Lilly sat on the couch, panic hammered at her ribs, wild and uneven. The news on the TV rushed over her; the words wouldn’t stick. New portals. Humans still falling behind. But nothing about a missing kid—nothing about the only thing she cared about. The rest of the world could burn, for all she cared.

  Axel sat beside her, eyes blank, skin pale.

  Ashe was supposed to be home by the time they got back from work. They still hadn’t been able to get ahold of him. The police had said they’d “open a file” and get to it when they could. Since the portals appeared, the force was stretched thin; a missing kid was just one more case in a mountain of crises. They promised to let her know if anything came up, any update at all.

  Lilly had already started a countdown.

  Her fears ran wild. Her child dead in an alley. Her child kidnapped. Her child hit by a car, lying in the street. Each image flashed before her eyes like a waking nightmare.

  She bit her nails down to the roots, blood pooling despite how clammy her fingers were. It was all she could do to keep the thoughts at bay.

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  The front door clicked open. Footsteps.

  Lilly shot to her feet, heart in her throat. She and Axel almost collided in the hallway, both scrambling to reach the door first. Her socks slid on the floor as she grabbed for the wall, vision tunneling on the entryway.

  When her eyes landed on Ashe, her heart both jumped and sank at once.

  His clothes were soaked, his face streaked with mud. His skin was so pale he almost looked translucent, his whole body sagging with exhaustion. She knew this look. The Jumpers she saw at the hospital had the same hollow expression, the same fragile way of standing.

  He faced them, his expression barely shifting.

  She sometimes forgot he was blind; his hazel-brown eyes almost seemed to track her, even though she knew he was following the sound of her breathing.

  The TV remote slipped from her fingers and thudded against the floor. Lilly rushed to him. She skimmed shaking hands over his face, his shoulders, the soaked fabric of his clothes, searching for injuries before finally dragging him into her arms.

  The three of them stood there in the doorway, pressed together, silence pushing in around them. Then the dam inside her broke. Lilly started to sob, the flood of fear and relief crashing through her all at once.

  She wanted to be angry. She wanted to yell, to demand what he’d been doing, where he’d gone, why he hadn’t called. But all of that felt small in the face of one simple fact.

  He was home. He was safe.

  At least for now. The rest could come later.