Chapter Eight The Shimmering Doorway 
That evening Piper found herself back in the kitchen, but this time, she got to see the children at work. Julius chopped and measured ingredients while Kenji worked diligently at the stovetop, keeping pots boiling or simmering at precisely the right levels. Everyone had a task, and for Piper, it was peeling carrots. All the while, Camilla ping-ponged around the kitchen, sampling sauces and stirring pots as she shouted out instructions. It was organized chaos.
The children ate when they could, shoveling down each course in the kitchen while Sophia dined on hers in the other room. When Sophia was done eating, she discarded her napkin and left without so much as a thank-you. Did she know that Piper was back here in the kitchen with the other children, falling in line and following orders? Did she even care?
“Wait! Magi Studies!” Piper shouted as she burst into the hall and ran after her mother.
“I’m sorry?” Sophia asked, turning to face her.
“Studies, training, whatever you call it. There’s a class tomorrow, right?”
“Concealment Studies is on Wednesdays, yes,” her mother confirmed.
“Where do you meet? What time? I want to come.”
“Do you have an affinity?”
“Well, no.”
“Then it would be a waste of my time, training a hollow,” Sophia said. “Don’t you agree?”
“But—I just—Julius said …”
It was no use. Sophia was already walking away, the Persian sauntering just a few steps behind.
Piper stormed back to the kitchen, fuming. “She is the worst!”
Julius looked up from where he was washing dishes, and Kenji teleported into view with another stack of dirty plates. Camilla flung a towel at Piper so she could help dry.
“She won’t let me study with you guys,” Piper explained. “Not unless I have an affinity. And I know you insist I have one, Julius, but it hasn’t presented itself in twelve years, so I doubt it’s going to anytime soon.”
“Maybe you can find your affinity on your own,” Kenji offered.
“It’s still crappy that your mom won’t help,” Camilla said. “Mrs. Mallory helped Julius pinpoint his—and she helped all of us strengthen our affinities, even if we already knew it when we arrived. Since Mrs. Mallory’s not here, those jobs should fall to your mom.”
Piper wasn’t sure where this small dose of kindness was coming from, but she appreciated it.
“I can try to help,” Julius said. “I remember the bulk of what Mrs. Mallory said when we …” He froze.
The Persian had backtracked to the kitchen and was sitting near the fridge. Its head was cocked to the side, an ear turned deliberately toward the conversation. It noticed the kids watching and blinked calmly, then turned its attention to cleaning its paws.
“Let’s talk about this later,” Julius suggested. Even as he said it, it seemed silly. It was just a cat. But Piper found the hairs on the back of her neck rising.
“Yeah, sure,” she agreed, eyeing the cat suspiciously.
They finished the rest of the dishes in silence.
When the sun had set and the stars had begun emerging, Piper slid from her bed. She tiptoed to the door, cracked it open, and peered into the hall. The Persian was waiting near the landing. Its ear perked up; Piper closed the door before the animal could whip its head around and find her.
She paced the room, panicked. What the heck was she going to do? How was she supposed to talk to Julius if the cat was always shadowing her? She picked up her phone again, praying for service even when she knew she wouldn’t find it.
How was her father doing? Was Aunt Eva trying to send updates? No, it wasn’t the weekend yet, but even then, would Piper receive them? She’d never thought she’d want to see her grandmother so badly.
Piper came to a standstill before the balcony. To her left, the bookshelf remained mostly empty, save for the few books Piper had unpacked from her duffel and set on the shelves. Beside the bookshelf was a door.
Piper frowned at it. She hadn’t noticed this before. The trim was painted the same pale blue shade as the wall, and the doorknob hardware also seemed to have been picked to be overlooked.
Julius’s room was next to hers, Piper realized. On the other side of this door.
She made a fist and knocked softly, just in case the Persian was listening.
The door cracked open. Julius’s face peered through.
“The Persian was in the hall,” Piper whispered. “And it’s past curfew. I thought it might get my mom if I—”
Julius grabbed her wrist and hauled her into his room. It was identical to hers in layout, only it looked lived-in. Clothes were scattered over the floor, and several dresser drawers yawned open. The bookshelf was stocked full with reading material.
“No, that’s smart,” Julius whispered back. It seemed to go without saying that whispering was the only way to discuss things past curfew. “You should always use the shared door at night. Just knock first. For obvious reasons.”
Piper blushed at the realization that her room was connected to a boy’s and either of them could barge into the other’s room at any moment, unannounced. “But I did knock,” she managed to say.
“Yeah, and I’m grateful for it. Teddy was always forgetting.” Julius’s face fell. “He used to have your room.”
“Oh,” Piper said. She wasn’t sure how she felt about living in the room of a possibly dead and most definitely missing boy. “What happened to all his things?”
“Your mother boxed everything up.”
Because Teddy was gone and wouldn’t be coming back? Or because her mother was behind his disappearance and wanted to bury any evidence of him as quickly as possible? Both were awful to think about.
“So earlier, in the kitchen,” Piper began. “How did my grandma help you find your affinity?”
