Chapter Seventeen
Intent on finding Jack, Calisa hurried downstairs. She paused by the smoky mirror in the lobby. “Is that where she went? The Night Market? Do you know?”
Who?
“Auntie Zee.”
New phone. Who dis?
“Ha. Very funny. How do you even know that? Never mind. Do you know if Auntie Zee went to the Night Market for supplies yesterday?”
Don’t know. Don’t care.
“You are determined to be unhelpful, aren’t you.”
Yes.
She glared at the mirror, and then she searched the inn for Jack. Calisa found him cleaning the bathroom on the third floor. Leaning against the doorframe, she asked as casually as she could, “Hey, want to go on an adventure?”
Jack did not want to go on an adventure, thank you very much.
She explained what she’d found and what she planned: a trip to the Night Market to see if they could locate Auntie Zee. And she explained her reasoning: the inn needed Auntie Zee, and just waiting passively for her to decide to return was a greater risk than going to find her.
“It’s absolutely not a greater risk,” Jack objected.
“We can’t run the inn without Auntie Zee,” she said.
“I don’t see there’s much choice. She said she’d be back by dinnertime yesterday, and she’s way overdue.
We need to find her and tell her she can’t do this.
Not without telling us where she’s going, when she’ll be back, or what we’re supposed to do while she’s gone.
She has responsibilities, whether she wants them or not. ”
He protested for about five minutes more, gesturing with the sponge that was still in his hand.
He kept his voice low so the guests wouldn’t hear.
It was a terrible idea, he said. Much too dangerous.
Auntie Zee wouldn’t want Calisa to risk herself, her moms wouldn’t want her to risk herself, Steve wouldn’t want her to risk herself…
. What she heard under it all was: I don’t want you to risk yourself.
He didn’t want her hurt. Or lost. Or to have anything bad happen to her. As the one with the most experience at the Faraway Inn, he considered it his responsibility to keep her safe.
The word responsible was made for people like Jack, Calisa decided.
Mom-Kate would have said, He has integrity.
It was rare.
And sweet.
He was absolutely not the kind of boy she was normally drawn to. She would have said she liked boys with a hint of danger—the kind with an attitude, as Auntie Zee would have said. But Jack wasn’t like that.
So why did she even want him to come with her through the portal? She could do it by herself. And why didn’t she get tired of spending time with him? He should have bored her. He was so nice and good. He shouldn’t have been her type at all.
She let him spool out all his arguments until he ran out of words. She just looked at him, and he looked back at her. He sighed heavily. “You’re still going anyway, aren’t you.”
“Yep.”
And with that Calisa simply walked out of the bathroom.
Leaving behind the cleaning supplies, he tagged along as she went downstairs to the second floor, to the guest room where she’d seen the nighttime farmers market.
She thought it was a pretty safe bet that it was the Night Market that Auntie Zee had mentioned repeatedly in her logbook.
“Just once more, for the record, I think this is a mistake,” Jack said. “My father was going for supplies when he went missing. Now Auntie Zee, same situation: going for supplies, and then missing.”
“Not doing anything is a mistake,” Calisa said. “Besides, you said she’s disappeared before. It’s not the same as your father.”
“And if the door malfunctions and we’re trapped on the other side?”
Then that was a Future Calisa problem. “It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
Yes, it was a risk, but she’d read every entry in the inn’s record book, and the Night Market was the most common origin for guests, as well as the source for many of the supplies that Auntie Zee used to feed her guests.
According to the notes, the Night Market was like the inn: a nexus, with customers and vendors from multiple realms, which meant the people there were accustomed to random, clueless visitors.
Besides, she’d been there once already, even if she hadn’t immediately realized it.
The wind didn’t hurt like it had in Melidor’s world, and the whole place practically screamed to be explored.
She unlocked the guest room with the master key. “We can’t run the inn without Auntie Zee.” She didn’t add: And your father can’t return without the inn.
