Timepiece: An Hourglass Novel (14 page)

Chapter 27

A

The wound had been inflicted fourteen hours earlier, with a six-inch blade, from behind. The killer had slashed from left to right. The same way Poe cut Emerson.

There was no doubt in my mind he was the culprit.

I kept seeing the knife slice across her throat at the Phone Company, her lifeblood leaving her body. The next second, it was Dr. Turner, a man with grandchildren and a pink flower in his jacket, slumped over his desk, blood dripping to the floor.

Since the moment we’d found him, I hadn’t been able to get a grip on my own emotions. Guilt, fear—other things I couldn’t name. It all added up to something so out of control my heart kept skipping beats.

Em wasn’t any better. We’d returned to the Peabody, where she’d taken a forty-five-minute shower. Now she sat on the couch, wrapped in Michael’s arms, a complete wreck. Lily was in the shower, and I sat in a chair in the corner, trying to block everything out. Finally, I couldn’t take any more.

“Em.” I reached for her hand. She looked at me blankly. “Let me take it.”

“Take what?”

Her voice was loud, as if she’d forgotten how to modulate. I pointed at her heart.

“The pain. You want to take the pain.” Her words weren’t a question. More like an accusation. I didn’t expect the laughter that came next, or her short answer. “No.”

She was in no shape to handle her emotions on her own, especially when she didn’t have to.

“I feel it either way, whether I take them or not,” I said, attempting to persuade her.

“I’m sorry my pain is inconveniencing you.”

“You know that isn’t what I meant.” The words came out harsher than I intended. Michael sat forward in his seat. I needed to temper my response. “Don’t shut me out when I can make it better.”

The bathroom door opened, and Lily emerged with wet hair and pink cheeks. I didn’t want her to hear any of this.

“Taking my emotions won’t make it better, Kaleb.” Em acknowledged Lily but didn’t lower her voice. “If you don’t like them, get out. Go in the bedroom.”

“The bedroom isn’t far enough.” I’d be able to feel her on the opposite side of the equator. At least if I took her emotions, I’d be able to control them.

“Then go somewhere else. Leave. Go ahead!” Her shouting caught me completely off guard. The Em I knew was violent with her fists, not her words. I’d never seen her be irrational. Michael’s worry and his expression of concern told me he hadn’t, either. “Make me worry about you, as long as it makes
you
feel better.”

“How far away do you want me to go?” I asked. She was spinning like a top on the edge of a table.

“Oh, that’s right. You can leave the situation behind without even leaving the room, can’t you?” She cut her eyes in the direction of the minibar. “Just crack a few open. All kinds of teensy little bottles in there that should numb everything right up.”

Her refusal to let me help made me angry for reasons I couldn’t name. “I offered because I care.”

Michael tried to pacify me, “She’s just mad. You don’t need to take care of her. I will.”

“Like you take care of everything, right?” I asked. Something broke loose in my chest, and my rationality flew out the window, right behind Emerson’s. “You always swoop in and save the day. You saved my dad. I could have
prevented
his death if I’d been more in tune with Cat and Jack. If I had, my mom would be awake and healthy. And if I’d taken the files out of Dad’s safe when I was supposed to, Jack would have never known about Emerson. So it’s all my fault.”

From the other side of the room, I felt Lily weighing whether or not to intervene.

Michael stood up. “Don’t do this. Don’t make today about you.”

“Oh okay,” I scoffed. “Because that’s totally what I’m doing, Mike. No, wait. I wasn’t making it about me.
You
did that.”

“You did that all by yourself,” Michael said.

Our emotions reminded me of a hurricane that stayed in one place, churning up destruction and then churning it up again. But there was no eye in this storm.

“I know how Dr. Turner’s family feels,” I said. “He will
never
go home to them. He doesn’t have a second chance like my dad did. There’s no rewind or easy out for a slit throat. There was a body. A slit, bloody throat. Someone had to identify him. Someone had to claim him. And now someone has to bury him.” I laughed, but there wasn’t an ounce of mirth in it. “So, yeah, go ahead and say today is all about me.”

“Stop.” Em covered her ears. “
Stop it.
Listen to yourselves. You’re making it about both of you, and Kaleb’s right. A man is dead.” She burst into tears, sobbing like she’d never be whole again, and started to slide to the ground.

Michael caught her before she could hit.

Without another word, he scooped her up and carried her into the bedroom, kicking the door closed behind them with his foot.

I grabbed a key card from the table and ran.

