As soon as we were alone, I turned and hugged Rita like the world was about to end. I’d spent a week thinking she was dead—or worse—and blaming myself. Now she was here, in the flesh, and not only was I glad to see her, but the guilt that had been my constant companion since our return was finally easing its death grip on my soul.
“Hey, girl. I do need to breathe.” She chuckled as I let her go, but I saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes, and there were some in mine as well. It was a pretty overwhelming moment.
“What the hell happened?” I asked her. “How did you get separated from us?”
She shook her head. “No clue. One moment I was right there next to you, then next . . . well, everything was gone. I mean, everything. The Gate, the cave, all of you guys, even the world we had just come from, completely gone. I was so terrified. I just couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even think. Then suddenly I felt myself falling, and I landed on something hard. It was totally dark. I yelled for you guys, but no one answered. I didn’t know if you’d been lost between the worlds, or killed back at the arch, or . . . or what. I didn’t even know where I was, but when I felt around all I could find was rubble. Oh God, Jesse, I was so scared.”
I reached out and rubbed her shoulder. It seemed to steady her a bit.
“I fumbled for my flashlight, then realized it had been taken by the Shadows. I had no light. It was so dark.” She shivered. “The place smelled damp, like a cave, so I guessed I was back in Mystic Caverns. But the room the Gate was in had been enormous, and this place . . . When I called out your names the echo didn’t sound right for that. So I reached out over my head and I . . .” Her voice broke for a moment. I saw her tremble as she fought to pull herself together. “There was rock only a few feet above me. It was like I was sealed in a tomb.”
“Shhh,” Devon said. He put a hand on her other shoulder and squeezed gently. “You’re here now, okay? You’re safe.”
“I just lay there,” she whispered. “Overwhelmed. I knew that I needed to do something, not just lay there and wait to die. But what? I didn’t even know which way was out, and crawling randomly in the dark wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I never felt so helpless in my life.
“But then as my eyes started to adjust to the darkness, I realized that there was a faint light off to one side. Really faint, barely enough to see by, but at least it was something.” She drew in a deep, shaky breath. “I can’t even tell you what that moment was like. Like something inside me was coming back to life, and it wanted to live. It wanted desperately to live. So I began to scrabble toward the light, mostly by feel. It seemed hopeless, there were mounds of rubble in my way, and I had no idea where I was going, but I just kept crawling toward the light.”
God. I couldn’t even imagine what that must have been like. When Devon and Tommy and I had arrived back home Mystic Caverns was in the process of collapsing, and it was hard to believe any of the chambers had survived intact. If Rita arrived after we did, which was what it sounded like, it was a miracle she’d found any space big enough to crawl through.
“Slowly the light grew brighter,” Rita continued “and eventually I got to a place where there was an opening overhead, and I could see stars through it. And that’s . . .” her voice broke for a moment, “that’s when I lost it,” she whispered. “Just laid there and cried like a baby.”
Suddenly it hit me how recent all this was for her. Devon and Tommy and I’d had a week to recover from our ordeal in Shadowcrest—and to heal our wounds—but if Rita had just arrived, then for her all that had happened yesterday. I reached out and hugged her again, oh so tightly, and she just held me, while Devon rubbed her shoulder sympathetically and even Tommy offered her a fleeting touch of reassurance. “I must have arrived pretty close to the surface,” she whispered. “I don’t know how that happened. Maybe without its Gate, a portal can’t stay anchored right. And we destroyed the Gate that controlled this one.” She laughed weakly. “Maybe I owe my life to a malfunction.”
“Whatever the reason,” Devon said, “you’re damn lucky. The lower levels are a wreck. Police couldn’t get down there at all.”
Rita shut her eyes and sighed heavily. “When I finally climbed out, that’s when I saw the scraps of yellow police tape all over the place. The wind had torn it loose in a few places, so I figured it had been put up a while ago. That was when I realized that you guys must have arrived before I did. That you might be safe.” She opened her eyes again. “I managed to find my way to a nearby house, slipped in an open window, ate some food, and borrowed some clean clothes. They had a landline phone, so I used it to call Devon, to see if he’d gotten home safely. His dad answered.” She looked at Devon. “He didn’t have a clue who I was.”
