and Smorgaz to split. A tall, blond woman in jeans waited for her own order. The woman nodded at Diana. Diana nodded back.
“They’re cute,” said the woman. “Your friends.”
Diana glanced over at her monsters. She had no idea what the woman saw, but Diana saw a furry green eating machine and a giant rubber hedgehog. They were kind of cute. In a strange, not-of-this-Earth way.
“You’re lucky,” said the woman. “I know a guy who is stuck with a slime-covered spider-thing.”
Diana nodded. If that was her other option, she was lucky.
The woman took her drink and started to walk away, but Diana stopped her.
“Hey, can you see my friends for what they are?”
The woman smiled. “Of course.”
“And you’re not freaked out by that?”
“Why should I be? Believe me, the stuff I’ve seen… it makes those guys look like a couple of teddy bears.”
The woman went to a table where she was playing by herself. Diana followed her.
“I don’t mean to bother you, but—”
“But you’re new to this and had a few questions.” The woman leaned over the table and sank three balls in one shot.
“I’m sorry,” said Diana.
“No. Don’t worry. I understand where you’re coming from.”
She lined up another shot. The cue ball zipped across the felt and knocked two more balls into pockets. Diana noticed that the balls all moved in odd zigzagging patterns. At one point the cue ball circled the eight ball twice before completely reversing direction and smacking another target hard enough to send it arcing through the air to land in a pocket on the far side of the table.
“How did you do that?” asked Diana.
“It’s all angles,” the woman replied. “I just like to use the ones most people ignore. I’m Sharon by the way.”
“Diana.”
She took Sharon’s hand. A zap passed between them. It startled Diana but didn’t hurt.
“Sorry,” said Sharon. “That happens sometimes to people like us who have slipped just a bit into the beyond.”
She made it sound so casual, so everyday. Diana found that comforting.
Diana scanned the hall. There was a dog-sized housefly crawling along one of the walls.
“Is that one yours?”
“That’s just a phase fly. They’re all over the place this time of year. No, my partner isn’t here right now.”
“Aren’t you worried?” asked Diana. “What if something attacks you?”
“Why would anything attack me?”
“Because that’s what they do, right? I think that’s what they do. I don’t know if I quite get it yet, but displaced monsters might attack you in confusion.”
“I don’t really shine like you do. If anything, my bond has the opposite effect. I make most displaced entities uncomfortable. They tend to avoid me.”
“That’s a neat trick. Don’t suppose you could teach it to me?”
“I wish I could, but it doesn’t work like that.”
Sharon joined Diana at their table. They played a few games while Sharon explained some things. Vom had tried to enlighten Diana, but there was a chasm of perception between them. Their situation was similar. Both were struggling to make sense of an alien universe, but it was the difference in the areas they defined as alien that made things difficult.
The game of billiards was the perfect example. The reason Vom and Smorgaz had trouble sinking shots was that simple geometry was a bit confusing. They understood walking around solid objects, accepted the inconvenience of gravity, and could work with a one-way time continuum, but multicolored balls bouncing around a few square yards of felt was simply too subtle.
It didn’t help that Sharon’s presence proved distracting. If Diana was a comforting melody that kept the monsters calm, then Sharon was a low-pitched hum, too soft to be heard but rattling them on a cellular level, making them queasy.
Smorgaz smacked the cue ball with far too much spin. The ball leaped off the table, shattering someone’s beer bottle.
“Dang,” he said. “Thought I had it that time.”
Diana resisted the urge to smile and headed to the restroom. She was washing her hands when she heard a peculiar gurgle coming from the stall she had just used.
“Did you hear that?” asked the short, black-haired woman beside her.
“Must be problems with the plumbing,” replied Diana.
The woman opened the stall door as the toilet began spilling water across the tile. “Gross.”
Diana was getting a bad feeling about this. “Maybe we should get the manager.”
A bolt of lightning erupted from the toilet. The woman was disintegrated in a flash. She didn’t even have time to scream. The crisp smell of ozone filled the smoky bathroom, and a giant eyeball floated toward Diana. That was all it was. A huge eye rimmed by a dozen tentacles. Strange energies crackled in the orb’s interior.
Diana’s attempts to flee were hampered by the slick floor. She fell on her butt just as the eye creature unleashed a blast that blew a hole in the wall. She kept her head down and scrambled toward the exit. The eye monster looped a slippery tentacle around her ankle and pulled her back.
The creature studied her with its single eye. She remembered that this monster, just like Vom and Smorgaz, didn’t mean her any specific harm. It was just lost, confused, and trying to figure things out, figure her out. If she remained calm she could provide it with the anchor it sought.
“It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “It’s okay.”
The eye narrowed, but it didn’t blast her, so she felt confident.
Vom and Smorgaz flung open the bathroom door.
“Don’t worry, Diana!” said Vom. “We’re here!”
“No, it’s cool,” she said. “I have this under control.”
But her defenders had already sprung into action, tackling the eyeball.
“Hey, no! Stop!” she shouted. “Damn it, listen to me!”
Sharon grabbed Diana.
“It’s too late for that. You need to put some distance between them, let them work it out on their own.”
“But—”
Sharon yanked Diana out the door. The people in the pool hall stood in shocked confusion at the howls and shrieks coming from the restroom. Diana resolved to, first, always save at least a little bit of her magic, and, second, avoid public bathrooms in the future. She realized that the second resolution was nothing more than superstitious impulse, but it couldn’t hurt to keep to it.
The foreboding crackle warned Diana to hit the deck just a moment before the bathroom exploded. She didn’t know what had happened to Smorgaz or Vom, but the eyeball hovered toward her. She stood, focusing her calming influence over the bizarre thing.
Sharon leaped in front of Diana. Her claim to be disruptive to alien monsters must have been true because the eye retreated.
Diana said, “Thanks, but I think I can—”
Several Smorgaz clones jumped the eye from behind. “Damn it!” shouted Diana. “Everybody needs to calm the hell down!”
The eye unleashed blasts at random. A sizzling beam cut a swath of destruction through the hall. Pool tables and people were scorched into piles of dust.
She waved her arms and screamed in a futile attempt to get things in order. Instead she found herself looking into the eyeball’s destructive gaze. She didn’t have time to ponder the limits of her immortality as the creature
