Obidias leaned forward in his chair, cloaking his cruelly deformed hand once again. “Perhaps they aren’t as rare as you think. Maybe they just don’t live long enough for the Casters to find them.”

There was an undeniable truth in his words that I couldn’t explain. I guess there was some part of me that knew a lie would have sounded different. Another part knew I’d always been in danger, one way or another—with or without Lena.

Whether I was meant to jump off a water tower or not.

Either way, the fear in his voice should’ve been proof enough.

“Okay. So I won’t get caught.”

Aunt Prue’s face was filled with concern. “Maybe this isn’t the best idea. We should go on back ta my house and think on it. Talk ta your mamma about it. She’s waitin’ on us, I reckon.”

I squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, Aunt Prue. I know a way in. There’s a Temporis Porta in an old tunnel beneath Wate’s Landing. I can get in and out before the Keepers ever realize I was there.”

If I could walk through walls in the Mortal realm, I was pretty sure I could step through the Temporis Porta, too.

Obidias broke the end off a thick cigar. His hand was shaking as he lit the match and held it up. He took a few puffs, until it glowed a steady orange. “You can’t enter the library at the Far Keep through the Mortal realm. You have to enter through the seam.” He delivered the news as calmly as if he was giving me directions to the local Stop & Steal, to pick up some milk.

“You mean the Great Barrier?” It seemed like a strange place for a door to the Far Keep’s inner sanctum. “I can handle it. I did it once, and I can do it again.”

“What you’ve done is nothing compared to what you’re about to do. The Great Barrier is just one place you can get to from the seam,” Obidias explained. “You can cross into other worlds from there that will make the Barrier feel like home.”

“Just tell me how to get there.” We were wasting time, and every second we sat around talking was another second away from Lena.

“You have to cross the Great River. It runs through the Great Barrier, all the way to the seam. It forms the border between the realms.”

“Like the River Styx?”

He ignored me. “And you can’t cross unless you have the river eyes—two smooth black stones.”

“Are you kidding?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. They’re very rare and hard to come by.”

“River eyes. Got it. I can find a couple rocks.”

“If you get across the river, and that’s a big if, you’ll still have to make it past the Gatekeeper before you can get into the library.”

“How do I do that?”

Obidias took a puff from the cigar. “You have to offer him something he can’t refuse.”

“What exactly would that be?” Aunt Prue asked, as though she might have whatever it was tucked in her pocketbook. Like the Gatekeeper would be interested in three linty breath mints, some nondairy creamer, and a wad of folded-up Kleenex.

“It’s always different. You’ll have to figure it out when you get there,” Obidias said. “He has… eclectic taste.” He didn’t say any more on the subject.

An offering. Eclectic taste. Whatever the hell that meant.

“Okay. So I have to find the black stones and get across the Great River,” I said. “Figure out what the Gatekeeper guy wants and give it to him to get inside the library. Then find The Caster Chronicles and destroy my page.” I paused, because the question I was about to ask was the most important detail, and I wanted to get it straight. “If I do all that and don’t get caught, I’ll get back home—my real home? How do I do that? What happens after I destroy the page?”

Obidias looked at Aunt Prue and back to me. “I’m not sure. It’s never happened, as far as I know.” He shook his head. “It’s a chance, nothing more. And not even a good one…”

“Nothin’s certain, Ethan Wate, ’cept for that you had a shot at a life a your own, and the Keepers stole it from you.”

I stood up before they could finish talking.

Lena was waiting, in my room or hers, by the crooked cross stuck in the grass at my gravesite or somewhere else. But she was waiting—that’s what mattered.

If I had a chance in hell to get back home, I’d take it.

I’m trying, L. Don’t give up on me.

“I need to get going, Mr. Trueblood. I have a river to cross.”

Aunt Prue opened her pocketbook and pulled out a faded map, covered with shapes that didn’t represent any continent, country, or state I’d ever seen. This was more than a doodle on the back of an old church program. I knew what Aunt Prue’s maps were like, and I knew how important they had been to me before—the last time I found my way to the seam, for Lena’s Seventeenth Moon.

“I’ve been workin’ on it since I got here, jus’ a little bit here and there. Obidias told me you’d be needin’ it.” She shrugged. “Reckoned it was the least I could do.”

I leaned down and hugged her. “Thanks, Aunt Prue. And don’t be worried.”

“I’m not,” she lied. But she didn’t need to be.

I was worried enough for both of us.

CHAPTER 12

Still Here

After we got back to our side of the Otherworld—Harlon Jameses and all—I didn’t go home. I left Aunt Prue at her house and walked the streets—more like the rows—of His Garden of Perpetual Peace.