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The Evil wasn’t trying to invade, Jack realized. It wanted to drag them in.
“Keep back,” called Susan, reaching for the twins and Kyle and Tara but not having enough hands to reel them all in. “Don’t get too close.”
“We have to do something,” said Jaide, retreating to search the chaos of the blue room. Where was the Compendium? Perhaps there was something in there that could close the vortex. Already the wall was bending around the door, and a rising wind was pulling in dust bunnies and flakes of ash.
Jack was looking worriedly at the cats. If the vortex got any stronger, they would be in trouble.
“Ari, Kleo, get out of here,” he said. “We’ll deal with Grandma.”
Kleo nodded, seeing the sense in it immediately, but Ari’s fur rose.
“I’m not a coward,” he spat.
“I know, and if you had hands instead of paws to help with the lifting, you could stay,” said Jack. “Wait for us outside. I’m going to try closing the door.”
Ari bristled but obeyed, claws digging into the wood to stop him slipping.
“What can I do?” asked Stefano.
“Keep out of the way and don’t cause any more trouble!” Jack said.
While Tara, Susan, and Kyle struggled with Grandma X’s unconscious body, Jack picked up the oar his mother had dropped. Inching along the wall, his hair whipping around his face, he reached out with the oar to touch the door. Using both hands, he poked the door with the oar and swung it out from the wall. When it reached halfway, the rising vortex caught it and slammed it shut with such force it broke the door in half and ripped it off its hinges.
With a searing, crackling sound the door vanished into the spinning maelstrom.
As though emboldened by the meal, the vortex snatched the oar out of Jack’s hands and might have taken him, too, had he not caught the edge of a bookcase in time and hauled himself back. The wind was so strong that for an instant his feet actually lifted off the ground.
Jaide had found the Compendium behind the mahogany desk, which had somehow been tipped over during the chaos. Sheltering behind the desk and gripping the folder tightly with both hands, she concentrated fiercely on the situation for two full seconds, then opened her eyes and the folder to see what it revealed.
Sealer of Bifrost Breach Takes Secret to the Grave
Great Steward Earl Henschke left no notes or sketches concerning the method by which he sealed the rent leading to the realm of The Evil. This was confirmed by his widow, who conducted a thorough search of his office in the weeks following his death. Warden Sally Henschke married the Great Steward, her second husband, one year earlier, and inherited all of his effects. Speculation concerning his methods have run rampant among the Progress Party, with Chief Speaker Aleksandr Furmanek …
“Gah!” That was no help at all.
Jaide tried again, concentrating on Professor Olafsson’s theories instead. There had to be something in there that could help them.
This time the Compendium opened on a page entitled Magical Properties of the Elements. It was written in tiny, crabbed script that she had to peer closely at to read at all. One line stood out:
Copper: This most conductive metal allows the flow of energies within our world … and beyond. Instruments made of copper can be used to open and close conduits between continuums, if properly exercised.
That was the clue Jaide needed, and which Aleksandr had missed. No one had known that cross-continuum conduit constructors were made of copper until they found the one in Rourke Castle. This had to be the key.
With the Compendium held in one hand, she stood up in order to shout to Jack.
The wind had risen without her realizing it. It snatched at her, and it snatched at the Compendium, too, almost ripping it from her hands. She clutched at it and barely caught it in time. Several pages slipped free and went fluttering into the white center of the vortex.
Jack was trying on his own to drag a heavy bookcase across the doorway, without much luck. Distantly, over the roar of the wind, he heard his sister shouting. He glanced behind him. She was on the mezzanine floor, waving her arms.
“What?”
“Look for something made of copper!”
“Why?”
“That’s how he must have closed it! She didn’t give it to Aleksandr so it must still be here!”
Jack didn’t know who “he” or “she” were, but he had to assume that Jaide knew what she was talking about. She had the Compendium, after all.
The wind snatched more pages and sucked them into the vortex.
“Stop that!” Jaide shouted, but the wind wasn’t responding to her command. Either her Gift was still drained or this was a different kind of wind. A wind from another world, she thought with a shiver. The world of The Evil.
