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“What is he talking about?” asks Calla.
He blinks as if coming back to himself. “Your father. When he sent you here, he must have done something to cover your cross to this side. Shadow selves or not, we’re blood, and we can feel it when one of us passes through. In the same way I imagine you have a feeling, a knowing, when someone you love is gone on your side. But when you came here, I couldn’t see it, and I felt nothing. Your father must have cloaked you somehow. He didn’t want anyone here to see you, to hear you.”
“Why would he do that?” I ask.
James shrugs. “He must have put her here for a reason. Didn’t want to leave it up to chance that someone from this side could help her get back.”
“Could you do that?” I demand. “Could you help us get back?”
I turn to Calla, but the spark of hope igniting in my chest fizzles when I see the suspicion on her face. Because of course she’s suspicious. We both should be. I was fooled by our version of Westcott once before, allowed myself to start to believe him, to trust him.
I won’t make that same mistake twice.
“That’s why I’m here. Those girls.” He shakes his head, the softness of his expression quickly disappearing. Those girls—hischildren, technically. “They never should have crossed to the other side. The world should never have to know their evil. I couldn’t just sit by. I had to help.”
“Help?” Calla repeats, not even bothering to hide her skepticism.
“We don’t have much time,” James says, his earlier sentimentality apparently gone as he hurries through the hall and beelines to the basket Calla had been using moments before he arrived. He digs through the contents and lets out an impatient breath through his nose. “Does she still keep her supplies in the basement?”
“That’s where Calla said she found those.”
I’m barely finished with the sentence before he’s moving again, heading straight for the door across the kitchen, and then he disappears down the stairs.
Calla and I exchange another glance, unsure if we’re meant to follow him, if we should even be considering this in the first place. The last two shadow versions we’ve met had ulterior motives and clearly no regard for the well-being of their counterparts—who’s to say this one is any different?
“Now, neither of you have been here long.” His voice drifts up the stairs, followed by the hollow thuds of his boots as he returns with his arms full of various jars and containers. “So you may not have noticed the effects of them being on the other side yet, but you will. Their actions will start to mold you—your thoughts, your choices, your actions. It’s not as obvious as it may sound, that their lives dictate yours. You’ll think it’s your idea. That you’re the one calling the shots over here.”
A shiver runs up my spine as he sets out his armful near the fireplace again. Have the effects already started and I haven’t noticed?
“How does this work?” I ask and follow Calla numbly as she joins James in the living room and inspects the new ingredients.
“I’ve been trying to find a way out since I got here and haven’t come up with anything,” says Calla, who looks at me until I repeat it aloud for James to hear.
“Because there are no one-way tickets,” he says. “Not to here. Not to there. There always has to be balance. A life for a life.”
“So you’ll have to pull them back here,” I say.
James nods his head to the side, which isn’t a yes, but it isn’t a no.
“Now that they’ve had a taste of that side, they’ll dig their heels in.” James pulls two small plastic bags from his pocket to add to the growing pile of ingredients on the mantel. I take a step closer, trying to see inside the pouches, and he holds them up. Very clearly inside sits two clumps of dark hair.
Belonging to V and Popi, if I had to guess.
He sets the third pouch—Adrienne’s shadow self’s, probably—off to the side.
“I’ll need one of you girls to take it from here. I’ll tell you what to do.” When neither of us moves, he adds, “I have no magic of my own.”
It’s easy to forget with how Westcott turned out that he was once only a vampire. But this version of him never stole powers and collected them like trophies.
Calla steps forward to take over, nodding along to his instructions even though he can’t see her. The spell looks eerily similar to what she’d done before, all the way down to throwing the water and having it latch on to an invisible wall, though no image appears this time. The water ripples in the air, growing darker by the minute like some kind of portal.
I eye James warily as he sets the two bundles of hair in the center of the rest of the ingredients. There’s no way it’s that easy—otherwise our shadow selves would’ve ripped us through that portal and taken our places a long time ago. V wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of waiting until I’d crossed over, then trying to get me to trust her enough to give her a stronger foothold.
“How do you know all of this?” I ask.
James dusts off his hands as he rises to his feet, still looking a little shellshocked as he takes me in, like he’s trying to memorize every detail. “Your father’s quest for power turned into my quest for knowledge. I didn’t want to lead or change. I wanted to learn. To know as much as I could about those who came before, how things came to be. I’ve spent my life researching and teaching at one of the universities here. The intricacies between the realms has always been an interest of mine.
“Now, I won’t lie to you and say it’ll be easy going back. Your shadow versions won’t go out without a fight. But you both can’t exist on the same plane simultaneously, so you’ll return in your body—the one they currently inhabit. The only one who can cast them out is you. You’ll have the upper hand. Your body will recognize you, and the darkness will call more to them. I trust they trained you to fight off possession at the academy? Perhaps to resist a glamour?”
