Hourglass (22 page)

Chapter 47

A
ll hell broke loose when we exited the bridge into the kitchen.

Cat gasped and turned unnaturally pale, covering her mouth with her hands. Dune and Kaleb seemed to freeze in place. Nate spoke first.

“Dr. Ballard? You’re alive!” Nate rushed over to us to gape at Liam in disbelief, touching his arm tentatively.

“That’s why I couldn’t feel you,” Kaleb said, staring at his father. “I really thought you were dead, because I couldn’t feel you. But you weren’t. You aren’t. You just didn’t exist.” His face crumpled, and for a split second he looked exactly like a little boy. “Dad?”

Liam moved toward Kaleb and extended his arms. In two steps Kaleb was across the room, his father wrapping him in a hug.

I backed out of the room slowly. I didn’t know where to go.

Cat followed, eyeing me cautiously. “Emerson?”

“Michael’s gone.” A full-body chill overtook me. “He was in the building when it …”

She looked away from me.

“Cat?” I’d thought I was too numb to feel anything, but her avoidance of my eyes ripped my heart to shreds. Every slash was a moment lost with Michael. “
Cat?
Why don’t you seem surprised? Talk to me.”

She exhaled deeply. “The day after you, Kaleb, and Michael visited me at the college, he came back to see me by himself. He asked me to open a bridge to the future.”

“No.” The word was a plea. It couldn’t be true.

“That’s when he found out that you made it back.” Now she met my eyes. “And that he didn’t.”

“No!” I wrapped my arms around my waist, holding myself together, my body warring against my emotions. “Please, please no.”

“He wouldn’t tell me what else he saw, just that he wasn’t with you. I know he cared for you so much. I know he wanted you to be part of his future.”

“Don’t tell me that.” I wanted it all to go away. Disappear like rips did when I popped them. “Why did we even go back if he was going to … Why?”

“I’m not sure, but I know Michael believed Liam had to be saved. I think he chose the greater good—what was best for
every
-
one
over what was best for him personally. There’s a heavy responsibility that comes with your gift, and he always understood that.”

“It’s not a gift,” I spat out. “It’s a curse.”

“Emerson!” Cat gasped, finally noticing my injuries. “You’re bleeding!”

“It’s fine,” I insisted through chattering teeth.

“No, it’s not. You’re shaking, probably going into shock.” She grabbed the blanket from the couch and tucked it around my shoulders. “We need to get you to the emergency room.”

“No hospital. I can’t. I don’t want to.” I looked up at her, my very life depending on her answer. “If he took precautions, if he somehow survived the fire and found a bridge, could he get back through without you and your exotic matter?”

Her face was full of pity. “Emerson—”

“Could he get back through?”

“It’s a possibility.” The look of pity didn’t fade, and somewhere, deep down, I knew she was telling me what I wanted to hear.

I turned to stare at the grandfather clock in the corner. Half past midnight.

“I’m going to wait for him.”

“At least sit down before you collapse.” Cat helped me onto the couch, placing pillows behind my back. “Let me look at your cuts—”

“Don’t touch me. Okay?” I forced myself to keep my voice steady, at a normal volume. “I’m fine.”

“But—”

“Please!” I could feel myself edging toward hysteria with every second that passed. I needed her out. “I’m fine. Please leave me alone.”

“I can’t, you’re hurt—”

“Cat?” I didn’t want to break, and if she didn’t leave me alone, didn’t stop talking about Michael … I knew I might.

She left me.

I hoped and prayed that there was some possibility he’d survived. That by some miracle he could come back to me.

I sat in the dark, waiting. The grandfather clock in the entryway sounded the hour.

One.

I barely noticed when Nate and Dune headed up to bed. Dune started to say something, but stopped when he saw my face.

An hour passed; the clock sounded twice.

Cat came in to check on me but didn’t speak. I ignored her, turning my body to face the clock, still as stone, watching the hands move. The house slowly went quiet, the only sounds the occasional creaks and pops common in older homes. I thought I heard Kaleb and Liam walk past, but I was too fixated on the time to pay close attention.

Dawn came. The sunrise brought no hope.

When the chimes sounded seven times, I stood, pushed the blanket to the floor, and walked up the stairs to Michael’s bed. Alone.

He wasn’t coming back.

Chapter 48

I
knew who it was the second the door opened. He would be the only one who would come looking for me here, the only one who wouldn’t be afraid to come in without knocking. He wouldn’t ask for permission to enter because he knew I’d say no.

