Skyline (16 page)

Without
waiting, Charlotte snatched the photo from the stack and spun to the door. Her
hand reached for her purse beside the door, but there was only air.

“Where
… ?” It wasn’t on the table or the couch. She’d definitely dropped it beside
the door last night, after Bill returned it. Then she’d had a day with Bill,
discussing possible options, and then Monroe had come home.

Monroe
.

She
hadn’t grabbed it on her way out before, too irritated to stop, wanting to make
a point of her own with a slammed door and not a moment wasted. She’d left it
behind, and Monroe had taken advantage of that.

Charlotte
sprinted out the door, clattered down the stairs, and burst through the door
into the early evening. What if they hadn’t gone to the cheese bar at all? If
they’d gone through time, she’d never catch up.

She
raced along Lexington Avenue, turned onto Ninety-eighth, and turned once more
on Park. They’d be here; even if they’d gone through time, they’d return
quickly. She didn’t bother considering what would happen if they’d gone to an
unsavory future and been trapped.

That’d
mean too many months building a new astrolabe. That’d mean Paris showing up and
taking Charlie. That’d mean her traveling to the future herself, on the off
chance that she could find them. Or, worse, interrupting their timeline to stop
them, probably preventing this moment from happening.

Adding
more paradoxes to her life.

Then
she heard a loud cackle, resounding through the humid air and down the empty
street. Monroe’s laugh, followed by Bill’s low chuckle. She followed their
murmurs along Park Avenue and discovered them where she’d hoped they’d be—at
the cheese bar, sitting at a tall table that looked out an open window.

“Charrr!”
Monroe said when he spotted her.

“My
astrolabe?”

“Safe,”
Bill said, lifting the bag. “Safe.”

“Join
us, Charrrrrlotte.” Monroe said, patting one of the high bar stools beside
them.

“How
are you so drunk?” Right, the astrolabe. They must’ve traveled back, long
before she’d seen them, so that they could have a little more time. “I guess
you found a surefire way to get the tall table.” The beer-and-cheese bar was a
tiny place, always crowded. Monroe loved meeting there, but always insisted on
arriving early to get this table. In the summertime, not even noon seemed early
enough. With the window open, it was a way to stay inside the bar without
dealing with the noise.

Monroe
giggled.

“Tell
me this is the only way you used it,” Charlotte said. “Just to get a table?
Not—”

“We
didn’t go to the future,” Bill said. Before him was a simple cheese plate and a
single glass of water. Nothing like the variety of glasses around Monroe’s mac
and cheese.

Charlotte
grabbed a stool and sat outside, opposite Monroe and Bill. Behind them, as
usual, the one long table was crammed with bodies, glasses, and cheese boards.
“So where?”

Monroe
gulped, straightened himself, and took a long sip of water. “Damn, I’m drunk.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Bill? You tell ’er.”

“Monroe
had this idea,” Bill said, leaning in and quieting his tone. “That we had
another lead. The day he talked to Ana at the Blast, before she vanished. He
figured we could go, reveal ourselves to her
without
being seen by our
past selves.”

“You
didn’t—” No, if they’d changed something, Monroe would’ve been more apologetic.
He would’ve had to endure the same memory rewrite she had.

“Didn’
change a thing.” Monroe said, but held up a finger. “Just got info.”

Charlotte
watched him, then turned to Bill. “What sort of information?”

“Ana
saw
us,” Bill said. “Gave us a brief nod before she vanished.”

Charlotte
still wasn’t seeing the point. What good was a nod? “Did she come back? Appear
behind you?”

Bill
shook his head. “No. Monroe was all depressed until we realized—”

“The
dots!” Monroe yelled, holding up a triumphant fist.

The
burns of constellations.

“She
knows we can track them,” Bill said, a smile growing. She was right to leave
them be. “Ana saw it at the pier, right? When she was still against us. She
must’ve left them as they were as a clue. A way for us to follow her.”

Charlotte
leaned in. This was a lead. A better lead than the fact that Leanor happened to
be in the past with Bill, weird though it was. “And? Where did she go?”

