The Door in the Moon (26 page)

There was cold meat and salad and fruit and platefuls of delicious little creamy desserts, bowls of strawberries and ice cream that seemed to stay cold despite the heat, because the day was scorching, the blueness of the sky almost oppressive as it reached even to the crisped barrier of the moor.

“I think,” David said, pouring a huge mug of tea, “that this afternoon I am going to take the car and go down to the cove and sit on the beach. Anyone who wants to can come. I haven't seen the sea for . . .” He shrugged. “Centuries.”

Jake laughed.

“But first I need to phone your mother in the States. She might be vaguely interested to know I've turned up again.”

He got up and wandered in. Jake's eyes followed him. Sarah moved to the empty seat.

“Happy?”

He smiled. “What do you think?”

She nodded, watching a ladybug crawl between them on the white tablecloth.

Something in her silence made him look at her.

She said, “Janus won't give up. Nor will I. If Venn succeeds, the whole thing starts up, the rising power and fame of the mirror, the way it was traded and fought over, the people that were killed for it, the wars that were fought over it. You don't know any of that. And then, at the end, it becomes a black hole eating my world, my family, my friends. We can stop that, Jake, right at the source.”

He was watching her. “Now that I've got what I want, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“You want me to help you stop Venn. But don't you see, if we do that, if he never gets Leah back, Summer will take him.”

She shrugged, looking out at the Wood. “Better that than the alternative.”

It chilled him. Because he knew she was right.

David put the phone down with relief because it had only been the answering machine, and saw Venn looking at him through the open doorway.

“Coming to the beach, O? Brisk walk?”

“No.”

“Listen. I always knew you'd come for me.”

Venn looked uneasy. “It's Jake you should thank, David. If he hadn't broken out of school and come storming in here to sort things out, I might still be sunk in darkness and despair. He's a bright kid.”

“Takes after me.” David laughed, awkward. Then he stepped closer. “What I mean to say is, now I'm back, we'll work like stink. We'll get Leah.”

Venn moved aside to let Piers push an old-fashioned pram past him. “We will. And this time, nothing will stop me. Nothing, David. I swear that.”

The long afternoon walking the beach ended in a sunset that seared the west. As they drove back to the Abbey and up the drive, Jake sat with his elbow out of the window, feeling calmer than he had for months. The worst was over. His father was here. For a moment, a fleeting memory of Moll creased his mind, but that was fine, he would see her again.

After all, they had a time machine, and were close to knowing exactly how to use it.

“Look at that,” his father muttered.

Between the darkening branches of the Wood, the Abbey rose like a dark shadow. But it was lit with a light that made Jake frown, a strange, green, shimmering glow.

“Put your foot down,” he muttered, worried. “That's not right.”

David drove hurriedly down the overgrown drive.

As they came out onto the lawns he gave a gasp, and Jake flung the door open and leaped out, his heart thudding, all calm gone, because surely that glimmer was made by the Shee and that must mean they were back and—

He hurtled around a tree and stopped, staring.

The lawns were hung with soft blue lights, like lanterns. In the house were hundreds of tiny movements and glints and glimmers, flitting shapes, a face with silver hair appearing briefly at a window, a flock of starlings on a chimney.

Venn and Sarah were standing outside, watching. Jake raced across to them. “What's happening?”

Venn smiled, sour. “They're tidying up.”

Piers came down the steps with a rug, shook it, grinned, and went back in.

“Piers? Or the Shee?”

“Summer seems to have given orders.” As he said it a window opened by itself above, and a great cloud of the green dust was hurled out, billowing into the air.

Sarah giggled. “Brushes and brooms and all sorts of things. But they seem to be making more mess than ever.”

As she said it a door opened and a thin figure came out, walking quickly toward them. Gideon wore his green frock-coat. There was dust in his hair, and his skin was pale under the moon. He came and stood in front of them, hands in pockets, and his eyes were green and distracted.

“Don't forget me,” he said

Sarah said, “You don't have to do this.”

“Call it my sacrifice. It's been good being a mortal. It's made me remember myself. But . . . maybe I've been with them too long to stop now.”

“They don't have time,” Jake said “So how . . .”

Gideon shrugged. “I know what I mean.” He turned and walked through the long grass of the lawn toward the Wood. “If you call, I'll come. If she lets me.”

He raised a hand. Sarah shook her head; Jake frowned.

“You're not Shee,” he said with sudden fury. “You're one of us. Don't forget that.”

Gideon nodded. “Maybe.”

Then he was only a shadow among shadows.

And then nothing at all.

About the Author

C
ATHERINE
F
ISHER
is a critically acclaimed author and poet and was named the first Young People's Laureate for Wales. She graduated from the University of Wales with a degree in English and a fascination for myth and history, and has worked in education and archaeology and as a lecturer in creative writing. Her genre-busting novels, like the
New York Times
bestselling
Incarceron
and
Sapphique,
have given her the reputation of being “one of today's best fantasy writers,” as noted by the London
Independent
. Ms. Fisher lives in Wales in the United Kingdom.

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