She lowered the mirror and looked around. The blue room was in a state of utter devastation. Broken furniture lay everywhere. One of the chandeliers was gone. The Compendium lay open on its back, missing half its pages. But the crisis was over, and she sobbed with relief at the thought of it. They had beaten The Evil once again.
Pushing away from Stefano, grateful for his help but not forgetting his role in recent events, she looked around and said, “Where’s Jack?”
Stefano hesitated.
“He’s … gone.”
For a full second, Jaide could only stare at him.
“What?”
“Jack was right there, and now he’s not,” said Stefano, pointing to the left of the now ordinary doorway. “Tara was there and Kyle was over there. The bird was here, too. They’re all gone.”
“The bird has a name,” said Jaide, hurrying to the doorway and peering warily through it, into the room that contained the cross-continuum conduit constructor. The room wasn’t much bigger than a closet, and apart from the conduit constructor and the plinth, it contained nothing at all. No Tara, no Kyle, no Cornelia, and no Jack.
Jaide spun around.
“Jack, if you’re hiding somewhere, come out now,” she shouted. “It’s not funny!”
There was no reply.
“He must have —” Stefano began.
“Don’t say it,” she snapped at him. “This is all your fault.”
“Me? It was The Evil —”
“Yes, but if you hadn’t come here it wouldn’t have taken you over and done all this. Jack would still be here. He wouldn’t be —”
She put both hands over her mouth, unable to finish the sentence. Trapped in the Evil Dimension. Jack would be right here with her, where he belonged. But he wasn’t. She felt like crying, screaming, and running all at once.
What if he was dead? How would she go on living?
++Jack?++
The voice in her mind made her jump, but it was only Stefano, not The Evil.
++Jack, can you hear me?++
Jaide kicked herself for not thinking of teeping earlier. Just because they were in different worlds didn’t mean their minds couldn’t reach out and find each other.
++Jack!++ she shouted. ++Hold on! I’ll come and find you!++
She listened as hard as she could, and wondered if she heard a faint reply, right at the edge of her senses.
++… aide, stay where … dangerous …++
The voice was so faint she wasn’t sure she was imagining it, and when she called again she heard nothing at all in reply.
Then the door at the top of the stairs was opening and Susan was leading Grandma X inside. The old woman moved slowly and weakly. Her hand shook as she gripped the banister.
The gaping hole in Jaide’s chest got even wider. How was she going to tell them?
“We closed the breach,” said Stefano, and she almost kicked him for the pride in his voice. This wasn’t time for showing off! “It was Jaide’s work, really. She found something useful in the Compendium. We got lucky.”
Grandma X looked at the mess as she came gingerly down the short flight of stairs, leaning heavily on Susan’s arm. The cats followed more lightly, exploring the rubble to see what could be salvaged.
“Are you okay?” Jaide asked Grandma X.
“I will recover. How about you?” she asked Stefano. “Are you feeling … yourself?”
“Who cares about him?” said Jaide. “Jack, Tara, and Kyle are gone and it’s all because of him!”
Susan put a hand to her mouth and sat down on a wooden chest as though her legs had lost all strength. “No! They can’t be!”
“What’s this about Jack?” asked Ari, emerging from a tangle of chess pieces and jewelry.
“He and the others fell through before we could close the hole,” Stefano said, straightening his back. Dozens of round red marks dotted his skin like pimples, where the leeches had latched on to him. “It is my fault … Jaide’s right. The Evil used my Gift. It made me attack you. Warden, I am sorry.”
He bowed his head low before Grandma X, and for a second Jaide thought he might go down on one knee. Even as she held herself back from punching him, she had to admire the way he took the blame when called upon to do so. Ari looked like he wanted to scratch the boy’s eyes out. Kleo sat straight and still with her ears flat against her head, as though not wanting to hear any more.
Jaide waited to see what Grandma X said. Would she send Stefano to his room, or even farther away? Would she blast him to atoms with her silver ring?
