Dad stops rowing long enough to touch my hand. “Allie.”
Loneliness cleaves through me in all the places that Jeb has always occupied. “He can’t stay here. He has to go back home, Dad.”
“It’s late. We’re all tired. I’m sure tomorrow he’ll see things differently. If we give him space, he’ll make the right decision. We need to have faith in him.”
“He hates me.”
Dad sighs. “No, sweetie. If that were true, then why is he still protecting you? He’s sending us to the island because he’s worried for your safety.”
“How is being on some lame island supposed to protect us?”
Dad resumes rowing. “Not sure. I was hoping he would’ve explained that to you.”
I clench my hands on the edges of the boat. “He won’t confide in me about anything. He’s even closer to Morpheus than me.” My bones weigh heavy, and my emotions are wrung dry. I lean my head back, closing my eyes so the sound of swirling water can unwind my knotted nerves.
“Well, it makes sense that they’re close,” Dad says. “Considering Jeb fused with Morpheus’s magic when they came through the gate.”
My eyes snap open and I sit up, stunned.
That’s why. Jeb’s barb to Morpheus about the pupil and the tutor, the strange purple color of the magic . . . how they’ve overlooked their hatred for each other and learned to coexist. More than coexist. Bond. Two guys who once were enemies have learned to rely on each other for survival.
“Allie, you okay?”
“I just . . . I wish he’d told me himself.”
“He was closed off with me, too,” Dad says. “When he first found me in the empty room where that creature left me. But we talked about my past and your mom’s predicament. I apologized for being wrong about him on prom night. He forgave me. He’ll do the same for you. Just be honest with him. Deep inside, he understands you didn’t mean to send him here.”
It’s so much worse than that. You don’t even know. If only I had the energy to tell Dad everything, but I’m too tired to even try. The light passes over the boat before leaving us in darkness again. I won’t fall victim to the pity party gnawing at me. I’ll win Jeb’s trust back. Till then, I’ll take comfort in the fact that he can confide in Dad.
“On the upside,” Dad continues, “it looks like Jeb has the lion’s share of the powers since he’s human and the iron doesn’t affect him the same. He rations it out to Morpheus through his creations. That’s how Morpheus can perform magic without mutating.”
I purse my lips. “Wait. It was the griffon cane that was magic, not Morpheus? That’s what needed to recharge?”
Dad nods.
So, without Morpheus’s magic, Jeb would be a sitting duck, and without Jeb, Morpheus would be magically impotent—a fate worse than death in his mind. Come to think of it, he won’t be pleased when he learns we melted his walking stick.
I lean over the edge to let my palm skim a current. “The cane turned into a puddle of paint. Jeb created it, and the water dissolved it.” I frown. “It’s the water that will protect us tonight. Not the island. But why is the rowboat still intact? And the sea horse? They’re also his creations. Why aren’t they melting?” I dry my hand on my pants.
“Jeb didn’t paint the sea horse.” Dad tows the oars through the sloshing waves. “It’s part of the wildlife here. Jeb and Morpheus tamed it. As for the boat. Maybe it has something to do with the answer he gave when I asked about that . . . thing. His image. Why it’s marred.”
“Yeah?”
“He said something about the boundaries of a painting’s reality. That whatever originates on the same canvas can coexist. Most of his paintings are contained within a setting he creates. But the few that aren’t—that he paints on blank canvases—when they stumble into another painting’s territory, unpredictable things can happen.”
I pull apart the threads of his explanation. That explains how Nikki can fly outside in the looking-glass world, and how the elfin doppelganger—CC—could wander the halls. “So, if something is painted in a scene with water, it won’t erode. But if it’s not . . .”
“Right. And I guess in the case of Jeb’s image, it got mixed up with some territorial paintings and its face was ripped to pieces.”
Dad’s words trigger the graffiti’s reaction to me: You should be in pieces. Morpheus said that all the creations know my image, and Jeb had mentioned something about my face turning up in his art. Which means he must’ve painted me.
Maybe the graffiti thought I was a stray painting that didn’t belong in their scene. And they were going to shred me for being there. Or maybe it’s like Morpheus said, and they were seeking vengeance for their master.
A disturbed shudder trails my spine.