CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Reunion

CHLOE SLEPT A HORRID SLEEP, AND FOR ONCE, IT WASN’T BECAUSE of the god-awful mattress that smelled and felt like a giant moth-filled sock. Her muscles ached with a deep, all-over ache. Her mind was a nest of surly bees. The bed in her little room at the Mazzoleni Academy rustled and creaked beneath her restless sleep, spilling her from dream to troubled dream—into the tiny prison cell in the Riven’s nest, or back to her own bedroom before the fire, or to brightly lit places she scarcely remembered. Her mother roamed them all, red hair ablaze.

Chloe woke slowly, raggedly. She shed her dreams and slipped messily through the wreckage of yesterday’s memories. The riverbank, the Mordin, the filthy, miserable Auditor—a creature who deserved to be exterminated if ever there was one. And then, of course, her own mother. Returned against all odds or expectations. Returned not from the dead, but from something like it.

Chloe hadn’t seen the woman in seven years. There were a few pictures, of course—or at least, there had been before the fire. That red hair was unmistakable. But now Chloe felt sick at having uttered the word that had risen to her lips in that harrowing moment: “Mom.”

Isabel had tried to embrace her, calling Chloe’s name over and over, but that wasn’t going to happen. No way. Chloe had instinctively gone thin, her mother’s arms going right through her. And then Mr. Meister took control, issuing commands in that infernally smooth voice. Immediately Mrs. Hapsteade had whisked Chloe and Horace away, leaving the others behind with the old man.

They’d stumbled along the riverbank, Neptune guiding them from above. They’d crossed a wooden bridge, and then a damp, lumpy meadow. More trees, darker this time, and then a loose and crumbling wall of brick. A cloister. Once inside, Chloe spotted the requisite leestone, flat on the ground and half buried in leaves, this time in the shape of a brownish bird with a splash of blue on the wing. Around the leestone was a motley circle of cabbage-sized stones embedded in the earth. All cloisters had these circles, and Chloe hadn’t given them much thought, but now Mrs. Hapsteade and Neptune stalked around the stones intently, clearing away forest debris and examining each curiously shaped rock, Neptune murmuring apparent nonsense: “Wren’laddon . . . Aarnin . . . Navendrel . . . where is it?”

At last Mrs. Hapsteade stopped beside a stone shaped like a half-buried armchair. “Here it is—San’ska.” She waved at Horace and Chloe. “Come and see.”

Chloe had no idea what she was talking about, and she didn’t care. Her mother had returned. Her mother was a Tuner. Not only that, but her mother and Horace’s mother had actually known each other as children. Impossible. Chloe was so full of rage and confusion—and yes, fear—that she couldn’t speak. She thought she might set the air on fire if she opened her mouth.

“Let’s go,” Mrs. Hapsteade said briskly. “We have to get back to the Warren immediately. Now. The others will meet us there.”

The others. Isabel too? Chloe couldn’t move her jaw to ask.

Horace asked, “What are these things?”

“This is a falkrete circle,” Mrs. Hapsteade replied. “One of only a dozen or so in the city that still work.”

Horace, ever curious, stepped forward to examine the chunky stone. “What does it do?”

“It’s a transport system. Each of these stones is a gateway to another cloister.”

Horace gave Chloe an incredulous look, but she was only half listening. “You mean we’re teleporting?” Horace said.

That word got her attention. Teleporting? What?

“If you like,” Mrs. Hapsteade said. She nudged the stone with one black-booted foot. “This particular falkrete stone leads to San’ska. That’s the name of the home cloister—the cloister nearest the academy. But there’s a trick to getting there. Neptune, this is your specialty. Would you explain, please?”

Neptune stepped forward, her tourminda in hand. She crouched over the stone, holding her Tan’ji just above the jagged surface. “When you’re ready, hold your instrument against the falkrete. You’ll immediately split in two, and then—”

Shoving thoughts of her mother aside, Chloe spoke at last. “I’m sorry—what?”

“You won’t physically be ripped in two, of course,” Neptune explained. “Actually what happens is you’ll be in two places at once—you’ll be here in this cloister, but you’ll also be in the destination cloister.”

“How does that work?” Chloe said.