In the end she just nodded.
“Yes, I thought it had to be something like that. You were far stronger than you had any right to be.” She patted the burned patches in her hair, as though making sure there was any left. “No permanent damage was done.”
“Is that it?” asked Jaide. “What are we going to do about him?”
“Don’t blame Stefano because of The Evil’s actions,” Grandma X told her. “We all have moments of … not weakness, exactly … more a kind of distraction. If The Evil has a way of making us forget what is dangerous, it’s only because we insist on believing that things can get better. That despite all evidence we will overcome.”
She sighed, and Jaide was compelled to hug her tightly. She had never seen Grandma X looking so old and tired and … defeated.
“What are we going to do?” asked Susan. “How are we going to get them back?”
“We’ll have to use the Bridge,” said Stefano, pointing at the inert cross-continuum conduit constructor.
“It’s not safe,” said Grandma X, letting Jaide go but still keeping her arm around her. “You saw what happened when it’s activated. I was charged with keeping it out of harm’s way, but even so The Evil found it and used it to its own ends. Controlling it is very difficult. We can only guess what might happen if we try to use it again.”
“So we don’t do anything?” asked Jaide. “I know Jack’s alive. I heard him. We can’t leave him there, like —”
She stopped and bit her tongue.
“Like I left Lottie?” Grandma X asked her, with a renewed vigor. “If that is what’s best for the world, then yes, we must do exactly that. You saw how The Evil used her against us. That apparition fooled all of us, and it fooled the alarms, too. They thought they recognized my sister and that enabled The Evil to walk right into the heart of the house. Be glad its mission was to trick one of us into opening the way, not to kill us in our sleep.”
Susan’s fists were clenched.
“I will not leave Jack … wherever he is,” she said. “I will bring him back if I have to go there myself.”
Jaide wanted to cheer.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Grandma X. “I’ll talk to Aleksandr. Project Thunderclap must be testing its own Bridge. That must be what’s creating these holes within the wards that The Evil is sneaking in through. At the very least, I can ask him to stop doing that.”
“I thought the plan was supposed to make everyone safe,” said Susan bitterly.
“It will do that eventually.”
Grandma X smiled at all the anxious faces gathered around her. It was a brave effort at restoring calm, but it looked strained.
“First, let’s clean up,” she said. “I can’t think with such a mess around me. Some of these remnants are highly valuable … and dangerous if left in one another’s company for too long. Let’s start at this end and work our way to the other side in a line. We’ll also have to call Tara’s and Kyle’s parents, and tell them that they’re staying over. That will buy us a little time.”
With heavy hearts, Jaide, Susan, and Stefano helped Grandma X and her Warden Companions sort through the rubble, putting pieces together and restoring what remained to its proper place. A surprising amount was missing, ranging from the very small to the very large, and a lot had been broken. They put all the fragments in the center of the room for dealing with later. Every damaged relic aged Grandma X a little more. No
ne of it was replaceable.
Perhaps most worrying to Jaide was the Compendium, which contained barely half as many pages as it had before. Was all that information lost forever? What if it got into the hands of The Evil? She didn’t want to ask how bad that might be. Things seemed pretty bad as they were.
Then a single peal of thunder sounded outside, and the blue door that led to the front yard opened to admit Hector Shield, looking scruffy and anxious behind his thick-rimmed glasses and floppy bangs. His jacket was smoking from the violence of his arrival.
“Dad!” Jaide dropped the feathered quills she had been collecting and ran into his arms.
“Jaide, darling girl, don’t cry. It’ll be all right.”
That was exactly what she needed to hear, because suddenly she was crying — at the thought that Jack might never make it back, that he might already be dead or absorbed by The Evil, or something too horrible for her to imagine. She had heard so many times that for all troubletwisters one twin always fell, but why did it have to happen to her and Jack? Why so soon, when they had barely begun? It wasn’t fair.
