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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I woke up swearing.

“I need to get back,” I said, before even opening my eyes.

“Hold on there, pumpkin pie,” said Mrs Spencer, helping me sit up and plumping the pillows behind me. I’d know her voice anywhere, and the pain in my head was still too sharp to open my eyes. “You’ve got a nasty bump on that old noggin of yours. The last thing you need is a concussion.”

I knew she was right, but it was still frustrating. I had no idea what was going on back there, if everyone would get out safely, if Sam would listen to me and escape. What if my not-father overpowered Tennyson and Althea and captured all four of us for his creepy experiments? I didn’t want him getting his greasy mitts on my other world form. Who knew what he’d cook up if he knew about parallel worlds, he’d probably just grow his ambitions to fit the bigger universe. The last thing I needed was a second evil faction to deal with, I had plenty to be going on with as it was.

“Here, drink this. It’ll help.”

She pushed a cup of hot tea into my hands. I sniffed it but couldn’t smell anything suspicious, mostly just sage and ginger. I took a wary sip but nothing tasted out of place either.

I couldn’t sense anyone else in the room, but I attempted cracking my eyes a bit to double-check. The light was like a dagger into my brain but I could see enough to know we were alone. I set the tea cup aside and grasped her by the hand.

“I saw him,” I whispered. “Sam.”

For a moment, she seemed frozen, but then she squeezed my hand. “How is he?”

I shook my head, unsure how to answer. “He’s… confused, I think. He seems okay physically but…” I shrugged, then winced at the movement. “I was helping him escape when I got knocked out, that’s why I need to get back there. I don’t know if he got out.”

“He’s a prisoner?” she asked me softly.

“My father,” I said. “Other father. Her father. There.”

She was quiet for so long that I risked opening my eyes again. It was less painful this time. She looked very tired but she smiled when she noticed me staring.

“I want to come with you,” she said. “To that world. We’re working on a way but we need that sword, and that awful woman hid it too well.”

I assumed the awful woman was Tennyson’s mother, and I couldn’t disagree with her assessment, even if it did seem mean to say about her now she was dead.

She took a deep breath, then stood up. “I should tell Tennyson you’re awake. That Vucari has been buzzing around like a darn mosquito as well, wanting to know how you’re doing with his business. Anything I should tell him?”

I shook my head. I’d all but forgotten about his relic but once Sam was safe, I could look into that more. To do either though, I needed to get back. Even though Mrs Spencer warned me to stay awake as she slipped out the door, as soon as she was gone, I closed my eyes and snuggled down into the bed.

It didn’t take long for me to drift off, but this time, I didn’t immediately wake up in the other world. Maybe because of my concussion, but when I came to, I was in that temple, the same one from my dream, from the ritual. Even though I couldn’t see anyone else there, I could tell I wasn’t alone.

And that noise. The dripping I’d heard when we were in my not-father’s dungeon. It was even louder here, and when I listened closely, I could make out what it was saying.

“Come and take your seat with us,” it said, and once I heard it, I understood that it wasn’t dripping at all, it was a blend of voices. The voices spoke at so many different frequencies that they couldn’t be heard by the human ear, so I’d just heard dripping, but here, in this place, I could understand.

“You are like us, and yet unlike. We could learn much from each other.”

And even without them saying, I knew who they were. It was the Spirit Council. Those useless jerks who had refused to help us when we were trying to fight against my evil dad and his jerkface sidekick, evil Henry. They’d had no interest in us learning from each other back then, they couldn’t have cared less. As far as I knew, they were controlled by my father now. He was calling himself the “master of all”, the leader of the High Council, which included the Spirit Council. And it hadn’t just been the fey who had betrayed us the day that Sam had vanished, the day Tennyson became alpha.

“I’m good,” I told them, in my drippiest voice.

“The time will come when you will think differently,” they said. “Our knowledge is necessary if you hope to be successful.”

I shrugged. I knew I was being stubborn, and maybe I’d regret it, but I couldn’t help myself.

“We will be here when you change your mind.”

As their voices faded out, so did the temple. I blinked my eyes and I was awake again, back in the other world.

I expected to be in a cell in my not-dad’s compound, or maybe hiding out in the forest. I did not expect to wake up, tied to a chair, being glared at by my own face. I could recognize the library in the Golden House, even with all the changes. The layout was basically the same, just the furnishings were more of a Victorian Gothic aesthetic than the classic elegance I was used to in that house. It seemed more a grey house than golden, but that might have been because of the heavy drapes that covered the windows, blocking any light and making everything a dull monochrome. Or it could’ve been from the cracking pain in my skull.

Other-me poked me in the cheek, not gently.

“She’s awake,” she said.

Nikolai was sprawled in his usual wingback chair, affecting an air of unconcern. Tennyson and Althea were there too, but they sat huddled together on a chaise lounge, looking out of place and uncomfortable. It was a world away from my pack being all together, literally, and yet something felt right about seeing the four of them together.

“Who are you?” Other-me demanded. She scowled at me, and then pinched the end of my nose, wiggling it as if she was trying to pull it off. I shook my head to get out of her grip.

“What are you doing?” I asked her. “I’m not wearing a mask.”

