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“If nothing else, we’ve really mastered facing one another in the round,” Sam said.
Evie kicked him.
“Now what?” Isaiah asked.
“I have no idea. Oh, why couldn’t Sister Walker and Will have managed to teach us something?” Evie said.
“I don’t think they knew, either. They created a problem they couldn’t solve,” Ling said. “I think it’s always been up to us. We’re just going to have to take some chances. Accept the risks.”
“That’s easier to do when it’s the stock market and not when you might, just possibly, blow up half of Nebraska,” Henry said.
“Hands,” Ling said with great irritation. “Think of a portal.”
There was a tug. Portal, Ling thought. Portal. She had the slightest sense of Memphis beside her thinking the same thing. Energy was building between them, stretching into the others. It was like a wild horse, exciting and terrifying. Ling felt pressure rising inside her, and then, all at once, they were standing in the land of the dead. A sound like wind on the top of a mountain raged in her ears. She saw her friends in the circle looking like wispy ghosts of themselves, fighting to take more solid form, and then, in a whoosh, it was gone. They were back on the prairie again, looking at one another with wide eyes.
“Don’t you see what this means?” Ling said later as they drank cold Coca-Colas on the porch.
“Why, yes!” Henry said excitedly. “Just as soon as you tell me!”
“That’s how we heal the breach,” she said.
“Still not on the trolley,” Henry said.
Ling placed her empty Coca-Cola bottle on its side. “It’s like a tunnel connecting the two dimensions. We are here.” She placed a pebble at one end of the bottle. “And the land of the dead is here.” At the other end, she placed another pebble. She removed the bottle. “Without our powers, the only way to punch a hole into the King of Crows’s world is with the Eye. But using our powers, we”—she put the bottle down between the two pebbles again—“create a tunnel that connects the two dimensions.”
“Okay. Then what happens?” Memphis asked.
“We go into the land of the dead, find the crack, and seal it up. Then we come back out and seal the hole we’ve created.”
“But what about Marlowe’s machine? Won’t he just create another rip into that world?” Henry asked.
“If we destroy the Eye in that dimension, I don’t think the one here will work anymore.
“What’s to stop Jake Marlowe or anybody else from doing it again?” Theta asked.
“We can’t guard against every act of malfeasance,” Jericho said. “We have to do what we can when we can.”
“Malfeasance,” Sam sputtered. “Holy cow, Freddy, do you read the dictionary for fun?”
“I also know the words nuisance and irritant.”
“Let’s go again,” Ling said, rising from the porch and heading to the yard. The others followed suit.
“I don’t think we should,” Sarah Beth said, still sitting on the steps.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel right. Isaiah? Do you feel it?”
Isaiah didn’t want to admit that he didn’t. “I…”
“Aw, c’mon, Sarah Beth, you’re not chicken, are ya?” Sam goaded.
Sarah Beth narrowed her eyes at the insult. “Fine!” She stomped back to the circle and squeezed Evie’s and Sam’s hands tightly. It was like an electric current stinging. The insect drone was everywhere, along with the faces of the dead. They could feel the dead moving through them, thousands strong. Evie wanted to scream but she could scarcely breathe from the unholy pressure. And then, mercifully, it was gone.
“Wh-what was that?” Theta said, coughing.
“Sarah Beth? Sarah Beth!” Isaiah shouted.
