Page 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

For a moment I thought it was another Groundhog Day situation like when I’d been stuck in that time loop, but this definitely wasn’t that other world, it was my own. It was my magic tree, and I was surrounded by Tennyson, Althea, Nikolai, and Hannah.

“She’s awake,” said Hannah.

I wasn’t sure who she was telling, as everyone was already huddled around where I was slumped against the tree trunk, but after a moment, Mrs Spencer pushed Nikolai and Althea aside and took my arm, feeling for my pulse.

“Tell us everything before you forget,” she said, dropping my arm and placing the back of her hand against my forehead.

So, I told them everything, ignoring Nikolai’s sniggers at the parts about him.

When I’d finished, I had a few questions of my own. “What was that?” I asked. “A dream? A hallucination? And how did I get here, we were back at the Manor. How did you even get back so fast?” I looked at Tennyson. It took a few hours to travel back to school from his house and I surely hadn’t been out that long.

“It’s been a day and a half,” he said, and now that I looked, I could see the strain on his face, the shadows under his eyes and tension in his jaw. “You were unconscious the whole time. I thought maybe the tea really had been poisoned.”

He shot a look at Mrs Spencer and I wondered why he hadn’t locked her back up if he thought that.

“ You were fine,” she told him, more snappishly than I’d ever heard her speak to anyone. “If I was serving up poisoned tea, I’d make sure it took you out first.”

From her tone, it seemed like she and Tennyson had not been on the best terms while I was out.

She turned back to me and smiled. “Your physical body was here but your astral body went to that other world. We didn’t have the sword, so I guess that’s why the rest of us got left behind. If we’d had it, we could’ve made a bigger door for us all to fit through, but only you could travel through the spirit realm, so you had to go alone.”

Nothing that she said lined up with what I’d read about quantum physics, but it did seem much easier to understand, so there was that.

“When you return to that world, we’ll keep someone here guarding your body to make sure you stay safe. Although in that world, you’re really only a spirit, you’ll seem just as real as you are here. And since you look real, your body will react as if it’s real while you’re there. If you get hurt, you’ll feel it, and it could even cause your real body back here to get injured, so don’t go acting crazy while you’re there, or you’ll pay for it back here.”

I nodded. “Like Nightmare on Elm Street ,” I said.

“You were right to stick close to that version of Nikolai,” she continued. “There will be parallels between the two worlds, they’ll be the biggest clues to finding what you need.”

“Sam?” I asked. “Or the relic?” I hadn’t found any clues that might lead me to either, though I’d barely been there five minutes.

She gave me a sad smile. “Or a way to defeat your father.”

“Okay now,” said Tennyson, moving to help me up. “That’s enough. She doesn’t need to go back there unless she wants to, and I’m still not convinced Sam is even there.”

“She’ll have to go back. When she falls asleep here, she’ll wake there, and the same there to here. That is, until we find that sword and can fix what went wrong.”

Tennyson stopped moving and turned to look at her. “You knew this would happen?”

She shrugged. “I knew it was a possibility.”

Tennyson looked as if he was about to strangle her. Nikolai and Althea glanced at each other, clearly unsure what to do. But Hannah knew what she was about.

“Look you… Temu-Stevie Nicks,” she said, her curls bouncing in anger. “You’ve put my best friend in danger without her knowledge or consent, you better figure out a way to fix this or I’ll turn you into a newt! Come on, Lucy, we have stuff to do.”

She grabbed my other arm and her and Tennyson helped me inside. I honestly didn’t need them to, but I did need the reassurance of them being there, and being real.

When I glanced back, Mrs Spencer was gone.

I was scared to fall asleep again. What if I woke up in that place and the other me was there, calling me out for being an imposter? It was never good when you crossed your own double, not in Harry Potter or Doctor Who , or anything else I could think of. Though, both of those were time travel scenarios, which fortunately this was not. I had enough to think about without worrying about accidentally killing my own grandfather. Or purposely killing my own father.

I sat in the Golden common room, in the most uncomfortable chair I could find, in the coldest part of the room, but honestly even that was quite cozy. I leafed through one of the books in the stack that Althea had bought me about wormholes and astral projection, and chugged one of the Monster energy drinks from the crate that Nikolai had brought me.

I don’t want to go back , I told Tennyson, in his head so the others couldn’t hear how afraid I was.

We’ll watch over you , he said. You’ll be fine.

But I couldn’t explain to him how alien it felt there, how everything just felt slightly off. It wasn’t my world, and it knew I didn’t belong there. It wanted me out.

Eventually, I had to sleep. I kept nodding off over the book I was reading and then startling awake.

