Alicia, crouching by the broken sofa, looked up at him. For a moment their eyes met. She said, “You mean for me to journey? Through time? Oh, how absolutely marvelous!”
David caught her hand. “All right. But go! We’ll be right behind you.”
Maskelyne grabbed Jake. He looked at David and said, “First, listen to me now. We found Dee’s manuscript. What it says is important. He says Time is defeated only by love. You must remember that! And the snake’s eye on the bracelet. It opens. Use what you find inside.”
“I will. But go!”
Alicia looked flustered. “Wait! Jake, I have to give you the ticket to the left luggage office. Now, where did I put that? Ah yes, the tea caddy.”
Pressure in the air.
Jake gasped. He felt the scream of the bomb as it fell. He felt it hurtle down through smoke and tiles and rafters. Maskelyne was a darkness pulling him. The touch of the silver bracelet was spilled blood on his arm, the throbbing opening of the mirror his death. Terrible desolation fell on him. “No! Wait!” he yelled. “Wait!”
Too late.
He was dead, in the darkness, in the mirror.
It opened for him, he crossed the invisible threshold and fell out into Wharton’s arms.
“Dad!” he screamed.
But George held him too tight and there was no going back.
Hours later it might have been, he heard Sarah creep into his room.
He lay with his face to the wall, and she sat on the end of the bed for a long moment before he spoke. “He hasn’t come, has he?”
She said softly, “No. But . . .”
“They must have got away.” He didn’t turn; she wondered if it was her he was trying to convince or himself. “When I spoke to Alicia first in the rubble, she was still alive. They never found her body.” He rolled over and his eyes were wet and furious. “They must have journeyed, Sarah, mustn’t they? They must have got out?”
She had never seen him like this. “They had every chance.”
“But where? And it was my fault, that he stayed with her! I needn’t have told him. We could just have gone together.”
“You did the right thing, Jake. You saved her life. And . . . your father . . . he wasn’t . . . he’s not the sort of man to abandon anyone in trouble. You knew that.”
“You think he’s dead.”
She sat without looking at him, her bleak gaze on the scuffed carpet. At last she said, “I don’t know what I think, Jake, not anymore.”
“I found him, Sarah. Just for a few minutes . . . an hour. He was there, with me. And now he’s gone again.”
There was nothing she could say. How could she say that she knew that loss? Because for a few moments the golden crescent of the Zeus coin had been in her hands, and now it was gone, and maybe her parents’ lives and all hope of saving them were gone with it.
Maybe he guessed. He said, “You did what you thought was right. But Venn won’t forgive you.”
“I’m not asking him to.”
“We have to be able to trust you.”
Sidelong, she glanced at him, her blue eyes as cool as Venn’s. “Do you know who the enemy is here, Jake? Not me, not Summer. Not even Janus. The mirror is the enemy. The mirror, and what it offers. It has us all in its power; we already all but worship it.”
He was silent. Then, to her surprise he said, “We need to work together, you and me. Promise me we will. No more secrets.”
She laughed. Then she nodded.
Deep in the house a gong rang. Piers’s yell came up the stairs. “Supper!”
Jake rolled off the bed.
“I’m surprised you can eat,” she said.
“I’m not giving up.” He grimaced, feeling the strapping Wharton had put on the knife slash. “Not on my father. I know him. He’ll be back. Anytime.”
He went out and ran down the stairs. She wondered if the glint in his eyes had been tears, or sheer determination; either way, she envied him. Instead of following, she crossed to the window and opened it, leaning her elbows on the sill.
The night was calm. Over the dark branches of the Wood the moon was a thin crescent.
Below her the kitchen light spilled out across the lawns; she could see the shadow of Piers and then maybe Wharton cross the window.
She stood still, listening, as if the evening called her.
It was the last night of April.
And it was strangely warm.
Small yellow flowers were opening in the aisles of the wood. Cow-parsley stood ghostly, its white umbels wide. She could smell the may, and even as she watched, the undergrowth seemed to ripple into the soft greenery of spring, as if Summer had forgotten her anger, lost interest in her revenge.
Smoke from the Abbey chimneys rose straight in the calm evening air.
A bird chirruped, high above.
Sarah breathed in the sweetness, and despised herself. Jake had failed. She had failed too.
Whatever he said, it was over. Unless . . .
A cheep called her, a last lonely whistle in the twilight.
She looked up, alert.
It fell from high in the blue-and-purple sky. It dropped like a small crystal raindrop, a solitary snowflake, so small she could barely see it at first. And then it was a tiny blue-and-gold bird of wood and feathers, giddying down to land on the windowsill with a broken gold coin in its beak.
Sarah stared in disbelief.
The bird put the coin down carefully on the stone sill. “There.”
It had lost all its tail feathers. One eye had been pecked away. But the other, beady and black, fixed on her. “Of course, there’s no going back now. I’ll have to live in the Dwelling. You’ll have to swear to protect me till she forgets.”
Sarah reached out for the coin, her fingers trembling. She touched the face of Zeus and turned it around, the ancient god with his hooked nose and bold eye, gazing at her through the night.
The bird fluttered past her into the room. “I can stay anywhere. A cuckoo clock. Jewelry box. Anything like that, as long as They don’t find me. And if I were you, I’d hide the coin under a stream of running water, because Summer won’t be able to get it there.” It perched on Jake’s wardrobe.
Sarah held the gold piece tight.
“How did you get away?” she breathed.
The bird gave a puzzled whistle, and tilted its head on one side. “Not quite sure, really. She was on me, caught me, had me gripped in her talons, all ready to tear my head off. Then she just dropped me. As if something else caught her eye.”
Wharton gulped a spoonful of the hot garlic and tomato soup with relish. “Totally fabulous, Piers. One of your best. Home-baked bread?”
“Of course.” Piers wore a chef’s hat at a jaunty angle and new checkered trousers. Happy, he surveyed Horatio chewing a banana, the seven cats licking from identical named bowls, Rebecca and Wharton eating, Jake picking at his bread. “Lovely old food,” he said. “Nothing like it for cheering everyone up.”
Jake flashed a look at Gideon. The changeling sat in the inglenook bench, hugging his knees, brooding into the fire, his patchwork clothes steaming dry.
“What will you do?” Jake asked.
Gideon shrugged. “Stay here. Refugee from the Wood.” He was pale, as if the thought of Summer’s fury chilled him. “At least until she gets back in here.”
“Have some soup.” Wharton pushed a bowl across the table.
“I don’t need to eat.”
“Then maybe you should start. This is not the Summerland, after all. Maybe if you eat, you’ll feel more like a mortal and less like one of those unpleasant creatures.”
Gideon uncurled and came over. Curious, he looked down at the hot liquid, smelled the savory aroma cautiously. “It won’t bite you,” Wharton said. “Actually, you bite it.”