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“I’ve done mine,” said Jaide smugly.
“I’ll check on Cornelia now,” said Jack. It was his job to make sure she had enough seed and water, and to clean her cage once a week. “I’ll get the Compendium while I’m there.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Kleo. “The Wardens wouldn’t leave any clues right out where you could find them.”
“Maybe this is part of the Examination.” Jack didn’t really think that, but he had other leads to follow, anyway. There was the Catastrophe from forty-five years ago, for starters, and the Warden of Last Resort. Grandma X might not be actively keeping secrets from them anymore, but there was still an awful lot left to find out.
He was shocked to reach the door to the blue room and find it locked. The secret panel clicked but wouldn’t open. He pushed it a couple of times, then knocked.
“Hello?”
The panel clunked and slid open to reveal Grandma X. She looked flustered and bedraggled.
“Jack, of course. You want to say good night to Cornelia. Come on in. But don’t linger. Stefano and I are hard at work.”
Jack hadn’t even known they were working. He passed through the tapestry, keen to see what they were up to, but nothing looked out of order. The big mirror was back where it belonged, and there was no sign of the cross-continuum conduit constructor. It had been taken somewhere safe, he presumed. Stefano glowered at him from one corner of the room, angry at the interruption. He didn’t say anything, and Jack didn’t say anything back.
Cornelia was asleep already, clicking her beak and muttering softly to herself. Jack distinctly heard her say “Charlie? Your porridge is getting cold!” but figured he would never understand the dreams of birds. Her water and seed tray were fine.
“All done?” asked Grandma X.
He felt as though she was trying to get rid of him.
“Can I borrow the Compendium?”
“Of course.” She got it for him, a fat binder full of loose pages she kept on a mahogany desk on the landing, and put it safely into his hands. “Don’t stay up too late. You’ll need to be alert for tomorrow.”
“Okay. Good night, Grandma. Good night, Stefano.”
Stefano just grunted. He seemed to be sweating and his eyes looked slightly crossed. Jack hadn’t noticed it before, but Stefano was holding a short iron rod that was the spitting image of one Hector Shield carried. This one was shiny and new, however. As Jack stared at it, a faint spark shot out and ground into an old ashtray, which let out a puff of smoke.
“Off you go, Jack,” said Grandma X, practically pushing him up the stairs. “Good night.”
Once he’d gotten to their room, Jaide listened with interest to her brother’s account of Stefano’s odd behavior, but had no explanation for it.
“Maybe she’s teaching him how to use his lightning Gift, as she taught Dad,” she suggested.
“But she wouldn’t have taught Dad, would she?” Jack said. “Troubletwisters are taught by other Wardens because parents make their kids’ Gifts go crazy.”
The cats professed not to have any idea, but Jaide caught a knowing look in Kleo’s cool gaze, suggesting that she did know but just wasn’t telling. Later, Jaide promised herself. They had other things to search for now.
As Ari had suggested, there was nothing in the Compendium to even hint at the process of Examination. No matter how fixedly the twins concentrated on the concept, holding the Compendium in both hands and closing their eyes, when they opened the folder it always landed on the same notice.
Examination will be conducted at regular intervals to ensure the safety of troubletwisters and to maximize the likelihood of their survival.
“That’s worrying,” said Jack.
“But it’s not telling us that the Examination itself is dangerous,” said Jaide, hoping that was true. “Let’s move on. I want to know about the Catastrophe.”
Asking the Compendium that question produced a wealth of information — too much, in fact, to take in all at once. Dozens of Wardens had written reports on the subject, but not many of them actually talked about what had happened. The reports seemed to be part of a larger argument that had raged for many years between the two factions that Custer had mentioned that day: the Hawks, who wanted to take the fight to The Evil, and the Doves, who wanted to declare peace, or a truce, or something like that. What they actually wanted wasn’t very clear, except that they wanted the fighting to end. When the two sides weren’t shouting at each other, they spent very little time actually talking about what had happened forty-five years earlier.
