The tape ripped off the cardboard packing box with a satisfying tearing sound that Andy didn’t realize she liked until after she heard it. Moving in the new house was slow going, but that was just fine by everyone because there wasn’t a real reason to rush. Furniture was still needed to fill the bigger space and there was a lot that simply needed to be bought, since some of the people moving in didn’t have much to move. Andy and Claire were used to living light, the teenage witch Avery that Claire was protecting from Vampires had a fair number of belongings but not a ton considering she had to flee her home quickly, and Mia—their sixteen year old daughter from a parallel dimension—escaped her dying world with nothing more than the clothes on her back and whatever was in her pockets, so she had to get everything new. So yeah, it was slow going, but that was okay. When you lived a life that was full of violence and chaos, a little slowness was nice every now and then.
Andy sat in the empty living room tearing open boxes that her mother shipped her from her cabin in Illinois. Some of it was useful, like clothes and such, but others were things she just didn’t trust out of her sight for too long. Andy was cross legged on the floor, and the house was quiet, but outside she could hear the muffled screams of AC/DC turned up to eleven but garbled by the thick walls. Claire was out in front of the garage working on her car with Mia and her daughter Mollie. The quiet was nice, but quiet was sort of a relative thing when dating a werewolf.
The top of the box Andy just opened had a layer of folded flannel shirts. When she moved that out of the way there was a layer of newspaper cushioning what was below. Andy went to reach for an old clock that sat in the corner, wrapped up in more newspaper, but something else caught her eye first and she ended up pulling it out of the packing box instead. The object in question was an old looking cigar box. On the outside it didn’t look like anything special but that was sort of the idea. She opened it up and found the Nocul Amulet inside; a solid gold circular talisman allegedly made from the golden blood of a god. It was the artifact that brought Andy and Claire together in the first place, and even though it packed some crazy power and was dangerous in the wrong hands—like end of the world dangerous—it made Andy smile. That one, dumb piece of gold changed her life forever.
“Stahp!” The giggle of a couple of teenagers pulled Andy’s attention away from the amulet. She stood up, leaving the cigar box behind but holding the Nocul Amulet in her hand, and she went to the window and peeked through the nice curtains that Claire’s sister Erin helped hang for them. Apparently, they had moved from working under the hood of Claire’s car to washing it. It was hard to tell who started it, but Mollie was chasing Mia around the car with a hose, spraying her on low, and Claire was already covered in suds. They were giggling and laughing, and even Claire was smiling. It was hard to believe that this was really their life. It was hard for Andy to believe that she could actually be attached to something so… nice.
It was extra comforting seeing Mia feel at home here. She lost everything, her entire universe was destroyed, including her version of her parents who’d she never see again. Andy and Claire could do their best for the girl but they’d probably never be able to replace what Mia lost. Andy’s thoughts drifted a bit, now thinking about the ever infinite multiverse and all the other versions of her that were out there. She wondered if those other versions of her had it this good, and her curiosity got the better of her. As if it was listening to her thoughts, the Nocul Amulet started to glow in her hand. She looked down at it and the magic pouring out of the gold disc surged through her fingertips and across her body.
Andy’s eyes rolled to the back of her head and the amulet gifted her a glimpse of a different world… of a different Andy.
***
DIMENSION 4-2-HB
Glimpses and images rushed to Andy’s mind, though it was hard to really qualify what that meant. Andy could sort of see bits and pieces of everything like some sort of omnipotent cloud. The Nocul Amulet showed her a world that was not totally unlike her own up to a point, but diverted off significantly after a while. In this world, Claire’s daughter Mollie was able to convince Claire to have Andy and the witch Avery help them move their souls into new bodies, bodies that weren’t werewolves.
So that’s just what happened. In this world, both mother and daughter soul-hopped into new vessels where they could live a life that resembled something normal. It worked for a while… but once you lived a life that was abnormal you really couldn’t go back to normal. Not fully, anyway. Eventually, Claire’s past came up to bite her. The vampire queen that Claire stole Avery the witch from returned with a bloody vengeance, and with no werewolf powers to easily defend herself, there was no stopping the slaughter that followed. Mollie was killed first, then her friends, then Claire’s sister Erin, and the vampire queen saved Andy for last. The vampire queen ripped Andy’s throat out and let her bleed out in Claire’s arms. Andy tried to mutter her spell, she tried to summon the power of Damballa in order to find a new vessel and live on so she could always be there for Claire, but it was hard to mutter anything without a throat. Her soul escaped but it was unguided and for a while Andy was just dead.
