“But what did Roger mean about seeking Jeremiah?” Joe asked, clinging stubbornly to the point.
“We think that’s how you . . . steer,” Brianna said. “Focusing your thoughts on a particular person who’s in the time you want to go to. We don’t know that for sure, though,” she added, and stifled a small belch. “Each time we—or Mama—did it, it was always two hundred and two years. And it was when Mama went back the first time—though come to think of it,” she added, frowning, “she thought it might have been because Black Jack Randall—Daddy’s ancestor—was there. He was the first person she met when she came through the stones. She said he looked a lot like Daddy.”
“Uh-huh.” Joe poured another half glass and stared at it for a moment, as though hypnotized by the soft reddish light glowing in its bowl. “But.” He stopped, marshaling his thoughts. “But other people did go farther. This Geillis your mother mentioned, and Buck? Did he—never mind. Roger and Buck did do it this time, for sure. So it’s possible; we just don’t know how.”
“I was forgetting Geillis,” Bree said slowly. She’d seen the woman only once, and very briefly. A tall, slender figure, fair hair flying in the wind of a murderous fire, her shadow thrown onto one of the standing stones, enormous, elongated.
“Now that I think, though . . . I don’t believe she had gemstones when she went back. She thought it took . . . er . . . sacrifice.” She glanced at Jem, then looked at Joe, lowering her brows with a meaningful look that said, “Don’t ask.” “And fire. And she never came back the other way, though she planned to, with stones.” And suddenly a penny that she hadn’t known was there dropped. “She told Mama about using stones—not the other way around. So somebody . . . somebody else told her.”
Joe digested that one for a moment, but then shook his head, dismissing the distraction.
“Huh. Okay, Hypothesis two: focusing your thoughts on a particular person helps you go to where they are. That make sense to you, Jem?” he asked, turning to Jemmy, who nodded.
“Sure. If it’s somebody you know.”
“Okay. Then—” Joe stopped abruptly, looking at Jem. “If it’s somebody you know?”
The icy centipede came rippling up Bree’s backbone and into her hair, making her scalp contract.
“Jem.” Her voice sounded odd to her own ears, husky and half breathless. “Mandy says she can hear you—in her head. Can you . . . hear her?” She swallowed, hard, and her voice came clearer. “Can you hear Daddy that way?”
The small red brows drew together in a puzzled frown.
“Sure. Can’t you?”
THE DEEP LINE between Uncle Joe’s eyebrows hadn’t gone away since the night before, Jem saw. He still looked friendly; he nodded at Jem and pushed a cup of hot chocolate across the counter to him, but his eyes kept going back to Mam, and every time they did, the line got deeper.
Mam was buttering Mandy’s toast. Jem thought she wasn’t as worried as she had been, and felt a little better himself. He’d slept all night, for the first time in a long time, and he thought maybe Mam had, too. No matter how tired he was, he usually woke up every couple of hours, listening out for noises, and then listening harder to be sure Mandy and Mam were still breathing. He had nightmares where they weren’t.
“So, Jem,” Uncle Joe said. He put down his coffee cup and patted his lips with a paper napkin left over from Halloween; it was black with orange jack-o’-lanterns and white ghosts on it. “Um . . . how far can you . . . er . . . you know, when your sister’s not with you?”
“How far?” Jem said uncertainly, and looked at Mam. It hadn’t ever occurred to him to wonder.
“If you went in the living room right now,” Uncle Joe said, nodding at the door. “Could you tell she was in here, even if you didn’t know she was in here?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes, sir. I think so.” He stuck his finger in the hot chocolate: still too hot to drink. “When I was in the tunnel, in the train—I knew she was . . . somewhere. It’s not like science fiction or anything, I mean,” he added, trying to explain. “Not like X-rays or phasers or like that. I just . . .” He struggled for an explanation and finally jerked his head at Mam, who was staring at him with a serious kind of look that bothered him a little. “I mean, if you closed your eyes, you’d still know Mam was here, wouldn’t you? It’s like that.”
Mam and Uncle Joe looked at each other.
“Want toast?” Mandy thrust her half-gnawed piece of buttered toast at him. He took it and had a bite; it was good, squidgy white bread, not the home-baked brown kind Mam made, with gritty bits in it.
“If he could hear her—sense her—from the tunnel while she was at home, he can do it for a good long way,” Mam said. “But I don’t know for sure that she was at home then—I was driving all over with her, looking for Jem. And Mandy could sense him while we were in the car that night. But—” Now her eyebrows went together. He didn’t like seeing a line there. “She was telling me she was getting colder, when we drove toward Inverness, but I don’t know if she meant she couldn’t hear him at all, or . . .”
“I don’t think I can feel her when I’m at school,” Jem said, anxious to be helpful. “But I’m not sure, ’cause I don’t think about her at school.”
“How far’s the school from your place?” Uncle Joe asked. “You want a Pop-Tart, princess?”