3:59 (15 page)

Josie was screwed. She was Josephine Byrne—only not Nick’s Josephine Byrne. How could she explain it to him without getting her head blown off?

“I’m not going to ask again.”

“Okay!” Josie said, panting. “You win.”

The gun didn’t move. “Go ahead.”

“Just hear me out,” Josie said. Nick’s face was impassive, his eyes quick and alert, like a tiger hunting its prey. But the knuckles on the hand that gripped the gun were white and tense. He was scared too.

“Quickly.”

“My name is Josie Byrne.”

Nick pressed the gun into her cheek. “I said—”

“Listen to me!” Whether it was the tone in her voice or the look on her face, it made Nick pull back as a wave of hestitation passed over him.

“Josie Byrne,” she repeated. “Not Jo,
Josie
.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I haven’t had plastic surgery to look like Jo, okay? I
am
her.” As soon as Josie said the words, she felt her face flush bright red. It was true, sort of, and even with Nick sitting on top of her holding a gun to her head, she felt a rush of excitement at saying those words.

Wow. That was completely fucked up.

“You’re not Jo,” Nick said, turning ever so slightly pink.

Josie ignored him. “We’re the same person. Sort of.”

Nick barked a disbelieving laugh. “Are you trying to tell me you’re long-lost twins or something?”

“No.”

“Then?”

Crap, what
was
she trying to tell him? “We’re like the same person. The exact same person. Only not.”

“A clone?” Nick sat back on the bed.

“No, not a clone.” Josie pushed herself up to a sitting position. Nick still held the gun pointed in her general direction, but he seemed to have forgotten it was even in his hand.

“Because I wouldn’t put it past the Grid to start cloning us.” Nick looked out the window, clearly lost in his own thoughts.

Again, the idea of making a break for it crossed Josie’s mind, but something held her there. Maybe . . . maybe he could help her? She was going to need an ally if she was ever going to get home.

“I don’t know anything about clones,” Josie said truthfully. “But what I’m about to tell you is going to sound strange.”

“Stranger than clones?”

“Actually? Yeah.”

Nick half smiled. He was still tense, but there was an instant lightness to his face. “This had better be an awesome story.”

Josie glanced at the clock. Five minutes to four. Well, that was the first thing that had gone right for her in the last twenty-four hours. At least she would have concrete, irrefutable proof of the completely insane story she was about to tell her gun-toting not-boyfriend.

“Well?” Nick asked.

It was now or never. Josie pointed to the mirror. “I came through there.”

NICK ARCHED AN EYEBROW. “YOU CAME THROUGH the mirror?” he asked skeptically.

“I know, it’s crazy. But something happened last week and suddenly there was this connection between my world and yours and then—”

Nick snapped to attention. “Hold up.
Your
world?”

“Yeah. I—I don’t come from here. I’m Josephine Byrne, but in another world.”

“You mean in another dimension.” Nick didn’t sound incredulous. In fact, he said the words like they were common knowledge.

“Exactly.”

“How?”

“Um . . .” Yeah, wasn’t that the million-dollar question. Would he have any idea what she was talking about if she mentioned her theory about the ultradense deuterium? Doubtful. “I’m not really sure,” she said instead. “Something happened and then I started having these dreams, like I was me but not me. Every night at the same time. Then I started seeing things in the mirror. Jo. This room. Every twelve hours at the exact same time. I realized I was seeing Jo’s life, like through her eyes. Just for a minute. Every twelve hours.”

“At what time?”

“Three fifty-nine.”

Nick’s eyes grew wide. “Three fifty-nine? You’re sure?”

Josie nodded. “Positive.”

Nick fell silent. He stared at the bed and bobbed his head up and down slightly. Was he trying to remember a month’s worth of 3:59s? Josie looked away. Hopefully he wouldn’t remember exactly what he’d been doing at those times. What snippets of his life Josie had been eavesdropping on.

“So if you’re not bullshitting me . . . ,” Nick started.

