Joe called it a vortex, Honey says. It’s what we used to try to get to you.

Widdershins, I think. Which is counterclockwise, the opposite way of how the sun moves.

It’s like how I finally opened my heart to Geordie, coming at it all backwards. But then I’ve spent the better part of my life coming at things from an unexpected direction, so why change now?

“Okay,” I say. “I can do this.”

I give Geordie another hug, then put a finger across his lips when he starts to speak. Honey gets a pat. More hugs for Lizzie and Timony. Then I go back up the trail to the top of the mesa, the others trailing along behind me. My gaze is drawn to the petroglyphs and I wonder how I’m going to walk around the big stones that they’ve been scratched into, but then I realize that the vortex is right in the middle of the open ground.

I don’t know why, because I’ve never been sensitive to this kind of thing before, but I can almost see the flow of energy rising straight up in a glittering column of amber and smoky green. Maybe this time in the otherworld’s changed me. Maybe it’s responding to something in me—this light inside me that Nokomis keeps telling me I have.

Whatever it is, I know exactly where the vortex is and all my doubts flee.

I start to walk backwards around it, giving Geordie and the others a last wave.

I can do it, I’d said cockily, because that’s usually me: the I-Can-Do-It Girl. But you know what? I can do it.

I do.

There’s a weird shifting under my feet, the bright desert fades into the cool green of an Eastern forest, and then I’m back in the world inside my head, standing in a copse of cedar and spruce. A squirrel, startled by my sudden appearance, scolds me. I glance in its direction, then look out across the field. The house rears up out of the weeds and grass at the far end, worn down, shutters askew, ugly.

I don’t want to go there—not for a moment—but I know I need to finish this.

I won’t pretend that I’m not scared. You want to know the truth? I’m terrified. I’m sure this is the hugest mistake I’ve ever made.

But it’s too late to turn back now.

I don’t know how to get back, and the only things waiting for me there are all the arguments that brought me here.

So I do what I have to do. I set off across the field to find my brother Del.

Galfreya