Magic Girls of Multiverse Inn 4: A Reverse Portal Fantasy, page 1
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Chapter 1
Every lamp post in town was decorated with LED skeletons, cheesecloth ghosts, or huge glittery spiders. There were rows of jack-o’-lanterns on every doorstep, handmade gravestones, and more than a few houses had positioned twenty-foot-tall skeletons in their front yards.
These small-town folks really knew how to commit to holidays.
“It’s so odd!” Kaz giggled again as we passed a display of vampiric scarecrows dressed in thrift store flannel shirts and ragged jeans.
“What’s this event called again?” Izzie asked as she pressed her face close to the passenger window of my M550i xDrive Sedan.
“Halloween,” I chuckled. “It’s always been one of my favorite holidays.”
“I love it,” Prinna said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “Though I don’t appreciate some of the incarnations of witches I’ve seen displayed.”
“You have to remember,” I chuckled. “Nobody on Earth knows that witches or any of this other stuff is real. It’s all just fun spooky stories for them.”
I pulled the BMW onto our cul-de-sac, and it was just as heavily decorated as the rest of the town. Jack-o’-lanterns, fake spiderwebs, spooky orange and purple lights, scarecrows, fake tombstones, mummies, and even one really impressive werewolf display, welcomed us home.
And my creepy Addams Family style Inn fit right in. For the first time since I’d laid eyes on the massive and almost dilapidated building, it looked like it was exactly what belonged at the end of Oak Circle.
We’d gone out for a few hours to load up on groceries for the week, and being gone for that short period of time was enough for me to realize how much had changed about the inn in the last several weeks. After the roof replacement had been completed, we moved pretty rapidly into the renovation process with Quality Contracting LLC.
As awful as Cheryl had been upon our first interaction with her at the diner, her husband, Doug, was the complete opposite. His crew was always on time in the mornings, they were professional and polite, and they always did their best to clean up at the end of the day. Seeing as Kaz, Prinna, Izzie, and I were all still living in the inn during the renovation process, we were especially grateful for that. But I also was just happy to be gaining a good standing with the locals here. Especially since I was always looking forward to the day when I’d finally be able to open up the inn for business.
“It looks so different,” Kaz observed as I parked out front.
“And yet…” Prinna ran a hand over her straight, white-blonde hair. “It hasn’t changed very much at all.”
“Good.” I grinned. “I really wanted to keep all the old charm of the place, you know? I wanted to repair what was needed, but not modernize it too much… at least not in its looks. Places like this are honestly hard to come by these days.”
“It’s very…” Izzie’s eyebrows furrowed under her brunette braids as she searched for the right word. “Looming.”
“Looming?” I laughed as I gazed up at the four-story building and all its glorious amalgamation of architectural styles. “Yeah, I guess it does loom a bit.”
The building was a weird and inexplicable combination of Queen Anne and Carpenter Gothic styles that I never would have imagined would work until I’d seen the inn for myself. It still seemed just a little insane to me that my old college professor had left the place, and all its contents, to me in his will, but I’d forever be grateful he did.
“Sam?” Kaz called from the front steps that were no longer falling apart. “Will you come unlock the door, please?”
“Oh, shit,” I chuckled to myself, and I grabbed the right key as I jogged over. “Sorry.”
Kaz smiled at me, and her deep purple eyes with their lavender halos made my breath catch in my throat. I opened the door for my Enchanted lover, and she walked in with a cheerful smile on her beautiful face.
Prinna strode up on her long legs a second later, and the witchy woman gave me a sweet little wink as she passed through the front door. They’d each taken maybe four bags of groceries from the trunk, but Izzie lumbered up the steps with as many bags as she could hold.
“Watch out!” the playful pirate teased as she pushed her way inside.
I shook my head affectionately at the rough-around-the-edges woman who was the most recent addition to my household.
It had only been three weeks since Kaz, Prinna, and I had helped our new friend Pete rescue his sister from a band of dastardly pirates on a small island of pure anarchy. Even now, I had to fight off a jolt of hysterical laughter at my internal summary of the events as I went back to see if there were any more groceries for me to grab.
The only thing left in the trunk was the twenty-four-pack of toilet paper, which, so far, seemed to be one of Izzie’s favorite things about living in my world.
I tucked the huge pack of two-ply under my arm and closed the trunk. With a quick press of the key fob, I locked my eighty-thousand-dollar car, and I walked back up to the front steps.
The new sign caught my attention, and I took a long moment to enjoy the craftsmanship.
I had it custom made by a little sign shop in town. It was made with iridescent blue resin on a piece of reclaimed lumber that had been saved from the previous front steps. When I’d brought the piece into the shop, I wasn’t even sure if it was big enough for the sign, but the middle-aged woman had assured me it was plenty.
She laser-carved “The Multiverse Inn” into the lumber and filled it with UV resin for a unique and otherworldly aesthetic. It was just perfect for the new-old inn I was dreaming into reality.
