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there was something that bound us together, and I knew I would rather side with him than against him.
     
    Angelo positioned himself in the elaborate center seat with all the ceremony of a reigning king. His assistant followed in his wake, quickly setting out the paper on the table and withdrawing a pen and an inkwell from the satchel at his side. Angelo pinned Orlando with a sharp look. “You will tell me everything that happened to you from the moment you stepped through that door”—he pointed at the black frame—“until the moment I stepped through that one”—he pointed at the main door to the room.
     
    Orlando hesitated. Then he folded his arms across his chest, the fabric of his shirt pulling tight across his back. “Why are you here?”
     
    “What?” Angelo barked, looking up from a scrawl on one of the papers on the table.
     
    “If you weren’t planning to open the door until tomorrow, then how did you know I would be here now? How did you know I had returned?”
     
    Angelo’s frown deepened and a muscle jumped along his jaw. “I didn’t,” he said finally, and I could see what it cost him to admit that. “I was here on other business. Your appearance was . . . unexpected.”
     
    “How long was I gone?” Orlando asked, a huskiness in his voice.
     
    “A day shy of one month.”
     
    Orlando nodded as though he had expected that answer, but I could tell that it still made him sad.
     
    “Where did you go?” Angelo asked again. He gestured to his assistant, who dipped the pen in the ink and held it over a blank parchment.
     
    Orlando glanced at me, his blue eyes filled with a strange light. “Beyond this life. Beyond time itself. Perhaps even to heaven and back.”
     
    Angelo’s assistant sucked in his breath in a small gasp. A drop of ink fell to the paper, marring its pristine surface.
     
    Angelo’s face paled. He swallowed, and a thin line of sweat graced his upper lip. “Blasphemy,” he whispered. “No man could see heaven and live . . .” His eyes rested on the black door, closed and quiet. Now he seemed willing to grant it the fear he had withheld earlier.
     
    I suspected it might be too little, too late.
     
    Orlando lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You told me what the machine did—what you hoped it would do—before you sent me through. Why is it so hard to believe that it worked? That it did what it was designed to do?”
     
    Angelo kept his gaze on the door, and I could see how his fear was slowly giving way to something else. Something that looked like cunning. Like satisfaction.
     
    His mousy assistant coughed, and Angelo returned his attention to us, quickly masking his expression. “But we sent you alone. So I must ask again: Who is she?” Angelo stabbed a finger in my direction, and I flinched even though I was across the room. “Where did she come from? And why is she wearing men’s clothes?”
     
    I looked down at my clothes: blue jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. What was so strange about that? It was what I always wore, wasn’t it? I felt a weight around my neck and brushed my fingers over a heart-shaped locket on a silver chain. When I touched it, two faces appeared in my mind, but the images were sketchy. Just fleeting impressions. Two men. Both with dark hair—but one with a fringe of white along the edge, one with a hint of a curl. Both with dark eyes—but one with black, the other gray. Two smiles—one sly, one small. Had one of these two strange shadow-men given me the locket? I couldn’t remember.
     
    Orlando didn’t even glance at me; he kept his gaze locked on Angelo’s face. “I did what I said I would do. I expect you to keep your promises: Protect my family; tell them I died a hero; restore my name—and my honor—in their eyes. And I will keep my promise: I’ll leave here and never return.”
     
    Angelo shook his head before Orlando had finished speaking. “You have information we need—”
     
    “You know the machine works,”