The Boys Are Back in Town (25 page)

In the darkness, in the branches of that tree, Will looked in the window at the sudden light in Ashleigh's eyes, as though a veil of cobwebs had been torn away, and for a moment it was as though he had not used dark sorcery to travel back in time, but rather had woken up to find that his entire life since this moment, this night, had been one long dream.

“Uncle Harry,” he said.

Ashleigh let out a long breath that ended with a tiny laugh. “Uncle Harry,” she repeated, and nodded. “And so what happens to us, Will? Me and you? We're still friends, right?” Her shoulders bobbed in the smallest of shrugs and her tone was cautious. “All of us. I know people drift apart after high school, but I have to believe this group will be different.”

Will felt queasy. “We probably shouldn't talk about this.”

She rolled her eyes. “Please. You're totally screwing up the future anyway. You're here. I've seen you. I believe you're you. You don't think I'm just going to forget that, right?” Ashleigh sat back on her haunches and sighed. “I know you had to come back. People are going to die, blah, blah, blah. But you're here now. So tell me . . .”

In that moment while she paused, he thought of a hundred questions she might ask. Would she marry Eric? Would Will marry Caitlyn? Where did she live? What did she do for a living? Did she have children? But Ashleigh asked the one question he wasn't prepared for.

“Am I happy?”

Will froze, moisture burning the corners of his eyes. His throat tightened, and try as he might he could not force himself to smile. Looking at her now, the idea of what was to come, what would happen to her, devastated him even more than it had when he had discovered it.

Her eyes widened and a look of anguish contorted her beauty. “Oh, God, Will . . .” she began, her voice cracking. “What? Tell me, what is it?”

“No.”

“No?” she demanded, cold and angry.

Shit,
he thought.
This wasn't in the plan.
“You
were
happy. That's part of the reason I'm here, Ashleigh. I'm not going to give you any other details, but yeah, you were happy. Then whoever is messing with us . . . changed things. I want to stop that from happening.”

For several seconds she quietly digested this, and then she nodded slowly. “And the group?” she asked, moving on from his unsettling response. “What about that? We're still tight?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “It's pretty amazing, actually. Not that everyone hangs together all the time, but we keep in touch. It's all good.”

How could he explain to her the bittersweet nature of the truth? They were fortunate, he knew that much. The group of them had remained friends and that was unusual. But the intensity, the passion with which they had all viewed their friendships and the world around them, was a pale shadow of what it had once been. The things that had seemed so immediate and vital when they were teenagers were fondly remembered, and that was all. Other, more adult concerns occupied their minds now. But that was a lesson Ashleigh would learn for herself as she matured. Even if he told her, she couldn't really understand until she lived it.

“Yeah,” he repeated. “It's all good.”

Her eyes seemed to focus on his face without the doubt and shock and fear that had been there before. “I feel like I just woke up.”

Will smiled softly, remembering all the secrets he and Ashleigh had shared. “From a nightmare?”

She frowned. “Not exactly. More like I was dreaming the world was this ordinary place. Now I wake up and it's anything but. But I feel like I always knew it. Isn't that weird?”

“Not really,” Will told her warmly. “You were always wishing for something amazing to happen.”

“But when it did happen, for real, you didn't say a word,” she chided him, gaze darkening.

Will felt a cold chill pass through him, an icy shiver that lingered around his heart. His nostrils flared and he shot a glance down at Brian, who still lurked at the base of the tree. He shook his head.

“I didn't want to think about it. Not ever.” Will resettled himself so that he was more comfortable, the tiny scar from Uncle Harry hidden in the autumn leaves. When he looked at Ashleigh again he could not hide the melancholy in him. “You were hoping for something wonderful. Magic is not that.”

Ashleigh widened her eyes. “But you're here. Look at this. Look at you. This is . . . this is fantastic.”

Will shook his head, icy tendrils wrapping around his heart ever more tightly. “Is it? Think about why we're here. If magic is this . . . this untapped power in the world, a way to break the code of the fabric of things, then obviously it isn't natural for a reason. This is the code of miracles. The secret pattern of the universe. It's encrypted for a reason, Ashleigh.” He stared at her, hearing the edge in his voice and wishing he could banish it. “I know it's all real. I know it exists. But maybe the reason I tried to pretend for so very long is not just that I didn't want to know, but that I realized that I shouldn't.

