“What secrets?”
“A couple weeks ago, Tony was here when something unusual happened.” Zo moved a few paces closer to Dante. I noticed he didn’t leave any footprints behind him. “He saw you by the river.”
Dante narrowed his eyes.
“With a girl.” A sharp smile slashed across Zo’s face. “And not just any girl. Tony saw you with Abby Edmunds.”
Even safe in my dream, I felt a shiver when Zo said my name.
“Imagine that,” he continued, circling around Dante. “Abby Edmunds. Here. Because the last time I looked, she didn’t have a membership pass to our exclusive little club.” He grabbed Dante’s wrist, squeezing through the shadows to the skin beneath. Dante hissed in pain, the stark planes of his face pale and rigid.
“Let go of me.”
Zo stepped back, baring his teeth in a feral grin. “When Tony told me what he had seen, I had to ask myself, Why would Dante want to bring someone here?” He spread his arms wide, turning in a circle to encompass the entire void around them. He pivoted on his heel and placed his hands on Dante’s shoulders. “And then Tony told me the rest of what he saw.” Zo leaned closer. “Tony said he saw you and Abby walk to the edge of the river. He saw you push her in. And when the river closed over her, he saw something we all thought was impossible, something Leo swore was impossible. Tony saw a way back.”
A tick jumped in Dante’s jaw. He chafed at his wrists as though they still hurt from Zo’s touch. “I know what he saw. It has nothing to do with you.”
“Nothing to do with me?” Zo repeated, letting go of Dante in surprise. “A bridge appears, spanning the river—a bridge that leads to the past, to home— and you don’t think it has anything to do with me—with all of us? How long did you think you could keep it a secret?”
“It’s my secret to keep.”
“Keeping secrets is a dangerous business.”
“So is telling them.”
Zo acknowledged the veiled threat with a nod of his head. “How many of your secrets have you told Abby, I wonder? What did you tell her to make her willing to trust you? Did you tell her you loved her?”
Dante looked away.
“I see. Then you haven’t told her about Orlando? Or Sofia?”
He took a step toward Zo. “Don’t.”
“Interesting,” Zo said, amused at Dante’s reaction. “Secrets within secrets.”
“I suppose you don’t have any secrets.”
Zo laughed again, a harsh sound, brittle and venomous. “I have as many as you do. Maybe more.”
“Then you don’t need any more of mine, do you?”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Tell me how you did it. Tell me how you brought Abby here.”
Dante smiled and remained silent.
Zo frowned. “Did Leo teach you?”
“I think it’s time for you to leave.”
“What else has Leo taught you? What other secrets are the two of you keeping?”
Dante sighed, ignoring Zo. “I guess I’ll have to leave then.” He turned on his heel and took three steps away from Zo. Between the third and the fourth step, Dante disappeared.
Zo howled in rage, the roar impossibly rising in volume, impossibly expanding to fill the edges of the emptiness of the bank.
Then suddenly he looked around, his senses alert, his eyes darting from side to side, before they abruptly snapped into focus. I could see the fury etched on his face, distorting his angelic features. As our eyes met across my dream, I heard his scream of rage transform into a roar of laughter.
I woke in a cold sweat, the predawn sky the same flat empty color as the sky over the bank. Shaking, I ran to my door and locked it, pressing my back against the wood. I slid down to the floor, my mind still in a fog. I knew my fear was irrational—Zo wasn’t in the hallway, he wasn’t anywhere close to my house—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that when Zo’s eyes had locked with mine, he had seen me. Really seen me.
I realized with a rising sense of dread that what may have started out as a dream had suddenly become something more dangerous.
Chapter
21
Monday morning, I saw Dante walking toward me in the hallway, his backpack slung over his shoulder, as though his life was as normal as the next person’s.
My heart lifted at the sight of his tall frame parting the crowds. I’d been a wreck all weekend, barely sleeping for fear of having another dream that was more than a dream.
