Free Between by Kerry Schafer

She had seen this face before, feared it, somewhere, in Wakeworld or Dreamworld.
    Jehenna set a package on the table. It was wrapped neatly and precisely in brown paper, corners creased and symmetrical and secured with clear packing tape. Vivian’s name was written in the same black hand as the envelope and the letter.
    Time slowed as she put her hands to the paper—smooth beneath her fingers, except for the places where it had once been folded; here there were little ridges, the edges of the tape snagging on the skin of her fingertips. When she tore the paper away, everything in her world came to a sharp focus.
    This moment.
    This act.
    In the middle of the torn paper sat a wooden box withdragons carved into the top, dark with age. A box big enough for secrets, small enough to carry with you. A box she had seen once before.
    “Open it. Are you not curious?”
    “It’s locked.” The lid refused to yield to her fingers.
    “Perhaps the key is yet in the envelope. It would be a small key.”
    Vivian peered into the smaller envelope, and then the larger one. She picked up the brown paper wrapping and shook it over the table. Nothing.
    Memory stirred.
    Blue eyes, alarming in their intensity, looked directly into hers as her grandfather hung the chain around her neck.
    “Keep it a secret. Do not lose it.” He’d frightened her a little, with his sharp face and his knowing eyes, and she had kept her promise, never revealing it even to her mother.
    “You must have the key somewhere,” Jehenna said. “Bring it here.”
    Vivian hesitated. She didn’t quite trust this woman, but the box called to her as it had when she was a child. In this moment she wanted nothing more than to see those globes again, to hear the sound of crystal on crystal.
    And surely she was being paranoid. It made perfect sense for Mr. Smoot to send a junior partner on this errand. Feeling strangely detached, almost as though she were watching herself on a screen, she drew the pendant out from under her shirt. The penguin still held in its beak a tiny brass key.
    Bending down to the table, Vivian fitted the key into the lock. It turned with a little click. Jehenna lifted the lid and there they were, just as Vivian remembered them, small glass spheres in varying sizes, hints of movement flickering across their surfaces.
    “Do you know what these are, then?” Jehenna asked. She leaned forward over the table; her eyes glowed.
    A cold chill settled at the base of Vivian’s spine. She shivered. “I have some idea.” She closed the box and pulled it closer to her.
    “I find I am very curious about these little globes—they are lovely, aren’t they?”
    Their eyes met, and Vivian’s unease deepened. She should do something, but her tongue seemed glued in place; her body refused to move. Her brain calculated the time it would take to snatch up the box and run for the door, how much of a lead she might have if she made the break. But she sat still and watched as Jehenna opened the box again.
    The woman lifted one of the globes to the light, looked through it, then returned it, drawing out another. Vivian saw naked hunger in her face, even as she said, lightly, “As I thought—only a bauble, a toy. He mentioned them to me once as though they had some magical power. Your grandfather was, I fear, a little crazy at the end. It runs in the family, I understand. A very sad thing. Now, my dear. There should be, somewhere, another key.”
    Vivian blinked. “I don’t know anything about another key.”
    “It should have been with the bequests he left for you, but it isn’t. I thought perhaps he had already given it to you.”
    Vivian’s hand tightened on the pendant. “This is the only thing he ever gave me.”
    “That can’t be right. In all the times you saw him, surely—”
    “I only saw him once.”
    For an instant, so brief Vivian wondered if she’d imagined the expression, the smooth face revealed utter malice, then shifted back to a serene