JO LOOKED BACK to her computer, tapping the monitor back to life. “I don’t see how it’s anyone’s business. But thank you for getting Pan out of here.”

A large sigh was let loose from her left. Jo kept her eyes on the monitor, trying to convey that while she may be appreciative of his help, she had no intent of having a conversation. Wayne either didn’t get the hint, or didn’t care, because he pulled up the chair from the other workstation.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told her.” Jo continued to work. While Pan had this odd way about her that made Jo suspicious that she understood far more than she let on, Jo was fairly confident that Wayne had no idea what the various folders or scripts meant. “I don’t feel like sharing.”

“Doll, don’t play that way.” He looked toward the monitor and with one stare affirmed Jo’s suspicions that he didn’t actually know what he was looking at. “It’s been two days and—”

“Two days?” Jo balked.

“Since anyone has seen you? Yes.” Wayne seemed confused as to why she was startled.

“Two days, huh?” She skimmed her work. “Pretty good, almost finished, actually. . .”

“With what?” he probed again.

“Didn’t I tell you I’m not going to share?”

“Don’t you know by now that I’m here to help?” He slung his own question back at her.

Jo leaned back in her chair, folded her arms over her chest, and swiveled to face him. She arched her eyebrows, assessing the man. He wasn’t wrong, not really. He had shown her around at first, and had taken her to see her family. She sighed, debating where to start.

“It’s Yuu.”

“You?” His brow furrowed in confusion.

“Yuusuke.”

“The gentlemen we went to see,” Wayne spoke with the confidence of clarity now.

“I wouldn’t call him a gentleman.” Jo rolled her eyes. “But, yes.”

“What about him?”

Jo looked back to the monitor and swallowed in an attempt to relieve the sudden tightness in her throat. “My wish. . . was for him. And my family by extension. When we saw him. . . he was doing the same hack that led to our deaths. He’s going to end up back there. Depending on how stupid he acts—and believe me he can be quite stupid when he’s on a mission—he could be headed there in a week, even a matter of days.”

Jo could feel Wayne’s attention on her before he opened his mouth to speak. “You can’t stop this.”

“Like hell I can’t!” Jo’s head snapped back to Wayne and her sudden ferocity had him pinned down to a stunned silence. “Why? Why can’t I? You expect me to just sit here? To not help with the wish, even though I’ve already quite grasped the hang of my magic? And on top of that, to watch as Yuusuke gets himself killed, again? My wish will mean nothing. I will mean nothing!”

Her words seemed to echo impossibly in the small space. Jo’s chest heaved, as if trying to snuff the burning in her lungs. Now that she’d said it so simply, Jo wondered how she hadn’t seen it all along.

“Wayne. . . I’ll mean nothing.”

“You can help in the Society. You’ll always mean something.” His hands grabbed for hers, closing them both in a net of his fingers.

“If I can help with a wish.”

“You can.”

“Just not now.” He didn’t object to her counter. Jo shook her head. “Please. . . I’m not one to beg, but I’m begging you. Let me do this.”

Gravity pulled her chin to her chest and Jo waited, as if an axe that Wayne wielded hovered above the nape of her neck. She’d spent two days on this, and she was close, so close.

“What do you need?” he asked softly. Jo didn’t know if his voice had dropped due to the conspiratorial nature of the subject, or out of tenderness that she didn’t know the man could muster.

Jo’s head jerked up, and her heart latched onto the opportunity. “I need you to show me how to use time without having my watch on my wrist. I’m close, but all my prep work is for nothing if I can’t affect the real world.”

“The room will vanish if you remove your watch, and you can’t use time without wearing it. Even if those things weren’t true, you can’t affect the real world from here.”

Her heart sank into her stomach, tore through the bottom, fell to the floor, and continued in free-fall straight to the depths of space.

“But we can if we go through the Door,” he added hastily. His voice was so low now that he needed to lean in and whisper. “If I help you with this, now, promise me you will never try to change things outside of a wish again?”

“I promise.” Jo didn’t know if she was lying or not, and didn’t really care. She’d say anything to garner his help.

“And promise me you’ll be careful; you’ll change as little as possible.”

“I promise.” The words flew from her lips before he even had a chance to finish speaking.

“All right. We should go, then.”

“Wait, I can’t just leave my code. I wouldn’t have time to start from scratch there. . .” Jo looked to the computers. How could she transfer her work? If what Wayne said was true, she couldn’t upload it to a cloud server and expect to access it on the other side. If only there was some physical way of carrying digital information. . . “I have an idea.”

Jo was sprinting back through the mansion before Wayne even had time to respond. Her feet flew over the marble and carpeted floors alike, carrying her back to her room. Nico had said they couldn’t take things from the recreation rooms, but that they could from their bedrooms.

She flung open her door, flying to her desk and rummaging around in her drawers.

“Please, please, please. . .” she uttered on repeat like a prayer—a prayer that was answered. If the mansion was recreating her room from real life, then there was bound to be a rogue USB stick somewhere. Antiquated technology, really, but something Jo always insisted on having at least one or two of. Physical backups were much more difficult to track than the cloud, even if you couldn’t always find a computer with the proper port.

Back in the rec room, Jo appeared to a dazed Wayne who barely had time to get “What?” out of his lips before she was back to work.

“Our clothes go with us to the real world.”

“Thankfully, or unfortunately, depending on who you’re with,” Wayne mumbled.

Jo braved a grin, feeling in a better mood than she had in days. Such a good mood that his appreciative stare toward her regarding the sentiment didn’t go unappreciated. “Which means we can bring stuff from here, there.”

“And?” Of course he wouldn’t follow.

“I’m backing up all my scripts.” Jo tapped the blinking USB, mid-transfer. “I’ll pop over to the real world, polish them up, and run them.”

“Run them from where?” Wayne asked warily. Good, Jo thought. He should be wary. He’d offered to help the Shewolf on a mission, after all.

“From inside the Black Bank, of course. Where else?” The computer answered her question before Wayne could with a satisfying beep, indicating the end of her transfer, and the start of her chance at securing meaning in her new world.