Time's Divide (The Chronos Files Book 3) (4 page)

“And who is this handsome young man?” Pru asks.

I reluctantly look away from the security guys and glance at Trey, who is standing a few feet to my left, looking awkward and out of place.

He moves a step toward Mom, pointedly ignoring Prudence. “Trey Coleman, Ms. Pierce. I’m pleased to finally meet you.”

Mom takes the hand he offers, giving it a momentary squeeze. “You can call me Deborah,” she says, and then she turns to Pru. “As happy as I am to see Kate, I had no idea she was joining us. I certainly didn’t know she was traveling with her . . . boyfriend. They’ve only been dating a few weeks, and—”

“Really, Deborah,” Pru says, rolling her eyes dramatically. “You’re so old-fashioned. Can’t you see they’re in love? I’m sure neither of them has eyes for
anyone
else.”

The last sentence fairly drips with sarcasm, although I’m not sure whether Pru is digging at me about the time I’ve spent lately with Kiernan or at both of us about her own little adventure in Trey’s bedroom.

Mom seems to pick up on the tone as well, because she gives Prudence a confused look before turning back to us. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Trey, even if I’m baffled at the circumstances. Does Harry know you’re here, Kate—and that you’re traveling together?”

I debate my answer for a moment. Dad has enough stress right now without landing on my mom’s dreaded List. Finally, I just nod.

“But why, Kate? It’s such a huge expense, and I told you Prudence and I would be traveling back to DC soon. I’m taking the rest of the month off—my supervisor at the university in Genoa was very understanding when I explained the situation.”

So Prudence hasn’t admitted that she was behind the research grant. Great. It may pale in comparison to everything else she’s about to hear, but that’s one more bit of unpleasantness I’ll have to break to Mom.

“It should be obvious, Deb. She couldn’t wait to meet her Auntie Prudence after all this time!”

The smile on Pru’s face is too big and too bright to seem at all sincere, at least to my eyes. Mom seems uncertain, too, but she returns the smile, nervously at first, and then her lower lip starts to tremble. She reaches out and puts one arm around Prudence and one around me, squeezing us both into a hug.

“I’m sorry, Kate,” she says, her eyes a little teary. “Of course you wanted to come. This is just so unbelievable, to find her after all this time. Are you staying here, or . . .” She glances over at Trey again, a little embarrassed.

“I have a room,” Trey says. “Not here—they were booked solid. I’m at the Park Plaza a few blocks over. I think Kate was planning to stay with you?”

I nod and smile, even though I have no intention of sleeping in London tonight. If things go as planned, Mom will be on a plane to DC and I’ll be sleeping in my bed at Katherine’s.

Prudence claps her hands, as though she feels compelled to pull everyone’s attention back to her. When her arms move, a faint sliver of vivid blue light peeks through the thick cabled fabric of her left sleeve, just below the elbow. It seems like a weird spot to strap a spare CHRONOS key, but I guess it explains her out-of-season sweater.

“Enough with the logistics!” she says. “We should celebrate! They have the most divine afternoon tea in the Library, with champagne and these little sandwiches and—”

Mom holds up a hand. “Remember, Pru?” she says in the slightly patronizing voice I recall all too well from when I was a kid and she was trying to put the brakes on my suggestion that we go to Disney World, or get a puppy, or whatever. “You asked when we checked in. We’d need reservations weeks in advance.”

Pru’s shoulders slump like a kid who’s just missed the ice cream truck. Then her eyes widen and the smile returns. She grabs the CHRONOS key on her silver chain and blinks out.

I expect Mom to be stunned, but she looks annoyed more than anything else. “Damn it! She did it again! You saw it, too, didn’t you, Kate? Trey?”

We both nod, and she continues, her voice too loud, like it always is when she’s stressed. “Well, thank God. I thought I was going crazy. It’s the third time in the past few days. Last night, before we left Italy, I was looking straight at her and . . . poof. Just poof. It’s not . . . possible!”

People are staring at us now, and not just the security guys, who are still on alert near the concierge desk. I’m not sure if anyone else saw Prudence disappear or if it’s just because Mom is freaking out, but we’re drawing far too much attention. I make a shushing noise and lead Mom back to the bench.

