Skyline (13 page)

Maybe
she’d be safe. Or maybe Paris would murder her again. There was only one way to
know for certain, and Charlotte wasn’t about to travel back to that horrible
day in the distant past.

Behind
her, the doorknob twisted. “Leanor?” came her own voice from outside the door
as it swung open. Just in time, Charlotte spun her own astrolabe to the future,
her past self seeing her for a split second. A momentary headache triggered,
but didn’t last. She was safely away.

Well,
not completely safe.

Charlotte
raced from the apartment, shoved past the man waiting with his phone, ran down
the steps, and spun herself forward a couple years. Flashing blue and red
lights arrived for a second, but she was gone.

As
she trudged back to the Upper East Side, Charlotte replayed everything. Every
moment from when she’d lifted her hand to wave at Leanor’s shadow. What could
she have done differently? Why had Leanor run
again
?

“They
need you,” Leanor had said. “He can’t stop the bomber either.”

Either
.

Which
meant Leanor couldn’t help them for some reason. But if Ana was so dangerous,
why enlist Charlotte? Or maybe …

Charlotte
jerked her head up on the subway, staring through the glass as underground
pylons sped by.

Ana
knew
them. Ana must have known Paris as much as she’d known Leanor. And
if she saw them or felt their presence, she’d do more than run from a confused
new time traveler. She’d fight.

It
was up to them, and them alone. Leanor couldn’t help. Paris could only
threaten. Which meant that Charlotte and her family had to work hard. Had to
explore every possibility.

Charlotte
clutched her hands into fists as the subway pulled to her stop. Monroe was
going to hate her, but this night wasn’t over. It was time to send Bill to the
past, to help him implement his plan, and pray that Leanor had been correct
when she’d said two more words: “They’ll wait.”

Charlotte
pushed through the door to Monroe’s apartment and found Bill sitting where
she’d left him, staring at the dark television. He must have turned it off in
the few minutes it took for her to get to the alley and back. “Hey,” she said,
not bothering to set down her bag.

He
twisted, his eyebrows lifting in hope. “How’d it go? Did she give you
anything?”

Now
Charlotte was forced to take stock of all that had happened. She’d been going
over Leanor’s words as if they held a clue, as if they were something to cling
to. But the truth was that the words were empty. So they were on the right
path, so they were the only ones who could stop the bombs, none of that really
mattered.

Charlotte’s
shoulders fell. “Nothing. Just that we’re doing what she wanted.” Shaking her
head, Charlotte folded her hair over, smoothing it down. “But she said they’ll
give us time to figure this out. So, you ready?”

Sighing,
Bill twisted back to the television, resting his elbows on his knees. “I don’t
know,” he admitted, his voice soft and confused.

They’ll
give us time
, Charlotte reminded
herself as she set down her bag. She joined Bill on the couch, stretching an
arm to touch his back lightly. “He hasn’t come out to talk?”

Bill
frowned, pulling out of his slouch to give her a look.

“Of
course not,” she said. It had only been minutes. Minutes since she’d convinced
Bill to wait, to let her go first. Convinced Bill that maybe he’d never have to
implement the plan that had made Monroe furious.

“I
thought he’d be happy that I wasn’t focusing on the
Lusitania
,” Bill
said. “That I was thinking about the greater good. But by then, I’d already
rejected his idea. He was on the defensive and thought that my idea was
why
I’d said no to the future. That I thought I was smarter or …” He held his palms
out, his voice making airless syllables. He settled on a topic. “He told me
that you’d been to the future.”

“Me?”

“Today.”

Today?
But today she’d just visited Felix. Gone to lunch with him … Oh. “That wasn’t
the same. Three hours in the future isn’t two hundred years.”

“He
was so certain you’d come home and be on his side.”

Two
days ago, she hadn’t wanted to be on anyone’s side but Monroe’s. She hadn’t
wanted Bill here, but now she was glad he was. That was all Monroe’s fault. But
Bill was right, just as he’d been about time’s malleability. His plan just made
more sense.

“How
did it start?” Charlotte asked. A whole day of fighting, and she’d only caught
the tail end. “You came home, you talked to ’Roe. What was supposed to happen?”

His
pale eyes met hers. “Honestly? I thought he'd be thrilled. I thought …” Again,
his voice dwindled away. His wide shoulders sagged.

“You
thought he’d come with you.”

“He
wouldn’t even hear it. Thought I was placating him. And now everything’s
fucked.”

