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CHAPTER TWO

Although I had no idea where to start, I decided I had to research. We weren’t short on material, that was for sure. There was the library at Wilde Manor, which was massive , plus the combined libraries of all the other packs, not to mention the magical knowledge of Hannah’s family. She hadn’t been able to access a lot of it since my father killed everyone on the Magic Users’ Council, but now that her father was back, all sorts of wards could be broken or changed.

It was overwhelming, but most people were willing to help. We’d saved Hannah’s dad from the other world, so he was more than obliging. He not only sent us a bunch of cool old books but had been scouring them himself.

Tennyson put a bunch of pack members on research duty too, though I wasn’t sure how thorough they’d be, especially ones from other packs. They just weren’t as invested as we were.

“You can’t spend all your time on research,” he said to me. “You need to study. You’re still my lab partner and I won’t have you dragging me down with you.”

He said it from a place of love, I knew, but I also knew that he meant it as well.

So, between research and school, the days flew by. I was too busy and exhausted to think about anything else.

Which was why I was so shocked when the news came of the attack.

The scale of the attack wasn’t so big, not compared to some other attacks my father had committed, but the pure brutality of it made my stomach turn. It was on a werewolf family. A young werewolf family. I had to leave the room halfway through the report to be sick.

When I came back into the room, Tennyson was still on the Zoom call discussing it. I didn’t want to hear anything else about it, but I had to know. It was my father doing these things; the least I could do was hear about it.

“He’s getting closer,” Tennyson said, barely noticing as I sat down.

I raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“You still haven’t told her?” asked one of the guys on the screen. Steven, I thought, some relation or other of Hannah's.

“Told me what?”

Tennyson shot me a look, then ended the Zoom call. I took a deep breath. This was going to be bad.

Tennyson turned to me, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

“Let me guess,” I said. “My father has been committing these attacks this whole time, and you’ve kept it from me.”

From the way his shoulders slumped, I knew it was true. I took another deep breath. I didn’t want to be angry with him, especially not because of anything associated with my father.

“There just hasn’t been a good time to tell you,” he said.

“Right,” I said. Deep breath. Remain calm. “How long has this been going on?”

We’d only just gotten back from the other world, and I’d been “swooning around astral traveling or whatever” for a while before that, so I could kind of understand it if it had only been happening for a month or so. I’d still be annoyed, but I’d get it.

“Since summer,” he said, not meeting my eyes.

I took another deep breath. It didn’t help. Sometimes, no amount of breathing in the world can fix things.

“Right,” I said. I stood up and gathered my things.

“Lucy,” he said, reaching for my hand.

I shook him off.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” I said, struggling to keep my voice neutral. “So, I’m just going to go back to my room and think about things until I’m less mad at you. If I stay here and talk about this with you right now, I’ll say things I regret, and we’ve got enough problems at the moment without us being on the outs.”

I glanced around to make sure I had everything.

“I didn’t do it to hurt you,” he said.

“I know. You did it to protect me. But if you can’t see why that’s just as bad, then that’s a whole other problem. Let me know if Althea’s condition changes, but apart from that, it might be good for us to have a little space.”

It was hard, being cut off from Tennyson. Even harder than being cut off from my powers, but I knew it was the best thing for us both. There was too much else happening, too much else to give our mental energy to.

So, I threw myself into study, and when I wasn’t studying, I was researching the lodestone. It took me around a week to catch up with my classes, just enough so I wasn’t completely lost, but the lodestone was another matter entirely. The only thing I found was that while I read through ancient text after ancient text, I sorted out my thoughts about Tennyson in the back of my head. It took me a few more days than that to get up the courage to go talk to him.

He sat alone by Althea’s bedside. She looked exactly the same as the last time we’d been there. Maybe a little thinner, but no closer to waking up. He glanced up when I entered the room and gave me a tentative smile that made my insides all fluttery.

I sat down beside him and took his hand.

“You know I love you, right?” I said.

He squeezed my hand. “Of course. And I, you.”

I smiled. It was such a Tennyson way to say it. He wasn’t going to make this easy.

“I understand why you withheld that information from me. You didn’t want to burden me with everything else going on. You thought I’d feel responsible, because he’s my father.”

I kept my eyes downcast, focused on our joined hands. If I had to look at him, I wasn’t sure I could say what I needed to say.

“Lucy, I –”

I shook my head. “Let me say this before I change my mind.” I took a deep breath. “I know we’re in this for the long haul. At least, I know I am.”

I felt him nod beside me.

“So that’s why I think we should cool it for a little while. At least, until all this craziness settles down.”

He made a noise in his throat, almost a cough but not quite. “You want to break up?”

