“Kiera, you’re here, just left of center. Lily, take a step back and hold out your arm. I want the mark over the center point, just the mark. That’s it,” he said, as I moved into position. “Perfect.” He scurried backward until he was out of the circle.
“Uh, what now?” I asked.
“It’s your blood, Lily,” he said, which I probably should have known. These days, pretty much everything was about my blood.
“Kiera,” Clarence said, tossing her a knife. “Cut her across the image, then throw me the knife.”
“You?”
“I’ll need your blood to call you back.”
“Oh.” I supposed that made sense. Next time, though, I’d be sure to bring my passport along. Just in case I got stuck going home the more traditional commercial jetliner way. “How will you know when to open it?”
“I’ll know,” he said, though his expression did not fill me with confidence.
“Ready?” Kiera asked. “It’s either going to work, or it isn’t.”
She had a point, and even though I was far from ready, I nodded. Rose was behind me, but I swear I could feel her eyes upon me. And then, when Kiera slashed the blade fast and sharp against my skin, I heard my sister’s sharp intake of breath.
“The knife!” Clarence said, as Kiera tossed it. “Now clasp hands. Quickly! Quickly!”
We did, and not a moment too soon, because almost simultaneously with my blood dripping onto the symbol drawn onto the floor, the concrete beneath us seemed to fall away. The colored outline that had been drawn around us began to spin and rise, as if pulling up a thin, misty curtain, and leaving us encased in a writhing, moving tube. It stretched and pulled, and as everything outside the tube went black, I held on tight to Kiera’s hand, for the first time grateful I had company on this freakish journey.
At first, it didn’t seem like we were going anywhere, then the tug came, that hard yank at the gut. Kiera yelped, so I knew she felt it, too, and, all of a sudden, we were hurtling through space, hands clenched tight and nothingness all around us.
Except it wasn’t nothing. There were sounds. And bits of light. And strange mists. And the overwhelming sense that we were not alone.
The ground had disappeared from beneath us, and the only purchase I had on any sort of reality was my death grip on Kiera’s hand. Her fingers were tight in mine, too, fingernails cutting into flesh, drawing blood, and the pain was grounding me, because I was starting to feel like if we didn’t end up somewhere soon, I was going to scream and scream and scream and—
“Holy shit!” Kiera’s voice cut through the darkness of the room we’d just landed in.
“Shhhh.” I had my hand over her mouth without thinking. “Someone was with us,” I whispered, my mouth by her ear, my voice low.
I felt her nod. I couldn’t see her, though. Wherever we were, it was pitch-black, and I was beginning to fear that Clarence’s bridging skills needed some work.
A slight breeze stirred my hair, and I twisted my head, finding the direction from which the air was coming. I tapped Kiera, then crawled slowly in that direction, small rocks digging into my palms and knees as I inched my way through the chamber. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only fifteen minutes, I found the far wall. I didn’t know whether we were alone in the room, and if we weren’t, I didn’t want to reveal ourselves to our companion. I didn’t really see an alternative, though. If there was a way out of this chamber, it was there by the draft. But I couldn’t feel the exit point, and I was out of ideas.
I reached into the interior pocket of my duster and pulled out my cell phone, silently berating Clarence for not loading us up on all sorts of survival-type goodies. Like, say, some C-4 and a detonator.
Barring that, I flipped open my phone and let the light shine back into the chamber, illuminating Kiera’s face in the strange blue light. Hers, thank goodness, was the only face I saw, and I immediately felt a dozen pounds lighter. Maybe nothing had come with us through the bridge. Maybe we were there on our own, and we’d get the key and get out without any trouble.
I mean, hey. A girl can dream, right?
Kiera scrambled up beside me, adding the light from her phone to mine. “Where are we, anyway?” she asked.
“Dunno. Do you have a signal?” My phone was flashing No service, and it was clear hers was, too. Hundreds of dollars of technology between us, and the most we had were expensive flashlights. “Right here,” I said, pointing at a seam in the stone. “I think if we just push—”
I pushed as I spoke, and, sure enough, the stone wriggled loose. “Help me.” She got up close, and the two of us pushed and shoved until finally the stone gave way and we had a nice, girl-sized hole in the wall. I looked over my shoulder at Kiera and shrugged. “Here goes nothing,” I said, then wriggled through the hole. It was tight—my shoulders scraped the sides—but it wasn’t as if I had far to go. I emerged on the other side of the wall in a cavernous room, the walls of which were decorated with images that looked like something from Pier One. And, no, I’m not history, science, geography girl, so “from Asia somewhere” was the best that I could do.