Chapter 1: Bleeding Aisle Nine
The sticky linoleum bit into Ashanti’s knees. The sickly amber glow from the flickering ‘Open’ sign above Aisle 7—Lubricants & Enhancers—did nothing to improve the view. She scrubbed at a dark, suspiciously viscous stain with a ragged blue shop towel, her nose wrinkled. The chemical cherry-scent of the cleaner warred with something older, muskier, that lingered beneath. The air in the Walmart Adult Section wasn’t just air; it was a held breath, thick with whispered psychic spam and the ghost of bad decisions.
“This,” she muttered to the stain, “is why I went to four years of arcane academy.”
A shadow fell over her. The scent of ozone and cheap bubblegum preceded her.
“Ugh, you’re such a martyr.” Jackie’s voice, a drawl of perpetual boredom, floated down. Ashanti looked up. Her roommate hovered a few disrespectful inches off the grimy floor, pale lavender calves crossed delicately in the air. Jackie licked a swirling, neon-purple lollipop, her fiery pink hair a chaotic cloud around the neat rams’ horns she made no effort to hide tonight. Her purple eyes, heavy-lidded, scanned the empty aisles of latex and plastic with profound disappointment.“Also, it’s dead in here. I’m dying. This is actual death.”
“You’re a succubus. You don’t die,” Ashanti said, sitting back on her heels with a sigh. Her braids, tied in a thick bunch, fell over one shoulder. “You just get progressively more dramatic until someone feeds you.”
“My needs are valid, Ash. The psychic energy in here tonight is drier than that discount rack of ‘rabbits’.” Jackie pointed her lollipop at a sad display of pastel vibrators. “Not a single fraught marriage, no secret kinks bubbling to the surface… just expired coupons and despair. I’m starving.”
“Try the break room vending machine. I think the jerky’s sentient now, but it might hold you over.”
“The jerky hates me.” Jackie descended, her bare feet touching the floor without a sound. She peered at Ashanti’s work.“What even is that? Demon blood?”
Ashanti looked at the blackish gunk on her towel. It shimmered, slightly iridescent. “Nah. Too… chunky.Probably just a spilled unicorn smoothie. Or a melted stress toy.” She tossed the rag into a nearby hazmat bin she’d conjured earlier; it vanished with a soft pop.“See? Boring.” Jackie slumped against a shelf of edible body powders, making the boxes rattle.“We need a distraction. A crisis. Maybe a small dimensional rift in the condom aisle? Nothing serious, just enough to get management to send us home.”
“We are management, Jackie. It’s our shift.” Ashanti pushed herself up, her knees popping. Her amber eyes, currently a tired honey-brown, scanned the silent aisles. The supernatural bleed-through here painted everything in a faint blue-green haze, making the plastic packaging look alien, otherworldly. “And no rifts. The last one took three weeks to close, and we kept finding sentient, amorous socks from the Tupperware dimension.”
“Those socks loved fiercely!” Jackie protested, a flicker of a smile touching her lips. Then it vanished. “Ugh, fine. Be responsible. Ground us in your mundane, mortal coil. I’m going to go haunt Seasonal and see if the giant Easter bunny gives off any lust vibes.”
She was about to float off when a customer materialized at the end of the aisle. He was middle-aged, holding a single, economy-sized bottle of personal lubricant and a crumpled piece of paper. His aura was the color of overcooked oatmeal. Jackie perked up, a predator sensing movement. “Ooh. Prospect.”
“Don’t you dare,” Ashanti hissed under her breath, but Jackie was already gliding forward, her posture shifting from lazy catastrophe to liquid interest.
“Find everything okay tonight, sir?” Jackie’s voice had dropped an octave, taken on a velvety, hypnotic quality. The pink of her hair deepened, shimmering toward crimson.
The man blinked, looking from his coupon to Jackie’s horns, his brain visibly short-circuiting between societal norms and the undeniable reality in front of him. “I, uh… does this… is this eligible?” He thrust the coupon at her.
Ashanti watched, arms crossed, as Jackie took the paper, her fingers barely brushing his.The man shivered.
