Joel drove fast and jerkily, I found. I wasn't sure exactly why, but I was glad of the seatbelt and gladder when he pulled up outside the apartment block. The lock on the door didn't move though until Maria was out of the car and waiting for me to get out.
"Where are the Browns?" he demanded once I'd pulled the latch of the door and at last it swung open for me.
I huffed. "I don't know." I wished that I did. It had been... well, maybe forty minutes? They'd be on the other side of the portal by now, of course, but how long would it take for them to reach the prison and what would they have to do there?
"One little girls missing," he grumbled. "Or tw and one that appears out of nowhere. What are you hiding from us?"
"Joel..." Maria's voice held a warning tone.
He turned back to look out the front of the car. "If anything happens to them, it'll be your fault for not helping us."
There didn't really seem to be a good answer to that. It might even be true, although I'm rather at a loss as to what he - or the entirety of Interpol - could have done about the situation and I wasn't about to ask any revealing questions. "Then I shall hope for a good anything, Mr. McTiennan, something I don't mind you blaming me for." I closed the door before he could reply.
Maria gave me a thoughtful look and then took my hand - at least it wasn't snaring me by the wrist this time - and led me to the door. We were barely inside when Mom came down the stairs.
"I saw you get out of the car," she explained and then gave me an awkward look before turning her head towards Maria. "Do you want to come up for a coffee?"
"That'd be lovely, but I'm going to have to turn in a report on this and get everything set up. How about I call you back once I know when the hospital can give Hope a check-up. We can talk then?"
Mom nodded in agreement and then reached out and took my free hand. "Come with me, Hope."
What else could I do but trail after her? I'd never, in my admittedly short experience, seen her like this.
She didn't say anything until we were in the apartment. She let go of my hand and pointed to a chair at the kitchen table. Once I was sat down, she took the opposite chair. "So you're Hope."
I nodded meekly.
After a moment Mom sighed. "I'm not going to hurt you."
How could I tell her that she already had? "I... you wanted answers. I'm not sure where to start."
"The beginning usually works."
"Oh. Well... I wasn't there for the beginning. I think it was... Halloweve?"
"Halloween?"
I nodded. "Yes, that's it."
"How does a girl your age not know Halloween?"
"I'm..." I calculated quickly, "Forty-three days old. I think I'm doing pretty well."
"Forty-three days?" She shook her head. "This isn't making any sense."
I groaned. "Okay, never mind that for now. There was a party at school for Halloweve."
"Halloween."
"Whatever. There was some trouble at the party, something about the fireworks I think. Some of the girls..." I paused and then realised there wasn't much point to trying to hide their identities since WIll had teleported them away. "Cornelia, Taranee, Irma and Hay Lin; had noticed that odd things were going on. Irma's dress changed colour. Cornelia's room tidied itself -"
"I wouldn't mind that sort of strange thing happening to Will's room every now and then."
I giggled. "Yes, well. That night all five of them dreamed of the Heart of Kandrakar."
"What's that?"
"You might have seen Will holding it just before we left. Pink glowing crystal in a silver setting?"
"I didn't get a good look before you disappeared," she said sadly. "Where did you go? That blue man - Vathek? - his home?"
"Well, not directly. To Metamoor, anyway. I don't know if Vathek even has a home of his own. Um. The two Interpol people didn't mention the disappearing so I suppose you didn't tell them about that?"
Mom shook her head. Her long black hair was almost as impressive when tossed like that as Cornelia's longer blonde locks. I felt pronounced hair envy: maybe I could grow my hair out someday? "No. Without evidence they'd just have assumed I was hysterical or lying. I wasn't sure about the first as it was."
I rubbed my head. "So they'd not believe in magic?"
"I rather doubt it. I'm not convinced myself."
That seemed a little odd. I'd literally never known an instant where magic wasn't a real factor in my life. Granted, a factor that I understood almost nothing at all about, but undeniably real. Then again, my life wasn't exactly typical. Then a more pressing concern presented itself and I blushed as my stomach rumbled.
Mom's expression shifted slightly. "Let me guess. No breakfast?"
I laughed awkwardly. "Not really. I was going to get some fruit but..."
She sighed and pointed at the fruit bowl. "Have something to tide you over. I'm sure we've got enough in the fridge to feed you for today... or we can order out if we have to."
I took an orange from the bowl and started to peel it.
"No wonder we've been going through so much food," she added after a minute. "I thought it was Will having her friends over all the time, not that I was feeding two teenage appetites full time."
"Sorry."
"It doesn't matter particularly, I was just thinking out loud. So you said that the girls all dreamed of the Heart of Candy-car?"