She stepped back and folded her arms, staring at me. “So, what? You’re like Nicolas Cage in Face Off ?”

I don’t know why, but it was somehow reassuring to know that this world had its very own Nicolas Cage. Things couldn’t be so very different here after all.

“No,” I said. “And if I were, you’d be the Nicolas Cage.”

She scoffed, but I ignored her. Had I always been this annoying?

“I’m from a parallel world,” I told her.

She rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.” I rolled my eyes right back at her. “My friend fell into this world by accident, so I came here to bring him home.”

“That’s who you were trying to free, back there?” Nikolai asked, even though he knew this. I’d told him. Was he playing dumb for Other-me? Or was he playing some other game? Either way, I didn’t know the rules.

I turned to him, as much as I could while tied to the chair. “Did you see him? Did he get out?”

Althea snorted. It was such an un-Althea noise that it startled me. “As if he’d know. As soon as he had the chance, he ran away, back through the teleportation door, or whatever it was. Leaving us with that butcher like the traitor that he is.” She spat. I decided to never, ever tell my Althea that I’d seen her spit. “We followed him through and ended up back here.” She sneered as she looked around the library.

“And in the process, ruining all our carefully laid plans,” said Other-me. “It took years for my father to begin to trust Nikolai. He barely trusts me , probably not at all now.”

She turned to Nikolai. “Do you think I could turn her over to him? Tell him she’s some sort of spy and that you were working under duress?”

Nikolai shifted in his chair, hooking his legs over the arm. “You’d have to get close enough to him first, and that might be a problem.”

Other-me paced back and forth in front of me, with her arms folded across her chest. It was so surreal to watch, this mirror-pack trying to work out their problems.

“Hang on a second,” I said. Other-me spun to glare at me, but I turned toward Nikolai. “Didn’t you say that your whole big plan was to taser not-dad and lock him in his own dungeons? That’s not exactly the most foolproof plan in the universe, you know. Did it really take you years to come up with that?”

Nikolai and Other-me exchanged a glance.

“So that wasn’t the whole plan,” I said. “What was the rest of it?”

Nikolai opened his mouth to speak but Other-me held up a finger to stop him.

“We have no proof that you are who you say you are,” she said, imperiously. “We’re not about to tell you the details of our plan. If, in fact, we have a plan at all.”

I sighed. It was fair enough, but still annoying. I turned to Tennyson and Althea.

“I helped you both escape,” I said. “Do you think you could get me out of here?”

Tennyson got to his feet. Other-me raised her finger at him this time, as if trying to get a disobedient puppy to sit, but he ignored her and came over to cut the ties around my arms with a flick of his claws.

“Thank you,” I said.

He nodded, then went back to sit next to Althea.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what I know. I need to find Sam and get him back home.” There was also Vucari’s relic but something stopped me from mentioning that to them. They didn’t need to know all my plans. “Once I do that, I can leave here and never come back.”

“Um,” said Nikolai. “Can you not do that.”

He waved a hand at me, and when I looked around, I saw that I’d been pacing as I spoke in the exact same way Other-me had. I stopped walking and put my hands on my hips. Then I dropped them, but I didn’t know what to do with them, so I folded them over my chest again, even though that was exactly how Other-me was standing.

“How will you leave?” asked Althea. “How will you take someone back with you? You couldn’t take us through those doors you walked through.”

“Sorry, what?” asked Other-me. She turned to Nikolai. “What is she talking about?”

“She can walk through walls,” Nikolai explained. He waggled his eyebrows in a way that I’d seen my Nikolai do when he thought he was being sneaky, though it was obvious he thought they could use my power to help their plans in some way.

“Do it,” Other-me said, waving a hand toward me as if to say I had the floor.

“Uh, no,” I said. “I’m not a performing monkey, and I’m not here to get involved in whatever little power grab you’ve got going on with your evil dad.”

“You want our help,” she said. “You help us.”

“I never said I wanted your help,” I told her. The less time I spent with her the better, she was obnoxious.

“You’re currently my prisoner,” she said. “You’ll do whatever I want you to do.”

“We’ve all seen it,” said Althea. “She can pass through solid matter. What’s the big deal, we’ve all got talents.”

“ I haven’t seen it,” said Other-me. “And some of us have more useful talents than others. Some of us can perform miracles, and some of us,” she motioned toward Tennyson and Althea, “can sniff butts and pee on lampposts. It’s not the same.”

“And what can you do?” I asked her. “Are you talented like your father? Can you steal other people’s power and ruin lives? Whatever. I don’t need your help. I can find Sam on my own.” I started toward the door, but as I did, the doors slammed shut.

I turned back toward Other-me and saw her hand raised in the air.

“I don’t need to move through doors,” she said. “Doors move for me.”

Which, admittedly, could be useful, but didn’t make her any less annoying. And if she could do it, surely I could too. I probably just needed to practice.

Still, maybe we could help each other, if it meant getting Sam to safety.

“Fine,” I said, and turned back toward the door, preparing to walk through it. “But after this, I want some answers.”

But before I could walk through the door, someone else walked through it. Mrs Spencer, and she was armed.