Loop (3 page)

Two hundred years of interest. Leto smiled as the potential amount dawned on me.

“But if I got caught—”

“You gonna get caught?” Leto scowled.

“No.” What he asked of me could land me in prison. “No, I mean, I won’t do it.”

“These, heh, transactions happen all the time. No different from your school assignments.”

It was completely different from our school assignments. Different from legitimate chronocourying. Anything delivered to the past had to pass strenuous scrutiny for era appropriateness—a fancy way of saying it had to belong in that time. Had to already exist. And it couldn’t result in any personal gain on the sender’s or receiver’s part.

Leto was right on one account, though. The black market for illegal deliveries to the past was alive and well. Technology, medicine, and probably unsavory things that never made the news. But that didn’t mean I wanted anything to do with it. I looked away.

“Suit yourself.” Leto patted my mom’s foot on his way out. “I thought you might be … motivated. But maybe you like your free options.”

I shot Leto a dirty look behind his back. We both knew there was only one free option, even though I didn’t see it as an option at all. I squeezed Mom’s hand and willed her to squeeze back. But of course she didn’t.

“Wait,” I said before he reached the door. “Just this one time?”

He nodded.

“And you’d pay all my mom’s bills?”

Leto nodded again, this time more slowly.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “But how am I supposed to—”

“Shh.” He gave my cheek a not-so-gentle
thwap
. “You’re a resourceful gal. Figure it out.”

It actually wasn’t that hard, once I realized no one would check my shoes. And if I didn’t deliver this package, Leto would find someone else who would. The buyer would get his gadget one way or another. History books told us that. Leto would get his money. Whoever really invented it would go forever nameless and faceless. You can’t change the past. One of those weird temporal loops that couldn’t be explained. Also one of the reasons I sometimes didn’t blame nonShifters for not trusting us past where they could track us.

A car drove by Finn’s house—the driver craned his neck and waved as he passed. I ducked my face down. I had to get Finn and me inside the house, out of view. Then I could explain to him it was a silly misunderstanding. We’d have a chuckle, and I’d slip out the back door.

As the plan, sketchy as it was, solidified in my brain, my pit-a-patting pulse slowed its erratic pace. My training took over. I could salvage this.

“Open your door,” I said. Finn obeyed, and I shimmied over the car’s center console after him, careful to keep my gloss in contact with his back. “Now get out of the car … no, slow down … walk to the front door.”

Again, he did as he was told. His whole body trembled, and I was thankful for it. He wouldn’t detect the tremor in my own hand. Standing there, I wondered how ridiculous we’d look to a passerby. Me, a barely five-foot wisp of a thing, hijacking the silver medalist of the Nerd Olympics. Part of me wanted to reassure the poor guy that, worst-case scenario, I’d stain his expensive shirt. But that wouldn’t get me in the house. The key scratched feebly against the lock, Finn was shaking so hard at that point. His fear pushed the last bit of mine away. I grabbed his hand, shoved the key in, and pressed him inside.

There were two light switches on the electrical panel next to the door. I gouged the gloss deeper into his back and reached for the closest one, flicking it to the “on” position.

A massive blown-glass chandelier exploded to life above us and bathed the foyer in golden light. I couldn’t help but gawk at my surroundings. Vases, paintings, and tapestries lined the two-story entryway, floor to ceiling. The antiquities in that one room alone were worth several million dollars. A small Renoir hung next to one of the creepy Dutch Baroques, the kind that follows people around with its eyes. I wasn’t sure which painter it was. Vermeer, maybe? Mom would have known in an instant and would have scolded me for not remembering. One of those infuriating
Mom
things that I sometimes missed more than the stuff I was supposed to.

I snapped back to attention and, curious to what other treasures the house held, reached for the remaining switch. At first, I thought it was a dead button when nothing turned on. Then, I noticed that the top of Finn’s head had taken on an odd grass-colored tint. An eerie green light slowly filled the entire room. I looked for the source and spotted it above the doorway—three electric candles glowing like emeralds.

Holy crapoli.

