Page 27 of The Other World

“I can’t promise that,” I said. If my head hadn’t already started pounding and distracting me, I’d probably be mad already.

“The relic that Nikolai’s cousin is after, I think my father was after it too. I think that might be why he vanished.”

“Okay,” I said. It wasn’t something that I could compute at that moment. “And what exactly is this relic that makes everyone want it so badly? What does it do?”

It was probably something I should have asked Vucari before, though he was so cagey he probably would have just vanished into a cloud of smoke if I had.

“I don’t know,” said Hannah. “I know as much as you do, that it’s a lodestone.”

I tried to think back to what Vucari had said about it. He’d said I’d be drawn to it somehow, but I hadn’t felt any magical pull toward anything. Well, except for that time with the dripping, but that couldn’t have anything to do with it, could it? I sighed. If I knew anything about my evil dad, no matter what world we were in, he couldn’t resist a magical artifact.

You know where it is?Tennyson asked me silently.

I think my evil alternate dimension dad has it, I told him.But I don’t know how that helps us, with Hannah or Mrs Spencer or anything.

But it did remind me of something. When Mrs Spencer had appeared to me in the other world, her voice had sounded drippy. I’d assumed that was just how all spirits sounded but maybe not.

“I think I know where Mrs Spencer is,” I said. “But I’m going to need your help to get there. All of your help.”

I glanced at Tennyson nervously. He was so busy taking care of the pack, keeping us all safe from whatever my father might throw at us next. It felt wrong to ask him for more when he was already giving so much. He nodded, without a second of hesitation.

“Just tell us what you need,” he said, in a way that made my heart hurt from missing him. He was sopresentright then, so completely there with me in a way he hadn’t been since he’d become alpha.

If my suspicions were right, Mrs Spencer was in that temple, the spirit temple. I had absolutely no proof of it, but my gut said I was right. I knew she was able to get there, she’d been therewith Tennyson and Vucari and I, kind of. Maybe she’d thought that, with the sword, she could get from the temple to the other world and save Sam without anyone’s help. That was the least nefarious reason I could think of for her to steal my sword and get me out of the way. There were a bunch of much worse reasons I could think of, but I couldn’t dwell on those. Either way, I needed to find her and get my sword back.

It took a few hours to prepare everything, but eventually we gathered in the clearing behind the house, the same place our counterparts were gathered in the other world, except here we had Hannah and Harper as well as Tennyson, Althea, and Nikolai. Hannah had been studying Mrs Spencer while I’d been world-hopping, so she was pretty sure the tea she’d brewed up was the same as the one Mrs Spencer had given Tennyson and me, only this time Althea and Nikolai were going to drink it as well. Hannah was staying behind to do the ritual on our home turf, and to stabilize the portal if we managed to open it. Harper was staying behind as a bodyguard for Hannah.

It went much more smoothly this time, with the four of us. Maybe because we were pack and trusted each other. Maybe because Mrs Spencer had been doing something to mess with us last time. Maybe just because I knew what to expect this time, but we seemed to be transported to that temple as soon as I set the teacup back in the saucer.

“Woah,” said Nikolai, looking around. “This place could really do with a makeover.”

Althea didn’t comment, but I could tell she was taking everything in to process later.

Tennyson didn’t let go of my hand as we looked around the temple. It didn’t take long to find Mrs Spencer. She wasn’t exactly hiding. She stood at a small dais at the far end of the temple, where a sunbeam shone directly down through a gap in the stone.

“I knew you’d come,” she said. “You’ve always been such a good girl. Your father never appreciated you, I always said so.” She stood casually, leaning her weight on my sword as if it was a cane and she were about to launch into a tap routine. At this point, I’d have barely been surprised.

“You lied to me,” I said.

She shrugged. “You figured it out though, didn’t you.”

I was starting to lose patience with her. “Quit playing, why did you lure us here? Why did you steal my sword? Why any of it?”

Her brow furrowed and she held the sword out to me by the hilt. “You’re afraid of your power,” she said. “I knew that if you were here, in this special space, a safe space, you could embrace your powers and become what you were meant to be.”

I shook my head. “I just want to get Sam back. I don’t care about any of the rest of it.”

“I want that too,” she said. “But I want so much more for you.”

I stepped up on the dais beside her and took the sword. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t care about any of that. What was the point if I couldn’t protect the people I loved? But before I could open my mouth, the beam of light hit the sword and Mrs Spencer began chanting something in what sounded like Latin, but who even knew with her.

I looked to Tennyson in panic and saw that the three of them were surrounded by beams of light as well.

Are you…I began to ask him, but I couldn’t finish the thought before the light bounced back from all four of us and converged into a central point. It was too bright to look at for a moment but it soon began to fade, and when it had faded enough to look directly into, I could see through it. On one side, I could see Hannah and Harper, staring with their mouths open through the light to us. And I knew that if I walked around the room tolook into the light from the opposite direction, I’d see the other world version of Tennyson and Althea, in the same clearing.

“I knew you could do it,” Mrs Spencer gushed from beside me.

I reached out to grab her, to restrain her somehow, but she was too fast for me. She darted forward and into the light, circling around so that she entered from the other direction, into the other world. From beyond the light, I could hear her calling to me.

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