Even if they’d had a car or managed to flag down one of the few taxis they saw passing by, they wouldn’t have gotten very far in a vehicle. The streets that weren’t blocked by rubble or police barricades were jammed with cars driven by people trying to reach loved ones or just get the hell out of Boston. They finally settled on St. James Avenue. Though there were buildings that had merged when the cities collided, spilling debris into the street, the road was passable.
Jim strode with purpose, wanting to break into a run but knowing that the five of them-this impossible gathering of women and him-had to stay together. Sally led the way, and they all seemed to take for granted that she would, despite the fact that she was a child. As the Oracle of Boston, she was both their best guide and their best protection. Jim followed close behind, with Jennifer a few feet to his right. They glanced at each other from time to time, the immediate intimacy they had felt before awkward for both of them. Trix and Anne-that other Jenny-hung back, and Jim felt sure it was partly because Anne and Jennifer did not know how to communicate with each other.
Again and again, they saw examples of this phenomenon as they traveled across the city. Rarely were the twins from parallel Bostons exact copies. They differed in weight and style and clothing. But given what had happened and what was transpiring all over the city, they were impossible to miss. Two old men sat on a stoop, both in gray cardigan sweaters, though one wore a distinguished gray beard and the other looked sickly and had gone nearly bald. They took turns patting the same dog, which perhaps they both now owned. A pair of olive-skinned women shouted at each other in Spanish, both in tears, on the sidewalk in front of a dress shop. One of them held a boy of about eight in front of her, arms wrapped protectively around him, and the boy looked frightened and confused as he listened to the two women-one his mother and one who, in another world, might have been-panic.
Anne reached out to hold Trix’s hand. Trix seemed hesitant for a second, then twined her fingers in Anne’s. Jim saw the shy way that Anne looked at her-the hopeful gaze in her eyes-and found himself wishing that they had both lived in a world where they could have had their heart’s desire. It felt strange but right, and he decided that in a city where reality existed in different facets, everything should be possible.
“It must be so weird for you,” Jennifer said, walking along beside him. She had seen the dynamic developing between Trix and Anne as well.
“Weird for all of us,” he said.
Jennifer smiled, but her eyes were sad, as if they held a painful secret. “That’s for sure.”
They had come to the intersection of Berkeley and St. James, where the building on the southeast corner-he thought there’d been a big insurance company headquarters there in his own Boston-had been merged with a tall, gleaming art deco hotel that had to have come from Anne’s Brahmin-influenced Boston. What had been there in Jennifer’s Boston, with its Irish roots, had been a massive retail space with a Waterford crystal store on the corner. Now broken glass and debris had spilled into the street, and they had to move carefully around it. Sally stumbled a bit, and Jim caught up to her, reaching out, but she recovered without his help.
“I want to thank you,” he said.
“For what? I haven’t gotten you back to them yet.”
“For trying. For removing Veronica’s mark from me and Trix. For coming with us now.”
The little girl glanced at him, but there were storm clouds in her eyes and her lips pulled up into a grim expression that could not have been called a smile. In that moment, she looked far older than her years-ancient. Whatever part of her was the soul of the city of Boston, that was what looked back at him. “I’m not doing it for you,” Sally said. “There are two cities full of frightened people finding their lives crashed together, and now I have a responsibility to all of them. I’m not ignoring them just to help you find your family. I’m doing it because of what will happen if your Oracle gets her way. The death we’ve already seen today will just be the start.”
Jim glanced away, embarrassed without really knowing why. “I get that,” he said. “I know that, of course. But thank you anyway for helping. Not just me… all of us.”
Now it was Sally’s turn to look embarrassed, as if she was ashamed of having snapped at him. “I’m the Oracle,” she replied. “It’s what I’m for.”
Jim glanced back to make sure they were all still together. Trix and Anne, hands held tightly, helped each other over the debris. Trix’s pink hair gleamed in the city light. Jennifer gazed around at the terrified people they passed, obviously wanting to stop and help but sticking with them-with him-for the sake of yet another of her otherworldly twins, a woman who was her, though they had never met, and a daughter she had never had.
“Tell me about these Shadow Men,” Jim said. “How do we fight them?”
“They aren’t people… not anymore. I mean, they’re not solid, right? But they’re not really ghosts, either. If they’re solid enough to attack you or grab you, then you can grab them back. It’s tricky. They kind of fade in and out. It won’t help you beat them, but maybe it’ll help you get away from them if they try to take you through.”
“Through where?” Jim asked.
Sally glanced at him, a bit surprised and disturbed at the same time. “Into the In-Between, of course.”
Jim shuddered, mostly because of her tone but also because of the haunted look in her eyes. “What happens if they do?”
Sally glanced back at Trix and the Jennys, then at Jim again. They were making their way around an abandoned Volvo station wagon that had bumped up onto the curb and run over a couple of parking meters. “I know Veronica can’t have told you much, but didn’t the Irish Oracle-”
“O’Brien.”
“Didn’t O’Brien explain what she’d done to you, sending you here?”
Jim shook his head. “We weren’t there long before the faceless guys… the Shadow Men… came and killed him.”
Sally sighed. “Right. Of course.” She gave a small shrug. “Y’know how I just said they’re not people anymore? Well, they were. The In-Between-the shadow stuff that separates three Bostons, or I guess the two Bostons now-it has tides.”
“An ebb and flow,” Jim said, nodding. “Veronica said something like that. But she was saying that sometimes the three cities overlapped.”
“Yeah, but she didn’t tell you about the In-Between. That’s what’s really flowing. And sometimes it washes into one of the real worlds, and when the wave goes back, it brings people with it. If they’re in a place where the cities overlap normally, where the Bostons are the same, then they can slip from one to the other. But if not, and they’re dragged out of their world… they end up in the In-Between.”
Jim felt a little nauseous. “You’re saying they get turned into those shadow things?”
“Not right away,” Sally said. “It takes time. I’ve seen them when they’re not fully changed, part flesh and blood and part shadow stuff.”
“Jesus,” Jim muttered.
“Veronica showed you and Trix how to get through at the crossings, the places where the cities overlap, and as long as you’re quick and careful, you can do that, because you’re Uniques. Holly, too. But Jenny…”
Jim stopped, not liking the girl’s tone. “Jenny what?”
Sally scuffed her feet on the sidewalk, so much like a little girl. “There are only a couple of places where you can get Jenny through. If you tried anywhere else, she’d get lost in the In-Between.”
Jim couldn’t help but laugh. “That unbelievable bitch. That was her plan all along, for us to come over here, lead her killer shadows to you and O’Brien, and then lose Jenny on the way back anyway.”
“I don’t think so,” Sally said. “I’d bet that was just her Plan B. Plan A was for all of us to die.”
Jim gaped in horror and disbelief, a cold edge forming inside him. He had been terrified for Jenny and Holly, determined, but now he was furious. Veronica was going to pay for what she’d already accomplished, and for what she had tried to do. But first he had to get his family back. “So your No-Face Men are…?”