Kaleb wouldn’t take no from me.

He crossed the room to the bed where I lay curled up in a ball, holding on to Michael’s pillow and breathing in his scent. Kaleb reached out to touch me, but caught himself when he saw me flinch. I couldn’t help it. The last time someone had touched me in this room, it had been Michael.

He dropped down into the desk chair.

“You should be with your father.” My voice sounded raw, still full of smoke and tears.

“No, I should be with you. My father agrees.”

I didn’t have a comeback. I was too broken for a good one anyway.

“Em.” He reached up to rub the back of his neck. I knew Kaleb could feel every single one of my horrible emotions. I started to tell him I had the formula for his meds in my pocket, but I realized he didn’t need it now that his father was back.

Liam was alive.

Michael was dead.

Waves of sorrow crashed over me as Kaleb leaned forward in the chair, reaching out his hand. “This has to stop. Come here.”

“Why?”

“Just … Just come over here.”

I sat up on the edge of the bed to argue with him, my muscles aching and tense with anxiety. He caught me off guard, taking my hand and maneuvering me onto his lap.

“What are you doing?” Surely he wasn’t making a move on me. A hysterical bubble of laughter threatened to escape from my throat. Everything that had happened in the past few hours was ridiculously surreal.

“Not what you think.” He slid me away from his chest toward his knees so that I stayed on his lap, but barely. Leaning his head toward mine, he said, “Look at me. Emerson, look in my eyes.”

I gave in.

The second I did, the pain began to disappear in a vacuum, both the physical and the emotional. A roaring sound filled my ears, and I couldn’t see anything but the deep blue of Kaleb’s eyes. I unconsciously leaned in, pressing my face to his, our mouths so close we were breathing the same air.

The relief was enough to make oxygen bearable. I took the comfort from him for a moment before I realized what was happening. Once I did, I jerked away, pushing myself off his lap to land on the floor in front of him, my muscles bunching in spasms. The room went eerily silent.

“What did you just do?” I said, gasping for breath.

His eyes were full of agony, his voice bleak. He sounded like he was in physical pain. “Tried to help you. Taking some of your emotions.”

“How long have you been able to do that?”

He shook his head. “As long as I can remember. Sometimes it doesn’t work, though. It didn’t with my mom, when I tried to help her. But I can help you.”

I wanted to lean on him, find comfort in his embrace. Kaleb would do his dead level best to give me whatever I wanted. I knew it. All I had to do was ask.

The ache that had disappeared reformed in my chest and moved up to my throat. “I can’t let you take on my hurt when you have more than enough of your own. The two of you fought like brothers. I know you loved each other like brothers, too.”

Kaleb stood, and once again I was taken aback by the sheer size of him. “I know you did this—at least in part—for me. To keep me from going through everything you went through when you lost your parents. Now here you are, hurting more than you were before. I know, because I couldn’t block out your emotions if I tried.”

I bit down on my bottom lip. I would not cry. Crying could wait until I was alone. I
would not
cry. The tears formed and I fought not to blink, knowing if one tiny wet drop escaped, the battle would be over.

I lost.

My world, which I was struggling to hold up on my own, crashed down around me into so many pieces. I had to lean on a chair leg to keep myself upright. I watched my pain flash across Kaleb’s face, finally hiding mine in my hands so I wouldn’t have to see any more.

He dropped down beside me, pulling me into his arms and rocking me back and forth as I let the tears come, keeping my eyes closed, refusing to watch him share my grief. I remembered the way it felt to be in Michael’s arms the night I told him about losing my parents. He’d rocked me to comfort me, too. The memory only made me cry harder. Kaleb stroked my hair and pressed his lips to my temple.

“It can’t be true. Michael has to come back. This has to be a mistake.” My tears had a mind of their own. No matter how hard I fought against them, they kept forming and slipping down my cheeks.

“I could make it better if you would just let me.”

“I won’t,” I said. “Not that way. I’m not putting you through more pain just to spare myself.”

“Even if I want to?” he asked softly.

I shook my head.

“He cared about you. It felt a lot like he loved you.”

My sobs caught in my chest. “He never said it.”

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.”

“Maybe.”

“You’ve got to stay strong. We don’t know what happened. What if he managed to survive it? You’re a mess. Would you want him to see you like this?”

“I’m not a mess.”

And he’s not coming back.

Kaleb gazed down at me, cradled in his arms, tears and snot all over my face.

