"Something that involves university," Derek said. "Something less embarra.s.sing."

"I don't know what I want to do," I said quickly. "I have been thinking about it," I added, looking at my mother.

"That's all I'm asking," she said.

"I like working with you," I said to Derek. "I like that I get to see you every day, but she's right, I don't love it like you do." I paused, looked at both of them, and wondered how to say that I didn't want to make steps for my future here because that would mean I had to stay. I wanted the right moment to tell them I was leaving.

"Mom, is there any more rice?" Derek asked suddenly.

She nodded. "I'll get some."

When she left the dining room for the kitchen, Derek reached over and grabbed my arm. "Just don't leave yet." I opened my mouth to say I wouldn't, but he shook his head. "I can see it in your face. I could before, but I didn't want to believe it."

"I'm sorry, Derek," I said. "I've missed you both so much, but everything here feels so foreign, it feels so different."

"It doesn't matter what universe you're in, you'll always be my brother," he said. "I mean, stay for a while. If you want to go back, I get it, sort of. I want you to be happy, but stay for a little while. Try for Mom and for me."

I nodded.

"Hey, Mom," Derek called. "I don't need more rice. I'm actually full."

He smiled and I shook my head. "Let's clear the dishes."

"That's all you, little brother," he said, stretching his arms over his head. "You have thousands of nights of dish duty to catch up on, and taking out the trash."

For a second, I almost pointed out that it was Dad who was supposed to take out the trash, but I caught myself before I said it. My mother always wanted each of us to have a job. She cooked and cleaned, my father took out the trash, and Derek and I alternated with dish duty.

"I could have been clearing dishes for someone else while I was gone." I stood up and started clearing them anyway.

"Doesn't matter," Derek said. "Every night while you were gone I had to do it. That's your job now, at least for the next few weeks."

The next few weeks. I knew what he meant by that. That's how long he was asking me to stay. I nodded, and he stood up, grabbing the dishes I couldn't carry.

My mother stood at the fridge, putting the extra food away. As I moved around her, something in the living room caught my eye. I set the dishes in the sink and went back to look through the doorway.

For as long as I'd known her, my mother had been a fastidious housekeeper. She vacuumed a certain way, so that it left a pattern on the carpet. As a family we spent time in the den, watching TV or playing board games. We ate at the dining room table; we prepared food in the kitchen. We only went into the living room when we had company over. When we were kids, she always had a baby gate up at the kitchen to keep Hope and Derek and me out of there.

Which is why it didn't make sense that I could see footprints marring the vacuum lines in that room.

"Who's been here?" I said.

Derek came over and peered around me, careful not to step into the living room. As I had thought, she hadn't changed the way she felt about the living room.

"Oh, it was nothing," she said. She didn't look up. And she didn't elaborate.

"Clearly not," Derek said with a laugh. "Someone with big feet has been all over the living room."

"I just haven't had a chance to get in there and vacuum today."

"Why?" I asked. She didn't work anymore. "What have you been doing today?"

She stood up and straightened her clothing. "If you must know, I spoke to a few men who stopped by the house today. They had some questions. I answered them, and then I made dinner."

"Wait a minute," Derek said. He wasn't laughing anymore. "A few men stopped by the house with questions, and you're just telling us now?"

"Who were they?" I asked.

"They didn't say," she said, ignoring Derek. "They just had some routine questions."

"That's bulls.h.i.t," Derek said, his voice rising. "Hasn't the city guard bothered us enough? This is how it started last time. Just some routine questions."

My mother didn't respond.

The city guard hadn't bothered my family for quite some time, and they didn't have reason to now. Unless the reason was me.

But it wasn't the city guard who was following me. Today I had approached that car, and now someone had come to my mother's home and questioned her. They were upping their game.

The doorbell rang. "Derek, could you get that, please?" my mother said.

He swore under his breath, but he left. He started to head out through the den like we always would have, but then he turned around and went through the living room as some immature act of defiance.

"Were they city guard?" I asked.

She shook her head, but she didn't look at me.

"Their questions. They were about me?"

"They asked about everything, but yes, they asked a lot about you," she said. Then she turned, and I saw in her eyes that she was worried.

"What did they want to know?"

"Everything," she said. "If you were clearer about your future intentions, I think it would help."

She thought they were from the government, then. Someone from this universe. I just didn't think anyone here had reason to be interested in me.

I thought back to my last night with Janelle. The night Alex and Reid died. The night we got back here. Taylor Barclay pulled Janelle to her feet and turned to me. I didn't like the way he held on to her, so I didn't really digest his words when he spoke them. I just waited for him to finish and pulled her back into my arms.

Thinking back now, though, I remember his words clearly.

There are people out there who think no one should have that kind of power, and you'd be smart not to advertise.

I didn't have time to think too hard about it, though. My brother came back into the kitchen with Eli.

I saw the lines on his forehead and the way his eyes said whatever he came here for was serious. Then Eli said, "I need you to come with me."

