One

Finn

Mom inched the car into the garage. The Greystones were finally home.

But nobody moved until Mom said, “Quick. Grab whatever you need from the house, and let’s get out of here.”

Finn’s older sister and brother, Emma and Chess, sprang out of the car and dashed for the door into the kitchen. But Finn shook his head.

“I don’t need anything.” He dived into the front seat of the car, grabbed Mom’s hand, and held on tight. “I’ll help you.”

“Oh, Finn,” Mom said. She drew up the corners of her mouth into a shaky smile. “You can take your favorite toys. Or games. There’s room. It might be a while before we come back here again. Or . . .” She looked down at Finn’s hand in hers and whispered, “It might be forever.”

A month ago, Mom wouldn’t have said that. She would have pretended everything was fine. She had pretended everything was fine, actually—back then, she hadn’t told Finn or Emma or even Chess how much danger she was in. She’d just left, and pretended it was an ordinary “business trip.”

A month ago, she’d probably treated Finn and Emma and Chess as though they were younger than eight and ten and twelve.

Now it felt like they’d all grown up.

And Mom was the one they needed to protect.

“Toys and games?” Finn said, like those were unfamiliar words. The corners of Mom’s mouth quivered. He tried again. “We’re going to stay at Ms. Morales’s house for now, right? She’s got all the old toys and games Natalie outgrew. We could probably play forever and never get to them all.” He leaned close and whispered, “They’re really rich. You know?”

Mom’s smile almost looked real now.

“And generous,” she murmured.

“Come on,” Finn said.

He reached past her to open Mom’s car door. Together, they walked into the house. Chess was coming up from the basement.

“All clear,” he reported. “Emma checked upstairs and I checked downstairs. There’s nobody here.”

Mom put her hand over her mouth. Her already-pale face turned completely white.

“I should have checked,” she said. “I should have left you three kids in the car until I knew for sure it was safe. . . .”

Chess might as well have had his thoughts written on his face: Nowhere’s safe. But he patted Mom on the arm and repeated, “Nobody’s here.”

Chess was at that age when it seemed like he could grow three inches taller overnight. That must have happened last night, because he towered over Mom now. His arms and legs looked even spindlier and more stretched out than ever, as though his whole body were made of Silly Putty and someone had pulled it too far.

“But anybody could show up, anytime,” Mom muttered. “If they’ve been using our house as a crossing point . . .”

She meant the bad guys. Finn, Emma, and Chess had known nothing about it until a month ago, but all four of the Greystones had escaped from a bad place when Finn was only a baby. The bad place was a completely different world—Finn had started thinking of it as almost a mirror image of the world he’d known most of his life. Duplicated versions of lots of people existed in both worlds, but they were sadder and meaner—or at least more desperate—in the other world.

Even some of the people who were actually nice in the other world had to pretend to be mean, just to survive.

Finn liked to think of it as though his entire family had escaped from the bad world when he was only a baby, but he knew that wasn’t completely true.

His father had died in the other world. He’d been killed.

And could you really say that his family had escaped, when the bad people had found a way to follow them?

And when Finn, Emma, and Chess—and their friend Natalie—had had to go back to the other world again and again, and they still hadn’t ended all the danger?

“We’re going to fix everything,” Finn said now. “We’re going to make it so the bad guys never bother us again. We’ll make it so they never bother anyone again! Even in the other world!”

Mom ruffled Finn’s hair. She always did that. If he’d wanted to, Finn could have closed his eyes and imagined that the last month of his life hadn’t happened, and he was still just a goofy little kid whose worst problems were that his hair stuck up whether anyone mussed it or not, and he had trouble remembering not to talk all the time in class.

But Finn kept his eyes open, and fixed on Mom’s face.

“You’re . . . so brave,” she whispered. “My little Finn. Who knew?” She turned to Chess. “And you and Emma . . .”

“Mom, we really shouldn’t stay here long,” Chess said gently. “I just need one box from upstairs, and then I’ll be ready. I don’t think Emma wanted much more than that.”

Mom squared her shoulders.

“Then Finn and I will get everything I need from the Boring Room,” she said.

The Boring Room was what the Greystone kids had always called their mother’s basement office. It had turned out not to be so boring, after all. Finn hoped neither Mom nor Chess noticed how hard he had to work to quell a shiver of fear as he started walking toward the stairs.

Halfway down the steps, Mom sniffed, made a face, and laughed.

“I guess you were all too busy rescuing me to clean Rocket’s kitty litter, huh?” she asked.

“It wasn’t my turn,” Finn said. “Honest!”

And just for a moment, this felt normal and right, to argue over chores. But the Greystones’ pet cat, Rocket, was still at Natalie’s dad’s house, and there was no telling when they’d be reunited.

And when Finn reached the bottom of the stairs, the first thing he saw was a pile of Hot Wheels cars. Emma had dumped them on the floor a week ago when she and Chess had received an unpleasant surprise.

We won’t have any surprises today, Finn told himself. See? This is just our normal basement rec room, and that’s just Mom’s normal Boring Room over there. . . .

He trailed Mom into the Boring Room with its empty desk and vacant bookshelves. And then Finn couldn’t pretend anything was normal, because the secret door to the hidden space behind the Boring Room hung wide open. Mom turned on the light and ducked through the secret doorway to peer around at the shelves holding canned food and boxes of cash. The shelves at the back of the secret room were cracked and sagging. But that was the only sign that a tunnel had once lain behind those shelves, leading into the other world.

Mom picked up a can of tuna fish and absentmindedly rolled it back and forth in her hands.

“I thought I was so well prepared,” she muttered.

Finn grabbed one of the boxes.

“We should take the cash,” he said, because anybody could have figured that out.

He opened the box—it was empty.

“The police already took it as evidence,” Mom said. “Mr. Mayhew explained all about that.” Mr. Mayhew was Natalie’s dad. “I’ll have to go down to the police station and claim it and . . . I just haven’t felt up to doing that yet. You know. I may have to lie.”

“Because the police don’t know about the other world,” Finn said. “They don’t know you were trapped there. Because they can’t know about the other world.”

This made Mom snort and nearly giggle, and it was like having Normal-Mom back, Before-Everything-Happened-Mom back.

“Can you imagine telling them the truth?” she asked. “They’d never believe me!”

“Honest, Officer!” Finn said, as though she’d asked him to act it out. “You really don’t want to meet your evil twin!”

Mom’s smile faded.

“Finn . . . remember, we’re from the other world,” she murmured, still rolling the tuna can back and forth in her hands. “You can’t assume one world’s all good and the other’s all evil. I have to believe that everyone in the other world still has the capacity to—”

She broke off as chimes pealed through the house. It was the doorbell.

“Mom?” Chess called from above. “I don’t know who . . .”

Mom took off running for the stairs. Finn was right on her heels.

Then Finn heard Emma cry from even farther away: “No, Mom, I see who it is! Stay hidden!”