Jo gripped Nico’s wrist; the trance was clearly broken. But the Italian stayed in time. He held out the painting as if all his muscles had locked into place.
She looked back to the prime minister, who was now blinking away rogue tears spilling over onto his cheeks. “It worked,” Jo whispered in relief.
“An evacuation,” Nakamura whispered to himself. He turned to his computer. It was as if Nico had become a fixture in his office, a statue and a painting, nothing to be alarmed by.
Nakamura stroked in a few commands on the computer. Jo sprinted around, looking at the screen, hovering invisibly over him, a hand he couldn’t feel grasping for stability on his shoulder. A document was open: standard, official-looking letterhead. The date was already typed in—
“Nico, it’s a press release!” The rush of joy was going to tear her apart. The sheer relief was overwhelming. “We did it!”
As if hearing her (which was impossible since she was out of time), and as if determined to prove that everything thatcouldgo wrong with this wish would, Nakamura’s fingers stopped mid-sentence. He hung his head, magic continuing to evaporate off his immobile shoulders like the last frayed threads that had held together the Society’s hopes.
The man slowly shook his head and deleted the draft—an omen of doom. “I can’t. . .” he said, as if speaking to them both.
Nico’s fingers uncurled and the painting dropped like dead weight, a curtain falling upon their last hope and revealing its maker’s horror. Jo watched it happen, as if in slow motion. She didn’t hear the canvas striking the floor. She heard, instead, the sharp intake of breath from Nakamura. She saw the man’s brow furrow and his lips part as his head snapped upward, all traces of magic gone.
“We have to go!” Jo practically leapt over the desk, bounding to Nico in a few wide steps. She grabbed the frozen Italian, shaking him. “Get out of time.”
“Who the hell are you?” The prime minister was on his feet. His hand slipped under the desk, no doubt to push a panic button. “How did you get in here?”
Jo rummaged through Nico’s pockets, pulling on the chain of his watch to free it. She wondered how it looked to Nakamura, if the watch was merely floating in space or perhaps didn’t exist to him at all. It didn’t matter; they were about to be ghosts anyway. She tried to push on the watch, turn the dials, open the face, but Jo couldn’t affect it. She recalled what Takako had said when she’d first used the recreation room:No one could activate another person’s watch.
Clinging to the chain, Jo pushed it toward Nico, dangling it in front of his face. “We have to go, Nico,now, push it now!”
A commotion was rising outside the door. Jo practically punched the man in the face trying to get his attention. Numbly, a hand rose, tapping on the watch.
Jo heard the prime minister’s shock from behind her, no doubt coming from the fact that the strange man had just disappeared in thin air. She turned, glaring at him, and in the same moment stooped to scoop up Nico’s painting. She pulled them toward the door of the room before it could be thrust open by whatever responders were fast on the way to the office.
It wasn’t so much belief that made the Door appear this time, but a magical demand. Jo silently shouted across every possible universe.Appear or feel my wrath. And appear it did.
She wrenched it open with the energy of all her anger and sorrow, feeling like she could rip the thing off its hinges if she so chose. All at once, she allowed herself to be pulled through, painting under one arm, the other linked tightly with the now-trembling shell of a man who had been their final hope.
Chapter 29
We Wait
NICO WAS STILL in shock when they stumbled back into the briefing room, but by the slight tremor in his fingertips, it wouldn’t be long before that shock wore off. Jo didn’t want to know what would happen to the poor man then, almost as much as she didn’t want to see the reactions on the team’s faces when they found out. And they would, any second now.
Because, as expected, the briefing room was already full, brimming with tension so thick, Jo had been able to feel it even before stepping fully through the Door. Arm still looped around Nico’s, helping him a wobbling step at a time towards his seat, Jo looked from face to face around the table.
Pan and Snow were missing.The hell were they doing?an angry little voice in her wanted to scream.
Everyone had gotten to their feet upon Jo and Nico’s arrival, and after helping Nico sit down, Jo took Wayne’s usual chair so as not to remove her steady presence from the Italian’s side. She could feel the trembling of his fingers stretch up into an outright shaking along his arms. Any second now, he would fracture, crumble into pieces, and Jo didn’t think she’d be able to put him back together. But she would damn well try. It was better than focusing on her own rising guilt, her growing panic, her pain and misery at the loss, so much loss, and they’d triedeverything,so why had at all still turned out so, so—
“So?” Takako’s voice caught Jo off-guard, wrenching her back to the briefing room. The woman was smart; she should’ve been able to see the creeping mental devastation all over their faces. Maybe she had. Because even though Takako had bothered to ask the question on everyone’s mind anyway, it was already obvious she knew the answer. “How’d it go?”
That was all it took for Nico to lose it.
A broken sob tore its way up his throat, a sound that held as much emotional anguish as physical. Nico had worked for hours, poured everything he and his magic had into the painting that now leaned, forgotten, by the Door. There was no doubt in Jo’s mind he’d been exhausted and broken down even before watching that final blossom of hope wither and die in the prime minister’s eyes.
Now, he was beyond broken, inconsolable. If they could manage to ease his suffering at all after this, it would be a miracle. And after today, after every one of her own failures, believing in miracles seemed incredibly naive. They were the ones who were supposed to be the miracle workers, and they’d failed.
The group probably didn’t need her to explain, but Jo couldn’t handle the idea of Nico’s sobs being the only sound in the room.
“He wouldn’t change his mind.Couldn’tapparently. Not even with Nico’s influence.” She hated the way Nico’s back seized beneath her hand, whole body tense and shaking in what was more than likely guilt. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that he’d done all he could (which was true, ofcourseit was true), but she knew he wouldn’t hear it; Jo felt guilty too, had ever since that first botched evacuation hack. So instead, she just kept talking, raising her voice a little to drown out some of Nico’s softer whimpers and cries. “Twelve hours just. . . wasn’t enough time. The magic wore off too quickly and it. . . it just wasn’t enough.”
“No. . .” That simple word, whispered past Takako’s lips, felt like having the breath ripped from her lungs. With the hand that wasn’t rubbing comfortless circles into Nico’s back, Jo gripped ruthlessly at her own knee. She shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Takako.”