"Kandrakar," I corrected her mildly. "Yes, so they tell me. And the next day, when they were at Hay Lin's her grandmother had the Heart and explained they were Guardians of the Veil. There was lots of capitalisation being thrown around I guess."
"I think I'd like to have a word with her about dragging young girls into this," Mom declared angrily.
"Ah... that's probably not going to go so well. She died before I was created."
Mom made an angry noise that suggested to me that it might be for the best that Mrs. Lin wasn't around. If nothing else, Hay Lin and Will might have gotten dragged into the shouting.
"Anyway," I said hastily. "That's when Elyon disappeared. While the other girls were with Mrs. Lin, she'd gone to see a boy she met at the Halloween party. His name's Cedric and he's from Metamoor, another world ruled by Prince Phobos. I don't know exactly what happened but by that evening he'd convinced her she was Phobos' long-lost sister and that she should help him lure her friends into a trap. That was their first real battle and they barely escaped him. If they hadn't had the Heart and been able to transform... they might have been captured or worse."
"That's what worries me." She frowned. "Go back a bit, you said you were created?"
"Yes, this was a little later. Um, you remember when you had that cold and had to take a day off work?"
She nodded and then frowned. "Will went out that evening and didn't come back for hours! Was she off in this Metamoor place?"
"Ah... no, she was... chasing me down. Um. You see Taranee had been captured a couple of days before so the day before, everyone had gone into Metamoor to rescue her. Will had come up with the idea of creating Astral Drops which are sort of... magical puppets? She created one to take Taranee's place so her family wouldn't worry about her."
"A clone?"
"A what?"
"A clone. A... perfect copy of someone."
I shoved a couple of segments of orange into my mouth to give me time to think. "I suppose so," I agreed at last. "Although we're not exactly perfect copies. Anyway, since they didn't know how long it would take to find Taranee, they created Astral Drops for the rest of them before they went. So when you found Will asleep on the couch that night..."
"It was you?" she asked accusingly. "Oh that girl! Why didn't she tell me!?"
"..."
"What?" Her eyes were flashing with anger.
"Probably..." I gulped nervously. "Because she was afraid you'd do what you did this morning?"
To my horror, Mom's face crumpled from anger to anguish. "Oh god! What have I done!?" She buried her face in her hands. "Will's afraid of me!"
I went around the table and put my arms around her shoulders. It wasn't until she stiffened that I realised that that might not be the best idea. "She's afraid that you won't want her."
"How could she think that!? Will's everything to me!"
It wouldn't have been diplomatic to point out that at least while I'd known them, they'd also had at least one blazing row each week. Instead I hugged her tighter. "I know." There were tears in my own eyes. What would be left for me if Will never returned? What if my clumsiness this morning divided her from Mom forever? How could I ever forgive myself if that happened?
She put one arm around me. "You care for her too."
"Of course I do!"
She patted me on the back. "Let me up a moment."
Opening one of the cupboards she pulled out a dark green glass bottle and filled a glass with the dark red contents. It took me a moment to realise that it looked like what Van Dahl had been drinking when I first met him. "Is that wine?"
"Yes."
"Isn't that alcoholic?" I folded my arms. "Will said I shouldn't drink anything alcoholic. It's bad for me."
"It's not for you." She lifted the glass.
"Well if it's no good for me, how is it any good for you?"
Mom put the glass down. "You're too young to drink. What was it, forty-five days?"
"Forty-three. So I'm younger and probably healthier. Either pour me a drink or you don't have any either." I was not having Will come back and find out her Mom was ill for drinking something she shouldn't.
"Are you... I'm a grown woman! You're being ridiculous!" She gave the glass a guilty look and then looked back at me.
I did my best to look stern and unbending. Which probably wasn't very good, really.
She threw up her hands. "Alright." Mom poured the contents of the glass down the sink and put the bottle away. "So Will doesn't approve of drinking? That's reassuring."
"I think it's more that she doesn't think that you do."
"I don't as a rule." Mom looked defensive. "We were talking about you, weren't we?"
I let her get away with the change of subject - better to quit while I was ahead I felt. "Yes, we were. The thing is... well, Astral Drops are supposed to have all their template's memories. Taranee's did a wonderful job of replacing her, no one suspected a thing and Will... didn't particularly like the idea of someone being able to replace her."
"So she made herself a sister instead?"
"Not exactly. Or at least not intentionally. The rest of the Astral Drops were as intended: they knew who they were supposed to be and didn't have any objection to being re-absorbed once the Guardians came back. But WIll made a mistake with me: she didn't give me any of her memories."
