G. Lippert - JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

"You'll tell us all about it when you get back, right?" Wentworth suggested, frowning slightly.

"Definitely," Ralph nodded, producing his large wand. Its lime-green tip glowed dimly in the moonlight.

"You want us to come too?" Gobbins asked. "Because we could, you know." The rest of the team, even the reserve players, murmured agreement.

"No," James replied, smiling, "but thanks."

"Whew," Norrick breathed. "Good luck, then. Wherever you're going, and whatever you're gonna do when you get there, good luck."

Mukthatch let out an encouraging woof.

Ralph turned around and held the horseshoe up, measuring it against the shape carved into the conjoined cornerstone.

"Petra," James asked quietly, turning to look at her, "what happened back there, in the Medical College? What happened to Keynes?"

Petra met his gaze thoughtfully. "He's still alive," she answered simply. James sensed her thoughts and sensed that this was the truth. It wasn't all of the truth, he knew, but for now, it was enough.

He moved a step closer to her so that no one else would hear. "Is it true, Petra?" he whispered. "Are you a… a sorceress?"

Her eyes hadn't left his. "Yes," she mouthed, and shrugged faintly. Tears stood in her eyes, shining dully. She tried to smile, but it faltered.

James nodded. For now, there was nothing more to say.

With a soft grating sound, Ralph pushed the unicorn horseshoe into the shape engraved in the cornerstone. There was no shocking noise or burst of magical light, and yet the crowd responded. A sigh of awe washed over the quadrangle. James looked up, as did the rest. A faint rose-coloured light glowed from every window of Apollo Mansion. It shifted softly, seeming to hint at every colour of the rainbow and even some colours that James had never imagined.

"I guess we go inside," Lucy suggested, her voice an octave higher than usual. "Is that it?"

James nodded. He reached out, took Lucy's hand in his right and Petra's in his left. Slowly, the group began to walk toward the main entrance of Apollo Mansion.

"Boys!" a voice called suddenly. James paused again with one foot on the first step. He looked back and saw Chancellor Franklyn peering up at him, his face lit with the soft, rosy light.

"If you see Ignatius Magnussen," Franklyn said earnestly, "tell him… tell him to stay away. Tell him not to come back. Will you do that?"

With those words, James thought he finally understood Franklyn's reasons for wanting to keep the Nexus Curtain closed for good. Magnussen, despite being Franklyn's friend, had been a monster. If he had escaped through the Nexus Curtain, then perhaps—hopefully—it had been a one-way trip. Perhaps the only way the murderer could ever return would be if the Curtain was opened again from this side. Franklyn had made it his life's mission to assure that that never happened.

"He won't be coming back, Chancellor," Ralph answered stolidly, raising his voice just enough to be heard. "Trust us."

Franklyn studied Ralph's face for a moment and then nodded slowly.

A moment later, Zane reached for the door handle atop the short stoop of Apollo Mansion. He gripped it, thumbed the latch, and pushed it open. The mysterious pulsing light covered every surface inside, shifting hypnotically.

"All of us together," Petra said, squeezing James' hand. "Everyone hold onto someone else. I think the moment we cross over the threshold, we'll go through. I think the whole house is the portal. Ready?"

James gulped. Ralph shuddered. Zane said, "You all go on ahead. I'm just gonna pop back to Hermes House for my camera. 'Kay?"

Ralph grabbed the blonde boy's hand and Zane gripped it, tittering nervously.

As one, the six stepped through the doorway into the faint rosy light, and vanished.

James' first step into the World Between the Worlds nearly tumbled him headlong over a rocky black cliff. Petra and Lucy were still holding his hands on either side and they pulled him back even as his foot dipped into empty space. He gasped as he drew his foot back and wobbled on the ledge. The six travelers peered carefully down into the misty distance.

They seemed to be standing on the lip of a shallow cave worn into a cliff of sharp black stone. A hundred feet below, monstrous waves slammed against the face of the cliff, sending up explosions of white water as if in slow motion. Beyond this, steely grey ocean stretched off toward the horizon, heaving beneath a low, white sky.

James shuddered. "I nearly fell into that," he commented, wide-eyed.

"This isn't the most convenient place to put a portal," Zane nodded. "Even if you survived the drop, who knows what kind of monsters swim around in an ocean like that?"

"None at all," Petra answered, her voice calm but emphatic. "There's nothing alive in that water. Nothing at all. You can sort of feel it, can't you?

Lucy frowned. It was almost a grimace of disgust. "Yes," she answered. "It's like this isn't really a place at all. It's more like a kind of window dressing, something just to take up the space. There's no… no taste to it. No life or colour at all. It's like chewing on cardboard."

"Or like taking a peek behind the curtain of reality," Ralph agreed, his face tense. "Like it's here just because something has to be, but it's not meant to be seen by anyone."

"I think it makes sense," Izzy said, still holding Petra's hand.

Petra agreed. "It's not really a world after all," she mused. "It's just the World Between the Worlds."

"Look," Zane suddenly pointed, raising his arm toward the distant horizon. "It isn't all just water. There's something out there."

James followed Zane's pointing finger. Very faint and distant, a dark shape clung to the horizon.

"Is it a boat?" Lucy asked doubtfully.

Ralph shook his head. "It's an island, I think. But not like any island I've ever seen. It looks almost like a big giant footstool."

"It's a plateau," Petra said. "Just like this one, I think. Look over to the right. There's another one."

"There's more on this side," Zane added, peering around the boulders of the cave's left edge.

James leaned carefully out over the rocks of the cave's mouth, scanning the length of the watery horizon. The shapes were grey in the ocean mist, so far off as to be almost invisible, but once you began looking for them, more and more of them seemed to appear. They were eerily similar: rocky plateaus, oddly flat on top, rising like giants' stepping stones out of the monstrous ocean.

"What are they?" Izzy asked in a hushed voice.

"They're portals," Petra answered, and James did not doubt her. "Like this one. Each one leads to a different universe, or dimension, or reality. Some of them would be almost exactly like our own. Others would be so different, so alien, that we could barely look at them."

"They're awful," Lucy proclaimed with a shiver, hugging herself.

"No," Petra countered. "They're just themselves. They aren't good or bad. They just are."

Ralph asked, "Do you think this whole world is covered with them?"

Petra shook her head. "It isn't a world. It isn't round, and it doesn't have an end. But yes. I think all of it is like this. On and on, infinitely. If one had a boat, just think of the places they could go, the things they could see."

James shuddered again at the thought. The idea of taking a boat out onto that strangely disastrous, unnaturally flat ocean was horrible. Looking out over all that distance and those endless bland islands, James wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the shallow of the cave and huddle into a ball. He turned around and was both amazed and relieved to see a door standing in the shadows of the cave. It was framed with wood and James recognized it immediately as the front entrance of Apollo Mansion, seen from the inside. It hung open and through it, James could still see the slope of Victory Hill, the broken werewolf statue, and the crowd congregated on the quad behind Administration Hall, milling uncertainly.