Silence from the bathroom.
“You do still have the key, right?” I asked.
“Of course I do,” she said hotly. “It’s right here in my pocket.”
“That’s good. Would you mind using it to unlock the door?”
The lock popped and the door slowly swung open. Valerie’s eyes were wide and her mouth opened in an O of astonishment. “It worked,” she breathed. She looked down at her empty hand, then held it out to me. “Here’s your key back.”
I lifted the invisible key from her palm and made a show of slipping it into my pocket. “Thank you for keeping it safe for me.”
“I knew it was an important key,” Valerie said, awed, “but I didn’t know it could open any door. You better not lose it again.”
I smiled at her like we were sharing a secret. “I won’t let it out of my sight.”
Valerie grinned and then rubbed at her eyes. “I’m tired. Can I go to sleep now?”
“Of course you can,” I said. I handed her off to Natalie and caught Dante’s eye. Jerking my head toward the hallway, I opened the door. Dante grabbed V’s arm and hauled him to his feet, dragging him out of the bedroom.
Valerie took off her bathrobe and crawled into Natalie’s bed. “Tell me a story?” she asked. “I don’t want to have bad dreams tonight.”
“Okay,” Natalie said, sitting on the edge of the bed “Um, once upon a time . . .”
I closed the bedroom door behind me and then rounded on V. “What were you thinking? Where did you take her? And why did you come to Natalie’s house, of all places?”
V tried to back up, but Dante was standing behind him and wouldn’t let him move. “When Zo showed up, I panicked. I just . . . I didn’t think. I jumped to the bank and I took Valerie with me.”
“You took her to the bank?” I hissed. “Why? Because Zo told you to?”
“What? No!” V looked stricken. “I told you—I don’t have anything to do with him anymore.”
I folded my arms and stared at him until he shifted his gaze away from me.
“Yes, taking her to the bank was part of the plan, but it was my plan. Not Zo’s. I thought . . . I thought if the shock of going there once was what cracked her, then maybe going there again would snap her back to herself.”
“That was a dangerous risk,” Dante said.
“I know. But I didn’t know what else to do.” He looked over my shoulder at the closed bedroom door. “It didn’t work anyway.”
“Why bring her to Natalie’s?”
“Because I knew Dante would be here.”
I met Dante’s eyes over V’s shoulder and raised my eyebrows.
“What do you want with me?” he asked, turning V’s back to the wall so we could both face him.
“All I want is to help Valerie,” he said in a low voice. “And if taking her to the bank didn’t work, then maybe taking her through the door will.”
“Is that why you agreed to build the door?” I asked. “So you could use it for your own purposes?”
“In part,” V admitted, looking at me. “But only as a last resort. I built it because we had a deal, Abby. I did my part, and you did yours.” His eyes flicked to Dante. “You got what you wanted. I just want the same thing.”
“The door won’t work for you,” Dante said flatly.
“Why not? I built it according to your directions—”
“No, you didn’t,” Dante interrupted. “You built it wrong. If it hadn’t been for Abby, I would never have made it out of that darkness.”
V’s face paled, his dark eyes the almost-purple shade of bruises. “Whatever it was I did wrong, it was an accident, I swear. You have to believe me.”
“Why do you think taking Valerie through the door will heal her?” I asked. Information was coming at me too fast. It was hard to know who to believe, who to trust. My mind felt heavy with sleep, but I shook it off. I couldn’t give in just yet.
“I don’t know that it will,” V said. “But both times she’s been to the bank, someone else has taken her. Maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe if she can travel there like we did, it’ll help her.”
I looked to Dante. “What do you think? Is it possible?”
Dante brushed his hair out of his eyes. A stillness filled the hallway as he considered the questions.
“It’s possible,” he said finally. “It’s not my first choice, though.” His gray eyes turned to steel as he looked at V. “You were sent through the door against your will. You didn’t choose this life. None of us chose this. Will you be the one to send Valerie through that same door against her will? What gives you the right to choose this life for her?”
“It’s a better life than she has now,” V said. “You’ve seen her. Who would want a life like that? Besides, what alternative does she have?”
I thought about my grand plan to wait for that split second when the true Valerie peeked through one of the cracks and then take her picture. It was as dangerous and fragile a plan as V’s was, and it carried the same risks. I slumped against the wall, my memory filled with the vision Zo had shown me of Valerie’s mind.
“She could stay in the hospital,” I said slowly, “and grow old and die like a regular person.”
“Exactly,” V said. “If we don’t at least try, then she’ll be in that hospital for the rest of her life. She’ll never get better.”
“But if we do try, and it doesn’t work, then she’ll never get better—and she’ll never die.” I closed my eyes against the horrible thought of Valerie living for five hundred years or more in the state she was in.
“It’s been a long day,” Dante said, reaching out to me and drawing me close. “We don’t have to decide anything tonight.”
The weariness I’d been holding at bay for the last few hours broke through my defenses until my body felt like it was weighed down with sandbags. Now that my eyes were closed, I didn’t think I had the energy to open them again.