“I’m not. I swear.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nick nodded. He was staring at the clock on the nightstand. “If you’re not bullshitting me then in about thirty seconds there’s going to be an image in that mirror that is not a reflection of this room, right?”

“Right.”

“It’ll be your room in another dimension.”

Ugh. Josie shook her head. “Not exactly.” Nick arched an eyebrow.

Josie was about to explain, when she caught sight of the mirror. It was starting.

“See for yourself,” she said, nodding at the mirror.

Nick turned his head and, Josie saw with some satisfaction, his jaw dropped. He stared for a few seconds as the glass undulated, distorting the reflection of Jo’s room. Nick slowly rose to his feet, the arm with the gun hanging limply at his side.

The concrete wall was still there, stark, gray, impenetrable. Nick reached his hand out to touch it, pausing just before his palm grazed the surface as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing and feeling was real. He gingerly brushed his fingertips against the mirror, breaking the surface of what, just seconds ago, had been solid glass. Josie watched as he swished his fingers around in the murky middle of the portal. He pulled his hand away and held it up before his face as he wiggled his fingers. Then he thrust his hand forward into the portal and pressed it flat against the wall.

Nick paused, then he leaned his body into the portal, testing his weight against the wall. He stood up straight, and with his fingers, traced the inside of the mirror frame looking for a break or a gap, just as Josie had done in the early hours of the morning, then he pushed his face into the wall, peering closely at the corner of the mirror, and poked at it with his finger.

Even though his body was blocking the mirror, Josie caught sight of the surface as it started to morph back into shape.

“Nick,” she said. “Back up.”

His head was completely submerged. Duh, he couldn’t hear her.

The mirror began to resolidify. It washed over Nick’s face and hands, still pressed into the concrete wall, viscous and shimmery, like liquid metal. Josie leaped forward and grabbed Nick by the back of his sweatshirt, then heaved with all her strength. He was choking now, suffocating on whatever made up the portal. It was like trying to pull someone out of quicksand. Nick felt stuck to the mirror. Horrific gurgling noises poured out of his mouth. Josie wrapped both of her arms around his waist, braced her foot against the frame, and pulled with all her strength.

With a sharp sucking sound, Nick’s body was released from the mirror, and he and Josie tumbled backward onto the bed.

They lay there for a second, his body on top of hers. He was panting heavily, just as Josie had been a few moments before when he was choking her.

That’s right. Nick had just tried to kill her.

She pushed his body to the side and shimmied out from under him. “See?” she said. “I told you it was crazy.”

Nick passed a hand over his face. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Josie sat down in the chair and folded her arms across her chest. She didn’t know what else to say. At last someone other than Jo knew her secret. At least it was out, the burden of secrecy removed. Whether or not Nick could help her was another matter entirely.

Nick slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, then stood up and walked over to the window. He left the gun on the bed, discarded, unheeded. As he stared outside in the late afternoon sunshine, Josie made a mental note that she was about three feet closer to the gun than he was.

“So you and Jo switched places.”

“Yep.”

“Her idea?”

“Actually, yeah.” Josie conveniently left out the part about how she’d desperately hoped Jo would want to switch places. That wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with Nick.

“Okay.” He still didn’t look at her. “And then when you went to switch back out, you found the wall.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s so like her,” Nick said, more to himself than to Josie.

“Is it?”

Nick turned around. “Yeah. Selfish. Jo’s used to getting what she wants. Mr. Byrne’s a nice guy, but he’s the government liaison with the Grid. Pretty powerful. Has his office up at Fort Meade on the Grid campus and everything. Jo likes to talk it up like she can decide who gets power from the Grid, and who doesn’t. She uses it as a threat.”

“Right.” Josie remembered Penelope’s comment in the lab, and the way people went out of their way to be friendly without actually wanting to be Jo’s friend. She was a bully.

“It’s weird, though,” Nick said after a pause. “Why she’d want to stay there.”

Once again, Josie couldn’t prevent her natural reaction. She laughed out loud.