“It’s a quantum state,” Neptune said. “Like Schrödinger’s cat.”

Horace shook his head. “No way. That’s not possible. That only works with, like, atoms and stuff. Really small things.”

“You could be right, of course,” Neptune said calmly. “We could just be jerking your chain.”

Chloe frowned, thinking hard. She’d read about Schrödinger’s cat once but hadn’t totally understood it. Something about a sealed box with a cat inside that was either alive or dead. And supposedly, according to some crazy law of science, the unobserved cat could be both dead and alive at the same time. The moment you opened the box to look at the cat—to observe it—then the cat would turn out to be either definitely dead or definitely alive. But before that, it was both. Thinking about it gave Chloe a headache.

“But how do you get through?” Horace asked.

Neptune said, “The trick to moving on through is to decide—to believe—that you are in the next cloister. In a way, you have to sort of observe yourself being there, not here. And then you will be.”

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Hapsteade. “Once your Tan’ji touches the falkrete and you see both cloisters, be decisive. Move through quickly. We’re only doing a single jump tonight, but it will still be disorienting. And the longer you hesitate—the longer you straddle both cloisters—the more disorienting it will be.”

“Okay, here’s a question,” Chloe said to Neptune. “You touch your Tan’ji to the stone, and you’ll be in both cloisters at once. But we’ll observe you here. Isn’t that a problem with the whole Schrödinger thing? Won’t you be stuck here?” Horace glanced at her and nodded approvingly.

“Actually . . . ,” Neptune teased.

They were silent for a moment, and then Horace said, “We can’t watch.” His voice was dreamy, a sure sign he was geeking out, sucking down this new knowledge like it was candy.

“That’s right,” said Neptune. “A girl needs her privacy.”

Mrs. Hapsteade bustled forward. “Remember which stone it is. We’ll go one at a time, while the others wait outside the cloister. I’ll go last.”

“What about on the other side?” said Horace. “Can we watch people arrive?”

“It can be done, but observing people from the other side yanks them through immediately, and hard. It makes the arrival much more painful. Better to let each traveler come through under their own force of will.”

They’d stepped outside the cloister then, giving Neptune a minute or two. Horace had gone next. While they waited, Chloe focused all her mental energy worrying about Horace, even though she was pretty sure he didn’t need it. Meanwhile Mrs. Hapsteade eyeballed Chloe steadily. Chloe knew what the woman was thinking, and stupidly took the bait. “Do I have something on my face or something?”

“Chloe, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Hapsteade said gently. “We should have warned you.”

Chloe shrugged. When she spoke, she tried to keep her voice calm, her tone indifferent. She practically trembled with the effort. “Warnings are overrated. I mean, come on—what’s life without a terrible surprise now and then?” She drew on the Alvalaithen’s power, letting its song drown out the sound of some of the few words Isabel had managed to say in those few moments on the riverbank: “I found you. Chloe. Wait, I found you.”

Chloe stepped into the cloister, feeling the chill of the thick brick wall as she passed through it. Horace was already gone. She slipped the dragonfly from its cord and approached the small, armchair-shaped rock. Part of her hoped that Horace was still in the cloister at the other end, that he would observe her and therefore yank her through without her having to exert a bit of will. She hoped it would hurt.

She tapped the dragonfly’s head against the stone. Immediately the world doubled. She was in the city—a sudden canvas of lights overhead, and thin but jarring sounds of traffic—and yet the forest was still here too. The city cloister was cleaner and totally empty; she recognized it as the one where Gabriel had met Horace and her just a few days ago, a couple of blocks from the Mazzoleni Academy.

She looked down at her hand, flexing it. Two versions of her fingers opened and closed, one disorientingly ahead of the other by just a fraction of a second, as if she were watching herself on a video screen. She almost said “Crazy,” out loud, but then caught herself—what if Mrs. Hapsteade heard? Wouldn’t that count as an observation, of sorts, snapping her back fully into the forest cloister? After her embarrassment with the oublimort, Chloe wasn’t going to screw this one up.

She concentrated on the city cloister. In her doubled vision, the leestone there—the black-and-white bird—overlapped the brown leestone in the forest cloister. The other day, she’d joked that the black-and-white bird was a penguin, but now its true name popped into her head. It was a magpie.

