I didn’t move.
“Well, this is all of us, Hope,” Lucinda said, spreading her arms wide. “We Viators. Excepting your mother, of course.”
The only sound came from the rush of my own blood in my ears, and the chatter from Tesla’s machines. I studied each person in turn. Their faces wore identical, earnest expressions. Something wrenched apart in my chest. This was no deception. No elaborate joke. They were serious.
“It was an ambush,” Collum said, his hands in fists. “Celia laid it, and now your mum’s trapped there. Alone.”
My eyes burned, but I clenched my jaw and forced my shoulders back. An insane urge to laugh bubbled up inside me as I realized why Lucinda had sent for me. I needed to hear it, though. They had to say the words.
“Why am I here?” I asked in a flat voice.
Phoebe’s friendly, animated face was grave when she spoke. “The Dim’ll open in six days,” she said. “One of its weird quirks is that it won’t allow a person to go back to the same place and time more than once. It’s been tried in the past. But the Dim knows, somehow. Doug says it recognizes the person’s genetic pattern.”
Doug took up the explanation. “When someone tries to return again to the same point in space and time, The Dim just shuts down, see. All the lines turn to green. We don’t know why, though I believe it has something to do with the Dim disallowing a paradox to occur. For instance, you could cross your own path. And, oh, all kinds of awful . . . Well, let me show you.” He whipped out a small notebook and began sketching a series of intersecting lines.
Phoebe laid a hand on his arm and stepped out from the others.
“Listen, Hope,” she said, her small blue eyes locked with mine. “Lu, Gran, and Mac already went back to look for Sarah a few months ago. Though they didn’t find her, they found clues. A noblewoman, new to town, had recently joined the baroness’s household in Baynard’s Castle in London. No one they spoke with knew where the woman came from. And the baron and his family had left town for their castle in the country. There wasn’t time to go after her. But they did find out the woman’s name. Sarah de Carlyle.”
My mother’s name felt like a slap. I lurched back, but Phoebe grabbed my hand, her gaze locking me in place.
“The Dim won’t let them go again, see? And Viators never travel with just two, cause if one gets hurt”—her face scrunched into a frown—“or worse, the other person would be all alone. That leaves you, me, and Collum.”
She took a deep breath and exchanged a quick look with the others. Lucinda nodded, and Phoebe squeezed my limp hands between her small, cold ones.
“We’re going after your mum, Hope,” she said. “The three of us. And this time we’re going to bring her home.”
I nodded thoughtfully, as if all this was perfectly ordinary. Sure. I get that. Want me to travel through time with you? No problem. I’m on it.
My feet were backing up the stairs. I forced them to stop as my vision filled with the image of Mom’s face in the tapestry. She’d looked so angry. So scared.
My head jerked as a detail I’d registered, but had no time to examine, pricked at me. The hoop of embroidery she’d held in her lap seemed to magnify in my mind. The stitched words had been tangled in vines and flowers, and written in a language only a scholar would recognize.
I knew it, though. Aramaic. It was one of the many my mother had taught me.
Find me, it said.
My cunning mother had sent her sister a message through a thousand years, just hoping she would find it and come for her.
I nearly tripped as I stumbled down the step. “Th-the embroidery,” I gasped.
The others were arranged in a semicircle around me. Together. Bonded. Only I stood alone. Lucinda was nodding, almost smiling.
“Yes, we know about the message,” she said. “And I’m very pleased. Your mother prepared you well, Hope. You have more knowledge of history, and archaic languages, than many learned professors could absorb in their lifetime. Do you now understand why? You’ve been training for this since you were four years old. We need that knowledge. We need you.”
The last time I heard my mother’s voice was the morning she left us forever. She’d been pacing, the rising sun painting her bedroom pink and gold. I’d gone to apologize for being such a brat to her the night before, when she’d dared suggest I go with her. I paused in the hall outside when I heard her arguing with someone over the phone.
Of course I want to tell Hope the truth. A pause. Oh yes. Last night. And she got so angry. The female voice on the other end grew louder.
As I hid in the dusky hallway, I watched Mom’s restless shadow flit across the wall. Her heels clacked as she roamed the room.