so? How is that even possible? She looks like she’s about five years old. Is it normal for boys in your realm to conceive children when they are eight or nine?” Diana asked.
Sam waved a hand. “No, no, you don’t understand—”
“I understand that you should have given me a heads-up before now that not only was I going to have to deal with a son but a granddaughter as well. Are there any more relatives from alternate realities that I should know about?”
“Mom, hold on,” Mara said. “Hannah is not from another realm. She’s from this one.”
“This one? Sam’s only been here for a couple months.”
“She is from the future. She is Sam’s daughter in the future.”
“The future?”
“Right. At some point in the future Sam has a daughter named Hannah.”
Diana walked over to the counter and lifted Hannah onto it, next to where Sam stood. “You’re too heavy to stand around holding.” She smiled at her granddaughter and turned back to Mara. “So, what is she doing here now?”
“We don’t really know,” Mara said.
“Well, how did she get here?”
“Mar-ree sent me,” Hannah said.
“Mar-ree?” Diana raised an eyebrow.
Mara sighed. “That’s what she calls me. Apparently, at some point in the future, I send her back to our time, but that’s all we know.”
Diana turned to Hannah and asked, “Sweetie, why did your aunt Mara send you to visit us?”
“To bring the book and make her shine,” Hannah said. “Can we go to your house and have banana pancakes?”
“That sounds like a wonderful idea. We’ll go in just a minute.” To Mara she said, “Did she have a book with her?”
Mara nodded. “Yes, but the pages are blank.”
“And making you shine?”
“That’s a little more complicated to explain. She appears to be a prompter, like her father.” Mara glanced over at Sam, who blushed and looked away. “Except she gives people abilities instead of thoughts. I think she might have saved my life last night.”
Diana took a deep breath and scanned the debris in the front of the store. “So you’re saying you slipped out last night and put yourself in a life-threatening situation and your niece from the future showed up to bail you out.”
“There’s a lot more to it than that. You see, I crossed over to another realm and brought back this guy who was supposed to conduct a ceremony to remove Juaquin Prado’s spirit from the bodies of all the shedding victims, except he tried to put it inside me—”
Diana’s eyes widened. “You crossed over to what?” Mara opened her mouth to explain, but her mother raised a hand. “Don’t answer that. Get your stuff, and let’s go home. You’ll have plenty of time to explain, since you are now grounded until you’re thirty.”
Mara rolled her eyes. “I can’t leave until I clean up and get the windows boarded up. I can’t just abandon the shop like this.”
Ping cut in. “I can call the construction crew who worked on the bakery. They can board up both Mr. Mason’s shop and the bakery. It shouldn’t be too long before Mara can come home.”
Diana looked at Sam. “Take your daughter, and let’s go.” Turning to Mara, she said, “Come home as soon as you’ve gotten the shop secured, and please try not to show up with any more relatives. Mr. Ping, we’ll see you tomorrow.”
“We will?” Mara asked.
“For dinner, Thanksgiving dinner,” Diana said. She turned and followed Sam and Hannah to the front door. There she paused and looked back. “Where is Abby? If that was her car they towed away out front, you might want to give her a lift back to Oregon City.” She didn’t wait for a response and left.
Mara blanched.
Ping noticed and asked, “That’s a good question. Where is Abby? I don’t remember anything after Prado’s spirit—that black vapor—invaded her body. How did you defeat it?”
“I didn’t.” Mara’s eyes welled up, and she looked downward. “He took her.”
Ping wrapped an arm over Mara’s shoulder. “What do you mean, he took her?”
“Prado, the darkling wraith or whatever you want to call it, took Abby, all of her. I think he took her entire consciousness from every realm and merged with her somehow.”
“That’s impossible. How could that be?”
“After he possessed Abby’s body, she attacked you. She was literally cooking you on the spot, and she made me open the Chronicle. When she entered the bubble, I saw all the different versions of Abby fly from the nodes and meld with her. All of what she is or could be,