“We need to talk,” I said, my voice clipped and low. “Now.”
“All right. But first . . .” He brushed his fingers across my lips. “I’ve got a few moments to spare.” He bent down and kissed me.
I felt the familiar sensation of time slowing down around us, of my senses heightening and mixing. I could taste the softness of his lips, hear the clarity of his clothes sliding over his skin. I ran my fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck into his hair at the same time he slid his hands down to lock at the small of my back. His fingers left tracks of heat in their wake. He pulled me closer to him, just the two of us in a stolen moment of time.
But now was not the time for kisses.
I broke away, pressing my lips together and letting the taste of him fill my mouth before swallowing hard. He tasted of exotic places and possibilities.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages, Abby.”
“It’s only been two days.”
“Two days too long.” Dante nuzzled at my earlobe.
I pushed him away, feeling myself blush. “Not at school,” I said. The few people around us were oblivious to our embrace. “We only have so much time together. Let’s not waste it.”
I felt Dante’s mouth curve in a smile against my neck. “I don’t think this is a waste of time.”
I managed to keep my eyes open despite Dante’s focused attentions. “Who’s Sofia?”
Dante’s lips turned to ice. Time snapped back into motion. I felt a hard and fast lurch deep in my stomach and blinked at the sudden jolt in my surroundings.
He straightened up slowly, his face carefully composed to reveal nothing of his emotions. “Where did you hear that name?”
Now that the moment was here, I wasn’t sure I had the courage to say the words to this sudden stranger who wore a mask of Dante’s face. I looked around, even though I knew no one was listening to us in the crowded hallway. And even if someone was, no one would know what we were talking about. “I . . .” I cleared my throat. “Friday night I dreamed you and Zo were talking on the bank.” I lowered my voice. “Zo said you were keeping secrets. He mentioned Sofia.”
“You dreamed this.” The mask remained in place. “Friday night.”
“Well, I thought it was a dream. But weren’t you . . . I mean, you were on the bank then, right? And . . .”
“You saw me—and Zo—in your dream.” He spoke carefully, emphasizing each word as though he might have misheard me.
I nodded. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t think it was a dream exactly.”
Dante grabbed my hand and pulled me behind him, heading for the main doors. He muttered a string of vicious-sounding Italian words under his breath.
“Where are we going?”
“Leo’s.”
“But what about class?”
“I’ll have him write you a note.” Dante crashed through the doors.
He didn’t speak the entire drive to the Dungeon. I pulled into the parking lot and he opened the door and helped me out of the car. Once he had closed the car door, he grabbed my hand again and we quickly walked into the Dungeon.
“Leo!” Dante called as the door swung closed behind us.
I rubbed at my face with my free hand, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.
Dante muttered something under his breath. “Leo!” He turned abruptly and led me across the floor to the bar. He slammed open the door, but the back office was dark and quiet. Dante hit the doorjamb with his open palm. “Where is
he?”
“Will you please tell me what’s going on? Why do you need Leo?”
Dante reached out and grabbed a set of keys from a cubbyhole on the desk. He pushed me back through the door and toward the glass cabinet of Leo’s curios. “You’re in danger, Abby, and it’s all my fault. I should never have taken you to the bank. I should never have told you the truth.”
“Danger?” I looked around as though a monster lurked in the corners of the room, ready to leap out and devour me whole, but there was only Dante, his chest heaving with his uneven breathing. His gray eyes were chips of ice in his frozen face.
“If anything happens to you . . .” Dante stopped by the cabinet door, the keys jingling quietly in his trembling hand. He shook his head once as though making a difficult decision, or dispelling a bad memory. He jammed the key into the lock and wrenched open the cabinet door, shaking the contents in his haste. A set of teacups rattled in their saucers. A porcelain figurine of a ballerina teetered on her pointed toe and crashed to the shelf in a shower of pink-and-white shards.