It wasn’t until months later that Andy found a third life, this time in the form of a distant Barclay cousin. His name was Bert and he passed away in his sleep on a lazy-boy in front of a TV after drinking so much that his heart gave out. When Bert’s soul slipped out Andy’s was able to slip in, and just like that Andy Barclay was back. Andy and Claire reunited and used their grief to motivate them. They only had each other, but in this world that was all they needed. They left Texas, hit the road, and killed every vampire they came across. It was never enough to bring back what they lost, or to fix the broken relationship between the two of them, but it was better than nothing.
***
A coughing fit knocked Andy out of her vision, and she had to lean up against the window for a minute to support herself. She blinked slowly and looked around, she was back in the living room of her new house. Outside the window, Claire, Mollie, and Mia were still having their water fight around the car, but instead of basking in that moment, instead of smiling at those she loved having fun, Andy looked back down to the Nocul Amulet in her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Show me more,” she whispered.
The amulet glowed again, as if in response, and another vision overtook Andy Barclay.
***
DIMENSION 9-9-NO
In this vision, Andy didn’t see things from above. She wasn’t a cloud, but a shadow, a transparent fog that drifted around everything, haunting each corner of that reality like a stuck and angry spirit. In this universe, Andy Barclay was dead, and he was dead because Mia Allen was still alive. In this world, when Andy was stabbed half to death and managed to make his way to the morgue where he was meant to find a new body—a second chance—the morgue was empty, and he bled out on the floor all alone. Mia Allen never died in that world, but that didn’t mean her time in hell didn’t change her. The drugs that she took to help cope with her experience in hell didn’t kill her, but they did force her into a life of crime to help her afford them.
Andy watched as Mia fell darker and darker into her life. The longer she lived, the more corrupted and broken she became. This was the woman who allowed Andy a second chance at life, the woman Andy and Claire named their daughter after in another world, but here she was shattered and destructive, and there was no fixing her.
Though it seemed that destiny had a strange sense of humor in every universe. Andy saw as Mia Allen eventually found a way to die. She robbed the wrong house, trying to rip off a couple of werewolves. It didn’t end well. It was Claire—the burglary victim, in this case—who ended Mia Allen’s life. She slashed her throat open with her claws and gutted her in the living room of her sister’s house.
***
A tear ran down Andy’s cheek as she came out of the second vision. The amulet in her hand was quiet, almost mockingly so, and she hated it for it. “No,” she said harshly at the piece of gold in her hand, as if it could respond. “No, show me happiness. Show me this,” she pointed out to the window where Claire, Mollie, and kid Mia were having fun. “This can’t be the only one.”
The amulet glowed again, and Andy closed her eyes, preparing herself for what she was going to see next.
***
DIMENSION 2-2-3-RG
This world, Andy saw as the sun saw. She was rays of light shining down on the new house. It was like she was seeing this day, this very day, but in another world where things were slightly different. The Andy of this world sat on the porch reading a book. She seemed more or less the same except for the fact that her hair was blonde. Claire was out in front of the garage working alone under the hood of her car. She seemed the same, too—was even listening to the same AC/DC song, only her hair was red.
Avery the witch came up the porch from around the side of the house. She was carrying some of her stuff and taking it up to her new room. She waved to blonde Andy and went inside. There was no Mollie. There was no Mia. Mollie existed in this world, sure, but without a Mia popping in from another dimension there was less of a push for her to connect with her mother, and less reason to be around.
Things were quiet and nice in this universe, and people were happy, but something was missing.
***
The sound of a hose spraying up against a car and Claire yelling for them to watch the paint job brought Andy back into the moment of her own reality. She was quiet when she came back, blinking slow blinks and thinking about everything she just saw. She looked down at the Nocul Amulet in her hand. It didn’t do anything—didn’t glow, or make noise, or do anything at all—but it still felt like it was trying to say something to her.
Andy sighed and turned back to her moving boxes. She put the amulet back in the cigar box, folded it all up back under the newspaper, and retreated to the kitchen where she found a mop bucket that she could fill up in the sink. Andy went out through the back and circled the house. It was hard to sneak up on people when two of them were werewolves, but she figured she might be quick enough to get Mia. She joined in on the water fight before Claire could get bored of it and get grumpy again.
How things were in other worlds… it didn’t matter. It couldn’t.
Andy had her world, and it was up to her to make the best of it while she could, and that water fight was a moment she didn’t just want to watch. She wanted to live it.