“We couldn’t tell anyone about you,” he said. “If you never came back . . .”
She nodded. “People would keep looking for me, even after you guys came home, and there would have been more media attention. Don’t worry, I get it.”
Devon looked at me. “Since our cover story was that we’d been kidnapped, I told Dad that someone we’d met in our captivity had turned up, but was hurt. He didn’t ask any questions, just drove us out there to pick Rita up. I texted you on the way, but when you started asking questions, I didn’t have any other information to give you . . . I’m so sorry, Jesse.”
“‘It’s okay,” I said softly. “I understand.”
“Once we got back, and Rita was all cleaned up, Dad gave her something to help her relax.” He drew in a deep breath. “I told him about Terra Prime, and what really happened to us. Maybe it wasn’t the best time for that conversation, but with Rita back, I couldn’t put it off any more.”
“How’d it go?” Tommy asked.
Devon hesitated. “He didn’t accuse me of being crazy, or of getting into his drug cabinet or anything. So I guess you could say it went well. I had given him the glow lamp a few days earlier, figuring if he looked it over before we talked that might help. But he didn’t say anything about it. Just listened to me without saying a word, and then said we needed to come up here together, so all of us could talk.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but a call from downstairs came first.
“Jessica!” It was Julian. “Tommy!”
We looked at each other, then Tommy yelled back, “What is it?”
“Dr. Tilford wants to talk to the four of you. Can you all come down to the parlor, please?”
I looked at Devon. His face was ashen.
“It’ll be all right,” I told him. “He’s seen the glow lamp. He’ll come to the right conclusions.”
I could see how much effort it took for him to force a smile to his face. “Yeah. And the fact that he knows from those earlier tests that our DNA doesn’t match, so I’m not really his son . . . it won’t affect his reaction at all, right?”
There was nothing I could say to that, so we headed downstairs to talk to Dr. Tilford.
The glow lamp on the coffee table appeared as bland and uninteresting as an object could possibly be. If you looked closely enough you could make out the Weaver’s etched sigil etched into the small fetter, but it was subtle—like a watermark—and easy to miss. Other than that, the thing was featureless. A child who was shopping for a glass marble would probably pass it by in favor of something more interesting.
Dr. Tilford gestured for us to take seats around the table, which we did. He was a handsome man, with skin the color of dark chocolate and the long, lean features of East Africa. Given that Devon wasn’t really his son, the resemblance between them was remarkable. But his expression was that of a statue right now, rigid and unreadable. Even his eyes, as he looked us over one by one, revealed nothing of his thoughts. At least with the other adults gone we could talk freely.
“You understand,” he said, once we were all seated, “I was limited in what tests I could run. I didn’t want to show this ite
m to anyone else, lest word get back to the government that there was an object of unknown tech in the neighborhood. Trust me when I tell you, that wouldn’t be good.”
Devon nodded solemnly. I got the impression his father was referencing a specific past incident and Devon knew what it was.
“The object appears to be made of quartz crystal,” Dr. Tilford continued, “albeit a more perfect specimen than we usually see in nature. I could detect no structural or chemical variation of any kind, which suggests there isn’t a physical mechanism. Regarding electromagnetic energy, there’s nothing detectable when the item is dormant, but there’s a brief spike when it’s activated. The lamp appears to require the electromagnetic charge of human skin to activate it. I was able to trigger it with my bare finger and with a conductive stylus, but not with an insulating object.” He stared at it for a moment, his eyes narrowing slightly. “The necessity of intent defies all my analysis. How one’s desire to have the lamp activate figures into the trigger mechanism, I still don’t know, but given my other findings, my guess is that it’s some sort of electromagnetic signal.” His lips tightened. “That’s all my tests could tell me—enough to raise new questions, but not enough to answer the one that matters most.”