"But surely you must have had some idea, or how could you have fooled me that day? Or got through school?" Mom shook her head. "You took a maths test that day, and you did quite well, didn't you?"
"I had some basics. Talking, writing, riding a bike. Besides that I was lucky and... well, honestly? Why would you suspect Will had been replaced by an Astral Drop?"
"I suppose not. So how did things go from you replacing her for a day to her chasing you that night?"
I grimaced. "Well, I'm not all that keen on being reabsorbed into her. I had a taste of being alive and I wanted more. So when she got back I ran away."
Mom moved closer and cupped her hand around my neck. "Where would you have gone?"
"Well I was going to try to get to Metamoor. I'm not sure how bright an idea that was now that I've been there, but I was mostly concerned with getting away from Will. I figured she'd not be able to find me there."
"How would you have got there? Magic?"
"There are portals. One of the things the Guardians do is close them, but I didn't know that at the time, just that Will and the others had used one to get there, so I tried to do the same thing. Of course, they'd closed it when they got back." I shrugged. "Will found me while I was still trying to figure out what was going on."
"And she decided to take in another stray?" asked Mom ruefully.
I... hadn't thought of it like that before. But no, she'd called me her sister. That had to be different from her decision to keep Mr Huggles around, didn't it?
Mom pulled me closer and wrapped her other arm around my shoulders. "I have to admit that I was expecting her to be a bit older before she brought someone else into the family. And I've no idea how we're going to explain this to the police."
What?
"But there's going to be some ground rules, young lady."
She didn't mean...?
"Uh... you mean I can stay?" I asked nervously.
Mom kissed me on the forehead. "Welcome to the family, Hope. You're grounded."
I don't think I could have come up with anything to say so I hugged her back. What did being grounded matter? Being forced to spend a lot of time in the apartment? That wasn't exactly unexplored territory for me.
She ruffled my hair. "We're going to have to figure out some new sleeping arrangements though. I had a look at that little loft of yours. It's very cleverly put together, but it's not good enough for my daughter."
"It's alright."
"No, it's not," Mom insisted. "It's a pokey little hole. If Will hadn't felt she had to hide you from me, you could have had a proper bed at least. Not a pile of cushions and a sleeping bag." She produced a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped at my face. I hadn't even realised I was crying.
"Can I..."
She took the handkerchief away and raised one eyebrow.
"Can I call you Mom?"
"I insist on it," she told me and then we both needed to use the handkerchief.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
"Where are the Browns?" he demanded once I'd pulled the latch of the door and at last it swung open for me.
I huffed. "I don't know." I wished that I did. It had been... well, maybe forty minutes? They'd be on the other side of the portal by now, of course, but how long would it take for them to reach the prison and what would they have to do there?
"One little girls missing," he grumbled. "Or tw and one that appears out of nowhere. What are you hiding from us?"
"Joel..." Maria's voice held a warning tone.
He turned back to look out the front of the car. "If anything happens to them, it'll be your fault for not helping us."
There didn't really seem to be a good answer to that. It might even be true, although I'm rather at a loss as to what he - or the entirety of Interpol - could have done about the situation and I wasn't about to ask any revealing questions. "Then I shall hope for a good anything, Mr. McTiennan, something I don't mind you blaming me for." I closed the door before he could reply.
Maria gave me a thoughtful look and then took my hand - at least it wasn't snaring me by the wrist this time - and led me to the door. We were barely inside when Mom came down the stairs.
"I saw you get out of the car," she explained and then gave me an awkward look before turning her head towards Maria. "Do you want to come up for a coffee?"
"That'd be lovely, but I'm going to have to turn in a report on this and get everything set up. How about I call you back once I know when the hospital can give Hope a check-up. We can talk then?"
Mom nodded in agreement and then reached out and took my free hand. "Come with me, Hope."
What else could I do but trail after her? I'd never, in my admittedly short experience, seen her like this.
She didn't say anything until we were in the apartment. She let go of my hand and pointed to a chair at the kitchen table. Once I was sat down, she took the opposite chair. "So you're Hope."
I nodded meekly.
After a moment Mom sighed. "I'm not going to hurt you."
How could I tell her that she already had? "I... you wanted answers. I'm not sure where to start."
"The beginning usually works."
"Oh. Well... I wasn't there for the beginning. I think it was... Halloweve?"
"Halloween?"
I nodded. "Yes, that's it."
"How does a girl your age not know Halloween?"
"I'm..." I calculated quickly, "Forty-three days old. I think I'm doing pretty well."
"Forty-three days?" She shook her head. "This isn't making any sense."
I groaned. "Okay, never mind that for now. There was a party at school for Halloweve."
