I stood just without, hoping to ascertain how much information had been passed between them, and whether there were plans to involve any likeminded friends of this zounderkite. Similar to cockroaches, there was never just one. Out of pure curiosity, I also wished to gauge the nature of their relationship.

“Closets?” Stephanie asked him. “Really?”

“A famous investigator and researcher once stated that you were asking for trouble if you left your closets open at night,” the boy droned on, the irksome know-it-all cadence in his voice making me wish upon him a slow and agonizing death. Did I hear he would be supping with the family this evening? Pity the grounds did not produce any belladonna. “There’s some conjecture that closets can hold or trap energy and, possibly, act as vortexes between dimensions.”

“Vortexes,” Stephanie repeated without inflection.

In reality, he was not so far off from the truth, though “portal” would have been a better word. I had passed from one side of the house to the other many a time through that closet. Closets, though, were not my only means of transport. In Moldavia, all doorways and thresholds held, for me alone, the power to open to one version of the house or the other.

“I’m not asking you to believe it,” replied the boy with a shrug that suggested he meant what he said. “I’m not sure I believe it. But, all the same, it can’t hurt for your sister to sleep with the closet closed from now on.”

“Point taken,” Stephanie mumbled.

She said something else then, but I missed it on account of the fast thudding of small steps. Charlie came barreling up the stairs, and just before she could round the banister, I managed to retreat into the door’s shadow.

THIRTEEN

Stephanie

“Why are you in my room?” Charlie asked.

Lucas and I hadn’t been in her room for more than five minutes before she’d come running up the stairs. No doubt Dad had sent her to spy on us.

Thankfully, I’d already gotten a chance to tell Lucas about her initial conversations with Zedok, her claims of there being another house, and the business surrounding her closet.

“Charlie, this is my friend Lucas.” I gestured toward Lucas, who’d been waving some colored-light-studded remote-control-looking device over the closet’s back wall.

He’d already snapped plenty of pictures, checking the view screen after each batch of shots, his expression giving nothing away. But I could tell by the way he’d taken his time soaking it all in that, for him, just being here was a big deal.

“Hey there,” Lucas said, smiling at my sister, causing a pair of dimples I hadn’t noticed before to appear. “Nice to meet you, Charlie.”

Charlie just stared at him, her head tilting back as Lucas drew nearer, like it was a skyscraper that approached her and not a person.

He lowered himself onto his haunches and offered Charlie his hand. Instead of shaking, though, she gave him five.