She stared at the magpie, willing it to grow clearer even as she let the brown bird fade from her sight. She could only be in one place, and it had to be there, in the city. It had to be. Suddenly a great cramp seized every muscle in her body, and the forest cloister dropped away completely. She fell back onto her rump. Overhead, no longer a forest canopy but skyscrapers soaring high over a single tree. A ginkgo. She’d done it. She’d come fully into the city cloister. But her muscles ached and she felt lightheaded, scattered—as if she’d had a dream in which she stayed in the forest cloister. It felt so real that she had to collect herself for a moment before she felt fully present.

Afterward, once Mrs. Hapsteade had followed, the little group had trekked back to the academy. Without a word to anyone, not even to Horace, Chloe had gone up to her dingy room on the academy’s deserted top floor. Her father’s room, at the opposite end of the hall, was dark. How long would it be before he found out his wife had returned? What would happen to them now?

An hour later Horace had come to her door to announce that he was leaving, that the others had returned and Beck was taking him home.

“Is she with them?” Chloe had asked. “Tell me he didn’t actually bring her back here.”

“He did—back to the academy. But not down to the Warren. And he took her harp away.” He paused and said, “Are you okay?”

“That’s a stupid question, Horace,” she’d replied, and rolled away from him.

“For what it’s worth,” Horace said after a while, “I don’t think my mom knew that Isabel was . . . you know.”

“Of course she didn’t, Horace. Your mom would have told me if she knew. Your mother, unlike some, is a good person.”

Another long pause. “Isabel saved us tonight.”

“Did she?” Chloe had said, and after a painful minute of silence, Horace had left her. Once he was gone, all that was left was a short night filled with long, terrible dreams.

Now Chloe opened her eyes and stared at the water-stained ceiling, lit with sickly morning light. She went thin and stuck her hand outside, her muscles complaining faintly. Even now, the day was already muggy and hot, and promising worse to come. She groaned and rolled over, then opened her eyes wide.

There, sitting silently on the other bed, was her mother. Isabel. The woman made no effort to smile, just gazed at Chloe as if half expecting Chloe to ignore her. Chloe sat up, surprised at the blaze of hurt and rage and doubt that flared up all at once. She corralled it all, finding every bit of braveness she could muster.

“I was beginning to hope I’d imagined you,” Chloe said.

“I’ve had similar thoughts myself,” Isabel replied.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me you’ve been sitting there for a long time, just watching me.”

Isabel sighed wistfully. “Not nearly long enough,” she said sadly. “Or maybe my whole life. I don’t know.”

The sorrow in her voice was grating, unbearable. Chloe felt herself bristling but couldn’t tear her eyes away from that face, so foreign and familiar, the ghost of a ghost. Isabel’s hair was even redder than Chloe remembered. Her clothes were travel worn. Isabel worried a brown ring she wore on her right pinky. On her left hand, meanwhile, she still wore her wedding band. Chloe was about to make a nasty remark about that when she noticed the absence of Isabel’s harp.

“I heard they took your harp away,” Chloe said. “Good for them.” She tried to forget what Horace had been trying to tell her—that Isabel’s power might well have saved them all last night.

“They didn’t take it,” said Isabel. “I surrendered it.”

“Willingly, I’m sure.”

“I knew Mr. Meister would want me to give it up, and I did. Besides, it was the only way.”

“The only way to what?”

“To come home.”

Chloe made herself laugh, sharp barks that she hoped sounded cruel.

If Isabel flinched, it was hardly noticeable. “I talked to your dad last night,” she said.

Chloe stopped laughing, unable to resist imagining it. Isabel had been talking to her dad, just down the hall from here. Had they been reconciling? Crying? Hugging? Possibly all of those things, if she knew her dad. The thought made her boil. “I don’t want you talking to him.”

“That’s not your decision to make. There’s a lot for him and me to talk about.” Isabel sighed again, and Chloe could hear the exhaustion in her voice. That voice—it registered in some deep pocket of remembrance Chloe hadn’t even known she still had. How had that voice sounded to her father?

