Timebound

  I had just turned to go back in and call him when someone appeared behind me, quite literally from out of nowhere. He grabbed my left arm, pulling it up sharply and painfully behind my back. My first impulse was to follow my self-defense training and twist toward him, kicking to throw him off balance, and to use the heavy textbook to whack him in the head—but then I felt his other hand reach under my T-shirt. He closed his fingers around the CHRONOS key and I froze.

  “Drop the book and call for your grandmother.” I recognized the voice immediately. It was Simon, my pudgy friend from the Metro.

  Daphne had either smelled him—which I thought very likely since he seemed not to have bathed since our last encounter—or else she heard him because she began barking wildly from inside the house.

  “I’m not playing around here, Kate. Just do it.”

  “Katherine, be careful!” I began, tossing the book onto the grass beside the walkway. My voice was little more than a hoarse croak. “Closer—we need to get closer if she’s going to hear me over the dog.” I was hoping that I could reach the maple tree that marked the boundary of the protective zone, but Simon yanked threateningly on the medallion. I shuddered, partly from fear and partly from revulsion at the feel of his arm against my bare skin.

  Daphne’s claws were raking against the door now, and a split second later Katherine opened it. I saw her make a quick motion with the hand that was still inside, pointing upward twice. Then she pushed Daphne back into the foyer and walked onto the porch, closing the door behind her.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” Katherine asked.

  “What do you think I want? Just bring your medallion here and I’ll let Kate keep this one. She can go about her business and she’ll be just fine, as long as she never forgets and takes it off in the shower.” On the last word he rubbed his arm against my bare stomach again and I fought to keep from gagging.

  I watched as Katherine removed the CHRONOS key from around her neck. The blue light glowed between her fingers as she clutched it tightly in her hand. She was still about a foot away from the maple tree, still behind the barrier. “She’s taken it off,” I said. “Let’s go get it.” I tried to move toward Katherine, but Simon pulled me back.

  “No,” he said. “I think she can bring it to me. Do it now, Katherine.” I wasn’t sure if Simon knew about the protective zone or if he was just obstinate. I suspected the latter, given his comment about me being safe as long as I showered with the medallion. Either way, he wasn’t budging an inch.

  Katherine took a step forward. “And why should I believe that you’ll let her go?”

  I could feel Simon shrug behind me. “Brother Cyrus just said to finish you. And Kiernan—well, he has a vested interest in this one.” He leaned in and brushed the top of my head with the side of his cheek. “For obvious reasons.” I yanked my face as far away as possible, and he chuckled. “I’d rather not cross Kiernan unless I have to.”

  Katherine glanced around as though looking for anyone who might help us. When she didn’t move forward, Simon continued, his voice casual. “I can take her key right now and then come get yours. You can’t outrun me, and we both know I can take care of my business here and be years and miles away before anyone hears you scream.” He jerked at my medallion to make his point, yanking the arm behind my back upward with his other hand.

  I clenched my teeth to hold back a scream. “He’s lying, Katherine. He won’t let me go.”

  Katherine caught my eye for a long moment and gave me a sad smile. Then she walked toward us, stretching out the hand holding the medallion.

  After that, several things happened at once. Simon had to either loosen his hold on my arm, which he still had wedged against my back, or let go of my medallion in order to take the other one from Katherine. He made the mistake of releasing my arm, and I quickly used it to pin his other hand against my chest, thrusting my leg backward and leaning forward at the same time. The idea was to throw him off balance, flip him, and then fall against him, hopefully maintaining contact with the medallion.

  To my surprise, the move actually worked—but it was a moment too late. Just as I bent forward, tugging on Simon’s arm, I saw the medallion leave Katherine’s hand and fall into Simon’s. Out of the corner of my eye, as we fell, I saw Katherine blink out of existence.

  “No!” I screamed, and Simon took advantage of my shock, flipping me over and wedging his knee into my stomach. I could hear Daphne behind the door—her bark, already frantic, climbed up three notches.

