He took us back out to the main room, through two more doors, and into a room that was so utilitarian, it must have belonged to the original building. There was a closet door on one wall, and it was to this he led us.

Zee took a deep breath. “This one wasn’t here last month. There are too many doors to Underhill in too small a space.”

“We know,” said Beauclaire.

“It’s not safe,” said Zee.

“We know that, too.”

Zee snorted. “Well, somebody doesn’t, because she can’t make doorways where she isn’t invited.”

“Is this doorway acceptable?” Beauclaire asked me, ignoring Zee’s taunt.

I looked at Aiden, who shrugged. We both looked at Zee.

“It doesn’t matter where you go in,” he said. “These doorways are all too new to have found an anchor in Underhill. That means they’ll drop you someplace random. Just make sure you are holding on to each other when you go—or you’ll all end up in different parts of Underhill.” Beauclaire opened the door and stepped back. Jesse hugged her father, hugged me, then hugged Aiden.

“Don’t get them killed,” she told Aiden.

“I’ll try not to,” he said earnestly.

“Don’t get stuck,” she said.

“I’ll try not to,” he told her.

“Good enough,” she said. “If you try, Dad will do the rest.”

“Safe journey,” said Zee.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” said Tad.

“I love you, too,” I said, and, holding on to Adam with one hand and Aiden with the other, crossed over into Underhill.

—

We had to go down three cement steps to get to the ground. When Aiden went back and shut the door behind us, I turned to see that the door was set in the back of a building that looked like the back of the building we’d gone into.

But my bones hummed with the magic—it was like standing on a washing machine permanently caught in the spin cycle.

“It’s a good idea to shut doors behind you in Underhill,” Aiden told me. “People who are chasing you usually go somewhere else.”

He looked around, his breathing a little fast, and his weight shifted from foot to foot like a deer waiting to see where the danger emerged, so he could flee in the opposite direction as fast as he could.

We had emerged into an anticlimactic, bland landscape that looked very much like the area around the reservation. We were on the top of a small hill at the base of larger hills. Below us was a grassy valley with a river running through it. If it hadn’t been for the lack of civilization—roads, wires, squashed beer cans—it could have been anywhere near Walla Walla.