“I’m
not
a mess!” I jerked my sleeve down over my hand and wiped some of the moisture away. Struggling to sit up, I voiced the question I was most afraid of asking. “Do you feel him? His emotions?”

His answering smile held a world of sadness.

I buried my face in his chest and let go.

It took a while for me to stop weeping. When I finally ran out of tears, Kaleb stood and helped me to my feet. “Get cleaned up and then come downstairs. I’ll have Cat bring you some clothes. You need to let her look at those cuts.” He gestured to my hands and knees. I started to protest, but he interrupted. “Let her do it here, or I can take you to the hospital.”

“I hate hospitals.”

“I know.”

“That’s a dirty trick.”

“I know that, too. Do it.” He reached into his pocket before placing something in my hand and carefully curling my fingers around it.

When he left, I examined what he’d placed in my palm. It was his silver circle engraved with the word
hope
. I stared at it for a few moments before placing it in the exact center of Michael’s bed.

I stripped off the jacket, hearing a clunk when it hit the ground. I picked it up and unzipped the pockets, finding the computer disks I’d retrieved as well as Michael’s car keys. I squeezed the keys so hard the teeth hurt my fingers. Tears filling my eyes, I dropped them onto his nightstand. I left the computer disks where they were.

I walked blindly into the bathroom and turned the water to the hottest temperature I could stand. Before I stepped in, I stared at my reflection in the mirror.

My hair was gray instead of blonde, speckled with ashes, my face dark with soot and streaked with tearstains. The irises of my bloodshot eyes were bright green; they got that way when I’d been crying. My shoulder was already developing a deep purple bruise, and it hurt when I rolled it forward to stretch it. I looked down at my knees and the heels of my hands, both scabbed over.

As bad as I looked on the outside, the inside was much worse.

I stepped into the shower and stood under the spray until the hot water ran out.

Chapter 49

W
earing only a towel, I cautiously opened the bathroom door to a fresh set of clothing on the bed, a soft pair of gray yoga pants I’d be able to roll up at the waist along with a white hoodie and tank top. There was a pair of thick blue fuzzy socks, even a package of new underwear. Bless Cat’s heart and her wardrobe. I almost laughed at the underwear, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.

The time in the shower gave me more clarity about what I’d seen at the Hourglass. If what I believed to be true was in fact true, there were questions that needed to be answered.

And … Michael was gone. I had to make a choice. I could either break the same way I had when I lost my parents, or I could do whatever it took to find some kind of justice for him. I knew what would be easiest. I also knew what would be right.

I didn’t know which choice would win.

I dressed and took the silver circle from the center of Michael’s bed and tucked it into the pocket of the hoodie. Descending the stairs slowly, I winced each time my knees bent. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other, every forward motion another strain on the tightrope of my emotions. I passed by the common room, refusing to look at the couch or the clock, and stopped outside the kitchen.

Just function, Emerson. You can’t drown in it yet. There are things that have to be done.

After a few deep breaths I opened the door and stuck my head in. It still smelled like popcorn.

“Hi.” Cat was alone at the kitchen table. She stood, reaching out to help me into a chair. “Kaleb said you were going to let me look you over.”

“The only thing that really hurts is my shoulder.”

And my heart. But I doubted she could help me with that.

“Which one is it?” she asked.

“The right,” I answered, counting it as a tiny victory when my lips didn’t tremble.

She carefully pulled the hoodie to the side, making a pained face when she saw the bruise. “Liam said he threw you to the ground when the building blew up. Is that when this happened?”

Something she said sounded strange, distracting me from my pain. Both physical and emotional.

“Blew up.” The building
had
blown up. Everything I’d read or heard indicated that there had been a fire, but never an explosion.

Cat seemed confused. “Am I wrong? Did I misunderstand Liam?”

I ignored her questions. “Where’s Ava?”

“I don’t know. No one’s seen her.”

“I saw her. In the past. She was standing with a man, watching the lab burn.” Sorrow made my chest tight, and I checked my grief so I could continue coherently. “I thought I recognized him.”

“What did he look like?”

“Tall. Broad shoulders. Light hair.”

Cat’s face remained immobile. “And you recognized him?”

“Yes.” I didn’t think she’d like it when I told her how. “I’ve met him.”

“What?”

I crossed my arms on the table and laid my head down on top of them.

Everyone might think Landers had disappeared because he’d taken off with Liam’s files. But he hadn’t really.

He’d been living in my loft.