Charlotte
could tell him to wait. She could tell him to go into Monroe’s bedroom, to
snuggle with him, to remedy things. In the morning, there’d be plenty of time.
Bill and Monroe could go into the past and balance each other.

But
her own failure nagged at her.

She
had time, according to Leanor, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like every
moment was one more in which Paris could appear. No matter how much she told
herself there was time, she couldn’t believe it.

“He’ll
understand,” Charlotte said, hating herself as she rubbed Bill’s back. “When we
have a lead, when we take him with us to stop Ana, he’ll forget his plan. He’ll
just be happy to be in history again.” One of her baldest lies.

“Sure,”
Bill said, pushing himself to his feet. “Maybe.” God, he was trying so hard to
convince himself this wasn’t a bad idea. Charlotte could see it from his
lowered eyebrows. But even she wasn’t sure.

Like
Monroe warned, Bill’s instincts could kick in and he’d change history. Or he’d be
good, and Monroe would still be furious. Or worse, he’d fail like she had.

No
, Charlotte reminded herself
, there’s time
.

“Here,”
she said, standing alongside him then crossing to the door. She knelt to where
her purse lay, bulky with the astrolabe. She pulled out Charlie’s toys, her
wallet, and a few other small items until only the astrolabe remained. “Now you
get to see how it feels.”

How
weird to pass the astrolabe off to someone. Even Leanor hadn’t used it as much,
content to let Charlotte be the one in control. But then, she probably wanted
Charlotte familiar with it. After all, she already had a time device of her
own. “Do you mind if I come with you for a bit? Only, Charlie’s with Felix,
Monroe’s in his room.” All her family were elsewhere: in other apartments,
other rooms. But Bill and she shared a connection, too. Joining Bill, even for
a little bit, would remind her that there was time.

That
all would be well.

“Of
course,” Bill said, accepting her bag—which now that Charlotte looked at it was
clearly a purse. Gold details were set into the handles and pockets.

“Maybe
we can find you something more fitting,” she said.

And
Bill smiled. At first, it was forced, pretending Monroe wasn’t in the other
room stewing. But it softened, grew wider, became real. This would be his first
time in control of his own science fiction life.

Bill
reached inside the purse and lofted the astrolabe in one hand. “It’s really
beautiful, Charlotte. Maybe when all this is done, you and Leanor can change
the design. Remove the time travel, but still sell it to children as the
astrolabe you thought you were building.”

“Maybe,”
she said. “Done” was a long way off. She pushed out the door, into the humid
evening. The rain had passed, but clouds still trapped the moisture in. It
reflected off the concrete, the asphalt, and the brick of Monroe’s apartment
building. “Ready?” Charlotte asked when they arrived at the alley where she’d
appeared a few minutes prior.

In
the darkness of the wet night, Bill illuminated the orb. Lights reflected off
the sidewalk, the apartments across the way, even off of Charlotte’s polished
black shoes. Now that she was with someone, she found herself seeing the beauty
once more. Then Bill twisted the stars back.

At
first he spun too fast, the readout quickly heading back to the early 900s.
Thank God he hadn’t released, sending them back to the jungle of Mannahatta.
Still keeping his hand on the astrolabe, Bill twisted the lights forward more
slowly, watching the readout tick forward in years. He tested speeds, flicking
through the years, until at last he'd picked the date he wanted.

April
8, 1996. Twenty years before the Blast.

“Here
we go,” he said, and lifted his fingers. The sun rose back up above them, then
crashed below into the street. Soon scaffolding grew in front of the buildings
across the way, and when they disappeared, it was dirtier. Cars streamed by,
impossible to see, until everything slowed. The cabs were no longer hybrids,
but were still bright yellow. The only store remaining from Charlotte's time
was a bodega. The sign was different, but bore the same name it would in thirty
years.

“Monroe
and I are six,” Charlotte said, gazing down the street. “Only now warming up to
Dad.” She couldn’t remember most of the details, just flashes of a large warm
hand clasped around hers, a dress that she swore she’d never wear, Dad taking
her side in an argument with Monroe.

“I
figured I’d set up shop here,” Bill said. “That way I could look for days,
weeks, whatever. And once I come home, no time at all will have passed for you
and Monroe.”

Days,
weeks, months, it could even be years. How long would Paris actually give them?
Or if hardly any time passed for Charlotte, would he not care? What metric was
he using? She shook the questions away. They were, all of them, impossible to
answer. “Well, if you’re going to live here, you’ll need cash. And some ID or
other, even if it’s a bit fake.”