“I know that, but…”
She scooted inside, and he followed her, closing the door behind him. “This is a portal that’s been stable for years—Auntie Zee went through hundreds of times. If there’s any portal that’s safe, it’s this one, and if there’s any place she’s most likely to be, it’s through here.”
“Okay, but what if there’s danger on the other side?” He didn’t sound like he was going to say no. He was staring at the portal as if he wanted to walk through and just needed reassurance that it wasn’t a terrible mistake.
She couldn’t promise it wasn’t, but she’d already stepped through this doorway once before and survived fine. “We’ll stick together,” Calisa said, “and if you feel uncomfortable or there’s any sign of trouble—”
“We run? Like frightened rabbits.”
“Like rabbits,” she promised. Tentatively, she added, “Your father…”
“I know,” Jack said. “We need to find Auntie Zee. For a whole lot of reasons.” He hesitated one more minute, and then he took her hand.
She liked the way his hand felt in hers—it fit, warm and comforting. She could feel the calluses from all the work he did, and she wondered if he could feel her newer ones, or if he was paying nearly as much attention to the feel of her hand as she was to his.
Calisa opened the closet door, and the gold swirled through the black. “Brave heroes,” she said, “venturing into the unknown, ready to flee.”
“I’ve never wanted to be called brave.”
“What would you rather be called?” Calisa said.
“I’d settle for not stupid,” he said.
She wasn’t sure if he was saying this idea was stupid or if he just meant in general, but either way she—
Before she could finish the thought, Jack stepped forward into the portal. It swallowed his body, and she followed quickly, still holding his hand. Coolness wrapped around her, and she couldn’t feel anything but his fingers closed around hers.
A second later, they stepped out of the closet and into another world. Jack released his grip. She wanted to grab his hand back, but there was no rational reason.
It was night again. Or still? It was literally called the Night Market, according to Auntie Zee’s notes.
It could be perpetual night. She looked up.
The moon was higher in the sky than before, blanching the blackness around it.
The stars looked like jewels strewn across the sky, disappearing then reappearing as clouds shifted over them.
Below, the Night Market was just as active and lively as before—rows of tents with customers strolling between them, alone and in groups.
This is another realm.
She let the words wash over her, and she felt her heart beat faster. A smile tugged at her lips, and she felt like laughing out loud.
“Any clue where we start?” Jack asked.
She’d memorized the relevant parts of Auntie Zee’s logbook.
“ ‘Good prices from Rin, third stall in the fifth row,’ ” she recited.
Good prices for what, she didn’t know, but she hoped it meant this Rin person would be friendly.
“He’s mentioned often. I think we start with him, ask if he’s seen her, and see what he says. ”
Together they walked down the slope to the Night Market.
Voices welled up around them—shoppers and vendors—and music, unfamiliar music from instruments that Calisa didn’t recognize, blended in a cacophony of sounds.
The smells too rolled over them: spices and meats and fruits and breads, sweet and savory, so thick in the air that Calisa’s mouth watered.
They walked past a stall that sold stalks that looked like grasses, each a different shade of blue, with tufts of hay at the top.
Another sold birds in cages—each bird was jewel-colored, with beaks that curled and feathers spread behind them with zigzags and swirls in patterns that Calisa had never seen on any bird she knew.
A third was what she guessed was perfumes: tiny bottles that the customers sniffed.
She caught a scent of the ocean, and then it was replaced by a heavy, fruit-like scent that she couldn’t name.
She took Jack’s hand again as the crowd pushed around them.
“If this is another realm, why are they all speaking English?” Calisa whispered to Jack.
“Portal magic,” Jack whispered back. “It translates…well, it does this thing with our brains so it translates whatever we speak and hear.”
“Convenient.”
“Necessary.” He paused. “Just don’t, like, concentrate too hard on the syllables you’re hearing. Let it wash over you.”
She immediately started listening to the words around her, and they clashed as the syllables her ears heard overlapped with the words she understood. She winced and focused on the sound of the night breeze through the tents instead until the voices stopped warring inside her.