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CHAPTER FOUR

Tennyson stared down at me, the halo of light around him almost blinding me after the darkness of the tunnel.

Hannah and Nikolai tiptoed their way up the last few steps of the tunnel exit and made their way around him with exaggerated care, as if scared to startle an angry beast. Which, in a way, he was, so their caution was probably smart.

Hannah mouthed “good luck” to me, and Nikolai gave me the double thumbs up, then they both took off out of sight.

Tennyson’s nostrils flared and he took a deep breath before speaking. “I thought we were in this together.”

Now it was my turn to take a breath. I couldn’t tell if Tennyson was angry, or hurt, or just annoyed, and I couldn’t try to figure it out. Not at that moment. Not after what I’d just learned.

“Sam’s alive,” I said. It was the only thought in my head. “He’s alive and he needs our help.”

“You know this? How?”

I shook my head. If I explained about Vucari, he wouldn’t believe it, just like he hadn’t believed when Mrs Spencer had said it. I didn’t want to say it out loud and have him take this feeling away from me, this tiny spark of hope.

I was standing so close to him that he felt magnetized, as if I’d just snap into him and no force could pry us apart, but I couldn’t let that happen. There was too much at stake. I couldn’t relax for one second or I’d fall into him and everything else would drop away. Sam, my father, everything we’d been fighting for. I had to be stronger than that.

“You still don’t trust me,” he said.

I’m sorry , I whispered into his mind.

Then I turned and walked away.

It seemed obvious to me I needed to talk to Mrs Spencer about my meeting with Vucari, but that was easier said than done. I couldn’t exactly commandeer the Wilde’s helicopter and go flying off to talk to her. Especially not on a school night. So, I did the next best thing and filled Althea in on everything. Which, of course, led to research.

We’d read through most of the library in the Golden House in previous years when trying to fend off various evils, but this was a whole other branch of inquiry, and she seemed weirdly excited about it. Within an hour of hearing my story, she’d gathered us all – Hannah, Nikolai, and Harper York, but not Tennyson – together and assigned us different areas of research.

“It will be good practice for writing your doctorate,” she said, dumping another pile of books in front of me.

“If I live that long,” I muttered, half-hopefully. If I had the choice, being banished to the spirit realm seemed way less torturous.

“According to this, you will,” said Harper, waving a thin paperback around. “This says you’ll live forever and be some sort of messiah.”

“Muad’dib,” Nikolai muttered to Hannah and she giggled into his shoulder.

Harper rolled her eyes. “Nerds.”

I reached out to snatch the book from her but she held it away. Then she rolled her eyes and handed it to me.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when I read the name on the cover. Ruby Spencer. With foreword by Daniel O’Connor. The title was “The Fated Child: the oncoming apocalypse and how to avert it”.

“That was not in your pile,” said Althea, plucking the book from my hand and setting it back on Harper’s pile. “Your pile is string theory.”

“Can’t my pile be… anything else?” I asked, opening “String Theory for Dummies”, and sinking my head down onto it. Maybe if I used it as a napping pillow, the contents would soak into my brain. It was the only way they’d get in there. I couldn’t even understand the Wikipedia article on string theory. I needed “String Theory for Dummies for Dummies”, and even then, I probably wouldn’t understand it. Honestly, the whole topic seemed more like Althea’s type of thing but she was looking into portals. Portals sounded way more fun.

“You’ll be happy you know this stuff when you’re stranded in a parallel world with no library or internet.”

I briefly paused in banging my head against the table. “No internet?”

She shrugged, turning a page in a massive leather-bound book. “It’s possible.”

Maybe I could back out. Surely if Vucari heard about the no internet planet, he wouldn’t expect me to go there. I mean, there’s harsh and then there’s harsh .

But then I thought about Sam. Sam didn’t even care much about the internet, but he did care about his friends. He was stranded in some other world all alone, and anything could be possible in that other world. He could be the only human. Well, humanoid. He might be surrounded by dinosaurs, or snakes, or really stinky cheese. He could be in danger. And he’d feel like he deserved it. If I knew Sam at all, I knew that he’d think it was a fitting punishment for everything he’d done. But it wasn’t. I had to save him.

