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Preview of Thorns of Decision:
Book Three of The Dusk Gate Chronicles
~ 1 ~
Angry
THE LOUD KNOCKING ON her bedroom door set the fierce anger rolling in Quinn Robbins’ chest again. “What?” she yelled; knowing, but not caring, that her voice was too harsh.
Her mother opened the door and came in, barely seeming to notice the way Quinn sat, rolled up in a ball near her pillows, still in her pajamas, even though it was almost noon.
“I’ve decided you’re not grounded from your phone,” she said, setting the small, black object on the nightstand. The little notification light blinked furiously. “You need to use it to call Zander yourself, get things figured out with him.”
She raised her eyebrows at her mother. “What did you tell him?” Last night, in the car, as they drove home from the river, her mom had told her that she had explained things to Quinn’s boyfriend, but Quinn had no idea what that meant, and her mother wouldn’t elaborate further.
Megan Robbins’ gaze was just as steely as it had been since last night, and she looked Quinn in the eyes when she spoke. “I told him that Dr. Rose had a family emergency and that since you were becoming good friends with William, you went along for support.”
Quinn’s jaw dropped. “That doesn’t even make any sense!” Of course, it was eerily close to the truth … but that was the problem. The truth didn’t make any sense.
“Well, if you have a better explanation, you’re welcome to share it with him. I’m headed down to Denver to pick up Owen and Annie from Richard and Denise’s.” Megan turned and left the room, closing the door behind her with an audible clunk.
She only barely resisted the urge to pick up the phone and hurl it at the door. Instead, she flipped it open and began scanning through the messages – all forty-six of them. Almost every message was from her best friend, Abigail, or from Zander, although there were three from her mother, left on Thursday evening, just after Quinn had disappeared.
She opened the first one.
Where are you sweetie? Zander just called and said he saw you leaving work.
Oh. So Zander had seen her running away from the library with William? She closed her eyes, trying to remember that evening, which seemed so
long ago. Of course, nearly three weeks actually had passed for Quinn, even if it had only been just over two days for her mom.
Still, even if Zander had seen her, it didn’t explain how her mom had known where to find her. It didn’t explain why her mom had been sitting there at the bridge last night when Quinn had returned from Eirentheos.
She had disappeared for two whole days without a word, and she’d come back to find her mother, not panicking as Quinn had expected, no police officers searching the river, or even dropping by her house for a chat. No, instead, her mother had been sitting, perfectly calm, on a boulder near the gate, just waiting, as if she knew exactly where her daughter had been.
Okay, so calm wasn’t the right word. Her mother had been furious, livid, as she still was today. But she hadn’t been worried, even in the slightest. And this was the source of Quinn’s wrath now.
Not that she’d wanted to worry her mother – actually she’d spent long hours during her time in Eirentheos fretting over what she thought she was putting her mother through. She hadn’t meant to disappear for so long without saying a word; it had just happened. When William had told her that Thomas was missing, she had just gone, without thinking about the consequences.
But when she'd stepped through the gate, and seen her mom there, she had been rocked to the core. What was going on here? How? How did her mom know about the gate? What did she know?
Last night in the car, Megan had refused to answer any of Quinn’s questions, and even more disturbingly, she hadn’t asked any. She’d sat there in the driver’s seat, stone-faced for the whole drive. When they pulled into the garage, Megan had turned to Quinn.
“I explained things to Zander and to Mrs. Williams for you, so you still have a job. I picked up your stuff from the library. The perfect attendance at school you were so worried about is blown on that unexcused absence, though. You’re grounded from your phone, from everything.”
“What do you mean? What did you explain?” Quinn had asked. But Megan had just climbed out of the car, slamming the door behind her, and then disappeared into the house. When Quinn followed her inside, she discovered that her mother was locked in her bedroom. After several failed attempts at knocking and yelling through the door, Quinn had given up and retreated into her own room, nearly breaking her own door when she slammed it. She had noticed that Owen’s and Annie’s rooms were empty, and wondered where they were.
The phone in her hand buzzed loudly, and then began to play a tune that sent an electric jolt through her. It was Zander again. She stared at the screen, at the picture that had popped up of the two of them. In the picture, Zander’s arms were around her shoulders, his cheek close to hers, both of them smiling widely. She almost answered it, but it stopped ringing before she managed to make her finger move over to the answer button. She waited for several minutes, but there was no notification of a voicemail message.
She sighed and picked up the phone again. Unable to force herself to call Zander back; she dialed the number of the one person she could handle talking to right now.
“Hello?” The voice that answered was immediately comforting and familiar. Her trembling fingers steadied a little.
“William?”