I smiled as I went in through the new front door that swung on silent hinges. It was an impressive and detailed door with a small half-circle window on the top with frosted glass and decorative lead-work that almost made it look like a spiderweb. It had been crafted in an antique style that fit with the whole façade of the inn, but it had the major advantage of brand-new hardware that functioned well and gave added security to the building.
Everything was falling perfectly into place with the renovations, and the inn was transforming before our eyes every day. We were only three weeks into our five-week timeline, but I was ready to give Doug and Quality Contracting LLC a five-star Google review.
I dropped the pack of toilet paper at the bottom of the repaired staircase and headed into the updated kitchen where my three lovers were busy unpacking our grocery haul.
“Only… what? Two weeks left?” Kaz finished as I walked in.
“What’s two weeks?” I asked.
“Two more weeks of the renovation,” Prinna clarified. “Is that right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They could have finished up next week, but with the crew taking this week off, it’ll be another two.”
“It was really good of you to agree to let them off this week,” Prinna said.
“I couldn’t exactly say no,” I said with a smirk. “Fright Night is a huge tradition here in Arcton, and Doug said his company always does all the work for the haunted house and hayrides.”
“It probably wouldn’t have gotten you many thanks from the people in town if you kept them here,” Kaz said emphatically.
“No,” I agreed. “They would have been pissed. Not that I could have demanded that anyway. I mean, Quality Contracting already has a long-standing contract with the town for that work. Plus, I’m not a dick.”
Kaz snickered, and I remembered the first time I’d used the phrase with my ladies.
“I still struggle with that one,” Prinna said. “Dicks are a fun thing.”
“That’s true,” Izzie laughed.
“I don’t know where it started, either,” I chuckled.
“It also seems that their work is well worth an extra week of waiting for,” Prinna added as she brought us back on topic.
“Definitely,” I said. “The whole place is looking incredible.”
“I love that all the charm is being preserved,” Kaz said.
“Me, too.” Izzie nodded. “I was worried when you first said you were having repair work done. I really thought you were going to make the place look like all those other houses on this road.”
“No way!” I laughed. “The best part, well, one of the best parts about this place is how spooky and eerie it is.”
“It’s fantastic.” Izzie grinned.
“I think using the reclaimed materials has a lot to do with it,” I said.
“You mentioned that before,” Prinna said with a confused look in her hazel eyes. “What does that mean again?”
“It’s like salvage, right?” Izzie chimed in.
“Pretty much,” I said. “Doug tried to talk me out of it because reclaimed material is almost always significantly more expensive than new material, but I wanted the authenticity that comes with it.”
“The old bricks they brought in were really lovely,” Kaz said with a whimsical smile.
We all had a good laugh about that, and I felt a bit insane at the truth of the statement. There were a lot of digits in my bank account at that very moment, and I was still sitting on enough gold coins, gems, and jewelry upstairs to make tens of millions more if I wanted.
I’d made two solo mini trips to Bioniin to sell a fair chunk of gems to the people in the realm that felt very Victorian-era steampunk to me, but Izzie had convinced me to keep the majority of my pirate booty trove. I’d agreed mostly because it felt suspicious to sell too much too quickly, and I didn’t want to have one hundred percent of my wealth in liquid cash. It felt smart to keep a good fraction in physical assets, too.
My magical lovers asked a few more questions about Halloween while we put away the rest of the groceries and made our dinner.
“Do people here worship a deity for this holiday?” Kaz asked.
“Ooh!” Prinna gasped with excitement. “Do they cower in fear of their insulting depictions of witches?”
“No!” I laughed. “I’m not super sure of the origins of Halloween, but I think it’s mostly a celebration of autumn nowadays. I think it was originally a pagan thing.”
“What’s pagan?” Izzie asked.
“A kind of spirituality,” I said. “It’s not practiced very widely anymore, and I know even less about that.”
My three ladies looked at me with confused eyes, and I chuckled at how strange this world still was to them. Even Kaz, who’d been with me the longest, still found things to be confused by on an almost daily basis.
“Modern Halloween is about spooky fun and candy, basically,” I said. “Kids dress up in costumes, and they go trick or treating.”
“What’s that?” Prinna asked with excitement.
“Are they sacrificed to keep the spirits away?” Izzie asked with a thrill in her bright blue eyes.
“Um, no,” I said without inflection. “They go door to door and ask for candy.”
“What!” Kaz shouted with disbelief, and she laughed. “There’s candy at the stores! Why would they go begging from strangers?”
“Because it’s fun?” I laughed and shrugged.
“Strange…” Prinna said with a slow shake of her head.
We finished eating and started to make our way upstairs to our new bedroom suite.
“Let’s do some YouTubeing for inn aesthetic inspiration like we wanted to,” I said as we walked. “Then we can look into some Halloween stuff, too. How does that sound?”
“Are you talking about that odd flat mirror that shows into other realms?” Izzie asked with a skeptical look.
“The laptop,” I clarified. “Yes.”
