The cat ran under Weyona’s feet, and she swore. She was trying to juggle house keys, her mobile, and her purse, and the damn thing took full advantage, scampering through the barely opened door and out into the yard.

  “Toxic!”

  Every time she said it, she almost winced, but it still made her smile. It was a bad name for a cat, but the kids had named him, and she’d thought it was cute at the time. It wasn’t so cute when she was looking for him out in the park. The looks she got shouting his name as she searched the flower beds and fish ponds were borderline priceless!

  Most people would be sympathetic. She lived in a cat containment zone, where pets weren’t allowed outdoors. If one escaped nearly everyone helped get it back before the local pet patrol found it.

  This was the ninth time this week Tox had gotten away, and something told her the neighbors might be less-than-understanding, this time round. A much as they said they admired her for adopting a rescue cat, she didn’t think they were ready for the reality of it.

  She raced after him, slamming the door behind her as she stuffed her keys and mobile into her purse.

  “Tooooxiiiiic!”

  But the cat ran on, straight across the road and through the gates of the park. Weyona ran after him, coming to a screeching halt on the curb to let a car roll past, before bolting to the other side.

  “Toxic” she shouted, following it with a muttered, “you furry pain in the ass.”

  He’d vanished from sight by the time she reached the entrance, but she didn’t let that bother her. She knew exactly where he’d gone. In the middle of the park, there was a small lake, stocked with so many decorative fish that the kids had decided it was just an oversized fishpond, linked by a ‘short, fat river’ to an ‘oversized duck pond’ with a bridge across its hourglass middle.

  Toxic loved the fishpond. Weyona would find him trying to catch the multi-colored koi that swam among the lilies and reeds. If she was quick, she’d catch up to him before he made it to his favorite perch on a rock in its centre.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t catch him once he’d got there. It was that she didn’t like following him out across the stepping stones that made a pathway for the more adventurous park visitor. She also had to hurry, or she’d have to leave catching the cat until she’d collected the kids from school—and she didn’t want to have to deal with the drama that would follow when they found out Toxic had escaped, again.

  Kids were merciless when it came to saying exactly where the blame should lie—and Weyona didn’t need to be told. She also didn’t need the post-event dramatics. They had a game, that night. The last thing she wanted was for their guests to be entertained by another story of ‘how Mum let the cat out, again’.

  Toxic was gaining quite the reputation for escaping... and all at Weyona’s expense.

  She didn’t see him by the pond—or even out on his favorite rock. The koi swam, undisturbed, at the shoreline. They followed her shadow, hoping for fish food as she passed, but she ignored them. She had to find the cat, and time was running out.

  The Heavens knew what the kids would do if anything happened to him—or if the local pet patrol caught up with him before she did. Rumor had it the fine for a loose cat was hideous!

  Normally, she would have rung the school and had them tell the kids to walk home together, but they’d said they’d seen a man ‘who looked like Theo’ hanging around the front gate, and she couldn’t risk it. Theo had been a bad mistake, albeit one she’d thought she’d dealt with and left behind her.

  The kids seeing a man that looked like him wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Weyona might have left them to walk home if it hadn’t been for the next thing they’d said.

  “He looked like he was following us, mum,” her youngest daughter, Nettle had told her, with eyes dark with worry.

  Weyona might have dismissed it, since Nettle was always finding something to worry about, but Jamieson had nodded, and Selene had laid a supportive arm around her little sister’s shoulders.

  “Yeah, mum,” her oldest daughter had agreed. “He did look like he was following us.”

  “How do you know?” Weyona had challenged, and Jamieson had taken over.

  “He didn’t make it obvious,” the boy said, “but he was standing at the entrance to the park when school let out. At first, I thought it was just another parent waiting with their dog, but then we walked past him, and he watched us.”

  “That was the first strange thing,” Selene cut in, and Nettie continued the story.

  “He didn’t wait for any other kid,” she told her mum. “He let us get past, and then two more people, and then he followed us.”

  “How do you know he was following you, and not the other people?” Weyona asked.

  “Because he didn’t take the same turn they did,” Nettle told me with a nine-year-old’s logic, but then she added, “and I saw him pretend to take a different path, when he saw me looking.”

  Jamieson took his turn.

  “Only, when we looked back, he was standing under one of those droopy trees trying to look like he’d had to stop to let the dog pee, or something.”

  “A weeping willow?” Weyona broke in, and was answered by three solemn nods. She cocked her head. “So, how do you know he didn’t need to stop and let the dog pee?”

  Nettle rolled her eyes.

  “Because it was trying to pull him out from under the tree to go play with another dog.”

  “Only he wasn’t letting it.” Selene wasn’t letting herself be left out.

  Eventually, Weyona had gotten enough out of them to believe them... and to work out who had been following them. She had to get to the school in time to collect them, even if it was just to make sure Theo didn’t follow them all the way home.

  When she’d asked if he had the day before, Jamieson had given her a look that said she’d asked a stupid question.

  “As if we’d ever,” he’d said. “We got on a bus and lost him at the mall.”

