Meeting Read Free

Rowan had drifted closer, and so had Maya’s Janus House teacher Sarutha.
    “Well, maybe it’d be all right to show you,” Gwenda said. She glanced at Sarutha, who nodded once. “How interested in clothes are you?”
    “I like looking at people who wear a lot of colors. I don’t necessarily want to wear them myself. When can I come?”
    “Tomorrow afternoon,” Gwenda said. Sarutha gave one sharp nod again. Gwenda gripped Maya’s hand. “You come, too,” she said, “okay?”
    “Sure,” said Maya. She had been in several apartments at Janus House, but she’d never visited Gwenda’s. “Hey, do you guys celebrate Halloween? We’re carving our pumpkins tomorrow.”
    “Halloween? That’s a whole other subject,” said Gwenda, and then Maya’s mother said it was time to sing again, and everybody settled down except Candra, who went upstairs to get away from the ultimate dorkiness of group music.

TWO
    “Come on. She said it was okay,” Maya told Candra the next afternoon as they approached the steps to Janus House’s front porch.
    “I know,” said Candra. “I want to go inside. I’ve wanted to for a long time.” Then she turned around and headed back to the sidewalk, away from the verandah that surrounded the big, complicated, old-fashioned building that held the Janus House Apartments and all sorts of hidden rooms and other secrets.
    “Candra,” Maya said. She grabbed her big sister’s hand and dragged her toward the building again.
    “This is what always happens when I try to come over here,” Candra said. “Keep hanging on, will you?”
    “Weird,” said Maya. Candra was trying to pull free.
    “Hey.” Peter came up behind them. “If you guys are going to Janus House, I want to go, too.”
    Peter’s fists were clenched at his sides, his eyebrows lowered, as he trudged up the path toward them. He got halfway there and suddenly turned around. “Hey.”
    An energy reaches out and persuades their bodies they don’t want to come here , Rimi told Maya.
    The wards, Maya thought. She’d heard her teachers and others mention warding the house against intruders, but she hadn’t seen it work before.
    It reaches for their minds, too, but they are focused now, and harder to persuade.
    “You guys, wait here. I’ll go get Gwenda,” Maya said. She released Candra, who wandered away. Peter fidgeted on the pathway, frowning as he faced the house.
    Maya crossed the porch and opened one of the double front doors. She stepped over the threshold into the foyer of the building.
    Inside, the space opened into a broad, three-story entry with a special welcome-to-the-outside-world mat you wiped your feet on as you left the building. Janus House people had to be careful not to take the dust of other worlds where outsiders might sense it. Maya wasn’t sure what her family would make of a doormat on the inside of the door. If anything. Heck. She didn’t have to explain.
    Benjamin’s apartment was to the left as she entered. Wide stairs rose before her, and hallways led past the staircase on either side, with different colored apartment doors opening off them. Maya’s teacher Sarutha’s apartment was on the third floor, with its own tiny balcony, where they sat amid Sarutha’s potted plants and drank tea sometimes while Maya was studying. Maya wasn’t sure which door Gwenda lived behind.
    She knocked on Benjamin’s green door. A moment later, Benjamin answered, and she smiled at him. He smiled back. “Hi. Are we expecting you?”
    “Gwenda said Candra could come over and see her closet today, only I don’t know where Gwenda lives, and anyway, Candra can’t seem to get to the house. How does that work?”
    Benjamin frowned. “Oh, yeah. I bet Gwenda forgot about the wards.”
    “Peter wants to come, too. Is there a way for them to come in?”
    “Sure.” He turned and called toward the kitchen, “Hey, Mom. It’s Maya. I have to go out and let her sister and brother through the wards and take them to