Page 26 of The Other World

She blinked at me.

“I need to be unconscious,” I explained. “So that I wake up in my world.”

She was still turning the idea over when there was a flash of movement to my left and Tennyson launched himself at me. I only had a moment to mumble, “thanks” before I hit the ground, my head bounced once and I was out cold.

“This is not fun,” I said, opening my eyes to Tennyson’s room, and my version of Tennyson and Althea staring at me. “Where’s Mrs Spencer?”

They glanced at each other.

“About that…” Althea said.

I pinched the bridge of my nose to stave off the oncoming headache. “Let me guess, she’s vanished, taking my magic sword with her?”

“I believe her intentions are good,” said Althea.

“I don’t,” said Tennyson.

“She literallyjustappeared to me and told me to come home,” I said. “Why would she do that if she planned to double-cross us?”

“I’m not sure she’s in her right mind,” said Tennyson.

I sighed. It was definitely easier to talk to other-Tennyson. He didn’t talk back.

“She’s never been in her right mind,” I said. “Not exactly. That doesn’t make her evil. She has the sword. She told me to come home so we could do the ritual to open the portal between our worlds, so if she’s betraying us, she must have said that to get me out of the way in that world, right?”

They both nodded.

“But will the ritual work without you?” Althea asked. “I thought you needed to be the one to wield it, since it came from your magic.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t exactly been in the loop about this,” I said.

“It’s mainly been Sam’s mother and Hannah working on it,” said Tennyson, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

“I trust Hannah,” I said, and he raised his eyebrows. “Don’t give me that face, she wouldn’t betray us again.”

I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t.

“Unless…” Althea said slowly. “I mean, the reason she tried to hurt us in the first place was because her father is missing. He’s never been found, not a trace of him.”

A terrible feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. “You think he might be there? In that world?”

“It’s not impossible,” said Althea.

“In fact, it’s quite probable,” said a voice from the doorway.

All three of our heads snapped around to stare at Hannah.

“Any trace of him, magical or otherwise, vanishes from this world at the exact same time. Even if he were dead, he’d leave a spiritual residue, but there’s nothing. It tracks that he might have fallen through a portal like Sam did, and for some reason, that world, in particular, seems to be the easiest to access from ours.”

Tennyson moved to stand up, maybe to throw her out, I didn’t know, but I put a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “You had enough going on and I didn’t want you to think I had a secret agenda or something.”

“Even though youdidhave a secret agenda,” Tennyson snapped, though he didn’t shake my hand from his arm.

“There’s something else,” she said, moving into the room to sit by my bed. “Don’t be mad that I didn’t tell you.”

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