3:59

THIRTY

9:50 P.M.

“JOSEPHINE?” MR. BYRNE CALLED OUT FROM THE living room the second Josie closed the front door behind her, blocking out the floodlights from Nick’s car that had lit her path up to the house. “Is that you?”

Damn. She’d been hoping everyone would be in bed. She was completely exhausted, and her mind reeled with a million new bits of information she needed to digest and process. She wasn’t sure she had enough energy to masquerade as Jo for even a few minutes.

“Josephine?” Mr. Byrne repeated, this time more urgently.

“It’s me,” Josie said. “Daddy,” she quickly added, remembering the way Jo always mentioned her father. She meandered over to the archway that led into the living room and leaned wearily against the wall.

“Oh, thank God!” Mr. Byrne exclaimed. He placed his tablet down on the coffee table. “I was so worried. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

Josie flinched. Her phone. She’d turned it off at the warehouse and totally forgotten about it. “I’m sorry. The . . . the battery died.”

Mr. Byrne sighed and patted the cushion next to him on the sofa. Josie dutifully sat down, pulling the sleeves of her sweater down past her wrists so he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of her bandages, and tried to look suitably ashamed.

“I was worried,” Mr. Byrne repeated. “There have been elevated Nox sightings throughout the area. We got reports tonight of particularly large swarms between Baltimore and D.C., and there’s a rumor going around that someone was attacked in our neighborhood just recently. Have you heard anything about that at school?”

Josie folded her arms across her chest, hoping he hadn’t caught sight of her bandages. “No,” she lied. “Haven’t heard a thing.”

He patted her knee. “Hopefully it’s just a rumor, then. But please be careful. I can’t bear the thought of losing my little girl after . . .” His voice drifted off. Josie looked up and saw that Mr. Byrne was staring across the room at a photo on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. A photo of his wife.

A wave of guilt passed over her. Here she was, an impostor pretending to be the daughter of this man who had been through so much. His wife was still alive, but in what state? She had no idea who she was or where she was. Was that better or worse than having her die in the explosion?

Mr. Byrne smiled weakly as he gazed at his wife’s photo. For the first time, he reminded Josie of her own dad. “Maybe we should go see her,” he suggested. “Try again.”

Josie stiffened. Go see her fake mom in a mental hospital? That seemed like an incredibly bad idea. She’d been lucky with Mr. Byrne: he was distracted by work and grief over his wife, and hadn’t noticed the girl pretending to be his daughter was really nothing of the kind. But a mom? Moms had a way of knowing things, of looking right through you and reading your mind. Even if Dr. Byrne wasn’t quite 100 percent there, would she know the girl standing before her wasn’t the one she gave birth to?

Still, the woman was suffering mental effects of a massive explosion. If she started ranting about how Josie wasn’t really her daughter, they might not actually take her seriously.

Josie looked up from making her mental pros and cons list, and noticed Mr. Byrne watching her intently. He raised his eyebrows as if to say, Well?

“Whatever you’d like, Daddy,” she forced herself to say.

Mr. Byrne laughed drily. “Josephine, who do you think you’re kidding? You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. I won’t force you to, okay? I know how hard it is to visit her when she doesn’t know who you are.”

For the first time in almost forty-eight hours, Josie felt sorry for Jo. No wonder she was so desperate to get through the mirror and find a mom who knew who she was. Josie could hardly blame her for not wanting to come back. Though maybe missing her dad would precipitate a return? He seemed like a great father and clearly cared for his daughter tremendously. Between him and Nick, maybe it would be enough to lure Jo home.

Josie smiled. “I’ll let you know if I change my mind.”

“Deal.” He picked up his tablet and rose from the sofa, planting a light kiss on the top of her head as he did so. “Now how about you get to bed, young lady? Busy day tomorrow.”

He had no idea.

3:59 A.M.

Her mom sits at the kitchen table. She rests her elbows on the laminate wood surface and holds a steaming cup of tea to her lips.

She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, relishing the aroma. “I dearly love a cup of tea,” she says on a breathy exhale.

“I know.”

“That woman only drank coffee. Bins of the stuff in the house, and not even a box of tea when I got here.” She stares lovingly at the box of tea bags on the table.

“Oh.”

“I can’t tell you how many mugs of that slime I’ve had to choke down at the lab.” She takes a long sip, then abruptly lowers the cup. “Speaking of, you’d better start making a list of what your other half did and didn’t do. We can’t have any suspicions if we’re going to stay here.”

“Stay here?”

Her mom arches an eyebrow. “Don’t you want to? You don’t really want to go back to all that, do you? The secrets and the lies. And the Nox.”

She shudders at the mention of the Nox, then shakes her head hesitantly. “No.” She pauses. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Don’t worry about your boyfriend,” her mom says sharply. “He’ll be fine.”

Jo’s stomach tightens up. “He’s not my boyfriend.” Not yet, she thinks to herself.

“We can’t go back,” her mom says with a nod of her head. “The mirror has to stay where it is. Besides”—her mom reaches across and pats her hand—“now that you’re here, I don’t have to worry about creating a new portal. That’s all I’ve been working on the last six months, you know. A way to bring you here.”

“Oh.” Jo tries to hide her anxiety. She doesn’t want to stay, not any longer than they have to. “Are you going to destroy the mirror?”

“I can’t,” her mom says. “Too dangerous. I have to find a way to close the portal first.”

“Oh.”

Her mom whisks away her hand. “It’s not so bad here, Josephine. I promise.”

Jo shivers. Her body feels suddenly cold.

“Get to know the other Nick,” her mom says. It’s like she can read her daughter’s mind. “Maybe you’ll like him.”

“I suppose.”

“Try,” her mom says. “Because once I figure out how . . .” She pauses and stares Jo directly in the eye. “We’ll destroy the portal. Forever.”

Josie’s eyes flew open and she pushed the sleep mask up over her head. They were still connected. She and Jo.

A hundred ideas flooded into her head at once. Her mom. The portal. Her mom.

Holy shit.

It had been Jo’s mom she’d been living with for the past six months. Jo’s mom who kicked Dad out of the house. Jo’s mom who seemed so cold and distant and spent twenty-four-seven in the lab.

Jo’s mom. Not her mom.

Which meant her mom was here.