“O’Brien would have been slowed, his ability to fight back reduced. And he’d have known what was happening.”
“So it is our fault,” Trix said softly, and Sally said nothing to disabuse her of that notion.
Trix’s legs hurt from running. Her chest burned from effort and her mind whirled as she tried to make the pieces of the puzzle fit together. She thought of O’Brien opening the envelope, swearing when he found the black- spotted page. He must have known in that moment that danger was approaching.
Trix felt herself swept along in Sally’s wake. What could she do now? How was she supposed to find Jenny and Holly? And what about Jim? They were moving farther and farther away from Jenny’s parents’ restaurant. If Jim went looking for her at Sally Bennet’s address, he would find nothing but dead people.
“My friend-”
“Later,” Sally said. “First, we get somewhere they can’t find us. Then we get that mark off of you.”
Trix gasped. “Mark on me?”
“The Shadow Men are following you somehow.”
“But she never touched me,” Trix said, thinking back to her brief time with Veronica, wondering.
“Doesn’t matter. Did it somehow, and it needs removing. Then I have to stop that bitch from doing to your Boston what she’s done to mine!”
“And killing you,” Trix said.
Sally slowed down, out of breath, getting her bearings. She looked at Trix. “That, too,” she agreed. She glanced back and Trix followed her gaze. There was no sign of the Shadow Men, but if Trix was really marked, they would find her again as soon as they got away from Sally’s No-Face Men.
Her heart ached, but not from exertion. In all of this madness, with the stakes so high, how would she ever find Jenny and Holly?
“Hey,” Sally said, reaching out to touch her. “I’ll find them. Whoever you and your friend are looking for, I’ll find them, and get you out of here. We’ll all be safer with you back where you belong.”
Trix felt relief wash through her, but then she frowned. She didn’t understand why Sally would bother to help her in the midst of all this.
An angry sneer lifted one corner of the little girl’s mouth, and suddenly Sally seemed much older, almost cruel. “I’m going to send you back with my own mark on you,” she said. “And with my No-Faces on your trail. I won’t let them kill Veronica, but they can punish her. Imprison her. Keep her from trying this fucking shit again.”
Trix stared at her in wonder. Ten or eleven years old, but so much older than her years, Sally Bennet had it all figured out. She might not be able to turn back time and prevent the horror and devastation that had hit two Bostons tonight, but she knew how to stop Veronica from making it any worse. And Trix and Jim would get Jenny and Holly back in the bargain.
“Just tell me what I need to do,” Trix said, hopes soaring.
“For now?” Sally said, grim and dark-eyed. “Just keep up.”
She started running again. Trix took a deep breath and ran after her, putting her fate and the fate of those she loved in the hands of a little girl. But she knew she had no choice. Jenny and Holly were out there, somewhere, in the ruin of two cities. The survivors of those two Bostons, and the people of Trix’s own city… they were all now depending on Sally Bennet.
When he saw Jenny shrink away from him, all of Jim’s strength fled. For an instant, hope had raced through him like adrenaline fire, but then he had seen the lack of recognition in her eyes and knew that when she looked at him, she saw a stranger. This wasn’t his Jenny.
Exhaustion weighed him down. Thus far, determination had driven him on. He loved his family, but he needed them even more, and that need propelled him through despair and past weariness. But all along, hopelessness had whispered in the back of his mind like some tiny devil seated on his shoulder, and now at last he surrendered to it.
Jim turned his back on the restaurant-on not-his-Jenny and not-his-Jenny’s mother-and tried to walk away. He managed three steps before his legs went out from under him and he fell to his knees on the cracked pavement. No tears came. Numb, he felt his whole body sag.
In a moment he would get up. In a moment he would continue his search. In a moment he would catch up with Trix and they would pretend that two cities hadn’t just smashed together, that people weren’t dead and dying around them, that Bostonians weren’t facing their doppelgangers, their reality falling apart. In a moment-
“Do you know me?”
Her voice froze him in place. For a moment he could not breathe, and his chest clenched so tightly that he thought his heart had paused as well. Then she touched him gently on the shoulder and spoke again. “Hey,” she said. “Anybody home in there?”
Jim shuddered and smiled at the same time. How many times had she said the same words to him? When he was lost in thought, painting in his mind, she would try to talk to him and it would be like her voice-her presence- was muffled conversation from another room. And then she would touch him, and ask him that same question, in those same words, though rarely with the same sadness.
If he just kept his eyes closed, if he didn’t answer, maybe he could pretend for just a little while that she was his Jenny after all.
But he couldn’t do that. The sounds of chaos and crisis filled the city, and closing his eyes did not make them go away. There could be no pretending.
Jim turned to look at this woman who was not his wife. She wore a confused and troubled expression, and he wondered what she was seeing on his face-surprise or love or madness, or some combination of all three? “I’m sorry,” Jim said, unable to keep himself from searching her eyes for some sign of recognition. “I keep wishing I could wake up and find out it’s all a nightmare.”
Not-his-Jenny nodded. “Me, too. I think there’s going to be a lot of that going around.”
Her mother stood on the restaurant’s front stoop, gazing worriedly at the two of them. But then something inside the restaurant drew her attention, and after a quick glance, she set aside her broom and went in.
“So, are you going to tell me who you are?” she asked.
Before he could answer, a fire engine roared down the street without its siren, a grim-faced man behind the wheel. They both watched it pass, and Jim saw that a number of people had come out onto the stoops of the apartment buildings on the block. A van pulled up and two burly men got out, staring at the damage to the facade of a music store across the street that had specialized in antique vinyl records. The owners, he figured. The store existed in his Boston, too, and somehow that reassured him.
She was still waiting for an answer.
“I’m Jim,” he said, feeling foolish, as though she ought to know. But of course she didn’t. “Jim Banks.”
“Why don’t you come inside, Jim?” she said.
He looked at her, amazed at her tenderness, as he always had been. “You don’t even know me.”
“No, but I can see you know me. Or you think you do.”
“Jenny-” he began.
“Jennifer,” she corrected. “No one’s called me Jenny since my grandfather died.”
Jim nodded, studying her. Jennifer. That would make it easier-at least a little. She had an old scar on her chin that his Jenny had never had and she wore her hair pulled back into a ponytail, revealing three studs in each ear. She was thinner than his Jenny, too, by at least ten pounds. More time at the gym.
“Jennifer,” he echoed, finally climbing to his feet. “Why doesn’t it freak you out? I mean, yes, I know you, but you’re not afraid of me. Why aren’t you calling the cops right now, reporting me as a stalker or something?”
“The cops have bigger troubles tonight,” she said. “Besides, you showing up here, calling my name, looking at me like that? It’s not the weirdest thing to happen to me tonight.”
A tremor of excitement went through him, and he could feel his face flush. He glanced at the shattered windows of the restaurant, but from this angle he could only see the ceiling fans and the old tin ceiling. “She came here, didn’t she?” he asked, nodding at Jennifer. He smiled. “Is that what you’re talking about? You must have thought you were going crazy. And your parents-”
“Who are you talking about?” Jennifer asked.
Jim had to laugh at her tone, and the crinkle of her eyes, and the way one corner of her mouth lifted higher than the other. All so familiar to him. All parts of his Jenny. “The other you,” he said. “My Jenny. Your double, or
