face with the tray, felling him, but Shinobu himself collapsed as well.
Quin made a quick decision. She leapt away from her father, who seemed glued to the door, and grabbed Shinobu by his shirt. Hauling him across the room, she positioned the bed between them and their attackers. The window was directly behind her.
The two boys were struggling up onto their hands and knees, trying to get vertical for another attack, though they had obviously been knocked almost senseless.
“Hold them off!” she said to Shinobu, who was attempting to stay upright. “Do your best.”
Hospital staff pounded on the door, but Briac managed to keep it shut.
Quin drew the athame from her waist.
“Don’t you dare!” came a yell from the older boy at the sight of the athame. He’d made it up onto his knees, was shaking his head as though trying to clear it. “Don’t use his athame! You’re not allowed.”
“I can’t keep standing,” Shinobu told her. He’d listed to one side.
“Your implant is drugging you,” she breathed. “But adrenaline can overcome it. Think about fighting them!”
The athame’s dials were different from what she was used to. She adjusted them as well as she could.
Both boys had made it up onto their feet. Shinobu balanced himself upright, and, swaying, he kicked open the wheel locks at the foot of the bed. Then he rolled the bed directly into the boys.
Quin flicked her whipsword, making it small and thick, turned, and smashed the window. It shattered, allowing cool night air to pour into the room.
She pushed down on one side of the athame’s blade with her thumb, and a long, slender piece of stone came free of the blade with a gentle click. This was the athame’s lightning rod, its partner and necessary complement, the object that would bring the ancient dagger to life.
She struck the lightning rod against the athame, and a deep, penetrating vibration filled the air. Furniture began to rattle. The pounding on the door stopped as the vibration spread beyond the bounds of the hospital room.
“Stop!” yelled the younger boy, grabbing the bed to drag himself to his feet. “It’s not yours! You’re a thief!”
Quin reached the trembling athame through the broken window and drew a wide circle in the air below the ledge. Where she traced that circle, the athame cut through the fabric of the world as easily as a fin cuts through ocean water. In its path, tendrils of dark and light were exposed, and these snaked away from each other to create a doorway, an anomaly, humming with energy. Through the doorway was blackness.
“Climb up!”
She pushed Shinobu at the open window, even as she kept her own eyes away from the view. The forty-story drop was making her dizzy.
The door shook behind Briac, beneath renewed assaults from outside. Quin saw her father struggling to keep it closed.
Shinobu climbed up into the window frame with difficulty, Quin steadying him from below.
“Have you got your balance?” she asked. She avoided thoughts of him plummeting all the way to the ground.
“Yes, I’m all right,” he breathed. Then he tumbled forward and fell directly into the anomaly. Quin’s own stomach dropped as she watched him do it. Then she jumped up into the broken window. The London streets far below appeared to tilt and sway.
I’m scared of heights, she realized. No, I’m terrified! It was a new fear, and entirely inconvenient at this moment.
The older boy was reeling across the room toward her, his dark eyes furious.
“I will put you in your place!” he cried.
There was a loud bang, and both boys turned toward the hospital room door. Briac had at last been shoved aside, and uniformed guards were streaming into the room.
Quin turned toward the night, briefly glimpsing the endless lights of London stretched out before and below her. Then the view was swimming, and her stomach was lurching. She was falling through the cold air, falling through the anomaly she had carved from here to There.
The drugs were floating Shinobu away. He’d slid out the window and managed to fall into the right spot, his whole body making it through the anomaly. Now he was There, out of the well-lit darkness of the London night and surrounded by this other darkness, blacker and more barren.
He was supposed to say the time chant, to keep himself focused.
“Knowledge of self, knowledge of…” he began. What came next? “Quin?” he croaked.
“I’m here,” she answered, grasping his shoulder. The feel of her hand helped a little. “Hold on to