the front door. “I tried to call him a few minutes ago, and there was no answer, so I’m not as optimistic as you.”
“Anyway it’s cold. So I think hanging out in the living room is smarter than being out here,” Sam said, following her inside.
“Don’t take off your jacket,” Diana said, standing in front of the fireplace. “I need you to run out back and bring in some wood. I’d like to start a little fire.”
Mara took off her jacket, hung it up and said, “It’s nice to have a boy around to do manual labor, isn’t it?” She headed directly for the stairs.
Sam followed on his way to the back door and said, “How do you know she was talking to me?”
As Mara ascended the stairs, she said over her shoulder, “You’re the only one who still has a jacket on. She must have been talking to you.”
After she got to the second floor, Mara stepped into her own bedroom and grabbed the demontoid from the center of her desk, where it sat next to the Chronicle of Continuity and the Chronicle of Creation—or, as she still thought of them—the stupid book of haikus from the future and the doodad that downed a jetliner a couple months ago. Tossing the crystal up into the air and catching it like a baseball, she walked down the hall to her mother’s room.
“Hey, munchkin. You hanging in there okay?” she asked, sitting on the side of the bed.
“Yep, my dad just finished reading me a story.” She pointed to the green crystal. “Hey, you’ve got the demon toad crystal.”
“Actually it’s demontoid, but demon toad does sound better. Have you seen this before?”
Hannah nodded. “It’s a green crystal. It’s your favorite. Nana gave it to you a long time ago.”
“I see. Well, today I was staring into this crystal, and guess what I saw?”
Hannah’s eyes widened, and she smiled. “I bet you saw me, huh?”
Mara was a little surprised. “How did you know that?”
“’Cause a green light shined all over me in the kitchen, and, for a minute, I could see lots of me in the green light.”
“Did that scare you?”
Hannah shook her head. “I wasn’t scared. I was just seeing all of myselves, like in a funhouse, and you were there, so I knew it was okay.”
“So you could see me sitting on the floor?”
She nodded again. “Then the light went away, and Nana freaked out a little.”
“Strange lights tend to freak out Nana, when she doesn’t know where they come from. But you don’t seem to have a problem with them, do you?” Mara paused and watched Hannah shrug off the experience. “Did you see anything else in the light?”
“Nope, just lots of me and one of you.”
A loud rumble and a blue flash drew Mara’s eye to the window across the room. She glanced over, expecting to see the night sky outside, but a blue light continued to flicker, seemingly from somewhere below the window in the backyard.
“That’s strange. I didn’t think we were going to get any rain tonight and certainly not any lightning. Wait, that doesn’t even look like lightning,” she said, standing up. She ran to the back window, and, just as she pulled back the curtain, Diana screamed from downstairs. “Mara! It’s got Sam! Hurry!”
Mara looked out the window. A large blue bubble filled the back lawn.
CHAPTER 54
Mara dropped the curtain and ran for the door, but, when Hannah flung back her blankets and bounded from the bed, Mara stopped in the doorway, pointed toward the headboard and said, “No way. You stay right there in bed, so I know you’re safe. I don’t need to be worried about you running around, while all hell is breaking loose.”
Hannah crossed her arms and pouted. “But …”
“No buts, get back to bed. I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on you,” Mara said, turning into the hall. She ducked into her room, grabbed the Chronicle and ran for the stairs. As she slipped the copper medallion into her back pocket, she wondered what good it would do to have it. After all, the bubble—the portal to the other realms—was already floating around in the backyard. What would a second Chronicle do? She wasn’t sure, but the first thing that came to mind when she saw the bubble was the Chronicle.
“Mara, you have got to hurry! He’s disappearing!” Diana screamed. Mara bounded down the stairs, ran through the kitchen, knocking over a chair next to the