“Anyone home?” she asked, tapping on the front door of the treehouse.
“I’m in the kitchen,” Alex called back. Ellabell had ordered him to bake some cookies for Agatha, while she went to visit Hadrian up at the school. It was a focusing task in itself, but a fun one that meant everyone got to eat something delicious.
“Ellabell got you making cookies again?” Ceres said, amused, as she walked into the small kitchen area that Hadrian had installed.
Alex grinned. “She thinks it keeps my mind steady, going through the recipe, measuring things out. What she doesn’t know is, I just like to lick the bowl,” he chuckled.
“I hope you don’t do that before you’ve spooned the mixture out,” Ceres teased.
“With everything you people keep feeding me, I don’t need to,” he remarked, patting his stomach. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”
“News that you’ll be pleased to hear,” she said, taking a seat on one of the high stools that sat by the kitchen door.
Alex turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“I have decided to test whether your recovery is complete,” she said, smiling kindly.
Alex frowned. “Sounds painful.”
“Not painful, it just requires focus,” she said, chuckling softly. "Now, I’m going to place my hand on your chest, and I want you to reach inside, to find your soul, and let it rise to meet my palm. Focus your mind, and it should come easily,” she encouraged.
He did as she’d asked, closing his eyes as he felt her palm on his chest. Once upon a time, such a task would have been simple, but now it was a real strain to seek out the pulsing coil of his essence and coax it into action. Reaching it, he focused hard on lifting it, feeling as the tendrils twisted up through his ribs, pushing toward the hand pressed just above.
“And, relax,” said Ceres.
Alex smiled nervously as he felt his essence descend back into the depths of his body. “How did I do?” he asked.
“You’re done,” she replied, grinning. “There’s nothing more we can do for you. You have your strength back, your mind is as focused as it’s ever going to be, and the little pieces that were broken have been tied off, as it were. Demeter and I have been discussing it, and we think you’re ready to go home. That test proved it.”
The spoon in Alex’s hand clattered into the bowl, splashing unfinished cookie mixture up the sides. Without a word, he reached out and pulled Ceres into a tight embrace, his shoulders shaking from happy laughter. She laughed too, the sound infectious, as she patted him on the back. It was a well-known fact that she wasn’t exactly a hugger, but it was evident she was making an exception for Alex.
“I’m really good to go?” he asked, pulling away.
She nodded. “You’re really good to go.”
When Ellabell returned, he told her the good news, scooping her up into his arms and spinning her around, both of them whooping with excitement as they danced around the kitchen, eating half of the cookies that had been intended for Agatha. It had been a long time coming, and both of them were eager to return home.
“What will you do when you get home?” Alex asked, once they had come down from cloud nine.
Ellabell shrugged. “Depends who’s there when I get there,” she said sadly. “My parents probably won’t be home, with how much they work. My neighbors, if they still live there, might be happy to see me, though.”
“You only saw your parents every few weeks, right?” Alex asked, remembering the stories she had told him of her lonely childhood, in the many long conversations they’d had together.
“Yeah, I was the ultimate latchkey kid,” she said with a tight smile.
“Perhaps things will change, seeing as you’ve been gone so long?” Alex encouraged, putting his arm around her.
“Perhaps… but I think it might be too little, too late,” she sighed. “I just want to see them to let them know I’m okay, and then I’ll leave again. If they’d been home, Finder never would have kidnapped me.”
“But if he hadn’t, you’d never have met me,” Alex teased, wanting to coax a smile back to her face.
“Every cloud, eh?” she murmured, giving him a playful shove in the ribs.
The following afternoon, Ellabell and Alex met with Natalie on the front lawn of Spellshadow Manor. They had sent had a message through to her the day before, explaining what had happened, and she had sent one back, asking if she could come with them.
She looked sleek and sophisticated, dressed in silver trousers and a white t-shirt, her black hair slicked back into a high ponytail. Whatever she had been doing at Stillwater, it agreed with her. She looked happy and healthy, a big smile on her face.
“I suppose we should do this at last,” she said as the duo approached, gesturing toward the wide-open gates.
The spells that concealed the place from ordinary eyes were still up, but the barrier remained absent, the clockwork discs all broken to pieces.
“I suppose we should,” Alex agreed, turning to look at the looming figure of Spellshadow one last time. “I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see the back of this place,” he muttered.
“Nope, not one bit,” Ellabell chimed in, taking Alex’s hand.
“Goodbye, Spellshadow!” Alex yelled, his voice echoing all the way around the crumbling walls.
“Goodbye, Spellshadow!” the girls howled, grins spreading across their faces.
With that, they walked out of the school, not giving it a second glance. It might not be the last time they returned to the magical realm, Alex reasoned, but he never wished to set foot inside the manor again.
As they walked, Alex turned to Natalie. “What are you going to tell your family?” He had given it some thought during his long recovery, but had not come up with anything particularly plausible. The real explanation seemed too outlandish, even for him.
