“That’s why you were talking so funny to the folks with the animal skins and spears,” Abbey said. “And that night when you carried Sylvain off, and Max was there… you were influencing him—and me.”
Ian nodded. Abbey wasn’t sure if she liked being influenced.
“And what’s Caleb?”
“He’s probably an intuit. That’s why he can read the cards. But he probably doesn’t know what they mean.”
“Other than that you all like phi?”
“I suspect patterns are your strength. Pattern finders are rarer.”
“So Caleb can read the card, but doesn’t know what it means, and I might know what it means but can’t read it?”
“All of us can develop our abilities in all three. You just have to learn how to control your brain on a quantum level.”
“What does that mean?”
“Think of it like the observer effect in quantum physics. When you observe subatomic particles, you affect their behavior. All physical matter in the universe exists as an infinite number of possibilities. Some people can learn to be sufficiently mindful, and are able to channel their energy, such that they can direct the observer effect and collapse waves of probability. We become like the ultimate catalysts.”
Catalysts. The word had been on the list she had left for herself. Catalysts may not create paradox.
Digby poked his head out of Ian’s pocket, and Ian gave his head a pat. “Not in here, buddy. I’m pretty sure there’s a dozen people that would go apoplectic.” He turned back to Abbey. “Then if you take it a step further, there’s the idea of spooky action at a distance, and quantum entanglement. There’s evidence that we can make things become entangled—and then by influencing the action of one particle, or set of particles, we can influence the action of a linked set elsewhere.”
“So what type of witchcraft was that crazy pentagram thing you did with Simon?”
Ian gave a sheepish little smile and waved a hand in the air. “Oh, that. That was a bit of smoke and mirrors. Simon already knew the answer. He wrote the number nine more often than he wrote down any other digit. It was a simple matter of tallying. The pentagram simply allowed him to think he was doing something more complex and prevented him from letting his own mind get in his way.”
“So it was basically just sleight of hand?”
“I’m afraid much of witchcraft, and life, is just sleight of hand.”
“Isn’t that a little bit pathetic?”
“I prefer to think of it as a question of focus. It is all about where you’re looking, when, and what you’re focusing on. The answers are often right in front of you, if you’re just able to look at things in the right way.”
“Why can only we witches do it?” Abbey slashed air quotes around the word “witches.”
“Well. There’s the interesting part. I’m not entirely convinced that only we witches can do it.” Ian slashed quotation marks in the air as well, but around the word “it” instead. “Maybe we can do it because we believe we can do it, and because we’ve been told for generations that we can do it. Maybe we’re special. But I’m not so sure. Maybe a long time ago, certain people were more open to the universe and their quantum brains than others, without calling it that of course. They saw they could do things, and they banded together and called themselves witches. Or other people saw they could do things and branded them as witches.” Ian paused, removed a cigarette from the carton in his pocket, and rolled it between his fingers. For some reason Abbey’s thoughts flitted to the burning swamp. Wildfires were often the result of stray cigarettes.
“Then, because they believed in it, they taught it to their children, and because the children—or some of them anyway; there are fewer and fewer of us as time goes on— bought into the bloodlines and heredity idea, they were able to do things. There’s a reason we try to introduce new witches to the stones before they become adults. It’s partly the ability to suspend disbelief that makes them work. But maybe with the right teaching, and confidence, everyone could do it.” He shrugged. “But you can be well assured that the idea of teaching anyone not connected to the old bloodlines to do these things isn’t supported on the Witches Council. Do you know the reason Coventry is called Coventry?”
“Dr. Ford said it was related to the word coven, as in a witches’ coven.”
Ian made an angry noise in his throat. “That man will do far more damage to our cause than Selena, even if he is on our side. Coventry means ostracism. People with our abilities have been ostracized throughout history. Apparently most humans are very committed to only seeing and believing in solid reality. Now we’re just treated like whackadoons, but we used to be burned at the stake. And several hundred years ago, Coventry was where we were sent to live together in exile. That’s why there are so many witches in this area.”
Abbey realized that Caleb had removed his earbuds and was listening to the conversation. She wondered how much he had heard.
“Do you have any classical music on that thing you were listening to?” Ian said to Caleb. “Something relaxing, like Debussy or the Moonlight Sonata?”
Caleb stared at Ian blankly. “I have ‘The One that Got Away’ by Katy Perry,” he said.
Ian scrunched up his face slightly. “Why don’t you try that song you were listening to when I first got here?”
“Calvin Harris?”
“Right. Whoever. Give her your headphones. Do you have the card with you?”
Abbey withdrew the card from her pocket and held it out to Ian, while Caleb suppressed a chuckle and offered up his earbuds. She decided not to mention that the first card still occupied Sylvain’s locker in the future.
Ian pushed her hand back to her chest gently. “You hold it. Close your eyes and just listen to the song. Wait until the music hits a crescendo, or you feel most transported by it—when you feel yourself dancing—and then open your eyes.”
Abbey wanted to say that she never pictured herself dancing, and that she had three left feet, but that would be a lie.
“Why are you so determined to teach us this?”
