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“You should be. But I forgive you. Do your job well, and maybe I’ll reward you.”
“Whatever you say, whatever you want.”
If possible, the conversation was even more desperate the second time around. At least now I knew that Michael and Liam were in the lab, and that I was merely a few feet away, hiding behind a tree, listening to the same conversation.
That was weird.
I leaned as close to the door as I dared, peering through the crack with one eye.
Jack stood, starkly handsome against the winter landscape, carrying the cool assurance that he was justified in what he was about to allow. It made me hate him even more.
“How long do you think we have before they come looking for us?” Something about Ava’s voice was different now, maybe because they were closer to me this time. Or maybe because she sounded scared.
“They won’t come looking. There will be no evidence this was caused by a time-related ability.” He threw off her worry as if it were meaningless—he was right to do so. According to Kaleb, no traditional authority even knew anything like the Hourglass existed. “Stop being so concerned with the repercussions. You act like policing me is your job.”
I tried to catch a glimpse of Ava’s face as they walked past the building and into the woods, but all I saw was the flash of a long necklace and a blue coat. Then they were gone.
A rectangle of golden light formed on the frozen grass.
Michael—alive, whole, breathing—leaving the lab to retrieve John Doe from his car.
I watched him hurry to the side of the house, keeping him in my sight line until he disappeared.
This was the worst part, knowing what was about to happen and being forced to wait. I tried to use the time wisely, testing the floor gingerly with my foot. Michael and I needed a quick shelter after I pulled him from the building to avoid the blast.
The wooden planks were stronger around the perimeter of the room, and as I scanned it to find the best place for us to hide, the unthinkable happened.
The logs that made up the interior walls morphed from blank, decrepit slats to ripples filled with life. In the light from a kerosene lantern, the images came faster and faster, a crazy quilt appearing on a rack beside a woodburning stove, a young girl—her dark skin shining like ebony—singing to a carved wooden doll, a young mother rocking a baby in the corner.
“No, no, no.” I closed my eyes tightly and opened them again. The images were still there, now with more details filled in. The room had completely transformed. I thought about Liam’s words, that ripples were bleeding through the fabric of time. I’d gone from seeing individual people to a jazz trio to a horse-drawn carriage, and now the inside of a whole cabin with occupants intact. How far could the color run—how wide would the ripples spread?
I looked out the window, now hung with homespun curtains. Outside, other tiny cabins formed a kind of semicircle around an open area.
There was no lab in sight.
Do I pop the little girl or her mother and the newborn?
Because one of them had to go. Everything needed to disappear, and quick. I needed to see the present time out of the window, not an entire scene from the past.
The little girl was closest, so she was the winner. Or the loser, depending. I reached out and tapped her gingerly on the shoulder, rather than lunging into her as if my arm was a rapier and she was the target.
The dissolve was different than anything I’d ever experienced.
Instead of an instant pop and poof from the little girl, the fade started at the top of the scene and ran down like rivulets of rain on glass.
Something was very, very wrong, but I didn’t have time to think about it. Like a screen wipe in a movie, the lab reappeared, filling in from the top to the bottom. Michael was walking toward the door—dragging John Doe.
I had maybe a minute. I ran, giving no thought to possible exposure. Jack and Ava were secured somewhere in the woods, preparing to do serious damage, and now Liam, Michael, and I were busy arguing in the doorway to the lab. When I reached the side of the building, I pressed my body against it, squeezing my eyes closed. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to see myself.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“Go, Emerson. Take these.”
“Come with me. You promised we’d be safe.”
I sounded desperate. In that moment I realized that somehow I’d known Michael wasn’t going to make it out of that building alive. But that was then.