“If my dad was glad to see you,” Chloe said, “it’s only because he’s been alone this whole time. He’s been through more than you can imagine.”

“Don’t presume to know how much I can imagine,” Isabel said low. “But you’re right. He’s being too kind. He’s showing me more forgiveness—more love—than I deserve.”

“Spare me,” Chloe said, hardly able to stomach the idea. “What about Madeline? Does she know yet?”

Isabel’s eyes grew shiny. “Not yet. I so want to see her. How is she? Dad said she’s strong, and happy.”

“She’s the best of us,” Chloe said firmly. “No big surprise, though—she knew you the least.”

Isabel looked away. She got up and wandered over to Chloe’s desk. There wasn’t much to see—library books, her stash of wintergreen mints, a chunk of charred brick from the wreckage of the fire. There was also an intricate black key, entrusted to her by Mrs. Hapsteade. It unlocked the elevator that led to the Great Burrow.

If Isabel noticed the key, she didn’t comment. Instead she hefted the scorched brick, examining it. “The fire,” she said. “Dad told me. I’m so sorry. You lost everything.”

“Not everything.”

“Not everything, no. Not the most important things. But I’m sorry, Clover.”

The all-but-forgotten nickname shocked Chloe, actually knocking the breath from her. “Do not call me that,” she spat.

Isabel dipped her head. “Old habits die hard,” she said apologetically. “I’ve missed you plenty.”

Angrily, Chloe swallowed the unwanted knot that rose in her throat. This woman had no right to be here, to be saying these things. You shouldn’t be able to toss something away and then whine about it being gone. “You’ll get over it,” Chloe said. “I did.”

“Yes,” Isabel said lightly. “You really seem over it.”

From the desk, she picked up an oversized marble, clear as glass. Like all raven’s eyes, this one had started out black, but as it safely absorbed the unwanted attention of the Riven, it had faded from black to purple to transparent until its protective powers were exhausted.

“What a souvenir this is,” Isabel said, frowning at it. “A raven’s eye, all used up. I wonder how.”

“It helped save me during the fire,” Chloe said, unsure why she was bothering to explain.

“Can I have it?”

Chloe shrugged. “Why not? It’s useless now. And every time you look at it, you can remember how it was there when you weren’t.”

Isabel tucked the raven’s eye into a pocket without comment. Chloe, meanwhile, struggled to keep her bearings. She found herself wishing for Horace, for his steadfast voice and his logical way of looking at the world. If anyone could make sense of this terrible moment, a moment she did not want but had so often imagined, it was Horace.

Isabel sat down on the far end of Chloe’s bed. “You seem to have a lot you want to say to me,” she said. “But nothing to ask?”

Chloe let that one sink like a stone through all the questions she’d wanted to put to her mother over the years, all the things she’d asked her father, all the answers she’d tried to give Madeline. So much, so thick, all so old and dusted and worn down. She went back to the night before, to the moment she’d first recognized that fierce face, so infuriatingly like her own. She went back to the first thought she’d had, and said it out loud now:

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Isabel sighed. “Oh Clover, I came back for you. For you and Madeline and your dad. I’ve been looking for you all these years.”

“All seven?” Chloe snapped, and then winced at how readily the exact number sprang out, as if she’d been counting. As if she’d been keeping track.

“No. Not all seven. I traveled, trying to come to terms with what I did. I worked for a while in various places. Never very far away. But then I came back to find you.”

“It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to find someone, if you really wanted to.”

“You moved,” Isabel said, as if that explained eveything. “Dad left his job.”

“He lost his job.”

“And he changed your name, from Burke to Oliver.”

“That was my idea,” said Chloe. Isabel frowned sadly. “What, are you really surprised that I didn’t want to keep the name of the woman who abandoned me? Abandoned all of us?”

“Maybe it would help if I told you why I left.”

Chloe’s stomach fluttered. “I can’t imagine how, but knock yourself out.”

Isabel folded her legs beneath her on the bed and spoke softly, looking Chloe in the eye. “When I was your age, I worked for the Wardens as a Tuner. I was . . . good at it. I was the only one who could use Miradel—the wicker harp.”

