“I can do better than that,” Sonder said, and raised his hand towards the door. For a few seconds nothing happened, then the area around the door seemed to twist and warp before suddenly reflecting our images back at us. Where the door had been was a mirrored sphere, radiating from the wall. I could feel the time magic in the effect but it wasn’t a spell I’d ever seen before. “What is it?” I said.

“Stasis,” Sonder said, not taking his eyes off the sphere.

I raised my eyebrows. Even slowing someone down as Sonder had done a minute ago isn’t easy, and a temporal stasis is supposed to be even tougher. Sonder had gotten a lot better over the past year. From below I felt a flare of life magic, the draining, tugging sensation of Ja-Ja’s spell, and there was a whining, rasping sound just on the edge of hearing that made both me and Sonder flinch. The stasis flickered briefly, then strengthened. “I think the nocturne just lost,” I said. “Caldera?”

“Working on it,” Caldera said.

Sonder and I glanced at each other, then Sonder focused again on his stasis and I started calculating probabilities. I couldn’t see any future in which the adepts got through the stasis . . . yet. I also wasn’t sure how long it would take Caldera to pull off the gate, or whether she could manage it at all. From the stairs I heard running footsteps. They paused briefly in the corridor, then started towards us. “Caldera?” I said again.

“I’m working on it!”

The footsteps halted. The stasis was muffling the sounds, but I was pretty sure they were on the other side. I wondered what would happen if they opened the door into the spell. I couldn’t see the answer from my angle; in all of the futures I could see, the stasis remained as it was, smooth and unbroken. I heard a distant banging sound.

Then from behind I felt the catch as the gate spell took, and the portal opened behind us. Looking around, I saw the brown-rimmed oval hanging in the air, and through it someone’s living room. “Move!” Caldera shouted.

I didn’t argue, jumping through and landing on carpet. Caldera followed and Sonder came last, backing through the gate, still holding his focus on the stasis spell. The instant he was through, Caldera let the gate collapse and I had one last glimpse of my old bedroom before the gate winked out and was gone.