  “Sorry, pretty Katie.” Simon gave me a mean little smile as he stashed Katherine’s medallion in his pocket, then reached behind my neck to undo mine. “I’m actually going to need this CHRONOS key, too—and the half dozen or so your grandmother has stashed somewhere in that house.” I struggled, trying to pull my body and his along the ground far enough to reach the maple tree and the protective zone. I felt the medallion’s clasp give way and changed strategies, trying now to grab Simon’s own medallion, but my fingers slipped against the fabric of his shirt.

  He pushed more of his weight onto his knee, pressing the breath from my body in a quick whoosh. “Or maybe I’ll just take you with me. Cyrus would never allow a traitor like Kiernan to have you, not after his recent interference, but you and me could have a real good time…” He slid his hand suggestively along my inner thigh. His mouth was just inches from mine, his breath against my face, and I felt panic beginning to set in. My vision began to blur. The light on the porch, directly in front of me, faded in and out several times as I struggled to get even the tiniest bit of air into my lungs.

  Then there was a loud whack. Simon’s head snapped back and his body slumped to the left, a red line of blood swelling up on his right temple. I saw the blue light of my medallion, still in Simon’s hand, arcing upward against the twilit sky as he fell away, and Trey standing behind him with a raised tire iron. I braced myself for nothingness, thinking only how very happy I was that Trey’s face, and not Simon’s ugly leer, was the last thing I would see before I vanished, just like Katherine.

  17

  But nothing happened. Trey reached down and yanked my medallion out of Simon’s hand. “Are you okay?” he asked. He wedged the tire iron under his foot and leaned forward to put the medallion back around my neck. “Kate?”

  I nodded, still unable to pull in a full breath, much less speak. Simon groaned as Trey scooped me into his arms and carried me to the porch. His jaw was tight as he turned back toward Simon and, from his expression, I’m pretty sure that the game plan was to grab the tire iron and finish the bastard off. If that was Trey’s intent, however, he never got the chance. Simon was still sprawled on the lawn, but his hand reached up for his medallion and before Trey had moved more than a few steps, he was gone.

  Trey stared at the spot where Simon had been for several seconds and then turned back to me. He looked stunned. “Did he hurt you?”

  I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes. Trey sat down beside me, pulling me close. I breathed in his scent as I tried to fight back the tears. “Katherine…”

  “I know. I remembered my lit book was on the coffee table—I was just getting out of the car, when she…” He paused, shaking his head in disbelief. “That’s when I went back for the tire iron.”

  I glanced toward the curb. The bumper of Trey’s car was just visible beyond the hedge. “I didn’t even hear you pull up.”

  Trey shrugged. “Daphne’s racket provided good cover. Thankfully he didn’t hear me either.” He pressed his lips against my hair and we sat there for a moment, trying to process the past few minutes. “I just don’t understand why Katherine didn’t wait—I know she saw me drive up.”

  The porch light dimmed again, then brightened briefly just before the bulb popped, causing both of us to jump to our feet. “Remind me to ask Connor where the lightbulbs are,” I said in a small voice.

  Trey nodded. “Yeah. And now that you mention it, where exactly is Connor?”

  I don’t
know. I saw Katherine signal to him as she was coming out the door. Maybe we should go and check on him?”

  I opened the door and immediately saw Daphne and Connor sitting at the top of the stairs. Connor’s head was in his hands and Daphne’s nose lay between her paws—a perfect study in dejection. They both looked up at the sound of the door, a confused expression spreading over Connor’s face. “Kate? I thought—oh, thank God! I thought both of you—I mean, I saw Katherine… go… and when I looked back through the library window you were gone, too.”

  “If you saw Kate trying to fight that guy off, why didn’t you try to help her?” Trey asked. Connor had started down the stairs but paused at the anger in Trey’s voice. “Or Katherine? Where the hell were you?”

  I put my hand on Trey’s arm, shaking my head softly. “It’s all right, Trey. Katherine told him to go up to the library. Right, Connor?”