She smiled. “I am going to tell them I slipped and fell into the ravine after messing around up there—typical teenager mischief—and suffered a bout of amnesia that made me forget who I was. I shall say you were in there too, and when the two of us came around, we couldn’t remember a thing, so we traveled all the way up to Alaska, hitchhiking most of the way, believing that was where we were from,” she began, the whole thing apparently carefully thought out. “Then, I will say my memories were restored after eating strawberry pancakes at a truck stop in Juno, and we hurried back as fast as we could.”
Alex whistled. “You mind if I use that too?”
“I was counting on it,” Natalie chuckled. “It will not work if your story is different!”
Alex laughed. “That’s very true. So, accident, amnesia, Alaska, strawberry pancakes?”
“That is about it,” Natalie replied.
Faced with the passageway that led into the real world, Alex began to worry. The door would always be open for a return journey, he knew that much, but he felt as if he were in a strange kind of limbo. Part of him never wanted to set foot in the magical realm again, but then the other part knew that the real world would seem strange and unusual to him now.
How was he supposed to deal with ordinary life, having lived through the things he had?
Chapter 34
Anxiety settled across the group as they stepped over the threshold between realms, emerging into the world beyond. For a moment, Alex was confused, wondering if they’d come out in another part of the world. With the way the horizon had shifted scenery, seen from the library window at Spellshadow, he knew the gateway didn’t always lead out to the ordinary streets of Middledale, Iowa. This time, however, it seemed they’d hit the jackpot, timing it just right. He recognized the landscape instantly. Yes, this was definitely his hometown; there was no mistaking the quaint streets and uniform houses. The roads were quiet, although an elderly gentleman, in the middle of putting out his trash, eyed them curiously as they passed by.
Do we look different from normal people now? Alex wondered, feeling suddenly self-conscious.
&nbs
p; The memories of the night he had followed Natalie and the raggedy gray phantom came flooding back as they walked along the streets, and Alex’s heart began to pound harder when he realized they were almost back at his family home. Turning onto the very road he had known all his life, nausea gripped his stomach like a vise. What if his mother was worse? What if the sight of him sent her over the edge?
Picking up a newspaper, left discarded on a neighbor’s lawn, he checked the date and was surprised by what he saw. If it was correct, only six months had passed since he had gone missing. Enough time to cause worry and distress, but not nearly as long as he had actually been away. He passed the paper to Natalie and Ellabell, pointing to the date.
“Is this today’s?” Ellabell asked.
“Even if it’s not, it’s recent,” Alex replied, looking again at the newspaper. It hadn’t browned, nor had the print faded. In fact, it looked fairly fresh off the press.
“How is that possible?” Natalie wondered, a nervous expression upon her face.
Alex shrugged. “Time must move slower here.”
Finally, he could put it off no longer. Standing at the gate that led up to his front door, he paused, his knuckles white on the latch. All he had to do was lift it up and walk along the path to the porch, but he was frozen to the spot. Moving beside him, Ellabell lifted the latch for him, swinging the gate open.
“You’ve got this,” she said softly, placing her hand lightly upon his arm.
Taking a deep breath, he put one foot in front of the other, forcing himself to make the short journey to the front door. Hesitating for a second, he knocked on the wooden surface and took a step back, waiting for the familiar face of his mother to appear.
Only, the person who answered the door wasn’t his mother. A large man stood in the doorway. Gray eyes peered at them curiously, set in a grizzled face, his dark hair short and flecked with silver at the sides. Alex’s heart sank, convinced something had happened to his mother, and this was the new resident of his childhood home. A moment later, however, the man’s eyes went wide with understanding.
“Alex?” he gasped, in utter disbelief.
Alex nodded. “Who are you?”
“I’m Detective David Cartwright,” he said, holding out his hand to shake Alex’s. “I’m a… friend of your mother’s. I’ve been helping with your missing person’s case,” he explained hurriedly, almost shaking Alex’s hand clean off. “And you must be Natalie?” he asked, spotting the French girl standing behind Alex.
Natalie nodded. “That is me.”
“Well, come in, come in,” the cop said, ushering them quickly inside. “Your mother is in the den. I’ll be with you in a moment; I just have some calls to make,” he added, looking over them again as if they were figments of his imagination. His gaze paused on Ellabell, like he wasn’t sure what to make of her, but urgency sent him toward the phone without saying another word.
Alex braced himself as he walked toward the den door. Quietly, he knocked on it, not wanting to burst in and give his mother a shock.
“David?” his mother’s voice asked.
Alex felt tears brimming in his eyes as he pushed open the door and stepped into the room. His mother was sitting on the sofa, clutching a pillow to her chest, her eyes listlessly watching the television in the corner. She looked up as the trio entered. For a minute, nobody said a word. Then, his mother screamed, jumping up from the sofa, before running into Alex’s open arms. She grasped at him, pulling him to her with such ferocity he felt she might crush him, but he understood the impulse. She wanted to make sure he was real. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her tightly, hearing her sobbing in his ear.
“Alex, Alex, Alex,” she whispered. “Is it really you?”
“It’s me, Mom,” Alex said gently, tears falling from his eyes. “I’m back.”
“Oh, Alex… Where have you been?” she breathed, hugging him tighter. “Where did you go? Who took you?”
