The Shadow Men

Cruel Mistress

In the old days,” Veronica said, slipping into the Mercedes’ front passenger seat without asking Trix if she minded sitting in the back, “we’d have had to wait until morning. All the shops closed at a decent time then. Life was less frantic. Now people want twenty-four-hour everything. TV, takeout. Clothes shopping. Things are changing.”

“What do you mean?” Jim asked. He held the passenger door open, watching as Veronica made herself comfortable and then sat motionless with her hands folded in her lap. The only real sign of effort was the woman’s subtle sigh.

“Shopping,” Veronica said. She looked up at Jim, eyes twinkling, then glanced over his shoulder at Trix. “Oh, you’re coming, dear, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Trix said. She got into the back of the car, glancing at Jim and trying to communicate something with a frown, a sharp nod.

“What shopping?” Jim said, and he thought, Is she really just a crazy old lady after all? Out here on the busy Boston street, the woman seemed somehow smaller than she had in the restaurant, and less convincing.

Veronica closed her eyes briefly, resting her head back against the seat as if asleep. But the frown was not at home on a relaxed face. Her hands twitched a little in her lap, and Jim leaned sideways to look in the rear window. Trix, sitting in the backseat, was watching Veronica with her mouth slightly open, whether in awe or fear he couldn’t tell.

Veronica opened her eyes so suddenly that Jim took a small step back. “Copley Place,” she said. “There’s a mime artist on the library steps as they pass. Holly wants to stop and watch, but Jenny’s in a hurry to get into the mall and find somewhere to eat. Jonathan holds her elbow and whispers something to her. Something Holly can’t hear. I think she’s a little spooked. Jenny’s missed that. What kind of a mother am I? She puts one arm around Holly’s shoulder.

“But Holly’s fascinated by the mime, and his silently moving mouth. She rubs her ears, as if she’s been swimming and maybe got water in them. But she can still hear the pigeons and the traffic, and a bunch of children across by the church are singing a song she hasn’t heard before. The mime opens and closes windows in thin air, as if he’s peering through from somewhere else, and he smiles at her. She smiles back. He’s not so scary.”

“What is all this?” Jim asked. “What are you doing?”

“I’m giving you what I can of your wife and daughter before they went,” Veronica said. “Now, if you’ll just…” She raised and lowered one hand, an almost dismissive gesture.

“Trix, I don’t like-”

“Jim!” Trix snapped from the backseat. If her voice had been angry or impatient, he might have argued. But Jim could see that she was crying.

“Jenny’s hungry. She’s got lunch on her mind. But Jonathan sees what Holly really wants. He knows even as they pass the bookshop, and Holly slips away from her mother, pressing her face to the window. There’s a display of fairy books there. She already has some-she has three of them-but there are two others she’s always wanted. I’ll get us a table, Jonathan says, and Jenny smiles at him and nods. I won’t be long. She follows Holly inside. The smell of new books, coffee from the Starbucks upstairs in the shop, the sound of gentle conversation at the counter. Pages flip, books thump closed. Holly is already past the counter and at the kids’ section, and she has a book in each hand, deciding which to read.”

Veronica fell silent and her expression slowly changed. Gone was the gentle smile as she relayed Holly’s supposed behavior earlier that day. In its place was something like resignation.

“What happened next?” Jim asked, because he did believe, really. It wasn’t that he knew the story, but the subtleties were accurate: Holly’s delight at the fairy books, Jenny’s eagerness to get her daughter fed before shopping, Jonathan’s surprising perceptiveness for a guy who’d never wanted kids. She couldn’t be making this up.

“A book falls from the shelves,” the old woman said. “Jenny reaches for it, wonders, Why the hell did that one tumble, there’s no one to push it, there’s no reason- And then…” Veronica looked up at him again, and for a second there was a smile in her eyes. “Jonathan is back at home. The falling book is on its shelf, and your wife has never touched it.”

Jim breathed heavily, trying to process what she had said, and what she was still saying. “I don’t understand.”

“We must go there,” Veronica said. “That’s not always essential, but it can help. You need to feel the place to know it.”

“Copley Place?” he asked. The old woman nodded, and in the backseat Trix was looking at him expectantly. Jim pushed the door closed and stood alone on the street for a moment, cold, getting damp again from the fine rain. It’s where they were headed when I last saw them, so why the hell not? he thought. But as he got in and started the car, he knew there was more to it than that. He would go because Veronica had suggested it. And she knew.

The old woman sat quietly beside him as he drove, hands still crossed in her lap, and he adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see Trix.

“You all right?” he asked. Trix caught his eye and nodded. She even offered him a smile that said, Yes, fine now. He thought of standing on that traffic island pleading with the patterned cobbles for help, and the rain, and the long wait in the restaurant while Veronica dealt with some other city emergency.

“So what makes you the Oracle of Boston?” he asked. He heard an intake of breath from the backseat.

“Long story,” Veronica said.

“Well, it’ll take a few minutes to-”

“And private.”

“Right.” Jim pressed his lips together and flicked on the wipers. The rain was growing heavy again, and Boston’s evening streets demanded his attention. Dueling taxicabs jockeyed for position as they took couples and friends out for the evening. Other cars lined up at traffic signals, pedestrians dashed across the streets, and horns erupted here and there as impatience settled and tempers flared. You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience, he’d read somewhere once, and he leaned on the car horn for no reason.

Veronica turned to look directly at him. “Breathe, Mr. Banks,” she said. “I’ll do all I can.”

“Why Copley Square?” Jim asked. “Are Jenny and Holly still there?”

“Nowhere near. But you know that.”

“Then we should be going where they are!”

“You understand, Jim. You’re just trying hard not to.”

“Then fucking make me understand!”

“Jim!” Trix said from the backseat, but fear and anger had Jim now, and such emotions combined brought out the worst in people.

“Learn patience, Jim,” Veronica said, as if she’d known what he was just thinking. “I need to see where they were before they went, even if you do not. I need to… taste the air. It will help me pin down their location.”

Jim scoffed but said nothing. Tears pressed against his eyes and throat, and he did his best to swallow them down. They were as useless as drops in a rainstorm. “But you’ll help me find them?” he said finally.

“I have every intention of setting you on the right path.”

Jim nodded, and a tear streaked down his right cheek. Veronica saw it. He didn’t know how he knew that, but the air in the car seemed to soften. But perhaps that was just him. The trials of driving through a busy Boston possessed him for a while, and each time he looked in the mirror he saw Trix, light splaying across her bright hair, eyes sad, face shadowed with confusion and grief. We’ve both got to hold it together, he thought. And so far, she’s done more than I have to find Holly and Jenny.

“Thank you for helping,” he said softly, glancing across at the old woman. “And I’m sorry about…” He shrugged.

“Oh! A thank-you. Well, that’s an even better start.”

It took another ten minutes to wend their way toward Copley Square. They passed Boston Common, rolling along Beacon Street, then cut left along Clarendon, finding a parking space opposite the First Baptist Church.

“It’s Borders, on the corner,” Veronica said. She was breathing more heavily now, and Jim noticed that her skin had taken on a sickly pallor.