I’d tried to explain the mechanics of a computer to all three of them, but none of my ladies really understood it. Prinna seemed to grasp the aspects of the technology the best, and she’d compared it to some of the devices we’d seen in Bioniin. Kaz wasn’t bothered by not understanding it, much like she was content to use polite manners with the smart refrigerator we had. Izzie had been the most suspicious of the laptop, though. She was convinced it was some kind of bewitched device that would steal her soul or something if she gave it the chance. Only when I popped the battery from the back had she accepted that it was simply a very advanced kind of tool.
The staircases and second floor hallway looked so much better than when I’d first come into possession of the inn. The cracks in the baseboards and ceilings had been repaired, the paint was fresh, and the new dark blue carpet still felt soft under our bare feet. It had an elaborate pattern that added to the antique feel I was going for, but the place needed a lot in the way of decorating.
Which was the whole purpose of our planned evening of YouTube scrolling. Architecture I could do. Crown molding, arches, staircase balustrades, flooring material, and even light fixtures were all something I was pretty comfortable with, but the decoration process was outside my wheelhouse. I had no idea how to pick paintings, curtains, accent rugs, or which knickknacks to use.
I could have just gone with whatever items I liked, but I knew that probably would have ended up as a bizarre hodgepodge of items without a single bit of cohesion. And my ladies weren’t much more suited to the job, either. They couldn’t really picture the spooky, eerie, ghost-hunter vibes I was aiming for, and I knew some visual aids were in order.
I couldn’t wait to get some paintings, small sculptures, and other decorations up as we walked down the bare third floor hallway to our new suite.
After Izzie had joined our growing family, I knew we needed to sort out our private space. Kaz, Prinna, and I had been a bit cramped in the old bedroom anyway, so we’d taken the space of four bedrooms at the end of the third floor hall and converted them into a brand-new space for ourselves.
The final touches in our en-suite bathroom had been the last things Doug’s crew had completed today before their week off from our project, so tonight was our first night in the new space.
Kaz, Prinna, and Izzie hadn’t even been inside the space yet since the crew had just finished clearing out for the day. We’d literally followed their work trucks out of the driveway and down the street to go get our groceries.
“Ooooh!” Kaz squealed and bounced on the balls of her feet. “I can’t wait to see it!”
“Neither can I.” Prinna grinned.
“There’s a space for the treasure trove, right?” Izzie asked. “Like you promised?”
“Yes, Iz,” I chuckled at her adorably bossy demeanor. “I told them it was a walk-in closet, but it’s yours to fill with our treasure and organize as you see fit.”
Izzie smiled at that and gave me a grateful nod of her head.
“Are you ready?” I asked, as I grabbed the doorknob.
“Open it, Sam!” Kaz giggled while Prinna nodded, and Izzie laughed.
“Does anybody wanna say–” I teased.
“Sam!” all three of them shouted at the same time.
“Okay!” I conceded with a smirk on my face, and I opened the door.
The door opened into our private living room which was still fairly barren, other than the sofa we’d had brought upstairs from the parlor and some cardboard boxes filled with our stuff. It was a spacious room that took up almost two of the previous four bedrooms’ square footage, and all the walls had been lined with soundproofing materials for our privacy. The floors were a beautiful mid-tone walnut, and the walls were painted with a soft sky blue we’d all agreed on. All the molding and accent features were a simple and clean white that we could always update with some paint later on. Overall the room was simple and classic enough that it could have been from many different time periods. It felt calm and peaceful and welcoming, and I couldn’t wait for my ladies to help me decorate it.
Our private space could be whatever we wanted it to be without worrying about deterring from the spooky, ghosty vibes of the rest of the building. No one would ever come in here but us.
“Whoa!” Prinna breathed.
“It’s huge!” Kaz gasped.
Izzie was silent as she stared into the large and almost empty space. Her blue eyes were wide, and her mouth hung open with amazement.
Kaz and Prinna bounced right into the room and started to giggle and dance around the ample space.
“We need another couch!” Prinna chirped. “Maybe something bigger.”
“Yeah, the one we have now is sort of cramped,” I agreed.
“Can we get one of those things…” Kaz snapped her fingers. “A tee-vee! Can we get one for in here?”
“Yeah, of course,” I laughed. “We can get whatever we want.”
“Oh, my seas,” Izzie finally spoke. “It’s… enormous. This is our space?”
“Yep,” I let the sound pop from my lips. “And this isn’t even all of it.”
“What!” Izzie squawked.
I knew she was amazed because the living room alone was bigger than the whole cottage she had grown up in with her older brother, and it was still only part of the whole inn.
“Wanna see the trove’s space?” I waggled my eyebrows alluringly.
“Yes.” Izzie grinned.
“Over here.” I waved her over to a white paneled door.
Izzie practically lit up with excitement, and I opened the door for the first of three walk-in closets in our private suite. Aside from the cardboard boxes packed with the gold solars, uncut gems, and other jewelry we’d brought home from Ebon, it was an empty six-by-sixteen-foot room with rows of shelves on every bit of wall space available.
