Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
ANTIMONY
“I wasn’t planning on becoming a mother. My own mother didn’t give me very good examples to follow. But once I did, there was nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my children. No matter what, I was going to be a better person than my mother was.”
—Jane Harrington-Price
Buckley Township, Michigan, the basement of the Old Parrish Place
SWITCHING DIMENSIONS WITH SARAH AT the helm had been a traumatic experience, at least the one time I remembered it.
She and Artie had both gone down before we could make the crossing, and when the spell had taken effect, it had been like all of reality was being compressed and forced through an opening the size of a garden hose. Not fun or pretty.
Doing it with Thomas taking the lead had been easier, just a ritual circle, some chanting, and then a light so bright it left afterimages on my retinas but didn’t cause any actual pain. And no one I cared about had been broken or unconscious at the time, making it practically pleasant.
Making the transition under the power of the Johrlac collective made the other two methods seem like child’s play.
One moment we were standing in the box in the bullshit pantomime the Johrlac called a court, and the next moment we were back in my grandparents’ basement, all four of us, now with the sudden addition of—
“Artie!” I squealed, throwing myself at my cousin and locking my arms around him as tightly as I could.
He made a confused noise and embraced me back. “Annie? What the hell is going on?”
“Um,” I said, and paused, letting him go. I took a step backward, looking at him. He looked back, open and bemused and so utterly Artie that it threw every difference between him and Arthur into stark relief. They really weren’t the same person.
The thought awoke a pang of regret. We had Artie back, but where was Arthur? Certainly not here with us.
“Everything the Johrlac said was true, just presented in the worst possible light,” I said finally.
“They abducted Sarah to make her stand trial for what they called her crimes, and they took Arthur—the other version of you—as evidence. We followed to try and get them both back. We got caught, and all wound up in their court.” I reached up and touched my aching temple.
“Before you got deleted, when we left Iowa for a whole dimension full of shitty giant bugs, Sarah wiped herself from both our minds. Just snipped our memories of her right out of our childhoods. So nothing made much sense for a while, and I really only agreed to go to Johrlar because we needed to recover Arthur. I hope he’s okay. ”
“And Mom?” Artie looked past me to Alice, desperation in his face.
She shook her head, her own expression going grave. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. There was nothing I could do,” she said.
Artie stared at her, slow tears gathering in his eyes. “Mom,” he said, softly. Then: “How’s Dad? Elsie?”
“They’re both fine,” said Alice. “Your father’s still very sad, of course, and your sister has been grieving in her own way, but she’s been preoccupied with trying to keep Arthur as stable as she could, and I don’t know how she is overall.
Distressed by having a group of Johrlac appear in her house and snatch her brother away. ”
“And who’s this?” Artie’s gaze shifted to Thomas, turning wary.
Alice smiled, bright as the sun. “This is your grandfather, Thomas Price,” she said. “I finally found him. He’s finally home.”
“You went jumping across dimensions until you found the love of your life, and then you brought him back to his family, even though it was dangerous,” said Artie. “Got it. So when do we leave?”
“Leave?” asked Sam.
“To get Sarah back,” said Artie. “I mean, we have a precedent, right?”
“It’s not that simple—” began Thomas.
“Pretty sure it is,” said Artie. “You got there once. You can get us there again, right? So when do we leave?”
I put a hand on his arm. “Artie, we just got you back,” I said. “You can’t really expect us to—”
“Save a member of our family? Do for her what she would do for any one of us? You heard her at the end there! She gave up in order to get us out! We have to go back for her!” He sounded borderline frantic.
I couldn’t blame him for that. I would have had the exact same reaction if it had been Sam who’d been left behind.
I would have had the exact same reaction if it had been anyone other than Sarah.
My memories were still sliding back into place, and until they were finished, I presumed she would keep feeling like a person I knew but didn’t have much of an emotional attachment to.
I hated feeling like my world could be that easily manipulated, but what are we apart from collections of memories and experiences, all webbed together with emotional reactions?
I loved Sam with all my heart. If someone started knocking out the experiences that had formed the foundation of our relationship, how long would that love be able to endure?
I didn’t want to think about it, and so I focused on Artie.
“They let us go this time, because Sarah said she’d stay,” I said.