The late-morning air was crisp. Somewhere someone burned leaves. Kaleb and Liam sat in glider chairs in the backyard underneath an ancient oak tree. The overhanging branches dropped newly turned autumn leaves like rain. As they fell, the sun touched them from the east, setting them aglow.

It should have been a beautiful day.

“Liam.” Cat approached them, her arms over her chest to brace herself against the chill in the air. Or maybe to protect herself from Liam’s reaction. “I’m sorry to interrupt. We have to talk.”

“It’s fine, Cat.” Something about his face was older than it had been yesterday. He pushed his foot against the ground, gliding back and forth in his chair. “Good morning, Emerson.”

“Morning.” I failed to see anything good about it.

Kaleb offered me his seat. I made a sound of protest, but he took me by the wrists anyway, avoiding my injured hands, and guided me into the chair.

Sparing Cat the difficulty of figuring out how to break the news, I said, “Jonathan Landers has been living in my bedroom.”

No one spoke. Liam froze midglide. Kaleb swung his head around to stare at me.

“I didn’t know it was him. He told me his name was Jack.”

“Jack is his childhood nickname,” Cat murmured.

“I made the connection last night, but it didn’t sink in until this morning. I thought he was a ripple until I tried to pop him and he didn’t disappear. He was … semisolid.”

Liam leaned forward in his chair, placing his hands on his knees. His wedding band was encircled by infinity symbols. That must have been how he got through the bridge last night.

“When did you first see him?”

“The night the restaurant opened. A couple of weeks ago.”

A lifetime ago.

“Living in your bedroom … was he there all the time? How did he appear to you?” Liam asked calmly.

“He’d be there, and then he’d be gone.” My body felt heavy, weighted down by shame and sorrow. “Now I realize that there’s probably a bridge in my room that I couldn’t see before. I think he was traveling through it. Using the veil to disappear quickly.”

“Did you ever see him when Michael was around?” Cat asked.

“No. But I did see him in Michael’s loft once when I was in there alone. Jack claimed to be watching him. Michael’s room is … was on the other side of the wall from mine.” I focused on the ground, counting acorns. I wouldn’t think about where he used to sleep. I wouldn’t think about the pull I’d felt toward him, even through the concrete wall. “The veil must be divided by the two rooms.”

Liam stroked his beard. I wondered if it was a nervous habit, the way Michael always twisted his thumb ring. The memory threatened to slice me open.

“But how?” Cat’s skin had a pale gray sheen. “He doesn’t carry the travel gene.”

Liam stood up from the chair and began to pace. “There are rumors of ways to travel if you don’t carry the specific gene, but they go against everything the Hourglass stands for—against the laws of nature and man. The cost would be dire.”

“Landers doesn’t care about any laws.” A shower of leaves fell from the tree beside us when Kaleb plunged his fist into the bark. “He only cares about himself.”

“What kind of cost?” I asked Liam. “Who would make him pay?”

He stopped pacing. “Among others, the universe itself.”

“The ripples are changing. I started out seeing one person, now I’m seeing groups, snippets of scenery. I thought Jack was part of that, or something new that I didn’t understand yet.”

“You’re seeing entire scenes?” The look of intensity on Liam’s face made my heart constrict. “Multiple people?”

“What does it mean?” I asked tightly.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “But if ripples are growing, bleeding through the fabric of time, we have more to worry about than Jonathan Landers.”

I didn’t think I could handle worrying about more than Jonathan Landers.

Even with Liam alive and prepared to regain control at the Hourglass, Jack still had enough information to be dangerous. Information about me, my family. He had names and addresses of people with special abilities. Whether I was his intended target or not, I didn’t doubt he would attempt to exploit every single person on the list.

“We need to find him.” Kaleb kicked at the freshly fallen leaves that littered the ground. “We need to go to Em’s loft and pull him out of the bridge.”

“I don’t think he’s there anymore. He told me good-bye.” I looked from Kaleb to his father. “Liam, you told Cat the lab exploded. One second it was there, the next second it was gone. Did you see who I saw, standing there watching it burn?”

Liam nodded. “I’d hoped to protect the identity of one of those people.”

“One of those people?” Kaleb interrupted. “Landers had an accomplice?”

“I don’t believe she knew what she was doing,” Liam said quietly. “I believe she was used.”

“She who?” Kaleb asked in a strained voice. No one spoke, letting him work it out for himself by process of elimination. He let out a string of curse words one didn’t usually hear in everyday conversation, ending with a particularly venomous, “Bitch.”