“Are you okay, Miss Braden?” Trix asked, leaning over from the backseat.

“I’m fine,” the old lady said. She took a few breaths, seeming to gather herself, and then offered Jim a small smile. “When there’s a trauma to the city, I suffer a little myself.”

“A trauma to the city?” he asked.

“I’ll explain when we’re there.”

Jim glanced at his watch. Almost ten p.m. “It’ll be closing in a minute.”

“Not tonight,” Veronica said. “Tonight it will remain open until almost ten-fifteen.” She checked the side mirror, then opened the door, standing up with an audible groan.

“Jim,” Trix said as soon as Veronica let the door swing shut, “you’ve got to give her a chance. You must! Believe me, this is the only thing-”

“We’re here now,” he said. “This is where they came. And the things she said about Holly, those fairy books…” He shook his head. “She couldn’t know that.”

“So you’ll give her a chance?”

“It’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?” It came out harsher than he’d intended, but when he and Trix got out of the car he smiled at her, and she nodded. She knew him so well, and even with everything that was happening, she’d know that Jim would struggle to hold on to reason. Though an artist, he was also a pragmatist, an atheist, and a skeptic when it came to the supernatural or anything associated with it.

“She’ll amaze you,” Trix said. “Come on. She’s going.”

They followed Veronica along the street, and Jim was surprised when Trix clasped his hand. He took great comfort from the contact, and as he realized it was because she was afraid, he acknowledged his own fear as well.

Entering the shop, breathing in warmth and the familiar smell of new books, he wondered what they would find.

It was almost as if he had walked this way before. He had, of course, many times in the past. He and Jenny were both big readers, though their tastes differed-she loved thrillers, historical novels, and real-life stories, while he preferred biographies and science fiction. When they came into town they often spent an hour in one bookstore or another, enjoying watching Holly browse the books, buying a couple here and there, maybe progressing to the cafe for coffee and a shortbread, and sitting to check out their purchases. But this time was different. Veronica had said only a few sentences about Holly and Jenny being here, but the picture conjured in his mind was complete. He was walking in his missing family’s footsteps.

Breathing deeply, Jim moved past the counter and approached the children’s section.

Trix had let go of his hand as they walked through the front doors. Perhaps she’d felt the tension growing in him, or sensed that his mind wasn’t quite in the present as he tried to relive that moment, following Jenny and Holly’s path.

“Here,” Veronica said. She’d gone ahead, and as if following a guide of some kind, Jim and Trix had stayed a few steps behind. Now he saw her swaying slightly, and he reached out hesitantly, not wanting to touch her but worried that she was about to fall. If she drops dead here, now, just what the fuck will that mean? But she didn’t fall, and when she looked back at them he saw a strength in her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. Something was affecting her, challenging her. But she was fighting back.

“I’m not sure,” Trix said. A strange thing to say.

“Do you feel it, Jim?” Veronica asked.

He frowned and looked around at the book stacks-the splash of colors and textures, words and names jumping out at him, the spines of children’s books hinting at the stories inside, and books faced out tempting with elaborate and enticing covers. “No,” he said, not understanding what she meant, but even as he closed his mouth again he did feel something. He felt…

Someone passed him by, but there was no one there.

The front door closed softly, and he heard the distant jangle of keys, but when he looked back it stood open, warm-air curtain shimmering his view of the rain-slicked sidewalk outside.

It’s all so wrong! he thought, and a nightmare he used to have when he was young struck him for the first time in decades. It used to plague him when he was sick, and he’d never been able to describe it, not even to himself. It was an impression of terrible space, so wide, so endless, that it lessened him where he stood at its heart, smothered him, crushed him down with enormity and possibility. And now it impacted again, because everything he saw and felt around him seemed, for a moment, an infinity away.

He gasped in air that was too far away to breathe. Book titles on the shelving before him blurred, and he closed his eyes to the cold, staggering thought, They mean something else! He stepped back and Trix stopped him, hands on his waist and her chin resting against his shoulder. He heard her breathing hard, felt her heart thudding against his back.

“What is it?” she asked Veronica, voice loud in Jim’s ear.

He opened his eyes again, and the woman was staring at a bookshelf. It was four rows above the floor, a selection of hardback books for children-atlases, natural-history books, histories-and as she slowly lifted her hand and moved closer, Jim knew what she was doing.

“This one,” she said. She touched the spine of a book called People and Places. “It fell, but not here. It only fell there.”

“Where?” Jim asked. Anger flared and faded again just as quickly, because now, through the fear, he only felt a desperate need to know. “ Please tell me, where?”

“Where they went,” Veronica said. “They slipped through into another Boston, and this is where it happened. Here.” She tapped the book’s spine and looked around again, ignoring an inquiring look from a shop attendant. “It’s all closed up again now, though. The In-Between has receded; the wound is mended. But there are always scars.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Jim said.

Trix held him tighter. “I think I’m starting to.”

Veronica froze, and it was that sudden stillness that made Jim realize just how alive she seemed. Even while sitting beside him in the car she had been a formidable presence-a person whose gravity was greater than most-and he imagined her being the sort who could command a room upon entry, if she so desired. But for that brief moment she became more immobile than he believed any living person could.

“Closing time,” the shop assistant said.

“Yes,” Veronica said, turning and breezing past Jim and Trix. “Good. It’s gone now. Come with me.”

“Where to?” Jim asked, pleased to leave that place. They were here and then they weren’t, he thought, and there was something cold about that shop, and distant, and he wondered why the assistant didn’t seem to feel it. She smiled indulgently as they exited the store, and he heard the jangle of keys as she closed and locked the door behind them.

“Somewhere special,” Veronica said. “I can tell you more in the car. Hurry.”

As the rain stopped, a siren wailed in the distance. They walked back to the car. It took Jim a couple of seconds to identify the sensation rising inside him.

It was hope.

They slipped through, Trix thought. She was sitting in the backseat again, heart thudding, and as Veronica lowered herself gently into the front passenger seat, Trix said, “They’re somewhere else.”

“Yes, dear,” the woman replied. Jim was walking around the front of the car to the driver’s side, and for an unsettling moment Trix felt complicit in something of which she had no knowledge.

“But you can help us find them?” she whispered.

“I can help you.”

Jim opened the door and climbed in. He slipped the keys into the ignition and placed his hands on the wheel, ten to two. “So will you start telling me now?”

“I will,” Veronica said. “Now that I know for sure, I will.”

“Good. Where to?”

“The North End,” Veronica said. “Home.”

“We’re going to your house?” Trix asked.

“Like I said, dear. Somewhere special.”

Trix stared from the window and watched Boston passing them by, and thought about who they were with and where they were going. For some reason she’d never imagined the Oracle of Boston even having a home. Her grandmother had told her that story when she was barely into her teens, and the Oracle had taken on the hue of someone mystical and mysterious, one of the city’s own shadows, a breath of Boston’s unique air, a ghost. The story had been remarkable and felt very real, and Trix had always believed it was this, more than a thousand childhood dreams and a love of books, that had given her the open mind she had grown up with. She’d toyed with various prescriptive religions before settling into the comfortable embrace of her own beliefs. She’d once heard a ghost, and remembered the way sadness had settled around her for a brief, shattering moment as the wraith walked by. And now here she was in a shiny new Mercedes with the woman who knew Boston, and whom Boston knew.

