“Noooo!” Dex wailed, spinning round, scanning the room as if Nora had suddenly decided to play hide-and-seek among the corpses on the floor. “Please, no!”
“Oh, God, Dex,” Daphna said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! But wait! It sounded like Mr. Brown thought if we wrote someone’s name back in, we might be able to bring them back!”
Dexter snatched up The Book of the Living, which was sitting harmlessly on the throne.
“Let’s do it then!” he cried. But now he was running around, unsure of where to go or what exactly to do.
“But wait!” Daphna said again, stopping him when he came back to the throne. “We need to talk this through.” She took the book and opened it between them. “It’s okay,” she promised. “We have ten days to figure out how to do it right. Everything’s going to be okay. And if we can’t figure it out, that will be okay, too, because we’re going to find The Book of Creation—It can do anything! Anything! It’s going to fix everything—for everybody.”
Yes, Dex thought, looking at the names rising and sinking on the page like slow breaths, they’d be swift, but not hasty. They’d do it right. Everything was going to be okay. Nora was going to be okay.
“Well, well, well,” someone said.
Jolted, Daphna dropped the book.
“We meet, as they say, once again.”
The twins spun round to face the exit. The Secret Keeper stood on the fallen door. He was, of course, pointing a gun at them.