Several minutes later, Mara sat on the floor by the coffee table, facing Ping and watching him arrange the various items that had been there earlier. Mara plucked the green crystal from the bowl that had held a small mound of dirt earlier. Rolling the crystal between her fingers, she stared past its reflective surface and realized it was a demontoid, like the gem her mother had given her.
Where was that crystal? It was the one she had used in the battle with her mother’s counterpart on the bridge in Oregon City. They had also taken it to Cam’s Reality, the realm where she got her artificial body. They had carried it in the book bag along with a cup of dust of Prado’s remains and the last remaining page of the Chronicle of Context, the book Mara’s niece had brought from the future. An imag