“A long time ago, there was a man called Thomas McGee,” Veronica said. Her voice had changed somewhat, as if she used different tones and inflections to relay stories, and Trix felt herself settling in to listen. “He was the Oracle at the end of the nineteenth century,” the older woman continued. “The first Irish Oracle, in fact, since the Boston Brahmins had dominated up until then.”

Trix frowned. “Brahmin” was such an outmoded word to describe Boston’s first families and their English Protestant ancestors. She wondered how old Veronica really was, and how long she had been the Oracle.

“By all accounts McGee was a proud man,” Veronica continued, “an older Irishman who’d seen his countrymen struggling toward equality against a background of bigotry and resentment. Since the middle of that century they’d filled most of the unskilled-labor jobs in the city, household domestics and the like, but as the years went on they became the backbone of Boston’s industrial boom. Yet they were still looked down upon. They lived in squalor in the North End and other areas. The all-Irish neighborhoods housed whole families living in single rooms. McGee grew up through that, and after he took on the mantle of Oracle he became more determined than ever to ensure that his people lived better lives in the future.”

“But as Oracle, weren’t all Boston’s people his people?” Trix asked. Maybe she had a rose-tinted view of what being Oracle meant; maybe she’d set Veronica on a pedestal higher than the position justified. Just because it was a little beyond and outside the perception of most normal people, did that mean that being Oracle implied perfection?

“Of course,” Veronica said. “But McGee… well, no one becomes Oracle without maintaining hold of his or her earlier experiences. We are a product of our experiences after all. He was as human as I, and I’m as human as you, dear.”

“So what happened?” Jim asked. He was driving quickly, paying close attention to the road, hands gripping the wheel tightly. He’d moved the rearview mirror back to its original position, and Trix had to lean to the left to catch sight of him now. But he was no longer glancing back to see if she was all right. His focus was elsewhere.

“The longer he remained Oracle, the more he witnessed events in the city around him, the more determined McGee became to ensure that the Oracle of Boston was always Irish.”

“Are you?” Trix asked.

“No,” Veronica said. “My father was English, my mother Italian. I do have some Irish in me, many generations old. But if Thomas McGee were alive today, he’d view me as his…”

“Enemy?” Trix finished for her.

“Perhaps,” Veronica said, smiling enigmatically.

“What does any of this have to do with Jenny and Holly?” Jim asked. Trix knew that tone; he was barely holding back his impatience. She’d heard him like that a few times before-usually when Holly was being difficult and deadlines pressured him into being a lesser father than they all knew he was.

“Plenty,” Veronica said. “Didn’t I say I’d tell you what was happening?”

The car was silent, and neither of them responded. And she shut down his rising anger just like that, Trix thought, seeing how much more loosely Jim sat in his seat.

“Well, then,” the woman continued. “Thomas McGee spent a long time planning how to pass on the responsibility of Oracle. It’s not a title, as such. It’s not a position that you can interview people for, or place an ad in the newspaper for when you feel your time in this world is coming to an end. The Oracle is you, as much as you are the Oracle, and it makes decisions through you.”

“It’s something separate?” Trix asked.

“Yes and no. The Oracle shares the soul of the city. It exists within me just as my own soul does. Though the city does not control the Oracle, it influences.” Her voice was lower, darker. “It becomes a corner of your own soul, when your soul has no corners.

“McGee was the city’s heart and soul for over forty years. In that time he saved countless lives, settled hearts, calmed ghosts, protected the city from dangers. He was, as far as I can tell, a good man. But he also spent a long time studying magicks that no Oracle should ever need. Druid ceremonial chants, Native American magic, Chinese and Eastern European spells, and much, much more. He accumulated a whole library of texts and parchments, purchasing them when he had to, procuring them by other means if he could. Though he could never leave the city, he sent people out to fetch what he sought. He studied and planned, and made it his aim to secure the Irish lineage of Oracles from his life forth.”

“He wanted Boston to remain Irish forever,” Jim said.

“Yes. He witnessed the Italians flooding the city, lessening the Irish majority, and though he was the Oracle, I believe there was always a small part of him that was still too much of what he had been before. He’d suffered hardships and discrimination, and that twisted parts of him that not even being Oracle could completely erase.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Jim said.

“Have you ever heard of me?” Veronica asked.

In the backseat, Trix smiled. That had been a question she’d asked her grandmother, all those years ago. If the Oracle’s so awesome, how come everyone doesn’t go to her? And her grandmother’s answer had stuck with her forever: She’s there to help people who come to her with open minds and open hearts, and who are truly in need. Others will never believe in her, and if they don’t believe, they’ll never find her.

“Fair point,” Jim said. “Which way?”

“Left here. Five minutes. I’ll show you more then, but for now all you need to know is this: McGee tried something that no one had ever tried before, and he failed. And his failure had dire consequences.

“He performed a ritual to try to secure Boston for the Irish, to make sure the influence of Irish culture would remain and that the Oracle would always be Irish. But he toyed with magicks far beyond his capacity to control, and his meddling splintered the city. No one since has discovered just how he did this, because everything he used in the process was destroyed. But his ritual created a schism, splitting Boston’s reality into three distinct paths: one where a Brahmin Oracle would exist, and the city reflected those influences; one where an Irish Oracle persisted; and one, this world we know, where the Oracle is chosen by the city, as was always intended.”

“What happened to McGee?” Trix asked, though she thought the answer was almost inevitable.

“I believe he died,” Veronica said. Trix hadn’t been expecting that. Doesn’t she know for sure? she wondered.

“And these Bostons,” Jim said, gesturing at the windshield as if to indicate all three. “What are they? Where are they?”

“They’re here and now, but beyond the reach of most,” Veronica said. “Alternate paths. Histories, presents, and futures created by McGee’s dabbling. He smashed reality and replaced it without most people noticing. It’s possible he changed things-thousands might have ceased to exist, and thousands more been dragged into existence, though there’s no way of telling.”

“But how could he do that and not change the whole world?” Trix asked. “If he changes Boston…”

“They’re alternate paths, and in the other Bostons the worlds beyond are subtly different, too,” the old woman said. “But only insofar as they’re affected by Boston. He split this city into three new worlds, but Boston is the heart of the change. Its differences seep into the wider world. He made it one of the most important cities ever, and most Bostonians don’t even know.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jim muttered. He stopped at traffic signals and glanced back over his shoulder, and Trix expected to see his weary cynicism souring his face. But he looked excited and hopeful, the emotions sheltered but definitely there. She knew him well enough to see that.

“You think Jenny and Holly have slipped through to one of these other worlds?” Trix asked.

“Our world, but an alternate path,” Veronica said. “And yes, that is what happened.”

“How?” Trix asked. “Why? In that bookshop? How come no one saw, or raised the alarm? Why them? What happened to them, do they know, will they… Will they be scared?”