Chloe was surprised to hear Isabel telling the truth. She was equally surprised to hear that the harp had a name—Horace’s mom hadn’t mentioned that. And now a watery memory floated to the surface of Chloe’s mind. An old photograph of her mother and father lying in a hammock together, looking young and happy. And around her mother’s neck, a round wicker pendant. The harp. Aggravatingly, Chloe realized a hunger was gnawing at her quietly now, a hunger for answers she’d never gotten. But she’d be damned if she was going to show it. “I heard a different story,” she said. “I heard you couldn’t control the harp.”

“Sometimes there would be . . . events. Things I didn’t intend. Usually it was no big deal.”

“Severing people, no big deal.”

Isabel winced. “I was getting better,” she insisted. “I needed help. Mr. Meister could have helped me, but it wasn’t fair—” Furrowing her brow, she caught herself, rethinking her words. “It was difficult for me, because—”

“Because a harp isn’t a Tan’ji. You’re not Tan’ji.”

Isabel bared her teeth.

“You’re not,” Chloe insisted. “You can use it, but the harp isn’t even really yours.”

“So they always said,” Isabel snapped. “They reminded me every day. I could use it when they allowed me to. Miradel was on loan to me, like a library book.” She gestured at the books on Chloe’s desk.

Under the circumstances, Chloe didn’t want to admit that these library books weren’t exactly on loan. “The Wardens didn’t let you keep the harp because you couldn’t really control it.”

“No, because that was the rule.” She thrust an angry, rigid finger at the floor. “And because of the rule, I couldn’t master my instrument properly.”

Chloe, of course, was no fan of authority. Much to her dismay, she felt a flicker of anger on her mother’s behalf, knowing very well how frustrating the Wardens’ rules could be. “So you stole it.”

“Yes. Maybe you understand why.”

“I don’t,” Chloe lied. “And I definitely don’t understand why Mr. Meister would let you keep it after you stole it.”

“Oh, he knew where I was. I was only twelve. He could have come for me.”

Chloe had no idea whether that was true or not. “So why didn’t he?”

Isabel shrugged. “Probably he was afraid. And he should have been.” Her tone was icily casual and tinged with arrogance. “So instead, he banished me. I was excommunicated. I felt it happen.” She glanced down at the floor. “It was . . . very bad at first. I’d been to the Warren dozens of times, but after they banished me it was like the sight of it had been erased from my mind. I could picture the neighborhood, but not the academy itself. And even if I’d walked right past it, I never would have seen it.”

It occurred to Chloe that Isabel didn’t seem to know how she’d been banished. She didn’t seem to know about the spitestone. “But now thanks to April, you’re back,” Chloe pointed out, pressing. “Lucky you.”

Isabel twisted her pinky ring. “But I’m not back. Even as I sit here, right above the Great Burrow, I couldn’t find my way down.”

“Really?” Chloe asked. “Are you saying you could roam the halls of the academy day and night, and still never find the passageway that leads down into the Warren?”

“Is it even a passageway?” asked Isabel. “I have no memories. I can barely even summon up the idea.”

Chloe managed not to glance at the black key on her desk. She wondered if Isabel was even able to see it. “Well, shucks, if only you were Tan’ji,” she said, making her voice saccharine sweet. “Your harp is down in the Warren, right? The Wardens could never stop you from finding your way to your instrument again—if you really had the bond.” She frowned poutily, feigning sadness.

Isabel stopped fussing with her ring and folded her hands into her lap. “True enough,” she said flatly.

“I’m still waiting to hear why you left us. Why you left my dad.”

Isabel took a long time responding. “I was very young when I met your dad,” she said at last. “Very young when I had you. We were happy—genuinely happy. I still had Miradel.”

“And you taught yourself how to use it.”

Isabel waggled her head ambiguously. “I tried. But there was no real work for me to do, no Tanu to practice on. A harp is pointless without a Tanu there to manipulate. There was no one to teach me how to get better, no one to help fix me. Even so, life was good. Madeline was born. And then, when she was about a year old, and you were five . . .” She trailed off, as if into some sad reminiscence, but Chloe caught something unmistakable in Isabel’s expression, a familiar spark Chloe recognized all too well. Anger. And not anger at herself, but anger at some outside thing, some unexpected invader.