Bill
didn’t reply at first. He gave Monroe a glance, his mustache cockeyed. “Um.”

Monroe
tugged at his ponytail before admitting, “The future. Sorry, Char.” His head
tilted; he had to press his fingers to keep it sideways, concerned. “But what
else do we have?”

Now
it was Charlotte’s turn. Just as he’d trapped her earlier by making sure she’d failed
before reveling in that failure, Monroe had asked her the perfect question. She
snapped the trap. “One other lead.” Charlotte pulled out the folded piece of
paper. Unfolded it patiently. Slid it Monroe’s way.

“My
picture?”

“Maybe
it’s a
good
thing Bill was so careless.”

But
Monroe shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

Charlotte
pointed to the white-haired woman at the edge taking notes while she watched
Bill. Monroe peered closer, blinking rapidly. He wiped his lips, his eyes
growing clearer. Sobering in a second. He must not have been as drunk as he was
acting. “Is that Leanor?”

“What?”
Bill asked. He snatched the page from Monroe’s hand. He leaned into the image
too, squinting. “That’s not her.” He looked up from the page, his eyes staring
straight into Charlotte’s. “That’s not Leanor, Charlotte. That’s
Ana
.”

Monroe
snatched the image from him. Charlotte had to go into the bar and lean over
Monroe’s shoulder just to see.

“Just
look,” Bill said, his finger on the image. “Same jacket as her. Same tight
pants. Even the hair’s similar, just
longer
.”

“But
that’s …” Charlotte gaped at the image, unable to finish. It was Leanor, there
was no question. But the jacket, the hair, the pants all pointed to Ana. How
hadn’t she seen this? “Oh, my God.”

Charlotte
was speechless. Her mentor wasn’t just someone who created time travel. She
wasn’t just the woman who’d been killed by Paris, but a woman who’d killed
thousands of New Yorkers—trapping them in some horrible distant future. And for
what? Why?

She
was also the woman working against herself. Which, of course, was why Leanor
didn’t join them to stop Ana. She wasn’t scared of Ana. She would just crumple
to the ground, pain spiraling through her brain. This was how Ana knew to give
them another clue to following Leanor’s instructions. “This is why they were so
similar,” Charlotte said, her mind whirling. “Why they both wanted to stop
Ana’s bombs. Why they both gave us just enough information to act. Not because
Ana was another assistant.”

She
thought she’d had the full picture when she visited Leanor yesterday—three
years ago. But she hadn’t known a thing.

All
this time, Leanor had planned this. The astrolabe
was
meant to send
Charlotte, Monroe, and Bill to meet Ana. Not just at the World Trade Center, or
at the Blast, but before she’d ever committed the awful act. “You’ll fix
everything,” she’d said, and now Charlotte understood. If she could prevent Ana
from ever bombing the city, then Leanor would never have to regret it. She’d
never mess with time. She’d never destroy New York City. “This is why he killed
her,” Charlotte whispered. “Paris said she deserved it, didn’t he?”

“But
then why is she
here
?” Bill asked, pointing back to the image that had
caused it all. “If he was after her, why would she be watching me? Shouldn’t
she be on the run?”

If
Charlotte was right that Leanor had gone to her death, then this was
before
that. It was before anything was set in motion. How could she know that Bill
was even searching? Maybe she was checking on him, as Leanor had always checked
on Charlotte. But she wouldn’t have met Bill. Wouldn’t know to check on him.
Which meant that maybe she was concerned about him. Worried he was a minion of
Paris’s on the lookout for her.

“We
can
ask
,” Monroe said, his eyes alight. “Before she ever gets old.”

Charlotte
fought her instinct to say no. Her idea had failed. Bill’s idea had failed. And
now they’d found a way to get back into contact with Leanor. A way that she
almost seemed to be
asking
for. Maybe this time she wouldn’t run.

