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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I emerged from the portal into what looked like some sort of comedy skit, or that meme with Spiderman pointing at the other spidermen. The Tennysons and Altheas were just staring at each other in shock. Nikolai was looking around, I assumed for his doppelganger, and Mrs Spencer had run off into the night. Althea walked over to other-Althea and hugged her. It surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. I was forever underestimating her. Tennyson nodded toward other-Tennyson, who nodded back.

“Okay,” I said, wishing I had somewhere to put my sword. Mrs Spencer could’ve stolen a handy sheathe along with it, honestly. I looked to the Altheas, figuring I could at least count on them for logic. “I guess we need to assume Sam didn’t escape and work from there?”

My Althea nodded but other-Althea shook her head.

“I’m not going back to that place,” she said, which was fair.

“Do you think you could guard this side of the portal? Make sure nobody goes in or out?”

She nodded. I meant to include other-Tennyson in that, but he stepped closer to me.

“You can’t…” other-Althea said to him, but he shook his head and came to stand by my side.

My Tennyson looked at the two of us and raised his eyebrows, then moved to stand on my other side.

“Okay,” said my Althea. “What do we need to know?”

I explained about the portal at the lighthouse, or magic door, whatever it was, and gave her a vague description of the layout of not-dad’s compound.

“You won’t be able to hack his security a second time,” said a cold voice behind me.

I wrinkled my nose up in annoyance. Other-me.

“You said you wanted no part of this,” I said, not turning around to look at her, though I could see Tennyson’s and Althea’s surprise when they saw her. I wasn’t sure I liked the expression on Tennyson’s face but I didn’t have time to be jealous. “It’s a bit late to backtrack now.”

“Wrong,” she said, stepping forward to inspect the portal. She waved to Hannah and Harper on the other side. Harper waved back. Other-me spun back to face me. “You need me, if you want to get anywhere close to Daddy’s compound.”

I gagged at the way she said “daddy” but motioned for her to go on.

“He’ll be on high alert. The gateway from the lighthouse is probably closed and even if it isn’t, the other side will be heavily guarded.”

“So, we need another way in,” I said.

She shook her head. “There is no other way.”

I rolled my eyes. “How is this helpful?”

“I will contact my father, tell him that Nikolai double-crossed me and I have captured him and two of the escapees.” She motioned toward my Tennyson, Althea, and Nikolai. “He will then give me access to the compound and you can travel through and enact your little plan.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “And what’s in this for you?”

She shrugged. “I want to overthrow my father. He mismanages his empire and his ideas are antiquated, it’s time for a new leader. Your ill-conceived escape can serve as a distraction while Nikolai and I stage our coup.”

I didn’t trust her, not one bit.

We don’t have any choice , Tennyson said. We have to go along with it .

Other-me started when he spoke in my head, as if she could hear him.

Monkey farts, I said back. Spaghetti jockstrap rainbow.

Tennyson looked at me as if I’d lost my mind but Other-me didn’t flinch. Well, that was strange and unpleasant, but I’d think about it later, Tennyson was right, we had no choice but to agree to her plan.

“Fine,” I said. “But you can go ahead first with these three, and I’ll follow with this Tennyson and your Nikolai.” I patted other-Tennyson on the shoulder. “That way, I have someone I trust watching you, and if you rat us out, I can kill your Nikolai.”

“Oi!” said both Nikolais. I hadn’t even noticed the other-Nikolai there, probably because he was lurking in the shadows like a creeper. Now that he’d revealed himself, the two Nikolais eyed each other up, giving the nod of approval. Those two should not be allowed to spend time together. They’d bring down both our worlds, with bad fashion if nothing else.

While everyone was getting organized, back inside, I pulled Tennyson aside.

“I think she can hear you,” I whispered to him. “Other-me, I mean. When you talk in my head. But she can’t hear me.”

He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “And… other me , can he hear you?”

I hadn’t noticed him react when I’d talked to my Tennyson, but I hadn’t been paying attention.

Calling all Tennysons , I said. Come in, Tennysons .

Other-Tennyson was across the room, getting ready with Althea, but he glanced up.

It’s okay , I said. False alarm.

He smiled and went back to what he was doing.

“He definitely heard that,” I said.

Tennyson glanced between the two of us. “He likes you,” he said.

I shrugged. “He’d better,” I said flippantly. “He is you .”

He went to say something else but I waved him off. It wasn’t worth getting into, not if we pulled this off. We could be home by suppertime and never have to see other-us again, so it was pointless.

“I don’t trust Other-me,” I told him. “It’s the best way for us to communicate if we’re separated, but we can’t risk her hearing us, not unless it’s an emergency.”

He nodded and was about to say something else when Other-me interrupted us.

“I found this,” she said, handing me a worn leather sheath. “It should fit your sword, and it’s safer than you flinging that thing around everywhere. You’ll take someone’s eye out if you’re not careful.”

