“All right,” I said. “That’s easy then. I’d get her something she can’t conjure. Something she doesn’t realize she needs. Something that’ll make her smile.”
He thought about this for a moment, then his cheeks turned pink. I looked away as he hooked me up to the machine.
Four hours later, after Jacob had told me stories about our mom, our dad, our home (the one I’d burned down), and family trips to the north, the machine stilled and went quiet.
“Well?” he asked.
I shook my head. “It didn’t work.”
He dropped his chin into his hands. “Darn.”
So that was that.
“Jacob?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
He nodded.
It was time to go back to Hell Gate. It was long after midnight. This morning, the Smiths had destroyed my home, and I hadn’t been back to see the wreckage. I hoped Rou was okay. I hoped Griff hadn’t been hurt after Luvic tore me away. I hoped . . . well . . . I hoped.
I stood, only a little wobbly on my feet. “About Rockefeller. Why didn’t you stop it from falling?”
Jacob frowned and steadied me. “Rockefeller? Because yesterday, the Smiths took control of the Middle East. The day before, they sacked Asia. Europe fell the day after the Smith took the crown. The Bard is using it to launch war. If not Rockefeller, then it would’ve been something else. Something worse. I didn’t stop it because I was controlling the fall. And now I know what the Bard is going to do, and I think I know what the Smiths will do. A controlled catastrophe is better than chaos.”
“When I go, you’re locking this room? Jagger won’t find it? I won’t remember this?”
Jacob swallowed. “Yeah.”
Looking at him was like looking in a mirror that was foggy and distorted but still a mirror. It was so obvious now why I’d always pitied him when I heard the story about him shattering his mirror. I’d always felt he must be very lonely. Very alone.
I wondered if he had anyone at all. I hoped the woman he was finding a gift for would be kind. I hoped she’d be there for him. I never was.
It was strange to think he’d been there my whole life, but I’d been there for none of his. I’d never been a sister to him, and I wasn’t able to start now.
But like he said: sometimes, imagination was better than reality.
Maybe his imagined sister—the one he’d made up in his head when he was little—was better than the real me.
I frowned, wondering. “What did I say when you were little and you told me about your books and frogs and illusions? What sort of things did the imagined me say?”
He shook his head like he couldn’t understand why I was asking. “You didn’t say anything. You were just there.”
I laughed. “So I’m nothing like your imagined sister.”
“No.” He smiled, and it was the brightest, happiest smile I’d ever seen him give. “You’re real.”
I smiled back. “Okay. I’m ready now.”
He nodded. Then he put his hand to my head, and the room inside me shattered.
47
I blinked awake, pulled out of a thick black fog. Someone was roughly shaking my shoulder.
“Wake up, you. Wake up!”
