Into the Dim (Into the Dim, #1)(23)

My mother’s name felt like a slap. I lurched back, but Phoebe grabbed my hand, her gaze locking me in place.

“The Dim won’t let them go again, see? And Viators never travel with just two, cause if one gets hurt”—her face scrunched into a frown—“or worse, the other person would be all alone. That leaves you, me, and Collum.”

She took a deep breath and exchanged a quick look with the others. Lucinda nodded, and Phoebe squeezed my limp hands between her small, cold ones.

“We’re going after your mum, Hope,” she said. “The three of us. And this time we’re going to bring her home.”

I nodded thoughtfully, as if all this was perfectly ordinary. Sure. I get that. Want me to travel through time with you? No problem. I’m on it.

My feet were backing up the stairs. I forced them to stop as my vision filled with the image of Mom’s face in the tapestry. She’d looked so angry. So scared.

My head jerked as a detail I’d registered, but had no time to examine, pricked at me. The hoop of embroidery she’d held in her lap seemed to magnify in my mind. The stitched words had been tangled in vines and flowers, and written in a language only a scholar would recognize.

I knew it, though. Aramaic. It was one of the many my mother had taught me.

Find me, it said.

My cunning mother had sent her sister a message through a thousand years, just hoping she would find it and come for her.

I nearly tripped as I stumbled down the step. “Th-the embroidery,” I gasped.

The others were arranged in a semicircle around me. Together. Bonded. Only I stood alone. Lucinda was nodding, almost smiling.

“Yes, we know about the message,” she said. “And I’m very pleased. Your mother prepared you well, Hope. You have more knowledge of history, and archaic languages, than many learned professors could absorb in their lifetime. Do you now understand why? You’ve been training for this since you were four years old. We need that knowledge. We need you.”





The last time I heard my mother’s voice was the morning she left us forever. She’d been pacing, the rising sun painting her bedroom pink and gold. I’d gone to apologize for being such a brat to her the night before, when she’d dared suggest I go with her. I paused in the hall outside when I heard her arguing with someone over the phone.

Of course I want to tell Hope the truth. A pause. Oh yes. Last night. And she got so angry. The female voice on the other end grew louder.

As I hid in the dusky hallway, I watched Mom’s restless shadow flit across the wall. Her heels clacked as she roamed the room.

Listen, I—I don’t know what else to do. Hope’s just so fragile. I assumed she’d grow out of it as she got older. As she assimilated into . . . well . . . but it just gets worse. Though her mind is the most astonishing I’ve ever known, the phobias and anxieties she’s racked with are—

The voice on the other end of the line cut in. On the wall, my mother’s shadow covered her eyes. Yes, and I take full responsibility for that. But I wouldn’t change it. Not ever. You weren’t there. It wasn’t even a choice. I will never regret taking Hope from that awful place.

I’d startled at that. Oddly, I had no memory whatsoever of the Eastern European orphanage where my mother had found me when I was four. Was the voice telling her she should’ve left me there?

Still, she was saying, so that I had no time to process the comment, I’ve begun to think it might be kinder to keep all this from her. If the thought of a plane ride practically incapacitates her, how do you suppose—? The voice spoke. Mom sighed and said, I know, but she’s my daughter. And I’m beginning to believe she may never have the strength to bear the truth.

I remembered creeping away, the apology still captured in my throat. So she thinks I’m a weakling? Fine, I’d decided. Let her think it. Who cares?





Anguish, bitter and dense as lemon peel, nipped at the back of my tongue as I realized it was my fault that Mom went on that trip alone. If I hadn’t been such a coward, if I’d gone with her, maybe none of this would have happened.

My throat clicked when I swallowed. I took a step toward them, my eyes dry and flinty as they locked on my aunt’s. “So when do we leave?”





Chapter 11


AFTER WE’D CLIMBED BACK UP THE STAIRS, Moira ordered us all to bed.

“Rest,” she said, shooing us to our rooms. “That’s what is needed now. We can discuss all this further after everyone’s had some sleep.”

Back in my room, the girl who glared from the silvered bathroom mirror looked like she’d been through a natural disaster. Pale, chapped lips. Dark curls frizzed and matted. The skin under my eyes like bruised fruit.

Mom’s alive, I mouthed to the mirror. Alive.

Unable to bear the fear in my own eyes, I averted my gaze, splashing my face with cold water until it ran down my chest, drenching my nightgown. Wet and shivering, I burrowed beween the sheets, praying sleep would erase the dread that slithered over my skin.





After a few hours of disturbing dreams, it was time for my first official lesson. Time Travel 101.

“It was easy after that.”

Seated around a long table in the library, a modest, brilliant Doug fended off the others’ praise. “No, no. Tesla was the visionary, not me,” he explained. “It was his idea to use alternating current that could read the pulses from the Dim, then use a crosscurrent to interrupt the flow at specific times. My program merely amplifies his readings, pinpointing the time and place and giving us more time to prepare.”