“Quinn? Is that you?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, what’s going on with you? Are you okay?”
“I … I think so.”
“What was all that at the bridge last night? Why was your mother there?”
“I don’t know. She just drove me home and never told me anything. I’ve never seen her that angry before, but I don’t think she could possibly be as mad as I am. Now, she’s gone. I guess she took my little brother and sister down to Denver sometime this weekend to stay with their grandparents, and she went to go get them.”
William was silent on the other end of the line; she could almost see the look he would have on his face – confused, thoughtful.
“Did Nathaniel say anything to you? My mom didn’t seem too surprised when he came out of the gate, either.”
“No. I asked him if he knew what that was about, but he said it was between you and your mother.”
“What is that supposed to mean? Is he there?”
“No. He went into work really early this morning, and he was going to try to spend the day getting things set up for Thomas to go somewhere for the surgery. He was gone before I even woke up.”
“Well, crap.”
He chuckled for a second, but then his voice grew serious again. “Are you sure you’re okay?” The sound in his voice told her he knew the answer, no matter what lie she made up.
“No. I’m not sure about anything right now. Everything is such a mess.”
“Do you want to come over, and we could talk here? I’m not so good at this phone thing. This is probably the longest conversation I’ve ever had on one, actually.”
That made her smile. “Sure. Give me half an hour?”
“I’ll be here. I’m doing homework – you might want to consider bringing yours along, too.”
If she rolled her eyes hard enough, would he be able to hear it through the phone? “You would be thinking about homework at a time like this.”
He laughed. “I’ll see you in a li
ttle while.”
As soon as she snapped her phone shut, she made a mad dash for the shower. After the days of traveling in the rural areas of William’s world, she’d become adept at getting ready quickly. Within ten minutes of hanging up with William, she was in the small mudroom that connected the garage and kitchen, looking for her keys.
She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to leave the house, or if being grounded from “everything” besides, apparently, her phone, meant she was allowed to use her stepfather’s car today, but after a few seconds of consideration, she decided she didn’t care.
Somehow, her mother knew about the gate that led to William’s world. Even more astonishing was the fact that she had known that’s where Quinn would be. How? What did her mother know that Quinn didn’t? And worse, why was she keeping it a secret?
As she reached for the small ring that hung underneath a bulletin board in the room, one of the papers tacked to the board caught her attention.
She recognized it immediately, and it sent a cold chill down her spine. Her mother had gone through her backpack? It was her most recent World History exam, the first paper she’d ever gotten a grade lower than a B – and usually she was disappointed with those. The big, red ‘D’ on the top glared at her mockingly. Even worse, there was a heavy black circle drawn around the letter, and words, written in her mother’s perfect penmanship: ‘What is THIS?’
The fury welled within her chest again, rising into her throat and nearly choking her. The shaft of the thumbtack ripped a straight line up the center of the page as she yanked it from the display. She shoved it into her backpack, which was hanging nearby on a peg, the zipper wide open. Throwing it over her shoulder, she grabbed her keys and left.
* * *
William was waiting for her in the driveway of the small bungalow he shared with his uncle; she wondered how long he had been standing there in the cold. He directed her to pull all the way up beside the house and then opened the door for her.
A look of shock crossed his face as he took in her appearance. She’d seen, in the rearview mirror, how flushed her cheeks were with her anger. Her hands were still shaking.
“Yeah, you’re definitely not okay, are you?”
She shook her head, and he helped her out of the car, steadying her on the slippery concrete. For a split second, she wondered if someone came and removed the snow for them when they disappeared, or if William had come out to shovel this morning.
He reached around her to remove the backpack from the passenger seat, zipping it up before slinging it over his own shoulder. “Come on,” he said.
It was only the third time she had ever been inside the home of Dr. Nathaniel Rose, but somehow right now it felt more like home than the bedroom she’d just come from. A warm fire crackled in the fireplace, and William’s books were spread out over the entire dining room table. She felt safer here, almost relaxed, and her anger started to fade.
William set her backpack down on the couch, and then helped her out of her coat. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
She shrugged, slumping down onto the comfortable leather couch. “I don’t even know where to start.”
He sat in a low chair across from her. “Why don't you start at the beginning? What happened last night?”
“That’s the problem. Nothing happened last night. My mom told me to get into the car, and then the only thing she said the whole time was that I’m grounded from everything.”
“You’re grounded from everything?”
“Well, apparently not from this,” she said, pulling her cell phone from her pocket and tossing it on the coffee table. “This morning she told me that I needed to call Zander, and then she left and went to Denver. I don’t even know when she’s going to be back.”
“Are you going to be in trouble for coming here?”
She stared at him – he actually looked concerned about that. “It’s not exactly my biggest worry right now, William.”
