“Tell us what, sweetheart?” Travis said, keeping his tone light, unsure how much she had heard.

The girl pranced to the table and set the paper down. “How we came here. Look, I drew you a picture. It explains everything.”

Travis turned the paper around. The drawing was made up of simple but expressive lines. At the bottom of the paper was a small black triangle. Above the triangle was a large circle with wavy edges. On either side of the circle stood a stick figure, one tall, the other short. The shorter figure held a hand toward the triangle. Small black shapes like teardrops fell from the little figure’s hand onto the triangle.

Only the drops weren’t tears, Travis knew. A sweat sprang out on his skin.

Vani picked up the paper, folded it in half, and gave it back to Nim. “It’s time for you to go to sleep.”

“I know,” the girl said. “I can put myself to bed. I just wanted my fathers to kiss me good night first.”

They did. Beltan picked her up and hugged her, and Travis gave her a solemn kiss on her forehead. She ran to the door, then stopped and looked at Vani.

“I’m lucky, Mother,” she said.

Vani’s gaze was thoughtful. “How so, daughter?”

“Most children have just one father. But I have two.”

With that, Nim was gone. Travis and Beltan sat again at the table. Vani stared at the door where the girl had vanished.

“How?” Travis said simply.

Vani didn’t look at him. “She told me to do it. I refused at first—older though she seems, she is only three—but the sorcerers were close behind us, and I knew my people would not be able to delay them for long. I had little choice. And I learned early on that she knows things. Things she shouldn’t know, yet does all the same.”

Beltan pressed his hand to the inside of his right arm.

“So her blood activated the gate,” Travis said, feeling ill.

“She didn’t even cry as I pricked her finger with a needle.” Vani hesitated, then touched his hand. “Somehow, through some magic of the Little People, she truly is your child, Travis. Even as she is my child, and Beltan’s. She is what she is because of all of us.”

Travis struggled to comprehend. How could Nim really be his child? The Little People had tricked Vani and Beltan, making each think the other was Travis. The two had lain together, and Nim was conceived. But it was only illusion; he hadn’t really been there. Or was it some enchantment of the Little People? Some magic that had taken something from all three of them and imparted it to Nim?

“There’s something else I have not told you.” Vani circled her hands around the onyx tetrahedron—the topmost portion of the gate artifact. “It has been three weeks since I came to Earth. It took me that long to find you, for I began my search in Colorado.”

“Sorry,” Travis said. “We didn’t know we needed to leave a forwarding address.”

Vani did not smile. “I kept the lid of the gate artifact so that I might remain in contact with my people. While a Mournish man or woman’s blood is not enough to open the gate—”

“It’s enough to send a message,” Travis said. “Yes, I know. Are you saying you’ve heard something?”

“Hold out your hand.”

Travis did so, and she set the onyx tetrahedron on his palm. It was warm, and he felt a hum of magic. Blood flowed beneath his skin. Blood of power. Just the proximity to it was enough to awaken the artifact. A tiny, transparent image of a man appeared above the tetrahedron.

It was Sareth. He held a knife, and there was a dark line on his forearm.

“Sister,” the image spoke in a reedy but clear facsimile of Sareth’s voice, “I returned from the south, from Moringarth, only today, and our al-Mama tells me that you are already two weeks gone. I wish that I could speak with you in person. But I fear, whatever dark wonders you might tell me, the news I bear would be darker yet.”

A grimace crossed the image of his face. “I must be brief. Let me say this: I think it is fate you chose to journey to Earth. In Moringarth, I spoke to a dervish, and though what he told me seems impossible, I am certain it is true. The burial place of Morindu the Dark has been discovered. Already the Scirathi seek it out, and our people move to hinder them and reach the city first. And, sister, this news is even stranger than you imagine, for the dervish who brought it to me is a man from Travis Wilder’s world, a man named Hadrian Farr. He says word must be sent to Travis, that the time draws near when he must return to Eldh and—”

The image of Sareth flickered, then vanished. The tetrahedron grew cool and heavy in Travis’s hand. He could feel both Vani’s and Beltan’s eyes on him as he set it on the table. His mind buzzed, and his hands itched. What had Sareth been about to say before the spell of blood sorcery ceased? What was Travis supposed to return to Eldh and do?

They want you to raise it, Travis. To raise it from the sands that swallowed it long ago. Morindu the Dark, lost city of sorcerers.

He shoved his chair back from the table and stood.

Beltan’s green eyes were worried. “What are you doing?”

“I’m calling for help,” Travis said as he picked up the phone and dialed.

7.

“Come on,” Deirdre Falling Hawk muttered as the train rattled to a stop at the Green Park station.

The doors lurched open, and she squeezed through the moment the opening was wide enough. “Mind the gap,” droned a recorded voice, but she had already leaped onto the platform, breaking into a run as her boots hit the tiles. Travis hadn’t said why he wanted her to come over, but there had been something in his voice—a sharpness—that made her heart quicken. Besides, Travis and Beltan hadn’t invited her or any other Seeker to their flat in the three years since they had come to London. Something told her this wasn’t an invitation for a drink and casual conversation.

She gripped the yellowed bear claw that hung at her throat as she pounded up the steps and into the balmy night. A man wearing a grimy white sheet stood next to the entrance of the Tube station, holding a cardboard sign, a blank look on his face. The sign read, in neatly printed letters, You Will Be Eaten.

“Are you ready for the Mouth?” he said as she passed him, the words accompanied by a puff of sour breath.

Deirdre ignored him—the Mouthers were everywhere in the city these days—and darted across Piccadilly Street. She had never been to Travis and Beltan’s flat, but she knew exactly where it was. The Seekers had a penchant for keeping tabs on otherworldly travelers. Even those whose cases were closed.

Except the case would never really be closed, whether the Seekers were actively investigating it or not. And it wasn’t just because of the phone call from Travis that Deirdre ran headlong down the sidewalk, daring other pedestrians to get in her way.

Just before the phone rang, she had been sitting at the dining table in her flat, working on her laptop computer, doing some cross-indexing between two databases. It was tedious work, but necessary as well. The kind of work she’d been doing a lot of lately.

Not that she wouldn’t rather have been investigating rumors of unexplainable energy signatures or artifacts of unknown origin, journeying to exotic locations, poring over lost manuscripts, or decoding hieroglyphics. However, if there were any otherworldly forces lurking out there, waiting to be discovered, then they were studiously avoiding her, because she hadn’t worked on an interesting case in over a year, and the last several leads of any promise she had found had all run into dead ends.

Eyes aching from staring at the computer, Deirdre had just decided to call it a night when the machine chimed. On screen, a message appeared.

Do be sure to take this call.

That was all. There was no indication of the sender, no box in which she could type a reply. She was still staring at the message when the phone rang, causing her to jump out of her seat.