I warily lowered myself into a chair shaped like a giant baseball mitt. Cheerful Em made me nervous.
Putting down her glass, she cleared her throat. “I’ve been thinking about Liam, and how he doesn’t want our help to find Jack.”
“He has reasons.” Michael’s fingers curled around the edge of the bed.
“Oh, I know he does,” she said. “But I don’t like them.”
I snorted.
Em grinned at me. “There’s one easy way to find Jack, and that’s to travel through time to somewhere he could be intercepted. Dune tracked Jack and Cat making a cash withdrawal in New York and then buying plane tickets to Heathrow, so we have times and places to look.”
“But traveling is impossible without exotic matter,” Michael said.
“Which gives Liam a good reason to be in the lab, searching for what’s missing from the exotic matter formula. Michael and I need to be there to help him.” She turned wide, innocent eyes on me. “That’s where you and Lily come in.”
“I thought you didn’t want her to help,” I said, more than nervous. Almost twitchy.
“I didn’t. Then she yelled at me.” Em winced at the memory. “A lot.”
“What does that have to do with me?” I asked.
“She’s never really used her ability outside Murphy’s Law. She also told me that she can’t track things unless she’s seen them, so to find Jack, she’ll need to see something he keeps with him. All the time.”
“That’s impossible, unless we track him down.” Michael looked at Em as if she’d lost it.
“No, it isn’t,” Em answered smugly.
“How?” Michael asked.
“You forget Lily was at the masquerade. Kaleb pushed her under the stairs, but she got a good look at Jack first.” She waited for the answer to register, and we spoke at the exact same time.
“The pocket watch.”
Chapter 13
I took a picture of Jack and the pocket watch to Murphy’s Law on Monday afternoon. He’d always carried the watch with him. I thought it was pompous, but I also thought he was a tool, so I hadn’t paid much attention.
I waited for Lily at a table in the back. She took care of her customers with efficiency and a smile. Confidence. The Hourglass school was too small to provide complications like popularity and gossip, but I knew other girls who were caught up in all that. I’d bet Lily wasn’t.
She knew what she wanted, and she was all about achieving it.
“Where are Em and Michael?” Lily asked when she finally made it over to me. She stretched, rubbing the small of her back. She was wearing the Murphy’s Law apron again, and the strings were wrapped around her waist and tied in the front.
I focused on the bookcase just behind her and tried not to notice how curvy she was. “Dad needed them after school for some research.”
“So they sent you?” She sounded disappointed.
“Calm yourself, you’re going to scare the customers,” I deadpanned. “This seems to be a persistent problem with our interactions.”
“This is where I remind myself how much I love my best friend. Abi’s at the farmers’ market in Nashville, so I have a couple of hours.” She sighed and took off the apron. “Let me get rid of this so no one asks me for help.”
I watched her walk away. Such a hot little package.
Such a pain in the ass.
She disappeared behind the swinging door and returned with a plate of cookies and hot tea that smelled like mint. Setting the cookies between us and pushing a bottle of cold water at me, she asked, “What’s the plan?”
“Who’s Abby?”
“Abi is my grandmother. Short for abuelita.”
I opened the bottle but didn’t drink. Just twisted the cap on and off. “How are you going to keep what we’re doing a secret?”
“I’m going to be very careful.” She stared into her cup of tea for a second before inclining her head toward the picture on the table. More determination. “That’s Jack, isn’t it?”
I slid it over to her. “That’s Jack.”
Leaning back in her chair, she called over her shoulder, “Sophie, will you throw me my glasses?”
Lily caught them one-handed and slid them on without ever putting down her tea.
I picked up a cookie. Peanut butter. “That was a really impressive catch for a girl.”
She leaned over so far her nose almost touched the photo. “Your mouth is talking. You might want to look to that.”
I bit into the cookie and ignored her. “Need a magnifying glass?”
“Yes.” She abruptly put down her tea, went to the children’s section, dug around in a bin, and pulled out a book. It was roughly the same size as our tabletop and had photos of magnets, microscopes, and graph paper on the front. “There’s supposed to be a plastic magnifier in here, unless some little rug rat stole it. Aha.”
She gently removed it, careful not to damage the book, and held it above the picture. I scooted my chair closer to her and caught the scent of vanilla and peppermint.
“You’re sure he keeps the watch with him all the time?” She looked at me from the corner of her eye. “The engraving is detailed. It looks really valuable.”
I put down the cookie, dusted off my hands, and reached for the magnifier. “May I?”
When she handed it over, I held the picture up to the light and studied the engraving.
Infinity symbols.
“It looks like duronium,” I said.
The duronium disc my parents had made for me when I turned sixteen was in my pocket, just like always. I felt for it from habit, reassured by the shape, if not the sentiment engraved on it. Hope.
“Aren’t the rings Michael and Em wear made of duronium?” Lily asked. “Em said it’s so rare I’d never see it on a periodic table.”
I handed the magnifier back to her. “It is rare, and really hard to come by. The general public doesn’t know about it. Neither does most of the scientific community.”
She closed the book and put it on an empty chair. “Why?”
“No one can explain its properties. Not even my dad.”