Several loose hats and a cloudy crystal ball followed the pages into the vortex, which only made it hungrier. A heavy fur coat flapped in next, then the Oracular Crocodile, its jaws snapping uselessly at the air. Each time the vortex absorbed something, the wind got stronger and it became harder to move around. Each time, the urgency to find a way to close the Bridge increased. What happened if it wasn’t closed, wondered Jack as he rummaged through boxes and cupboards for anything made of copper. Would the entire house be sucked into the Evil Dimension? The whole world?
Tara and Kyle had successfully helped carry Grandma X out of the blue room. They returned to look for the missing copper artifact. Through the open panel where she crouched next to Grandma X, Susan urged them all to leave.
“It’s not safe!”
“It really isn’t,” Stefano agreed. He was hanging on to the dragon chair for grim life. “Let me call Hector. He’ll fix this.”
“It’ll take him too long to get here,” said Jaide, even though she would have liked nothing more than to see her father walk in at that moment. He would know what to do. “We need to fix this ourselves and we need to do it now!”
“What about this?” Jack held up a roll of copper wire.
“Here,” called Tara from the other side, clapping her hands together. “Toss one end across. We’ll try to tie it up.”
Jack wound one end of the wire around the grandfather clock, unwound several feet more, and tossed the roll to Tara, who did the same on her side, using the bookcase Jack had been struggling with earlier as an anchor. There was just enough to cross the doorway four times. When they’d finished, the wire was singing a series of strange, high notes. Jack stepped back to test the wind. It did seem to him that the vortex was losing some of its strength, and the white heart of the vortex appeared to have receded slightly.
But the wind was fighting back. The grandfather clock and the bookcase shuddered and rocked, yanked by the wires. The high notes became a screech, then a scream, then a series of four piercing twangs as the wire snapped, unable to bear the forces arrayed against it.
Jack and Tara fell back. The storm was more powerful than ever. A silver sword stuck in a block of timber was sucked in next, followed by a trio of flapping umbrellas. The sound of the wind was deafening. They could no longer speak over it.
Jaide could barely stand in front of the doorway, but she was determined to. She had found a large copper bowl in a chest, inscribed with symbols that might have been letters in a language she didn’t understand. Hopefully this was the Warden artifact they needed. Cupping it with both hands, she held the base against her midriff and pointed the bowl into the vortex.
The wind made it sing, too, but with a low mournful wail, like someone blowing over the top of a giant bottle. The bowl shivered in her grip, and she felt herself being inched toward the door no matter how determinedly she pushed back. The bowl was making it worse!
With a cry of frustration, she let go and dropped to the floor.
The bowl tumbled through the door and into the vortex, spinning as it went. When it hit the white heart, a shockwave rippled back up toward them, and suddenly she was hanging on for dear life, scrabbling at the floorboards for the smallest amount of grip.
Something heavy, perhaps a chest of drawers, tumbled past her, which only made the vortex hungrier. Jaide felt her hands and feet slipping on the floor. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and willed her Gift to respond. “Help me,” she hissed with her face pressed against the floor. “You have to help me!”
Instead of her Gift, she felt a strong hand grip her wrist and pull her firmly back from the hungry doorway.
“Here!” said Stefano, pressing something into her hands. “Try this!”
Jaide looked down and saw a polished copper mirror, stained with age. There was a symbol on the back, a triangle with no equal sides. She nodded. It was worth a shot. Stefano had one elbow hooked into the balustrades of the mezzanine. The other he wrapped around her waist so she wouldn’t slide. Gripping the mirror tightly in both hands, she thrust its shiny side right down the throat of the hurricane.
The effect was instantaneous. Confronted with its reflection, the vortex reeled and swayed, losing half its strength in the matter of a second, then half again. Jaide’s ears were ringing from the powerful roar, but slowly she became aware of her own gasping. She felt as though she had played a hundred games of soccer in five minutes. But she kept her arms outstretched and the mirror exactly as it was. She put all her faith in it and the triangular symbol, because that was all she could do.
The hurricane became a gale, and then a stiff breeze. The flickering light from the spinning cross-continuum conduit constructor ebbed, too, and after a moment she heard a solid clang as the long, metal rod fell back onto its plinth.
