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 Like living in a fort within a fort, Molly said, watching the direction of
Lauren s gaze.
Lauren nodded.  I wish it seemed like overkill.
 I know what you mean. Molly shrugged.  But at least nothing is getting in
here tonight.
Lauren, lying with her own cot shoved against Jake s, realized as she was
drifting off to sleep that he was wearing a red cape. She wondered which of
the goroths had managed to understand what Jake wanted well enough to find the
cloth and fashion a cape.
Sweet of them, she thought. And drifted down to darkness.
Copper House
 Hunter? Hunter? He s& gone.
Lauren woke, to find the goroths up and milling, the guards standing around
staring with panic in their eyes.
And she saw Jake s cot empty, and looked for him, and did not see him.
She was on her feet, caught in a fine rage and a coarse and terrible dread.
 Where is he? she asked to anyone and everyone.  What happened?
 He kissed you, Doggie said, wringing her knobby hands.  He said,  Everything
will be okay, Mommy. Superman will go get Daddy. And I thought he was
playing, for he spoke much of this Superman yesterday after he pulled the red
cloak out of the bag you brought him though when he asked me to get the cloak
from the bag, I could not find it there and then he said to me that he was
Superman. The hands wrung faster,  And you said he did not have the god
powers, so I thought he could not do any harm to himself playing with the
mirrors.
Lauren s skin suddenly wore a sheen of cold sweat.  The mirrors, she
whispered. She d gone through gates as a small child. Had brought playmates
into her room from Oria, too, by opening gates. But Jake had never opened a
gate. Had never done magic.
But he watched. He had traveled the path between the worlds.
He knew the feel of gates opening, the feel of the power that opened them.
 But when he put his hand on the mirror and the green fire opened before him,
I was not fast enough. Had I been, I would have pulled him back or barring
that, I would have gone with him. But the passage closed behind him, and I
could do nothing but wake you.
Lauren felt light-headed. Sick. Her mind whirled, confused, like an animal
caught in a trap trying to find a way out. Trying to roll back time just a few
precious minutes.
 Which one? Lauren asked, and suddenly Molly was at her side.
 What happened? What are you going to do? I just woke up and all I caught is
that Jake is gone.
 He opened a gate and went through it. He s gone to get his father.
Molly looked bewildered.  But his father is dead.
Lauren asked Doggie,  Which mirror?
Doggie showed her, and Lauren knelt before it, her fingers pressed lightly to
the glass, feeling the echoes of the last passage.
 Lauren, Molly said, her voice a background noise in Lauren s mind,  Brian is
dead. Where could Jake possibly think he might find him?
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Lauren felt the first echoes of Jake s passage, and shivered, wanting to pull
away. Coldness, darkness, a slow and terrifying vibration that had nothing to
do with worlds and life, and everything to do with eternity and death it
seeped into her fingertips and ran through her bloodstream, freezing her from
the heart out. Her child was in there. Jake. Jake, who thought he was
Superman.
 Where did he go? Molly asked again.
 Heaven, Lauren said, her voice dull.  Or Hell. Or maybe just nonexistence. I
can t tell.
Molly put a hand on Lauren s shoulder.  How could Jake know where to go?
 Brian gave Jake part of himself part of his soul, his essence to keep Jake
alive when you carried him from Oria back to Earth after the accident. Jake
can feel his father as clearly as I can feel Jake. Maybe even clearer.
Lauren stared into the mirror, into the reflection of her eyes, and there
looked within for the fire comforting green fire, the embrace of the energies
of the universe. She splayed her fingers against the glass, summoning the
gatefires, and the storm that rode with them. But the familiar energies did
not come. No green light glimmered far away. The fire that came for her, the
fire that had swallowed Jake and that would take her, too, seeped toward her,
gray and cold and terrifying, and tears filled her eyes as she thought of her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]