“Son—”

“Ava came here to hide her ability,” Kaleb argued with his father. “That was shady enough. But you’re actually going to defend her when she used it to
blow you up
?”

“She’s a fire starter?” I asked, a picture of a tiny Drew Barrymore in my mind. Somehow the young blonde with the endearing lisp didn’t mesh with Ava and her glamorous beauty. Kaleb had referenced the wrong Stephen King story for her nickname.

“Ava’s gift is layered,” Liam answered. “We think she can move things, push objects through time.”

“You think? You mean you don’t know?” I asked.

“Like Kaleb said, Ava came to the Hourglass to make her ability disappear. I never argued, only tried to make her life easier than it was at home. It seems Landers had a different idea. And a stronger influence.”

“Where do we think Ava is now?” I asked.

Another shower of leaves fell from the tree as Kaleb made a sound of frustration and pain.

Landers had an accomplice, money, and a list of people with abilities.

“He told me he wanted to protect me. Protect my innocence. I almost bought it.” Recoiling at the memory of the way he’d looked at me that day, I closed my eyes and tried to block out the image of his face. “I wonder if Ava did.”

“He’s a persuasive man,” Liam said.

“He was stalking me. Now he and Ava are missing, and Michael is dead.”

They wouldn’t get away with it. I would do whatever it took to stop them. I’d let revenge keep me alive, and once that revenge was exacted … well, I’d reassess. My tenuous hold on sanity was slipping, and I doubted even Kaleb could help me once it did. I had to be alone, to think.

I left them all outside and climbed the stairs to Michael’s room. A few seconds later, Cat stuck her head around the doorframe.

“Emerson, I—”

I held up one trembling finger, motioning for her to be quiet.

“Don’t do this.” She frowned, deep creases forming on her forehead. “You can’t cut yourself off—it’s not healthy.”

“You have no idea.” I laughed bitterly.

“Tell me what you’re feeling. Talk to me.” She looked so worried, almost like a mother concerned for her child. “Please.”

The “please” got to me.

“I’m never going to see him again. There were so many things I didn’t say, and after my parents … I swore I’d never leave anything unsaid. But I did. Now he’s gone.”

Could we have had the same kind of lifetime connection Grace and Liam did? I’d never know. I’d wonder about the possibility for as long as I lived.

Cat moved toward me slowly with her hand outstretched, as if she was approaching the scene of an accident.

She kind of was.

“Don’t touch me.” I scrambled farther back on the bed, out of her reach, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around my legs. I rocked back and forth. “Did you know there are seven stages of grief?”

I said the words so conversationally that I must have sounded manic. Cat stepped back and silently lowered herself into the desk chair.

“I learned all about it in counseling. Seven stages. And guess what? Four of them suck. Where’s the balance? Why not eight stages of grief? Give me some kind of benchmark for my suffering; let me know I’m halfway there.” A dry laugh escaped, and I paused to regain control. I needed to be in control.

I focused on a cobweb in the corner by the ceiling, a tiny remnant of forgotten life stirring in a wayward breeze. “But there are just seven. I should be able to talk myself through the first few—shock and denial, pain and guilt. I already have experience, so it’ll be easier, right? I can tell myself all the right things, remind myself of the coping mechanisms.”

Resisting the urge to stand and tear the fragile cobweb to the ground, I hugged my knees more tightly to my chest. “I … got stuck in those stages when I lost my parents. For months. I almost disappeared.”

Cat’s frown had only deepened since she sat down. It didn’t go with the rest of her face.

“When I came to him from the future, why didn’t I tell him to get out of the building before it exploded?” I couldn’t understand why I’d keep knowledge like that to myself now or ever. “How could I let him die that way? How could he choose to die that way?”

“You couldn’t have said anything—there are rules, especially if you remain connected to the Hourglass in the future.” She was trying to comfort me, but her explanation only made me angry.

“Who makes these rules?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” She stood, speaking matter-offactly. “I expect after today they’ll be paying a visit.”

I stared at her blankly. “What are you talking about?”

“What if I told you,” Cat said, leaning over to look deep into my eyes, “that you could change things?”

I looked back, afraid to believe but desperate to do so.

“The fact is that I’m already in enough trouble.” She paused, pressing her lips together, and I could almost see the gears clanking in her brain. “If Landers is missing … and we can gain access to the Hourglass … there’s a bridge there. I could put you through.”