Chapter 28

B

The wind blew colder than it had that afternoon. Music rolled out of every open bar, neon lights in every color of the rainbow made everything seem celebratory, and the crowd ranged through every emotion.
Lust to anger to tipsy joy.

My fake ID was solid. I needed it to work tonight. I was definitely in the market for some tipsy joy, and maybe a couple of college girls.

I wanted to forget Em’s rejection. The confusion I’d seen on Lily’s face.

I couldn’t even think of Michael’s disappointment without boiling the blood in my veins. I’d offered to lay myself open for the girl he loved, and he’d shoved it back in my face. For the first time in a while, I hadn’t had one selfish motive, and he’d blown the whole thing completely out of proportion.

I wondered what Dr. Turner’s family was doing tonight. What had his granddaughter thought when she heard that she wouldn’t be able to take her grandfather flowers anymore, except for the ones she left on his grave?

Turning in the direction of South Main, I walked toward the Orpheum Theatre. After the rip experience at Ivy Springs Cinema, I was glad to see the marquis advertising an upcoming concert by a modern band. It was nice to be firmly planted in my own reality.

Now I was ready to plow myself out of it.

I followed a crowd of frat boys into a bar called the Love Shack. Holding my ID up in front of the bouncer’s face as the line went through, I engaged the guy in front of me in conversation. Casual. Cool. Easy enough.

I plopped myself on a bar stool and ordered a gin and tonic. “Extra gin.”

The bartender, a ridiculously hot redhead with a name tag that read “Jen,” offered me a crooked smile. “Right, baby boy.”

“What do you mean, ‘right’?”

She scooped ice into a glass. “You aren’t old enough to drink.”

“I most certainly am.”
Indignant
was the perfect word to describe how I felt. Not one I’d use in everyday conversation, but still perfect. “I got in, didn’t I?”

“Where’s your stamp?” Opening a new bottle of grenadine, she poured some in the bottom of the glass, added two cherries, and topped it off with Coke.

“Stamp?”

She grinned wider. “Stay out of trouble, sugar. Come look me up when you’re legal.” She slid the cherry Coke across the counter and winked. “On the house.”

The guy beside me showed her a stamp on his hand and ordered a beer. I cussed. I’d missed that part. At least I hadn’t paid a cover.

I turned around to scan the crowd, cherry Coke in hand, and immediately spilled it all over my right shin and shoe.

Jack. Standing by the front door.

I shoved the glass into an empty hand and pushed my way through the crowded dance floor to the entrance.

Gone.

Stepping outside, I cringed when the cold wind hit the Coke on my pants. Maybe it hadn’t been Jack. Maybe my anger was playing tricks. Maybe I needed to find a bar that would serve me.

I blew into my hands to keep my fingers warm, and saw a green trolley speeding up instead of stopping as it approached Beale Street Landing.

The crowd was too thick for the trolley to be going so fast. One drunk stumble in the wrong direction and a person could meet a bloody end.

Then everything flipped to slow motion, too heavy and too thick.

The rip blended, just like the one Lily and I had experienced the day before. The dark made it harder to see specific features, but when a newsboy passed by, hawking the
Memphis Daily
, and then passed
through
a group of Elvis impersonators, I knew time was shifting again.

I rubbed my eyes with my fists and looked around for someone to touch.

A little girl wearing a white dress. She had two long pigtails, and she was skipping. Completely out of place. I reached out to touch her at the same time she dropped a penny. She chased it into the street.

The brakes of the trolley squealed, and the smell of smoke filled the air, along with a mother’s anguished cry. “No! Mary!”

What if I was wrong, and the little girl was real, not a rip? I was close enough to catch her. Without another second of thought, I ran, desperate to stop her before the unthinkable happened and the trolley mowed her down. If I was fast enough, I could knock her out of the way and roll us both to safety.

I ran.

I leapt.

I grabbed.

She dissolved.

So did the trolley.

Chapter 29

“C

“I don’t know what I saw. There was a little girl—she was there and then she was gone. Her mother called her Mary.”

She was a rip. No good way to explain that.

“The Orpheum has a few ghosts, but Mary is the most famous. Maybe you have the Sight.” The policeman had a round edge to his voice. Definitely a local. “You were here earlier, with the Turner case? After what you’ve been through today, I’m surprised that’s all you saw.”

I focused on the scratched vinyl floor, unwilling to make eye contact. The cop walked away.

All the activity in the station faded into the background when I heard his voice.

“The subconscious is a tricky thing.”

He sat two feet away from me. Weapons were everywhere, along with enough cops around to take down an elephant if it picked up the wrong peanut. I couldn’t touch him. Too many witnesses.