There was one page that looked like a newspaper article, which was weird because something like this would never have been reported in a real newspaper, and neither twin was aware that the Wardens had a paper of their own. It was dated from January the same year as the Catastrophe, and said:
Bifrost Bridge: A Device to Cross Dimensions and Bring Peace?
In a new development, representatives of the Harmony Party approached the High Warden Council with a plan to open diplomatic relations with The Evil. Spokeswoman Lottie Henschke testified that the state of unceasing war between Wardens and our ancient enemy is unsustainable. “An alternative must be found,” she said. “Opening a Bridge to its realm is the first step in achieving that goal.”
Chief Speaker of the Progress Party, Aleksandr Furmanek, replied that such a Bridge was indeed in development but would not be used to “appease the monster that has terrorized humanity for so long.”
“Do you think that Bridge was the one we found?” asked Jaide.
“I don’t know,” said Jack. “If it was, what was it doing right next door?”
Before the twins could find any hard facts, Susan returned to turn the lights out. No matter how much they pleaded, she wouldn’t give them even an extra five minutes. They hadn’t even asked about the Warden of Last Resort. She took the Compendium away from them, shooed the cats outside, and tucked them in.
“Mom, do you know what happened to the house next door?” asked Jack.
“It’s always been like that,” she said. “The one time I visited while I was dating your father, there was some talk of renovating it. Apparently, your grandfather had always meant to do it before he died, but never got around to it.”
“You mean Grandma and Grandpa used to own it?” asked Jaide.
“I think so. It was a long time ago. I could be remembering it wrong.”
“What was Grandpa like?” Jack knew very little about his father’s father. Every time they brought him up, Grandma X changed the subject.
Susan smiled fondly, even though she was sure the twins were just stalling now.
“I never met him. He died long before I was on the scene.”
“Would we have called him ‘Grandpa X’?”
“I don’t think so. His name was Giles or James or something like that. Now,” she said firmly, “enough questions. You’ll need your sleep if you don’t want to make any mistakes tomorrow.”
They couldn’t argue with that. But when the lights were out and the door almost closed, Jaide whispered, “Lottie Henschke.”
“What?”
“In that article about the Bifrost Bridge. It said Lottie Henschke. We have her last name now.”
“And Grandma X’s, too.” Jack was astonished. He’d been concentrating so hard on the Catastrophe that he had missed that important tidbit.
“She might have changed it when she got married,” said Jaide. “But, yeah. That’s going to make them much easier to find.”
“Are we still going to look? Even though we know Lottie is stuck in the Evil Dimension?”
“The Compendium is being difficult about how she got there, so I think we should. And we still don’t really know much about Grandma. We don’t even know her birthday!”
That was true. Susan had bought her a cake one day in March, but Grandma X had been quick to inform them that, while she was touched by the gesture, her actual birthday was something she kept to he
rself, along with her age. Jaide found that both weird and old-fashioned, which summed up her grandmother pretty well.
“All right,” said Jack, reminding himself to be glad they were missing school the next morning. Mondays were the worst. Mr. Carver always made them describe any dreams they’d had over the weekend, and insisted on trying to interpret them. Once, he’d gone on for half an hour about how something Miralda King had dreamt meant that Portland’s mayor, her father, should grant planning approval for a school obelisk on the grounds that it would align his students’ chakras.
Jack closed his eyes, and within moments his breathing became regular and slow. However hard Jaide tried, though, she couldn’t get to sleep. It had been a long and eventful day. She kept thinking about Professor Olafsson and Lottie and everything else that was going on that she could do nothing about. It was only by concentrating on what Stefano had suggested earlier that finally settled her mind. What if she did have the same lightning Gift as her father? That would be wonderful beyond belief. And if Jack had it too, they could duel each other with lightning bolts … something she was sure neither their grandmother nor mother would ever allow….
* * *
The Examiner was a fussy, sixtyish man with very short silver hair who walked into the kitchen unannounced while they were eating breakfast. He was wearing a light overcoat and a shirt with no collar or tie, done right up to the neck.
