“I have no doubt. There’s no denying it is risky, and Wayne treasures this team—we all do.” Nico took her hand and looked her right in the eye. The other hand was held out, waiting, as the Door appeared over the gate, but Jo kept her attention solely on his face. “Trust me Jo: some people are well worth the risk of putting yourself out there and being hurt.”
As he turned to input the code on the door, Jo took one more look at the cemetery. There were no flowers on the graves here. No mementos from loved ones. No mourners weeping. It was clearly a place that had been mostly forgotten by a world that had long since moved on from it.
But one man remembered. One man, outside of time, cared enough to show Jo that there was one force greater than circles, or wishes, or magic. It was the only force that could triumph over them all, lasting when all else was dust and stars on stones. Love.
She could never again question if such a thing would be worth it.
Chapter 21
Man Made Reckless
WHEN THEY RETURNED to the mansion, Jo went promptly to the common room to find someone who could give her an update on the status of the wish. The length of time she’d been out of commission—occupied with her own issues—now bordered on selfish. But she and Nico found the main areas of the mansion quiet.
“Everyone must be busy,” Nico observed, already heading over to the kitchen.
Jo had a mug in hand before he’d even procured the beans. “I hope everything is going well.” She looked around the empty room once more. “Do you think we were gone too long?”
“We were hardly gone a few hours. All will be well,” Nico assured her with far more confidence than Jo could muster.
That nagging fear of being useless still sat in the back of her mind. If there was one thing she refused to be in this new life of hers, it was useless. The moment she became useless was the moment her sacrifice meant nothing, and all her magic potential to help the world would be wasted.
“I think I’ll stay here,” she said, as Nico moved to depart. “Just in case anyone needs me.”
“Relax where you’re most comfortable. We’ll find you as needed,” Nico assured her.
“I’m comfortable here. My usual chair is open and there’s this book Eslar lent me that I should really finish.” Jo paused and forced a smile. “Knowing him, if I don’t finish it and give him a proper report, I’ll get a talking to.”
Nico laughed. “Then I shall leave you to it.”
She watched him walk away. There was a downward slope to his shoulders that usually wasn’t there. Was he going to work on the painting of Julia? Jo swallowed the lump that had been lodged in her throat since the church.
After an hour of not really reading (all that clung to her mind was something about a forest clearing and a carving), Jo could take it no longer and wandered back to the Four-Way, walking to the top of each stair and peering down the empty hallways before heading back toward the now-occupied briefing room.
Eslar startled at her entrance, his eyes wrenching away from the Door as if he’d been staring at it for some time. Jo cradled her mostly-empty coffee mug between her hands and leaned in the doorframe, aware of Eslar’s eyes on her as she did so.
“Everything all right?” she asked when it became apparent that he was not going to be the one to break the silence. For a long moment, Eslar merely stared at her; if Jo didn’t know better, she’d have said she was being analyzed. But eventually, he took a breath, letting it out on a sigh and looking away.
“I should ask you the same.” He looked back to the Door. “You wandered off.”
“Nico said he had your permission.” Not wanting to throw Nico under the bus, Jo added quickly, “But maybe I should’ve asked, too.”
“You don’t need my permission, so long as you’re not affecting the Severity of Exchange.”
Damn straight I don’t, Jo wanted to say. Instead she passed her mug from hand to hand and pretended to take a sip. He didn’t seem irked, so Jo let the matter lie. “I take it we weren’t the only ones who left?”
“Wayne has returned to Japan to follow up on a few things,” he said, standing.
“How’s it all going?”
“Let’s find out,” Eslar said, simply, walking towards the double doors back to the mansion and motioning for her to follow. Jo took the last swig of her coffee and did as told, hurrying silently behind Eslar (every one of his long strides was two of hers) until the two of them were standing in front of the common room’s large TV. Eslar grabbed the remote and turned it on, the news station from the last couple of weeks still broadcasting the already-familiar anti-terrorism footage.
Except now, new content flashed intermittently.
“It would seem as though things are going smoothly.”
“Yeah,” Jo replied, though mostly out of reflex; her eyes were still trained on the new updates. After her initial failure, it seemed almost unlikely that things would be going so well now. But Eslar wasn’t wrong; Takako and Wayne had managed to get Samson’s machine into the hands of the right people. Now all they needed to do was wait for it to pick up the inevitable seismic activity, and then the regions would be evacuated.
It seemed so simple. Sopossible.
