Despair might have choked me if not for my certainty that this worked. In a sense, it already had.
On the fourth set of compressions, water spouted like a geyser from his open mouth. He rolled, vomiting up the strid’s briny water. It tasted like salt and iron and blood, I remembered.
Kessian sat back on his heels, letting out a sob of relief.
“It was you,” I said. “I felt like we’d met before, and we had. You saved my life.”
He smiled weakly. “I guess I did.”
“How did you survive the strid?”
“I could navigate it, somehow. The Keeper’s magic, it was like a purer version of the song sung by the flute. I … can’t really explain it, but I followed it here.”
Footsteps resounded in the night. A light bobbed through the darkness, and as it got closer, I recognized my mother’s face in the glow of her lantern. She wore a puffy jacket over her pajamas, eyes red with tears. She must have run here after finding her husband gone and her son’s bed empty.
She ran to me—her young son—and threw her arms around him. It only took him a few shaky moments to do the same, sobbing uncontrollably. I’d backed away several pacesinto the tree line, but I still heard my cracking, teenaged voice say, “Dad’s gone. Dad’s dead.”
My strength to hold the grief at bay failed me. I remembered that hug, the power of my mum’s arms to make me feel safe again. I remembered how this was the last time she ever hugged me like that, because soon Laurelie would be taken, too, and I would be blamed.
Kessian said, “Are you …?”
My breath snagged in my throat, the world gone blurry. And like my mum had done years ago, Kessian wound both arms around my ribs so tight they creaked when I breathed.
I didn’t reject the comfort this time. I gathered him close and wept into his shoulder, grieving the death of my dad, Laurelie, the love of my mother, the home I’d had to leave behind, and—
Kessian drew back and wiped my tears with his sleeve. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Did you find the flute player?”
“Yes,” I said. “It was Marlowe.”
Chapter 33
Kessian’s mouth fell open, face wan with shock. “Marlowe! You’re sure?”
I wished I wasn’t. “I saw his face right before he went through the portal. It was him.”
“Oh, Tal …” Kessian’s thumb brushed at the dampness on my cheek. “Why would he do that?”
I could only guess based on the argument we witnessed in Grandad’s study. “An old grudge? I don’t know.” The pocket watch ticked once, so loud I heard it from within Kessian’s pocket. He retrieved it and flicked it open to check how much time we had left. His face went paler than it already had been.
“Three hours have passed? Surely not, that felt like an hour at most.”
I checked the watch myself, but Kessian was right. The hour hand pointed to three o’clock.
Kessian swore. “What do we do now?”
Before I could answer, the world washed out, the colors dripping. With the rush of water in my ears, I felt myself swept away, the tide pulling me elsewhere and dumping me outside 37 Culpepper Avenue again.
Landing on my arse, I dusted myself off as I helped Kessian to his feet. He winced, the transition less gentle on his hip.
Beside us, the Keepers reappeared, inclining their head. “You have returned successfully from the first of many trials.”
“We found out who the poisoner is,” I said, pushing aside my feelings on the subject. “Now if you let us out of here—”
“You have found the poisoner, but not the nature of the poison or its antidote.”
I sagged. I’d hoped telling the authorities and bringing him to justice might be enough to soothe the strid, but of course it couldn’t be that simple. A bone-deep exhaustion plagued me after the last memory, too fraught with feeling to fully process while still trapped in this alternate reality. The thought of venturing into another didn’t thrill me.
“I have a question,” Kessian said. “What we’re doing, it can’t … rewrite history, can it?”
