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My mouth dropped open. “What?”
“She’s such a lovely girl.” Mom smiled again, as if she had a secret.
I guess she did.
Chapter 55
Lily and I escaped to the front porch.
“Are you okay?” Lily asked, putting her hand on my shoulder. I covered it with my own.
“I don’t know. Mom and Dad. It’s amazing.” I stared across the dewy grass and breathed in the smell of a new morning. But it wasn’t a fresh start. “Emerson and Michael …”
“There’s hope.” I heard it in her voice, felt it in her soul.
“Lily? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I know where the Infinityglass is.”
“What? How?”
“I lied to Teague. Once I figured out the Infinityglass was a person, I looked for it on the map. It’s in Louisiana, near New Orleans. We can save them, Kaleb.” Her smile was full of promise. “We just have to find the Infinityglass, and we can make everything okay.”
I touched the bruise on her cheek, ran my thumb under the cut on her mouth.
“I hope you aren’t going to let a fat lip stop you,” she said.
I barely touched my lips to hers, but rather than seek her emotions, I paid attention to my own.
All I felt was love.
Until other emotions pushed between us.
More relief. More gratitude. So much more love.
Michael. And Emerson.
I turned to see him, along with Emerson, perfectly healthy, standing right in front of us. I stared at them in wonder, and then I jumped off the porch steps, grabbing Mike to make sure he was real, reaching out for Em’s hand.
They didn’t disappear.
“How?” I asked, once everyone had hugged and been hugged at least fifteen times. “We were sure you were gone, forever.”
“So were we,” Em said. “Once we got inside, I realized that the Phone Company didn’t look like the Phone Company anymore. No one was inside, and there weren’t tables or chairs or … anything. I turned around to run back out, but the smoke was so thick….”
She’d been terrified. Being trapped, compounded with her fear of fire—I could feel the tightness in her throat, the shaking of her arms and legs.
“But I could see her,” Michael said, reaching for Em’s hand. “I knew we had one chance.”
“We couldn’t travel,” Em said, her voice stronger now, “because we didn’t have exotic matter. But we had our duronium rings, so we could get inside the veil.”
“The rip changed while we watched,” Michael said. “The Phone Company went back to normal.”
“But we couldn’t get out of the veil.” Em shuddered. “We were trapped.”
“If you were trapped, how the hell are you standing here right now?” I demanded. That’s when I felt him.
Poe stood two feet away from us, just outside a veil.