I turned to the intro of the book and started reading.

I stayed there reading until everyone else had drifted off, to dinner or to bed, I wasn’t sure. I was too focused on memorizing everything I read. And once I applied myself, it was actually much easier than I expected, as if the knowledge behind the words became my knowledge, rather than me taking in the words and deciphering them myself. I didn’t know how but I knew somehow that it was a perk of my new transformation.

It was past midnight when I looked up and realized I was alone.

No, not alone. Someone was sitting in the far corner, in the comfiest armchair, reading. Tennyson.

“You didn’t have dinner,” he said, without looking up. “I brought you a sandwich.”

I glanced over to the table beside me, and sure enough, there was a plate set on a pile of books, with a ham, cheese and pineapple sandwich on sourdough rye, cut neatly into triangles on it. My favorite. He must’ve made it himself, because it wasn’t something the school ever had.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, suddenly realizing how hungry I was.

“I’ve done some research on what we might come to expect, during your spirit phase.” He still didn’t look up from his book but I knew it was just for the effect. “There isn’t a lot on it, obviously, but most sources agree that you’ll begin to neglect your physical needs. It’s something we’ll need to be mindful of, so that your health doesn’t suffer.”

He was using “we”, I noticed. That seemed like a good sign.

I shouldn’t have been surprised he’d learned about my oncoming transition, since we’d all been talking about it that evening, but I hadn’t realized he was home. His attention wasn’t often on our stupid teen conversation lately, even when he was at the house.

I thought about what he’d said as I chewed on my sandwich. I was about to make some crack about how it wouldn’t really be me if I wasn’t hungry, when he spoke again.

“You need to speak with Ruby Spencer,” he said. “I don’t like it, but I can’t see any other option. I’ve got the helicopter pilot on alert. We can either go tonight or in the morning.”

We ? I asked telepathically, as I was still eating my sandwich.

We , he repeated.

He looked so tired that I couldn’t bear keeping him awake for the time it would take to get back to the manor. And by the time I finished eating, I realized he was already asleep where he sat.

He was gone when I woke up the next morning but he was waiting for me by the fountain as soon as classes were over.

“Are you sure you have time for this?” I asked him as we hurried toward the helicopter.

He nodded but didn’t say anything else until we were in the air.

This is important , he said. We need to save Sam. And…

Even through our bond, I could sense his hesitation.

And I need you to know that you can trust me. With anything.

I reached out and took his hand. In the washed-out light of the late afternoon, he looked exhausted. I decided then and there that we wouldn’t go back to school that night. He needed a night off, away from school and the pack and everything else.

Sam’s mother did not look surprised to see us, but she did seem pleased.

“I know why you’re here,” she said, before we could even say hello. “You’re going to rescue my Sam, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question. “But you’re a bit fuzzy on some of the details. Well, lucky for you, I’m the leading expert in interdimensional travel in the state, if not the country.” She shot me double finger guns.

Tennyson and I glanced at each other from the corners of our eyes. She could at least try to seem trustworthy, I thought. But at least she had the nutty part of nutty professor down, at any rate.

“Do you have the sword?” she asked.

“Sword?” I asked.

Tennyson didn’t look nearly as confused as I felt.

“The sword you manifested. During one of your ascensions.”

I hadn’t told her anything about that, I barely remembered it myself, and I didn’t need to see the look of surprise on Tennyson’s face to know he hadn’t mentioned it to her either. He wouldn’t.

“You’ll need it,” she said. “To open the portal. There are other ways, of course, but they take either a comprehensive knowledge of metaphysics, or an exceptionally centered mind, preferably both. No offense, sweet girl, but you don’t have either, so the sword will come in handy.”

I nodded. Tennyson’s mother had been having the sword tested, hopefully someone in the pack would know where she’d sent it, and the tests hadn’t done anything weird to its power.

