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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Other-Lucy, come in Other-Lucy. Over .

It’s not a CB radio , I told Tennyson. It was nice to be able to communicate through our bond again, even if it was just to lure in Other-me.

We want to make a deal with you. We will give you access to the lodestone.

It wasn’t a lie. Technically, if I absorbed her, whatever was left of her would have as much lodestone as she could handle.

This is not a trap , he added.

That makes it sound like a trap , I said, but I couldn’t stop smiling. The Tennyson in my head, the Tennyson at the other side of our bond, was the most distilled part of him. Like a Tennyson Wilde essential oil. The Tennyson that the outside world saw was him, of course, but it was filtered through layers of social conditioning and awkwardness.

If you are able to get away, come to this address at midnight on Thursday. He envisioned a page on Google Maps, with a flashing arrow at the right spot, and the geo-coordinates. That is midnight, local time at this location .

He flashed up the details again.

I will transmit this message to you again in one hour, in case you are not in a position to note this information. Please do not share this message with anyone else. Over and out.

He was such a dork.

We were still technically on a break, but after the other night in the common room, it seemed like a much warmer break than it had previously been. Like a break that was bringing us closer instead of further apart.

Tennyson faithfully transmitted his broadcast to Other-me every hour, until it must have driven her half-mad. Or mad der . The rest of us prepared for the ritual.

We’d picked the location to meet Other-me completely at random. Nowhere near anyone we knew, or anyone at all, as far as we could tell. It was a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. If Other-me was working with my father and they planned to ambush us, there was nobody they could hurt for miles.

Althea didn’t want me to go to meet with Other-me.

“You don’t know how bad the feedback between the two of you will be,” she said. “What if the worlds fracture and your father is there? It might be the very thing that leads to my vision.”

“Classic self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Nikolai, who was sitting in the corner, slurping cup noodles loudly. “That would be kind of funny, in a way.”

“Yes, when you’re a disembodied spirit floating through an endless void, I won’t be able to stop laughing,” Althea said snappishly. “This isn’t a joke.”

“If I don’t go, how will we convince her to come with us?”

“I’ll go,” said Althea. “I’ll tell her about my visions and show her the mark her experiments left on me. If she thinks she can keep running tests on me, she might be persuaded.”

It was a good idea, except for one thing.

“What’s to stop her from just kidnapping you and taking you back to my father’s creepy compound?” I said. “She’s bad enough, but I don’t even want to imagine what awful things he’d do.”

“Oh, so it’s safe for you but not me?” she said, arching an eyebrow.

I shrugged. “I’d rather risk my life than yours. You’re the brains of the operation, you know.”

“But you’re the key,” she argued. “Without you, everything collapses. Everything . This isn’t me trying to be selfless. We literally can’t lose you.”

In the end, she won. Even though I could see her point, I didn’t like it.

I was antsy all day Thursday. Tennyson and Althea left around lunchtime to go back to the manor, so they could prepare with the other pack members who were part of the operation. The manor was closer to the meeting spot than school, so they’d take her back there and contact us when it was all done.

I’d suggested that I could go wait at the manor too, but that idea was shot down from all sides. They wanted her completely secured before I went anywhere near her. I knew it was smart to be cautious. There was so much riding on this going well. Still, I hated it.

“Can’t you sit down?” Harper snapped at me that afternoon. “It will be hours yet; you’re driving me mad with your pacing. Better yet, can’t you go back to your own dorm?”

“Hannah and Nikolai are there, having ‘alone time’,” I said, throwing myself into a chair.

Harper wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“I know, right,” I said. It wasn’t often that Harper and I agreed on something.

“They’re worse than Althea and Jules were over summer. I normally adore our little place on the Riviera, but all month long, you couldn’t move without walking in on them somewhere. And let me tell you, there are some things that a girl should never have to know about her brother.”

I laughed. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about that with my brothers for a while.

“Well, you’ll have plenty of space to yourself next year,” I said. “It’d be weird being in this big old place by yourself.”

