I reeled at the sudden one-eighty.
Dr. Torrance looked just as confused. “I thought you wanted to keep an eye on me.”
“Do you prefer those trolls claw your face off?” Five snapped. “Because right now, it looks like that’s their plan. I said I can’t control them. I’m not the solution to any of this Chosen One crap.”
“You’ll believe in trolls, and dragons, and—and other dimensions,” I said, “but the rest of our story is a step too far?”
“You’re joking, right?”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand. If I told you I can turn my fingers into cats or control people’s minds with soap, would you buy that? What if I told you that I’ll bring about world peace if you give me your life savings? Hey, if dragons exist, anything’s possible. Pay up. No? Didn’t think so.”
“But . . . we’re you,” Red said. “We wouldn’t lie to you.”
“You’re me?” Five looked around the kitchen in disbelief. “You’re nothing like me. You’re soft, and scared, and you don’t know anything. Leave. Before you get your dumb selves hurt.”
“This can get you home,” Four blurted out.
Five stilled. “What?”
Four looked like a deer in headlights, like those were all the words she’d been able to come up with.
“If we defeat the trolls and, uh, ‘save the world,’” Red said, using air quotes, “the Powers That Be will send us all home.”
“Does that include me? I wasn’t sent here at the same time. Or for the same reason. I don’t know if I was sent for a reason at all.”
“I don’t know, either,” I admitted. “We’ll ask Neven. Please. We need your help.”
Five chewed the inside of her cheek, staring at the trolls. They seemed calmer. Maybe she could give us a few minutes more. “I’ve been following the news on Philadelphia,” she said finally, “and I’ve got a question.”
“Yeah?”
“Why the hell did that rift of yours just triple in size?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Five stayed in the kitchen while the rest of us filed into the living room with a handful of trolls on our heels.
Rainbow took the TV remote from the coffee table and upped the volume. A panicky bystander was being interviewed, her face red: “It just ripped open! The freaking sky! We were looking at that thing—that portal. It hovered right there.” She pointed at a park behind her. “Police pushed us back. They made us stop filming. After a couple minutes, it just—suddenly—out of nowhere—” She gestured wildly. “You could see the air move, you know? Like it was stretching. I can’t describe it. The portal tore open further. Two, three times the size. I had a tear in my tights the other day. Went exactly like that.”
The image switched to a newscaster. Her voice was steady as she showed footage of the rift before and after the change.
Five had asked why it happened; I could only think of one answer.
The walls are weakening.
One of the trolls drooped back to the kitchen, where Five was still working on her soup. It wasn’t all she’d been cooking. The living room held even more dirty dishes than the kitchen. Rainbow looked around, puzzled. I suspected the room normally looked perfectly nice: a huge curved TV, a tidy floor, neat bookshelves. The walls were decorated with crucifixes and family pictures and childlike drawings of animals and a photo collage with big letters spelling out SAN JUAN.
What distracted from all of that was the mess.
I counted five glasses and a handful of silverware. Two used dinner plates were haphazardly stacked on an arm of the couch, while a breakfast plate on the coffee table held an apple core and the remains of a sauce I couldn’t identify. It looked fresh enough that it had to be Five’s mess.
The knives I saw in several easy-to-reach places had to be Five’s doing, too. I imagined her sitting here surrounded by trolls and weapons as the news of the rift expansion broke.
“Dr. Torrance?” I nodded at the TV. “Did you know about this?”
“I got word half an hour ago,” she admitted. “I don’t know what caused it, though. I was never assigned to the rift itself. I worked with the trolls. It’s why I stayed behind—I can be more useful in Damford than Philadelphia.”
We needed to talk to Neven about what the expansion meant. I knew her answer, though: It’s not your problem.
“So you studied the trolls,” I said, “and you worked with that Hazel. Right?” Dr. Torrance had to know Five better than she knew me. It was an odd thought.
“Ever since she arrived. We’ve been looking for her since her escape this week, but the last thing I expected was to find her with the trolls. I’d thought she’d get as far away from them as possible.” Dr. Torrance sat down in an armchair, elbows on her knees. Her every movement was cautious. She kept glancing at the trolls and tugging nervously at a sleeve of her trench coat. Up close like this, she looked younger—thirties, maybe—than I’d have guessed in the garage. The glasses and nearly white hair must’ve thrown me off. “I’m sorry for not telling you about her,” she went on. “It’s, you know. Orders. I’m not exactly high up in the chain of command.”
I looked away. I believed she was sorry; I just wasn’t ready to hear it. Not after the MGA had lied about Neven and Five and let us drop from a balcony.
I’d put my life in the hands of this organization. This was what they offered in return.
“Do you think Neven knows about the rift?” Red sat down on the couch. “Or about Five’s connection to the trolls?”
“Five? You mean—Oh, right,” Dr. Torrance said. “It’s not the only unusual thing about her, you know. Both the night she arrived and the night she escaped, the power went out.”
“You think I did that?” Five stepped into the living room and leaned against the doorpost. “Sorry to disappoint. I can’t control electricity with my mind.”
“Only trolls.”
