Midnight Heights
A standalone spypunk story
☛ Leo Vaughn writes unusual fantasy for unusual people, rep’d by Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency. His novels are coming soon to a bookstore near you.
Deadwater Inn is a series of standalone short stories—basically Casablanca meets the Cold War in the multiverse. You can jump in anywhere without prior reading.
Come on, don’t be shy. The water’s cold and moody.
—
Montpelier was due to walk into the Deadwater Inn at any moment. “Wait for me,” he’d said. “I’ll be in a rush. Don’t let me down. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Harlan snickered as he checked the guestbook again, leaning over the front desk and into the dim light of a little lamp with a green shade. How could it hurt any more than it already did? Nora, his dear wife, was still off spying in another dimension for that damned Montpelier. Nothing mattered to the American CIA but mission success.
He slapped the guestbook closed. Of all the expected guests, only Montpelier hadn’t checked in yet. Gabby Jack, Harlan’s faithful brown tabby, slept at the far end of the front desk, wedged up against the dreary velvet wall hangings. Harlan had left the Inn in Gabby Jack’s care before. And like the terrible host that he was, he was about to do it again. Montpelier could wake the cat if he needed to check in.
Harlan ducked into the office behind the desk and grabbed his trench coat and fedora off the rack. It was a wet, blustery night out there. And though he would range far from the Deadwater neighborhood tonight, he dare not expect an improvement in the weather.
§
Harlan pulled his coat tight against the spattering deluge. From the front steps of the Inn, he climbed down onto the elevated and crumbling street that separated the hotel from the green hills that rose up on the other side. The rain didn’t touch that strange world. Every blade of grass was dry. A mile or more distant, where the brooding mounds of grass had piled upon each other, a ring of ancient megaliths tilted toward the sky. The portal lay between them. Step into the humming circle of those stones, and one might walk out into any dimension—provided one knew the precise angle at which to walk.
But Harlan didn’t. That was the problem.
Of course, he knew where Nora was—theoretically, anyway. Some bogeyman called the KGB held her in their hopeless prison in the dimension that Montpelier called home. She’d been kidnapped while executing some clandestine mission for Montpelier and his honorable CIA.
But how to reach that dimension? Harlan couldn’t say. All he knew was that once Nora came back, if she did, he would have precious little time—maybe hours—to convince her to leave this corner of the multiverse forever.
So he walked along the border of the portal land, following the crumbling road as it meandered along the edge of the hills, stepping over dangerous holes where the asphalt carpet had fallen through its supporting girders. Down there, still waters lazed against the green edges of the hills, dead with the eternal anticipation that hung over the portal land. Dreary buildings rose up on the other side of the road, some nearly sagging over the entire width of the pavement, hanging even over the edge of the grass. Beyond these dilapidated structures, a great mountain rose up of steel beams and tarpaper and corrugated metal, of improvised windows and perilous balconies, of clothes hung out to dry now dripping in the rain. Midnight Heights, they called it, a warren of fools and crackpots offering a thousand ways to die.
It was ugly, yes, this cancerous pile of a neighborhood, but he had friends there.
§
He had to duck to see into the little window. The old woman inside stood not more than three feet high, and she’d built her dwelling to suit her. The lower half of the shop door rose to eighteen inches off the ground, and the top half, now swung open, couldn’t be much taller. The woman herself was ancient, wrinkled as a nut, with small, silvery eyes that watched him out of the darkness.
“I’m telling you, money is no object,” he said. It wasn’t exactly true, but an urchin like this couldn’t possibly charge that much.
“I’m sorry, Master Harlan.” Her voice croaked, froglike. “You’ll have to come back when you have a plan.”
“No, see, I want to reserve your services. I want you on call.” This was the only way he could ever get Nora through the portal, out of this dimension, to some better place—and he could only do that once she’d actually come home. Once she did, he would have to catch her in the right mood. When she wasn’t thinking of their dead child. When she might have a brief and beatific vision of some kind of future. Only then would Nora accompany him, as if on a lark, to a new home in a new world.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” Her face crinkled like paper into a warm smile. “You have to know when you want to go. I run fifty portal trips a month. Sometimes a hundred, if things are really hot.”
He searched her face again, but there was no give in her eyes. She didn’t need to place herself on call. It was that simple.
“All right.” He nodded and stood, his back lancing with pain. “Thanks anyway. Maybe I’ll come back.”
“You will.” Her voice floated up to him. “Oh, you will.”
§
He opened the front door to the Inn, then stepped inside.
Damn.
Naturally, Montpelier stood at the front desk, tapping his foot, staring off into space with his head cocked in that So help me kind of way.
Oh, and Gabby Jack was gone. What a surprise.
Harlan scraped his foot on the floor so as not to startle Montpelier.
The American spymaster turned, glaring with beady little eyes. He had close-cropped, whitish hair under a worn-out fedora. His head looked a bit too small, sitting atop his hill of threadbare flannel. He held his trench coat in the crook of his arm.
“Abandoning your post again?” Montpelier’s voice was curt.
“In case you’ve forgotten…” Harlan rounded the front desk and flipped the guestbook open. “I own this place.”
“I told you when I would arrive.”
Harlan ground his teeth together. He’d tried diplomacy with Montpelier. Maybe it was time for a direct hit. “I went to Midnight Heights.” He stared straight into the American’s cold little eyes. “I went to see a portal guide. One day soon, I’m taking Nora, and I’m leaving this place forever.”
Montpelier’s face softened, and he sighed. He looked down at the golden pen on the desk as if he couldn’t bear to hold Harlan’s gaze.
“What?” Harlan’s heart flipped into a wild beat.
“She took another mission.”
Harlan stared as his knees weakened. This couldn’t be.
“I told her, I said, I worry about the two of you. I said, You’re like kids to me.” Montpelier’s voice grew thick with emotion. “You know what she said?”
“Save it.” He didn’t need another gut punch tonight.
“She said, I’ll go home when I’m ready. Her exact words.”
Harlan gripped the desk, elbows shaking as he held himself up. “She what?”
“When she’s ready.”
He licked his lips as the lump rose in his throat. Damn it, he was not crying in front of Montpelier. He had to get a hold of himself.
But it was so much to process. In fact, it was a sign. The portal guide refused to go on call for him, and Nora would come home when she was ready. Both of these things pointed to the same fact. It just wasn’t time.
Harlan wiped an eye while tracing the current page in the guestbook with the other hand. “Let’s see… three days?”
“That’s right.” Montpelier still wouldn’t look at him.
“I’ll take you up to your room.”
“No need, Harlan. I know where it is.”
Harlan nodded. Of course he did.
“You hang in there, buddy.” Montpelier took the key from his hand with a quick, sad smile. Then he lumbered off across the lobby.
Once Montpelier had gone, Gabby Jack peeked out from behind a red velvet draping on the wall.
“Come ’ere, little guy.” Harlan circled the desk and bent, wiggling his fingers.
Gabby Jack came over and arched his back into Harlan’s hand and knee. Some lousy employee, this cat. But it wasn’t a bad night after all.
§ § §
Text © 2026 by George Anderson. All rights reserved.
Banner artwork created by Bianca Yamakoshi. © 2026 by George Anderson.
No AI technology was used to write or edit this story. Likewise, no AI technology was used to generate or modify any visual content associated with this story. Read the No AI Statement for full details.