“Is that a Haven Beacon?” I asked when my tongue began working again. All other thoughts slipped from my brain. The forgotten lip gloss hit the floor with a
clink
.

I’d read about Beacons, of course. I’d always found them kind of fascinating. It was an ancient tradition. Those who knew of time travelers’ existence, who passed the knowledge generation to generation, placed three green-flamed candles in their window. A glowing welcome mat—
come in, warm yourself. Your secret is safe with me.
But Havens had disappeared long before Finn’s time and centuries before mine.

I couldn’t peel my gaze from the viridian flickering. Making contact with the Haven was forbidden. Totes verbote. Our teachers claimed it would give us an unfair edge on assignments, but that wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was the threat of who we might run into at a Haven—Shifters from the past. And, more important, what information we might let slip. Most Beacons had been tracked down ages ago so our transporters could steer us away from them. How had this one managed to slip through the cracks?

Finn’s eyes grew wide. I didn’t see any answers in them, but I repeated my question.

“Is that a Hav—?”

“Are you insane?” Finn roared. He pointed at the tube of lip gloss at my feet. I felt a fleeting sense of shame as he touched the place on his side where he, moments ago, believed I’d held a firearm. “Get out of my house!”

I ignored him and looked around the room again, searching for a clue as to how a Beacon could have ended up in the possession of a kid who clearly had no idea what a Shifter was.

Finn grappled with the door’s handle behind him, not taking his eyes off me for a moment. “Out!” he shouted as he wrenched the heavy front door open.

A short, plump woman with curly auburn hair stood on the front porch. Her arms sagged with grocery bags, but her face was taut with surprise. The house key hung from her hand limply at the lock as she took the scene in. The woman’s gaze lifted to the green lights above the door, then back down to me. I glanced up at the Beacon on reflex. She narrowed her eyes in an unspoken question:
Are you what I think you are?
I looked at the wall, at the door, anything to avoid her gaze, but I could tell I hadn’t fooled her. She bobbed her head in an almost imperceptible nod.

She knew. She knew who I was—what I was. And didn’t appear fazed in the slightest.

The woman turned to Finn. “That’s hardly what I’d call hospitality, pumpkin.”

Pumpkin didn’t seem to appreciate the flippant attitude at his predicament.

“Mom, I didn’t … She isn’t … This
nut job
could have killed me. She forced me in here at gunpoint.” He gestured to the tube, which had rolled over to a nearby chair. “Okay, maybe not
gun
point. More like—”

“
Gloss
point?” A gangly girl with a dark purple streak running through her hair leaned around Finn’s mother on the porch and snickered. The girl looked a couple years younger than Finn but at the same time was a good half a head taller than him.

“Not helping, Georgie.” Finn’s mom handed the grocery bags to the girl. “Take these to the kitchen, then unload the rest from the car.”

Finn opened his mouth to protest, but his mother silenced him with one arch of her eyebrow. When she turned back to me, her expression softened. She walked into the foyer, holding both hands out.

“Welcome to our home, honey,” she said in a dripping southern drawl. “I’m Charlotte Masterson. Would you care to stay for dinner—I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

Finn looked back and forth between his mom and me with his jaw hanging open. Charlotte gave his chin a gentle tap as she passed. “Don’t let the flies in.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t stay.” I had to get out of there.

“Hush now,” she said. “Nothin’ fancy.”

I gave the green lights a significant look and said, “I have a task to do.”

I’d lost enough time as it was. I had to find that grave. Not to mention get in touch with this black market buyer. I never should have agreed to do it on this mission. Well, I mean, I never should have agreed to do it, period. I just didn’t realize how blarked up this midterm would get.

Charlotte leaned around Finn and switched off the Beacon. “I’ll set a plate for when you change your mind.”

“Are you kidding me?” Finn said. “Hey, while we’re at it, let’s drop by the county jail and invite a few prisoners.”

His mother rolled her eyes and tossed him her key fob. “I’m sure it was all a misunderstanding. Go pull the car around to the garage and help Sissy unload it.” Finn didn’t budge, so she added, “
Now,
please.” More
“now”
than “please.”

When the door slammed behind him, Charlotte let out one of those sighs they must teach when you become a mother.