I heard the bedroom door open and shut and then Natalie’s voice say, “Let’s put her on the couch in the living room.”
I felt Dante’s strong arms behind my knees as he lifted me off my feet.
And then the twin wings of exhaustion and sleep swept over me and carried me away into darkness.
***
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have any dreams. I slept in complete, unbroken darkness, and when I finally woke the next day, I felt more like myself. A quiet calm had replaced the turmoil from yesterday. My mind was clear. I still didn’t have all the answers, but I felt like I could face the questions again.
I stretched my fingers and toes to their limits and yawned until my jaw cracked.
Footsteps thumped down the stairs. I quickly pulled the blanket up to my neck. I’d slept in my clothes, and they were rumpled and wrinkled. I wondered if I would have time for a shower, or at least a chance to change clothes, before I had to face the demands of the day.
Dante rounded the corner, carrying a plate of toast in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other.
My stomach rumbled loudly and I looked up, embarrassed. “Sorry,” I said.
Dante set the food down on the coffee table and sat on the couch by my feet. “Don’t be. It’s actually almost lunchtime. I thought you might be hungry.”
I sat up and grabbed a triangle of toast and ate half of it in a single bite. “’Sgood,” I mumbled around the crumbs. “Thanks.”
“You did some amazing things yesterday,” Dante said as I swallowed the juice. “We are all in your debt. Especially me.”
I set the juice glass down. “It was a pretty hectic day. How is everyone else holding up?” I tilted my head, realizing just then how quiet the house was. “Where is everyone, anyway?”
“Natalie is upstairs with Valerie, who is surprisingly docile today. V and Leo are at the Dungeon waiting for us, but I wanted to let you sleep as long as possible.”
I yawned again. “I could probably sleep longer if given the chance.??
?
“I’m afraid you might not have that luxury.”
I twisted on the couch until my back was against the armrest and my knees propped up under the blanket. “Why do you say that?”
Dante’s eyes were as gray as ice. “Leo and I had a long talk last night about everything that’s happened. We went to the bank. We looked into the river.” He took a breath. “We had to make some hard decisions.”
“And what did you decide?” I asked, afraid that I wasn’t going to like the answer.
“We decided I need to restore the door to its proper working condition. We’ll need it to open directly to the bank again.”
“What?” My knees flattened as I sat straight up. “I thought we agreed it was too dangerous for V to take Valerie through the door.”
Dante shrugged. “We did. And it is. But things have changed.”
“Like what?” I asked, worried that Zo had been busy while I’d been asleep. “What’s changed?”
“I have.” Dante’s mouth flattened into a grim line. “When Leo went to the bank, I went with him so I could study the river, see how the possibilities of V’s idea would flow and change—I needed to see if there was even a chance that it might work—but all I saw were the ripples on the surface.” He shook his head. “I can’t see downstream anymore. I can’t see down to the deeper currents of how events connect. I can’t
see where they lead. It’s like I’ve gone blind.”
I remembered Valerie’s story about the Pirate King and the River Policeman and saw again in my memory the thin silver buttons in the palm of her hand. I didn’t want that part of the story to be true. I leaned forward and gently touched the gold chains around Dante’s wrists. His skin was cold under my fingers. “Do you think it’s because of this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Dante said. “Or maybe I lost my ability in the darkness between doors.”
“Do you really need to see downstream?” I asked, trying to look on the bright side. “I mean, with Zo running free, isn’t it more important to follow him through the past instead of the future?”
“Zo wasn’t the only one I was watching in the river,” Dante said, looking at me pointedly.
“Leo said I wasn’t supposed to ask you what you saw about me in the river,” I said, giving Dante my own pointed look in return.
“How am I supposed to keep you safe if I don’t know what’s waiting for you?” he asked.
“The same way everyone else does it. I mean, not every girl is lucky enough to have a boyfriend who can see the future and manipulate time.” I shrugged with a smile. “It’ll be okay, Dante. We’ll stick together, and when trouble shows up, we’ll face it together.”
He was quiet, his eyes cloudy with thought.
“Just tell me what you need to tell me, Dante. I can take it.” I covered his hand with mine. I could feel his swift heartbeat along his wrist. “I’m not afraid of the truth.”
“I know,” Dante said. “Sometimes I think you’re not afraid of anything.”
“Well, if you must know, I’m not such a big fan of spiders.” I was glad to see Dante’s smile widen into a grin and to hear his soft laugh.
Both faded away too quickly for my liking. “What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked.
Dante clenched his jaw and kept his eyes fixed on the empty space between us. “I tried to restore your family for you.”
Hope flared into life inside me, releasing a flurry of questions. “You did? When? What happened?”
“It was the first thing I did after you fell asleep. I wanted you to wake up to good news.”
I pushed back the blanket and moved to stand up. Natalie had a phone in her room; I could call home. I couldn’t wait to hear my dad’s voice again or talk to Hannah. “Why didn’t you tell me that first?”
“Because it didn’t work.”
