“Everyone make sure they have a buddy, and let’s go back to the bus.” Staccato strikes as a group of elementary-school-aged kids paired up and filed out.
“Easy pickings,” I said to Monty. The sheer number of pivots would muddy our trail.
“Hurry it up,” Simon said.
The field trip had cleared out, leaving a gap in the crowd. I checked my phone and found a safe pivot—Simon might be immune to frequency poisoning, but Monty and I weren’t. The more stable, the better.
“Don’t rush me,” I muttered, but very faintly, I heard a shift in the world’s pitch, a new note breaking into the regular tone.
The Key World frequency.
The Consort guards were here.
Swiftly I slid my hand into the pivot, found a signal at random, and pulled us through.
The room itself was similar, but the crowd was different—adults in suits, eating hors d’oeuvres and quaffing champagne. The air here was as lifeless as the conversation.
Monty grabbed a stuffed mushroom as we ran out.
Simon started for the street, but I tugged him back. “The pit.”
“Too many people. We need to run.”
“Monty can’t sprint across the Loop,” I retorted. “Look at him.”
He was slumped against the wall, huddled into the heavy sweatshirt, struggling for breath. The plea in his eyes was genuine.
Without waiting for a reply, I headed down to the packed trading floor. Easily three stories tall, with giant monitors and tickers everywhere, paper slips ankle deep. The shouts of the traders were overwhelming, and it was hard to say which was stronger: the scent of panicky financial types, or the sound of the pivots, dense with static.
We didn’t bother with subtlety. I ducked behind a wall of wildly gesturing traders and grabbed the first pivot that caught my ear.
The mood here was as bright as the pitch itself, the trading excited instead of desperate, but I didn’t stop to figure out why—once I’d made sure Simon and Monty were behind me, I took another pivot, and another, shifting through Echoes so rapidly they seemed to blur. It was the kind of challenge I’d enjoyed as a kid. The floor shifted and slid as we moved, like walking atop wet sand.
Sometimes it’s the act of choosing that saves you, not the choice itself. Sometimes your only option is to move, and move fast, because if you don’t stay ahead—or at least get out of the way—the world will collapse beneath your feet.
Hard to say how far we’d Walked, but by the time we were done, we’d passed an art gallery, countless law firms, a vacant lot, and a gym. We stopped in a restaurant.
“Rest,” Monty wheezed, and leaned heavily on the bar.
Simon poured him a glass of water from a nearby pitcher. Monty drained half, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and started digging through a bowl of mixed nuts.
“I suppose you’ve got some grand plan, Delancey. You’re not just dragging an old man across the city in the dead of winter?”
“Would you rather I send you back?” I checked my watch. “Yes, we have a plan.”
He grunted. “You’ve found your boy.”
“He’s not my boy,” I said firmly, and Monty paused, eyeing him with fresh curiosity.
“You’re the Original, then?”
Simon checked the window for any sign of the Consort. “That’s me.”
“Impressive,” Monty said. “Gil always was the sentimental sort.”
“You really didn’t know about the swap?”
He popped a pistachio in his mouth before answering. “Rose never said a word. I put it together on my own, right about the time my granddaughter tried to murder me.”
I shook my head. “Slapdash, Monty. You should have figured it out years ago.”
“Fight later,” Simon snapped as the guards appeared outside. “Run now.”
We dashed through the kitchen and out the back door, the guards in pursuit, Monty leaning heavily on Simon. Despite the big leap in worlds, the Loop felt the same: skyscrapers and bitter wind and traffic and people and the damp, funky smell of the river a few blocks away.
“Cab,” I said as we ran, deliberately bumping into a banker, wincing as his briefcase banged my knees. Monty and Simon followed suit.
Once we were all visible, I stepped into the street and hailed a cab while Simon gauged the progress of the Consort guards. “Hop in.”
Simon and Monty climbed in after me and slammed the door. I leaned forward to direct the driver. “Navy Pier.”
“Cutting it a little close,” Simon said.
I dug two bags of M&M’s out of my backpack and tossed one to Monty. “I didn’t think they’d find us so