“During the next phase of your Becoming, the metaphysical stuff will all come to you naturally anyway. You should hurry that along if you can.”

I wrinkled up my nose. “I would if I had the first clue how.”

Which was a bit of a lie. The whole spirit thing was a step I wasn’t sure I wanted to take. I liked my physical self. I liked eating and sleeping and the way that sometimes when Tennyson held my hand, he’d run his thumb slowly over the back of my knuckles.

She tapped her finger against the tip of her nose a few times, thinking. “You had dreams, correct? Dreams of a temple?”

Tennyson drew in a sharp breath. He’d shared dreams like that with me before.

Mrs Spencer didn’t stop to hear my response. “That temple is real but it exists in a dimension beyond this three-dimensional reality, you follow?”

I wasn’t sure I did follow, but I nodded anyway.

“We all visit that dimension whenever we dream, but what you need to do is to travel there while you’re still awake.” She gave a little shrug. “Like an out-of-body experience, if you like, or astral projection.”

That all sounded a little woo-woo to me, but then, we were working on the theory that Sam was in another dimension, or reality or whatever. And I was part of a werewolf pack, so woo-woo was probably a few miles back at this point.

“Assuming what you say is correct,” said Tennyson, “Lucy can’t even focus her mind to meditate for more than a few minutes at a time.”

“Oi!” I said, though it was a fair point.

“I’ve been in your mind, I know what a mess it is,” he said.

Mrs Spencer waved her hand in the air as if batting the thought away. “Then you will be part of the ritual, to help her focus her mind. It will be easier that way.”

I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. “I don’t want Tennyson in any danger.”

“He’ll be in more danger if you try to shut him out,” she said. “The two of you are tangled up so tight together that anything that tries to pull you apart will rip either you or itself apart. Better to be on the safe side, stay tangled.”

I raised an eyebrow and glanced at Tennyson. The more I tried to take her seriously, the harder she made it. But Tennyson looked as if, after rejecting her for so long, he was now buying the whole package.

“So, what do we need to do?” he asked, leaning toward her.

I elbowed him but he ignored me. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to hear her out.

“Firstly, you need to get into the right meditative state, close to sleep but still aware. A hypnagogic state, it’s called. Binaural beats in the four to seven hertz range should help, you can find that online easy enough. I have a special tea that will put you right in the zone, and we’ll ask some friends in the spirit realm to guide you, that should be just the ticket.”

As she spoke, she rummaged around in her things, looking for something. She turned back to us with a guilty look on her face.

“Forgive me for a moment, but I don’t have the tea with me.”

I blinked my eyes and was no longer looking at her. I looked around the small cell but she wasn’t there. Tennyson seemed just as baffled.

“What the…”

Before I could finish the thought, she was standing right in front of me, no longer in the cell.

“Here it is,” she said, pressing a small paper sachet into my hand. “Now, it needs to brew for at least 20 minutes, and make sure to both drink it at the same time. Only one bag each, or you’ll go too far.”

With another blink, she was back in the cell. If I wasn’t holding the packet of tea, I might think I’d imagined it.

“Could you do that this whole time?” Tennyson asked, his brow furrowed.

She shrugged. “Yes, but I wanted you to trust me and you wouldn’t exactly do that if I was popping out every five minutes, would you.”

She walked over to her desk and flipped open a notebook, then tore out a page. “So, tea, then the four hertz… you’ll need headphones but they don’t need to be great quality but do make sure you have the right side on your right ear and left on your left, that’s very important. By the time the tea kicks in, the guides should be with you, but if not, here’s what you do.” She poked the paper out through the hole in her door.

I took the paper and glanced at it. It didn’t make a heap of sense but maybe it would after I was tripping on shrooms, or whatever was in that tea.

“Okay, and then what?” I asked her.

“And then you’ll be ready to bring my Sam back to me.”

I nodded. That was exactly what I intended to do, no matter what.