"Halloween."
"Whatever. There was some trouble at the party, something about the fireworks I think. Some of the girls..." I paused and then realised there wasn't much point to trying to hide their identities since WIll had teleported them away. "Cornelia, Taranee, Irma and Hay Lin; had noticed that odd things were going on. Irma's dress changed colour. Cornelia's room tidied itself -"
"I wouldn't mind that sort of strange thing happening to Will's room every now and then."
I giggled. "Yes, well. That night all five of them dreamed of the Heart of Kandrakar."
"What's that?"
"You might have seen Will holding it just before we left. Pink glowing crystal in a silver setting?"
"I didn't get a good look before you disappeared," she said sadly. "Where did you go? That blue man - Vathek? - his home?"
"Well, not directly. To Metamoor, anyway. I don't know if Vathek even has a home of his own. Um. The two Interpol people didn't mention the disappearing so I suppose you didn't tell them about that?"
Mom shook her head. Her long black hair was almost as impressive when tossed like that as Cornelia's longer blonde locks. I felt pronounced hair envy: maybe I could grow my hair out someday? "No. Without evidence they'd just have assumed I was hysterical or lying. I wasn't sure about the first as it was."
I rubbed my head. "So they'd not believe in magic?"
"I rather doubt it. I'm not convinced myself."
That seemed a little odd. I'd literally never known an instant where magic wasn't a real factor in my life. Granted, a factor that I understood almost nothing at all about, but undeniably real. Then again, my life wasn't exactly typical. Then a more pressing concern presented itself and I blushed as my stomach rumbled.
Mom's expression shifted slightly. "Let me guess. No breakfast?"
I laughed awkwardly. "Not really. I was going to get some fruit but..."
She sighed and pointed at the fruit bowl. "Have something to tide you over. I'm sure we've got enough in the fridge to feed you for today... or we can order out if we have to."
I took an orange from the bowl and started to peel it.
"No wonder we've been going through so much food," she added after a minute. "I thought it was Will having her friends over all the time, not that I was feeding two teenage appetites full time."
"Sorry."
"It doesn't matter particularly, I was just thinking out loud. So you said that the girls all dreamed of the Heart of Candy-car?"
"Kandrakar," I corrected her mildly. "Yes, so they tell me. And the next day, when they were at Hay Lin's her grandmother had the Heart and explained they were Guardians of the Veil. There was lots of capitalisation being thrown around I guess."
"I think I'd like to have a word with her about dragging young girls into this," Mom declared angrily.
"Ah... that's probably not going to go so well. She died before I was created."
Mom made an angry noise that suggested to me that it might be for the best that Mrs. Lin wasn't around. If nothing else, Hay Lin and Will might have gotten dragged into the shouting.
"Anyway," I said hastily. "That's when Elyon disappeared. While the other girls were with Mrs. Lin, she'd gone to see a boy she met at the Halloween party. His name's Cedric and he's from Metamoor, another world ruled by Prince Phobos. I don't know exactly what happened but by that evening he'd convinced her she was Phobos' long-lost sister and that she should help him lure her friends into a trap. That was their first real battle and they barely escaped him. If they hadn't had the Heart and been able to transform... they might have been captured or worse."
"That's what worries me." She frowned. "Go back a bit, you said you were created?"
"Yes, this was a little later. Um, you remember when you had that cold and had to take a day off work?"
She nodded and then frowned. "Will went out that evening and didn't come back for hours! Was she off in this Metamoor place?"
"Ah... no, she was... chasing me down. Um. You see Taranee had been captured a couple of days before so the day before, everyone had gone into Metamoor to rescue her. Will had come up with the idea of creating Astral Drops which are sort of... magical puppets? She created one to take Taranee's place so her family wouldn't worry about her."
"A clone?"
"A what?"
"A clone. A... perfect copy of someone."
I shoved a couple of segments of orange into my mouth to give me time to think. "I suppose so," I agreed at last. "Although we're not exactly perfect copies. Anyway, since they didn't know how long it would take to find Taranee, they created Astral Drops for the rest of them before they went. So when you found Will asleep on the couch that night..."
"It was you?" she asked accusingly. "Oh that girl! Why didn't she tell me!?"
"..."
"What?" Her eyes were flashing with anger.
"Probably..." I gulped nervously. "Because she was afraid you'd do what you did this morning?"
To my horror, Mom's face crumpled from anger to anguish. "Oh god! What have I done!?" She buried her face in her hands. "Will's afraid of me!"
I went around the table and put my arms around her shoulders. It wasn't until she stiffened that I realised that that might not be the best idea. "She's afraid that you won't want her."