Veronica turned in her seat, shifting sideways so that she could look comfortably at Trix. Jim glanced nervously at her, as if expecting her to do something terrible or unexpected. But the woman simply remained there, staring at Trix as something changed in her eyes. She’s seeking, Trix thought, unsure where the idea came from. But it seemed to fit. Veronica was in the car with them, but part of her was elsewhere as well.

“Trix, you were cold and wet and alone,” she said. “You tried to grab the branch, but it was slippery, wet from the rain and slick with moss. You tried for a long time, kicking against the current. Kicking against the depths pulling you down.”

Trix suddenly felt very cold. She gasped, shock stealing her breath.

“Every time you grabbed the branch you held on tighter, but when you tried to pull yourself out, it always slipped away. Because you weren’t grasping tighter, you were holding on weaker. You were fading. You knew it, but you refused to panic.” She leaned toward Trix, almost kneeling on the front seat now. “Am I right, Trix?”

“Yes,” Trix tried to say, but it came out as little more than a breath.

“How old were you?”

“Seven. My grandparents told me not to go too close to the river. We were on vacation in Baxter State Park in Maine. They were in the cabin getting dinner, and I… I went for a walk.”

“Too close to the river,” Veronica said.

“Yeah.” Trix remembered seeing the branch above her for the last time, shattered into a hundred slivers as she slipped below the water and sunlight glancing from the surface rippled her vision. Something grabbed her then and dragged her away, her limbs trailing through plants and weeds growing across the riverbed, though she could not grab hold of anything. She remembered wondering why, with hands so small and strong, nothing would let her hold on. And then after that things were dark and lost, until the sun prized her eyelids apart and her grandfather was crying above her.

“In the other Bostons… I don’t know if you drowned in that river at the age of seven, or died at a later age in an entirely separate incident. But in both of the other Bostons, you no longer exist.”

“Three years ago,” Trix said. “I had a bad car crash.” A chill went through her, raising goosebumps on her arms. For an instant too short to be measured she felt totally, utterly alone, little more than the memory of a name in the cool vastness of space. Then Jim adjusted the mirror again so he could see her, and his kind eyes brought her back.

“You died there, Trix,” Veronica said. “But here you live. And that makes you one of a handful.” She turned back to Jim. “You, too.”

“Jim?” Trix asked.

“Meningitis when I was six,” he said. “My mother always told a story about me fading away and then coming back again. I died, she told me. They brought me back.”

“And so they did,” Veronica said. “But in those other Bostons, death caught up with you, either that day or some other. You’re both Uniques. Most people exist across realities, but not you. And that gives you a certain freedom that those people don’t have.”

“What freedom?” Trix asked.

“To dream. You’re missing over there, but perhaps when you sleep, you know those other worlds.”

“The paintings,” Trix said, and she saw Jim’s gentle nod. The cityscapes that haunted them both were more real than they could have imagined.

“We’re here,” Veronica said, gesturing through the windshield. “Third house along. Come inside, and I’ll show you.”

Jim pulled up to the curb and put the car in park, killing the engine. “Just tell me,” he said. “Please, just tell me.”

“It is possible that you’ll see them again,” Veronica said. “That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? But much will depend on what the two of you do next.”

Standing at the front door, feeling Jim slip his hand into hers while Veronica fumbled with a set of keys, Trix had a very definite image in her mind of what to expect in an Oracle’s home. There would be walls lined with books and framed maps, both old and new. There would be a wealth of artifacts from Boston’s past-many of them rare, some perhaps believed lost to antiquity. There would be dark, shadow-clogged rooms with high-backed leather chairs, a liquor cabinet, perhaps, and the carpets would be worn by generations of honored footsteps. Perhaps the place would be slightly run-down, in need of a spring cleaning, but the accumulated dust would be a sign of just how crammed the building was with evidence of a wonderful history. An Oracle was a human as well, and there would be a kitchen and dining area with a well-stocked fridge and pantry. And upstairs, perhaps she slept in a four-poster bed, her window open to the night so that she could hear the pained requests and sad wishes of those in the city who believed.

But as Veronica pushed the door open, Trix realized quickly that her preconceptions were about to be shot down.

The hallway was light and airy, the stairwell rising above them to an atrium window on the third floor. Moonlight flooded in, silvering the walls and dark wooden staircases. The floor was light oak and the furnishings spare: a phone table, a chair, a coatrack with a lone umbrella propped in the stand.

“Please, come in,” Veronica said. “Hang your coats. The rack’s by a radiator so they’ll dry.”

“Where are we going?” Jim asked.

Veronica closed the door behind them and smiled gently at Trix. “There’s a room upstairs,” she said. “I’ll lead you. It’s where Thomas McGee tried to cast his abominable spells, and where he probably died.”

“Probably?”

“It was his library. His study. This whole house.” She waved one hand to indicate the building around them, taking in all the rooms whose doors they could see and others they could not. “He could have used any room, but he chose that one. And every time I even walk by the closed door, I know why.”

“You sound afraid,” Trix said.

“The room… fascinates me,” she said softly, and then without further explanation she started up the staircase.

Jim followed without even sparing Trix a glance. He thinks he’s close, she thought. He must be terrified that she’s lied, or is mad, but he can’t ignore the idea that every second takes us one step closer to getting them back.

Trix climbed the stairs after Jim, and soon Veronica stood on the landing outside a closed door. She was pale, and the effect was not simply moonlight on her skin. The gentle artificial light emphasized the bags beneath her eyes, and the skin hanging on to her jawline seemed to defy gravity’s best efforts. Her eyes were wide, and there was a sheen of perspiration across her brow. “You don’t have to-” Trix began, but Veronica quickly cut her off, harsh and berating.

“Of course I do!” She reached out and opened the door. “There’s a small anteroom, then another doorway. An attempt at privacy, put in by Thomas McGee, I suspect. Just… just look for now. Look and see, and you’ll believe me. You might not understand… but you’ll believe. Then come to the living room downstairs, because I have something to give you.”

“What?”

“Two letters.” Veronica swayed past them and started down the stairs; she seemed to strengthen a little, and a smile crept over her face.

Trix suddenly felt abandoned.

Jim grabbed her hand and nodded at the open door. Inside, in the shadows, she could see a second closed door. A strange smell emerged-old, wet ash, and something less identifiable, like the scent of fallen pine needles but more sour.

“Are we doing the right thing?” she asked softly, and Jim scoffed.

“You’re the one who-” But he stopped mid-sentence, his face softening. “Trix, if there’s any clue, any chance that I can know what happened to them”-he looked at the doorway-“however crazy…”

“We have to take that chance,” she said.

“Yeah. We have to.” Holding Trix’s hand, Jim reached for the inner door.

With a Wonder and a Wild Desire

A S J IM pushed the door inward, he felt resistance, as though the air pressure was different on the other side. It opened with a sigh, a musty breath escaping from within, and he thought of Carter discovering the tomb of Tutankhamen. He entered, and Trix followed a step behind.

The only light came from behind them, providing just enough illumination to make out the ragged outline of a broken chair, and to see that the rough wooden floor seemed to have been blackened by flame. Then Trix made a murmur of discovery and clicked on a lightswitch, and a ceiling fixture on the other side of the room blazed to life.