"Now?" I asked.

He nodded. His face was flushed and he seemed out of breath. "There's something you've gotta see."

I followed Eli outside and got into his car.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I think you're right," he said, starting up the car. I braced myself on the dashboard as he peeled out of the driveway. "IA is following you."

"They spoke to my mother today. Questioned her about me," I said.

"I saw them today too, a trio of douche bags with their commando boots. It's definitely IA," he said. "They came to my house, spoke to my stepfather. They didn't give a s.h.i.t who he was."

"What did they want to know?"

He shook his head. "It's my fault, Ben."

I didn't like the sound of that. He was never quick to admit he was wrong. If he was admitting it, he knew it was true, and he knew it was bad.

He pulled the car into a park and threw the parking brake up. The car lurched to a halt. "Get out," he said.

I followed him.

"You know I hate it here, right?" he said, leading me down a trail.

"I do." Out of the three of us, Eli was always the most desperate to get home. Being thrown into a different world was the hardest on him. He'd had everything here, and his first set of foster parents weren't people I would wish on anyone. But now we were back, and he'd lost more than I had. No matter how different things were for me, no matter how much I felt like I didn't fit here, I still had my mother. I still had Derek.

He looked at me. "I haven't just been hiding away in my room."

He held a hand out in front of him, and before it happened, I knew what he was going to do.

The air shifted, the wind kicked up, everything around us seemed to hush in antic.i.p.ation, and I saw the blackness spread from Eli's hand. A portal sprang open in front of him.

"What are you doing?" I said, reaching for him. I didn't have time to be surprised at what he'd done by himself. There were more important things to worry about. He couldn't possibly have forgotten what had happened before. "That's unstable. Who knows what damage it could be doing?"

"Then we'd better be quick," he said, and he stepped through it.

I ran a hand through my hair and swore under my breath, but I followed him.

Heat moved through me. My fingers and toes tingled with the sensation, and then I was pulling myself up off the ground. Eli stood next to me. The portal was gone.

"Before you flip out," he said, "our biggest problem before was that all of our portals were open too long, and we were usually trying to go to the same place."

"It's still dangerous. Even if you're trying to be careful! If you're leaving from our world every timea""

"I'm not," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm world-hopping. I'm gone for days at a time, just moving to different worlds." He shrugged. "I try not to open a portal here unless there are a few days in between the last time."

"Eli," I said. "You don't know what you're doing. You could still be putting our world in danger."

"I know, I f.u.c.king know," he said. "This morning I realized maybe they were following you because of what I was doing."

"You mean this?" I asked. "You've really been opening portals?" He nodded. "How many?"

"A lot," he said. "Off the top of my head . . . I don't have an exact count."

I turned around. I couldn't believe he'd been this careless. Not just with our lives, but with everyone's. It made it hard to look at him without wanting to punch him, and that wasn't going to solve anything.

"But I've been keeping track," he said. "Writing down details about all the worlds."

I turned around. "*All the worlds'? Do you hear yourself?"

"It's easier to control than we thought," he said. "I can open a portal by thinking of where I want to go. This one I found by thinking that I needed someplace completely deserted, where IA wouldn't find us."

I looked around for the first time. We were in some kind of suburb. There was a strip mall to the right and a row of apartment buildings behind it. But something didn't feel quite right about this place. It wasn't just that there was no one walking around or that the leaves were missing or that the gra.s.s was brown and dried up. There was no sound. No life here.

"This way," Eli said.

I followed him down the street. Still I heard nothing.

"Where are we?"

"I don't know, but I've been all over this place," he said. "There's no one here, and there hasn't been for a long time."

"How long?"

"Years at least," he said. "We shouldn't eat any of the food or anything here. Who knows what the f.u.c.k wiped these people out?"

It occurred to me that he was right. Whatever happened here, people had been wiped out. Everything had. That was the only thing that explained why there was no noise.

"This is the hospital," he said, as we came to a building. It looked gray and overrun by vines crawling up the sides. "There are beds and blankets and s.h.i.t, and I emptied my mother's medicine cabinet and pantry through a portal. The fifth floor will be our safe house."

I hoped we wouldn't need a safe house, but I also couldn't deny that he was right. IA wouldn't find us here.

"No more world-hopping," I said.

Eli shrugged.

"I mean it, not until we figure out what IA wants with us. Not until we make sure my mother and Derek aren't in any danger."

"You're right," he said. "No more world-hopping, but this is where we'll come if we need to get somewhere safe. And we shouldn't be seen together anymore. We need to get our affairs in order and meet here."

"*Our affairs in order'?"

"You know what I mean. Tell your mom and brother. Figure out how to lead IA away from them, and then we'll meet here."

I looked around again and wondered what Janelle would think of this place. Hopefully Eli was right and we could get out now, and I'd have the chance to tell her about it.

The next morning, the tan sedan wasn't there. Instead it was a black one, the same make and model, the same tinted windows. Parked in the same spot.