And suddenly, like a plane emerging from the clouds, she understood. Chloe rose to her feet, clutching at her own chest. “The dragonfly,” she whispered.

Isabel nodded slowly. “Yes. My own daughter—Tan’ji. I knew you had the potential, of course I did, but I never imagined . . . not so young.”

“Did you take me to the House of Answers?”

“I have no idea what that means. You were out with Dad. He lost you—you were always wandering off. And when he found you again, you had that.” She nodded at the Alvalaithen, and Chloe couldn’t tell if it was admiration or disgust in her voice. “When you came home,” Isabel continued, “I felt you before you even came in the house. I waited for you. You were bursting with power, even though you had no idea what the dragonfly did yet. And the moment I laid eyes on you and your Tan’ji, without thinking or trying or—god, I swear, even wanting—I severed you. I severed you clean. You broke into tears.”

Chloe had no memory of this, none at all, but a slow realization was beginning to dawn. “You couldn’t control yourself,” she said.

Isabel took a deep breath. “No. But I didn’t see the danger, not at first. I learned soon enough—oh yes I did, as soon as you came through the Find.” She interrupted herself with a bitter laugh and then continued in a near whisper: “A daughter with the power to walk through walls. A mother who can sever that power at any moment—even when she doesn’t mean to. It . . . it couldn’t last.”

Chloe felt like she was touching the falkrete again, like the world she knew was splitting itself in two. She clutched the Alvalaithen so tightly it cut into her skin. “The accident,” she whispered.

“I hung on for a year,” Isabel said grimly. “There were a lot of accidents in that time. Most of them weren’t my fault.”

“There was only one that mattered.”

Isabel closed her eyes and let her head fall back. After a long, silent minute she spoke, her voice soft and tentative and strangely sweet. “I felt you outside,” she explained. “Drinking deeply from the dragonfly. I did my best to ignore it like always. And then suddenly—nothing to do with me—you were screaming. Screaming terribly. I ran outside and there you were, on your knees in the grass. Only you weren’t on your knees. The dragonfly’s wings were whirring and you were buried. Sinking into the ground. You were clinging to a lawn chair and it was sinking too, like the earth had turned to quicksand right under you. Like it wanted to swallow you up.”

Chloe’s mouth went dry, remembering. Dark dreams had plagued her ever since that day, a day she’d relived so many times she was no longer sure which of its horrors were real. “And then?”

“I panicked. The veins had you, and it was like they were trying to drown you.” Isabel lifted a single shoulder, a seemingly thoughtless half shrug. “And then I . . . took them away.”

“You severed me, you mean. With my legs half underground.”

Isabel hesitated, then gave a single, quick nod.

“That’s how I broke my legs.”

“Yes. And worse. Your screams . . . changed. From terror to pain. I let go of the veins right away and the dragonfly came back to life. You crawled out of the earth—I don’t know how.” She shook her head wonderingly. “I just watched. I was afraid to touch you. You crawled toward me, and your legs . . .”

“I was six.”

Isabel laughed harshly. “You say that like I don’t know! Like I didn’t have to call an ambulance for my six-year-old daughter. Like I didn’t have to invent a story to explain two broken shins—broken ankles, broken feet. Like I didn’t have to hold little Maddy while we watched you push bits of dirt and stone out of your torn flesh. Like I didn’t have to call your father to explain what I’d done.”

Chloe breathed hard, trying to imagine the scene she could barely remember. “And then you left us.”

“Yes. To protect you.”

“Because you couldn’t control your harp, you left us.”

“Yes.”

“Instead of giving up the harp. Instead of burning it to ashes.”

Isabel flinched. “I tried to give it up. I tried. But I could never have destroyed it. Even then.”

“You mean you wouldn’t,” Chloe snarled. “Did you try taking Miradel back to the Wardens?”

“The Wardens wouldn’t have helped me. They didn’t want to fix me.”

Chloe shot to her feet. “Fix you? You weren’t the one that was broken! I was in a wheelchair for four months. You were gone before I could walk again. I thought—” Chloe blinked away sudden tears, furious and fuming with a rage she thought might never die out. “I thought it was my fault you left. Because of what I did.”

