Seventh Seal - Jacquelyn Faye Page 0,18

a virgin. You would have learned a lot more." She chuckled at her own joke. I blushed six shades of crimson.

"So, what have you been working on?"

"That." She pointed a finger at the furthest wall. Nailed to the wall were sheets of parchment all overlapped until it looked a solid sheet, diagrammed with Tartarus and the adjacent planes. Seeing it on paper gave me a bit more understanding of what Dar had been trying to explain.

"Oh. I already know all that. Cania was inhabited by Mephistopheles who got offed by the angels so they're the only ones who can enter Tartarus, essentially making it an escape proof prison."

"Very good. If you're thinking in positive and negative planes of existence. That doesn't take into account the lateral planes."

"Lateral planes?"

"Did you pay attention to nothing I said in your studies?"

"Musta been sick that day."

"Snogging. You were such a horn dog once you found out the miraculous uses of the penis."

Yuki snickered behind us.

"You were saying?"

"About the penises or the planes?" Nana cocked an eyebrow.

"Planes."

"Well, travel to the planes is like taking a subway from one to another." She moved to the beautifully drawn circular diagram and touched the disk representing the mortal realm. It flared for an instant, gold light looking like embers as the brown ink blossomed to life and the disk pulled away from the others and started spinning.

"That's fucking cool," Yuki said in awe.

"So, what are lateral planes?"

"Just as there is the mortal realm, there are others on the same plane."

"The multiverse?" I had seen the Marvel movies.

Nana shook her head in disappointment. "That, I'm sorry to say, is bullshit. But there are three for each. Think of all of these as the primary planes of existence. They are neutral." She waved her hand and the disk split into three, all overlapping each other. "Then there are the positive primary planes and the negative primary planes. They make up the lateral."

"That's the two kinds? So, Mephistopheles might be alive in one of them?"

She shook her head. "No. If you die in one, you die in all. They're that interconnected."

"So, how does that help us then?"

"It doesn't. I said there were two different kinds. I was explaining the first in hopes that you might actually retain some knowledge for a change."

"Yes. Two. Positive and negative."

"No, those are one kind. Laterals of the first."

"What's the second?"

"What do you think connects everything?" She motioned at the whole board.

"Subways?"

Her face fell in utter annoyance.

"Love?"

She smacked me in the back of the head.

"Just tell me!"

She motioned toward the board with both arms outstretched. A globe encircled all of the planes, glittering like stars.

"Space?"

"In a way, you are correct, Child."

I made a pumping motion with my arm. "Score."

"But if you think it's the space that a rocket can get you to, you are sorely mistaken."

"Drugs?"

"Nope."

"She is referring to Ethereum." My mother answered solemnly from the doorway behind us.

"So good of you to join us, Moth–"

Her hair was disheveled, her silk robe askew, and her usually pristine lipstick smeared across half her face. Seven guys were milling in the living room by the front door in various stages of undress, all of them putting on their shoes with dazed looks on their faces.

"Seven?" I hadn't meant to say the word aloud, but I hiss-whispered in disbelief. I was surprised she could walk from the bedroom to the workroom. But then again, the seven guys might have carried her. "They all on the same team?"

"Yes, actually. Thank the lady for softball!"

"Aren't there nine people on a team?" I vaguely recalled nine being the number, but I wasn't sure.

"Two of them were married and didn't feel like playing…" Mother wiggled her eyebrows.

Nana cackled and Yuki reverted to gagging noises. I was just in shock. Shaking my head, I turned back to Nana. "So, what's Ethereum? Like the digital currency?"

"No, Granddaughter. Ethereum is the space, energy, force, whatever, that connects all the planes. Theoretically, you could travel from the mortal realm to any of the other planes by cutting across Ethereum."

Something wasn't adding up. "If that is true, and travel to the planes is limited to the adjacent planes, how do the angels get to our realm, how did Dar get to our realm, and how did a portal to hell open up in the middle of town?"

"Magic."

"Ex-squeeze me?"

"She means conduits, dear." Mother strode into the room adjusting her robe.

"Conduits? Like subways?"

"Kind of. But, more like inside you."

She pulled out a stool from under the work bench and sat.