“Holy shit,” Jim whispered.

Trix stepped up beside him, and the two of them looked around the room, unnerved. It was not merely the floor that had been blackened by fire, or at least scorched by a blast of blistering heat. Bookshelves had partially collapsed, leaving piles of books on the floor beneath them that looked like little more than ash sculptures. On the shelves that were intact, some of the books looked as though the fire had been a hungry animal, gnawing away the bindings and leaving scorched pages exposed. Others had their bindings intact, but they were only partially legible.

Jim took several steps toward the nearest shelf and saw that, beneath a sooty film, leather bindings on some of the older volumes had crinkled and tightened, but he could make out words in foreign languages he did not speak and arcane symbols he understood even less.

He turned to see that Trix had gone in the other direction. Some kind of sideboard had once abutted the wall there, only the rear legs still in evidence, fused to the wall. Jutting from the wall itself was a pattern of what he first took to be more strange designs, but then he recognized what appeared to be a copper coil, along with what might have been a sailor’s sextant and several other strange instruments. They were set into the wall as though it had once been wet cement and the objects had been pressed into the surface before it dried. Yet here the wall looked almost as though the wood had melted and run like candle wax.

The chair between them was actually only half of a chair, burnt so badly that the legs were thin and brittle sticks of charcoal. Beyond it, at the center of the room, the floor was streaked with a grayish white starburst pattern. Jim dragged the toe of his shoe through it and found it greasy and chalky at the same time, like creosote built up inside a fireplace.

Yet the most startling thing about the room had nothing to do with its ruinous state. The starburst pattern in its center was really only half of a shape. The destruction of the premises ended halfway across the room, and the other half appeared entirely untouched by whatever had occurred there.

Over Jim’s head hung a light fixture whose metal arms had been wilted by incredible heat. But on the other side of the room was an identical fixture, controlled by the switch Trix had turned on, whose only flaw was a layer of dust. A similar sheen of dust covered the wooden floorboards over there. The bookshelves remained untouched by the event that had ravaged the part of the room where Jim and Trix stood. A small writing desk stood in one corner, a pile of books upon it. One volume lay open on the desk.

Trix came over beside Jim. They stood in silence, shoulders almost touching, the tips of their shoes nearly meeting the line that separated the ruined half of the room from the part that had been preserved. “This just isn’t possible,” Trix said.

Jim glanced at her. For a moment they searched each other’s eyes, wordlessly acknowledging the obvious-that neither of them felt capable of judging what was and wasn’t possible anymore. Trix looked away first, shaking her head, then took the initial step into the unmarred side of the room. Nothing happened. The place seemed solid and ordinary except for the obvious fact of its impossible half ruin. “It’s like someone cut the room in half,” Jim said.

“No,” Trix replied, walking over to the writing desk and examining the book that lay open there. “It’s like half the room was here for… whatever did all this damage-McGee’s fuckup-and the other half of the room was somewhere else.”

She flipped a page in the book, then turned to look at him, a kind of almost panic dancing in her eyes. “Magic.”

Jim flinched at the word. Veronica’s story had sounded like some kind of bizarre fairy tale, but the room around them was tangible, the evidence of the impossible undeniable. Now he took a steadying breath and crossed the room as well, heading for the door set in the opposite wall, beside the writing desk.

The knob turned easily and he pushed it open, hope surging in the moment when the hinges creaked and the light from the ceiling fixture spilled into the next room. But beyond the door he discovered no passage into other worlds. Instead, he took a single step across the threshold into a small, dust-coated bedroom decorated with antique furniture and piled with boxes. Two old television sets sat on the floor, abandoned. Across the small room was yet another door, this one partially open, and a small amount of light seeped in, revealing a set of narrow servants’ stairs that likely went down to the kitchen or pantry on the floor below.

Jim turned back into the half-ravaged room. Veronica had taken them into a damned bookstore in Copley Place and claimed that his wife and daughter had vanished from that very spot, just slipped into a parallel world, as though talk of such things was ordinary conversation and the existence of variable dimensions was something only a fool would deny. But Jim had gone along with her because he had no other alternative-Trix had led him to that circle of cobblestones by the State Street station, they had asked the city for help, and this woman had heard them. Even so, he had felt as though his every step took him deeper into a nightmare.

This room, though… this was real.

“Trix,” he said.

She glanced up from the old leather-bound book, looking pale and queasy. Then she stepped away from the desk as if the book might bite her. She turned to stare across the room at the door through which they had first entered. “This is all real.”

“You’re the one who knew about her,” Jim said. “You didn’t believe her?”

Trix laughed uneasily. “Finding someone you’ve lost track of, or the truth about a girlfriend you think might be getting beaten up by her husband… yeah, I can wrap my brain around that. You can chalk that up to, like, some kind of psychic powers or something. But this-magic spells and splintered cities-seems so crazy.”

Jim shut the door he had opened and walked to the center of the room. He stared down at the place where the undamaged floorboards met scorched and glassy wood, and then at the starburst pattern where it appeared something had burned hottest of all, and possibly exploded.

Something like Thomas McGee.

He looked at the charred remnant of what had apparently been the only chair in the room, and then he turned to Trix, surprised to find a smile beginning to spread across his face. “If this is true-”

“Then the rest of it…,” Trix said, faltering as if she was afraid to finish the thought. She glanced back at the magic book, then started for the scorched door, new purpose in her stride. “Come on. Veronica’s waiting.”

Jim took one last look at that spot in the center of the room, then hurried after her.

Trix found Veronica in the front parlor, where she had just set out a tea tray with service for three and a plate of Pepperidge Farm cookies. The elegant old woman glanced up guiltily, as though she’d been caught at something awkward. “I know they’re nothing special,” Veronica said, “but they’re my favorites. And, honestly, I couldn’t bake anything edible to save my life.”

Trix stopped just inside the room and stared at her, uncomprehending.

“It’s all right,” Jim said, sweeping past her and perching on the edge of a chair by the coffee table. “We’re not exactly invited guests. And we don’t have time for courtesies.”

Only then did Trix realize that the old woman had been talking about the cookies. Veronica’s concern for such a thing seemed surreal in the midst of the nightmare she and Jim were living-an absurd attempt at the ordinary.

“Tell us what we need to do,” Jim said.

As Veronica poured tea, Trix stepped into the room. “Hold on,” she said. “I need to slow down a second.”

Jim shot her a hard look. “You saw that room. I know you were thinking the same thing I was. We don’t have time to slow down.”

Trix sat on the love seat across from him. Veronica poured tea and offered them both cups, and though eager to move on, they both accepted. Veronica took her own teacup and sat on the love seat beside Trix, exhaling as she settled in, staring at her, the plate, and Trix again.

Trix smiled and took a cookie, and Jim plucked one up as well.

“Which one of you will carry my letters?” Veronica asked, sipping her tea as though all of this was perfectly normal.

“I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” Jim said. “Just tell us how we get to where Jenny and Holly are.”