  Connor nodded, continuing down the stairs with Daphne beside him. “We could see through the peephole that you were outside the perimeter. She thought that trying to expand the safe zone with the third medallion was our best chance. But it didn’t work. I still haven’t figured out how to keep the damned thing from overloading the system.”

  I remembered the porch light dimming as I fought with Simon, then the surge popping the bulb a few minutes later. I gave Connor a sad smile. “It did work, briefly. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. It just wasn’t in time for Katherine…”

  We sat down in the living room. I curled against Trey on the sofa. I was suddenly freezing and guessed that it was probably from shock. All of us, even Daphne, seemed dazed and the room was still for several minutes.

  Finally, I broke the silence. “Can I fix this? I mean, if I succeed in stopping her murder at the fair, will Katherine be here when I get back?”

  Connor gave me an uncertain look, but he nodded. “I think so. I mean, if she makes it to 1969, to New York, then everything from that point unfolds as it did before. She’d still exist in this timeline, so it really wouldn’t matter whether she was holding the CHRONOS key.”

  “Then we do this. As soon as possible. There are just a few other things we need to figure out—it shouldn’t take more than a couple hours.”

  To my surprise, Connor agreed. “You’re probably right. I think the tricky part for you will be getting Katherine’s attention without tipping her off about Saul.”

  “But why shouldn’t Kate tell her about Saul?” Trey interjected. “Isn’t he the one trying to kill her?”

  “Not directly,” Connor said. “Someone else will be doing the dirty work for him. Saul can’t use the medallion any more than Katherine could. The version of Saul that’s there with her in 1893… he’s rotten to the core, I’m sure, but he hasn’t decided to kill her yet. And how inclined do you think Katherine is going to be to continue a relationship with him if she finds out his true nature?”

  “It bugs me, too,” I said. “Even though I know I have to keep quiet, part of me wants to warn her to run away, fast—I saw what Saul did to her face that night.” Connor looked up, surprise and anger in his eyes, and I realized that Katherine might not have told him exactly how abusive Saul could be. “But if I do that,” I continued, “it increases the chance that everything changes. No Mom—at least not one born in 1970—no me. And a lot of other differences in the timeline, too. So I can’t tell her the full truth—just enough to prevent her murder.”

  “And then what?” Trey said. “Don’t you think he’ll try again—some other trip, some other day?”

  “One step at a time,” I said. “We need Katherine back. Eventually, we’ll have to find a way to stop Saul—to prevent the rise of Cyrist International—and I’ll be looking for any clues I can find on how to do it on this trip. But if I think too much about that, I’ll never be able to focus on what’s in front of me right this minute.”

  “So even when this is over, you’re still in danger. How am I supposed to be okay with that?”

  It was pretty clear that our conversation was headed down a more personal path, so I took Trey’s hand and motioned toward the stairs. Connor’s eyes were also red and watery, and he was running his hand through Daphne’s fur in an absentminded way. I suspected that he would appreciate some personal space to deal with his own emotions. He was closer to Katherine than I was and he was even more alone now. My heart went out to him and I squeezed his shoulder as we walked past. “Get some rest, okay, Connor? We’ll get up early tomorrow and start with clear heads.”

  Trey and I went upstairs to my room and sat down on the couch by the window. The moon, nearly full, was just visible through the leaves. I flipped my legs across Trey’s lap, propping my bare feet on the sofa so that I could look at him, and traced the line of his clenched jaw with my fingers. Then I moved closer and kissed the side of his neck, tracing a small circle with my tongue—something that I knew, from recent experience, drove him just a little bit crazy. His arm tightened around me.

  “I don’t have a choice here, Trey,” I said softly. “You know that, right? I’ll be as careful as I can be—I promise.”

  He was silent for a moment. “I just feel… trapped, Kate. Not by you, no, just the whole damned situation. You’re doing something impossibly dangerous and I can’t help you.”

