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She lowered the mirror and looked around. The blue room was in a state of utter devastation. Broken furniture lay everywhere. One of the chandeliers was gone. The Compendium lay open on its back, missing half its pages. But the crisis was over, and she sobbed with relief at the thought of it. They had beaten The Evil once again.
Pushing away from Stefano, grateful for his help but not forgetting his role in recent events, she looked around and said, “Where’s Jack?”
Stefano hesitated.
“He’s … gone.”
For a full second, Jaide could only stare at him.
“What?”
“Jack was right there, and now he’s not,” said Stefano, pointing to the left of the now ordinary doorway. “Tara was there and Kyle was over there. The bird was here, too. They’re all gone.”
“The bird has a name,” said Jaide, hurrying to the doorway and peering warily through it, into the room that contained the cross-continuum conduit constructor. The room wasn’t much bigger than a closet, and apart from the conduit constructor and the plinth, it contained nothing at all. No Tara, no Kyle, no Cornelia, and no Jack.
Jaide spun around.
“Jack, if you’re hiding somewhere, come out now,” she shouted. “It’s not funny!”
There was no reply.
“He must have —” Stefano began.
“Don’t say it,” she snapped at him. “This is all your fault.”
“Me? It was The Evil —”
“Yes, but if you hadn’t come here it wouldn’t have taken you over and done all this. Jack would still be here. He wouldn’t be —”
She put both hands over her mouth, unable to finish the sentence. Trapped in the Evil Dimension. Jack would be right here with her, where he belonged. But he wasn’t. She felt like crying, screaming, and running all at once.
What if he was dead? How would she go on living?
++Jack?++
The voice in her mind made her jump, but it was only Stefano, not The Evil.
++Jack, can you hear me?++
Jaide kicked herself for not thinking of teeping earlier. Just because they were in different worlds didn’t mean their minds couldn’t reach out and find each other.
++Jack!++ she shouted. ++Hold on! I’ll come and find you!++
She listened as hard as she could, and wondered if she heard a faint reply, right at the edge of her senses.
++… aide, stay where … dangerous …++
The voice was so faint she wasn’t sure she was imagining it, and when she called again she heard nothing at all in reply.
Then the door at the top of the stairs was opening and Susan was leading Grandma X inside. The old woman moved slowly and weakly. Her hand shook as she gripped the banister.
The gaping hole in Jaide’s chest got even wider. How was she going to tell them?
“We closed the breach,” said Stefano, and she almost kicked him for the pride in his voice. This wasn’t time for showing off! “It was Jaide’s work, really. She found something useful in the Compendium. We got lucky.”
Grandma X looked at the mess as she came gingerly down the short flight of stairs, leaning heavily on Susan’s arm. The cats followed more lightly, exploring the rubble to see what could be salvaged.
“Are you okay?” Jaide asked Grandma X.
“I will recover. How about you?” she asked Stefano. “Are you feeling … yourself?”
“Who cares about him?” said Jaide. “Jack, Tara, and Kyle are gone and it’s all because of him!”
Susan put a hand to her mouth and sat down on a wooden chest as though her legs had lost all strength. “No! They can’t be!”
“What’s this about Jack?” asked Ari, emerging from a tangle of chess pieces and jewelry.
“He and the others fell through before we could close the hole,” Stefano said, straightening his back. Dozens of round red marks dotted his skin like pimples, where the leeches had latched on to him. “It is my fault … Jaide’s right. The Evil used my Gift. It made me attack you. Warden, I am sorry.”
He bowed his head low before Grandma X, and for a second Jaide thought he might go down on one knee. Even as she held herself back from punching him, she had to admire the way he took the blame when called upon to do so. Ari looked like he wanted to scratch the boy’s eyes out. Kleo sat straight and still with her ears flat against her head, as though not wanting to hear any more.
Jaide waited to see what Grandma X said. Would she send Stefano to his room, or even farther away? Would she blast him to atoms with her silver ring?
In the end she just nodded.
“Yes, I thought it had to be something like that. You were far stronger than you had any right to be.” She patted the burned patches in her hair, as though making sure there was any left. “No permanent damage was done.”
“Is that it?” asked Jaide. “What are we going to do about him?”
“Don’t blame Stefano because of The Evil’s actions,” Grandma X told her. “We all have moments of … not weakness, exactly … more a kind of distraction. If The Evil has a way of making us forget what is dangerous, it’s only because we insist on believing that things can get better. That despite all evidence we will overcome.”
She sighed, and Jaide was compelled to hug her tightly. She had never seen Grandma X looking so old and tired and … defeated.
“What are we going to do?” asked Susan. “How are we going to get them back?”
“We’ll have to use the Bridge,” said Stefano, pointing at the inert cross-continuum conduit constructor.
“It’s not safe,” said Grandma X, letting Jaide go but still keeping her arm around her. “You saw what happened when it’s activated. I was charged with keeping it out of harm’s way, but even so The Evil found it and used it to its own ends. Controlling it is very difficult. We can only guess what might happen if we try to use it again.”
“So we don’t do anything?” asked Jaide. “I know Jack’s alive. I heard him. We can’t leave him there, like —”
She stopped and bit her tongue.
“Like I left Lottie?” Grandma X asked her, with a renewed vigor. “If that is what’s best for the world, then yes, we must do exactly that. You saw how The Evil used her against us. That apparition fooled all of us, and it fooled the alarms, too. They thought they recognized my sister and that enabled The Evil to walk right into the heart of the house. Be glad its mission was to trick one of us into opening the way, not to kill us in our sleep.”
Susan’s fists were clenched.
“I will not leave Jack … wherever he is,” she said. “I will bring him back if I have to go there myself.”
Jaide wanted to cheer.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Grandma X. “I’ll talk to Aleksandr. Project Thunderclap must be testing its own Bridge. That must be what’s creating these holes within the wards that The Evil is sneaking in through. At the very least, I can ask him to stop doing that.”
“I thought the plan was supposed to make everyone safe,” said Susan bitterly.
“It will do that eventually.”
Grandma X smiled at all the anxious faces gathered around her. It was a brave effort at restoring calm, but it looked strained.
“First, let’s clean up,” she said. “I can’t think with such a mess around me. Some of these remnants are highly valuable … and dangerous if left in one another’s company for too long. Let’s start at this end and work our way to the other side in a line. We’ll also have to call Tara’s and Kyle’s parents, and tell them that they’re staying over. That will buy us a little time.”
With heavy hearts, Jaide, Susan, and Stefano helped Grandma X and her Warden Companions sort through the rubble, putting pieces together and restoring what remained to its proper place. A surprising amount was missing, ranging from the very small to the very large, and a lot had been broken. They put all the fragments in the center of the room for dealing with later. Every damaged relic aged Grandma X a little more. No
ne of it was replaceable.