Harper sniffed. “You only think that because you’re poor and used to squalid conditions. But actually, I’m quite ahead in all my classes and have been accepted to a few of my top-choice colleges already, so I’ll probably just skip senior year. It seems like a drag, to be honest. There’s much more potential for fun at college. If we’re all still alive, that is.”

Being annoyed at Harper made the time pass a little faster, but after another five minutes, I was back to pacing.

She glared at me pointedly, clicking the end of her pen.

“The dining hall should be open now,” I said. “I might just go…”

“Yes, go eat your feelings or whatever it is you do,” she said, going back to her homework.

Why was she even doing homework if she was so far ahead that she could skip senior year? Maybe she was trying to distract herself, too.

In the dining hall, I met up with Hannah and Nikolai. We ate in silence, just picking at our food. I didn’t even register what the meal was, I was just eating for the sake of it, which offended me on the behalf of food. We barely talked. Even when we got back to the common room, we just sat around, waiting for each second to tick by.

“This is ridiculous,” said Hannah eventually, getting up. “We can’t just sit here waiting. There might not even be any news tonight. We need to do something to take our minds off it.”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Harper, in a voice that said I wouldn’t like whatever she suggested. “I think Lucy should go and sort things out with Sam, so that he’s not moping around all the time and sabotaging our plans.”

I was right. I didn’t like that idea one bit.

“That’s a bit unfair,” said Nikolai.

I was surprised until he continued.

“That’s only giving Lucy and Sam something to do. The rest of us will just be sitting around waiting for them on top of everything else.”

“Fine,” Harper said. “Well, I’m going to bed. If you losers want to sit around being boring, that’s your own business.”

She said it as if we’d feel her absence bitterly. Though, to be fair, once she left, I started feeling a lot like a third wheel.

“Right,” I said, once they started getting handsy. “Well, Harper was probably right, I should go find Sam…”

I doubted they even noticed me leave.

I hadn’t been in Sam’s room for ages, not since before he’d gone through the portal to Other-me’s world. Not much had changed. Maybe it was a little barer, or maybe he’d just gotten tidier.

He was sitting on his bed, staring at the wall.

“Hey,” I said from the doorway.

“Hey,” he said.

“I’m sorry I said you were wallowing in your own misery,” I said.

He shrugged. “I’m sorry for what I said, too. And for burning all your research.”

I took that as a sign that it was okay to enter the room. I sat in the chair by his bed, where I’d spent all those nights when he’d been unconscious.

“I haven’t been the greatest friend to you,” I admitted.

He scoffed. “You literally opened a portal to an alternate universe to come and rescue me.”

“Yeah, but like, emotionally, I mean.”

He shrugged again. “You’re not responsible for me.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Yes, I am.”

He laughed, but I was serious.

“No, I mean it. You’re my oldest friend in the world. You’re part of my family, my pack. I’m responsible for you, and you’re responsible for me. We need to have each other’s backs, and I haven’t had yours. And for that, I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “Okay. But I need to be responsible for myself as well. All the things I’ve done…”

“They were things done to you, not by you,” I argued, but he held up his hand for me to let him speak.

“It’s a lot,” he said. “All of it, from the time I was first taken. I’ve tried so hard to be normal, to fit back into normal life, but I can’t. Not even with the rest of the pack. I’m still different. Even before I ki –” He broke off, then shook his head, forcing himself to go on. “Even before that happened, but then they all saw me, saw what I did.”

I reached out and took his hand. I didn’t want to say anything, to interrupt again when he needed to talk, but I wanted him to know I was there.

“The therapist that Tennyson found, she’s good, but it’s not enough,” he said. “Our sessions don’t even scratch the surface. I know I need help, but it’s too much.” He shook his head.

“We’ll find someone who can help you,” I told him, hoping that was a promise I could keep. “People heal from all sorts of trauma. We just have to find what works for you.”

He squeezed my hand. “If the world doesn’t end first.”