He got the door open. Sudden bitter cold.
“Jake!”
He was outside. Rebecca was dragging him, holding him up. “What happened?” she gasped. “Are you hurt?”
He could taste blood. He swallowed and the roar in his ears popped; the night was a fog around him. He was shivering with cold and shock.
“Jake! Can you hear me!”
“I’m not hurt.” His lip was cut, his hands too. She stared into the car, her face white.
“Is he dead?” It was a whisper of dread.
The windshield was a cobweb of shattered crystal, its center a neat circular hole. Maskelyne lay slumped head-down over the wheel.
She leaned inside and touched him, feeling chest and neck. “Oh thank God. Thank God. He’s alive.”
Jake grabbed the weapon, then dropped it. Whatever it was, it had fired light, not a bullet. “Let’s go. Before he comes to.”
“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance…”
“He tried to kidnap me. And I have to get to Sarah.”
Maskelyne’s hand twitched. He moved, and groaned. Instantly Jake and Rebecca were out and running, between the trees, leaping branches, fleeing down the track to the road. Rebecca was faster; she had the car open and the engine fired up before he got there; breathless, he threw himself inside. “Go. Go!”
The tires screeched. Mud flew. Jake was thrown back in the seat.
“Where?” she screamed.
“The Abbey.” He was up on his knees, staring back. The forest was a foggy gloom. He slid down, and took a deep, sore breath. “Let’s hope we get there in time.”
“You will sit there,” Venn said, savagely, “and you will not interfere. Or”—as Wharton opened his mouth—“even speak a single word!”
“Nonsense. It’s my duty.”
“My God!” Venn was eye to eye with him in seconds. “Tell me why I shouldn’t put you into the thing instead of her!”
It was a real threat. Wharton sat silent.
Piers said, “Excellency. We have to do it now.”
Sarah said, “It’s all right. Do it. Get it over with.” She looked down and saw that the bracelet was slowly closing tight around her wrist, shrinking like a locking handcuff, or a snake devouring its own tail. Venn pulled her hurriedly, inside the green strands of the web.
Power clicked on. Deep in the obsidian glass, a charge flickered. Light slid and glimmered.
Sarah held her breath. This is for you Max, she thought. For Cara, for all of you. For Mum and Dad.
For ZEUS.
Voices.
Doors slamming.
The bracelet locked. Venn turned.
And then the darkness of the mirror stretched itself out for her, and she gasped. She was wrapped in it. The surface was gone; it was a great black hole of darkness, sucking everything in and down.
For a second, the way in was there, she saw it, it lay open and wide and clear, the way home, the way back, and then with a spark of agony it collapsed, and she was caught and tangled and trapped by a mesh of sticky threads, held by them when she wanted to crumple on her hands and knees, giddy and sick.
The bracelet fell off and rolled into the dark. She struggled up into Wharton’s grip and saw Jake was there, shouting and arguing with Venn, a tall red-haired girl running in behind him. Their voices were all confused in her head, mixed with the echo of carriages, the stink of horses, the mirage of the city on her retina and in her ears.
She tugged herself out of the sticky maze, away from Wharton’s concern, letting the terrible disappointment fade down into a dull ache of failure. She sat on a chair Piers hastily fetched and put her head in her hands. She was shivering with cold.
Then she saw they were all staring at her, silent.
“What?” she whispered.
Venn crouched, urgent. “I said, did you feel anything? Anything at all?”
She swallowed. Wharton said, “She looks so pale,” but she ignored that and said, “Yes.”
Venn flashed a glance of triumph at Piers. “I knew it! The bracelet triggered it!”
“No.” Sarah’s voice was a croak; she swallowed and stood up, wiping her face with her sleeve. “No. Not the bracelet. Nothing was working until Jake burst in. It was Jake who triggered it. And then I saw…I saw another world.”
It was worth the failure, she thought, worth the loss. To see the astonishment in Jake’s eyes. And the joy in Venn’s.
Like the hectic in my blood he rages.
11
Interviewer: And how do you feel about conquering a summit like Katra Simba and going where no one else ever has? Does it give you a great sense of freedom?
Venn: That’s a stupid question.
Interviewer: Well…um…
Venn: You don’t conquer mountains. They conquer you.
Interviewer: Yes, but I mean…
Venn: You don’t have a clue what you mean. If you’d ever been up there, you’d see why. A place like that—a mountain like that—doesn’t set you free. She chains you to her memory forever.
BBC interview; Volcanoes—Hills of Fury
SARAH KNOCKED AGAIN on the door. “Jake!”
There was no answer, but she knew he was in there. “It’s me.” She opened it and went in.
Jake said, “Leave me alone.”
She sat on the unmade bed. It was a four-poster, with red damask hangings, ridiculously grand in the paneled room. “You didn’t come down for breakfast. Wharton was worried.”
“I’m devastated.” He sounded bone-weary. He was sitting, knees up on the wide window-ledge, wearing a coat over pajamas, gazing out at the white frost that had stiffened the lawns. Beyond, the Wood loomed dark.
“Venn wants a meeting. All of us. About last night.”
His eyes flicked to her. She gazed around at the tumble of his clothes, the laptop, the monkey’s mess of crumbs and stolen nuts. It seemed like he had stumbled to sleep last night as exhausted as she had, after Venn had ordered Rebecca home and the rest of them to bed.
She said, “We need to get things straight. If we’re going to succeed in finding your father, we need to be working together, not as enemies. You and me. You and Venn.”
It made sense. He still hated it.
“And you’ve got to get rid of this idea that he’s responsible for your father’s—”
“He is responsible.”
“You know what I mean. Let go, Jake.” She got up and came over to him, looking at his fragmented reflections in the tiny windowpanes. “He wants to get David back as much as you. He’s desperate. He’s not the person you think he is.”
He didn’t move or answer, but she sensed a change, the slightest of thaws. As the marmoset swung down and settled cozily on his lap, she said, “Do you believe him? About the Chronoptika?”
He shrugged.
She squeezed onto the seat beside him. “It is true, Jake! Last night, when I was looking into it, I saw it. I saw the past.”
Silence. Finally he said, “What did you see?” and she knew she had won. She stood up. “If you really want to know that, come downstairs. We’ll talk about it all together. You’ll get nowhere skulking up here by yourself.” She took a small leather-bound book from her pocket and thrust it at him. “And when you get a moment, read this. It’s Symmes’s journal. It’ll explain a lot.”
She went to the door and out, and he let her go without a word, his fingers deep in Horatio’s fur, watching her reflection vanish.
Then there was only the blue sky to stare at.
He was cold, and alone. The hot excitement of last night, the fight with Maskelyne and the amazing story of the mirror seemed like a dream now; it had evaporated into restless sleep and listless bewilderment and he felt that all his energy had gone. That he almost didn’t care.