“Nobody should know how to do this shit. It isn't our place. That's why it's magic. Sorcery. Whatever you want to call it. It's intruding upon the mesh that makes up the fabric of the world, but without the tools to do it right.” He gestured down toward Brian, though Ashleigh couldn't see him without leaning out her window. “We're idiots. Screwing with magic gets people hurt, sometimes worse. And this . . . Jesus, I can't believe I did this. You were right, Ash. Traveling in time is like running through a minefield. We're bound to step on something that explodes.”

He felt a darkness come over him then, and Will lowered his gaze, brows knitting together. In his mind he still had so many memories, ugly pictures of Bonnie Winter's corpse and of Mike Lebo's funeral, images of Ashleigh's face changing before his eyes as someone in the past violated her, altering everything she had become.

“Listen to yourself,” Ashleigh said, a little too loudly. She glanced nervously around and then quickly scurried over to her door and peeked out. After a moment she seemed satisfied no one had heard her and she came back to the window.

“All of this stuff . . . I hear you, Will, but don't you understand how cool this is?” She shot him a look of dismay. “
My
friend Will, the guy who still lives next door? He would think it was very cool.”

“He
did,
” Will said, trying to get through to her. “I did. Until I understood what it is. What it does. You start picking at the fabric of something and it starts to unravel. That's all magic is. Unraveling. I swore I'd never go near it again. Magic is hideous. It would have been easier if I could have been clueless like everyone else. But magic tainted me, and Brian, too. Somehow traces of the old reality stayed with us. And as long as I knew how things were supposed to be, my only choice was to try to make it right.”

At last the gravity of his words seemed to sink in, to eliminate the sense of wonder and adventure that had begun to sparkle in Ashleigh's eyes. Now it had been replaced by the glint of fear. It hurt him to see that, but Will knew it was necessary. She had to see what magic was.

“All right,” she said. “So what's the plan, then? What do you need from me? What's first?”

Will paused and glanced down at Brian, whose face was barely visible in the shadows. He had not completely abandoned the idea that Brian was involved, but his behavior certainly diminished Will's suspicion. Perhaps they shared some bond now, or perhaps it was just instinct, but Brian's claims had simply
felt
true.

Now that Ashleigh had asked the question, he had to confront the reality that he and Brian didn't really have a plan beyond convincing her to help. That had seemed so insurmountable that they hadn't gotten much further.

“I'm not sure,” he said. “We can get by, food-wise, until the morning, I'm sure. Chances are we can sleep in the storage space under my porch . . .” He glanced at the house next door. “You know what I mean. Under his porch.”

“Young Will's.”

Will smiled. “I'm not exactly old.”

“Older than Young Will. Besides, I've gotta have some way to keep you two separate in my head.” Ashleigh crossed her legs and watched him expectantly, helpfully.

“I guess. Anyway, tomorrow's when we're really going to need your help. We have to figure out some kind of identities for ourselves, who we say we are if anyone asks. And we'll need the car tomorrow.”

Ashleigh grimaced. “I don't know. My parents only let me drive the Toyota, and my father always takes it on Sundays to go golfing with his friends while Mom does her whole church thing.”

The ice around Will's heart had thawed, but now a new tendril seemed to slide into his chest, coiling to strike. “But tomorrow's Saturday. The fourteenth of October.”

She thought a moment, but then Ashleigh shook her head. “Nope. No school today, Will. Tomorrow's Sunday. This is Saturday right now.”

Suddenly he began to shiver, his head shaking. The music in her room seemed far too loud, and he looked down at Brian, who was gazing curiously upward. He wanted to call down but didn't dare draw the attention of Ashleigh's parents.

“Son of a bitch,” Will murmured. He pulled himself to Ashleigh's window now and poked his head in. She backed up, startled, as he twisted around, surveying her room.

“What?” she asked in a harsh whisper.

He looked at her, frantic. “Your clock. Where is it? You . . . you used to have that one, the cat with the ticktock tail.”