“You need to make a list of anomalies you’ve experienced,” Julius explained. “Things that looked funny. Events that felt unnatural. Moments of déjà vu. That’s what Mrs. Mallory had me do when I first arrived. A friend of hers helped place me here when he realized I was a magi. I’d been bouncing between foster homes, mostly around Waterbury, and him spotting my aura was the best thing; Mrs. Mallory looked at my list and pinpointed my affinity on the second guess. From there, we picked out an amplifier.”
Piper thought again about that odd day at the aquarium, and how her classmates often didn’t acknowledge her, and how the hospital staff always avoided eye contact. How even her own mother had seemed surprised by Piper’s presence that day they played peekaboo in her closet.
Feeling somewhat silly, Piper shared these moments with Julius, leaving out only the hospital because she didn’t want to get into that with him yet.
“The aquarium is self-explanatory,” he said when she finished.
“It is?”
“Yes, the men were magi hunters. Their binoculars were probably like my spyglass, an amplifier of sight. Mrs. Mallory says there are bad magi out there who are desperate to find hidden artifacts like the elixir of immortality, and they’ll pay hunters to bring them magi children. Children who might be able to help them locate magi artifacts.”
“And by ‘bring’ you mean … kidnap?” Piper said in shock.
Julius nodded. “Most magi only have one affinity. So if a hunter is after a certain artifact and needs a certain affinity to reach it, a kid with the matching affinity is the perfect solution. The hunter gets their prize and they don’t have to share it with anyone. It’s just another reason we’re lucky to be here at Mallory Estate. Foster children with a shot at adoption, not kidnapped prisoners of some crazed artifact hunter.”
Piper turned this piece of information over. “So what about my other anomalies?”
The boy rubbed his chin for a moment. “How did you feel in those moments?”
“Overwhelmed,” Piper answered. “Nervous or anxious. Like at school … When I was tardy, I was scared to get lectured in front of everyone. At lunch I was embarrassed no one wanted to sit with me anymore. I used to have Bridget, but even she’s bailed—says I’m always either angry or sad lately; that I’m no fun to be around.”
“Hmm …” Julius thumbed his lip.
“Granted, I feel overwhelmed here, too, and nothing strange has happened. I’m probably a hollow. It was silly to think otherwise.”
“Piper, you saw the garden—the real garden—through my spyglass. You wouldn’t be able to do that if you were a hollow. We’ll figure out your affinity, and then you can train and study with us.”
She nodded weakly. “Can I see it again—your spyglass?”
He plucked the amplifier from his nightstand and they stepped onto his balcony together.
It was a cool summer night, the moon high overhead. Fireflies danced near the tennis courts and carriage house, but they seemed to avoid the garden, as if they knew better than to venture there. Julius handed over the spyglass and Piper looked through the eyepiece.
The live version of the garden appeared for her, but instead of feeling shocked as she had the first time she saw it, she felt … inspired. Like she was witnessing some beautiful secret. She believed Julius now—believed all of them. This was real.
At night, the garden’s trees glowed and twinkled, their trunks and limbs woven with strings of white light. It was like a winter wonderland, without the snow.
Piper scanned the head of the butterfly, where the Persian had been pacing the other day. The pedestal at the center of the pool held a metal sculpture shaped like an infinity symbol. Piper’s heart kicked in her chest. Her locket seemed to warm against her skin.
An infinity symbol.
An elixir of immortality.
She continued to search the garden, following the paths, examining the various pools, not entirely sure what she was looking for. An entrance? It wouldn’t reveal itself to her randomly when Julius had been looking at this version of the garden for years.
“If Teddy was stuck in the garden, wouldn’t you see him with this?” she asked.
Julius shook his head. “The spyglass lets me see the truth before magi involvement, so basically: what this place looked like before the garden was concealed. A snapshot in time. If I want to see what’s actively happening in the hidden version right this second, I’d need to be a lot more powerful.”
The two stag statues at the edge of the patio came into view, and Piper froze.
Hovering above the right-hand stag at the garden’s entrance, perfectly centered between the beast’s antlers, was a shimmering disk of light. White and pearlescent, it rippled at the edges, like the surface of a pond being disturbed.
“Do you see that?” she said, passing the spyglass to Julius and pointing. “Above the stag statue.”
He brought the amplifier to his eye. “See what?”
“There’s something rippling there. It’s white. Round.”
“I don’t see anything.”
She snatched the spyglass back and looked again. The pocket of shimmering light remained, clearer than ever. Why was she seeing it tonight, when she hadn’t yesterday? Maybe because she now believed; she’d accepted the secret of Mallory Estate.
“Huh,” Piper heard herself saying. “It’s gone. Must have been a trick of the light.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Julius. But she knew what would happen if she was honest. He’d call a meeting, tell the others, and the children would all inspect the shimmering disk together.
Piper said good night to Julius and slipped back to her room using the shared door. As she lay in bed—head resting on the pillow Theodore Leblanc had once used and staring up at a canopy that he’d once stared at—she wondered if she was following in his footsteps.
If he’d found that same shimmering pocket.
If, when she crawled through it tomorrow, she might not live to tell the tale.
She should have been scared, but she was brimming with excitement. With hope. If the elixir was real, it would change everything. If the elixir was real, it meant her father could come home. And Piper would see that happen, even if it meant denying the others the adoption they craved.