“Let’s see…” Jackie purred, examining the fine print. Her purple eyes glowed faintly. “Mmhmm. Yes. I think we can make an exception. Just for you.” She leaned in, the musky-sweet scent of her power wafting off her. “Would you like an extended warranty with that? For… protection?”
The man’s face flushed. He stammered something that sounded like “Yes, please.”
Jackie’s smile was all teeth.“Great. I’ll just need your name and soul signature on this tablet here…” She produced a sleek, obsidian device from apparently nowhere. Ashanti couldn’t watch. She turned, pretending to straighten a display of cock rings priced under $10. This was why they could never get a security deposit back. A soft ping and a dazed “Thank you…” signaled the transaction was complete. Jackie wafted back, looking smug, a faint, silvery wisp of energy curling from her fingertips before she absorbed it.“See? Service with a smile.” Jackie popped her lollipop back in her mouth.“He left with a spring in his step and fifteen percent off. Everyone wins.”
“He’s going to wake up tomorrow and wonder why he has an irrational fear of lavender and an urge to join a polo league,” Ashanti muttered.
“Details.” Jackie waved a dismissive hand. Then she frowned, her head tilting.“Huh. Speaking of disturbances…”
Ashanti felt it a second later—a subtle pull in the atmosphere, a shift in the low hum of the store’s magical baseline. It wasn’t a customer. It was a thinning, a weakness in the veil between their pocket dimension and the mundane world of this particular Supercenter. It was coming from Housewares.
The intercom above them crackled, but instead of a manager’s voice, a burst of static echoed, followed by a deep, rhythmic thumping that wasn’t the store’s Muzak. It sounded like a heart. A big, angry heart.
“Told you,” Jackie said, not sounding pleased at all. “Crisis.”
Ashanti’s eyes began to glow, a steady, fierce amber light igniting in their depths. The tattoos on her forearms, usually inert lines of geometric patterning, shimmered to life with a soft silver radiance.“Right. You take the left. Containment protocol seven.”
“Ugh, fine. But if this screws up my snack schedule, I’m filing a grievance with the Union of Chaos Entities.” Jackie was already moving, her form blurring and growing less substantial as she slid toward the source of the disturbance, a whisper of pink and lavender against the sterile shelves.
Ashanti moved in the opposite direction, her sneakers silent on the linoleum. She passed the blank-faced overnight stockers—a grizzled werewolf named Carl stacking cans of soup, a pair of ghosts phasing through a pallet of paper towels—all of them oblivious, their mundane minds protected by simple glamours. The thumping grew louder, a physical pressure in the air. As she rounded the corner into Housewares, she saw it.
A soft, pulsing rift, the size of a dinner plate, hovered in the middle of the aisle. It was a tear in reality, edges frayed and sparking with unstable energy. Through it, Ashanti could see a swirling, tempestuous sky of violent purple and green. And from the rift, things were crawling. Small, multi-limbed, shadowy creatures made of condensed frustration and broken cheap cookware. They were skittering across the floor, trying to hide under displays of non-stick pans.
“Oh, for the love of—” Ashanti began, raising her hands. Silver energy coalesced into glowing threads between her fingers.
A lollipop stick shot past her ear like a tiny javelin, impaling one of the creatures on a box of slow cookers. It dissipated with a hiss and a burnt-Teflon smell.
“They’re kinda cute!” Jackie called from the other end of the aisle. She was casually sucking on another lollipop, but her free hand was extended, claws extended, a field of rosy, seductive energy pushing the skittering beings back toward the rift. One of them stumbled, looked at Jackie, and seemed to blush before dissolving.
“Less admiring, more banishing,” Ashanti said, her voice tight with concentration. She began weaving her threads of light, crafting a complex net of sealing energy. The runes on her arms burned brighter. The rift pulsed angrily, resisting. A larger creature, vaguely humanoid but with spindly arms ending in can openers, clawed its way through.
Jackie sighed, deeply put-upon.“Fine. Party pooper.” She sauntered toward the big one, her movements a hypnotic sway.“Hey there, big guy.Lost?This isn’t your aisle. Let me show you out.”