“It broke,” she said, still taken aback. Then she scrambled to her bedside table and grabbed a small alarm clock from atop it. “It's—wow, I thought it was later than that. It's only quarter to ten.”

Will drew a shuddering breath and nodded to himself. “OK. OK, we've got about half an hour.”

Ashleigh frowned. “Why? What happens in half an hour?”

“If we don't do something about it?” Will replied grimly. “Mike Lebo dies.”

A
SHLEIGH STAYED CLOSE
to the garage door, out of sight of any of the windows. Her heart thundered in her chest and she stared with wide eyes at the sight of Will and Brian, at these two men who were even now stealing her father's car. With her help.

What the fuck am I doing?
she thought wildly, numb as she tried to process everything she had heard and seen this night, everything she had come to believe. Whatever whispered conversations she and Will had had with him perched in the tree in the middle of the night, whatever delicious thrills had gone through her, whatever dark fears had begun to surface in her, all of those things were hers and hers alone.

This, though, this wasn't magic. This wasn't whispers in the dark. This was two grown men stealing her father's car, and Ashleigh had given them her spare set of keys.

Her eyes felt strangely dry; it was as though she could not close them as she watched Will get into the driver's seat and give the key a quarter turn. Not enough to start the engine, but enough so that he could slip the car into neutral. Moving quickly—they had no time to spare—Brian pushed the car out of the driveway while Will steered. Ashleigh was proud of Will, seeing him like this. He was a handsome man. But Brian was the real surprise. He had always been a little doughy and more than a little sloppy. Despite the bruises on his face, it was obvious that he had changed a lot. He was handsome and fit.

It was so strange, seeing him. Seeing both of them. No matter that she already believed all of this. Just looking at them made the skin at the base of her neck prickle with the wrongness of it. They didn't belong here. And yet she was glad they had come. The very air around her seemed ominously heavy, as though there were a storm coming in. Yet the air was dry.

It wasn't that kind of storm.

Ashleigh watched for other cars on Parmenter Road, but there were none. She checked the windows of her neighbors' houses, wondering if irony would surface and she might see the face of Young Will James himself in the corner window of the house next door. But no. No sign of Young Will. Out with Caitlyn still.

The street lamp off to the right was broken, and so as Brian started to push the car again, this time down Parmenter, the two men became shadows. Only then, in the moment when Brian jumped into the passenger's seat and Will started the Toyota up, engine roaring to life, did she remember that dark silhouette in the woods at the edge of her backyard. Her breath caught in her throat now. How could she have forgotten?

Easily enough,
she realized. With Will appearing in her window and the shock that had given her, with all the startling things that she had experienced in the last forty-five minutes or so, it had been easy to forget. Now, though, the memory of that shadowy figure chilled her.

Will and Brian didn't want to talk about it, but they were magicians now. For better or worse. This time-travel shit was just one kind of magic. But if the two of them were traveling through time, doing sorcery or whatever, then who had it been back there watching her house? And had he been watching Ashleigh, or watching for Will and Brian? Someone was trying to change the past, hurting people, even killing them.

Ashleigh glanced around, suddenly very cold despite the sweatshirt she had pulled on before climbing down the tree by her window. Without another moment's hesitation she ran back around the rear of the house. Even with the moonlight, the yard seemed black as pitch, and her heart beat so hard she thought it would burst her chest. Her gaze swept to the right and she studied those woods across the yard, gasping several times when she was certain a contorted figure was moving, coming out of the trees at her, only to realize it was the wind, bending branches.

The light in her window was a beacon. She scrambled up the tree to her room faster than she ever had before, scraping the palm of her left hand before at last calming down enough to slip back into her room without making too much noise.

The music was still playing. Madonna.

Ashleigh spun around and knelt before the window again. She reached over to click off the light and then peered out into the darkness, studying the eerie topography of the woods behind the house. Her chest still hurt, and as the minutes ticked toward the moment when, according to Will, Mike Lebo was supposed to die, the only thing on Ashleigh's mind was the question of whether it would have helped them to know what she had seen. Or thought she had seen. Whether it had been important.