The train rattles under us as we speed through the night. There are windows, but there is no point looking through them. I have already tried, and it is as black as pitch.

At first I worry that I will be sick, the way I so often am in the carriage when I cannot see out the windows, but this time the rocking and swaying bring me comfort. I think if only we can stay on this train, rocking and swaying forever, everything will be all right. Not the way it once was, but perhaps all right just the same.

A warm hand reaches over, covering mine. When I look up, I am met by Sonia’s smile, at once excited and concerned. Convincing her to accompany me was not as hard as I expected.

My only bag is stuffed under my seat. In it are an extra gown, a few essentials, and the knife from Alice’s room. The rest of my things have been sent ahead to London. Aunt Virginia has arranged everything, writing to let the staff there know that I am coming. Milthorpe House, like Birchwood, has been in the family for ages. We shall be comfortable, Sonia and I, while Sonia teaches me the ways of our gifts. While we contact Philip Randall and seek out the remaining keys. While I become strong enough, in this world and the others, to fight the battle at which I am the center.

Luisa will join us at a later date, when she has found a way to have herself removed from Wycliffe with a minimum of suspicion and disappointment to her father in Italy. Saying goodbye was difficult. But it is written in the stars, and on the marks of our wrists, that we shall meet again.

Sonia squeezes my hand, and when I look down I see the medallion, gleaming taut and flat against her wrist. This is the bargain we have struck. I do not know if the medallion will remain on her wrist, or if it will find its way back to me the way it has in the past. It is my hope that it will be secure, that the power of the soul entrusted with its care will keep it from traveling back to me. Sonia is not the Gate. Samael cannot come through her, though she has warned me that the Souls will attempt to trick her, to frighten her, to harass her in any manner of ways until they succeed in their quest to get to me. But she is stronger than I in the ways of the Otherworlds. If anyone will hold them at bay, if anyone will give me the time I need to prepare for the battle ahead, it will be Sonia.

Will it work? Or will the medallion find its way to my wrist during some fitful night, carrying me to the Otherworlds and the Beast that will use me as its gate, as a conduit to the battle that will begin the Seven Plagues?

I do not have the answers. Not yet.

It is all I can do to travel forward into my future, that dark and shapeless shadow that lies in wait. Into the future my mother never quite reached, hoping for a way to fulfill my own part in the story. For a way to find the missing pages and the remaining keys. There are those who will always be with me—my mother and father, Aunt Virginia, James, even Alice.

And Henry. Henry is my talisman through every dark night.

I recall his somber eyes during that last, private conversation. His eyes and his words, far too wise for a boy of ten: only time will tell, Lia.

In the end, I suppose it will.

 

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