Dante’s words cut through my excitement. I sat back down slowly, the blanket clutched in my fist. “It didn’t?”
Dante shook his head. “I thought all I would have to do was find that moment when Zo interfered in your parents’ life and then set things right. But it wasn’t that easy.”
“Why not? It seemed pretty easy for Zo to change whatever he wanted.”
“I don’t think it was that easy for Zo either. Since he couldn’t touch your timeline directly, he had to follow the path of your life back to a point where he could intervene. He followed the links back to when your parents met, and then he changed something—I don’t know what. And when Zo changed that single event, he set off a chain reaction that he hoped would result in your parents never meeting, thus erasing you from existence.”
“But my parents did meet. They even got married. It was Hannah who was erased.” Just saying it out loud made my heart ache with pain. I frowned. “Why didn’t you just reverse the chain reaction?”
“No one’s life follows a single, straight path. Events bend and twist, branching off into unexpected directions and forming unexpected connections.”
Understanding dawned on me. “And since you couldn’t see how events unfolded downstream . . .”
“I didn’t know which connection was the right one to restore.” He curled his hand into a fist. “I couldn’t risk setting off another chain reaction. I didn’t want to make it worse for you.”
“Then, if you can’t fix it, how will I get my family back?”
Dante was quiet, his attention focused on the crisscrossed pattern on the blanket crumpled in my fist. His fingers traced the path of my veins along the back of my hand. When he looked up at me again, his eyes were as serious as I’d ever seen them.
“When I gave you the plans for the door, did you find the note I left for you on the last page?”
“Yes.” I remembered every word he’d written. “You asked me if I was willing to live without limits.”
“And are you?”
“Of course,” I answered, confused. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that why you gave me the plans? So I could build the door?”
Dante tugged at my hand until he had pulled me close enough to kiss. But instead of touching my lips with his, he touched his finger to the locket around my neck. “I gave you the plans for the same reason I gave you the key inside this locket. So that when the time came, you would have everything you needed to make your choice.”
My heart pounded so hard it felt on the edge of breaking. “Last time, I had to choose between you and Zo and it almost killed me. What choice are you asking me to make this time?”
“Whether or not you really are willing to live without limits. Whether or not you’ll be brave enough to use the door once I fix it.”
Chapter
24
If you go through the door,” Dante said, “know that you’ll be bound to the bank, just as I was. As Leo is. It’s not an easy life. You’ll have to find your own balance. You’ll have to make sacrifices.”
My body trembled at the implications of Dante’s words. I’d been to the bank both in person and in my dreams and I’d hated everything about it. I’d seen what being exiled from time had done to Leo’s life. I thought about Lizzy and how she had lost her father to the river and didn’t even know it. If I did go through the door, I would have to leave behind everything, my entire life. And though I could return and visit my family and friends, it would only be for a short time.
Dante had said that no one had knowingly and willingly chosen that path. Would I?
“You think that if I go through the door, I’ll be able to restore my family,” I said as a half-statement, half-question.
He nodded. “You’ll be able to see the connections that I can’t because they are part of your family and thus part of your timeline. And once we know how the connections fit together, we can reverse what Zo did without fear of making it worse.”
My true family was fractured—my parents divorced, my sister nonexistent. Did I dare walk into the darkness behind the door if I knew that when I came back, they would be whole?
“What happens if I don’t go?” I asked, numbness prickling the pads of my fingers.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I do know that the barriers between the bank and the river are weakening. We’ve both felt it. Even V and Leo have noticed it. Maybe, between the four of us, we can keep them from breaking.” His eyes never wavered from mine. “I’m afraid that if the walls break, it may not be possible for you to use the door at all. Your family may be lost forever.”
I sat back against the couch and pulled the blanket up to my chin as though it could protect me from the horrible possibility Dante had laid in front of me.
When Dante had given me the plans and asked me to join him, I hadn’t thought much beyond the promise of being with him again. I had thought building the time machine would be an adventure and something I could do that would somehow help Dante protect the river from Zo. I had even imagined the moment when I would walk through the door and straight back into Dante’s arms. But I’d forgotten the harsh truth of the time machine—it wouldn’t take me anywhere I wanted to go, it would only take me to the bank.
The barren bank that could crush a soul and crack a mind.
I didn’t know why I hadn’t made that connection until now.
If I went through the door, I’d be stepping onto the bank, risking my life and my sanity. But if I didn’t go, then Zo would break down the barriers and erase not only my family but the whole world, washing it away so he could remake it according to his will.
I blinked as tears started trickling down my face, quickly turning from a few drops to an endless stream.
“I know it’s a hard choice,” Dante said, wiping his thumb across my cheek as fast as the tears fell. “I’m sorry to have to ask you to make it. I wouldn’t ask it of you at all if it weren’t so important.”
“I just want my family back.” I felt a brittleness settle into my body, my skin as taut and sharp as glass. “Why do I have to make the choice?”
“Because only you can close this loop.”
I huffed in frustration. “Leo said something about that too, but I didn’t understand his explanation. What does that even mean?”