Bridgebreaker (The Echo Worlds Book 2) Read Free

the damage done to EVA, or at least working around it, when the Slyph had made her move.  A full out invasion of the human world.  Marcus and Jasmine had gone out to stop what they could while he and Sal worked to being EVA back online.  What they hadn’t known was that she had sent two new creatures after them, hound like things, and gotten them here into the headquarters.
    Cendan quickly found his way to the barrier room to find Marcus once again sitting in his favorite chair, staring at the board in front of him.  The board held spaces for hundreds of foci, if not a thousand, but now only two were in use; his and Marcus’s.  Jasmine’s was with Jasmine, wherever she was at the moment.  Rule of thumb; if you leave the lair, bring your focus.
    “Marcus, got a moment?  I have a question; something occurred to me and you of anyone here might know the answer.”  Cendan awaited Marcus’s response.  Since Sal’s death, Marcus had retreated to this room every day.  Earth was safer now than it had been in over a thousand years, with EVA back on the job.  But still, Marcus was the leader of a pitiful band of what once was thousands.
    “What is it Cendan.”  Marcus didn’t turn to look at him.
    “Well, I was wondering.  Are there any other echo worlds?  I mean, a sound has more than one echo, so if our world has an echo, wouldn’t there be more than one?” Cendan asked.
    Marcus shifted in his seat and Cendan winced.  Always touchy about certain subjects, Marcus took being a Bridgefinder deadly seriously.
    However, Marcus refused to believe that what they did was magic, in any sense of the word. He rejected the thought.  Sal had been more open to the idea, but he was not here anymore.  Jasmine had also rejected the idea, at least at first.  Both she and Marcus had healed somewhat from their injuries during the Slyph’s assault, and during that time Jasmine had asked him some quiet questions about magic.
    Marcus, however, clung to his prejudice.  What made it all the more galling to Cendan was that the refusal to accept what they did as magic, or even the far greater things they could do, was all borne of a fringe belief of a small faction of Bridgefinders long ago.  Somehow the idea had taken over, though, and the Bridgefinders had turned their backs on a large amount of their power.
    “Why do you ask?  Still looking for proof of your magic idea?” Marcus asked in return, his voice low and tired.
    “No, just something that occurred to me when I closed Oakhearts journal.  I heard the echo of the book slamming closed, and it just occurred to me...” Cendan trailed off.
    “The answer is, we don’t know.  Or least I don’t know.  The question has been asked before, more than once.  I will say that we’ve only had evidence of one echo that connects to our world.  If there are others, they don’t seem to connect to our world; at least directly.”
    Suddenly Marcus stood and walked toward Cendan.  His face, always sharp edged, looked haggard now, drawn.  “Your books in the Maker wing may have more information.”
    Marcus stopped in front of Cendan and spoke.  “What I’m more interested in is why there hasn’t been a single bridge formed in the last two weeks.  Nothing.  Not even the rare outlier.  It’s as if there isn’t a single connection between the worlds, though we know there still are – the map says so.  But the Slyph hasn’t tried.  Even once.  Why?”
    Cendan shrugged.  In truth, he wondered why as well.  EVA has told him that she hadn’t had to even try to stop anything, and for the last two weeks she’d been strengthening the barrier twenty-four hours a day with no interference from the other side.  She seemed pretty damn happy about it as much as a clockwork contraption could be.
    “I don’t know.  Is that really a problem though?  Maybe she’s trying to figure out what to do next.  Maybe she’s hurt or injured.  Or maybe she’s given up.  Who