Nine

Chess

Fearless, Chess thought. Emma is absolutely fearless.

He was quaking in his shoes and his stomach churned, and all he was doing was sitting at the table.

Meanwhile, Emma was pulling some strange man in through the open window. No—it wasn’t a strange man. It was Joe Deweese, who’d helped them in the other world. Like Mom, Joe had secretly crossed over into this world many years ago, but kept trying to help the people still trapped in the misery of the other world. And then, after the Gustanos were kidnapped, Joe and Mom had both gone back to the other world to try to rescue them, and gotten trapped themselves.

Mom and Joe had had a pact until a month ago, that they stayed away from each other and usually only communicated in secret, coded messages. They’d worked together for years, but most of that time Joe hadn’t even known what Mom looked like.

So it was very odd that Joe was here now.

Joe was a tall man, so he took a while unbending his elbows and knees and straightening up. But even then, he kept the hood of his jacket up, mostly hiding his face from the Gustanos.

Still, Chess could see that Joe had beads of sweat running down his brown skin.

It wasn’t that hot out.

“What’s going on?” Emma asked. “Why were you listening to people inside this restaurant? And why didn’t you use a bunch of listening devices instead of standing out there where anyone could see you?”

Joe was a genius with electronics.

“Emergency measures,” Joe muttered. He darted his gaze toward Mom, but seemed to notice Mrs. Gustano first. “Ooh . . .”

He shrugged and let the hood of his jacket fall back against his shoulders.

“How did you even know we were here?” Mom demanded.

“Hacked into satellite imaging, traced your car’s location . . . Kate, it was easy,” Joe said.

The blood drained from Mom’s face, and she looked like she was about to faint.

“So easy that anybody could do it?” she asked weakly.

She means, even people from the other world could do it, Chess thought.

“Should we get out of here?” he asked, springing to his feet. “And go . . . somewhere else? Without the car?”

He couldn’t think of anyplace safe. The image he had in his head was of burrowing down into the ground to hide.

But all their problems before had started underground, with the tunnels connecting the two worlds.

Joe cast a quick glance over his shoulder, back toward the parking lot.

“I think we’re safe here,” he said. “For now. I took security measures.” He peered down at Emma. “I set up perimeter listening devices. I’ll be alerted if anyone . . . unexpected . . . shows up within a hundred feet of us.”

Chess guessed that “unexpected” was code for “from the other world.”

“So what’s the emergency?” Rocky asked.

Joe winced, and jerked his head to the side. Was that supposed to be some secret signal to Mom?

“Kate, could I have a word with you?” he asked. “Privately?”

Couldn’t he see that Mom was about to fall over?

For that matter, Joe himself was swaying a bit.

Chess stepped between Mom and Joe.

“We’re all in this together,” Chess said. “If there’s an emergency, we kids need to know what’s going on, too.”

“All of us kids need to know,” Rocky said, stepping up beside Chess. Rocky wasn’t like Chess, and Chess wasn’t like Rocky, but it felt like they were a team just then.

Joe frowned.

“Well, actually . . . this is about you Gustano kids,” he murmured.

Mrs. Gustano hugged Other-Finn so hard he let out a yelp.

“What about my kids?” she asked.

Joe leaned back weakly against the wall. His eyes didn’t quite meet Mrs. Gustano’s. Instead, he stared at Rocky, Other-Emma, and Other-Finn.

“After you were kidnapped,” Joe began, “could you tell you were being used in scientific experiments?”