“How can you say that, Hector?” she heard her mother ask. “This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
Wiping her nose, Jaide pulled away from her father.
“It’s not his fault,” she said. “It’s The Evil’s.”
“But if we hadn’t come here …” said Susan. “If we had stayed right away from all this …”
“It would have followed us,” said Hector. “It would have happened anyway, and the kids wouldn’t have been ready for it. They were always in danger, but they’ve learned to fight back. Jaide is still here because of that. We should be grateful for what we have.”
“Forgive me for not finding that very comforting.” Susan’s hands were shaking. “Our son and Tara and Kyle are gone and we don’t know how to get them back!”
“Jack is a troubletwister,” said Hector. “He’s not defenseless. He’s smart and powerful. If he keeps his head, he’ll be okay.”
“He’s my grandson,” said Grandma X firmly. “Of course he’ll keep his head.”
Susan didn’t look reassured, and neither did Stefano. Jaide felt nothing but doubt, either. Neither Hector nor Grandma X had seen the power of the vortex. No one had ever been to the Evil Dimension and returned. Who knew what it was like over there? It might already be too late.
Stefano had been hanging back from the huddled family, and only now spoke, hesitantly, from the mezzanine where he had been attempting to restore order to the desk.
“I’m sorry I let you down, Hector.”
“Don’t be.” Jaide’s father let go of Jaide and stepped up the short flight to take him by the shoulders. “You passed the second test. You fought The Evil and survived. There may be much left to learn and do, yes, but you are still alive and still willing, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then let’s put this behind us and move forward. As my father used to say, you don’t boil water by staring at the kettle — unless you have a pair of Cuthbert’s Superluminary Goggles, in which case you very well might.”
Stefano didn’t smile, but he nodded and managed to partially wipe the hangdog expression from his face.
“Putting on the kettle is an excellent idea,” said Grandma X. “Let’s go upstairs and I’ll make us all some healing hot chocolate. There’s nothing we can do for Jack right now, except have faith in him. I’m sure he’s doing everything in his power to keep himself and the others safe.”
Susan nodded, although she looked about as happy about it as Jaide felt. Without looking at Hector, she turned and led the way out of the blue room, followed by the cats, Hector, and Grandma X.
Jaide snagged Stefano by the sleeve as he went by.
“Not so fast,” she whispered to him. “If Grandma thinks I’m going to sit around while Jack gets himself killed or worse, she doesn’t know me at all.”
“What are you going to do?” he hissed back. “You can’t open the Bridge again. It’s too dangerous. Besides, I don’t know how The Evil did it. You could make things even worse by trying.”
“I know,” she said. That was a real problem. “But we can get around that.”
“We?” he repeated weakly.
“That’s right,” she said. “I know exactly how I’m going to rescue Jack. And you’re going to help me do it.”
Cornelia was the first to go, snatched from her perch on the cage and sucked with a drawn-out squawk into the vortex. Kyle tried to catch her as she went by, but missed, and the one hand he had wrapped around a table leg wasn’t enough to hold him secure. He slipped sideways, lost his grip, and then fell after Cornelia into the whirlwind.
“Jack!” Tara cried, and the vortex, inflamed by the sudden intake of matter, reached out to snatch her next. Jack braced himself against the grandfather clock and kicked out across the doorway, hoping to throw both of them back out of the terrible current. But he wasn’t strong enough. Their hands had barely touched when the wind caught them both and pulled them in.
Tumbling head over heels, they whooshed separately down the vortex’s spinning throat, followed by the tapestry that hid the door to the inside of the house, a four-drawer bureau, and two oak chests. Jack closed his eyes tightly to stop himself from being sick. Unlike Jaide, he found carnival rides nauseating and had actually thrown up once, although that might have been more because of all the cotton candy and donuts he had eaten beforehand than because of the ride itself. This was much worse than that time. He felt like a bug being swirled down a drain. A very small bug in a very big drain.