Fragments of information started sewing themselves together in my mind. Jack had a duronium pocket watch, and he was able to hide in veils. He’d used them to disguise himself when he first approached Emerson last summer. Poe had a duronium knife. He was able to pull Emerson into a veil, kill her, and then bring her out again without any repercussions.
“How did Jack end up with duronium if it’s so rare?” Lily asked.
“No idea. I’ve never looked at his pocket watch up close. Jack and I avoided each other, kind of like never and always.” I took my duronium disc out of my pocket and held it tightly in the palm of my hand. “I don’t know if the pocket watch has always been duronium. He could have replaced another piece that was silver.”
The shop was crowded when I came in, but now things were starting to thin out. Out of nowhere, I got the weird feeling that someone was watching me. I looked around the shop, and then outside. All I could see was a man reading a newspaper. He’d been there when I came in, a full cup of steaming coffee in front of him. I kept staring, and he lowered the paper.
Blond hair. Cold blue eyes. Gratified smile. Pocket watch in hand.
Jack.
I pushed back in my chair, shaking the table. Lily grabbed her mug of tea to keep it from toppling to the floor. “Hey! What’s going on?”
One second he was there, the next he was gone. I rushed to the front door, slinging it open so hard the hinges squeaked in protest. There was a veil beside the table where he’d been sitting. He’d left a message on a white napkin, written in black ink.
Now you see him, now you don’t.
Chapter 14
Lily burst through the front door of Murphy’s Law. “Was that …?”
“Yes.” I shoved the napkin with the cryptic message into my pocket. I didn’t want her to see what Jack had written, or the threat it implied. That he was everywhere.
/> “I looked right at him. Served him coffee. I touched him.” She shuddered and rubbed her upper arms. “But I didn’t recognize him.”
“He’s playing a game. It’s what he does. Exposes weaknesses and dangles possibilities.” I leaned against the window. The coolness of the plate glass on my back was a welcome relief. But the second I started to relax, Lily’s tension jumped up and punched me in the gut. “Something else is bothering you. What is it?”
She leaned against the window beside me. “Did you just read me?”
“Like I could help it.” I gave her the side-eye. “You’re shooting off anxiety like fireworks shoot off sparks.”
“Your dad called earlier.” She sighed. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”
“Uh-oh.” I turned my head to look at her. “Which one of us is in trouble?”
“I tested positive for the time gene.” Her laugh was short and bitter, and she dropped her face into her hands. Her fingernails were short, perfect ovals. “This day. What’s next? Blood-filled water? A plague of locusts?”
“Apocalyptical references?” I crossed my arms and stared back out into the afternoon traffic. A red sports car kept driving around the town square, either on a joy ride or lost. “That bad, huh?”
“I think I’ll classify you in the boils category.”
“Ow.”
“Okay,” she said, relenting. “Maybe frogs.”
“You know what happens when you kiss a frog, don’t you?” I asked, appreciating the moment of levity in the middle of disaster.
“I think they pee.” She stepped forward into my line of vision, her hands on her hips. “Your dad’s phone call didn’t surprise you.”
I shook my head. “Nothing does anymore.”
“Why?”
“Something’s … off. In our world.” I didn’t want to say “wrong,” because that would be like saying “Welcome to hell, now with hotter fire.”
“Off? That’s all you have to say?” She threw her hands into the air in defeat. “That’s sad. I thought you and I’d come to an agreement.”
“What kind of agreement?” I couldn’t understand why she felt so let down.
“That you’ll tell me the truth.” She pursed her lips.
Even though we didn’t like each other, that bottom lip was still tantalizing. “I’m not exactly known for honesty.”
“This is different. We’re working together for a common goal. I’m not a conquest,” she said, “or even a possibility, so please be real with me.”
Uncommon request. “Okay.”
“I think my Ivy Springs as Freak Magnet theory is correct,” she said. Her hair was twisted up into a sloppy bun. “Three people from the same hometown with a time gene?”
“Technically, my hometown is Memphis.”
“Really, Kaleb?”
“Just keeping it specific.” I made a motion of surrender.
“It doesn’t matter if we were physically born here, we were attracted here. Magnet.” Lily drew the word out, speaking with precise enunciation as she touched her pointer fingers together.
I tried not to laugh. “What’s the other possibility?”
“I’m here because of him. Here in this situation and here in this town. Because of Jack.” When I didn’t answer, her hands dropped limply to her sides. “Why would any of you keep that a secret?”
“Because we don’t know anything for certain.” I couldn’t answer her truthfully. I didn’t want to give her any information that wasn’t absolute.
“If he isn’t found, and time goes into rewind, it could affect me.”
“If you’re here because of him, yes, you’d be impacted by a rewind.”
“Which means my grandmother would be, too.” I heard the realization dawn in her voice. “Possibly my extended family.”
“Possibly.”
“This throws a whole different perspective on things.” She took a deep breath, and I could feel her mind shifting to accept the truth. “I really am the only option for finding Jack.”
“No. If my dad can re-create the formula needed to time travel, it would provide a really easy fix. Intercepting Jack at a known place in his past would be the fastest way to find him.”
“How’s that working out?” she asked, her eyes steady on mine.