“I never wanted you to think that, Clover. I just—I couldn’t stay.”

“No, no. Screw that.” She leaned forward savagely, cutting out her words as if made of ice. “You chose the harp over us! Over your family. You left us all because you couldn’t—you wouldn’t—give up the harp.”

“I was young. And it wasn’t easy. Could you give up the dragonfly?”

“I’m Tan’ji!” Chloe shouted. “You’re just a Tuner!”

“I’m more than a Tuner,” Isabel insisted grimly. “And Miradel is more than just another harp. She can’t be passed around to whichever Tuner drops by—if there even is another Tuner who can use her.”

Chloe stared in disbelief. “So what do you think you are, exactly? Sorta kinda Tan’ji? Like a half Keeper or something?”

“Whatever I am can be fixed. I know it. Miradel belongs to me.”

“Obviously not, because she’s down in the Warren and you can’t even find her. Just like you couldn’t find me. The truth is, nothing belongs to you. Nothing belongs to you because you are nothing. You left because you could’ve killed me, and—news flash—you aren’t back here now to make it right. You didn’t come back for me, or for Dad, or Madeline. You came back because you think the Wardens can fix you. Like they can turn you into something you never were, and never will be.”

Isabel leapt to her feet. She stepped up to Chloe, her eyes blazing with a ferocity Chloe had never seen in anyone before, not even herself. “You don’t know what I am!” Isabel roared through her teeth. “You don’t know what I’ve been! You think you know Tuners? You think you understand because you’re an almighty Tan’ji? I suppose you’ve been told how Tuners are recruited, then. How a person becomes a Tuner to begin with. Explain it to me, mighty Keeper. Tell me all about myself and how I got to where I am today.”

Chloe practically strangled the river of doubt that trickled through her thoughts now. She was so angry and so bewildered that she could barely see. “You got to where you are today,” she hissed, “by being the crappiest mother imaginable.”

And then, suddenly, strong hands were on her—not grasping, not shoving, but pushing her gently and irresistibly away from Isabel. Her father, tall and sure. His voice, deep and calm, pulling Chloe and Isabel apart. He spoke soothing words Chloe did not understand, held her easily with one great hand wrapped around her arm. She heard him say “Belle,” a name she hadn’t heard in years, dripping now with sweetness and worry, and she wanted to puke.

Chloe drank hard from the Alvalaithen. Its golden song swelled to life, the chorus filling her. Her father’s hand fell away, unable to touch her.

“Did she tell you?” Chloe demanded, peering up at him. “Did she tell you what she did?”

“He knows,” Isabel said. “He’s always known.”

Her father’s face wrinkled with an impossible sadness. “Chloe . . .”

The world shrank. Chloe took a step back. Her foot sank momentarily into the floor and she stumbled. “You knew?” she whispered. “All this time you knew, and . . . you still wanted her back?”

Her father put his great arm around Isabel’s tiny form and pulled her close. Isabel shut her eyes and leaned her bushy red hair against his shoulder. “She never meant to hurt you,” her father said. “She deserves another chance. We all deserve another chance. Don’t build new mistakes on top of old ones.”

“I saved you,” Chloe told him.

“You’ve saved me every day of your life,” he said.

“No, I used my power to save you in the nest. I went underground for you—I faced the fear that she created—and even then you couldn’t tell me the truth. All these years I thought I messed up. I thought I made Mom leave.”

Her father released Isabel and reached out for Chloe. Still thin, she let him try to hug her, so that he would feel her absence in his arms. She winced as his hands passed through her, winced again as pain slid across his face. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “I didn’t know you blamed yourself. I thought you blamed me.”

Chloe shook her head in disbelief. “I never blamed you for anything. Ever.”

“Then don’t blame me now. Blame can’t help us be a family again.”

Chloe stared at him, hardly recognizing him. “Oh, it can’t?” she said. Tears fell from her eyes, fell tingling through her ghostly body to the floor. “Then in that case—blame.” She thrust her finger at her father. “Blame,” she said again, jabbing at Isabel. “Shame on you both. You deserve each other.” And then she let herself fall, letting the floor swallow her up, not even bothering to care where she landed.