“Yeah.
I’ll probably have to rent an apartment from someone who doesn’t care about
legitimacy.”

“The
money I’ve got covered,” Charlotte said, reaching into the purse around Bill’s
shoulder. She rifled around and pulled out a bag labeled “90s,” thick with
twenty dollar bills. “Once I learned what the astrolabe did, Leanor sent me on
a day-long trip of exchanging bills.”

She
couldn’t say how long it had actually taken. She had to pull out two thousand
dollars—across various days—then go back and exchange them every time a new
bill was released. “I just like the look of the old ones better,” she’d said,
again and again. Until she had money enough for four different periods, easily
split out into bags.

“Jeez,”
Bill said, taking the bag. “This must be around …” He opened it, flipped
through. “Five hundred dollars.”

“Around
there,” Charlotte said. “I knew it’d come in handy eventually.”

“I
actually did a little research into the ID thing, once Monroe finished yelling
at me.” He’d been that confident that she’d take his side. Or was it just a
matter of gathering information? Charlotte couldn’t decide.

Without
leaping through time at all, Bill led them to a subway and headed downtown to
the seedier streets of the Lower East Side. Together they wandered through
alleys until Bill found what he was looking for: a man with a shaved head and
tattoos riddling his arms.

Charlotte
stood behind Bill, her arms folded to show off the muscles that Bill didn’t
have. With a grateful smile to her, Bill gave the man a couple hundred dollars,
offering more on delivery. Two days forward in time, they met back up with the
man, and Bill gave him the rest of the money from the bag.

The
man counted it, nodded, and supplied Bill with more than Charlotte expected.
Not just an ID, but a Social Security card and birth certificate. A shiver ran
down Charlotte’s spine. Giving up all of the money she had for this time,
getting identification that looked completely believable … Bill must have
planned more than a crash house.

The
shiver crept away from her spine, shaking her limbs, turning her stomach,
buzzing in her mind. She’d taken his side. She’d sworn to Monroe that she
believed Bill—and she had—that he wouldn’t change the past. “Bill?” she asked
as they walked away from the alleyway. If he was going to start soon, she
didn’t have much time left with him. “What are you doing?”

They
walked along the streets of the Lower East Side, no wide canal filled with
boats in their path. In a world before the Blast, before 9/11, what could Bill
want?

“Don’t
go looking for trouble. Please,” she said, grabbing his shoulder and turning
him. He had to face her, he couldn’t just keep walking away. “Please don’t let
Monroe be right.”

He
looked her deep in the eyes, connecting with her. “I won’t,” he said. “I
promise.” And once again, she believed him.

She
looked backward toward their path, like she could see through apartments to
where the deal had gone down. Then back to Bill, to the purse at his side,
filled with too-real documents of his new existence here. “Then why do you need
such a good ID? You could’ve spent that five hundred dollars to get some crummy
apartment, to set you up for just a month.”

He
gulped hard, his eyes no longer meeting hers. Looking at the ground, the sky,
the same direction she’d looked, toward that alley. “I’m …” His green eyes
snapped onto hers. “I’m going to become a cop. Try to join the bomb squad.
Learn some tips, get stronger.”

“The
bomb squad?”

“I
know that the bomb is from the future; Monroe’s right that it has to be. But
that doesn’t mean I can’t learn how to stay calm. How to breathe, how to
look
at bombs and learn from them, even if I don’t understand the wiring. I figured
you could use the help.” Then he rushed through: “And I’ll still look for Ana.”

So
he hadn’t been lying, really. She believed he would look for Ana. Believed he
wouldn’t try to change big events. But he hadn’t told her the full truth. And
why not, when she’d taken his side?

She
let him walk now, releasing his shoulder. They got to the subway, took it up to
where she and Monroe would live, twenty-seven years from now. But she couldn’t
reply, couldn’t smile as if all was well. He’d lied, and why would he start
like that? Couldn’t he see how many liars she’d dealt with already?

Leanor
hadn’t explained that she’d invented the astrolabe to stop Ana. Ana hadn’t told
them that she was the bomber. Even Paris had never explained why he would take
Charlie if they took too long. Why add to that list?

But
she couldn’t stop him either. It
was
a good idea. Ana knew they were
after her and her bombs, so surely she’d reinvent them, change the schematics.
Charlotte could do with all the help she could get, especially since Leanor
wouldn’t come. Charlotte may have known tech, but that hadn’t kept her heart
from pounding at the top of the Octagon.