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Cat’s mouth formed an O shape as her skin tightened on her already skeletal face. I was draining her energy. I felt it flowing through me. To Jack. His hand was still on my arm.
All the noise and activity dissipated in a rush. I hit the ground again.
Cat followed.
A mere husk of the woman lay crumpled in a heap. Aftershocks of power surged through me, but I ignored them and put my fingertips on her throat, searching. She looked like an addict who’d taken things too far. Desperate, starving, ruined.
Dead.
Jack held a spinning purple sphere in his hands. It gave off a crazy, glowing light, and crackled with electricity, just as I had thirty seconds ago. I’d seen Poe with something similar. Exotic matter.
“It worked,” Jack crowed, mesmerized. “She transferred Cat’s ability to me.”
Whether Cat had been willing or not, she’d overdosed on Jack Landers and his ability to take away pain. He had been her illicit drug.
I looked at the dead body beside me and wondered if he was about to make me his next addict.
Dune
I hadn’t underestimated the power of the Mississippi. Muddy, churning, and teeming with life, the current pulsed strong and willful. The closer I got to its banks, the more it pulled at me. Regulating my intake of air was the first step to maintaining control, the second, exhaling.
The desire to see what I could do was powerful, flowing through my veins faster than my blood. The desire to keep Hallie alive was stronger.
The cab dropped me off just below the Port of New Orleans, and I followed the coordinates Lily had texted me. They led to a docked riverboat. I could see Hallie lying on the deck. Jack Landers stood beside her, holding a spinning ball of exotic matter in his hands.
The loading dock was at the other end of the boat. I approached it at a run, slowing down as I crossed it, and only then to soften the sound of my footsteps.
Chapter 25
Hallie
Fast as a snap, Jack lost twenty years. His pale hair brightened to blond, and his skin glowed with color. His cane hit the ground, and he left it where it fell.
“Exotic matter. First step, complete.” Jack tossed the light up, and then mimicked hitting it with a bat. It shot out like a home run, highlighting a veil behind him.
Mother waved to a couple of men by the paddle wheel and gestured for them to pull in the loading dock. No one could get on or off the boat without it, even though we were still tethered to shore, which meant I was on my own.
“You have what you wanted,” she said. “I’m sure it’s all you hoped for.”
My stomach roiled with the consequences. We’d known the Infinityglass could possibly transfer powers between people with time-related abilities, but we’d focused on dealing with the rips.
“It’s all we hoped for,” Jack said.
I started a slow crab walk backward. Jack was beside me in seconds, hauling me up by the arm. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
“Don’t make me do that again.” I felt like crying, but I didn’t want to show Jack an ounce of weakness. “I won’t.”
“You will, because that’s your purpose.” He steered me to a bench by the ship’s railing. “I have records. Years of information about people with time-related abilities. You’re just one of the tools I need to possess them all.”
“One of the tools we need,” Teague said, the mocking tone slight, but present. “Right, Jack?”
“What are the others?” I asked.
She pointed to my neck. I reached up to find the pendant I’d noticed her wearing in Audubon Park.
“There’s nothing standing in the way now. We have everything we need,” Jack said, beaming at my mother.
My mother smiled in return. Jack didn’t know her well enough to understand what a smile like that meant, but I did.