“That’s why I’m here, Mom. Could we go up to your room now? There’s a logical explanation for what you saw—”

“No,” she insists. “There’s not. She touches that . . .
thing
. . . and vanishes. How can there possibly be a logical explanation for that?”

“That
thing
,” I hiss in a low voice, “is called a CHRONOS key, and it’s the reason Prudence disappeared just now. Also when she was fourteen. It allows her to jump backward—or forward—in time.”

Mom’s eyes narrow, and she gives me her
yeah, right
look, but it’s not convincing. She knows something really bizarre is going on, and she must know it’s connected to the medallion. She just doesn’t
want
to believe it.

The quickest way to convince her would be a demonstration. Unlike Prudence, however, I’m not inclined to jump out in a crowded lobby, especially with the security guys watching us.

“Let’s go back to your room, okay?”

“No. We need to wait here. Pru will be back. At least, she came back the other times. But . . .” She starts looking around the lobby again. “It didn’t take this long before. She came right back.”

I tug on her arm. “Pru will go to your room if we’re not here, right?”

Trey, who has kept silent so far, leans in and adds, “You probably don’t want everyone looking on when Kate tells you what she knows about all of this.”

Mom starts to object again, then notices a middle-aged couple two benches away watching us. They look more annoyed than anything else, so I’m guessing they’re reacting to the noise rather than Prudence’s unconventional exit. The man quickly shifts his gaze to a large planter a few feet to our left when I stare back. The woman next to him watches a moment longer before deciding that same planter is fascinating.

Mom’s mouth tightens. “Let’s go.”

I watch the security guys from the corner of my eye as we head to the elevators. They seem confused. After a moment, the shorter man nods toward us, and the tall one hurries across the room. Fortunately the lobby is wide and we’re a good distance ahead of him. When the door closes in front of us, he’s still about ten paces away.

Once we’re in Mom’s room, she heads straight for the minibar. I’ve rarely seen her drink anything stronger than wine, but she tips back a tiny bottle of vodka, straight, her eyes tightly closed. A small shudder runs through her, and then she sits on the edge of one of the double beds.

After a moment, she opens her eyes. “Okay. Start explaining.”

I pull out the CHRONOS key and am about to start when I notice the window. Although Mom may have been kidding about being able to reach out and touch the Eye from her balcony, she wasn’t kidding by much. I don’t know how well the passengers can see into the rooms from the clear observation capsules that are moving slowly back toward the ground, but there’s no point in risking it.

Trey follows my gaze and pulls the curtains together. Without the bright sunlight streaming in, the medallion bathes everything in blue light. Mom and Trey can’t see it, though, so I flick on the lamp by the bed.

Sitting back down next to Mom, I hold the key out. “I know you hate this thing, and I get it. Believe me, I
totally
get it. I might be able to explain without using it, but it would take much, much longer for you to believe me.”

I run my fingers over the key to set a stable point and then roll the time back to 3:25, just after I called Mom from the lobby. “This is going to be a little uncomforta—”

“No.” Mom grabs my hand. Her fingers brush the side of the key, and she pulls them back, almost like she’s been burnt. “I don’t want you using that thing, Kate. Take it off. Put it away.”

“Sorry, Mom. I wish I could, but . . .” I pull up the stable point again, moving more quickly this time, so that I can blink out before she reacts.

Mom is standing at the window, staring out at the Thames, when I pop in. I clear my throat softly to get her attention.

She looks toward the bed where I’m sitting and says, “Oh, there you are—” before realizing it’s her daughter and not her sister in the room. Her jaw hangs open for a moment and she stands there, speechless.

“Sorry, Mom,” I repeat. “This will make more sense in about twenty minutes.” And then I jump back to 2:46, about ten seconds after I left.

Mom is sitting on the bed now instead of standing next to the window, but the stunned expression on her face is almost identical to the one she wore when I blinked in. Except she also looks like she might hurl on the rug.

“You were here . . . earlier. Why do I remember that now, when I didn’t before? What’s going on, Kate?”