He reached out to the lamp and touched it. There was a strange hesitancy to the gesture, almost a sense of awe. The light flickered on briefly, then off again. The blue glow was dimmer than before. Whatever energy source powered the thing was clearly starting to run out.
“No one has published any articles hinting at this kind of tech,” he said quietly. “Not even speculating that something of this nature could be produced. I suppose it’s possible someone has been working on a completely new type of technology, and not a whisper of it has gotten out . . . but secrets on that scale are hard to keep.” He shook his head, clearly frustrated by his inability to solve this puzzle.
Devon leaned forward slightly. “So you believe it could be from another world?” Another question, unvoiced, hung in the air, edged with silent desperation: You believe what I told you about our experiences?
For a long moment Dr. Tilford stared at the marble. I found I was holding my breath. “Are you familiar with Clarke’s Law?” he said at last.
Tommy spoke up first. “Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.” When I looked at him in surprise, he said, “What? I read science fiction.”
A faint smile flickered across Dr. Tilford’s lips. “Our army has developed a pain ray for crowd control. Point it at a target and he or she will feel pain, without actually being harmed. Just like in science fiction. Scientists have isolated the force required for a functional tractor beam, so we may see that in our lifetimes. A 3D printer has been used to replicate pizza. The speed of light has been altered in a laboratory.” He shook his head. “So many things done today that would have been considered impossible a mere decade ago. Ten years from now the world will be so far advanced that aspects of it would seem magical to us today . . . but the seeds of that future technology are all around us. No unearthly source is required to explain them.” With a deep sadness in his eyes, he looked at his son. “I’m sorry, Devon. What you’re asking me to believe . . . this artifact alone isn’t proof of it.”
The crestfallen look in Devon’s eyes made my heart ache. “I understand,” he whispered.
Dr. Tilford looked around at all of us. “The four of you were held prisoner for a week, isolated from the world. God alone knows what you experienced. Your captors appear to have drugged you with something in the Rohypnol class, which makes all memories suspect.” He looked back at his son. “So, I’m sorry, Devon. I do think you genuinely believe what you told me, but that doesn’t mean it really happened.”
Devon lowered his head. All he had to do was indicate he wanted help, and Rita and Tommy and I would back him up. If the four of us reported the same events, wouldn’t that be convincing? Rohypnol didn’t cause mass hallucinations, did it? But Devon just sighed and shook his head. He knew his father better than we did, and maybe he sensed that whatever story we told, Dr. Tilford would just explain it away like he had done with the glow lamp. And if his explanation cast the rest of us in a bad light, he might forbid Devon from seeing us.
Dr. Tilford turned to me, and the look in his eyes became gentle. “Devon told me what happened to your mother. I’m so sorry.”
I looked down at my hands. I was grateful for a change of subject, but wished he’d chosen something else to talk about. “The doctors say there’s not much hope.”
“The brain is a remarkably resilient organ. When one part of it ceases to function, another sometimes take over its duties. Usually that involves vital processes: speech, physical movement, things a person needs to function. But medical science is full of surprises. Don’t give up hope yet, Jesse.”
I blinked away tears that were coming to my eyes. “Thanks,” I whispered. Why did a cool, rational guy like him offering sympathy affect me so deeply?
Dr. Tilford looked back to Devon. “Could I keep the lamp, to study it further?” His tone was quiet, even casual, but you could sense the intense hunger behind it. He was a scientist. The lamp was a mystery. He wanted it.
Devon hesitated. “It was given to all of us. So everyone would have to agree.”
My first impulse was to say yes. The lamp was clearly running out of power, and soon wouldn’t be useful to anyone. Why not let him study it further? But it wasn’t that easy to give up an alien artifact, especially when it was the only proof you had been to another world. “Could we maybe have some time to talk about it?”
