadow you’ve coated on kills the effect.” Tasha let her own aggravation color her tone, as she side-stepped from behind Bracken. She was fed up with the whole save the chick-routine-before-she’s-murdered-for-real anyway. The last four years of jumping had warn out her patience, not to mention been more than a little rough on her body. “On top of which, you’ll have a hell of a lot of explaining to do when the council finds out you showed up, unannounced, and in front of an innocent.”

“Immediate steps were necessary. There’s an emergency,” Elvira sassed, but she didn’t quite pull off a ‘what the hell’ look as though her actions wouldn’t have major repercussions.

Tasha knew the rules as well as any of the other jumpers. The institute’s five-thousand page instruction manual had seen to that mandatory wisdom. She eased over to the lady’s lounger and perched on the edge, as she considered her fairy godmother’s serious security breach.

“Tick tock. Time’s a wasting.” Elvira tapped her wrist, where a non-existent watch should have been – that is if the old gal believed in keeping any sort of schedule. “Of course, if you’re perfectly happy being stuck in this century then it shouldn’t make any difference if someone cuts your throat. Your real throat. . . back in your own world.”

Bracken reacted in an instant. With a single long stride toward Elvira, his hand closed around the fairy godmother’s wrinkled throat. “You dare threaten my bride.”

But it wasn’t a question, and his fingers which should be seared by the contact against the entity’s unearthly flesh tightened as Elvira’s face actually turned blue.

Tasha found her feet. This certainly wasn’t in the rule book. She was at Bracken’s side and tugging on his arm before she could draw a deep breath. “Tempting as it is to throttle the old broad, if you squeeze the stuffing out of her, Bracken, then I can’t get home.”

He didn’t relax his grip. “You are home, Tasha. I’ve waited a life-time for you.”

With a suddenness that had the world tilting, her knees shook and took on a bad rendition of the cha-cha. Like a poorly built Lego house, she lurched away from him and swayed toward the bed. Because whatever, she thought she knew, thought she understood about her purpose here in this time, suddenly everything crashed without warning. “You called me by name. By my name.”