Hourglass (20 page)

“My hair?”

“I’ll give you a second to fix my hair. I mean, I’ll give you a second while I go fix my hair.” He let out a sigh. “I mean, I’ll see you downstairs.”

He turned to walk out of the room, but unfortunately, he forgot to open the door first.

I managed to hold my laughter until he got it right.

I followed the smell of buttered popcorn to the kitchen. Peeking my head around the corner, I found everyone in various stages of preparation: Cat still making check marks; Dune clicking a mouse repeatedly; and Kaleb, watching it all, his face drawn. A flurry of popping sounds echoed off the walls as Nate leaned over the counter, eyeing the microwave like it was his job.

Maybe it was.

“I need a ring.”

Michael almost dropped the bag of money he was counting when he heard my voice. He looked up at me, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

I shook off all thoughts of those lips and concentrated on the task at hand. “To travel. Duranium or whatever.”

“Duronium,” Cat corrected me.

“Yeah, that.”

“I’ve got you covered.” Kaleb fished in his pocket and pulled out a tiny ring, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. “I got it from the safe this morning.”

“I can’t take that,” I protested. “It’s your mom’s. Isn’t it?”

He reached out to catch my hand. “My mom isn’t … in a position to save my dad. You are. She’d want you to have it. This way, it’s like she’s a part of it, even if she isn’t here.”

Michael watched us from the corner. After what had happened upstairs, I expected jealousy, or at least a hint of it, but there was nothing.

I took the ring, slipped it onto my index finger, and looked up at Kaleb. “Perfect.”

“Perfect.”

The moment was interrupted when the timer on the microwave beeped.

“Okay, Emerson.” Cat bustled over and placed her hand on my back, ushering me to a seat at the table. “We’re going to give you a crash course in traveling. You’ll be with Michael, so you only need the basics, which is good. That’s all we have time for.”

“Do I need to take notes?” Nate placed the bowl of steaming popcorn on the table, and I grabbed a big handful. Comfort food. I stopped before tossing a piece into my mouth. “Can I eat this? Should I go in on an empty stomach?”

“It’s not surgery, just time travel,” Cat said.

“Just time travel,” I muttered under my breath, and then reached out with the other hand for more popcorn.

“Look around. Notice anything different?” Cat asked.

I obeyed and almost sucked a corn kernel down my throat. After Dune whacked me on the back and stopped my coughing, I pointed to a shimmering square of light hanging in the atmosphere. It was as tall as the ceiling and at least ten feet wide.

“Holy … It’s like a blanket made of water or something. And I can see it really, really clearly.”

“That’s one of the benefits of duronium. The way it interacts with your body chemistry helps you locate veils.” Michael got a can of soda from the fridge, opened it, and slid it across the table toward me. “Veils guard the entrance to bridges, and they’re kind of like a transition space or camo for travelers. Rips will stand out better for you now, too. When you’re wearing duronium, they shimmer around the edges.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this stuff when you were explaining rips? That day at the coffeehouse?” I gave Michael a pouty face, as I popped open the can.

“Because I wasn’t ready to explain time travel. And you weren’t ready to hear it.”

“True.”

“You’ll use this veil.” Cat pointed to the one three feet away, sparkling like sunlight on the ocean. “Dune’s research uncovered that this house was unoccupied at the time of Liam’s death.”

“I still don’t understand how we get where we want to go.”

Cat frowned. “You hold the date and exact time you want to travel to in your mind and step in. My exotic matter, your travel gene, and the duronium do the rest.”

I recalled the night I’d asked Michael if it was that easy and he’d given me his standard “It’s complicated” answer. “Really, Michael?”

“So you got that part right.” He shrugged and a smile played at the corners of his mouth. “But you were wrong about the other part.”

“What other part?”

“You don’t have to click your heels together three times.”

I launched the remaining popcorn in my hand toward his head.

“What about a time limit? Does time pass for you? Or us?”