  I gave a slightly exasperated sigh. “Trey, you just cracked Simon’s skull with a tire iron.” I glanced down at my Self-Rescuing Princess T-shirt. “I didn’t exactly live up to the title this time, did I? If you hadn’t been there, I’d either be dead, or worse, he’d still have his smelly hands all over me.” Thinking about Simon’s arm against my bare skin made me shudder, and I felt Trey’s body stiffen as well.

  I reached up and kissed him again, a long, slow kiss to wipe away that memory for both of us. “Thank you.”

  Trey relaxed a bit, and then shook his head. His right hand was resting on my feet, and his thumb traced a nervous pattern across my toenails, which were painted a deep crimson. “The thing that’s really killing me, Kate, is that I’m not going to know whether you fail or succeed. Tomorrow, when you make the jump, this… us… we’re over, right?” He gave a bitter laugh. “Whether you save Katherine or you’re both killed in the process, I’ll just return to some version of my life before. At Briar Hill or someplace else, but either way, I won’t remember you—I won’t remember that I love you.”

  Neither of us had said it before, and my heart surged—despite everything, it was wonderful to have it out there, in the open, confessed. “I love you, too, Trey.” He broke into a huge smile and then misery washed over his face again.

  “When did you figure it out?” I asked. “I mean, not that you… love me, but…”

  He shrugged. “Something in Katherine’s expression the other night, at your birthday party, kept eating at me. Then today, as I was driving away, it sort of clicked into place. I turned the car around before I even remembered the stupid textbook.”

  “I wasn’t as sharp,” I said. “Katherine had to spell it out for me in big block letters. And I still tried to argue with her—why couldn’t you be here? Why couldn’t we let you remember?”

  “And why can’t I?” he asked, a bit of hope in his voice. “I can help Connor—you’re one person short now.”

  I shook my head. “CHRONOS regulations, for one thing. We’re trying to fix the timeline and that would be yet another alteration.”

  “Yeah, well, screw CHRONOS regulations.”

  “That’s what I said,” I continued, keenly aware of the role reversal. Here I was repeating Katherine’s arguments with Trey’s face and voice reflecting the very same emotions I’d felt—anger, denial, defiance.

  “But the bigger issue is that it could… hurt you, Trey.” I stared down at his hand, fingers laced through my own. “You remember when you saw the pictures disappear, right? That was your brain trying to reconcile two very small conflicting versions of reality. Multiply that thousands of times over if you stayed here tomorrow. You’d have to leave the protective barri
er at some point, and Katherine doesn’t know what it might do to you—mentally, emotionally.”

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  “Maybe not. But I do.”

  We stared at each other for a while, seeing whose stubborn look would last the longest. Mine broke first, and I began crying. “I can’t focus on what I have to do, Trey, if I’m worried that you’re going to be hurt.”

  “And now you know how I feel. Damn it, Kate…” Tears were in his eyes and he held me for a long moment before speaking again. “Will you answer one question for me?”

  I nodded.

  “Who is Kiernan?” My face flushed, and I didn’t respond. “I mean, I know he’s Connor’s great-granddad or whatever—the guy he showed me in the two photographs. But Simon was saying something to Katherine when I first pulled up—and then again when he was… on top of you. Exactly who is Kiernan to you, Kate?”

  “He’s no one to me, Trey.” A small voice inside called me a liar, but I continued. I was determined to tell Trey as much of the truth as I could—as much as I understood, at any rate. “Kiernan told me to run that day on the Metro. He almost certainly saved my life when he did. And I’ve… seen his image in the medallion. He says we knew each other, in some other timeline.”

  Oh, and he kissed me, I thought, but didn’t add, since that fact seemed likely to make Trey feel worse, rather than better. And I hadn’t asked Kiernan to kiss me. Enjoyed, yes. Requested, no.

  “He knew you well enough to stake a claim, from the sound of it.” Trey’s voice was bitter and hurt. “Simon said Saul would never let Kiernan have you now…”