“They’re not going to let us just walk away a second time.
We don’t have anything to offer them in exchange for letting us have her.
I’m sorry, Artie. I lo-loved Sarah, too. But we can’t.”
“If you’re not going to help me, I’m going to find a way to do it without you,” threatened Artie. He took a step backward, jaw set and hands balled into fists, clearly furious.
Honestly, I couldn’t blame him. He’d been gone for years. Now he came back, impossibly, wonderfully, and his mother was dead, while the woman he loved was lost in another dimension. This was a lot, even for one of us, and it was perfectly understandable that he wouldn’t be handling it well.
“You can’t cross dimensions on your own, Artie,” said Alice. “And I’m sorry, but we’re not going to help you right now. We just got you back. I can’t do that to your father.”
“My father doesn’t know,” snapped Artie. “And if he did, he’d say I needed to go and get her back. He’d have done it for Mom. You did it for Grandpa. Why are you not willing to let me do exactly what any member of our family would be doing right now?”
“Honestly, Artie, I don’t have a good answer for that, and we just met, so it’s not like you have any reason to trust me anyway,” said Thomas.
“But I can’t open a tunnel to Johrlar again so quickly after the first one.
I don’t have the power. We need to sit down and come up with a plan that doesn’t just count on us blundering into an answer, and give me time to recover.
Then we can go back for Sarah. Once we have a plan. ”
“We’re going back,” said Artie firmly. “This isn’t a discussion and it isn’t a request. I refuse to leave her behind after everything she’s been through, and everything she’s done trying to save us. Mom raised me better than that.”
“All right, sweetheart,” said Alice.
I had the distinct feeling I was overlooking something.
I watched as my grandparents left for the kitchen, and mice began swarming onto the table, staring at Artie like he was some sort of impossible miracle.
None of them seemed confused in the least about who he was.
I guess Aeslin mice don’t have the same issue telling identical people apart as humans would, because they started to cheer and praise the return of the God of Chosen Isolation.
Sam’s tail snaked around my waist, and I leaned back against him as he wrapped his arms around my chest. “This has been … a lot,” he said, watching Artie and the mice.
“Yeah, it has,” I agreed. “And I can’t help feeling like I’m missing something that would make this all come together. What am I forgetting?”
“We just left your cousin, possibly two of your cousins, and a whole bunch of your distant relatives in a dimension swarming with Johrlac,” said Sam.
“Oh, and now the only friendly cuckoo we have access to can’t telepathically receive, which makes her a lot less useful when it comes to stopping hostile telepaths from breaking into our brains… ”
He stopped talking and craned his neck around so he could eye me suspiciously.
“Annie, what are you thinking?” he asked. “Because you have that look again.”
“I’m thinking that sometimes I can be really stupid for a smart person,” I said. “I totally forgot about our backup cuckoo.”
“Our … Oh!”
“Yeah.” I dug my phone out of my pocket, relieved to see I still had almost 80 percent battery charge. “Mark started this mess by calling me. Now I’m going to finish it by calling him.”
Finding Mark’s number wasn’t hard: it was the only recent unknown in my call history.
I pulled it up, put the phone on speaker, and pressed the button, setting the phone down on the table as it began to ring.
Artie detached himself from the still-cheering mice and wandered over to eye the phone warily.
“Who are you calling?” he asked. “It better not be my sister. She’ll just try to talk me out of this.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” I said. “I’m calling Mark.”
“Mark? As in the cuckoo?”
“The cuckoo king,” I said.
He was still eyeing me in disbelief when the phone clicked and the ringing stopped.
For a moment, I thought Mark had decided to hang up on me rather than answering the phone.
Then an unfamiliar female voice said, sweetly, “If you’re calling about my brother’s hospital bills, I will extract your larynx through the front of your throat before you have time to name a number, you fucking health insurance ghouls. ”
“I told you, Cici, my hospital bill’s been covered,” said Mark in the background, barely managing to contain his laughter.
“Never put anything past these collections assholes,” said the girl—Cici, presumably. Mark’s human little sister. Not so little anymore, from the sound of her.
“Yes, you’re wiser than I in the way of hospitals,” said Mark. “Give me back my phone.”
“Why should I?”