“That queasy feeling would go away much faster if you’d just hold your hand against—”

“No! I’m not touching that thing. I want you to take it off. Right now. I mean it, Kate.”

“I can’t. I really, really wish I could, but things are complicated beyond belief right now, and I have to keep this on. In fact, I’ve brought a spare for you.”

“No,” she says again, scooting toward the nightstand. “Keep that thing away from me. And take it off. Please, Kate. I don’t know what kind of magic makes it work, but it’s cursed.”

“It’s not magic.” I’m about to add that it’s not cursed, either, but given the trouble the thing has brought me in the past few months, she may have a point.

“It’s from the future, early twenty-fourth century. Katherine brought it back with her to 1969. That’s the year she was stranded in. She was with a group called CHRONOS that studies history by sending people back to view events as they happened. There was . . . well, it wasn’t an accident, more of a sabotage. Since Katherine was pregnant at the time, you and Prudence were stranded, too. Pru inherited the gene that enables her to use the key. That’s why she disappeared all those years ago. The gene isn’t . . .” I pause for a moment, trying to remember the correct word. “It’s not expressed in your DNA, but you passed the trait along to me. That’s why I can see the light—remember how I called it ‘Blue Light’ when I was little? Anyway, when the gene is active, like it is for me and Prudence, the person can use the key to travel between stable points to different times and places. It’s how I got to London.”

She looks over at Trey, and he shakes his head. “No. I can’t see the light or use the key. I took the normal route—eight hours, British Airways.”

“The key is also how I went back and changed your memory. I set a stable point for this room, which means I could adjust the time on the coordinates and go back to when you were here before, just after we spoke on the phone.”

I stop for a moment, expecting her to chime in with questions. The glazed look in her eyes worries me, and I decide to give her the rest of it in small, bite-sized pieces. The part about her biological father being a megalomaniac hell-bent on destroying a sizable chunk of humanity has to be discussed, preferably before Prudence gets back. Learning that Katherine arranged her failed marriage to Dad on the off chance that they’d produce me? I’m thinking that can probably wait, along with many of the other elements that make my head spin each time I try to sort them out.

“Mom,” I begin as I pull the spare medallion from my bag. “I really
do
need you to wear this. Because what happened just now, me going back and talking to you? That was a tiny little ripple, a small time change. You remember it—and kind of don’t remember it—only because you saw it happen. You were here when I changed it. But if a major time shift happened, if someone changes the entire timeline again and you aren’t under a key, you won’t know there’ve been changes. It’s happened before. This all started back when we were in Iowa—remember my so-called panic attacks?”

That catches her attention, for some reason. She gets up suddenly from the bed, startling slightly when she notices Trey in the chair near the window, like she’d forgotten he was there. Then she gives me another odd look and goes into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

After a few seconds, I hear water running in the sink. I wait about a minute, then get up and tap on the door. No answer.

“Mom?” The water goes off, so I knock again, louder.

Trey comes up and wraps his arms around me. “Maybe you should give her a minute. This is a pretty major sensory overload the first time.”

I lean my head back against his chest. “I know, I know. But Prudence could show up any second and—”

“Want me to go into the hallway and keep watch?”

“I doubt it would give us much of a heads-up. Pru probably set a stable point in the hallway or in her room. Maybe even in here.”

“True,” he says, moving around so that he’s facing me. “Still, it might be better than nothing. Your mom seems on edge with me here. Maybe she’ll listen better if I’m not in the room. I don’t think Katherine really thought that part through. Although to be fair, I guess I didn’t, either.”

I don’t entirely like the idea of Trey hanging out in the hallway on his own. Unfortunately, there’s no good way of saying that without it sounding like I think he can’t take care of himself, and he’s probably right about Mom. So I nod. He gives me a quick kiss and steps outside.

I go back and sit on the bed, trying to wait patiently.

I’m not good at that. Maybe twenty seconds later, I say, “Mom? Trey stepped out so we can talk alone. And we really do need to talk before Prudence comes back. That could be any minute now, so could you
please
? I need your help.”

Mom comes out and leans back against the wall near the bed. She looks tired. I don’t usually think of her as middle-aged, but the lines around her eyes seem deeper than a few weeks ago.