Dante pushed aside an obelisk of carved jade that stood next to the brass machine on the top shelf. He grabbed the brass box and handed it to me.
“What’s going on here?” Leo said, appearing suddenly in the doorway of the club, his arms full of groceries. “Dante? What are you doing? Put that back.”
“Abby needs your help, Papa,” Dante said, taking my free hand. “We both do.”
Leo’s forehead wrinkled as he frowned. He set the groceries down on the table nearest the door. He snapped the lock and flipped the sign to “Closed.” When he turned back to us, I was surprised to see the change that had come over him. Gone was the benevolent bartender; the man striding across the floor toward us was as regal and powerful as a lion.
In one swift motion, he took the keys from Dante’s hands and the brass machine from mine. He replaced the box on the top shelf and locked the cabinet, clucking his tongue at the disorder and destruction inside, and pocketed the keys. “Tell me everything,” he ordered, looking from me to Dante.
There was no question of disobeying that voice. Dante and I sat down at a table. Leo towered over us, his hands wrapped around the back of a chair. I didn’t know where to begin. How could I tell Leo I might have broken the most important rule he’d laid down? Thankfully, Dante spoke first.
“When I told Abby the truth . . .” Dante was barely able to meet Leo’s steady gaze. “I didn’t tell you everything that happened that night.” He swallowed. “There was a bridge. It appeared when I took Abby to the bank.”
Leo gripped the back of the chair so hard the wood splintered in his hand.
“Tony saw what happened and he told Zo about the bridge. This last time I was on the bank, Zo confronted me about it, demanding that I tell him how I did it.”
Leo’s mouth dropped open and he sat heavily into the broken chair. “You . . . saw the bridge?” He grabbed Dante’s arm. “What about the door? Did you see the door?”
Dante continued as though Leo hadn’t spoken. “I think that when I took Abby to the bank something . . . I don’t know, broke through, opened up. Changed. Things changed.” He glanced at me and then back to Leo. “I think Abby might be able to access the bank by herself.”
“What?” The color drained from Leo’s face in one instant.
“I didn’t mean to,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Dante nudged me. “Tell him what you saw.”
I told Leo about my dream, every detail I could remember, every scrap of conversation, everything.
Leo seemed to age before my eyes. “Tell me about the bridge,” he said finally.
“It rose out of the river as soon as Abby passed through.” Dante’s face was grim. “And it led directly to the door.”
Leo flinched as though he’d been struck. “How long did it last?”
Dante weighed his answer. “It’s hard to tell. Long enough for someone to cross.”
“And now Zo thinks he can go back.”
“He can go back. If Zo opens the door and goes through . . .” His voice trailed off into ominous silence.
“Is that bad?” I asked. “Zo going back, I mean.”
Dante and Leo exchanged a look.
“It can’t be that bad, can it? I mean, wouldn’t he just go back to the same time as when he left?”
“The machine doesn’t work like that.” Dante fidgeted with his gloves, finally stripping them off in agitation. “When we passed through it the first time—from past to future—we broke the bonds of time. We were placed beyond the reach of time. But we’re still bound to the bank, to the balance.” He rubbed at the dark chains around his wrists. “It was da Vinci’s way of keeping us from permanently corrupting the river with our . . . unnaturalness.”
“But passing through it a second time—from future to past . . .” Leo shook his head, clearly unhappy. “If Zo travels through the door a second time, he’ll break the binding of the bank.”
“And that means . . . ?” I asked, glancing between Dante and Leo.
Dante looked at me, an unreadable expression in his eyes. “Without the necessity of balancing between the bank and the river, Zo could stay in the river without having to leave. Ever.”
“And he’d still be immortal,” Leo said bleakly.
“And invincible,” Dante agreed.
“But without any danger of losing his mind.” Leo slammed his fist onto the tabletop. “Going through the time machine once made him a prisoner . . .”
“Going through it a second time would make him a god,” Dante finished.
“Once he figures out a way to bring someone to the bank so he can cross the bridge and go through the door,” Leo said grimly.