“No,” I said, gripping his hand more tightly. “No, that’s the last thing I want. But you can’t deny that our priorities are all messed up. If I were some rando with an evil dad, you’d have told me about the attacks in a heartbeat, in case I could help or had info. And I can’t count the times I’ve put my feelings for you ahead of what’s best for everyone.”

“Those feelings won’t stop just because we’re not together,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “But we both might think more clearly if we’re not so…” I made a vague gesture between the two of us. “You know. Distracted.”

“You’re doing this to punish me,” he said.

I scoffed. “If anything, I’m punishing myself.” I leaned into him, just a little. “Don’t be mad.”

“How can I not?” he said, but he didn’t sound mad. He sounded tired.

That made my heart ache even more, but it still felt like the right thing to do.

“We need to think of each other as if we were any other packmate. As if we were… Nikolai.”

Tennyson huffed out a little laugh. “I think it’s safe to say I will never think of Nikolai in the same way that I think of you.”

I would have made some joke about his crazed attraction for Nikolai, but that seemed like something a girlfriend would do, not an impartial packmate. Instead, I straightened my shoulders and let go of his hand, telling myself it wasn’t forever.

“Tell me about these attacks,” I said, doing my best to keep the heartache from my voice.

Tennyson nodded and started to lay out the details. It was bad. Absolutely merciless.

“I need to figure out the lodestone,” I said, once he’d finished. “I need Althea.”

“There’s someone else who might know,” he said.

“Vucari? He seemed to think I had to figure it out for myself.”

“Not Vucari. You. Other-you.”

I thought it over. I didn’t want to deal with her, but if I were this new logic-based Lucy, I couldn’t let that factor in.

“I guess you wouldn’t bother traveling to a whole different world after something you couldn’t use.”

“True,” I said, then sighed.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

I shook my head, then stood up. “Nah, you stay here with Althea.”

I wanted him with me, more than anything, but I had to get used to doing things alone, if this whole “cooling it” thing was going to work at all.

I glanced around for something, anything that would give me a reason to stay a little longer. Part of me felt as if once I left the room, that would be it. There’d be no going back for the two of us. Even though I knew it was the right thing to do, the only thing, I hated it.

I lingered in the doorway. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

He gave me a sad smile. “You know where to find me.”

The dungeon holding Other-me was not nearly secure enough. I’d have kept her in an electrified box that shocked her whenever she touched the bars. Even that probably wasn’t enough, not when I considered that Althea was currently a prisoner in her own body.

I recognized the dungeon from the time I’d been under the love potion and had to be restrained. Also, maybe the time I’d attacked Milo, though that was all a bit fuzzy in my mind. I’d been shackled, though, and Other-me was free to roam the room as she pleased. It was a sparse room, but not uncomfortable. Way better than the dungeons we’d found Sam in when we’d been in her world. Way, way better than she deserved.

“Finally,” she said when I entered the room. “I’m so sick of that creepy little witch. And your Nikolai is not nearly as much fun as mine. Do you have the lodestone?”

“No,” I said. “And you’re never getting it, so quit asking.”

“You don’t even know how to use it,” she said, her voice full of impatience. She paced back and forth across the room like a caged tiger.

I raised my eyebrow. I wasn’t sure I could bluff her, considering we were more or less the same person, but it was worth a try.

“Yes, I do, actually.”

She stopped pacing for a moment to roll her eyes. “If you did, you’d have taken your powers back from me and sent me home to my own world.”

I couldn’t help but smile. She thought she was so smart, but she’d just confirmed what I wanted to know. The lodestone could do everything I needed it to do. Now I just needed to trick her into telling me how .

Other-me snorted. “You didn’t even know it could do that? You’ll never figure out how to use it on your own; you may as well just hand it over. You don’t even know what it is.”

I mean, she wasn’t wrong. It was a magnetized rock, that was all I could find online, everything that wasn’t a videogame wiki. And all the musty old books I’d read hadn’t told me much more. A few spells had mentioned using a lodestone, but that was as a conduit for power they already had, not to reclaim power that had been stolen.

A conduit, though. That gave me an idea.

As much as I knew it was stupid to bring the lodestone this close to her, it felt worse to leave it somewhere unattended, so I’d been carrying it everywhere with me, in my pocket. I had a feeling it couldn’t be taken by force, anyway.

And having it there, together with the both of us, I wondered if I could use it as a conduit between the two of us, to tap into my power and pull it back to me. It was a stretch, but I’d kick myself if there was such an easy solution that I hadn’t bothered to try. I felt in my pocket and closed my fingers around the stone. Other-me paced back and forth across the room, and the moment she got close enough, I caught her by the wrist.

It was like being hit by a zillion watts of electricity. I was thrown backwards, flying into the stone wall behind me. My head cracked against it, and the world faded out.

When I opened my eyes again, the dungeon door was open and the room was empty.

Other-me had escaped.