Michael shook his dark hair, and popcorn fell to the table like giant buttery snowflakes. “It’s a two-to-one ratio. For every two hours we spend in the past or the future, one hour goes by here. It’s good because we can get more done when we’re gone, and it’s not as taxing on Cat. It’s bad because we come back older than we would have been.”

“I see.” I kind of did, anyway. “What else?”

“Those are the basics,” Cat said, dusting off her hands before wiping them on a paper towel. “Are you ready to go?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Suddenly I wished I hadn’t eaten quite so much popcorn. I wasn’t looking forward to tasting it twice.

Cat stood, purple fireball spinning.

Michael held a small duffel bag stuffed with money. The keys to his car were zipped into the pocket of my puffy jacket, and the keys to the science department were in his. The timetable was memorized but still in my right hand. My left hand held Michael’s.

Kaleb, Dune, and Nate stood by, everyone’s face tense. Kaleb’s was so tight it physically hurt to look at him.

Cat flicked her wrist.

Michael stepped into the veil.

I followed.

“Focus on the date and time.” Michael’s voice echoed through the tunnel. The watery look of the veil extended as far as I could see, highlighted by a light sheen of silver. I could almost see through the fluid circular walls, as if I had a window to watch time move past. “Are you focusing?”

Snapping my head forward, I concentrated on the date and time where we wanted to land. “Yes.”

“Good, because I’m useless right now. This is all you. The Emerson Show.”

“Couldn’t you come up with something better than that?”

“Focus, Em,” Michael reminded me.

“Don’t we need to walk, or something?”

“No. We stand still. Time flows around us.”

I’d expected the bridge to be loud, like hurricane winds or a roaring river. Instead, it was achingly quiet. Occasionally, the muffled sound of a voice or music seeped through the undulating walls, but always briefly. I squeezed my eyes shut, and guessed we were getting closer to the end when the sounds became more concentrated.

“We’re here,” Michael said, grasping me gently by the shoulder. “You did it.”

I opened my eyes. The veil shimmered in front of us, and I could see the room we’d just left, now empty and cloaked in darkness.

Chapter 42

O
ur breath froze in the night air as we hurried through the cold, Michael holding my hand as we walked to the parking lot where his car was parked.

“I was out of town when Liam died. I’m glad I didn’t drive,” he said, holding our joined hands up to his lips and blowing his hot breath onto them as we approached his car. “Makes it easier to get to the Hourglass.”

Easier.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“Florida. Spring break. Pretty sure the timing wasn’t a coincidence.”

Lights from distant neighborhoods twinkled on the horizon. No light shone from the windows of the campus buildings. The college was deserted and creepy with all the students gone. I walked a little closer to Michael.

“No wonder everybody heads to the beach instead of staying in the mountains over spring vacation. Why didn’t we think of bringing a scraper?” He ran his hand across the layer of ice on the windshield before opening the car door for me. I put on my seat belt as he slid in and started the engine, jumping when alternative rock poured from the speakers.

He turned the radio down and scanned the parking lot to see if we had drawn attention to ourselves. It appeared as empty and desolate as it was two minutes ago. And as spooky.

Five minutes later Michael parked behind the science department.

“I’m going to go get John Doe. Sit tight.” He opened his car door before I could protest.

I followed him to the back entrance. We hadn’t talked about this part of the trip. “Hold on,” I argued in a whisper. “There’s no way you can get the body out of the building and into the car by yourself.”

“Sure I can.” He frowned at me as he sorted through the keys in his hand. “I know how freaked out you were when you heard about the cadaver. I’m not going to ask you to help me carry it.”

“No, because you don’t have to ask. We’re a team, right?” I held up my hand for a fist bump.

“Em—”

“Right?”
I said, knowing we didn’t have time to fight about it. Michael knew it, too.

He gave me a fist bump back and we headed into the building.

Fifteen minutes after we retrieved the cadaver—Michael wrapped it up before I could see anything, and then assigned me the feet end to carry—he stopped the car in front of the gate to the Hourglass. It was closed.

