The butler looked doubtful, but Venn’s height and bearing seemed to reassure him; still he said, “Mr. Harcourt Symmes does not receive visitors at this hour.”
“He’ll receive me.” Venn took out a small card and wrote something on the back. “Give him this. Tell him it’s urgent I speak with him now.”
The butler vanished. Instantly Venn turned. “Jake? Where the hell have you been!”
“Where have I been? Getting robbed, beaten up…”
Venn’s icy glare took in Moll. “Listen. Get inside. Through the servants’ entrance. I need to look at Symmes’s setup for the mirror, and…”
The door opened; he turned. Jake shrank into the shadows.
“Mr. Harcourt Symmes will see you, sir.”
Venn flashed one look back into the dark street. Then he ran up the steps and the door closed behind him.
Jake turned, against the damp railings. He breathed out in anger. “How am I supposed to get inside?”
Moll looked at him, pitying. “Watch and learn, Jake, luv. Watch and learn.”
The Wood was a network of ice. Frozen branches crisscrossed above Sarah’s head; in the black sky, the stars were brilliant as jewels. Gideon looked back. “Not far now. Are you cold?”
“No,” she muttered, sarcastic.
He grinned.
They had slipped out of the house and run; though she was wearing a coat, gloves, and Jake’s school scarf, she was still shivering, hugging herself against the terrible, knife-sharp winter.
It was Christmas Eve, but here in the deep tangle of greenwood, it could have been any time, a pre-pagan Neolithic silence, of cracking branches and crunched puddles of ice aslant the path.
She gasped, “How do you…stand this?”
“I don’t.” He reached back and took her hand, leading her through the briars. “I live in the Summerland. See?”
Between a step and a step, the world changed.
She crossed a threshold that wasn’t there and the Wood was green, the sky blue. Bees buzzed in the throats of flowers. Warmth enfolded her, a relief so deep, she wanted to cry out with the delight of it.
“Incredible!” She turned, staring. “It’s like paradise! Where are we?”
And yet there were rooms in it, and buildings, that seemed to obtrude at crazy angles, corners of temples and museums and libraries, slabs of castle. As if these places began in some other dimension and ended here. As if they had slid in here, coming to a halt in the tangled Wood, snagged in brambles, held by honeysuckle.
He didn’t answer, and she saw he was gazing over her shoulder, with a dismayed, defiant look.
She turned.
Summer stood there in a dress of red, a brief, floaty thing. Her feet were bare. She smiled, charming. “Who have you brought me this time, Gideon?”
He shrugged. “She brought me.”
Sarah went to speak, and found she couldn’t. She tried to move, and nothing would work. In silent, suffocating panic she stood trapped in an immobile body, even unable to turn her own eyes and watch as Summer slowly circled her.
“A strange child indeed. So old, and so young.” Summer came around, reached out a finger and jerked Sarah’s chin up, studying her face. “A plotter and planner. A mad girl, of water and weeds.”
Her hand dropped. Then Sarah felt the lightest of touches, and realized the faery woman had lifted the broken coin from her neck and was examining it carefully.
“Zeus. I met him once. Another fool who came to nothing.”
She looked up, and Sarah looked for a moment deep into her eyes, and they were green and no light reflected in them.
Then, as if she had lost interest, Summer turned, and Sarah, with a gasp, could move.
She looked around. The clearing was grassy. There were fallen trunks and a sweet cascade of honeysuckle. Under it a fountain splashed into a deep well where salmon swam; hazelnuts fell from a bush above and floated in the water. On the grass a selection of chairs stood, rough and wooden, an ornate gilt stool, a toppled plastic garden chair, a faded painted throne that might have been Egyptian or from some film-set. Summer sat on the stool and spread her bare toes luxuriously in the warm grass. “So. Sarah. What do you want with us? Not many mortals have the gall to come here.”
“I need a favor.”
“From the Shee?” Summer laughed. “We don’t do favors. Bargains, perhaps. Is this about Venn?”
She nodded, trying not to sound too anxious because she sensed already how this creature seemed to feed on that. “Last night Venn and Jake entered the mirror. They haven’t come back.”
Summer’s laugh was a tinkle of spite. “So he finally got to seek his lost love. How I hope he rots in some brutal age forever.”
“He won’t,” Sarah said quietly, “and you know that. You’re jealous.”
Summer stood, swift as a cat. “I am not jealous. Of a woman!”
“Did you ever meet Leah? Did you know her?” Sarah’s curiosity was sudden and real; she saw Gideon glance at her quickly, a warning.
Summer shrugged. “Human women are all the same. I don’t remember.”
“But Venn…”
“Venn is one of us. Our music is in him. When he gets tired of his obsession with the mirror, he’ll come home.” Summer frowned. “Don’t I know you? Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Among the ruin of Wintercombe maybe, the burned hall, the ashes of the Gallery?”
“No.”
“I think I have.”
Sarah went and righted a garden chair and sat on it. It was yellow plastic, from some cheap supermarket. Angling it to face Summer, she said, “You seem to know about the past.”
“All times are now to us.”
Sarah nodded. This was a huge risk, but she had to take it.
“Do you know Janus?” she said.
“What do you mean, he’s with you?” Baffled, Wharton lowered the shotgun.
Rebecca eyed the slim glass weapon. “I’m sorry. It was me that let him into the house.”
He stared. Even her voice was different. “He and I are friends. It’s a long story. But I know about the mirror, and well, Maskelyne’s not dangerous. He just wants what’s his.”
“Don’t we all.” Wharton took a step closer. He looked closely at the man. “I remember you. You were on the plane. You followed us here.”
“I did.”
“Are you really the one in the journal? All that time ago?”
Maskelyne shrugged. He looked wary.
“Well, then you can operate this thing! Get Jake back?”
“Maybe. At a price.”
They exchanged a long glance. Wharton said, “I have no idea what to do here. They’re all gone, even Piers seems to have vanished. There’s only me left to guard this thing, and I don’t know the first thing about it. I need help.”
Maskelyne faced him. His eyes were dark and troubled. “If I get them back, I take the mirror. It will be best—for Jake, and Venn.”
“They won’t think so.” Wharton frowned, blew out his cheeks, glanced at Rebecca. “I must be mad to trust you two, but do it. Do what you can.”
Rebecca laughed in relief. Maskelyne said, “I’ll try.”
Wharton turned.
“Where are you going?” Rebecca said, alarmed.
“To get Sarah. I think we need to be all together.”
Venn walked into the drawing room and saw a stout man in a red dressing gown standing before the fire in a hastily adopted pose. His mustache was bushy, his face florid.
He held the visiting card in his hand.
Venn said, “Mr. John Harcourt Symmes?”
“Who on earth are you?” The voice was peevish and suspicious. Symmes held up the card. “What is the meaning of this? This is the card of a fellow member of the Royal Society; I know him well, and you, sir, are an imposter.”
“My name’s Oberon Venn. We’re not acquainted. I’m an explorer and some say, a man of science.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of you, so…”