The Door in the Moon Read Free Page B

hand into a fist and blew into it. When he opened it, he held a handkerchief, which he used to mop his face. “I used to be trapped in a bottle. I hated it, but looking back, it was a quiet, comfortable life.” He looked up. “Someone’s kidnapped Jake.”
    â€œJake?
” Wharton was stunned, but Gideon said quietly, “Who?”
    â€œDon’t know. Tertius couldn’t get a good look at them. Two men, with weapons. Not Shee, human, but with something strange about them.
Journeymen,
for sure, because they had a bracelet and they forced him at gunpoint into the mirror. They may have come in that way too.”
    Wharton had to sit down. He dumped the shotgun on the bench. “Jake . . . dear God! But . . . the alarm . . .”
    â€œThe cat did that. These people were like shadows. Nothing registered them. As if . . . they didn’t exist. Experts.”
    â€œOr Replicants,” Gideon said at once. “Replicants don’t really exist.” He turned to look at the mirror and saw his green coat glimmer in its dark depths. “But why Jake? Do they think they can get some kind of ransom for him? And it means they must have access to the mirror, in some other time.”
    His quicksilver reasoning left Wharton feeling befuddled. “Jake. Kidnapped! It’s unbelievable!”
    He couldn’t seem to get it into his head. “And where’s Sarah? Surely she must have heard . . .”
    â€œAh,” Piers said. “Yes. Well. You haven’t heard the worst of it. Sarah’s gone too.”
    â€œGone?”
    â€œNot kidnapped. Oh no. Seems she followed them in, invisible. The cat says they had no idea she was there.”
    â€œBut . . .” Wharton struggled with it. “Sarah has no bracelet. You need physical contact with whoever is.”
    â€œShe’d have held on to Jake.” Gideon allowed himself a rare smile. “She’s crazy, that girl. But
when
have they gone? Can you track them?”
    Piers leaped up and ran to the mirror. A whole new console had sprouted from its side in the last month; now he tapped the controls nervously. After a minute he said, “Far enough, it seems. Between two and three centuries, but I’m not really able to pinpoint accurately . . . We need Maskelyne on this. Quickly.”
    As he said it, each of them wondered why the scarred man had not been first here. His care of the mirror was obsessional, as if it was part of his soul.
    â€œI’ll go and find him.” Gideon left them to it, slipped out, and ran down the stone steps at the end of the Monk’s Walk. He had been this way once before—since the spring he had explored every crack and corner of the building, every room and garret and cellar, because he had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. If he put one foot outside the safety of the Abbey, the Shee would be on him like flies. He had betrayed Summer, helped Sarah steal the coin from her. If Summer got her claws on him he would certainly pay. But, he thought acidly, these days she didn’t seem to care. She had Venn to distract her.
    At the dimmest turning of the stone stair was an ancient Gothic porch doorway and through that another tiny stone stairwell led down into the cellars. Why did the scarred man have to lurk in the very depths of the earth? Gideon wondered. Mortals seemed to have this urge to dig themselves in—to find dark corners and caves, to build houses, to hide from the sun and the sky. He couldn’t understand it. Living locked up in the Abbey, not even able to climb the trees or stand under the blue sky, was becoming unbearable for him. Day by day he was getting more irritable, more tense. He wondered how much more of it he could stand.
    The door at the bottom was small and heavily ornate with great black wrought-iron hinges—the metal made him shiver, but he knocked urgently.