“I don’t know. They’re justtheresometimes….”
“What do you meansometimes? Be detailed.” If she could identify a pattern…
He ran his hand through his hair. “Auntie Zee doesn’t exactly welcome questions. You know that. Sometimes a closet door opens onto a portal, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you just get shoes or brooms.”
Okay, that wasn’t helpful. Didn’t he have any clue how it worked? He’d lived here for years. “Is there any kind of pattern to when a door opens to a realm and when it opens to just a closet? Any common factors?”
He considered it. “Well…Auntie Zee, of course. She’s the only one who can change an ordinary closet into a portal, and vice versa.”
“So we know it’s not just the doors themselves.” It wasn’t new information. He’d told her that before, but it was a place to start. “That means it’s not random, right? Auntie Zee mustdosomething to them. Any guesses what? What does she do, in as much detail as you know, when she opens a portal that was previously an ordinary closet?”
“Um…I’ve never seen her do it.”
Calisa had witnessed her converting a portal to an ordinary closet but not the reverse. She didn’t think she’d seen Auntie Zee doing anything special, but then again, she’d been distracted by the howling darkness. “She never let you see, or you just didn’t notice?”
“The first. It’s not like I’m not curious. I’ve tried to watch. Lots of times. She shoos me away pretty much instantly. Last time, the statue ratted me out. She was standing outside the window, and Auntie Zee saw her pointing right where I was hiding.”
Fine. So he never saw it happen.
Could someone else have seen?
How about the statue?
Calisa wasn’t sure what the right yes-or-no questions would be to figure it out, but it was an option. There was, though, someone else a lot more talkative who could have seen. Someone who had lived here before Jack. “I need to call my mom.”
There was a phone on the bedside table—thankfully only splashed, not soaked, in seawater. Before she could talk herself out of it, Calisa lifted the receiver and punched in the numbers to Mom-Kate’s cell phone. She tried not to think about how awkward this phone call was going to be and instead focus on how to convince Mom-Kate to tell her exactly what she needed to know.
Mom-Kate answered immediately. “Hello, baby girl, how’s fresh air and unblemished skies?” she said chirpily.
“Great. All good. I mean, well, actually…we’re kind of having a bit of a problem here—I’m fine, totally healthy, nothing broken, and I didn’t break anything.”
“Okay. Good,” Mom-Kate said, less chirpily. “But that intro makes me think you absolutely did break something.”
“Not exactly, but yes, something is broken. Um, so…” What if Mom-Kate didn’t know about the portals? What if she hadno idea there was anything unusual at the Faraway Inn? What was she going to think if she didn’t know and Calisa started talking about portals and realms and sea witches? “All right, please hear me out and don’t judge me, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, pretend I saw it all in a TV show, and we’ll just hang up and forget this conversation ever happened, okay, Mom-Kate?” She was clutching the phone so hard that her hand started to sweat.
“Cali, you’re worrying me. You know you can tell me anything.”
Calisa squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would make the words easier. “I need to know how to reopen a portal. To another realm.”
There was silence on the phone.
“Mom-Kate?”
“Oh, sweetie. It’s okay. It didn’t work for me either, and I tried so hard. It’s…it’s an innate thing. Either you can do it or you can’t. I’d hoped it might have just skipped a generation….”
Her brain stuttered as it tried to catch up with what Mom-Kate was saying. “Wait. Are you saying…you know about the realms? You know what the B&B is? That it’s a nexus?” After Mom-Elise’s cryptic comment about opening doors, she’d guessed that her moms might know, but she hadn’t been certain. Hearing Mom-Kate talk so matter-of-factly was a shock.I should have called them sooner.
“Of course.” Her voice cracked as the phone connection wavered, then stabilized again. “I was supposed to take over for Auntie Zee eventually, but I lack the ability. It’s inherent, you see. You have to be born with it.” She sounded wistful.
Calisa glanced at Jack. “An inherent ability?” Did he know anything about that?
“Of course, it takes training and practice too,” Mom-Kate said, “but that’s useless without whatever gene I didn’t get. I’m so sorry, Calisa. I hoped you might have inherited it. Given Auntie Zee’s age and how much she wants the inn to continue, I thought it was worth sending you, in case she was willing to have you try. But if Auntie Zee has tried to teach you with no luck—”
“Auntie Zee hasn’t tried to teach me anything,” Calisa said. “She isn’t here.”
There was silence that made her wonder if the connection had failed before Mom-Kate said, “Sweetie?”
“She’s missing,” Calisa said. “And the portals…Some of them are closed that shouldn’t be closed.” Jack was standing beside her. She felt his hand on her shoulder, and she looked at him. “My mom says it’s an innate ability, to open the portals. She didn’t inherit it.”