  A bus and the mall, two of the activities she’d said were off-limits unless they had her permission—but Weyona just gave them my best ‘mother-isn’t-happy’ stare, and then asked what they wanted for dinner. Today, she’d really been hoping to NOT have the cat complicate things.

  She sighed, and yelled, again.

  “Toooxiiiic!”

  There was no sign of him around the edges of the fish pond. She stopped long enough to look for paw prints, but he hadn’t left any that she could find, which only made things worse. If he wasn’t at the fishpond, where on earth had he gone?

  The phone in her purse chimed, and she turned and hurried toward the bridge. It was still chiming, and she was still feeling around in her bag for it, when she saw the dog. Big and black, the kids had said, and with a red collar, Nettle had added, since that was the kind of detail she noticed.

  Weyona thought it was a prop, since Theo didn’t like dogs. He liked spy movies, though, and it showed in the games he ran. As players, they’d taken to watching spy movies and thrillers just so their characters had a better chance of spotting the bad guys before they attacked. Walking a dog where a lone man or woman without a dog would have drawn attention was just one of the ploys he’d used, except in the game it had been draco-cat.

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  Letting said dog run around in the open where it could be easily seen... well, that left an uneasy feeling in my gut—even if all it was doing was chasing butterflies.

  “Toooxiiic!”

  Weyona didn’t want to call the cat’s name, but she couldn’t see him, and it was all she could think to do.

  Theo had been a long time ago. She’d been single and in a whole other city, and roleplaying games had been an island of sanity in the midst of a crazy home-life and crazier work situation... and then the gaming had turned bad.

  Or rather, Theo had turned out to be more of an asshat that any of them had known.

  One of the other players, Diana, had missed a session—and nothing her character had tried had worked for weeks afterward. And then she’d left, and an evil sorceress sounding a lot like her character had appeared in our landscape. Until then, the rest of the players had put the overly vindictive bad guys down to Theo not pulling any punches, but, afterwards, they had their doubts.

  When it happened a second time, some of the group had started looking for an alternative DM, and, when Diana was reported missing, fear had settled like a chill blanket over them. None of them had stopped playing, though. They hadn’t dared.

  And then Weyona had missed a game. She’d been sick, but had called ahead and apologized... and not been comforted by the sinister chuckle Theo had given as he’d ended the call.

  “Stupid,” she’d told herself, “and paranoid” she’d added, until nothing her character did went right.

  Not wanting to disappear like the others, she’d done her own vanishing act, moving across the country and changing her name, her profession, and her hobbies... at least for a while. She’d met Luka at the shopping centre and he’d noticed the double-dice brooch she wore and asked about it.

  Chatter about jewelry had moved to games and gamestores, and then playing games, and was she interested in joining his group if it was okay with them? One thing had led to another, and they’d been married within a year with Jamieson arriving soon after.

  Toxic had been a welcome addition to the family, and now she had to find him, and then beat Theo and the black dog to the school.

  “Toooxiiic!”

  The dog got tired of chasing butterflies and bounded after some ducks, barking with hell-raising glee. No-one tried to stop him, and Weyona might have wondered where the owner was if she hadn’t been so concerned about the cat.

  She wished the dog would shut up. How could she hear Toxic with that racket going on?

  Some owners didn’t deserve to have pets.

  She felt ashamed of myself the minute the thought crossed her mind. Here she was scolding some unknown owner over a loose dog, when she was out chasing her loose cat... Her loose cat... Loose...

  The thought made her smile. Before she and Luka had had him fixed, Toxic had been responsible for several litters in their old neighborhood. When they’d moved, they’d both sworn there wouldn’t be any more.

  Weyona hurried along the path.

  “Toooxiiic!”

  The ducks had reached the lake and the dog gave up on them, bounding back to the open grass opposite the bridge. Weyona watched him bounce after a few more butterflies and then flop down in the shade of a tree at the grass’s edge.

  She finally got hold of her phone and pulled it out to check the time. She could still make the school if she hurried. She just had to go straight across the bridge and take a bend in the path, and she’d be opposite the front gates. She’d also be in a position to see Theo, if he was waiting for school to let out.

  It worried her that he might have chased her across the country. It also worried her that she’d let the children go to school unaccompanied that morning. She hadn’t really had a choice about it. She worked a six-hour morning shift on Thursday mornings, and that money was what made the difference between the kids going on excursions, or getting new shoes on time. Luka hadn’t been able to stay, either. He worked a twelve-hour shift so he could put extra hours aside for school holidays.

  Weyona’s stomach churned, and she tried to quell her worry by reminding herself that the kids had lost Theo at the mall, and he wouldn’t know which direction they’d be coming from.

  Except they’d crossed the park the afternoon before...

  She walked a little faster, almost missing the plaintive yowl that crept out from under the bridge. Her steps faltered.

  Really, Toxic? Now?

  She weighed the chance of being late but holding the cat, against the consequences of being late without him. The damn cat won.

  She altered course, taking a fork in the path that led down under the bridge. Trust the cat to find another set of stepping-stones for me face, she thought. She stopped when she reached the base of the bridge, listening for Toxic’s voice and both hoping she would and wouldn’t hear it.