“Of course.” He nodded. “Let me leave you to that, then.” As he stood up to take his leave, his eyes never left the fetter; you could tell how much he wanted to pick it up and take it with him. He walked around the table, heading toward the door, then paused beside his son. He looked down at Devon for a moment, then put his hand on his shoulder. Briefly. Silently. Just a fleeting touch, but it spoke volumes.
Then he was gone.
Devon fell back in his chair with a weary sigh. He reached up a hand to rub the bridge of his nose, as if the spot pained him.
“Could have been worse,” Rita said gently. “He could have thought you were crazy.”
“He may still think that,” Devon said. “Granted, I hadn’t really expected him to believe me, but damn it, I’d hoped . . .” He shook his head as his words trailed off into silence.
“Sorry about the Rohypnol,” Tommy muttered.
I blinked. “Say what?”
“It was my idea to add that to our cover story, so that we didn’t have to explain too much about our disappearance. Only now, Devon’s dad won’t believe him because of it.”
“That’s not the only reason,” Devon assured him. “And if you hadn’t come up with that idea, we’d still be in the police station answering questions about what happened to us the week we were gone. Sooner or later one of us would have gotten the story wrong, and then all hell would have broken loose. So don’t you ever regret that suggestion. Ever.”
Tommy bit his lip and whispered, “’Kay.”
Rita turned to me. “I’m really sorry about your mom, Jesse. Didn’t get a chance to say that before.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Not much hope on that front, though Dr. Tilford was nice to pretend that there was.”
She hesitated. “Jesse . . . you know . . . there might be Healers who could help.”
I stiffened. “You mean from Terra Prime?”
Eyes wide, she nodded.
I leaned back in my chair and shut my eyes for a moment. Yes, there were Healers in the other world. Sebastian had used a fetter to heal my leg, and fetters were created by binding someone’s Gift to an object, which meant that there were Healers in Terra Prime, probably a whole Guild full of them. Could someone with that kind of Gift help my mother? Possibly. But would one of them help her? That was a m
uch bigger question, and one that Tommy and Devon and I had been debating all week.
The mere thought of dealing with someone from that world filled me with dread. It would be best for all of us if Terra Prime just forgot we existed. But if there was someone who could help Mom? I sighed. “Even if a Healer was able to help, why would she? It’s pretty clear that Guilds don’t give two squats about outworlders. And how would I even find one to ask? It’s not like a Google search will turn up ‘Healers from Terra Prime.’”
Rita shrugged. “No clue how to find them, but once we do, the rest isn’t a big mystery. They sell their Gifts, remember? There were fetters for sale all over the place in the other Luray. All we would need is money.”
“I’ve got some savings,” I mused. “But who’s to say that would be enough?”
“I’ll chip in,” Devon offered.
“I’ll throw in what little I’ve got,” Tommy agreed.
Rita snorted lightly. “I think you can guess the state of my finances. If I had anything, you know I’d offer it.”
I was so moved by their generosity that it took me a moment to find my voice. “Even if that added up to enough, we’re still left with the problem of finding someone. I can’t just go the Greys and ask for help in hiring a Healer, not after what we did to their Gate. They don’t strike me as the forgiving type. And they work for the Shadows, who we really need to avoid.”
“Well,” Rita said, “forgive me if you’ve already discussed this—I’m playing catch-up here—but what about Miriam Seyer?” She raised a hand to forestall my objection. “Yeah, I know you don’t trust her. I don’t either. But all you need is someone to set up a meeting, right? Can’t you use her for that?”
For a long time I said nothing. In my mind’s eye I could see my house burning, that black-haired Seer standing across the street and watching it. Just watching it. What had brought Seyer to my home, just in time to witness the fire? It couldn’t have been coincidence. Later, when I overheard her talking to Morgana in the Seers’ garden, it sounded like the two of them wanted me to be safe. But they also talked about controlling my movements, and my being part of some mysterious project they were running. Games within games within games. Every instinct in my soul warned me to keep away from her—far, far away—but Rita’s suggestion had merit, there was no denying that. Seyer was one link between the worlds that did not involve Greys or Shadows. Perhaps the only one.