She glanced over at Tennyson and the look made me think about taking her eye out.

“Are you ready?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “I don’t love the plan but it’s the best we have.”

Other-Nikolai obviously didn’t like how she was staring at Tennyson like a shark at a sushi buffet either. He popped up between the two of them.

“All ready?” he asked.

In all the hubbub, I’d forgotten about Mrs Spencer but she was waiting for us on the steps of the lighthouse when we got there, like an overeager golden retriever.

“What’s this?” asked Other-me.

I sighed. I hadn’t factored Mrs Spencer into our plan and she was a bit of a loose cannon.

“Sam’s mother,” I explained. “She can come with us. She’s only here to rescue Sam.”

At least, I hoped that was why she was there but I couldn’t be certain.

“Any other surprises?” Other-me asked haughtily. “This is becoming quite the expedition.”

I didn’t answer her, because I didn’t know.

“It’s so strange,” said Althea, as we climbed up the steps. “It’s so much like home and yet…”

“Everything is just off,” I finished. “I know.”

“Is she… I mean, the other Althea, from here. Is she okay?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “She seems pretty tough,” I said. “But she’s been through a lot.”

She nodded. “And…” She pointed to other-Tennyson.

I shrugged. “This world is a mess,” I said, suddenly terrified of what we were about to do. If they got captured while we were trying to save Sam, if not-dad did to them what he’d done to this world’s versions of them, I’d never forgive myself.

Althea grabbed my hand and squeezed it, picking up on my fear. “Get in, save Sam, get out,” she said.

I nodded. That was the plan. “Be home for supper,” I finished.

But that didn’t make it any easier to watch her and Tennyson vanish through the magical door.

We waited. Me, Mrs Spencer, other-Nikolai and other-Tennyson, who seemed less wolfish than before but still partly transformed. Not exactly an elite covert team for hostage removal.

Other-me had said she could get not-dad out of his office within ten minutes, but couldn’t guarantee the magic door would stay open that long. I waited as long as I could stand – four minutes, seven seconds – before herding our ragtag group through.

Thankfully, the office was empty.

“This way,” I whispered, motioning toward where the elevators were, but I couldn’t help but take a moment and go over to the windows that looked down over the forest below.

It looked different than last time. Large patches of the forest seemed barren now. Burned out, I thought, since some areas seemed to still be on fire, and a haze covered large patches. It was the result of my actions, I realized. Not-dad had obviously been hunting down all the escapees and without his surveillance equipment, he was burning them out. I felt sick, remembering those footsteps I’d heard behind us, not stopping to see if they were guards or prisoners.

“Lucy, come on,” Nikolai hissed from the doorway, breaking me out of my thoughts.

It was good to have him with us, I realized. Not just as a hostage, but he was more familiar with the layout than the rest of us. Other-me had given directions but without a frame of reference, it was hard to follow and I didn’t want to walk into my not-dad and Other-me by accident, that would be hard to explain. I followed Nikolai past where we’d taken the elevators the first time, to a stairwell. A few flights down, he led us through what looked like a large storage space, then into another stairwell. After a few more flights, he went to lead us through another door, but Tennyson put a hand out to stop him.

“It’s okay, there’s nobody there,” Nikolai reassured him but Tennyson just shook his head and didn’t let Nikolai pass.

After a moment, we heard voices on the other side of the door. Tennyson waited a long time after the voices had faded from my hearing before he let us through.

The place was even more of a maze than I’d thought, even after running through the prison area, but eventually we came to the room with the viewing platform, where we’d emerged from the ladder out of the prison. There was nobody around. All the lights were off; it was totally closed for business. I wouldn’t put it past my not-dad or sneaky Other-me to suddenly jump out from the shadows and zap us with laser bolts or something though, so we stuck to the shadows and made our way down to the hatch where the ladder came out.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked other-Tennyson. “If you don’t want to go down there, it’s okay, you can stand guard for us here.”

He just shook his head and motioned for me to go down the hatch first. Mrs Spencer went after me, then Nikolai, then Tennyson came last. Out of all of them, I trusted other-Tennyson the most, so it was reassuring to have him bringing up the rear. I wished I could talk to my Tennyson, ask him how it was going, but we couldn’t risk it and I had to just assume that no news was good news.

Climbing down this time, I paid particular attention to the drips. They were still there, still seemed to ring with some type of resonant energy that I couldn’t quite decipher.

“You hear that, don’t you?” Mrs Spencer whispered down to me.

I didn’t answer her. I didn’t need to. But the fact that she heard it too, that meant I wasn’t going crazy, right? I wasn’t sure I could use her as a barometer for sanity, but I felt sure that the lodestone was close. If only I knew what it looked like. Looking for a stone, in this place, was like looking for a grain of sand at the beach.

I tried to look around as I climbed down, but there wasn’t a lot of light, and looking at anything but the ladder made me feel dizzy. There was a point though, maybe about a third of the way from the bottom, where it felt as if the dripping began to fade.