The creature turned its blender-base head toward her, clicking. Jackie’s eyes flared violet. She blew it a kiss. A pulse of pure, concentrated apathy washed over the entity. It stopped, confused, its aggressive momentum shattered. It looked around, seemed to forget why it was there, and then docilely allowed Jackie’s rosy energy to shepherd it back toward the rift. Ashanti seized the moment. With a final, whispered incantation, she threw the silvery net. It settled over the tear in reality, cinching tight. With a sound like a sigh and a vacuum seal, the rift snapped closed. The last of the shadow-creatures popped out of existence. The oppressive thumping stopped, leaving only the hum of freezers and the distant beep of a register. Silence.
Ashanti lowered her hands, her glowing eyes dimming back to brown. She was breathing heavily. Jackie drifted over, crunching the last of her lollipop.“See? Managed crisis. We’re a great team. You with your ‘rules’ and ‘permanent solutions,’ me with my…” She gestured vaguely at the empty space where the creature had been. “…therapeutic disinterest.”
“We need to report the locus weakness to the regional supervisor,” Ashanti said, already pulling out her phone—a battered model encased in a spell-resistant cover.
“Snitch.” Jackie leaned against a display of towels, watching her.“Wanna get waffles? My treat. I’ve got…” She conjured a small, glowing orb of purloined life-force in her palm. “…currency.”
“Sure, let’s go find our wolf boy first. He’s probably out back smoking.”
She grabbed the thick cascade of her braids, the coarse texture familiar and comforting in her hands, and swiftly tied them back into a severe, practical knot at the nape of her neck. The action felt like bracing herself. Jackie’s eyebrows, a shade darker than her hair, shot up. “Oho. Checking on Logan is suddenly a priority? Noted.”
“Shut up. He’s on perimeter duty. It’s a procedure.” Ashanti started walking, her sneakers squeaking on the freshly mopped floor. The glow in her eyes had completely faded, leaving them their normal, perceptive amber. She focused on the rhythm of her steps, on the chill of the air conditioning, on anything other than the warmth spreading up her neck.
“Procedure,” Jackie echoed, floating beside her.She sounded delighted.“Of course. The sacred text of Employee Handbook for Multidimensional Retail. Page forty-two: ‘Upon sealing a minor rift, immediately locate and visually appraise the hot, brooding werewolf security guard.’ It’s in the footnotes.”
“Your succubus is showing.”
“Honey, it never went in.”
They pushed through the heavy double doors into the back warehouse. The space was a canyon of towering shelves stocked with pallets of everything from toilet paper to leaf blowers. The light was bleaker here, long fluorescent tubes buzzing overhead and casting hard shadows. It was cooler, the air smelling of dust, cardboard, and the faint, never-quite-gone scent of wet dog.
Ashanti’s senses, still heightened from the magic, picked it up immediately: tobacco, and beneath it, the crisp, clean scent of autumn leaves and ozone. Her pulse, traitorously, did a little skip. She followed the scent trail past a stack of crated lawn gnomes.
He was leaning against the steel rail of the loading dock bay, the rolling door shut tight behind him. The orange glow of a cigarette tip bobbed in the shadows as he raised it to his lips. The light from a lone safety lamp carved out the sharp lines of his profile—the strong jaw, the permanent slight furrow between his brows that made him look like he was either solving a complex problem or deeply annoyed by the world. Probably both.
Logan heard them. His head turned, just slightly, catching them in his peripheral vision. He took a long, final drag and exhaled a stream of smoke that dissipated into the vast, dark space above the dock. He flicked the butt into a tin can on the floor with a quiet ting. “Rift in Housewares,” Ashanti said by way of greeting, her voice thankfully even. “Sealed. No collateral. Locus is weak, though. Needs reporting.”
