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He knew the date.

At any moment in his future he could come home, he’d come to that date.

If he was alive.

But he didn’t come home.

Maybe he wanted to give himself a day, for ease of transition.

Maybe he wanted me to get some rest before he showed up.

Maybe he was already here, in Florida, it would just take him a moment to get out of the swamp he accidentally landed in.

It was really cold outside so I tried not to think about all the little awful things that could happen.

That might have happened.

He didn’t come the next day.

Or the next.

61 - KAITLYN

On the night of the third day I lay in bed with a notebook on my knees and drew a spiraling time line. If Magnus had gone in a circle from the past to the future and then had come back to the past again and had looped around my death on the banks of the spring two or three times — I wrote in caps, with an underline, ‘we can change time!’ — and if Tyler had existed to help us change time, was the fact that Tyler still existed proof that Magnus was still alive?

I couldn’t come to a conclusion on it.

I needed Magnus to come home. Now.

Because I couldn’t go get him. I wouldn’t know how. I didn’t even know what the date was.

I was a dumbass that I didn’t know the date.

From now on my time-traveling ass was always going to know the date.

Not that it mattered anymore.

Unless Magnus came home where would I even —

And that’s when it hit me. With an intake of air that threatened to make me hyperventilate. In and in and in and in. Oh my god⁠—

Old Magnus.

I stared at the low geometric wood paneled ceiling that made the room seem like a cave. There was an old Magnus in the past. What timeline was that even? Mine? The new one, the fresh one?

What if...?

I threw my covers off my legs and jumped from bed. I ran down the steps to the living room yelling, “Zach! Emma! Oh my god, Quentin!”

Quentin slid open the deck door. He whispered, “What is it, a storm?”

Zach came out of their room. “Everything cool?”

“I just figured something out!” I slammed the notebook on the counter. “Look!”

They stared at the timeline, spirals, circles, the words ‘We can change time!’ And the scrawled dates of a possible lunatic.

Quentin said, “What are we looking at?”