“Stop for a second you guys,” I called up, as loudly as I dared. “Can you see anything weird looking, maybe a rock sticking out or something?”

There was nothing. It was probably inside the compound somewhere. It could be just on the other side of the wall, and I’d have no way of knowing. It was so frustrating, why couldn’t Vucari have sent me a photo of it or something, rather than this vague “sensing” malarkey.

I sighed and kept climbing. Even though I owed Vucari and I’d made a magical promise or whatever that I’d get this stone for him, my priority was Sam. If I couldn’t get the lodestone, I’d just have to do him a different favor.

When we got to the bottom of the ladder, Nikolai, and Tennyson both seemed to have a clear idea of where we’d found Sam the last time. I wouldn’t have trusted Nikolai on his own, but because Tennyson seemed sure too, I had no problems following them through all the twists and turns of the prison corridors.

A lot of the cells stood open, with nobody inside, I was pleased to realize. Hopefully that meant those people were free now, far from this place. There were only a few doors still locked, and I couldn’t sense anyone behind them. I hoped that was a good thing.

Finally, we came to a stop. Tennyson pointed toward an open door.

“He’s in there,” said Nikolai.

Mrs Spencer and I exchanged a glance.

“You go first,” I told her.

I hung back, not wanting to intrude on their reunion after such a long time, but as she got to the doorway, she stopped in her tracks, looking back at me uncertainly.

“Is he there?” I asked, stepping forward.

“I’m here,” came Sam’s voice from inside the cell. It rang out hollowly.

I crept up to the doorway, hardly wanting to see whatever was going on with Sam, after seeing his mother’s reaction.

But there was nothing wrong with him. He sat on his bed in the cell, much the same as when I had been there last, except that the door was open.

“We’ve come to take you home,” I told him. “We’ve opened a doorway. To our world. It’s completely safe.”

I assumed it was completely safe, anyway. Definitely safer than staying there, at any rate.

“No,” he said.

“Why?” said Mrs Spencer, her voice full of tears. “My baby angel, why would you want to stay in such a place?”

Sam shook his head, not answering her. He didn’t even look at her. “That is not my mother,” he said.

“It is, Sam,” I said, daring to take another step into the room. “We’ve been told a lot of lies, but this is really her. She’s alive. Everyone’s fine and we want you to come home.”

He lifted his eyes to meet mine then, and I took a step back at all the hate and rage inside them.

“No,” he said.

I glanced back at Mrs Spencer helplessly. I didn’t know what to say to that, how to combat all his pain and self-loathing.

“Come on now, sweet boy,” she said, entering the room fully and taking a seat on the bed beside him. “See here, I’m as real as anything, flesh and blood. I know you want to punish yourself for things outside your control, but you can do that just as well at home, instead of some dinky parallel universe, can’t you.”

Sam shook his head, staring at his feet.

There was a noise behind me and I turned to find not-Tennyson gesturing down the hallway.

“Someone’s coming,” Nikolai translated. “We don’t have time for his ethical crisis or whatever.”

I nodded. I’d been afraid he’d be reluctant, but I knew I couldn’t leave him here, no matter what. I took out a little pouch Hannah had given me and took out a pinch of the powder inside, then turned back into the cell.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” I told him. “I hope you’ll forgive me for this.”

I blew the powder directly into his face. He spluttered for a moment, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he sunk down onto the bed.

“That poor, sweet dear,” said his mother, as not-Tennyson pulled Sam onto his back awkwardly. We’d strapped a makeshift harness to not-Tennyson in case we couldn’t talk Sam into coming on his own, but I’d hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. Because Sam was so tall, it was hard to buckle him into it without his legs dragging along the ground behind them, especially since we were in a hurry to avoid whoever was on their way, but we got it done, more or less. Not-Tennyson was so strong in his half-transformed state that he probably could have thrown Sam over a shoulder and carried him without much effort, but that would’ve made it hard to climb back up the ladder.

As it was, it was awkward enough. Sam’s feet dragged along behind Tennyson, his arms flopping around. We were in no way stealthy, that was for sure.

Tennyson led the way up the ladder, which slowed our progress a bit, though not as much as I’d expected. We went in reverse order this time, with me climbing last, but as we got near the top, I called to them to go ahead without me.

“There’s just something I want to check,” I said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Mrs Spencer hesitated but I wanted to do this without her.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Go take care of Sam.”

Once I was alone on the ladder, I could hear the dripping more clearly than ever. Or rather, I could hear through the dripping. I didn’t need to make out its words or language, I could hear directly into the meaning of it. And it was calling to me. I knew where I had to go to find the lodestone, and I knew that once I found it, I’d know what to do next. It was just an absolute certainty, something that didn’t need to be explained, like breathing or sleeping.

I let go of the ladder and allowed myself to fall.