“Right now we’re in a race.”
“A race for what?”
“A race to figure out how to get to this parallel universe. And I need all the help I can get.”
“I thought you didn’t want to go there.”
Ian’s blue eyes met hers. “I don’t. But I can’t stop Selena unless I’m one step ahead of her.”
“Why not just let them go?”
Ian placed the cigarette in his mouth. “I’ve really got to give these things up.” The cigarette bounced around between his lips as he spoke. “Because using a wormhole, if you don’t know what you’re doing, creates a huge release of energy. Enough energy to potentially split this universe apart.” He pulled a silver lighter from his pocket and flipped it between his fingers repeatedly, the pentagon engraved on one side vanishing and reappearing again and again.
“But didn’t you go to parallel universes as a kid? Selena said you had a game that you played with an Alty.”
Ian almost jumped, and then stared at Abbey before removing the cigarette and pulling his lips into a thin line. “Don’t believe a word she said. She was fishing.”
“But why the cards? Why not just tell us what they mean and see if we can help you?”
“Because the cards are all I have. And I don’t know exactly what they mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“The cards were given to me when I was nineteen, as part of my Master Trials. The cards are supposed to unlock the secrets of the stones. But while I was doing the trials, I screwed up and ended up in Nowhere. Most witches in my day didn’t pass the Master Trials; a lot of them didn’t even try, so there are only a few people who really know how the stones work. The rest of them just use the stones to suit their own purposes. The information on the cards is said to be written in some files somewhere, but nobody knows where they are, and there
were apparently some associated maps, but those were destroyed in the Coventry Museum library fire. So the cards are all I have. Those, plus some old sayings and knowledge from my Basic Trials when I was sixteen. I kept the cards all these years, and now I need you to help me figure them out, because I still can’t. I thought that by presenting them in the same way I received them, in order, with no instruction, that I could replicate the trial process, and maybe you’d have more success with them than I did.”
And risk going to Nowhere, Abbey thought grimly. “Aren’t there other witches who can help you? Others who have passed the trials. Ancients? Why us?”
“Passing the Master Trials is like entering the inner circle of a secret society. You aren’t told who’s in it until you pass. And haven’t you noticed? All the ancients have disappeared.”
“What do you mean?”
“By the time I figured out what Selena was up to, that I would have to do something, they had all started drifting off. Left town or went into hiding. I don’t know. I’m the only one left living in Mrs. Forrester’s house now.”
“What about Sylvain and Dr. Ford?”
“Sylvain runs his own show, and has his own scheme going. He doesn’t pick sides, but he’s very secretive and trusts nobody. Dr. Ford’s a side switcher, and near as I can tell might stab you in the back as soon as you have a back exposed.”
“My parents?”
“Busy.”
Abbey looked at Ian for a few seconds and then pressed the earbuds into her ears and closed her eyes. When the music accelerated and launched into the chorus, she snapped them open. The card remained blank, and she almost threw it to the ground in frustration.
She pulled the earbuds out.
“Too soon,” Ian said. “You have to let yourself feel the music.”
Abbey scowled and flipped through the music on Caleb’s iPhone with her thumb. She picked an older Lady Antebellum song and hit play. This time she didn’t even think about the card. She thought about Jake.
And then she opened her eyes, and she saw the row of numbers.
Then the courtroom door opened, and her mother emerged, trying to hide her tears in the sleeve of her suit jacket.
Simon had been sentenced to six weeks in a local alternative juvenile detention center.
Her mother said it over and over again as she paced up and down the courtroom hall, with first Abbey, then Abbey’s dad, trailing behind her, offering reassurances that it was only six weeks. That it would be over before any of them knew it. That it was a low-security group-living-style center. That Simon would be safe.
Abbey was a bit bemused by her dad’s references to Simon’s safety. There seemed to be some implication that the rest of them might not be safe.
Simon had already been taken into custody, and after they calmed her mother down, there was little to do other than go home.
Ian had vaporized when Abbey’s mother had appeared, but had left a third cream card lay on the bench he had vacated. Abbey picked it up and slipped it into her pocket. She thought briefly about the Coventry Museum library fire and the maps that had been destroyed. She had to get home and talk to Mark.
As they were leaving, she heard Caleb murmur, “You’d better tell me about the men in animal skins.”
*****
The bustling streets of Coventry gave way to orchards, and the fruit trees stuck out of the rolling frosty grass like gnarled claws. Without buildings for landmarks, Mark was having more difficulty figuring out where he needed to get off the bus and how far he’d have to walk if he did. As far as he could tell, the dot might be in an orchard, which meant that if he wanted to take a look at it, he would have to trespass. And Mark didn’t like the idea of trespassing or walking a long distance, although, he reflected, he was pretty sure he had lost twelve pounds since moving in with the Sinclairs.
He pulled the stop signal for the bus when the stinky vehicle lumbered past Warm Hollow Road and, as the bus pulled over to the edge of the road, reviewed the contents of his satchel: copies of the maps, sharpened pencils, notepaper, flashlight, water, salami sandwich triple-wrapped. Then he checked his Garmin Forerunner watch with GPS to make sure that it was fully charged.
