“You can help in the Society. You’ll always mean something.” His hands grabbed for hers, closing them both in a net of hisfingers.
“If I can help with awish.”
“Youcan.”
“Just not now.” He didn’t object to her counter. Jo shook her head. “Please. . . I’m not one to beg, but I’mbeggingyou. Let me dothis.”
Gravity pulled her chin to her chest and Jo waited, as if an axe that Wayne wielded hovered above the nape of her neck. She’d spent two days on this, and she was close, soclose.
“What do you need?” he asked softly. Jo didn’t know if his voice had dropped due to the conspiratorial nature of the subject, or out of tenderness that she didn’t know the man couldmuster.
Jo’s head jerked up, and her heart latched onto the opportunity. “I need you to show me how to use time without having my watch on my wrist. I’m close, but all my prep work is for nothing if I can’t affect the realworld.”
“The room will vanish if you remove your watch, and you can’t use time without wearing it. Even if those things weren’t true, youcan’taffect the real world fromhere.”
Her heart sank into her stomach, tore through the bottom, fell to the floor, and continued in free-fall straight to the depths ofspace.
“But we can if we go through the Door,” he added hastily. His voice was so low now that he needed to lean in and whisper. “If I help you with this, now, promise me you will never try to change things outside of a wishagain?”
“I promise.” Jo didn’t know if she was lying or not, and didn’t really care. She’d say anything to garner hishelp.
“And promise me you’ll be careful; you’ll change as little aspossible.”
“I promise.” The words flew from her lips before he even had a chance to finishspeaking.
“All right. We should go,then.”
“Wait, I can’t just leave my code. I wouldn’t have time to start from scratch there. . .” Jo looked to the computers. How could she transfer her work? If what Wayne said was true, she couldn’t upload it to a cloud server and expect to access it on the other side. If only there was some physical way of carrying digital information. . . “I have anidea.”
Jo was sprinting back through the mansion before Wayne even had time to respond. Her feet flew over the marble and carpeted floors alike, carrying her back to her room. Nico had said they couldn’t take things from the recreation rooms, but that they could from theirbedrooms.
She flung open her door, flying to her desk and rummaging around in herdrawers.
“Please, please, please. . .” she uttered on repeat like a prayer—a prayer that was answered. If the mansion was recreating her room from real life, then there was bound to be a rogue USB stick somewhere. Antiquated technology, really, but something Jo always insisted on having at least one or two of. Physical backups were much more difficult to track than the cloud, even if you couldn’t always find a computer with the properport.
Back in the rec room, Jo appeared to a dazed Wayne who barely had time to get “What?” out of his lips before she was back towork.
“Our clothes go with us to the realworld.”
“Thankfully, or unfortunately, depending on who you’re with,” Waynemumbled.
Jo braved a grin, feeling in a better mood than she had in days. Such a good mood that his appreciative stare toward her regarding the sentiment didn’t go unappreciated. “Which means we can bring stuff from here,there.”
“And?” Of course he wouldn’tfollow.
“I’m backing up all my scripts.” Jo tapped the blinking USB, mid-transfer. “I’ll pop over to the real world, polish them up, and runthem.”
“Run them from where?” Wayne asked warily.Good, Jo thought. He should be wary. He’d offered to help the Shewolf on a mission, afterall.
“From inside the Black Bank, of course. Where else?” The computer answered her question before Wayne could with a satisfying beep, indicating the end of her transfer, and the start of her chance at securing meaning in her newworld.
Chapter 15
Paris
THEY STOOD BEFORE the Door,Jo’s heart threatening to beat from her chest. She kept glancing over her shoulder—a motion mirrored by Wayne—looking for any indication of anyone following. Luckily, they were solidlyalone.
“Where are we going,dollface?”
