The Golden Spiral (27 page)

I sat down across from Leo at the kitchen table.

Leo looked at me and smiled, his faded blue eyes soft and kind. “Thank you. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

I shrugged a little. “You don’t have to repay me. I just was trying to do the right thing. I wanted Dante home as much as you did.”

“I know, but if it weren’t for you—your persistence, your courage—Dante might have been lost forever and we might never have known what happened to him.” Leo drew in a deep breath. “This wasn’t the first time I thought I’d lost him. Saying good-bye to him in Italy was hard enough. But that first year after he traveled through the time machine . . .” Leo shook his head. “I wondered if he would even survive those first few months. And then I wondered, if he did survive, if there would be anything left of my brother at all, or if he’d crack under the constant pressure before he could learn to control it.”

“He doesn’t break easily, you know,” I said, glancing upward. I could hear the water of the shower running through the pipes.

“I know,” Leo said, his face serious. “But he was cracking fierce.”

“So what stopped him?” I asked, intrigued at this hidden chapter of Dante’s past. “What happened?”

Leo smiled at me. “You happened. He met you. And you brought him back to life. So, thank you, Abby. Thank you for bringing my brother back to me. In more ways than one.”

I felt the familiar prickling in my cheeks and nose that warned of tears. I took a deep breath and rubbed my eyes. “You should tell him, you know,” I said. “He should know the truth. It would mean the world to him.”

Leo’s smile turned sad. “I know. And perhaps someday I will. But not right now.”

The doorbell rang at the same time the dryer buzzed. I pushed back from the table. “Would you mind taking Dante his clothes? I’ll take care of the pizza.”

Leo had gone upstairs by the time I returned to the kitchen. I set the box down on the table and headed to the cupboard for plates and glasses.

“Need any help?” Dante asked from the doorway.

I turned around and had to stifle a gasp.

Fresh from the shower and dressed in his clean clothes, he looked like a new man. His skin gleamed like polished wood, and he had slicked back his dark hair to a blunt edge at his neckline. His confidence was back as well, a certain set of his shoulders, a look in his gray eyes that spoke of control and balance.

He locked his gaze with mine and slowly walked toward me.

I caught my breath, wondering how such a beautiful man had ended up in my kitchen, let alone my life.

He stood before me and I could smell the blend of soap and laundry detergent mixed with the musky-sweet scent that I had come to associate with Dante.

His eyes never left mine as he leaned in close, closer, and his arm brushed mine as he reached past me to pluck a glass off the shelf. “Thank you for lunch,” he said, stepping away with a grin just shy of wicked.

Clutching the stack of plates to my chest like a shield, I exhaled and tried to calm my racing heart. It wasn’t fair that just being near him could make me weak in the knees.

I joined Dante at the table, handing out plates and pizza while Leo poured water into the glasses.

There was something soothing about the routine of a meal, and I was glad that Leo had insisted we come here. I sat down, thinking that it was good to be home, even for a short time.

As we ate, I brought Dante up to date on what had been happening, Leo chiming in as needed. It was harder than I’d thought it would be to tell the story without mentioning Zo’s name. The few times I slipped up and said it out loud, I felt a shiver in the air, as though a trap was about to spring shut. I finally settled on calling him “L” for Lorenzo and hoped that Zo wasn’t listening for that particular nickname.

Some of the story Dante knew from our conversations while I’d been on the dream-side of the bank, but most of it was new. He asked a few questions, but mostly he listened quietly and attentively. Some of the details were new to Leo, too, and by the time I was done explaining everything, I had drunk two glasses of water and the last slice of pizza was long gone.

Dante was still for a moment, absorbing the flow of information. He placed his hands flat on the table and then turned his eyes to me. “You are indeed a brave woman, Abby.”

“I thought you said I was dangerous,” I said with a wry smile. My throat felt sore from the constant talking.

“Is there a difference?”

“I guess it depends on which side you are on.”

“Then I always want to be on your good side,” he said. He reached for my hand, lifting it to his lips and pressing a kiss to the curve of my palm.

I felt a shimmer of electricity run through my arm.

“Your turn to talk. Tell me about these,” I said, nodding at the gold bands around his wrists.

Dante looked down at his hands, turned them over. “I don’t know what happened. They were black when I went in, and gold when I came out.”

“L has them, you know. So does V. Did Tony?” I looked at Dante as the familiar shiver ran between us at the mention of the names. I mouthed
Sorry
and winced, reminding myself that I needed to be more careful.

Dante’s mouth thinned and a shadow rimmed his eyes in black. “If he did, I never saw them.”

I swallowed hard, remembering Tony’s fate. I traced my fingers around the gold, interlocking loops.

“What?”

I noticed that the hair on Dante’s arm stood up at my touch and I heard the quiet quiver in his voice. I smiled. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one who felt weak in the knees.

“I wonder if going through the door a second time . . .
reversed things.”

“Because we were going back in time?”

I nodded. “What if it was more literal than anyone expected? Maybe going back was like going in reverse.”

“Then shouldn’t my black chains have reversed to white? Or at least silver?”

“It’s just a working theory,” I said with a wry smile.

“But it’s a good theory,” Leo said thoughtfully. “Didn’t you say that when L changed things in your life, the world around you reversed for a moment from white to black?”

I nodded. “Though it hasn’t happened for a little while. I wonder why. I don’t suppose it’s because he has decided to leave me alone.”

“No, I don’t think so. There is something about you that has drawn his attention,” Leo said.

“Obsession is more like it,” I muttered.

Leo and Dante exchanged a glance.