“Okay … did you call Zander?”
“No.”
“So, you don’t know where he thinks you’ve been for the past two days?”
“My mom told him that you and Nathaniel had a family emergency and that I’d gone along to support you.”
William’s eyes opened so wide that she was surprised when his eyeballs didn’t fall out. “Why would she tell him that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s psychic, and she never told me that, either.”
To his credit, or perhaps as an indication that he was as confused and concerned as she was, he didn’t laugh.
“Which leaves us with basically nothing to go on,” he said. “You just spent I don’t know how long terrified about how your mother was going to deal with your being mysteriously missing for two days, and it turns out you’re not the mysterious one at all.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
“And then there’s Nathaniel…”
“Yeah… What is between him and my mother? What does he know about this?”
“I have no idea, but with everything that has gone on lately, I’m starting to see that Nathaniel is awfully good at keeping secrets.”
“Okay, but there was at least a point to some of the secrets he was keeping in Philotheum. He was trying to protect people. He’s not hiding me from Tolliver’s troops here. So what does he know about my mom that I don’t? Why wasn’t he surprised to see her there last night?”
William sighed, a deep furrow appearing between his eyebrows. “I don’t know.”
They sat there for several moments, both lost in thought.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this mad at my mom before in my life,” Quinn finally said.
“I don’t blame you. I’m not exactly thrilled with Nathaniel right now, and his involvement in whatever this is doesn’t affect me nearly as much as what your mom is doing does to you.”
“What do I do, William? She’s so mad at me that she’s not even talking to me.”
He studied her carefully for several moments without answering, and then swallowed hard before he began speaking. “Look, Quinn, you and I have been through a lot together recently, and before I say what I’m going to say, I want you to know that I don’t feel the same way about it that I used to. So don’t just take this as an ‘I told you so,’ but the fact remains that coming to my world the way you did, involving yourself the way you have – it was always going to have consequences on your life here.”
She was silent for a minute, processing that. “Exactly how is that not an ‘I told you so’?”
He chuckled. “I only said that it wasn’t just an ‘I told you so,’ I am starting to understand, though, that none of this is as simple as I was trying to make it out to be. And now this with your mom… I guess that all I’m really trying to say is that this is just one of those consequences, and it’s a crazy one, but we’re just going to have to deal with it. I know how angry you are at your mom, but just like in my world, there are other things that need to be taken care of, alongside of freaking out and trying to figure this out.”
She sat there, stunned beyond responding right away – not only because he was right, and she needed to wrap her head around all of this and still function, but also because of one little word that hadn’t escaped her attention when he’d said it. We.
She knew what he was talking about with the “I told you so” speech. Just before the last time she had come home from Eirentheos, she had confronted William about the way he was distancing himself from her, acting like he didn’t want her around. Although he had told her that it wasn’t personal, he’d said that he believed she was making a mistake trying to divide herself between two worlds, and that the lies she was telling to her friends and family were going to catch up with her, and result in unpleasant consequences.
And he had been right – exactly right. He had told her so. It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed him at the time; it was just that she had never anticipated that the consequences woul
d be something like this – that she would discover that she wasn’t the only one keeping secrets and lying. She had never guessed exactly how entrenched in William’s world she would become – never expected the deep connection that she felt to the people and the places there.
And she had really never guessed how much her relationship with William would change. It wasn’t only what he had just said, allying himself with her in this situation, placing himself squarely in it with her – there was something else that hung in the air between them.
They had never discussed it, though it was always there, almost visible, tangible, and it was apparent that it influenced them both. The kiss. That crazy afternoon in Philotheum when they’d learned another monumental secret as they hid from Tolliver in the basement of his own sister. No, neither one of them had said even one word about it since then, but she knew it had changed everything. And not in the way she would have expected, either.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she even knew that it hadn’t been an accident – it wasn’t just something that happened because they’d been so close and so frightened together in that dark place. No … it had been much more than that.
William leaned forward, reaching toward the coffee table, and the movement broke her from her reverie. When he sat back, he was holding her cell phone in his hand.
“You need to call Zander,” he said.
That statement yanked her instantly back to reality. “What? Now? Why?”
He didn’t flinch at her response. He sat, holding her phone in his hand, a patient look on his face.
“Quinn, he’s your boyfriend. He saw you running away from the library with me on Thursday evening, and then neither of us was at school on Friday. We are both going to be back there with him tomorrow. He needs to have some kind of explanation, or this could get really bad. You’ve made the decision to be a part of this huge secret, and now it’s time to take responsibility for it.”
Roots of Insight (Dusk Gate Chronicles -- Book Two) Page 27