“Jack,” I said under my breath.

He smiled.

My fingers gripped the edge of the bench seat. I wanted them wrapped around his neck. “Why are you in Memphis?”

“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to … no, wait, I wouldn’t. I could erase your memory.”

“Convenient.”

“I won’t, though, because I want you to think about what you saw tonight.” Jack leaned over as if we were sharing a secret. “Mary meeting her death in front of a trolley car. Because that’s what really happened way back when. No one sacrificed himself to save her, and she ended up as a bloody puddle in the middle of Beale.”

Rage burned like flames behind my eyes.

“You tried to change Mary’s path,” Jack said. “You saw a tragedy about to occur, and you stepped in front of it to spare the life of an innocent.”

My arms began to shake.

“We’re more alike than you think, Kaleb.”

“No, we aren’t.” I bit off the ends of the words. “I didn’t set up an elaborate plan to change that little girl’s life. I didn’t stalk her, or let her parents die.”

“Emerson’s parents were going to die either way. I had to let them. Stepping in and changing a time line causes problems just like the ones we’re having now—problems Emerson caused by saving Michael. Rips everywhere, trying to break through the fabric of time.”

“Don’t blame Em for all of this.” I paused and made a conscious effort to lower my voice. A young girl with dark brown hair and a black eye seemed to be listening to every word I said. “You traveled when you weren’t supposed to. You and Cat did just as much or more to damage the continuum.”

“Try to tell me you’d choose otherwise.” His voice was oily. “Tell me you don’t want Emerson in your life. That you want your father to be dead.”

I clenched my teeth.

“You can’t. That’s what I need you to understand, to embrace. Let me tell you a story.”

“I’m not interested.”

“I think you want to hear this.” Jack looked down at his fingernails. “I understand you. Liam always choosing Michael over you. How you always fall short in meeting your father’s expectations. I can empathize.”

My jaw grew tighter. I didn’t want a sociopath to tap into my feelings, and I hated the fact that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t tap into his. All I got was a steady hum of self-satisfaction, and that’s because Jack wanted me to feel that emotion. Too pure to be real.

“I had a brother who got the same kind of attention Michael does. A blood brother. In our father’s eyes, he could do no wrong. Beyond that, he was a hero. I tried to be like him, tried to emulate him, but Father didn’t see me. He was blind.”

The information Dune found about Jack hadn’t included any mention of a father or a brother. Was Jack making this up to try to elicit sympathy from me, or was this really part of his past?

Jack continued, “I did things to make my father look at me. At first, it was good grades, excelling in sports. When that didn’t work, I tried other, less pleasant things. A bottle can be an attention getter and a friend. As you know.”

I was going to choke him right in the middle of the police station.

“But my father seemed perfectly willing to let me go my own way. I gave it one final wholehearted attempt, sure I’d discovered the solution to making him care.” Jack scoffed. “But all that resulted in was one dead brother and one discarded son.”

“You were disowned. That’s the thing in the past you want to change.” I finally understood. “When you figured out how to travel, why didn’t you just change it yourself? Why did you have to involve Em?”

“There wasn’t enough of the exotic matter in pill form for me to accomplish all the things I needed to do without Emerson. It simply wasn’t strong or stable enough.” He shrugged. “The further I went back, the faster it burned up, the faster I aged, the longer it took for me to recover.”

“So Em was your alternative.”

“I thought once I found Emerson, and once she was mentally healthy, I’d just need to help her understand what I’d done for her. I was sure once we connected, she’d be willing to make any number of trips for me. But she chose the Hourglass instead. And then she tricked me by keeping the exotic matter formula disk.”

“Why are you telling me this? You always have a motive. What is it this time?”

He smiled slightly. “Because we’re the same, Kaleb. The things we want from life. We’re always the last to be considered. The second choice. And we both want that to change.”

Fury. So much I shook the bench. “We. Are not. The same.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” He shrugged. “I have answers for you when you want them. Wake up. I can see you. Now you need to try to see me.”

A throat cleared. I looked up sharply at the police officer from earlier.

“You’re free to go.”

“Thanks.” I gave him a nod. “I’ll be on my way shortly. I just want to finish this conversation.”

The officer frowned. “Are you sure you’re all right? No headache or … lingering … anything?”

“I’m fine,” I said, smiling. I even threw in a thumbs-up. “And dandy.”

He nodded doubtfully and walked away, and I turned back around to face Jack.

He was gone.

But he’d left the pocket watch in his place.