Page 5 of The Other World

He shrugged. “More or less.”

I filed that away to think about later, because I didn’t want my brain to explode. That was what Mrs Spencer had said as well. That was a heck of a coincidence.

It took me a moment to come back to the here-and-now.

“Right,” I said. “Okay. Alternate universe. Cool. So, I have a few questions…”

“The relic is a stone,” he said, either pre-empting my questions or cutting them off, I wasn’t sure. “A type of magical lodestone. You will be magnetically drawn to it. It will call to your power, so your power will guide you to it.”

I nodded, that sounded simple enough. “So, now I just have to become a spirit and get to the parallel world? Sounds easy.”

“Yes,” he said, obviously not getting the sarcasm. “You have people in your life who can help you with that, while I prepare things for the ritual.”

“You said that this would benefit me somehow,” I said. “Is becoming a spirit really that great?”

He stared at me blankly for a moment. “You do not seem to yet understand what this phase of your transition will mean. I advise you strongly to speak to the elders of your people, try toshare in their wisdom. However, that is not what I meant. You have lost someone precious to you. They too have been taken to this other world. If you agree to my favor, you may be able to bring him back.”

My knees buckled. “Sam?” I asked faintly, hardly registering Hannah grabbing me by the arm to hold me up. Unless Vucari and Mrs Spencer were in some unlikely sort of cahoots, two entirely different people saying the exact same thing about Sam in a parallel universe couldn’t just be coincidence, could it?

Vucari nodded, then started to fade away as the smoke cloud began reforming in the magic circle.

“He’s alive?” I asked, before he could vanish completely.

“He was alive yesterday, when my informant contacted me, but precognition is not one of my abilities.” He had faded so much that I could barely hear his last words. I could barely hear anything over the thumping of my heartbeat.

“He’s alive,” I whispered.

It was the only thing I could say as Hannah led me back down the tunnel. I repeated it over and over, trying to convince myself of its truth. It was the only thing I could think of until we climbed the steps out of the tunnel and back into daylight. Where Tennyson stood waiting.

CHAPTER FOUR

Tennyson stared down at me,the halo of light around him almost blinding me after the darkness of the tunnel.

Hannah and Nikolai tiptoed their way up the last few steps of the tunnel exit and made their way around him with exaggerated care, as if scared to startle an angry beast. Which, in a way, he was, so their caution was probably smart.

Hannah mouthed “good luck” to me, and Nikolai gave me the double thumbs up, then they both took off out of sight.

Tennyson’s nostrils flared and he took a deep breath before speaking. “I thought we were in this together.”

Now it was my turn to take a breath. I couldn’t tell if Tennyson was angry, or hurt, or just annoyed, and I couldn’t try to figure it out. Not at that moment. Not after what I’d just learned.

“Sam’s alive,” I said. It was the only thought in my head. “He’s alive and he needs our help.”

“You know this? How?”

I shook my head. If I explained about Vucari, he wouldn’t believe it, just like he hadn’t believed when Mrs Spencer had saidit. I didn’t want to say it out loud and have him take this feeling away from me, this tiny spark of hope.

I was standing so close to him that he felt magnetized, as if I’d just snap into him and no force could pry us apart, but I couldn’t let that happen. There was too much at stake. I couldn’t relax for one second or I’d fall into him and everything else would drop away. Sam, my father, everything we’d been fighting for. I had to be stronger than that.

“You still don’t trust me,” he said.

I’m sorry, I whispered into his mind.

Then I turned and walked away.

It seemedobvious to me I needed to talk to Mrs Spencer about my meeting with Vucari, but that was easier said than done. I couldn’t exactly commandeer the Wilde’s helicopter and go flying off to talk to her. Especially not on a school night. So, I did the next best thing and filled Althea in on everything. Which, of course, led to research.

We’d read through most of the library in the Golden House in previous years when trying to fend off various evils, but this was a whole other branch of inquiry, and she seemed weirdly excited about it. Within an hour of hearing my story, she’d gathered us all – Hannah, Nikolai, and Harper York, but not Tennyson – together and assigned us different areas of research.

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