Disappearance
She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen the stars. Madeleine didn’t even know who they were anymore. She hadn’t seen a movie in ages, and she’d let her Netflix subscription lapse badly. Thus it fell to the police detective to explain to her who the apparent victim was. The detective was a little shocked. He had assumed everyone knew about Pamela Percy, who’d taken television by storm last season. “Don’t you remember?” he asked curiously. “That show. The one where-“
“Didn’t see it,” Madeleine said absently. “So. Fell from the cathedral, huh?”
“Fell, jumped, pushed…” the detective listed. “We’re not sure yet. Thing is, she didn’t land. Just stepped out the window and vanished in mid-air. Flash of green light, she’s gone. Figured this was your department.”
“Figured right.” She paused, looking up at the cathedral. “Where was she when…”
The detective pointed to a window. Madeline could’ve flown straight up, but she didn’t want the attention just yet. So she took the stairs inside. Madeleine pushed her way past the yellow crime scene tape and examined the room. There weren’t much signs of distress. No note, no marks of struggle on the floor or walls, no scorches from errant laser beams. Pamela Percy had, it seemed, gone straight to the window, stepped out into air, and teleported clean away. For all Madeleine knew, the television actress was in another dimension by now. This assumed that she had in fact materialized elsewhere. She might have been reduced to a random squiggle of matter drifting through space.
Madeleine couldn’t teleport herself. Her powers were more of the flying brick variety, with a bit of flame thrown in. Fortunately, she knew people who knew people. She was on the phone to one of them within five minutes. “Audrey,” she said. “You know teleporting. I think I’ve got someone who just vanished right out of a cathedral here. I need help figuring where they’ve gone.”
Audrey wasn’t just a teleporter; she was also a ‘pather. She didn’t even use spoken word unless absolutely necessary. Her reply was, therefore, brief. “Where are you?” she rasped.
Madeline gave her address. Without warning, not even so much as a bamf sound effect, Audrey was standing next to her. Madeleine jumped involuntarily. “Would you mind not doing that?”
Sorry. Audrey’s voice echoed in Madeleine’s head. The teleporter looked over the room, then outside. Curious. No inter-dimensional residue. No transport energy signatures. Your Pamela Percy, whoever she was, did not teleport, not in the standard way. She just ceased to exist.
“Not good enough,” Madeline said. “People don’t just blip out.” Then she paused. “What do you mean, whoever she was? I didn’t know her, but the detective said she was on that show. The one where-“
Never heard of her. Are you certain the detective identified her correctly?
Madeline froze. She grabbed for her smartphone and did a bit of swift Internet searching. There was no record that anyone named Pamela Percy had so much as auditioned for a car insurance commercial, let alone starred in a major show. “Oh, crap,” Madeline said. “This is a time thing. I hate time things.”
