Hourglass (7 page)

Chapter 13

T
homas wanted to watch
The Godfather
. Again. I refused to surrender.

“But
The Philadelphia Story
is my favorite.” When he started to protest, I switched tactics. “Your wife is with child; you’re supposed to be catering to her every need.”

“She’s right, Thomas.” Dru nodded wisely. “And violence isn’t good for the baby.”

“The baby hasn’t even grown fingernails yet—how is he going to know we’re watching a mafia movie?”

“
She
is going to be sensitive just like her mother.” Dru looked up at him with wide eyes. “Surely you don’t want to take the risk?”

As the music that accompanied the title credits to
The Philadelphia Story
started, the doorbell rang. On my way back from the kitchen, snack bowl in hand, I called, “I’ve got it,” into the living room, and shuffled to answer the front door. Probably the pizza.

I opened the door to Michael, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, a look of misery on his face.

“Hey.” I hadn’t heard a peep from him in two days, and I felt supremely awkward. I pulled my robe closed over my purple striped sleep pants and tank top, putting the bowl of popcorn between us. “Did you need something?”

He eyed my bunny slippers. “Just you. Can we talk? Please, Emerson?”

“Give me a few minutes,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

The small lobby was deserted except for Michael when I found him there ten minutes later. I’d exchanged my robe for a sweat jacket, brushed my teeth, and at the last second sprayed on some perfume.

I left my bunny slippers on. Just to be cheeky.

I led Michael to the patio on the side of the building. It shared the same street view as the restaurant patio, as well as the same type of wrought-iron fence. Sitting down across from him at a glass-topped table, I waited for him to speak.

“I was wrong.”

Not exactly what I expected.

“Noble of you to apologize,” I said, inwardly cringing at the sarcasm in my voice, even though in my experience it was always best to run the defensive.

Michael leaned back heavily in the chair. “Listen, if you don’t want to work with me, I can try to find someone else to help—”

“No. No, I want you.” The words were out before I could stop myself. Michael’s smile was so wide, it exposed a dimple in his left cheek that I hadn’t noticed before. “To work with me.”

“Good. I promise from now on to keep any feelings I might have to myself.”

Feelings? What kind of feelings?

“There was another reason I wanted to talk to you.” He hesitated, drawing a deep breath. “You said you wanted the truth, and I want to tell you everything I can. Seeing time ripples from the past is only part of your gift.”

Gift was a really subjective term.

“There’s more?” I asked.

“This is going to sound impossible. Just hang with me. You’ve seen people from the past. Have you ever seen anyone … from the future?”

“I only see people who are dead. Dead people from the past. People from the future aren’t dead. How can a rip from the future show up in the present? Which would be their past, I guess.”

Wrinkles appeared on Michael’s forehead, I assumed from attempting to follow my logic. Understandable. I couldn’t follow it either.

“It’s not so much past, present, and future.” The creases grew deeper as he tried to explain. “It’s more fluid than that, almost parallel.”

“Then it’s inevitable?” I asked, defeated. “I’m going to have to deal with people from the future?”

He nodded. I felt like I’d been slapped across the face.

“Have you seen people from the future?” I asked.

“I started out seeing rips from the future, but now I see them from the past, too.”

Great. A whole other group of people to look out for at parties.

“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said, my voice edging closer to hysteria. “How did you know they were from the future? Did they show up in a hovercraft? With a trusty robot sidekick?”

“No.” He shook his head. His face grew more worried by the second. “At dinner you asked me about the first time I saw a rip from the past. I told you. But the very first rip I saw was from the future. We’d gone to Turner Field to watch the Braves play the Red Sox in an interleague game. The guy in line in front of me had on a World Series shirt. Something about the year—and the team that won—was off.”

Michael had been staring off in the distance as he relayed his experience. Now he focused on me.

“Two thousand four or two thousand seven?” I asked.

“Two thousand four.” He grinned. “When I reached up to touch his sleeve, my hand connected with his arm and he dissolved. I freaked, and my mom took me to the hospital. That’s how the Hourglass found me. They pay people to research that kind of thing.”

“People from the future. How strange. My rips show up in pilgrim bonnets or powdered wigs. But … people from the future. How strange,” I repeated. “Have you ever seen anyone you know?”

“Not exactly.” He looked away. His avoidance put my already overloaded senses on full alert.

“Michael?”

He said nothing but refocused his eyes on mine.

“Michael, who have you seen? Tell me.”

“I think this is a mistake,” he said, leaning forward to stand up. “Just forget it. You don’t really want to know.”

“No, I think I do.” I reached out to stop him, putting my hand on his shoulder then jerking away when the tremor started traveling up my arm. I repeated the question softly.
“Who did you see from the future?”