“What was your name again?” she said.

“Bree.” Might as well tell her, since her son already knew it.

“My, but you’re a slight thing.” She took a step back and gave me a look like she was sizing me up for a roaster pan. “Doesn’t your mama feed you?”

“Actually, I go to a boarding school.”

In the setting sun it might have been a trick of the light, but I could swear all the color drained from her face. “I see.” Charlotte changed the subject: “When John gets back from wherever he is, I’m sure he’d like to meet you. He loves to talk … timey stuff with other people like him.”

“John?”

“My husband.”

“Is a
Shifter
?”

“Yes.”

A Shifter’s house. I was at a blarking
Shifter
’s house. It was the rule that didn’t have a number.
The
Rule: If you should see a Shifter Past, run away and very fast. Yeah, it rhymed. They said it was to help the First Years remember it, but I’ve never met anyone who didn’t know it by heart from the cradle.

This was the red flag to end all red flags. If anyone from the Institute found out I’d had direct contact with a Shifter from the past, they’d swarm this place like fly on poo. This settled it. Forget Leto’s delivery. I couldn’t risk it. He said if I changed my mind I could return the package to him, no questions asked. I still had to figure out a way to pay for Mom’s care, but I’d deal with that later.

“Obviously,” Charlotte went on, completely oblivious to my meltdown, “we haven’t told Finn and Georgie about their father’s ability yet. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t either.”

Seriously?
I mean, it wasn’t my place to judge. When I was eight, my mom had picked up a bunch of pamphlets at the doctor’s office (
“So You Think You Might Be Time-Traveling?”
) and laid them on my bed.
That
was her way of having the talk. Even though I knew … what to expect, it threw me for a loop. I was an early bloomer. At eleven, the blinkies started, little micro-Shifts a few seconds and minutes back before synching up to real time. After three days straight of me complaining of wicked déjà vu, Mom clued up and took me to get microchipped. But then again, by my time Shifters hadn’t had to conceal their identities for almost half a century. Maybe keeping your kids in the dark was normal in their time.

Hard to know anything that was normal for Shifters this far back. It wasn’t like we could ask them.

“When are you from?” asked Charlotte, as if she were inquiring about the weather.

“I … I’d rather not say.”

“Oh, don’t worry. John and I have been married almost twenty years. I’m the model of discretion.”

I shook my head. Charlotte didn’t press further.

My mission timer beeped, one hour. A fresh wave of panic crashed over me. I had one goal now. Finish this midterm and finish it fast. No red flags in my report, and I’d be in good shape to do a different delivery for Leto on my next assignment.

“Do you come to the twenty-first century often? You’re always welcome here.” Charlotte pointed up at the lights.

“Umm, no.” I glanced at the door. I had to get out.

She must have thought I was looking at the Haven Beacon. She flicked it on and off a few times in an absentminded way. “Not even sure why we keep this thing around—more sentimental than anything. John’s gotten out of a few sticky jams thanks to the Haven. But I’m surprised you even knew what it was.”

“Pre-Schrödinger Elements of Shifting,” I said without even thinking. Apparently, I was on track to throw out every Rule of Shifting on this trip.

All of her light flicking had started to give me a headache, which was soothing in an odd way, since my head typically throbbed by this point in a mission. The lack of Buzz still disturbed me. It was weird enough on its own but combined with all the other inexplicable elements of this mission. Of all missions.

Charlotte’s voice turned wistful: “I’ve always wondered if—” But I didn’t get to find out what she’d always wondered. A door on the other side of the house banged open. A few seconds later Finn stomped into the living room. Georgie trailed at his heels talking eighty light-years a minute.

“So when she sat down next to you on the bus, did she
gloss
over the fact that she had a weapon?” Georgie snorted in laughter. “Oh, oh. Or did she make up a bunch of lies about where she was keeping it? Did you catch that one? It was subtle.
Makeup.
Wait, wait, I have one more.”

“Georgie.” Charlotte shot her a warning glance. “Why don’t you put away the groceries while I start dinner? And, Finn, you can help Bree with whatever it is she needs to do.”