  The path ended and the stepping stones began, and she didn’t want to find herself halfway under the bridge just to discover the cat had been hiding somewhere nearby. The kids always took the stepping-stones if they could. She’d race them by running around the top of the bridge to get to the other side before them. It had worked when they were little. Not so much now they were bigger.

  She had almost decided to turn back when Toxic yowled, again...the sound definitely coming from under the bridge.

  Typical.

  Weyona took a deep breath and hopped out onto the first stone. With any luck he’d only be a couple of stones out, and willing to let her pick him up. With any luck...

  She hopped out onto the next one, and then the third, trying not to look at the water. Now, she could see all the stones leading under the bridge and to the other side—and Toxic wasn’t on a single one of them. Weyona hesitated, and the meowing came, again.

  Almost like it was on cue...

  She hopped across the stones, until she reached the middle of the bridge. There was still no sign of the cat. Weyona stopped again, putting her hand out to touch the base of the arch and steady herself while she looked around.

  The meowing had to have come from somewhere under there.

  Her hand touched nothing, and she gave a startled yelp as she almost lost her balance. The yelp turned into a scream, a second later, as a large, clammy hand wrapped around her forearm and jerked her into the wall.

  Only she didn’t end up hitting the wall. She passed right through the bridge’s footing, and was hauled along a damp stone tunnel. The grip on her arm was unrelenting, the troll on the other end completely unbelievable. Honestly, as much as she didn’t appreciate being hauled around, she had to admire the craftsmanship that had gone into the costume.

  “Let me go!” she shouted, trying to jerk her arm out of its hand.

  It jerked back.

  “No.”

  She punched at its wrist, and grazed her knuckles on the costume’s gravelly exterior.

  The troll laughed, but it didn’t stop until they had reached a large cavern with a cobblestone floor, and then it let her go and trundled back toward the door. She guessed it was supposed to make sure she didn’t escape, but that would have been pointless. Everything she wanted was right here.

  Weyona stopped and gaped at the sight before her.

  “What the...”

  There was a pool in the centre of the cavern. Of course, there was, and of course it was glowing. Why have a pool in the middle of a mysterious cave if it doesn’t glow? And blue. How original...

  But it wasn’t the pool that caught her attention, or even the familiar figure in his familiar satin-black robes standing next to it. It was the group of people kneeling along the pool’s edge.

  “Mum!”

  “Weyona!”

  “Luka! Kids! What are you doing here?” She turned on Theo. “What do you think you’re playing at?”

  He smiled, and it wasn’t a very nice smile. It was the sort of smile he gave when he was DMing, usually just before he revealed the characters’ worst fears had come to life. Weyona’s stomach did a small nervous dance, and she took a hurried step forward to pull her family away from the edge.

  She hadn’t known trolls could move that fast, but this one was back from the tunnel entrance and grabbing her arm, before she’d gone two paces. She turned on Theo.

  “You let them go!”

  His smile grew wider.

  “I intend to,” he said, and walked over to one of two cages set beside her family. One held a very familiar cat, and the other her husband’s dog... Tiger, who should have been in the back yard when she’d left.

  She hadn’t even noticed he was gone. Did that make her a bad wife?

  Theo picked up Toxic’s cage and undid the latch before pitching it into the pool. Nettle shrieked in protest, her small voice piercing in its distress. Theo kept talking, as if nothing had happened.

  “I’m running a new game,” he said, “for all new players.”

  He walked over to Tiger’s cage, undoing the latch before moving to the back of it, and pushing it into the blue.

  Jamieson wasn’t impressed, and Weyona could see Luka straining against something she couldn’t see, fighting to get loose of whatever held him. Theo caught the direction of her gaze and tutted, moving over to place his hand on her husband’s shoulder.

  “You chose well,” he said, and walked behind Luka to place a boot in the middle of Luka’s back and push him into the azure swirl.

  “No!” she shrieked, and tried to dart forward.

  To do what, she wasn’t sure. She was torn between trying to snatch her children away from the edge, or to dive in after her man. The troll held her fast, and she ended up doing neither.

  “I needed a few new adversaries for the party to take down, before they got to you.”

  Jamieson went next, and Weyona had to wonder where her son had learned that many cuss words. Selene followed him, and Nettle was lifted screaming from the floor.

  “Please, stop,” Weyona begged, but the words came out as a whisper, as he tossed her youngest in.

  His expression hardened.

  “No,” he replied, and then cocked his head. “Do you remember the Sorceress?”

  Weyona nodded. She remembered Diane.

  Theo came over and took Weyona’s other arm, walking her forward with the troll’s assistance, until she looked down into the swirling blue, and realized it wasn’t water but some kind of pit.

  “Well, I had to get my ideas from somewhere...”

  The sudden jerk and release that sent Weyona into the azure depths made her gasp, and then she was spinning out of control through what she knew to be an interdimensional portal—like all the portals, in all the novels, and all the games she’d ever read or played.

  Her only hope was that she’d find her family waiting on the other side, and that they could all find their way out this, together.