“What are they?” Paul asked.

Sofia found it hard to believe something could be worse than those flying, snarling, diseased, sharp-toothed monsters.

“She hasn’t brought them out for full usage yet,” Master George said. “We’ve caught only bare glimpses and heard rumors. But her work in using nature to create nature has gone beyond anything you or I could dare scrape up in a campfire tale. Evil, evil things. We think she is also working to isolate the soulikens of . . . very bad people from the past.”

Soulikens. Sofia had heard the word before, but she’d never pursued its meaning because of countless other things that seemed more important. Master George continued before she could voice her question.

“I haven’t told you much about soulikens, because I myself didn’t know enough. But I’ve spent every spare second since we last said good-bye researching the phenomenon. It might be the most fascinating thing I’ve ever studied—everything from the fundamentals of natural electricity and its role within human biology to old tales and rumors of ghost stories.”

“Well, what is it?” Paul asked in an impatient voice. “What’s a souliken?”

The sun seemed to finally disappear for good in that moment, the sky darkening as if all the light had been frightened away. When Master George turned his gaze to Sofia, she almost gasped out loud at how creepy he looked with the angles of his face deep in shadow.

“Soulikens are your eternal stamp on reality,” he said. “They are the means by which you’ll haunt the world far after you’ve rotted to dust and bone.”

And then, for some odd reason, the old man laughed.

Chapter 31

Making Plans

Thirty hours?” Tick asked, hating how that sounded both long and short at the same time. “We have only thirty hours to save the entire universe?”

The silver-blue glow of the Haunce flared a bit then subsided. “Thirty hours or thirty years—it would not make a difference. There is not much we can do to prepare, and it might even be worse if we did have the time to try. The problem will be convincing Mistress Jane to cooperate. Once you accomplish that, all that will be left is our attempt to rebind the Realities and reseal the barriers.”

Tick felt a bubble in his stomach as he shook his head in disbelief. “Once I accomplish it? You really think Jane is gonna trust me for even one second? You’ll have to talk to her, not me.”

The face of an old man frowned back at him. “We are sorry, Atticus. Our ability to appear in this form is extremely difficult to maintain. Once we leave here, neither you nor anyone else will see us again until the moment we make our attempt. The task of having Jane join us is entirely up to you.”

Tick didn’t say anything for a minute, trying to process the new information and its potential ramifications. He felt an incredible amount of pressure draped across his shoulders like an iron shawl.

Finally, he said, “Okay, look. I don’t know how I can possibly do that. I’m not even sure I understand what it is I’m supposed to do. But you said something about my family being safe. I need to hear about that right now. How do you know they’re okay?”

A woman with a big nose responded. “As Jane was building her cache of dark matter and assembling her Blade of Shattered Hope, we watched carefully. We normally do not interfere with the realm of living humans. It is not our place. If Jane had destroyed the Fifth Reality, we would have been shocked and horrified, but we would not have stopped her. However, when the chain reactions that could end all existence were ignited, we no longer had a choice.”

Tick groaned on the inside, doubly annoyed. Both at the long non-answer about his family and the fact that the Haunce would sit back and let an entire world be destroyed. “What does this have to do with my family?” he asked.

An annoyed buzz sounded from the ghostly creature. “We hope your impatience will serve you well since we will have little time left together. No more interruptions. We will not be able to appear in this form much longer.”

The glow changed into three faces before Tick finally nodded.

“Good,” the Haunce continued. “When the barriers began to break and the seals began to split, we knew immediately what we must do. We winked you here to Reality Prime, where we would be able to discuss things in private. We also winked your family away from Jane’s prison, as well as a number of people from the Fifth Reality who were located in the area of your Realitant friends—Mothball, Rutger, and Sato. They are together in a special holding place we created long ago—a sort of way station that exists in a quasi-Reality that only we know about.”

“What about—” Tick stopped himself, not wanting to interrupt again.

“Your other friends?” the Haunce asked. “Sofia, Paul, and your Realitant leader, Master George?”

Tick nodded.

“They are in the Thirteenth Reality, where you last saw them.”

Tick couldn’t remain silent any more. “Why didn’t you take them to the same place as my family?”

The face of the Haunce flowed from an ugly woman to a pretty one, then morphed into a man with beady eyes. “They remain in the Thirteenth, because that is where you are going. You will need their help. You will be together very soon, though you will not have much time for happy reunions.”

“Okay, so what do I need to know?” Tick asked, surprised at how steady he felt. He was ready to have this whole mess done and over with.

No one had spoken since Master George’s explanation of soulikens. Sofia continued to sit still, staring at the dark shadow of a wall standing a few dozen feet from her. The sounds of the desert were soft and faint—an insect here and there, the sigh of the wind, sand scratching across rock.

When Paul spoke up, it startled her. She hoped he hadn’t noticed her jump.

“Soulikens,” he said. “Basically you’re telling us that throughout our lives we create these freaky electronic imprints on the world that never go away but hang around us like a fog, building and building until it kind of becomes our ghost. Is that what you’re telling us? That ghosts are real?”

“If you could see on a quantum level,” Master George responded, “you’d see an aura of energy around you and others that very much resembled exactly that. A ghost.”

Sofia felt a little creeped out. “Then I don’t wanna see on a quantum level. I hate scary movies, and I hate ghosts.”