He exhaled and leaned back in his chair before he answered.

“You.”

Chapter 14

S
taring at Michael, I wondered which one of us was the nut job. I practiced my deep breathing, although I don’t actually know how to do deep breathing that is in any way official. But the chances were good I would pass out cold within seconds if I didn’t try.

Michael’s voice was cautious. “Em, it’s okay.”

“Don’t call me Em.” The nickname suggested way too much familiarity, which made sense, considering he knew me before I met him. Placing my forehead on the glass tabletop, I banged it a couple of times, mumbling under my breath.

I convinced myself not to run from the patio screaming, mostly because I would have to come back eventually. I did live upstairs. I was also pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to run in my bunny slippers. The fact that he saw the jazz trio at the party gave him some validity. Just a little. But now he was talking about people from the future, specifically me. I raised my head, trying not to whimper.

“I should’ve broken that more gently,” Michael said. “It’s just that when you found me you told me to—”

“Stop! Please don’t talk about anything I’ve said to you unless the words have been uttered in the past twenty-four hours. By me.” I pointed to myself for emphasis. “This me.
If
this is true”—I emitted a hysterical giggle—“how did you know who I was? Why did you believe me?”

“You were very convincing. You knew things about me, kind of like I know things about you now.”

“Like what?” The thought was intriguing enough for me to forget we were talking about the impossible.

“Let’s see. You’re a baseball junkie, an out-of-place Red Sox fan like me, but you think designated hitters are a joke,” he explained, watching my face for my reaction, clearly enjoying the upper hand even in the midst of my breakdown. “You listen to bluegrass when you’re alone because you don’t want anyone to know you like it. You had a belly ring, but you took it out before you came home and Thomas found out.” He grinned and cut his eyes to my middle. I forced myself not to squirm. “And …”

He was dead on so far. I wondered why he stopped.

“What?”

“I’m not ready to give up all my secrets. Have I been wrong about anything?”

“No.” I sniffed. “Although the designated-hitter opinion is still in development.”

“You don’t have to think about it anymore. Now you know what you decided.”

“Whatever. So, when me from the future found you”—that just sounded insane—“what did I know about you?”

“Why should I tell you?” He was having a little too much fun.

“What if this is the only chance you get?” I pointed out. “What if the information you give me right now, in this conversation, is the only time you ever tell me what it is I eventually tell you to get you to believe me?” I hoped he would answer without making me explain that again because I was having a hard time keeping up with myself.

Michael’s grin grew wider, and I had the feeling he was on to me. “You told me that my favorite ice cream is spumoni, that I got stitches when I was seven and my scar is in a really interesting place—you knew where—that I had a teddy bear named Rupert I wouldn’t part with when I was little, and that the first time I saw you, now, in the present, you would … take my breath away.”

“Well.” Heat crept up my chest to my face.

He looked up at the night sky, speaking his next words so softly I almost couldn’t hear them. “You were right.”

Deep, slow breathing, Em. Deep, slow breathing.

“When I found you … was I a time ripple?” I asked after a quiet moment.

“That’s a little complicated,” he said, drumming his fingertips on the glass tabletop again.

“Why is that your favorite answer for everything?”

He didn’t respond.

Dealing with my own anxiety, I found I couldn’t keep my legs still underneath the table. I wished urgently it wasn’t see-through. I took a breath to steady myself, knowing what I was about to ask meant either I was truly crazy or my world was about to be turned upside down.

“You said I came to you from the future. I can only think of one way that could happen if I didn’t appear to you as a rip.” Another hysterical laugh escaped from my lips, this time for a really good reason. Or a really bad reason. “Christopher Reeve and self-hypnosis? Doctor Who and his phone booth? Hermione and the Time Turner?”

“Doctor Who had a police box.” He kept his gaze level. “But I’m glad to hear it’s not a foreign concept.”

“Holy crap. You really expect me to just
buy
this?” I leaned over to put my head between my knees, shaking so hard my chair rattled. I vaguely wondered if I saved any of my medication or if I’d flushed it all. Michael could put it to good use.

“You asked me the question—”

“I know!” I sat up, closing my eyes. Before I spoke again, I lowered my voice. “Can you do me a favor and lay
all
the information on me
now
? I don’t need any bonus material to throw me over the edge later.”

Or down a flight of stairs, under a bus, and straight back to the mental ward.

“Okay. I know it sounds impossible—” he began.

My eyes flew open. “Time travel? Yes, it does! How? Why me?”

Michael frowned. “It’s kind of … genetic.”

“Like a
disease
?”

I could tell he didn’t like the analogy. “If you want to go the disease route, you could compare it to addiction. Addiction is genetic. What each person is addicted to might be different, kind of like one son is an alcoholic, the next son is a drug addict, the next is addicted to gambling, and so on.” He pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead. “None of that sounds good.”

