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“Kind of interesting,” Ivy said, reading over my shoulder. “I guess it will depend on what she’s willing to pay, and what exactly she wants us to do.”
“What do you need from me?” I asked Jenny.
“I need you to steal a—”
My pocket buzzed. I absently glanced at the phone, expecting a text from J.C. He’d probably sent me a picture of himself trying to drink straight from the soda machine at the gas station, or some similar nonsense.
But the text wasn’t from J.C. It was from Sandra. The woman who originally taught me to use my aspects; the woman who had brought me sanity. The woman who had vanished soon after.
The text read, simply, HELP.
TWO
I tore from the room, followed by Ivy and Tobias. Out on the street, Wilson and his niece saw something was up, and he alertly opened the car door for me. I waved Ivy and Tobias in. J.C.? Where was J.C.?
No time. I climbed into the back seat of the limo.
“Wait!” Jenny shouted from the door of the building. “What about my interview! I was promised a full session!”
“I’ll start it up again another time!”
“But the case!” she said, holding up her papers. “I need to see how your aspects respond to this situation. Aren’t you intrigued by—”
I slammed the door shut. On a normal day, perhaps I would have been intrigued. Not today. I held up the phone for Ivy and Tobias.
“You’re sure it’s from her?” Ivy asked.
“It’s from the number she left on the table that morning,” I said. “I’ve kept it in my contacts list on every phone I’ve had since.” We’d tried tracing it in the past, but phone records always listed it as unassigned.
Wilson climbed into the passenger-side front door, and his grandniece pulled on her coachman’s cap and took the driver’s seat. The car rumbled to life. “Where to, sir?” she asked.
I looked from Tobias to Ivy.
“It could be someone else spoofing the number,” Ivy said. “Be careful.”
Is it really you? I typed to her.
Destiny Place, she typed back. It was her nickname for Cramrid Hotel, the place where we’d first met. Another text soon followed: a sequence of numbers and nonsense characters.
What? I typed to her.
No reply.
“Sir?” Wilson asked from the front. “We’re leaving?”
“Take us home,” I said to Wilson.
His niece pulled us out onto the street and made a U-turn, heading back the way we’d come.
“What are those numbers?” Ivy asked, looking toward Tobias. “Do you recognize them?”
He shook his head.
“Sandra is worried that I might not be the one who has the phone,” I said. “It’s a cipher. She often did this sort of thing.”
The other two shared a look. Both of them had been around when I’d known Sandra—or at least they’d been among the many shadows and apparitions I’d seen back then. But they hadn’t been completely themselves until Sandra taught me to create aspects. Focusing my attention, meditating, compartmentalizing my mind. They’d transformed naturally from shadows and whispered voices into distinct individuals.
“We should ignore it,” Ivy said. “She’s playing with you again, Steve. If that’s really her.”
“If he ignores it, Ivy,” Tobias said softly, “it will haunt him for the rest of his life. You know he needs to pursue this.”
Ivy sat back, folding her arms. With her blonde hair in a tight bun and her no-nonsense pantsuit, you might easily think her cold. But when she looked away out the window, there were tears in the corners of her eyes.
Tobias placed his hand on her shoulder.
Oddly, I felt out of place. I should have offered her comfort, reassured her I wasn’t looking for a cure, or a way to be rid of her. I’d always promised Ivy that wasn’t the point of finding Sandra.
I did none of this. Instead, I stared at the phone screen. HELP. Twelve years ago, Sandra had saved me from the nightmare my life had become. Dared I hope that I’d be able to be with her again? Dared I hope that she’d be able to do something about the way I was sliding, my aspects getting worse, my—
The image on my screen was obscured as a new text popped up.
Dude. DUDE! Tell me I didn’t just see you drive off.
We’re heading home, I wrote to J.C. Grab an Uber or something.
I got you a doughnut and everything. With sprinkles.
And you haven’t eaten it yet?
Sure I did, he wrote back. But I knew I probably would, so I bought two. Can’t promise the second will survive the trip home. These are dangerous times, Skinny, and it’s a rough neighborhood for a tasty doughnut to be wandering about on its own.
J.C., Sandra just texted me. She needs help.
I didn’t get a response for a good minute and a half.
Stay at home until I get there, he wrote.
I’ll try.
Skinny. I’m telling you, wait.
I tucked the phone into my pocket. Three more texts came from him, but I ignored them. I wanted J.C. to hurry, and nothing would make that happen more efficiently than letting him think I was going into danger without him.
Not that there was anything he’d be able to do. He was a hallucination, not a real bodyguard. Though … there had been that one time, when he’d moved my hand—as if he were controlling it. And that time he’d pushed me out of the car …
I texted Kalyani en route, so the aspects were waiting by the windows when I got back to the mansion. I pushed open the car door as soon as we were near the house. Wilson’s niece yelped, then stopped the car.
I strode across the lawn.
“Want me to get the White Room ready?” Ivy asked, hurrying up.
“We don’t have time for that,” I said. “Get me Audrey, Ngozi, Armando, and Chin.”
“Got it.”
We reached the front doors, and I took a deep breath, bracing myself. All of my aspects would be here. That could—would—be taxing.
“Master Leeds?” Wilson asked, stepping up to my side. “Might I discuss something with you?”
“Can it wait?” I said, then pushed open the doors.
It hit me like a sudden weight—as if someone had slipped bars of lead in my pockets. Some fifty people, standing inside, all talking at once. Some were panicked. Others excited. A few haunted. The same name was on all their lips. Sandra.
Tobias joined me, and he seemed winded. From that short walk from the car? He was getting old. What … what happened when one of my aspects died of old age?
“Can you quiet the crowd?” I asked him.
“Certainly,” Tobias said. He stepped among them and began explaining. His calming voice worked for most of them, though as I walked up the stairs of the grand entry hall, one woman broke off from the others and chased after me.
“Hey,” Audrey said. Plump with dark hair, she tended to be a little unusual even for an aspect. “Sandra’s back, eh? Is she going to un-crazy you? I’d like forewarning if I’m going to vanish forever; I’ve got plans for tonight.”
“Date?” I asked.
“Binge-watching Gilmore Girls and eating like seventeen bowls of imaginary popcorn. I can’t technically gain weight, right, since I already weigh nothing?”
I smiled wanly as we reached the top steps.
“So…” she said. “You doing okay?”
“No,” I said. “Take this, see if you can figure out what this sequence of numbers means.” I tossed her the phone.
Which, of course, she fumbled and dropped. I winced. Audrey looked at me sheepishly, but it wasn’t her fault. My mind had forced her to fumble it—because she wasn’t actually real. I’d thrown my phone toward empty space. It had been a while since I’d made that kind of mistake.
I picked up the phone—its screen had cracked, but not badly—and showed Audrey what Sandra had sent. Audrey was the closest thing we had to a cryptographer. Actually, she was getting
pretty good at it, now that I’d read a few more books on the subject.
“Thoughts?” I asked.
“Give me a few minutes,” she said. “Those characters in the string are probably wildcards … but for what…” She scribbled the string on her hand with a pen. “You going to deal with that mess?” she asked, gesturing toward the aspects down below.