He smiled, knowing the story was going to be long one. “I’ll explain everything later, but I think David has phoned the cops,” he said.
She pulled away. “You met David?” she asked, brushing the tears away from her eyes.
“Yeah, he seems like a nice guy,” Alex replied, not really knowing how to broach the subject of a strange man in his house, not when there were so many other things to discuss.
“Where have you been?” she asked again, more desperately this time. “You’ve been gone for six months. The police told me you were likely dead somewhere. I never believed them, but when you didn’t come back, I started to fear the worst.” She rattled off the words, as if she’d been storing them up for a long time.
He smiled, planting a kiss on her forehead. “I promise I will tell you everything later,” he said, and the funny thing was, he meant it. If anyone could understand the bizarre world he’d been living in, it was his mother.
“And Natalie! You’re here too! Everyone has been so worried!” she shrieked, finally noticing the two others in the room. “And you, I don’t know you, but you are very welcome here,” she cried, enveloping both Natalie and Ellabell in a warm embrace.
“I am back, Mrs. Webber,” said Natalie. “And we have quite a story to tell you, once the police have gone.”
Alex’s mom nodded. “I have been on the phone to your family every day, trying to encourage them not to give up on you. I just knew you would walk back through that door one day—I just knew it!”
“How are they?” Natalie asked sheepishly.
“They are distraught, as you can imagine, but I know everything will be forgotten once they see you again, and hold you again,” Alex’s mom replied.
Natalie smiled nervously. “Perhaps I should call them?” she said, but Alex’s mom shook her head.
“I would wait until the police have been and gone. They will have a lot of questions, I’m sure. David has been keeping me up to date with the investigation, and they will be very intrigued to know where you have been all this time, just as I am,” she explained, coming back over to wrap Alex in another hug. “I can’t believe you’re home,” she sobbed.
“I was always going to come back to you,” Alex swore, holding her close. As she let him go, he realized she looked healthier than she had the last time he’d seen her. There were blooms in her cheeks again, the dark circles beneath her eyes no longer as prominent, her whole figure less skinny than it had been before. “How are you feeling?” he asked, puzzled by the change in her.
She smiled. “I am better, my darling boy. My treatment is working. David has been helping me, but I am on the road to recovery,” she told him, fresh tears pouring from her eyes.
“That is the best news I’ve heard in months!” he cried, clutching her hands and squeezing them tightly. After all the worrying he had done, his mother was getting better. She hadn’t been sitting at home, wasting away, getting sicker by the second. No, the universe had seen fit to offer her some hope in all of this. He couldn’t believe it—she was going to be okay.
A short while later, the police descended on the house like a swarm of flies, buzzing around the place in sharp suits, wielding notepads and pens. Some were there to take statements; others were there to take DNA samples and fingerprints, with one taking photos, while the rest stood around doing nothing, drinking Alex’s mother’s coffee and eating her cookies.
They set up a makeshift interview room in the kitchen, bringing Natalie and Alex in individually to ask them for their version of events. They tried to interview Ellabell, but seeing as nobody knew who she was, or where she had come from, the information they got was fairly useless to their particular case.
Once it was Alex’s turn to enter, the detective in charge of interviewing scrutinized him closely. Natalie had gone first, flashing him a wink as she came back into the den. Alex sat down in the familiar chair, putting his hands down flat on the kitchen table. He didn’t know why—he simply reasoned it made him look less guilty, if the cop could see his hands at all ti
mes.
“Would you like to tell me where you’ve been?” the detective asked, pressing the nib of her pen down onto the notepad she had laid out on the surface of the table.
Alex nodded, recounting the tale they’d agreed upon. It tumbled from his mouth easily, the words well rehearsed in his head by that point. The detective barely looked up as he spoke, scribbling it all down onto the paper. When he finished, she finally lifted her gaze to his.
“Amnesia?” she said, giving him a withering look.
“Amnesia,” Alex confirmed, trying hard not to smile.
She glanced over the notes she’d made. “And strawberry pancakes triggered your memories?”
Alex nodded. “My mom used to make them, and the taste of them must have brought something back.”
The woman sighed. “Very well. If that’s all you have to say to me, then you can go.”
Alex jumped up from the table and hurried back into the den, where everyone was waiting anxiously for his return. He said nothing, not wanting to give anything away while the police were still in the house. Instead, David was called out into the hallway, where the detective greeted him. Alex could see them through the crack in the den door, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Whatever it was, it seemed the detective was at the end of her tether, her expression showing her exhaustion. She gestured at the den, but David put his hands up, shaking his head. Finally, the detective shrugged, shoving her notepad and pen into her bag.
“Teenagers go missing all the time,” she said, her voice just loud enough for Alex to make out what she was saying. “Some come back, some don’t. Your new friend is just lucky those two did come back. If they’re going to tell us lies, there’s nothing we can do. If they’re okay, they’re safe, and they don’t seem to be hurt, what more can I give to this investigation? It was a missing person’s case. Those missing people have been found. As far as I’m concerned, my job is done,” she continued tersely, gesturing for her team to gather their things and leave.