Dante shook his head. “No. Once he figures out a way to bring Abby to the bank.”
“What? Why me?” I hated to hear the crack in my voice, but I could scarcely believe the conversation flowing around me.
Dante brushed my hair behind my ear. “There’s something special about you, Abby. I’ve always known that.”
“I’m not special—” I protested weakly.
“It was your presence on the bank that summoned the bridge and the door,” Dante reminded me.
“But Zo won’t be able to take me to the bank, will he?” I asked Dante. “I mean, you’re the only one who can do that, right?”
“I thought I had something to do with it,” he said gently, reaching out to clasp my hand in his. “But if you can go alone . . .” He rubbed his thumb against my skin. “Maybe Zo doesn’t need me. Maybe all Zo needs is you.”
I swallowed down a dry throat. The image of Zo’s face rose up in my memory. He may have looked like an angel, but I knew better. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but Leo spoke first.
“He may need Abby to summon the door, but he can’t open it if it’s already broken.”
Leo’s chair scraped against the floor as he stood up from the table. Crossing to his glass cabinet, Leo unlocked the case and lifted out the brass object from the top shelf. Hefting it in his hand, he brought it back to the table and set it down in the center with a dull thud.
“I can’t believe you keep it out in the open,” Dante said flatly, shaking his head.
Leo shrugged. “I like to be able to keep an eye on it. Besides, no one but us even knows what it is.”
“What is it?” I asked, reaching out to touch the symbols carved onto the three notches of the brass square: a spiral shell; a half-sun, half-moon circle; a musical staff. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s the hinge to the door of the time machine. Without it, the door won’t open. Not for Zo. Not for anyone.”
“Does Zo know what it is?” Dante asked.
“No—” Leo said at the same time I said “Yes.”
They both looked at me.
The memory was clear in my mind. “The night of the Poetry Slam the three of them were standing next to the cabinet, arguing about something. They were looking at t
his.” I brushed my finger over the hinge again. “I bet he’s known for a while this was important. He just didn’t know how important until he heard about the door.”
The three of us were silent for a moment, contemplating the consequences we faced.
“Leo, we have to do something,” Dante said, bleakly. “We have to protect Abby. We have to take her away from here.”
Leo’s face was grim. “You’re right. We have to do something.”
“What!” I protested. “I can’t leave. What about my family? My friends? I’m going to college next year—”
Leo held up his hand, cutting off my words. “Dante, we’ve both known Zo a long time and we both know that if Zo wants Abby, he’ll find a way to get her, wherever she is. Sending her away is not the answer.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Dante pushed back from the table, a wild look in his eyes. “I won’t let him have her, Leo—”
Leo grabbed the hinge from the table and slammed it to the floor, shattering Dante’s words into silence. One of the delicate prongs broke off with a discordant clang. Cracks spiderwebbed across the top of the brass case.
Leo looked down at the fractured remains glittering on the floor. When his eyes met mine, I recoiled from the darkness that filled them like storm clouds. “Like I said, Zo can’t open a broken door.”
Leo lifted his foot and brought his heel down hard on the edge of the hinge. The second notch fractured with an audible snap.
“No, don’t!” Dante yelled. “Wait!”
He grabbed the broken notch and examined it closely. Then he licked his thumb and brushed it over the half-moon, half-sun symbol on the end. The dark paint smeared.
Leo’s labored breathing was loud in the suddenly quiet room.
Dante looked up with horror in his eyes. “This isn’t the hinge, Papa. It’s a fake.”
Chapter
22
Leo sank into the chair, an old man again.
“How do you know it’s a fake?” I asked quietly.
“Because the real hinge was brass, the carvings were done by hand, and the machine was filled with gears and springs of da Vinci’s best design.” Dante spun the broken prong across the table. “This is simply painted yellow and brown and is hollow inside.” Dante dropped his head in his hands. “It’s a fake.”