Flick rolled the information over in her head. “Did Jonathan’s dad say anything to you? Before he left?”
Darilyn shook her head. “Nothing unusual. He seemed rather excited, but… that’s regular behavior for a Society member.”
Flick tried to think. “The Thieves… they said Five Lights was in danger. They want to get away from the city. Did Daniel know about that?”
Darilyn nodded. “Oh, yes. It was Greysen and I who first contacted him about it. He’d been investigating the streets disappearing and so on for some time. I don’t think he ever got to the bottom of it though.”
“Wait, he did say something,” Greysen said, suddenly remembering. “He said something about a lighthouse.”
A freezing-cold chill ran over Flick’s skin. “A lighthouse?”
“Yes. I don’t know why that’s just come back to me. He said he had to go somewhere—to tell someone about it. Don’t ask me who, though.”
Flick sat in silence, remembering the dreadful emptiness of the lighthouse on the cliff. The lack of life. The quiet stillness that had crept under her skin. The photographs. The missing baby.
He had to tell someone about it?
Jonathan had said the Lighthouse suitcase was supposed to be locked. It had been so empty, and so dead.
Coral City was struggling to keep its plant life alive. But the place looked almost oversaturated with magic in among the city’s buildings.
Tam’s forest was scarier and darker than Jonathan remembered it, and the rules of the place had changed.
Daniel knew about the plight of Five Lights. And he had left his notes behind in a locked suitcase.…
Somehow, this all had to be connected.
“I can’t stay here.” Flick got to her feet. “I need to get out. Now.”
“There is no out, Flick. You’ve tried the door for yourself. If there was a way out, we would have found it by now.”
“We got in,” Flick said. “So there has to be a way to get out.”
“I don’t think this place works like that,” Darilyn said gently. “This isn’t like stepping into a suitcase. This is a prison. Rescue is your best hope. If Jonathan is your friend, perhaps he’ll come for you.”
Flick’s heart sank. “I don’t know what he is. Aside from a liar.”
“A liar?” Greysen frowned. “What did he lie to you about?”
* * *
Jonathan’s nose had more or less stopped bleeding as he dragged over the next suitcase. It was a heavy leather affair, hard and brown and dusty, with tarnished brass catches and a handle that was flaking away, revealing spun fabric beneath it.
“Thatcher’s Apothecary Shop,” Jonathan read from his guidebook. “Strangeworlds Society outpost. Second time lucky.” It was somewhere else he’d never been before, but the clock was ticking. He didn’t waste time in opening the suitcase and quickly stepping inside.
A strong smell of disinfectant and herbs assaulted his senses before his vision caught up. He made out an array of bottles and jars lining the walls and windows.
A man with long gray-black hair, and wearing a brown apron, looked up in complete shock at the suitcase and the young man who clambered out of it.
“Excuse me,” Jonathan said, straightening his bow tie. “But I understand you are familiar with the Strangeworlds Society? I do hate to bother you like this, but…” He sighed. “My name is Jonathan Mercator. And I need your help.”
He lied to me about almost everything.” Flick sighed, having explained to Greysen and Darilyn the whole business about Jonathan keeping her abilities a secret. “He kept something special about me a secret from myself. And then expected me to help him! Who does that?”
Greysen and Darilyn exchanged a glance.
“Perhaps,” Darilyn said carefully, “someone who has had to look after themselves for a long time.”
“I’ve had to look after myself too,” Flick said.
“Your parents aren’t…?”
“Oh, they’re alive,” Flick said. “Just… busy. All the time. They work a lot, and I’ve got a little brother.…” She stopped, the thought of Freddy’s damp shiny face like a punch to the heart. “Sometimes they don’t come home until late and I have to do things…”
“And they are otherwise… absent?”
“No,” Flick admitted. “No, they’re around me too much a lot of the time.”
Darilyn gave a small smile. “It sounds to me as though you have the sort of home that Jonathan would very much like to have.”
Flick opened her mouth to retort, but found she didn’t have anything to say.
“I’m sure I don’t know your circumstances,” Darilyn said, “but what do you think your family would do, if you were stuck here?”
The question hurt. “They won’t know where I’ve gone. They’ll never know what happened to me.”
“As Jonathan Mercator never knew what happened to his father,” Darilyn said. “Grief affects everyone differently. And whether or not Daniel Mercator is alive, his son is mourning him. Grief makes kind men into monsters. But they can change back.”
Flick frowned. “Okay. But he should have told me the truth, shouldn’t he?”
“Yes,” Greysen said. “He should have. But the young man you’ve described to me isn’t the Jonathan I knew.”
“People can change. You said so.”
“They can.” He nodded. “But let me finish. The young man you described to me doesn’t sound like Jonathan—it sounds like his father.”
“His father?”
“Indeed. When Daniel Mercator first lost his wife, he became much like the person you’re describing. Secretive. Telling half-truths. Evasive. Self-serving, to an extent. He got over it, in time, of course. But when it first happened… it was as though she had taken all the good side of his personality with her.”
Flick thought about this. It was understandable. She didn’t want to understand it, but she did. “What happened to her? Jonathan never said.”