"How could she think that!? Will's everything to me!"
It wouldn't have been diplomatic to point out that at least while I'd known them, they'd also had at least one blazing row each week. Instead I hugged her tighter. "I know." There were tears in my own eyes. What would be left for me if Will never returned? What if my clumsiness this morning divided her from Mom forever? How could I ever forgive myself if that happened?
She put one arm around me. "You care for her too."
"Of course I do!"
She patted me on the back. "Let me up a moment."
Opening one of the cupboards she pulled out a dark green glass bottle and filled a glass with the dark red contents. It took me a moment to realise that it looked like what Van Dahl had been drinking when I first met him. "Is that wine?"
"Yes."
"Isn't that alcoholic?" I folded my arms. "Will said I shouldn't drink anything alcoholic. It's bad for me."
"It's not for you." She lifted the glass.
"Well if it's no good for me, how is it any good for you?"
Mom put the glass down. "You're too young to drink. What was it, forty-five days?"
"Forty-three. So I'm younger and probably healthier. Either pour me a drink or you don't have any either." I was not having Will come back and find out her Mom was ill for drinking something she shouldn't.
"Are you... I'm a grown woman! You're being ridiculous!" She gave the glass a guilty look and then looked back at me.
I did my best to look stern and unbending. Which probably wasn't very good, really.
She threw up her hands. "Alright." Mom poured the contents of the glass down the sink and put the bottle away. "So Will doesn't approve of drinking? That's reassuring."
"I think it's more that she doesn't think that you do."
"I don't as a rule." Mom looked defensive. "We were talking about you, weren't we?"
I let her get away with the change of subject - better to quit while I was ahead I felt. "Yes, we were. The thing is... well, Astral Drops are supposed to have all their template's memories. Taranee's did a wonderful job of replacing her, no one suspected a thing and Will... didn't particularly like the idea of someone being able to replace her."
"So she made herself a sister instead?"
"Not exactly. Or at least not intentionally. The rest of the Astral Drops were as intended: they knew who they were supposed to be and didn't have any objection to being re-absorbed once the Guardians came back. But WIll made a mistake with me: she didn't give me any of her memories."
"But surely you must have had some idea, or how could you have fooled me that day? Or got through school?" Mom shook her head. "You took a maths test that day, and you did quite well, didn't you?"
"I had some basics. Talking, writing, riding a bike. Besides that I was lucky and... well, honestly? Why would you suspect Will had been replaced by an Astral Drop?"
"I suppose not. So how did things go from you replacing her for a day to her chasing you that night?"
I grimaced. "Well, I'm not all that keen on being reabsorbed into her. I had a taste of being alive and I wanted more. So when she got back I ran away."
Mom moved closer and cupped her hand around my neck. "Where would you have gone?"
"Well I was going to try to get to Metamoor. I'm not sure how bright an idea that was now that I've been there, but I was mostly concerned with getting away from Will. I figured she'd not be able to find me there."
"How would you have got there? Magic?"
"There are portals. One of the things the Guardians do is close them, but I didn't know that at the time, just that Will and the others had used one to get there, so I tried to do the same thing. Of course, they'd closed it when they got back." I shrugged. "Will found me while I was still trying to figure out what was going on."
"And she decided to take in another stray?" asked Mom ruefully.
I... hadn't thought of it like that before. But no, she'd called me her sister. That had to be different from her decision to keep Mr Huggles around, didn't it?
Mom pulled me closer and wrapped her other arm around my shoulders. "I have to admit that I was expecting her to be a bit older before she brought someone else into the family. And I've no idea how we're going to explain this to the police."
What?
"But there's going to be some ground rules, young lady."
She didn't mean...?
"Uh... you mean I can stay?" I asked nervously.
Mom kissed me on the forehead. "Welcome to the family, Hope. You're grounded."
I don't think I could have come up with anything to say so I hugged her back. What did being grounded matter? Being forced to spend a lot of time in the apartment? That wasn't exactly unexplored territory for me.
She ruffled my hair. "We're going to have to figure out some new sleeping arrangements though. I had a look at that little loft of yours. It's very cleverly put together, but it's not good enough for my daughter."
"It's alright."
"No, it's not," Mom insisted. "It's a pokey little hole. If Will hadn't felt she had to hide you from me, you could have had a proper bed at least. Not a pile of cushions and a sleeping bag." She produced a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped at my face. I hadn't even realised I was crying.
"Can I..."
She took the handkerchief away and raised one eyebrow.
"Can I call you Mom?"
"I insist on it," she told me and then we both needed to use the handkerchief.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.