The thought of what might be waiting for them at the other end only made him feel sicker. No voices taunted them. The Evil didn’t need to bother with that. They were heading right down its throat. If he didn’t do something about that soon, they were all going to die.
Jack forced his eyes open. Tara was falling next to him with her eyes tightly shut. He couldn’t see Kyle or Cornelia for all the junk from the blue room. He had read a book once about a ship being sucked into a giant whirlpool and broken to pieces. He wondered if it had looked like this on the way to the bottom of the ocean.
This wreckage heading for the Evil Dimension was no ordinary wreckage. Grandma X only collected things imprinted with Warden abilities. There might be something that could help them. But how long did he have? The only other time he had used a Bridge had been to cross from Rourke Castle into the pocket universe where the Card of Translocation was hidden. That journey had been almost instantaneous. Wherever the Evil Dimension was, it was clearly a lot farther away.
Jack snatched a coin out of the swirling wind. It was triangular with a small hole in the center. He didn’t recognize the name of the country. Holding it tightly in his palm, he willed it to do something, anything.
All that happened was another coin appearing in the vortex next to him. Jack shrugged and put the first coin in his pocket, thinking it a useful trick even if he couldn’t spend the money back home.
He felt a bump against his shoulders and twisted around mid-tumble. It was a small wooden statue with mother-of-pearl eyes. When he captured it, he heard a voice speaking to him in a language he couldn’t understand.
The next thing to come within arm’s reach was a pair of sunglasses that enabled him to see the view through the back of his head. Useful in some circumstances, he supposed, but not right then.
A hand clutched his shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
His heart skipped a beat. It was Tara.
“Trying to find something that might help us,” he said.
“What about this?” She offered him an umbrella she clutched tightly in one hand. “I grabbed it to hit the things that’ll be waiting for us. And in case it’s raining.”
Jack took it from her and hefted it. The umbrella was old and quite heavy. He sensed something powerful about it, but couldn’t immediately work out what that might be. Maybe it brought rain. Or maybe it just rained on the
person holding it. Wardens probably loved practical jokes as much as anyone.
He fiddled with the latch. When it swooshed open, the umbrella caught the wind and snapped his arm out straight in front of him. Tara grabbed him before he could be swept away and they were dragged along behind the umbrella like an extreme variation of Mary Poppins.
He considered letting go before his arm came out of its socket. But when he pulled back on the handle, he felt something shift. Not the umbrella itself, but the air around it. It was as though the open umbrella was fixed in the wind, and twitching the handle made the whirlwind change course.
That gave him a thought. If he couldn’t stop the vortex, maybe he could change where it was taking them — perhaps somewhere other than right down The Evil’s throat.
He wiggled the handle and felt the vortex wiggle in sympathy. But not by much. If he wanted to be sure of avoiding The Evil, he wanted to give himself as wide a margin as possible.
“Hang on tight,” he told Tara. She wrapped both her arms around his chest from behind, and he gripped the umbrella with both hands. “Let’s see what this does.”
He wrenched the handle with all his strength. The vortex howled and bucked, but he felt it shift even more and so he wrenched the handle again, assuming that any change in direction was a good thing.
He knew he was making progress when The Evil broke its silence.
++Do not fight us, troubletwister! It will make no difference to your fate.++
That only made Jack fight harder. As the wreckage shifted around them, Tara braced herself against a chest of drawers and he wrenched the umbrella harder still.
Something squawked “Hard to starboard!” in his ear, and suddenly Cornelia was with them. Kyle wasn’t far behind, leapfrogging from one piece of floating furniture to another until he was astride the chest of drawers with them, gripping the handle and adding his weight to the magical wind-steering umbrella.
“How did you know we were here?” asked Jack as they wrestled with the vortex.
“I didn’t,” Kyle said with a grin. “I was just trying to climb back higher, and there you were.”