“A freak accident, from what Daniel told us,” Darilyn said. “They were exploring a world they’d been to a dozen times before. Then there was a stampede of wild animals. They ran, holding tight to one another, but in the chaos their hands broke contact and Jodie was…” She winced. “Seeing that happen to someone you love would break you.”
Flick bit her lip. “That’s horrible.”
“I’m not saying you need to forgive Jonathan right away,” Darilyn said. “But after a loss like that, and then losing your father as well… it could be easy to assume there’s no good left in the world.”
Flick looked at the locked door to the Waiting Room. Everything Darilyn said made sense. But if Jonathan hadn’t thought she would help him…
What were the chances of him trying to help her?
* * *
“I have to say, I didn’t think I’d be seeing you today, or any other day. You Strangeworlders never change, do you?” The apothecary put a cup of herbal tea down in front of Jonathan.
“I don’t want any tea,” Jonathan said. “Unless it comes with milk and two sugars.”
“You’re in shock. And there’s blood on your face.”
Jonathan brushed at his upper lip. “I need your help. Mr.… Thatcher?”
“That’s right. Though you can call me Tristyan. Jonathan…” He paused. “I knew your grandfather.”
“And my father?”
“I’m afraid I never had that honor.”
Jonathan silently cursed. He picked up the cup and sipped the warm liquid. It tasted like wet paper but cooled the hot throb in his nose straightaway. He put the cup down. “Look, I’ll be blunt. I need to get to the City of Five Lights. Quickly. I’ve wasted enough time as it is, and I only have a few hours of their time left. It says in my guidebook that this place belongs to a Custodian. I need to know what suitcases you have.”
“This place did belong to a Custodian,” Tristyan said. “But that is no longer the case.”
Jonathan slumpe
d down in his chair.
“However, I do still have the suitcase you mention.” Tristyan got to his feet. He was very tall. “I thought your travel agency had a great many suitcases, though?”
“We do. But look, it’s complicated. I need to get a certain person out of a certain situation. And fast.”
Tristyan raised an eyebrow. “Out of Five Lights? The city?”
“Yes.”
Tristyan’s eyes unfocused for a moment. “Has—has the worst happened, then?”
“The worst?” Jonathan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You do know, don’t you?” Tristyan stared. “About what is happening to the City of Five Lights?”
“I don’t know anything,” Jonathan said, wincing at how very true that statement was. “What’s wrong? What’s happening to Five Lights?”
Tristyan paused. Then sat back down at the table, facing Jonathan. “Five Lights,” he said carefully, “is a place of schisms and magic, correct?”
“I know that. It always has been.”
“Yes. And it has been able to exist with schisms coming and going, opening and closing. The place is so rich in magic that it simply heals itself over and over. It is a wonderful world.”
Jonathan said nothing. He could feel a dull coil of dread beginning in his stomach.
“However, there is a… a danger. Something new. Magic is leaking out of Five Lights. Like water through a sieve. And it is leaking too fast for it to be replaced.”
Jonathan’s mouth dropped open. “But how? Schisms are small. They close up by themselves if left alone and with all the magic in Five Lights they should close up easily.”
“If they are small, yes,” Tristyan said. “But what if there was a large schism? A very large schism?”
“How large?” asked Jonathan, the dread twisting and untwisting inside him.
Tristyan shook his head. “No one knows. But the rate those streets have been disappearing and the way the climate and spin of the world has been changing…”
“The streets have been vanishing,” Jonathan repeated. “The Thieves said they needed to escape the world. They know.”
“The Thieves of Five Lights deal in magic,” Tristyan said, nodding. “They will be aware of what is happening.” He traced a finger around the rim of his cup. “Five Lights is crumbling, Jonathan Mercator. It is not merely your friend who is in danger.”
“But what caused such a schism?” Jonathan asked. “How could such a thing happen?”
Tristyan looked at him and seemed to be wondering if he could be trusted. “Tell me, how did you come to run Strangeworlds Travel Agency?”
“I, er, inherited it. There was no one else left.”
Tristyan’s face fell.
Jonathan was quiet for a moment. “My mother died when I was only fourteen. And I… I was so angry about the idea of the travel agency after she died…” He sniffed. “I felt as though the place had taken her away from me.”
Tristyan put his head to one side in sympathy.
Jonathan glanced away. His throat was aching. “My father tried to teach me about it afterward, but the fact it had taken my mother… it was always hanging over us both.” He picked at a thread on his sleeve. “And now he’s… not around. I can’t ask him anything about it. I feel like I wasted the time we had together.”
Tristyan reached across the table and touched Jonathan on the arm. His carefully blank expression had softened into something like sorrow. “The time we have with loved ones is never wasted. I know that better than most.”
Jonathan pulled his mouth into a flat sort of smile. “You lost someone… because of the Strangeworlds Society?”
“Yes.” Tristyan took his hand back. “I did.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Tristyan glanced at a picture frame on the counter. The glass was facing away from Jonathan. “It was a long time ago. And right now, you have a task to do. I have one single suitcase. The others were taken back to your world many years ago. I’ll be quite honest with you. I don’t know where it leads. It may not be anywhere useful. I think it was only left here as a gesture.” He got up abruptly and disappeared through the doorway. He was gone for only a few minutes and came back in holding an extremely dusty and faded suitcase.