Trix noticed he’d chosen his words carefully. He might have accepted what Veronica had told them as the truth, but he wasn’t ready to say it out loud, and she didn’t blame him. Not caring whether or not she was being rude, she set her cup and saucer down. “We need to know what we’re walking into,” Trix said, looking at Jim before she focused on Veronica. “Please, ma’am.”

“I’ve already explained-” Veronica began.

“I know,” Trix interrupted. “And I know Jim is ready. This is his wife and daughter we’re talking about, and he’ll jump headfirst into hell for them.”

“And you won’t?” Jim said. “You love her, too.”

Trix blinked, surprised at the bold acknowledgment from him. His tone made clear he wasn’t talking about the love of a friend. She nodded but kept her focus on Veronica. “Of course I’ll go,” Trix said. “But I just need to understand.”

“Understand what?” Agitated, Jim sloshed a bit of tea and it pooled in his saucer. As if only now realizing the cup was in his hands, he set it on the table.

“Why here?” Trix said. “Is this the only place this has happened? And have people crossed over before? Uniques, I mean. That’s what you called us, right? Have Uniques crossed over before, and come back?”

As if the kindly-hostess persona had been a mask she could peel away, Veronica’s entire mien changed. She sipped her tea again but sat up straighter, her eyes narrowing and seeming to grow darker. “There have been moments in history when reality has strained and splintered,” she said, taking an almost professorial tone. “Such moments can create schismatic realities. Usually these revolve around a particular locus, the point of origin of the schism. One took place in Boston in 1890.”

Veronica paused, studying them. “You want to understand how this happened? What the other two Bostons might be like, should you enter them?”

Trix nodded. “Exactly.”

“I’ve dreamed of those other places,” Jim said.

“Nightmares,” Trix said.

“Uniques do tend to dream across realities, I suspect because a part of them is missing in those alternate worlds.”

“So tell us,” Jim said.

Veronica was the last to surrender her tea. She set it down on the table. Now all three cups were forgotten. Three cookies remained on the plate. “Quickly, then,” she said, straightening up. “A variety of circumstances, most prominently the nearness of New York, conspired to prevent Boston from becoming a major center of immigration in the late eighteenth and early ninteenth centuries. In the 1840s, two elements conspired to change that. First, it was determined that the best way for mail to reach Canada was through the port of Boston, making transportation to our fair city from Liverpool and Dublin astonishingly cheap. Second, land evictions and the potato famine sent tens of thousands of Irish fleeing their own country. They arrived in Boston with no money, no skills, and nowhere else to go.

“I imagine you’re familiar enough with what the lives of Irish immigrants were like in that era. They filled the city, lived in poverty. But over time that began to change, as the Irish populated the police force and worked their way into Boston politics, and the city became divided between the Yankees-they were called the Brahmins back then-and the Irish working class. And then, in the 1880s and 1890s, the Italians began to arrive.” Veronica waved a hand to indicate not only the house around her but the entire neighborhood.

“The North End had been purely Irish, but in just a handful of years it was transformed. Ten thousand Irish moved out, and fifteen thousand Italians moved in.”

Trix studied her eyes, the lines in her face. “And that’s why Thomas McGee did what he did.”

Veronica nodded. “The Italians were flooding in, and the influence of the Irish began to wane. The Brahmins had never allowed them a seat at the table. But in McGee, the soul of the city had chosen an Irishman as its Oracle. Boston had an Irish spirit in that era, but McGee knew that could change.”

“So he wasn’t supposed to choose the next Oracle?” Jim asked.

“This isn’t science,” Veronica said. “I don’t know the entire history of all of the Oracles of the Great Cities of the World, but certainly an Oracle can train his or her heir, if the Oracle has the best interests of the city at heart. McGee feared that when he died the soul of the city would supersede his choice.”

Trix nodded, gesturing for her to move on. “We know this part. McGee splintered the city, so where there was one, now there were three.”

“Yes,” Veronica said, holding up a hand and counting them on her fingers. “First is this Boston, the one you know. Let’s call it Boston A. As far as I know it is unaffected, the city the way it would have been without McGee’s botched magic. The other two are the splinters, their realities somewhat weaker for that. In Boston B, the Oracles have been Irish ever since McGee, and the city has developed for the past twelve decades or so under heavy Irish influence. In Boston C, the opposite happened, with the Irish all but absent, and the city developing under the guidance of the Brahmins but without the tempering influences of its immigrant working class.”

“You’ve been there,” Jim said eagerly. “To these other Bostons.”

“As Oracle, I can never leave my city. My Boston. But I’ve met those who have traveled from one to the other-”

“Like Jenny and Holly,” Trix supplied.

Veronica shook her head. “Not really. Well, perhaps like Holly.”

“What do you mean?” Jim asked worriedly.

“Holly is a Unique, of course,” Veronica said. “In the other two Bostons, there was no Jim to fall in love with Jenny. In those cities, Holly Banks was never born.”

Jim looked as though he might be sick. “And Jenny?”

“No. There are facets of Jenny.”

“Facets,” Jim murmured, like he was testing the word on his tongue.

“So it doesn’t happen often?” Trix prodded. “People like Jenny, who aren’t Uniques, crossing over?”

Veronica seemed to consider her words a moment before forging onward. “Think of the cities as all existing in the same location, just slightly out of sync with one another. A kind of membrane separates them, and that is called the In-Between. It’s a limbo place, a vast nothing, but it… I suppose you could say that it breathes. Better yet, imagine the sea, waves rolling up onto the shore. When there is a storm or some other disturbance, the tide rises higher, sweeps farther inland before it withdraws and pulls things out to sea. The membrane can be like that. It expanded into our Boston for just a moment, and when it drew back it took Jenny and Holly with it. On rare occasions people have been pulled across. Where the cities are identical, those people vanish from one Boston and appear in the same spot in the other. But where the cities are different… sometimes there are voids, and there have been cases of people being dragged into the In-Between and lost there.”

“Jenny and Holly…,” Jim began.

“No. That is why I wanted you to take me to the bookstore where they vanished. The store exists in all three Bostons. Jenny and Holly have not been lost in the void. They’re in one of those other Bostons right now, probably very confused and very afraid, but alive.”

“So, how do we go after them?” Trix asked.

“I’ll show you the way,” Veronica said. “The existence of a Jenny in each world provides a kind of counter-pressure on that membrane that works to hold each facet in its place. But Uniques have little more than expectation and perception holding them in place. If you know how to look for the other Bostons, how to see the places where they are different, you can walk through in places where others would be lost to the void.”

“But which Boston are they in?” Jim asked. “The Irish or the Brahmin?”

“That,” Veronica said, “is something the two of you will have to find out for me.” She corrected herself. “For yourselves. ”

Trix studied the old woman. “The people this has happened to before-have any of them ever come back?”

Veronica shook her head. “I’m afraid not. But usually they are never missed. Ordinary people, those with facets in the other Bostons, never even know that they’ve lost someone. The splintered cities change around them. The two of you both remember Jenny and Holly because you’re Uniques. The rest of this world has forgotten them. They’ve been erased.”

“Erased,” Jim repeated, his voice hollow. “Jesus. That sounds so permanent. What happens when we bring them back? Is it even possible to bring them back?”