“Nope.”

“Look at it this way. You have a special ability. Seeing ripples is like a symptom.” He growled in frustration. “I mean, an indicator. The fact that you’ve only seen people from the past so far indicates you’re able to travel to the past.”

“Mmm-hmm. So if I want to go somewhere in the past, I can? What do I have to do? Close my eyes and picture where I want to go? Click my heels together three times and say, ‘Neolithic Age’?”

“It’s a little more—”

“If you say ‘a little more complicated than that,’ I
will
scream. What about you? Can you go to the past?” Was I having this conversation? I pinched my thigh, really hard. I
was
having this conversation. “Or can you go to the future because you can see people from the future?”

“I can go to the future on my own and travel back to the present. You can go to the past on your own and travel back to the present. But if we travel together, we can go anywhere on the timeline. We’re sort of … two halves of one whole.”

“Two halves of one whole?” I blinked slowly, twice, and then leaned in close to examine his face. “Do you do drugs? Pot? Acid? What? I asked my brother if he got you fresh from rehab, but I really didn’t think it was a possibility until now.”

“I don’t do drugs, and you aren’t crazy.” He leaned toward me now, placing his hands palm down on the table. “Considering all the other things you’ve experienced, is it really so impossible to believe?”

I stared at his fingers, watching the heat from his hands fog the glass. Was it? Almost four years ago I started seeing people from different time periods who disappeared when I tried to touch them. So, no, time travel wasn’t impossible to believe. That didn’t mean I
wanted
to believe it.

Except for the connected-to-Michael thing. That part still appealed to me.

“The connection,” I said, looking up at him. “Is that why we practically short out when we touch each other?”

“Our abilities complement each other. It can create a deep bond. That’s why there’s so much … chemistry between us.” He shifted in his chair, staring at the stained concrete patio floor.

A welcome wave of relief flooded over me. I was grateful I could attach my feelings for him to something, even a scientific connection. Chemistry. I thought about the amount of energy we produced when we accidentally touched and had a brief vision of what it would be like if our lips met. Would the world explode around us?

When he started speaking, I made myself focus on what he was saying, pushing away thoughts of fireworks and detonation.

Michael continued, his embarrassment either overcome or well hidden. “The man I told you about, my mentor from the Hourglass, he and his wife had the same abilities we do, the same connections.”

Tucking the word
wife
away to think about later, I asked, “What are the other connections, besides the physical one?”

“Strong emotional ties, a visceral pull toward each other.”

I didn’t have any trouble believing that. I was more drawn to him every time I saw him. More than I was willing to admit, even to myself. “What does all this have to do with the Hourglass? Why won’t you tell me anything about it?”

“I have my reasons,” he said. “There are things you can’t know yet—”

“You said you’d tell me everything,” I accused. “I need to know
everything
.”

“I did tell you everything. About you.” He stood abruptly, staring over the edge of the patio down onto the street. “You’ve seen time-travel movies. Parts of them are true. Events can be manipulated, but usually not without consequences.”

Michael turned back and crouched down, balancing on the balls of his feet at my eye level. “I’m not just here to help you understand what you see and why. I’m here to watch out for you and to …”

He broke off. I got the feeling he almost revealed something he didn’t want to share.

“Don’t stop now,” I said.

“This is where the visceral thing comes in.” He took my hands in his. “Either you trust me or you don’t.”

I didn’t know about trusting him. I did know I didn’t want him to stop touching me. I was getting used to the intensity. He leaned closer. I lost myself in the depths of his warm brown eyes, wondering if his lips would be warm, too …

Michael slowly inched forward before losing his balance and tipping to one side. He uttered a low curse under his breath and stepped away.

“You … You rule breaker!” My mouth dropped open, and I propelled myself up and out of the chair, poking him in the chest. “You almost kissed me!”

Michael backed up into the wrought-iron fence. “No, I didn’t.”

He didn’t mean it. I took a step closer and spoke in a whisper. “Liar.”

Running his hand over his face, he groaned in defeat. In one movement he turned so I was the one with my back pressed against the cold metal. The benefit was that my front was pressed against Michael.

He bent down, burying his face in my neck. I reached back to grab onto the iron bars behind me to hold myself up. My jacket slipped off my shoulders. I was pretty sure I was on fire, and at that moment I would have sworn that bursting into flame was a glorious way to go.

I’d never touched alcohol—doesn’t mix too well with crazy pills—but I knew at that moment what it must feel like to be drunk. Everything in my world shifted, and I knew I would trade every breath I’d ever taken for more of him. In a heartbeat.

Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw a red blinking light.

Security camera.