“Wait,” I said, holding up my hands. “Do you guys know something I don’t? Something about L?”

Dante shifted in his chair. Leo looked away.

“What are you not telling me? Now is not the time to hold on to our secrets.” Frustration gave my words a bite, but I didn’t try to soften them.

“We all know how long L can hold a grudge,” Dante said quietly. “And we know how far he’s willing to go to exact his revenge.”

“Yeah, I know. He ruined my family and redirected the river.” I looked at Dante and shook my head. “You said letting him go was our best chance to stop him, but he’s doing whatever he wants with the river. How are we supposed to stop him now?”

“Yes, the majority of the river may be under his control, but V gave you a clue when he said he couldn’t travel beyond the point where your timeline intersected with Zero Hour.” Dante covered my hands with his. “In a way, you have already stopped him. At least a little. You are protecting a key part of the river, Abby—a part L can’t see, that he can’t touch directly. And the more you are able to bring under your protection, the more we can control where L goes and what he is able to do.
You
are the key to stopping him.”

“How can I protect the river? It’s not like I can change when I first met Zero Hour and protect more of my past.”

“No,” Leo interjected, “but you
can
protect your future—as well as the future of other people. Remember when we talked about fixing things in place?”

“You mean by taking pictures?” I asked.

Leo nodded. He stood up from the table. “I think it’s time to put our idea to the test. May I use your phone?”

I waved to the phone on the kitchen wall but kept my attention on Dante. “So why me?” I asked him, still feeling frustrated. “I’m nobody. Why isn’t he targeting you, or Leo?”

“Because neither one of us poses the kind of threat you do to his goal,” Dante answered.

“What is his goal?” I asked. “V didn’t seem to know. Or if he did, he wouldn’t tell me.”

Dante hesitated, his gray eyes dark with thought. “When you traveled to the bank today, did you notice anything different?”

“About the bank? Yeah, sure—”

“No, about how you got there. The
traveling.
”

I thought back to the moment when Leo, V, and I had slipped from here to there. “It was a lot easier to reach the bank today,” I said finally, knowing the truth before I said the words. “And I don’t think it’s because I’m getting better at it or because I had help. It’s because the barriers are thinning, aren’t they?”

Dante nodded, the shadows sharpening the angles of his cheekbones and the set of his jaw.

“What happens if the barriers between the river and the bank disappear entirely?” I asked, dread settling like a weight in my stomach. “What if all the walls come down?”

“The river and the bank can never mix—L was right when he called them oil and water. And if the barrier between them falls, both will be destroyed. The river will be polluted beyond saving. And the bank, instead of being a place untouched by time, will become a place corrupted by time.”

“It would be chaos,” I whispered.

“Worse. It would be the end of everything.” Dante’s face paled as he spoke. “If the barriers break, then Zo could simply dam the river wherever he wants and cut off the diseased portion of the bank and start over fresh. With a clean slate ahead of him, he could erase the world’s history on a whim and rewrite the future according to his desires. Nothing would happen without his hand shaping it. Only his choices would matter. Only his vision. Time itself wouldn’t even flow without his permission.”

I felt a fist of ice-cold terror grip me. I didn’t want to hear any more, but Dante wasn’t quite done.

“Change isn’t enough anymore. It’s control he’s after. Total and complete control.”

“And it’s up to me to stop him?” I asked, feeling the impossibility of the task, like being asked to hold back the tide. I hadn’t realized I was crying until Dante brushed his fingers across my cheek and they came away wet.

“Leo is immune to his actions; L
can’t
touch him. And I am more his equal than he’d probably like to admit; he
won’t
touch me—not yet. Not until he tests my limits.” Dante’s voice was low but strong. “I told you once that our best chance for success against him would come from the choices you make. You made an important choice at the door. And the choices you are making now—and those you’ll make in the future—can still change things.”

“What if I choose the wrong thing?” I asked, my voice sounding like it belonged to someone else. “What if I just make things worse?”

“You won’t,” Dante said, cupping my face with his hands. “Because I believe in you.” He leaned in and kissed me until my doubt and my tears were gone.

Leo cleared his throat behind us, and Dante let me go with one final brush of his lips across my cheek.

“I called my friend at the camera shop, and she’s willing to help us today,” Leo said, holding out the phone to me. “Call Natalie. We don’t have any time to waste.”

Chapter

19

Leo pulled up in front of the small shop at the end of the row. The building looked almost the same as the others in the strip mall: squat and square. But where the other shops were beige, brown, or gold, this one was painted black from top to bottom. Black paper covered the window next to the door, which was also dark with paint. It reminded me of Dante’s black door; what waited for me behind this black door also had the potential to change my life. I couldn’t decide if it was a good omen or a warning.

Dante, sitting next to me in the backseat, tensed at the sight. I reached over and wrapped my hand around his, feeling the strong bones beneath his skin lock into a fist.

Through the glare of the sun, I could just make out the two words written on a small sign in the window:
The Darkroom.

“This is it?” I asked.

Leo nodded, stepping out of the car and opening the back door for me. Dante did the same for Natalie, who had been sitting in the front passenger seat.

“And tell me again why we’re here?” she asked.

“Leo’s friend works here,” I said, coming around to join the three of them on the curb. “He says she can help us take some pictures.” My hand instinctively connected with Dante’s.

“It doesn’t look like a studio,” Natalie said, shading her eyes from the sun.

“It’s not,” Leo said, nodding to the sign. “It’s a darkroom. And that’s what we need.”

“Is it even open?” Dante asked, glancing at me. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s here.”