“That gate’s never closed. This means we’re going to have to approach from a little farther away than I wanted.” He pulled off onto the side of the road before killing the headlights and enveloping us in darkness. I started to open my car door, but he stopped me. “I want you to stay here.”

My mouth dropped open. “What?”

“I think it would be a good idea if you stayed with the car.”

I turned to face him, even though it was pitch-black. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“I’ve been thinking about this. You did what I needed you to do by getting me back here. You could just wait, leave the car running—”

“Shut up. I’m serious, Michael.” I would not back down. “Shut your mouth. Why do you keep leaving me out of the equation? If you think for one second I’m going to let you go to that lab by yourself, you’re as crazy as I am. Sorry, as crazy as I thought I was. No way.”

He tried again. “But—”

“No. You can’t make me stay here. Do you want me to lie to you and tell you I will? Knowing I’ll just follow you? All by myself? Alone and unprotected?”

He sighed in defeat. “Why won’t you let me keep you safe?”

“I don’t need a hero, Michael. I thought you recognized that I can handle myself.”

“It’s different this time. The stakes are life and death. I got you into this, and the least I can do is make sure you get out of it in one piece.”

“I made the decision to help you all by myself. I know you have my back. And I have yours.”

Michael reached out, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck and pulling me fiercely to his chest. “I’m scared to death. If I were by myself, I think I’d be fearless. But not with you beside me.”

“Good. Because fearless is stupid.”

“I’d retract that statement. You’re one of the most fearless humans I’ve ever met.”

I grunted. “Get out of the damn car.”

We shut our doors quietly, and he tossed me the keys. I tucked them into my jacket pocket and zipped it up. The trees were covered in ice, making the grounds look like some kind of magical forest, entirely too enchanting to be the scene of a murder. I shuddered.

“Cold?” Michael whispered, wrapping his arm around my shoulders.

“No.”

He gave me a little squeeze. “We’ll go around back. I want to see which cars are in the parking lot.”

“Why?”

“I just want to know if Landers is on site. I won’t do anything about it.”

Like I believed that. I looked at him, knowing my eyes were full of doubt.

“I’ll
try
not to do anything?”

At least he was honest.

“What about John Doe?” I jerked my thumb in the direction of the trunk.

“The fire started around midnight. We’ll have time to come back and get him. It’s not a good idea to drag a dead guy across the lawn until we know what’s going on anyway.”

My nostrils flared. “Gross.”

“Sorry.” He stomped his feet and put his hands in his pockets. “We need to move.”

Frozen grass crunched beneath our feet as we walked, the sound echoing into the clear night air. We crossed the stretch of lawn quickly, our footsteps quieting when we reached the cover of the trees and the pine needles beneath them. I watched Michael scan over the cars in the parking area, as if he were looking for one in particular.

“Any clues?” I asked.

“It’s there.”

We continued, practically retracing the steps I made when I visited the Hourglass the first time. After watching from the woods for a few moments, we scrambled across the lawn toward the house to press ourselves against the bricks.

Michael put his hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Last chance. Are you sure?”

I gave him an inappropriate finger gesture, and he swallowed a laugh.

We dropped to the ground, crawling along the side of the house and then scampering across the patio where Michael and Kaleb had talked about me. Steam rose from the pool, creating a mist above us.

Once we rounded the back corner of the house, I was in unfamiliar territory. It was darker than it had been the night when I spied on Kaleb and Michael, and the patio porch lights weren’t on. The only light came from the pool.

I put my faith in Michael, dropping back to follow him as he darted from outbuilding to outbuilding. The terror that someone would see us—ruin our plan to save Liam or keep us from traveling back to the present—made my knees weak and my throat dry. By the time we reached the last outbuilding I was breathless, and not from running.

This building was the only one that showed any sign of occupation. It greatly resembled a horse barn and was stained what looked to be a dark red. A rooster weather vane creaked on the top, straining against the slight wind.

I didn’t remember seeing it when I was here before. I realized I hadn’t, because it hadn’t been there.

The lab.