Veronica’s expression turned darker than ever. She turned to look out the night-black window. “There are thin places where you might get them through. Once I show you how to see properly, you’ll be able to tell.” She glanced upward to indicate the half-burned study. “But now that you understand, there’s something else you need to know.”

“What’s that?” Jim asked.

“Every time someone is drawn from one Boston to another-someone with facets in the other cities-the schism deteriorates more. And if Jenny encounters her other facets, which seems likely, given that she and Holly will be searching for traces of the life they’ve known, that will exacerbate the situation.”

“What do you mean, the schism is deteriorating?” Trix asked.

“I suspect that the three Bostons might be reintegrating.”

“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Jim said. “This is all… well, it’s unnatural, isn’t it? What this McGee did? It’s not supposed to be like this, so what’s wrong with it all going back to normal? With there being only one Boston?”

“It could be a good thing,” Veronica said, glancing away as if distracted, “but there’s also a chance that the city would be left in ruins.”

Trix stared at her a moment, then reached out and drank her tea down, wishing it was whiskey.

“So, you’re saying Jenny and Holly being over there could trigger this thing?” Jim said.

“No,” Veronica said, “it’s happening already. But they could speed up the process. I may be able to stop the deterioration, but not alone. I need the help of the Oracles of the other Bostons, but I can’t pass through into their cities myself. I’ve written letters to them, intending to find a Unique ally who would carry them for me.”

Trix nodded. “That’s why you said this was providential, us coming to you.”

“It does seem that some greater power is at work here, yes.” She smiled, and Trix couldn’t help thinking her expression skull-like.

“You want us to deliver these letters to the two other Oracles,” Jim said.

“And they will help you locate Jenny and Holly,” Veronica replied.

Jim stood. “Come on, Trix. We know all we need to know. We’re wasting time.” He looked at Veronica. “Show us, please. Show us how to cross over. And give us those letters. We’ll deliver them for you.”

Veronica exhaled, and Trix saw a flicker of something pass across her face. Fear? She thought not. It was something lighter but deeper.

“Remember to hurry,” Veronica said. “And you must not give the letters to anyone but the Oracles themselves, and only at the addresses on the envelopes.”

“The Oracles don’t live in the same building in each Boston?” Jim asked, waving a hand around them.

“Of course not,” Veronica said. “Too dangerous. A catastrophe across the In-Between could wipe out this place, and all three of us, at the same time.”

“Right,” Jim said, uncertain and unsettled.

“And do not open the letters yourselves,” Veronica continued. “In addition to my warnings and pleas for help, there are incantations that the other Oracles will need to protect our cities. But if an ordinary person were to read them… well, without a mastery of such things, you could accidentally trigger an immediate and total integration.”

“And destroy the city,” Trix said. “Right. Important safety tip.”

Jim glanced over at her in surprise at the reference-a quote from Ghostbusters -and smiled. “We can do this, right?” he said.

“We have to,” Trix replied.

“Or die trying.”

Trix grimaced. “Aren’t you just a ray of fuckin’ sunshine?”

By the time they had returned to McGee’s study, the lightness of that single moment had been forgotten. Jim stood in the center of the room, one foot on scorched wood and the other on whole, undamaged floorboards, and felt a dreadful trepidation. Hours ago, the things he had been forced by circumstance to believe would have seemed absolutely absurd. Fantasy. Now, even as he straddled the two sides of that room, he felt torn between the fear that Veronica’s story might be the product of an unbalanced mind and the terror that it might all be true. Veronica unsettled him, but he had too much to lose by not doing as she asked.

Splintered cities-the barriers separating them now degrading-in danger of collision? It was daunting enough to think of finding Jenny and Holly in some parallel Boston, especially since they could be anywhere. A hundred anxieties came along with the prospect, not least of which was whether or not he could find them, and how they could all get home again. Would the world realign itself? Was reality truly that malleable? It had undergone a metamorphosis to account for Holly and Jenny no longer existing in this world, so he supposed it could happen.

Jesus, listen to yourself, he thought, staring down at the burn line in the floor, and the half-starburst pattern that-he suspected-marked the explosion that had killed Thomas McGee.

In the end, though, hope must hold sway. Jenny and Holly were the whole of his heart, existing outside of his body, and if they were now somehow elsewhere, then he would have to follow. Any other choice was inconceivable.

“Jim,” Trix said, and from her tone he realized she had called his name more than once.

“Sorry,” he said, turning to see her and Veronica watching him expectantly. “Were you saying something?”

Trix gave him a knowing look. He saw the pain in her eyes as she took a deep, worried breath and exhaled. Then she glanced at Veronica.

“Okay. We’re listening.” He patted his back pocket where he’d folded and stored the two envelopes, unknown names and strangely familiar addresses on their fronts in surprisingly untidy script. “Tell us what we need to do.”

The old woman stood at the open doorway, and every shred of her body language screamed that she did not want to be there. In the charred cavern of that half of the room, she looked almost in need of rescue herself.

“You both should be on that side of the room,” Veronica said, pointing toward the end opposite her, where the writing desk remained intact and the door to the small bedroom-perhaps once servants’ quarters-was tightly shut.

Jim reached out his hand to Trix. She took it, and together they crossed to the desk. They turned their backs to the desk, hands still clasped, and faced Veronica across the length of the room. “What now?” Trix asked.

“Look away from each other,” Veronica began. Jim started to turn. “No,” Veronica said quickly. “Not like that. Continue to face me, but let your eyes shift to one side. Stare at the wall with only your peripheral vision.”

Jim let out a breath, trying to focus. He felt uneasy, until Trix squeezed his hand reassuringly. He glanced at her and nodded, and then both of them followed Veronica’s instructions. Jim started by concentrating on Veronica and trying to push out of his mind how absurd the whole thing felt. He had to remind himself that he had accepted all of this, that he believed it. You have to believe it, he told himself.

And that was the truth. He didn’t have anything else.

Facing Veronica, he glanced to his right, away from Trix, assuming she was doing the same thing. The floral wallpaper was faded, and there were water stains along the seams. He focused on the flowers and those seams.

“Still without turning your head, try to look farther back, into the very edge of your vision,” Veronica said. “Your eyes will feel the strain. They may moisten or burn.”

Just as she predicted, Jim’s eyes hurt. He narrowed them slightly, fighting the urge to close them or to look forward.

“Keep them open. Force yourself,” Veronica said. “You may feel dizzy-”

Jim had to shift his feet to maintain his balance.

“-and your vision will start to blur eventually.”

“Start?” Trix said. “It’s blurry as hell.”

“Good,” Veronica said, her voice barely a whisper, coating the room like dust. “That’s very good.”

Good? Jim thought. This is bullshit. And what is that? Is she chuckling?

“Concentrate on the blur. There will be two or three variations on what you see, one laid on top of the other, shifting, out of focus.”

Jim’s eyes were tearing up badly now, but he did think he could see two different variations on the wall to his right, slightly out of sync with each other. One of them had the faded floral paper and water-stained seams, but the other… the other blurred version of the wall was just as charred as the far side of the room, where Veronica stood.

“I see them,” Trix said, startling him.

