He blinked, and his voice was thick and muzzy. “Candlewax linen, burning away.” He paused, breathed deeply, and spoke again, the words slow and rusty as an old hinge. “I’ll live.”
“Did you see Rose?” Monty demanded, but my mom hushed him.
Dad closed his eyes, his head falling back on the pillow. “More tea,” my mom said, and I hurried to bring it over.
“Del, take over. Give him a little at a time,” Mom said, eyeing the pair of Walkers at our kitchen table. She touched her lips to his forehead and whispered something, then crossed the room to speak with Clark.
I sat on the very edge of the couch. “Daddy, drink more.”
He mumbled something incomprehensible, and I looked over at Eliot. “How long will he be like this?”
“It depends on how long he was exposed,” he said. “Most cases take a few days to recover, at least.”
In the kitchen, my mom said sharply, “. . . gone that long! I was very clear!”
“It was worse than we expected. If we’d known—” Clark said.
“Are you saying this is my fault?” Her voice took on a dangerous note, and Monty, Eliot, and I turned our heads in unison.
“Let’s finish this in my office,” she said. “Del, get me if his condition changes.”
There was no way to hear the rest of the conversation, and none of us had much to say. I gave my father more tea, and he gradually came back to himself.
“Winnie?” he asked.
Did he think I was her, the way Monty sometimes mistook my mom for my grandmother? “She’s in her office. She’s debriefing Clark and the other guy.”
“Franklin.”
I nodded. His knowing their names was a good sign. “Do you want me to get Mom?”
He grimaced. “Cool down.”
“It’ll be quite a while before she cools down,” said Monty, handing my dad a square of chocolate.
“What went wrong?” I asked.
“Everything,” he said.
“But—”
Eliot closed his hand over my shoulder. “Later. Let him rest.”
“Did you see Rose?” Monty asked again.
Dad’s eyes drifted shut as he mumbled, “Too far gone.”
I didn’t know if he was referring to my grandmother or himself.
“You’re back now,” I whispered as he fell asleep.
“This is why you can’t Walk alone,” Eliot said as we sat on the porch swing that night. “Now do you believe me?”
I curled up, head against his chest. “I’ve never seen my dad so sick.”
“The doctor said he’d recover. It’ll take time, that’s all.”
After Clark and Franklin had left, my mom had summoned a Walker doctor, who’d said what we both expected and feared. My dad could Walk, once he’d recovered. But his resistance was lower. He’d have to be more careful, limit his exposure.
Frequency poisoning built up slowly. Usually, the damage didn’t present itself until Walkers were Monty’s age, the effects cumulative. But a massive dose, like the one my dad had received today, was harder to come back from. He’d lost years of future Walks in one afternoon.
“He knows the risks. So do you.”
“I know. I just thought . . .”
“That you were immune?” He wasn’t mocking me. If anything, his voice was careful and kind, our fight forgotten.
It sounded ridiculous, when he put it like that. No Walker was immune to bad frequencies, but my tolerance had always been higher than anyone in our class, higher than even Addie. More like my dad, or Monty, both of whom were known for their ability to withstand dissonance.
Except their abilities had failed them. Monty had lost my grandmother and his mind. My dad was upstairs in bed, barely coherent, lucky to be alive. What if mine failed too? What if my time with Echo Simon was actually destroying me—and my future?
I didn’t want to ask Eliot. The topic of Simon was too raw between us. Instead I said, “He’s my dad. I thought he could do anything. It’s weird to see that he can’t.”
“The Echo acted like Park World,” Eliot said after a brief hesitation. “Worse than predicted, accelerated destabilization. The only difference is that they were already planning on cleaving it.”
“You think Park World is part of the anomaly they’re looking for?”
“Could be. I’ll do some more digging. If we can prove the anomaly affected Park World, the Consort would have to overturn your suspension.”
Which was great, but it didn’t help my dad. Addie rapped on the kitchen window and beckoned me inside.
“Do you want me to stay?” he asked.
“It’s pretty late. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I hugged him tightly, felt his lips brush my crown. “I’m glad you were here.”
“Me too.”
I stayed outside after he left, listening to the creak of the swing and the wind rustling in the trees. The air had that late-fall, damp-leaf smell, spicy and earthy and faintly musty, like something locked away for a long time.
My mom never would have sent my father into danger without preparing him. Even if an Echo destabilized unexpectedly, my dad and his team should have known to get out.
The easiest explanation was that my mom had made a mistake in her calculations. But that didn’t fit. My mother, like Addie, didn’t make mistakes. And it didn’t explain how my dad had misjudged the frequency. Eliot was right: The anomaly was the only explanation.
The minute I’d stepped into Park World, I’d known the frequency was worse than she’d told us. The fabric had cleaved so easily, so quickly—like frayed rope. Eliot had insisted that there’d been something wrong, and I’d been equally certain my mom was right.
Maybe they’d both been right. Maybe the branches were shifting faster than anyone realized. Inversions, Baroque events, Echoes that cleaved too fast—something was pulling worlds off balance, creating Echoes too strong and flawed to sustain themselves.
And Simon was caught in it.
Addie pushed open the screen door. “Are you coming in? I made cocoa.”
I stretched, trying to ease the tension in my muscles. “How’s Dad?”
“He’s resting. Mom’s with him. It’s the longest she’s been out of her office in weeks.”
I sat down at the island, poked at the glob of Marshmallow Fluff bobbing on the cocoa’s surface. “It’s worse than they told us.”
“I know.” Her mouth was a flat line, her eyes fever bright. “Monty’s not doing great, by the way. He’s convinced Dad saw Grandma out there. I had to lock his door from the outside.”
That didn’t mean he’d stay; it was Monty who’d taught me how to use pivots to sneak out in the first place. But Addie had enough to worry about.
“I’m tired of them cutting us out,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t care if it is classified. Dad could have died today.”
He hadn’t known me. For an instant my father had looked at me without recognition, and I knew we’d come closer to losing him than the doctor admitted. “You’re the one with the plans,” I said. “Tell me what to do.”
“We can’t go back to that Echo,” she said. “But we could find a similar frequency. It might give us an idea of what he was dealing with. Where was he today?”
“No idea. Mom and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms lately. But she’d have a record in her office.”
We both looked at the heavy oak door.
“It’s locked,” Addie pointed out. “If you ask her for the key, she’ll know we’re up to something.”
“I don’t need to ask.” I smiled, relief breaking over me. Finally, something concrete to do, instead of sitting around worrying, making tea and plans. “And I don’t need a key.”