“Think,
Charlotte,” Monroe said. “Maybe we can even go to Ana’s—Leanor’s—past and stop
her before she plants the bombs. This will work. We know exactly when she was,
which means we
know
it’ll be safe.” Because not only
wouldn’t
she
leap to her death, she couldn’t, to be alive as the old woman who’d fled
Charlotte yesterday.

If
it was that easy to stop herself, then why did she need to die? If they stopped
Ana, could Leanor ever exist? Could she start a company and hire Charlotte?
Could she send plans to Charlotte, be her benefactor? Or would they return to a
completely different world? “And then?” she asked. “We stop her, and then what?
Convince her to jump back in time and start a company, hire me, and then
disappear so I make the device myself? If we stop her, then we stop ourselves.
It’s a paradox.”

“That’s
what all this
is
,” Monroe pointed out. “We’re going to stop her
eventually.”

“God,
paradoxes.” Bill ran a hand over his smooth head. “That’s why I keep saying
‘timeline.’ Because a world where we can stop the Blast, clearing it for Ana to
start the Blast, but then we go back in time to stop it … It doesn’t make
sense. At a certain point, a few years ago? I just accepted it. We
can
stop Ana, paradox or not.”

Charlotte
opened her mouth to reply, but closed it. She didn’t know whether Monroe and
Bill were right. What was worse? The idea that they were caught in some loop
and could never stop Ana? Or the idea that they’d stop Ana and return to an
unrecognizable timeline? “Okay,” she said. “Paradox or not, we have to try. But
we collect information only, okay?”

Bill
nodded, and Monroe followed his nod after a moment’s hesitation. Her brother
gulped. “Why don’t you just bring him?”

So
he’d remembered the real problem. “Last time we fell down a stairwell. I’m not
going to risk Charlie’s life like that.”

“That
was Ana,” Monroe said. “This’ll be Leanor.”

“We’re
going, Monroe. Isn’t that enough? I’m still nervous about the future. I won’t
endanger Charlie any more than he already is.” She could imagine him at home, a
TV dinner on his lap as he and Felix watched the Simpsons, him cackling the
whole time, even though he didn’t understand the jokes. She raised a hand to
silence Monroe’s rebuttal. “I have to believe that he’ll be okay. We don’t know
how time works, not really. Timelines or paradoxes, we don’t know how anything
works. So we go, we get information, and we return. That’s all, okay? If we
stop the Blast, then maybe Felix and I would never meet at that memorial. Never
date. Never …” Their ending had been rewritten, but she wouldn’t let their
beginning change. Not until she knew for certain how to keep Charlie safe from
time’s ebb and flow.

Monroe
stood from his chair, slipped the image into his jeans pocket. “Okay. I trust
you.”

Hopefully
they wouldn’t return to an even worse timeline.

•
• • • • • • • • • • •

On
the night
of the Blast, police lights sparkled along this arm of the Mid River. Policemen
combed the shoreline for any sign of the bombs that had caused the destruction.
Charlotte didn’t have much time before the police would sweep past Suni’s bar,
so she checked the exact time of the constellations burned from Ana’s device as
fast as she could. Without knowing precisely where Ana had sat, Charlotte got
to the specific date easily enough. Ever since meeting Ana in the Octagon,
she’d dreamed of following dots through time again.

“December
12, 2210,” she said, returning to Bill and Monroe, who were standing beside
Suni’s, closed like every business that day. They placed their hands on her
shoulders before she could ask, but Charlotte didn’t release her grip on the
astrolabe.

The
policemen drew nearer; they’d surely question their presence when everyone else
in the city was home mourning. “We’re sure about this?” she asked, staring out
at the dark river. If this was the only way to save Leanor, she shouldn’t
question it. Especially since it’d mean getting out of the way of the police.

“Sure,”
Monroe said, squeezing her shoulder.

Bill
was slower to reply. “It’s a risk,” he said. “But where else do we have? We
could check the dots from the World Trade Center, but if Ana—Leanor—is going to
the future then …” She looked back to see his wrinkled forehead. “If it’s safe
for her, it should be safe for us.”