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CHAPTER TWENTY

The next morning, doctors were called, both human and otherwise, but none of them had a definitive way to help Althea. Mostly they said to give her time. Her body had been through trauma and it needed to rest. Once it was healed, she’d wake up, good as new. I didn’t like it. It reminded me of when Sam had been in a similar state, but I didn’t have any better ideas either.

I hadn’t even finished breakfast when Nikolai nudged me and showed me the screen of his phone. There was a text from Vucari. He wanted to meet.

“How did he even know we were back?” I asked.

Nikolai shrugged. “He just knows things.”

So, after I was finished eating, Nikolai, Hannah, Tennyson and I made our way down the train tunnel so we could contact Vucari. We went through the same ritual as last time, with the magic powder and chanting and mirror. As far as I was concerned, after this I could quite happily never see another magic portal again.

“You got the lodestone?”

I held the stone up to show him. It was the happiest I’d ever seen him look. Which was a pretty low bar, if I was honest.

“How will I get it to you?” I asked. “I assume you can’t take it from through this portal. You’re just a projection, right?”

“You mistake me,” he said. “The lodestone isn’t for my benefit. You need to use it. The next phase of your transition will make you one of my people. Only then will your powers be in balance and will you be able to claim your rightful inheritance.”

I shifted on my feet awkwardly. “Well, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought,” I said. “But my powers got kind of zapped out of me, so I don’t think there’s going to be any more transitioning or ascending or any of that.”

“What has been foretold cannot be unwritten,” said Vucari. “The stone will help you along your path. You need to trust in its power.”

“Okey dokes,” I said. What else could I say, the guy seemed pretty sure of himself. “So… I feel like I haven’t really paid back my favor though, if I’m going to be keeping the stone. Are you sure that’s it?”

I really hoped he didn’t have some other massive quest for me to go on, because this one had not been particularly fun, but at the same time, it seemed kind of shifty to not pay back his favor.

“Only that when you take your place on the Dark Council, you look on me with kindness.”

“Sure,” I said, though the only thing I was sure of right then was that I was never going to be on the Dark Council. Or any council. But if I was, sure, I’d throw him a bone.

“Your power is not lost,” he said. “It is only misplaced.”

On that note, he faded away and the portal closed.

“Well then,” I said, looking around at the others. “That was enlightening.”

As we walked back to school, I thought over what Vucari had said. There was a way to get my powers back. But did I even want them back? In all honesty, if we’d lived in a different world, I’d be fine without them. But in this world, the world where my father was the Master of All, and had the power to act with impunity? In this world, I needed them. My powers were the only way I could protect the people I loved. I needed to get them back ASAP.

I just had no idea how. Hannah might be able to help, but I really wanted to talk to Althea. I hoped she’d wake up soon.

We’ll find a way , said Tennyson, falling into step beside me. Psychic link notwithstanding, he always knew what I was thinking.

We always do , I said. And right then, with him beside me, I really believed it. We’d get my powers back, defeat my father, get into an awesome college, all of it. All of the coldness between us seemed to have thawed. I’d had to go to a whole other world to realize it, but there was nothing that could come between the two of us. We just had to stop getting in our own way.

I opened up our connection to show him everything I was thinking, everything I was feeling, and in doing that, all the walls between us came down. He felt the same. He was the same. We could get through all of this and come out even stronger.

We were nearly back to the Golden House when Harper came running out to meet us. My first thought was that Althea was awake, but I was wrong.

“Oh em gee, you guys. You have to come see this. I know you’d told us, but I didn’t really believe it, not til I saw for myself…”

“What are you talking about, Harper?” Tennyson asked, clearly in no mood for her.

We followed Harper inside. She paused outside the common room door, looking far too pleased with herself. “Ready?”

“Just let us in,” said Tennyson, pushing past her.

Whatever I’d expected to find in the room, nothing could have prepared me for the sight we found.

Sitting there, beside the fireplace, casually flipping through a magazine, was Other-me.

“Surprise!” she said flatly. “I’m here for my lodestone.”