I frowned. “It’s not, exactly.”
“His past,” she mused. “What about his past?”
“If they make the formula work, I’m not sure where they’ll go to find him—”
“I’m not talking about the formula. Jack’s stirred up all this trouble because he wants something changed. He wants a ticket back to his past.” She almost bounced as she asked her next question. “Has anyone ever asked why?”
I sat at our table with my back to the kitchen door. Sophie had been assigned as the lookout for Abi. Even so, Lily stood with an order pad in her hand, leaning against the table instead of sitting down with me. Her apprehension at being caught by her grandmother made me a little afraid. Abi appeared to be the kind of woman you didn’t want to mess with, and I was helping her granddaughter break a huge rule.
I wished I could see enough to keep an eye out for Abi, too.
“We’ve never tried to figure out why he wants the past changed,” I said, continuing our conversation from outside. “Just why Jack didn’t change his past himself, and why he needed Em to do it for him.”
“No one knows the reason?”
“There are a couple of theories. Em thinks maybe there’s some reason he didn’t want to mess with his own time line, but I don’t think Jack cares about breaking rules. Michael thinks it’s because the exotic matter formula was unstable, and Jack couldn’t travel far enough to do what he wanted.”
“I have no theories. Time travel makes my head hurt.” She bit her bottom lip. “How old is Jack?”
“Midthirties.”
“Your dad is in his midforties.” She made a note on the order pad. “And Jack’s known your dad how long?”
“About fifteen or sixteen years. That’s when Jack became Dad’s lab assistant.”
“Fifteen years is a long time,” Lily observed, still writing. “And a lot of memories. Not to mention how hard it would be to keep track of who knew what. Lots of people are involved at the university level. Staff, students, colleagues at other schools.”
“Keep going.”
“I agree with you. I don’t think Jack cares about rules, which makes me think what he wants changed didn’t happen recently. I think it happened way before he came to Ivy Springs. Maybe even before he started college at Bennett.”
“We don’t know where he came from.” I rubbed my temples. “Our friend Dune’s been researching, but we don’t know anything about his background.”
“But someone has to, somewhere.” She leaned one hand on the table and tapped the end of the pen against her lips. “He could erase memories, maybe even find someone to help him erase complete computer databases, but not paper trails. Not every single one. Think about all the things that were on paper twenty-five years ago that are on computers now. Report cards, school records, annuals.”
I gave her a sarcastic smile. “I’m sure Dune’s taken all that into consideration.”
“Don’t condescend to me, Kaleb Ballard.” Lily snapped to attention, standing straight up. “I’m thinking out loud, and you’re supposed to be helping me brainstorm, not making judgments.”
I sat back in my chair and laced my hands around one knee. “Sorry.”
“We’ve established that you’re sorry.” I caught a hint of amusement under the harshness of her words. “I’m only saying, there’s no harm in asking Dune if he’s thought of that angle, and if he has, to ask if he has a plan for how you guys are going to approach it.”
“Lily,” Sophie whispered urgently over the counter. “She’s back.”
“So,” Lily said brightly, pen poised over the order pad with efficiency. “That’s two cheese and tomato paninis, a side order of sweet potato fries, ano
ther side order of pasta salad, and two vanilla cream cupcakes? What can I get you to drink with that?”
I stared at her. “A water tower?”
“Coming right up.” She smiled, ripped the paper off the pad, slammed it down on my table, and walked toward the kitchen. She called out something in Spanish as she walked through the swinging door.
I looked down to see what the order ticket said. She’d written down the entire list she’d rattled off to me, with the addition of water tower.
And below that, Twenty-five percent tip included. XOXO, Lily.
Chapter 15
I stared across the quad at the science building, waiting. A pile of red and brown leaves whipped into a tiny little tornado and bounced against the brick foundation.
“Well?” I asked Dune.
“Nothing online,” Dune said. He’d left his laptop at home. Bad sign. “No evidence of his existence.”
In addition to his excellence at research, Dune had the supernatural ability to control the tide and the phases of the moon. I was glad the power to cause multiple natural disasters was contained in one of the most kind and logical people alive.
“I couldn’t find anything in Dad’s office.” I stuck my thumbs in my back pockets. “Paychecks from the Hourglass don’t exactly run through any of the normal government processes.”
Nate kicked at a rock on the ground. “And there’s no one to ask around here, because Jack pulled his Jedi mind tricks on anyone who’d have any decent information.”
Dune turned his entire huge frame to the side and stared at Nate. “Please do not disparage the Force by including it in the same sentence as Jack Landers’s name.”
“You just did,” Nate pointed out, making an “oof” sound when Dune elbowed him.
I knew it had to hurt. Dune had told us he was the smallest of his Samoan brothers, coming in at only 220 pounds and 5 feet 11. Just one of the reasons I tried to stay on Dune’s good side.
I cleared my throat. “So Lily was right. A paper trail is the best chance we have to find out what Jack wants. And since he used to work here …” Dad had just started a three-hour staff enrichment, along with the rest of the physics department, so we were free and clear to get in and dig around. We’d stood behind a couple of trees and watched them trek from the science building to the administration office.