Jim’s heart began to thunder in his chest. His eyes burned. He wanted to look away. But he couldn’t, because this was real. Oh, God, Jenny, it’s real. I’m coming to get you-you and our baby girl. Just hold on.

“Jim, do you see them, too? The variations?” Veronica demanded.

As she spoke, he noticed the third. At first it had been difficult to see, because in that variation the walls were equally scorched. “Yes,” he said, hating how small and alone his voice sounded.

Trix squeezed his hand, reminding him that he was not alone after all.

“What now?” Jim asked.

“You’ve got to separate them visually. Shift your vision to follow only one of the variations that you know is not the image you should be seeing. Then begin to turn, slowly.”

Jim and Trix both obeyed, still clasping hands, turning together.

“Let your eyes relax slightly. Continue focusing on your peripheral vision, but not so painfully. Uniques can see all three variations, and this should work elsewhere as well, but it will be simpler here. The parallels are more unsettled here than anywhere else in the city. You’ll be able to see such places clearly after this-places where the Bostons don’t quite match up. Holly is a Unique. You can teach her, as I’m teaching you. In such places, you’ll be able to bring Jenny back with you.”

“But the void you talked about,” Trix said. “The In-Between. People get trapped there.”

“You’re Uniques,” Veronica said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. “You can guide her through.”

As she spoke, Jim and Trix continued to turn. When he’d made it three-quarters of the way around, he could see a badly blurred Veronica in his peripheral vision… but there was only one of her. She existed in only one of the variations his strained vision could see.

Veronica grinned, talking again, wishing them luck, cautioning them not to forget to deliver her letters, reminding them that the fate of the city might well be at stake… but by then Jim found it difficult to focus on her voice. She seemed to be fading. He kept turning until he and Trix had rotated 360 degrees. The strain on his eyes was great, though he had allowed himself to focus on only one variation of the room around him, with the exception of the distraction of seeing Veronica.

“Do we stop now?” Trix asked.

Jim paused, feeling Trix do the same. They waited for a reply, but none came.

“Veronica?” Jim said. “I need to close my eyes a second.”

Still no reply.

Jim ground his teeth together. The need to close his eyes made him grip Trix’s hand tighter. Tears began to slide down his face.

“What do we do?” Trix asked him, and from the groan in her voice he knew she was having the same difficulty.

“Veronica?” Jim asked again, but the room felt empty now, except for Trix beside him. He squeezed her hand. “Fuck it.” Closing his eyes, he held his free hand over them for a minute. Then he swore again and dropped his hand, blinking.

“Jim, look,” Trix said.

He forced himself to focus, wiping the moisture from his eyes. For a second, the room seemed to spin around him. What the hell had happened? The lights were off, the only light coming from behind them. But even in the dim illumination that slipped through the partially open door-which had been closed just moments ago-he saw that the floor and the walls beside them were charred black from fire. The metal light fixture above was twisted and blackened from heat.

“How the hell…,” Jim began, trying to make sense of it.

Somehow they had traded places with Veronica. They were on the scorched side of the room, though they had only turned in a circle where they stood.

“It’s backward,” Trix said.

Jim retreated toward the door, hitting the lightswitch beside it. The far side of the room was bathed in light from the single intact fixture. On the floor, practically melted into the wood, was half of a desk chair. Jim saw immediately that something was different about it, though it took him a moment to realize precisely what: it was the opposite half of the chair he’d seen before. The missing half.

He turned back to the door. It was narrower than the one on the other side of the room, and he knew where it led. Beside the door, against the wall, was the same writing desk, but now it had been reduced to a charred ruin, the front of it eaten away by fire and the rest blasted black.

“We’re here,” Trix said quietly.

Jim glanced at her and saw fear and wonder filling her gaze in equal measure. He knew she must see the same in him.

Thomas McGee’s spell had gone badly awry. It had scorched the room, scouring the interior with some kind of ritual magic, an enchanted fire that had spared the rest of the house. McGee had vanished. Incinerated? Perhaps. But the room had been just as splintered as the city. In the original Boston, one half of the room had been ravaged and the other remained pristine, as though it had been snapped into place moments after the damage had been done. But in this parallel Boston, the damage was reversed, the opposite side of the room having sustained the fire damage.

Here, the other side of the room-where Veronica had been standing inside the door-was abandoned, the wallpaper badly peeling. Boxes were stacked in both of those far corners, but otherwise the room had been abandoned in this world, just as it had been in their own. Whoever owned this house had left this place alone, perhaps driven by some urge they did not understand.

“Which one are we in?” Trix asked.

“Which what?” Jim said, and then he got it. “Which Boston, you mean?” Trix nodded. “Damn good question.”

Jim led the way, pushing the narrow door fully open and stepping into the small bedroom he had entered once before, in another city, in another world. Other than the fact that it still contained a bed, the room was entirely different. The walls were a bright yellow, with hand-painted flowers stretching in a curving line across three of them. The bed had a modern brass frame, with a wooden box at the foot and a handmade lace spread. The photos tucked around the frame of the mirror suggested an older girl or young woman, and the clothes that hung from the open closet door reinforced that impression.

“Shit,” Trix said.

“What?”

She looked at him. “We’re in someone’s house. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Jim laughed softly, more in disbelief than amusement. She was right. He’d been so astonished, his mind full of questions and trying to jump ahead and figure out how they were going to find Jenny and Holly, that he hadn’t even thought to worry about what they might say to whoever might live here.

He moved to the opposite door and cracked it open, peering down the narrow steps that he had presumed led to the kitchen or pantry. The bedside lamp was still on, so whoever occupied it was probably at home. But he neither saw nor heard any sign of the residents. “All right,” he whispered, turning back toward Trix. “We just have to…”

Staring at her, he let his words trail off. Trix had gone to the window and drawn the lace curtain aside. “Jim,” she said without turning, “come here.”

With a nervous glance down the stairs, he closed the door partway and hurried to her, aware now of the tiny creaks that his footfalls eked from the floorboards. Trix stepped back from the window and turned to him. She tilted her head, urging him to look, holding the curtain back for him.

Hesitating only a moment, he bent and peered out the window. For a few seconds, the view of Hanover Street only looked off, as though he’d been away for a while and some enterprising developer had come along and gentrified something, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on what. Then he realized that nearly all the shops and restaurants were different, that the Italian flavor of the street had been erased.

But he couldn’t keep his focus on the street below. His eyes were drawn higher, to the cityscape rising to the west, to a towering stone cathedral he had never seen before, and to modern skyscrapers with fluid lines and unfamiliar spires.

Not my Boston, he thought. But the cityscape was familiar.

Trix leaned in beside him, staring out the window as well, so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek.

“I’ve painted this,” he said, his throat strangely dry. “One of those two other Bostons.”

“I know,” she said. “And I’ve been here before.”

“In dreams,” Jim added.

“Nightmares,” Trix said, standing up, the motion drawing his gaze. “But this is real.”

Jim took one last glance through the window and then let the curtain fall back into place. He hurried quietly back to the door and opened it a crack, checking again to make sure the coast was clear.

He glanced at Trix and said, “Let’s go find them.”