Chapter 36

I replaced the book on the shelf and walked out the library to the courtyard. It was hard to tell if the gray air rolling in from the ocean was fog or smog.

I found Killian by a coffee cart on the patio. He sat at an umbrella covered table by a fountain, its water flowed into a stream that ran flush with the walkway. He handed me a cup of scalding joe. He was drinking tea with what, from the number of swizzle sticks in his cup, was probably more honey than liquid.

I took off the lid to my drink and blew at the top, testing it gingerly before I took the first swig.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“Yah,” I said.

We sat for a few more moments in silence.

“Care to elaborate?” he asked.

I put down the coffee, “I think I know where the diamond lion might be.”

“In an underground lock box bunker that is impossible to get into?” asked Killian.

If only it was that easy.

“I think my dad found the lion at one of the missions.”

Killian put down his drink, “It is at one of the missions? This is wonderful! We should leave immediately!”

“No, Killian,” I replied, slowing him down. “What I’m trying to say is that’s where it was, but my dad already found it. And I think he tried to take it to the Other Side.”

“But Xiaoming said you cannot take it across…” Killian said, suddenly GETTING it. I sort of felt the same way.

“I think he knew that if my uncle found it, our family was dead. I think Dad tried to take the lion across the boundary to save us. But I think he got stuck.”

Killian reached out and took my hand, “I am sorry…”

“The thing is…” I continued, trying to freeze frame the memory of a slippery image in my head, “when you were injured, I had to rip open a portal. It wasn’t neat and tidy. It was sort of like a tear instead of an incision. When we went through, though, I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I thought…”

Killian leaned forward.

“I thought I saw a face. Just for a moment.”

“You think you saw your father…” Killian said, slowly.

“Yah,” I replied. It hung in the air there for a bit, Killian looking at me and me looking at him, but he didn’t make a move to call the little white men in the little white suits, so I laid out my newly evolving theory. “My sister told me that she thought she’d seen him, too, and my mom went all weird on me when I told her about it. I’m starting to think maybe my sister didn’t suddenly come down with ‘the sight’… I’m starting to think she’s actually been seeing him.”

“You think he is trapped there?”

“I think he went into hiding there.”

I pulled out the bookmark. Yes, I lifted it from the library. Bart shouldn’t have left me unattended, “I found this. It was in the book that told me about the statues. I think my dad knew that there would be no place safe here on Earth or the Other Side. I think he knew that my uncle would stop at nothing to control the boundary. I think my dad chose a self-appointed exile inside the border with the diamond lion to save us.”

I could see the wheels of Killian’s mind starting to spin and put the pieces together like my mind had done. He slowly began to nod, which was much better than backing slowly away from me and calling me nutters. Killian looked up at me, “Your theory answers many questions.”

I shook my head. I suddenly had a very sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. There was something wrong and all my instincts were screaming at me.

“I think I need to go see my mom,” I said, pushing down an overwhelming feeling of panic. “I think I need to go right now.”