He stepped out of the bus carefully, patting his satchel to make sure he still had it. (He was sure things often got left behind on buses as people hurried to get off.) The bus pulled away, and Mark was alone on a rural road lined on either side by orchards. The highways that led to and from Coventry were south of here, and this road led only through orchards, a few hobby farms, and large estates. Maps of the city indicated that the road upon which he stood—Top Point Drive—wound up into the foothills of the Stairway Mountains and then terminated. Mark had never been out this way before, and he was amazed at how quickly the city had ended and the orchards had begun.
He zipped up his jacket, reversed direction, walked several meters down Top Point, and turned left onto the gravel Warm Hollow Road (which, he had to say, as he turned on to it, was remarkably straight and running precisely east-west, according to his watch). He had calculated that based on his remembrance of the original map, the dot would be down the road about half a kilometer. Of course, he had no idea what sort of landmark he was looking for.
He made his way slowly down the road, checking his watch for the guesstimated lat-long coordinates he had programmed in earlier.
He was almost at the coordinates when he became aware of the car following him at a very slow pace. A farmer wanting to pass? It wasn’t as if he was occupying that much of the road. He turned to look.
It was a red Mazda throwing up a spray of dust as it trailed him down the road, and behind the wheel, he could make out Sandy’s turned-up blond hair.
He stopped. So did the Mazda. Mark experienced an odd urge to run, but where would he go? All around him leafless fruit trees sat silent in orchards. And she was his half-sister, he reminded himself.
Sandy cut the engine and got out, pulling on a long black woolen overcoat. She held her hand over her eyes to shield them from the watery winter sun.
“Hey, Mark. What are you up to?”
Mark glanced around nervously, but thankfully realized his map reproductions were still in his satchel.
“Just out for a hike,” he said, continuing to walk backward, away from Sandy.
“Hmm. We all do a lot of that, don’t we?” she said. Mark didn’t laugh, although he was pretty sure she was making a joke. She narrowed her eyes slightly. “You’re a long way afield.” She started walking toward him a lot faster than he could walk backward, and he could see the approaching whiteness of her teeth.
His watch beeped to let him know that he had arrived at the coordinates.
“I have a theory,” she said, with a wink that alarmed him.
Hypothesis, Mark wanted to correct, after a month of living with Abbey.
“I think,” Sandy continued, “that we’re looking for the same thing, based on the maps—the ones my dad gave you. He gave me copies too. Is that right, Mark? Are we looking for the same thing?” She nodded at him in what seemed like a violent manner. Mark was sure this was intended to be a friendly gesture, but he was almost tempted to drop into a ball. (He had read somewhere that dropping into a ball and playing dead with your hands clutched over the back of your neck was the best thing to do when being approached by a grizzly. He wondered if his condition just always made him feel as if he were being approached by a grizzly… or if Sandy was perhaps somehow grizzly-like.)
“I’m looking for a dot,” he said simply.
“Me too!” she said, more loudly than he would have liked. “Shall we look together?”
“I guess. This is the location of the dot, though.” He looked around, but all he could see was the gravel road, the nearby trees, and wide blades of brown grass tufted together in frozen clumps in the orchard and on the shoulder of the road. “Approximately,” he amended. “We may have to walk into the orchard.”
�
��Okey-dokey,” Sandy said. “Let’s go.” She stepped off the road and started striding through the frozen grass in her long black riding boots.
Mark hesitated. The grass would be damp and seedy. His pants would get wet and full of seeds. But he had come this far. So he gingerly stepped off the edge of the road and into the cold, squishy grass.
“Tell me,” she said, after they had gone a few meters. “What do you think the dots mean? Have you noticed anything unusual about their arrangement? Any pattern, say?”
The bottom part of Mark’s pants was already wet, and he could feel bits of grass and seed pods slipping into his socks and attaching themselves to his cuffs.
“Two of the dots are equidistant from the third. I need to examine the other dots more closely,” he said, and then clamped his mouth shut. He had been thinking about the dots on the asylum map he had been looking at in the library in the future. He was certain there was some pattern on that map. And of course there was Kasey’s map, and any other maps that might be in drawer 309, but he decided that there was no need to tell Sandy any of this and bit the side of his tongue just in time. He needed to get back to the future.
“What other dots?” she said, then stopped suddenly. Mark almost walked right into her. “Look at that.”
The low crumbling cement walls of an old foundation lay ahead of them in the grass. A small, square building with three rooms. Sandy stepped over the edge of one of the walls and walked around inside the small remains of the structure, kicking aside grass and rubble as she went. Mark carefully joined her and immediately found his way over to a small wooden platform in the corner of one of the rooms.
He was puzzling about what it might be when he sensed Sandy approaching him from behind.
“A cellar,” she said quietly, but there was an ominous tone of expectation in her voice that struck a chord of fear down Mark’s back. “The wood’s almost rotten.” She reached down and pulled at the wood, her charm bracelet flashing in the mid-afternoon light. The wooden door nearly disintegrated as she lifted it, revealing a set of stairs leading down into darkness.
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