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++Open the way! Open the way!++
Susan reached out, gripped the leech firmly between her fingers, and yanked it from her daughter’s face. Grabbing a wooden oar from an elephant-foot hatstand at the base of the stairs, Susan swung it like a club, knocking leeches out of the air and squishing them before they could reach her. Tara found something that looked like a squat baseball bat and did the same. Kyle pulled a wooden shield from the wall and hunkered down behind it, inching across the room to where Jack was grimly squashing leeches underfoot.
++Open the way! Open the way!++
Jack pulled two leeches from his neck. Instantly, the voice in his head fell silent. A wind whipped up around them, and Grandma X called over her shoulder to Jaide, “Control your Gifts!”
Grandma X was hunched over Stefano, who was rolling wildly on the floor, glowing leeches stuck to every exposed part of his body — his face, his hands, his back where his shirt had ridden up, his ankles. There were leeches on his eyes and ears, and his fingers scrabbled blindly to get a grip on their squishy bodies.
“Get them off me!” he cried. “Get away from me! Leave me alone!”
Sparks crackled from his hair and discharged into the wooden floorboards, leaving tiny scorch marks.
“Stefano, listen to me!” Grandma X was shouting at him as she played the light of her moonstone ring over him. “You have to control yourself.”
“I can’t — it wants me to —”
Light from the ring played across his face. The leeches on his eyes curled up and dropped off, smoking. His eyelids flickered open. Terrible whiteness swirled across his pupils.
++The way … must be opened.++
“It’s trying to trick you,” said Grandma X. “Fight it!”
His eyes cleared. “I will! I will fight it!”
Stefano raised his hands and electricity sparked between them. The leeches clinging to his palms burned instantly to ash. He cried out in triumph and the lightning sparked again, running all over his body and sending tendrils out across the room. Grandma X fell back, her hair smoking, and Jaide called out a warning.
“Hey, be careful with that!”
Stefano ignored her. He staggered to his feet, blasting leeches wherever he saw them, not caring who might be standing nearby. The sole of one of Jack’s shoes caught fire when he stomped on a leech Stefano had targeted. Jaide narrowly missed a bolt aimed at a clump hanging over her head.
“Yes!” Stefano cried, his eyes turning milky again. ++Yes!++
A particularly powerful bolt illuminated a section of the wall next to an old grandfather clock, which was chiming double time. The wall glowed, and a door the twins had never seen before appeared. The handle turned and the door blew open, revealing a room large enough to contain a plinth. On the plinth was something they immediately recognized — something long and brassy that was drawing every spark of lightning toward it.
“Stefano, no!” Grandma X cried, levering herself upright with the help of a chair shaped like a dragon’s mouth. Her right hand came up, moonstone glowing.
Stefano turned to her with arms outstretched and eyes almost fully white. He raised his hands. A tendril of yellow light swirled between him and Grandma X, a rush of energy shooting from her heart into his. The light of the moonstone flickered and went out, and a jagged bolt of lightning stabbed into the center of her chest. She flew backward, skidded across the ground, then lay on her side, completely still.
The twins stared at Grandma X’s body in horror.
“Is she dead?” asked Jack.
“She can’t be dead,” Jaide touched Grandma X’s temple. Her skin felt warm and vital, but that didn’t mean anything. “She can’t be, Jack!”
Suddenly Susan was beside her, reaching a hand down to take the old woman’s pulse.
“She’s unconscious. I think she’ll be okay. But what are we going to do about him?”
Jaide turned to where Stefano stood, now facing the cross-continuum conduit constructor. Her Gifts rose up inside her, even more angry and powerful than they had been when they had attacked Aleksandr. This time she would not lose control of them. This time she would let them attack.
Stefano glanced at her with his Evil white eyes, and the corners of his mouth twitched in a smile. One hand pointed at her. Yellow energy flowed out of her, and all her strength drained with it. She hadn’t lost her Gifts, but they could manage no more than a slight breeze to ruffle his hair. She didn’t know what The Evil had done, but whatever it was, it was new and terrible.
“Jack!” she called.
Jack whipped around, and saw Stefano gloating over his powerless sister. Darkness swirled at his command and the earth quaked underfoot, but then Stefano turned his gaze to him and with a terrible wrench, all the power drained out of his body, just as it had drained out of Jaide’s.
Into Stefano’s.
++Thank you,++ said The Evil. ++That is exactly what we needed.++
He turned back to the cross-continuum conduit constructor and punched the air with both fists. A bolt of lightning leaped to the metal bar, and it was so thick and powerful that for a moment Jack’s sensitive eyes were blinded. All he could see was a jagged blue line across his vision. All he could smell was electricity. All he could think was: Why did The Evil want to destroy the cross-continuum conduit constructor?
++Yes!++ Stefano cried in The Evil’s terrible voice. ++Yes!++
Then there was a sharp thud and a cry of pain. The lightning went out, and Jack, blinking, saw Stefano slumped on the floor, holding his head, and Tara standing over him with a wooden club in her hand. Kyle stood next to her, protecting her with his shield.
“What happened?” Stefano said, blinking dazedly. “What am I doing?”
“Just you stay where you are,” said Tara, hefting the club. “Zap anyone else and you’ll get it right between the eyes.”
Kyle shoved him with the shield for emphasis. “Wood doesn’t conduct electricity, remember?”
“All right, all right,” Stefano said, “but what did The Evil make me do?”
“You took our Gifts!” said Jaide.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t mean to!”
Jack looked around and wondered why the slugs had stopped attacking. There were still dozens of them on the loose, glowing and alien-looking, but apparently harmless now. He poked one with the toe of his still-smoldering shoe, and it didn’t react. Ari sniffed one and all it did was curl up into a ball.
Jaide felt five tiny points of pain on her calf and looked down.
It was Kleo; her tail was swishing in agitation.
“Look at the Bridge, Jaide!”
“The what?”
Kleo pointed with one paw.
The cross-continuum conduit constructor was shining bright orange. Whatever Stefano and The Evil had done to it, with the combined strength of Grandma X and the twins, it hadn’t been destroyed. It was shaking on its plinth as though trying to escape. And it was bending in a way that hurt Jaide’s eyes. Or perhaps it was the light that was bending. Jaide couldn’t tell. Either way, she didn’t think it was a good sign.
“He turned it on,” she shouted over a rising hum emanating from the Bridge. “This must be the way The Evil was talking about. It wants to come through!”
They crowded together outside the door to the secret room, Cornelia flapping down to land on Jack’s shoulder. The wooden frame was twisting into impossible curves, and the cross-continuum conduit constructor itself was now a brassy circle singing with golden light. In the center of the circle a vortex was forming. To Jack it felt like looking down the mouth of a hurricane. He braced himself and reached for his Gifts automatically, but they were still drained. He could only hope his strength returned in order to resist The Evil when it arrived.
Something wasn’t quite right with the vortex, though. It swayed and rippled, and the whiteness at the end of the tunnel wasn’t getting any closer. Maybe it hadn’t had enough power from Stefano to fully open. Or maybe something w
as interfering with it. Either way, it didn’t look stable at all. And it was sucking rather than blowing, as it should have been if The Evil was about to come through.
Deep in the heart of the vortex was a point of bright, white light.
“Charlie!” called Cornelia. “Charlie!”
