“I—I can’t. I can’t.”
David wrapped his arm around her. “It’s all right. We’ll walk through it together.”
“I can’t do it. It hurts.”
Peter loomed behind them like a shepherd. “Go on ahead, boy. I got this.”
David eyed him suspiciously. The Irishman gripped his shoulder. “I got off on a bad foot with you, son, and I will make amends. But for now I’m asking you to trust me. Please.”
After a silent consultation with Mia, he squeezed her arm, then stepped through the portal. Peter watched the ripples settle.
“You weren’t kidding about him. He’s a lion, that one.”
She lowered her head. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“This whole thing could have been avoided. I should have . . . she should have warned us not to go in that building.”
He shined a droll grin. “Right. If only she had, you’d all be alive and together now.”
“It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not,” Peter admitted. “It’s tragic that a girl so lovely can be so cruel to herself. I’ve seen the way you talk about you. I swear, there’s no worse combination than adolescence and time travel.”
Mia peered up at Peter. “Do you get notes from your future selves?”
“Me? Nah. I blocked those fools out years ago. One of me’s enough for everyone.”
“How did you do it?”
“I’ll show you, Mia. I’ll teach you everything you need to know.” Peter jerked a thumb at the portal. “That thing over there? That’s your future. You’re just making keyholes now. Soon you’ll be making doors.”
Mia sniffed at the great white breach. To think how easily they could have escaped all their past calamities if she’d been able to rip an exit in the nearest wall. It seemed unbelievable that anyone could do such a thing.
“I still don’t know how we got these powers,” she confessed to Peter. “None of us were born like this.”
“I can’t answer that, darlin’. But it’s on the list of things to find out.”
He scanned the distant city, then put a hand on Mia’s shoulder. “Come on. Before the boy comes back in worry.”
As they moved toward the portal, Peter stroked the back of her head, a warm and fatherly gesture that made her as conflicted as the two messages she’d received about him. All at once, she wanted to hug him and run from him. She trusted him with her life and she feared he’d be the death of her. She had no idea what lay behind any of those feelings. Apparently she wasn’t immune to paradox after all.
“Where does this go?” she asked him.
“Brooklyn,” Peter replied, with a cheery grin. “Home.”
—
His brownstone lay in the middle of a chain, a slender construct of red brick and glass that stood all but invisible among its siblings. Every room in the four-story building teemed with taped cardboard boxes, bulging department store bags, and hastily placed furniture. Half the lamps still had price tags dangling from the bases.
By one o’clock, all wounds were bandaged, all faces washed, all bloody garments swapped for fresh cotton loungewear. Peter secured Amanda’s ankle with broken broomsticks and duct tape before leaving the house in search of better aid.
The Silvers convalesced in the hardwood living room, slouched among the mismatched chairs and sofas. Their twelve lazy feet faced one another on the circular glass coffee table like ticks on a clock dial. Only Hannah and Theo ruined the uniformity by bundling together on a recliner. While the actress wallowed in apocalyptic grief, the augur felt downright euphoric. Azral had offered him a shortcut to this very moment and Theo stubbornly insisted on forging his own path here. Now the thrill of success was incomparable, like winning two marathons at once.
Nobody moved or spoke for fifteen minutes, until Hannah retreated to the kitchen to make tea. She returned with a tray of steaming mugs, placing one on the end table near her sister.
“He doesn’t have milk. I looked. Sorry.”
Amanda stared ahead blankly, her senses dulled by exhaustion and painkillers. “Okay.”
Theo followed the exchange with grim interest. When he’d viewed this scene with Azral, it was Mia who served the hot drinks. The girl had looked fairly healthy in that string. But this one was listless, sweaty, and jaundiced. He feared something didn’t go entirely right with her reversal.
At two o’clock, Peter returned with a cartload of gifts for Amanda—a hospital-grade ankle brace, casting tape, ice packs, crutches, even a portable tomograph to gauge the extent of her bone damage. When David asked him how he managed to score such items on a major holiday, Peter merely shrugged and said he knew people.
He sat down with Amanda and pulled her legs onto his lap, peeling away her splint with the gentle grace of a lover. Zack took a forced and sudden interest in the red-leafed sycamore outside the window.
“Where in Brooklyn are we?”
“Greenpoint.”