He put it down on the table with a thump. His gray-black hair fell from behind one pointed ear.
Jonathan ran a hand over the leather, the dust gathering under his fingers like gray clouds. “So,” he said to the suitcase, “where do you go?”
You’re quite certain this will work?” Tristyan asked, as Jonathan climbed out of a suitcase into the apothecary’s shop for the second time that day, this time holding a book in one hand and a backpack in the other. “It’s very old,” Tristyan continued. “I don’t recall anyone ever using it.”
“I’m not certain of anything,” Jonathan said. “But I need to try. They’ve got my friend, and it’s my fault.” He dropped the enormous book he had fetched from Strangeworlds onto the floor and began to turn the pages.
“What is that?” Tristyan stepped back from the flurry of activity.
“A map book. An old one.” Jonathan hummed as he turned to the right page. “The last thing I want is to jump in there without knowing what’s on the other side. All right. This is you.” He pointed at a labeled oval on the page. “And that old suitcase you have leads…” He turned the book on its side to read a scribbled note, before flipping through the pages. He found the right page and squinted at more tightly packed writing. “The Station. That’s a Strangeworlds Society outpost.” A small spark of hope ignited in his chest. “And from there…” He turned more pages in the map book. “There are several options, at that point. Assuming the suitcases haven’t been moved.”
“Can you travel from the Station to the City of Five Lights?”
“Not directly,” Jonathan said. “Not according to the map. But there are other cases there I can go through. My idea is to find a suitcase that will take me back to Five Lights. One that doesn’t come from Strangeworlds,” he added.
Tristyan bit his lip. “What if there isn’t one on hand? You could be going in and out of suitcases over and over again. How will you carry them all with you?”
“I won’t be pulling any of them through with me.” Jonathan adjusted his backpack straps. “I’m going to jump through empty-handed. The only suitcase I’ll be carrying in my hand is the one I want the Thieves to take from me.”
“But you’ll be stranded. How will you get back?”
“One problem at a time, please.” Jonathan closed the book of maps and shoved it into his backpack. “Besides, there was a Strangeworlds Society outpost at Five Lights—Quickspark’s. It was robbed, but the cases must still be in the city, somewhere. I’ll find a way out.”
Tristyan stepped back. “Can I do anything to help?”
“Keep this suitcase close by,” Jonathan said. “Please.”
“I shall,” Tristyan said. Then he smiled. “It almost seems foolhardy to admit that I miss this. The visits and watching you all have your adventures, I mean.”
Jonathan paused. “You never traveled, then?”
“No, no.” The apothecary shook his head. “Not for the likes of me. Someone has to stay at home.” A heavy expression crossed his face and he shook his head, as if to clear it. “Until next time, Jonathan Mercator. I hope to see you again very soon.”
“Thank you,” Jonathan put a hand out. “For the help.”
“Not at all.” Tristyan shook it.
Jonathan squared his shoulders. “All right. Here goes nothing…” The old case, hidden by the apothecary for years, lay open before him. He stepped into it and vanished.
* * *
Jonathan wouldn’t come for her.
Flick didn’t want to think about it, but the miserable thought kept creeping into her mind like fog under a door.
His “friendship” had all been a ruse to get her to help him. Why would he try to save her?
An
d if he didn’t, what if no one ever did?
* * *
Jonathan clambered carefully out of the case.
Immediately a screaming noise blared close by, making his ears throb, and he froze in fear before realizing it was a train whistle.
“The Station…,” he whispered under his breath, his muscles slowly unbunching. “Of course.” He turned to the suitcase that led back to Tristyan’s apothecary shop. He took hold of the handle on the outside and steeled himself to do something incredibly unnatural. He pushed the handle inward, pressing the suitcase back on itself, back into the apothecary’s shop. Doing it felt awfully wrong—like missing a step walking down the stairs. The suitcase popped out of his grip and vanished. Jonathan shuddered. He’d only done that once before, and his dad had come straight back for him, afterward. This time, he was on his own. He shook off the feeling and hopped down from the luggage rack the suitcase was stored on. He seemed to be in some sort of train station storage room. There was a lot of luggage around, most of it modern and on wheels. He crept across the small, gloomy room to peer out of the frosted glass window in the door. There was a cobweb over the doorway. Good. That meant no one regularly came in. He had time.
The screaming whistle came again, like an elbow into his brain, reminding him that time was running out.
Jonathan took out the map. According to it, there were five cases hidden here at the Station. There were descriptions of what each suitcase looked like, but not a lot of detail. He needed to find them. Fast.
He went over to the oldest-looking suitcases on the racks and started to open them, one by one.
* * *
Fear condensed in Flick’s stomach like sour milk, turning into a hard ball of pain that pushed at her insides and made her feel faint.
As much as she complained and griped and moaned about her own family, she was also terrified—deathly terrified—at the prospect of never seeing them again. What if by the time she finally escaped this place her parents were old and didn’t remember her? Or what if—and she could barely stand to think it—what if by the time she got back they were gone forever?
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