“What?” Nick asked, half turning toward her.

“Why wouldn’t she want to stay there? This place is awful. She’s in love with you, while you clearly can’t stand her, and—”

“Whoa,” Nick said, holding up his hand. “How did you know she’s in love with me?”

Crap. Loaded question which Josie had no intention of answering. She cleared her throat and barreled on. “Everyone avoids her at school. She has no friends. Oh, and when the sun goes down the darkness tries to eat you alive.”

Nick cocked his head. “No Nox in your world?”

“Hell, no. What are those things anyway?”

“Hmm,” Nick said, ignoring her question. “Still, not enough to make her stay there. Not with her mom and everything. Unless . . .”

Josie started. “Wait, what about her mom?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

Josie narrowed her eyes. “There’s a lot Jo didn’t tell me.”

Nick laughed softly. “Yeah, that sounds like her too.” Nick paced back and forth, ignoring her question about Jo’s mom. Suddenly, he swung around. “Your mom, on the other side. She’s okay?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, she’s been kinda weird lately, but she’s not sick or anything.”

“And Jo knew this?”

Josie nodded. “Yeah.”

He tilted his head to the side. “What does your mom do? Like for a living?”

“She’s a theoretical physicist.”

“Specializing in quantum gravity?”

“Yes!”

“Experimenting with ultradense deuterium?”

“How did you know?”

“I wonder . . .” Nick bounded across the room and grabbed Josie by the hand, yanking her out of the chair. “Come on.”

Josie jerked her hand away. “Whoa, crazy. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Nick’s eyebrows pinched together over his nose in a look of utter confusion. Then his eyes drifted to the gun on the bed. “Oh. Right. Look, I’m sorry about that, but you don’t understand. I thought you were one of them.”

“One of who?”

“I’ll explain on the way. But we need to get out of here.”

Josie folded her arms across her chest. “I said, I’m not going—”

Nick rolled his eyes, then snatched up the gun. Josie backed away, cursing herself for being so stupid. He was going to kidnap her.

Instead, Nick flipped the gun around so the barrel faced him, and handed it to her. “You can carry this if it’ll make you feel better. But I need you to come with me right now. Please.”

Josie tentatively reached out and took the gun out of Nick’s hand. She’d never held a weapon before. It was heavier than she’d thought. “Why should I trust you?”

Nick smiled at her. A real, sincere smile. The first she’d seen from him. “Because I might be the only person who can get you home.”

THE SUN CREPT TOWARD THE HORIZON AS NICK continued to drive. Josie fidgeted in her seat, craning her head to get a look at how dark it was getting, as her fingers lightly traced the bandages on her arms. The last thing she wanted to do was get stuck outside after the sun went down.

“We’ll be fine,” Nick said, reading her mind. He tapped the roof of his SUV. “This baby’s got a full set of interior lights, plus the high-intensity floodlights I had installed on the roof. I go out at night all the time, no trouble. Trust me.”

Josie glanced at the handgun in her lap. “Right.”

“Besides,” Nick said with a shrug. “There’s plenty of light where we’re going.”

“And where’s that exactly?”

Nick smiled, but didn’t answer.

What was with all the mystery? She couldn’t figure it out. Nick seemed to be taking a random route: first they were on Annapolis Road, then the old Crain Highway, before doubling back on Route 32 to Route 50, almost exactly back where they started.

It wasn’t until the second loop that Josie realized what he was doing.

“You think someone’s following us.”

Nick shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

“Oh.”

They fell back into silence, but only for a moment. There was one question Josie was dying to ask.

“What are the Nox?”

“Good question.” Nick made a right-hand turn onto the highway for the third time. “You really don’t have anything like them where you come from?”

“Nope.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure I’d know if there were man-eating monsters living in the darkness.”

“Okay, okay. Don’t get touchy.” Nick glanced at her. “It’s just hard to imagine life without them. A life where you can actually go outside at night or sleep in the dark.”