“Actually, we were hoping to join in,” I said to her as I made space for her to pass. “Do you have room in your game for two more?”
“What do you say, girls?” she called out to the pair of women Damiel had chosen to interrogate. “Do we have room for two more?”
The ladies cheered in the affirmative.
Blue waved at us. “Come on over.” She set down the drink tray on the table closest to the balls-in-the-wall game.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” her pink-pigtailed friend asked us.
“Where do you come from?” asked the woman with the bright banana-yellow pigtails.
No one else in the bar had such vibrant shades of hair as these three, but there was nothing magical about them. They must have just enjoyed standing out in a crowd.
“We are visiting from another world,” Damiel told our new friends, to my surprise.
But no one attacked us.
“Cool,” said Pink, and she picked up a small silver ball, hardly larger than the palm of her hand. She tossed it at a hole in the wall but missed.
Yellow stopped the rolling ball with her foot. “Are you here for a little vacation?”
“For our honeymoon,” said Damiel.
“So you’re newlyweds. Cute.” Yellow threw the ball—and missed. It bounced off the wall.
Blue caught the ball before it hit her in the face. “This game is harder than it looks.”
“May I?” Damiel held out his hand.
“Sure.” Blue handed him the ball. “Are you here to see the sacred springs?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I understand they are just outside the city.”
Earlier, I’d seen a photo of these ‘sacred springs’ taped to a tourist office window. Obviously, Damiel hadn’t missed it either.
“They’re past the west end of town,” Blue confirmed. “But if you go there, be careful. Tourists have gone missing out there.”
“Oh?” Damiel threw the ball at a hole in the hall—and it went in.
“Wow, you’re good,” Yellow said, her eyes wide. “Have you played this game before?”
“Something similar.”
That ‘similar’ meant shooting the whiskers off a wild boar from a hundred yards away on the plains of monsters, while dodging enemy fire from an enraged dragon and evading the behemoth stomping feet from a dinosaur with a bad temper. That was the kind of thing an angel would call a decent workout.
I grabbed one of the balls from the bucket on the ground and tossed it into a hole smaller than Damiel’s. Then I turned to him, arching my brows in open challenge. His hand flashed out and grabbed a ball. He looked upon me, his lips curling with unspoken promises.
“Where did you say you’re from?” Blue asked us as Damiel landed another ball in a hole in the wall.
“Far from here,” he said, his gaze never leaving mine. He didn’t even look at the holes he was throwing balls into. “You were warning us about the sacred falls.”
“Right. Some tourists who visit the falls have gone missing.”
Yellow nodded. “It’s the rebels—”
“Shhh,” Pink cut in.
“The rebels?” I asked.
Pink frowned. “We don’t speak of them.”
Blue nodded vigorously. “The Magic Collective has labeled them heretics.”
Now we were getting somewhere.
“The Magic Collective?” I asked.
“The Chosen Ones,” Pink said.
“Anyone who possesses magic is chosen.”
“They’re taken to learn and live and serve in the grand castles throughout the world.”
So the Hive’s fortresses really did cover this whole world.
“It is a great honor to be chosen.”
“But no one ever sees the Chosen Ones again,” Yellow said in a whisper. “They are kept separate from the rest of us, apart from anyone without magic.”
“Is there magic in the castles?” Damiel asked.
“Oh, yes,” said Blue. “All the magic is there.”
“There’s no magic outside the Magic Collective’s castles?”
“Of course not,” Pink laughed. “We don’t have any magic, so why would we need anything to be run by magic?”
It sounded like the Hive had everyone perfectly in control—and all the cards stacked in their favor. But on the other hand, a rebellion was brewing against the so-called Chosen Ones. That must have been a recent development. The three women hardly dared speak of these rebels, even under the influence of alcohol. And when one of them had spoken of the rebellion, her friends had quickly silenced her. That told me people deeply feared the Hive.
“We haven’t had a visitor from another world in several days,” Yellow said. “I wonder why they stopped coming. There used to be so many.”
So normal humans weren’t kept in the loop of the Hive’s plans. That was unfortunate. It would have been easier to get all our answers from these people.
“The rebels might have chased away the tourists,” Damiel suggested.
“The rebels only attack tourists to bring attention to themselves,” said Yellow. “To be heard. To gain a voice.”
“It doesn’t matter why the rebels do it,” Blue snapped. “Their actions are hurting all of us.”
Pink nodded. “The rebels are the reason why there’s a curfew now in the city.”
So there must have been rebels nearby.
“Do the rebels ever do anything bolder?” I asked.
Blue frowned. “Like what?”
“Like attack the Magic Collective’s castles.”
“No, even they are not that foolish,” said Pink. “Entry into the castles is forbidden to all but the Chosen Ones, and there are magical defenses to keep out the unworthy.”
We’d thrown our final balls into the wall holes, and the game was over.
“You throw those balls better than anyone I’ve ever met,” Blue said.
I was willing to bet she’d never met an angel—or anyone with supernatural hand-eye coordination, for that matter. Not if the humans here were kept completely separate from anyone with magic.
“Don’t you worry. Those dirty rebels won’t be able to get the jump on someone with your reflexes.” Pink flashed us a warm smile.
“Where are you staying while you’re here?” Blue asked us.
“We were thinking of camping out in the woods,” replied Damiel.
“On your honeymoon?” Shock flashed across Blue’s face. “You mustn’t.”
Pink nodded. “Especially with the rebels stalking about. “There’s a nice hotel near the sacred springs. It’s called the Sunshine Palace.”
“The matron is lovely.”
“And she makes the loveliest fruit pies.”
Damiel looked at me. “It is late. And we haven’t slept in a long time.”
“True,” I agreed.
So we bade farewell to our bar buddies and headed out. Along the way to the hotel, we got a quick look at the Hive’s fortress. From the buzz of magic in the air, it was obviously heavily warded, just as the three women had told us.
There had to be a way in, but right now, I didn’t see it.