“Come on,” Tennyson said finally, after I spilled some foul-smelling energy drink on him. “Come sleep in my room. I can wake you if you start to seem distressed.”

I wasn’t sure it worked that way, but I was too tired to object. He nearly had to carry me up the stairs, I was so sluggish. I wondered if the sleep I had here actually counted, since my mind or whatever was still awake. Maybe I’d die from sleep deprivation or something and then none of this would matter. I really hoped not, it seemed like the worst possible way to go. I tried to remember if I’d ever read anything about the effects of sleep deprivation. Hadn’t the CIA done experiments on people in the 70s or something? Or was that just an episode of The X-Files ?

Before I could even think to ask Tennyson, I was asleep and waking up again in that other world.

The good news was: I felt refreshed, as if I’d had a proper night’s sleep. The bad news was that I was in Other-me’s room and I could hear my voice from just outside the door. Still half-asleep, I did a commando roll backwards off the bed and landed in a heap, then scooted as far as I could get under the bed. I only just made it in time.

Other-me came into the room and flopped down on the bed, which was sturdy enough not to sag too much and squish me into the floor. There was a second flop, which I soon realized was Nikolai, both because he started talking and because in every universe he wears way too much cologne.

“I just don’t see why we need to talk about this right now ,” he said. “We hardly ever get the house to ourselves…”

Oh no. This could be bad. Very bad. Like that scene in Parasite only like a bazillion times worse on account of it was Nikolai and Other-me . I frantically tried to think of ways I could distract them without giving myself away.

Luckily, Other-me didn’t seem very interested in getting it on with Nikolai either.

“I know, babe, but listen. This is important.”

Ew. Babe? Nikolai? Ew. Something about her voice sounded wrong and not like me at all. It was deeper, kind of smoother, and almost a little British. Maybe she’d been binging Downton Abbey or something. Either that or she was trying to sound fancy. Something about it gave me the ick.

“Daddy wants to do the hunt tonight,” she said.

The way she said “Daddy” was icky too, but I filed that away to be grossed out about later. I didn’t want to miss anything that might be helpful.

“Tonight?” Nikolai sounded alarmed and the bed shifted. “You think he’s onto us?”

She gave a throaty little laugh. “Of course not, silly. Now sit back down, we’ll have to change our plan a bit.”

They moved around on the bed again, then I could hear one of them typing. It was a super clacky keyboard, which made it hard to hear their mumbling. I could make out bits of “no, this would be better” and “uh-huh, but what if…” but nothing concrete. I needed to know more. What was this hunt? If my father was involved, it had to be something ominous. Even if he was from a whole other dimension, if he was planning a hunt, it wouldn’t be for Easter eggs, it’d be something messed up. And what was their plan? Were they trying to take down his evil empire as well? If they were, maybe we could team up. It would be a relief not to have to hide out the whole time I was here, that was for sure.

For a moment, the typing stopped and Other-me said, “it might actually work in our favor that it’s not the full moon.”

She resumed typing, which gave me a moment to think. I hadn’t been certain that our doppelgangers would have supernatural powers in this world, but I couldn’t think of any other reason why the full moon would factor into things. But were the supernatural people the ones doing the hunting, or were they the hunted? With my father involved, the latter seemed more likely.

After a while, Nikolai flopped back on the bed, so dramatically that his hand nearly hit me in the face.

“The problem isn’t getting him there,” he said, much more audible now that he was closer. “The problem is getting him into the right position. Your father isn’t stupid. If he senses even the slightest thing off, we’ll be the schmucks left out as werewolf bait.”

Well, that answered one question.

“I’m not even convinced this new guy is a werewolf. He couldn’t transform properly, and he’s not on the list. Where did he even come from, it’s like he fell from the sky.”

I let out a small gasp, and then froze. I could see Nikolai’s hand, still hanging over the edge of the bed, and it gave a little twitch, but after a moment where he didn’t jump down and pull me from my hiding place, I relaxed. He hadn’t heard me.

When my heart started beating again, I thought about what I’d just heard. He was talking about Sam, right? It definitely had to be Sam. Sam had always struggled with his transformations when he was in mental distress, and landing in a strange dimension was definitely distressing. And he was someone unaccounted for. Who fell out of the sky. How often did that happen?

Did that mean they were going to hunt Sam? They couldn’t do that, right? Surely they couldn’t.

Suddenly, my plan of action was clear. I had to go on that hunt. I had to save Sam, and whatever other poor souls were being hunted by my insane father.

And to do that, Other-me had to be out of the picture.