Logan pushed off the railing, turning fully toward them. He wore the same dark blue Walmart vest over a grey t-shirt, the fabric pulling across shoulders that were decidedly not standard-issue for a night stocker. His eyes, a cool, sharp grey like weathered flint, scanned them both, a quick, efficient assessment. They lingered on Ashanti for a fraction of a second longer, checking for signs of strain.“Felt it,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “A shiver in the lattice. Figured you had it handled.” He nodded toward Ashanti, a gesture of professional respect. Then his gaze slid to Jackie. “You didn’t eat anything you weren’t supposed to, did you?”
Jackie placed a hand over her heart, the picture of affronted dignity. “I am a model of restraint. I only sampled the existential dread of a man with a coupon. It was dry and disappointing.”
Logan’s lips twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it softened the severity of his face. Ashanti found herself staring at the line of his throat, at the way his adam's apple moved when he swallowed. She forced her eyes away, looking instead at the concrete floor.
She forced her eyes away, looking instead at the concrete floor.
A beat of silence hung in the cool warehouse air, filled only by the distant drone of industrial fans. The adrenaline from sealing the rift was fading, leaving behind the familiar, deep-seated tiredness that came with the last hour of a shift.The kind of tired that made your bones feel like they were filled with wet sand.
Jackie cleared her throat, the sound exaggerated. “Well, this has been a thrilling little post-mortem, but my digestive system is demanding tribute. Also, I can hear the bacon at the Waffle House screaming my name from across the parking lot.”
Ashanti took a breath, her heart doing a weird, fluttery thing against her ribs. She pushed off the wall she hadn’t realized she’d been leaning against and shoved her hands into the pockets of her Walmart vest. She kept her gaze fixed on a crack in the concrete near Logan’s boots.
“Jackie and I are gonna grab breakfast at the shitty diner,” she said, the words coming out in a rush. She forced a casual shrug. “You’re coming with, since our shift is over.”
She leaned back against the wall, trying to play cool. The cold steel bit through her thin shirt. She hoped the dim light hid the warmth she felt in her cheeks. Logan was quiet for a moment. She could feel his grey eyes on her, that assessing, unnerving focus. “The shitty diner,” he repeated, his tone flat.
“The one with the sticky menus and the cook who may or may not be a minor earth elemental,” Jackie clarified, rolling her eyes. “It’s part of the charm. Also, they don’t ask questions when I order six sides of hash browns.”
“I’ve got to file the locus report,” Logan said, nodding toward the makeshift office—a glass-walled room filled with clipboards and a flickering computer monitor.
“It’ll keep for twenty minutes,” Ashanti countered, finally looking up at him. Her amber eyes caught his, and she held the contact, channeling every ounce of her will into not looking away first.“The dimensional pressure has stabilized. The report won’t change. You need to eat something that isn’t from a vending machine.”
A faint, almost imperceptible change went through him. The rigid line of his shoulders softened, just a millimeter. It was the kind of tell you only saw if you’d spent years watching him from across a stockroom, or a cramped apartment living room. Jackie looked between them, a slow, knowing smile spreading across her lavender face. “Yeah, Logan. Come on. Be a pack animal. Participate in the post-hunt communal feeding. It’ll be fun. I promise to only mildly embarrass you both.”
Logan let out a long, slow breath, a cloud of condensation in the chilly air. He gave a single, curt nod.“Fine. But I’m driving. Your car sounds like it’s powered by angry gremlins, Ashanti.”
“They’re just enthusiastic,” Ashanti muttered, pushing herself off the wall. A foreign, buoyant feeling bubbled up in her chest. She tamped it down, hard. It was just breakfast. Just fuel after a long night. Nothing more.“Great! It’s settled!” Jackie announced, clapping her hands together. “Now, let’s get out of this dimensional sore spot before something else literally bleeds through. I’m craving syrup and existential dread.” She looped her arm through Ashanti’s and began pulling her toward the employee exit, her other hand already digging in her pocket for her phone, its screen casting a garish pink light on her smirking face.
Ashanti allowed herself to be dragged, glancing back over her shoulder. Logan was following, a dark, quiet shadow falling into step behind them. He caught her look and held it for a second, his grey eyes unreadable in the gloom. Then he reached past her to push the heavy metal door open, holding it for them as they stepped out into the pale, pre-dawn light.