The Forgotten Locket (2 page)

Questions pour from his mouth so fast they leave behind tracks of fire in his throat: “Who are you? Where did you come from? Where are we? Do you know how to take us home?”

She sits down in front of him. Her eyes reflect a faraway memory. Her hand drifts to her neck and she touches a heart-shaped silver locket. “You passed through a door, didn’t you? A black door covered with carvings and marks?”

He nods. “They said it was a time machine.” The black bands around his wrists throb and itch. They weep. He forces himself not to touch them; he doesn’t want to remember the darkness.

He looks instead at her hands, at her fingers that are holding a heart. Her wrists are smooth, bare of any chains at all, but she has other marks, other scars. A thin pattern of links lies on the side of her neck like the shadow of lace.

“It
was
a time machine,” she says. “And it worked. And now you are outside of time. Beyond the reach of time.”

“Am I . . .” He hesitates, not sure if he should ask the question, not sure which answer he wants to hear. “Am I dead?”

She takes his hand in hers. His heartbeat is suddenly in her hands. She is not afraid of his wounds. “No,” she says gently. Her eyes are bright with determination. “No, you’re not.”

“Then where am I?”

“You are on the bank of the river of time,” she says. Her smile is a little lopsided on her face. “A . . . friend explained it to me like this: Time is a river. The river bends and loops and meanders, but it always, only, flows one way—away from the past, and toward the future.”

He listens, mesmerized as she speaks of the river of time and of the endlessly barren bank that runs parallel to it. She tells him the rules of his new life, of the need for balance, of how to avoid the dangers that exist for him now both in the river and on the bank.

She is patient with him, answering his questions and explaining and reexplaining until the abstract becomes concrete, until he understands. And then, when he does, when the full weight of the truth crashes down on him, she gives him hope.

“How do you know all this?” he asks. “Did you come through the door too? Are you like me? Is that why you are here?”

Her lips part; she is about to speak. Then her eyes flick up and over his shoulder.

Emotions ripple across her face, one after the other, almost too fast to identify. Almost.

Unwelcome surprise. Untapped anger. Pride and hunger. Vengeance and justice.

But also, for the first time, he sees a touch of fear in her eyes.

He starts to turn, to see what she sees, but she stops him with a touch.

“Do you trust me?” she asks.

He thinks about that question for what feels like a long time. He thinks about the last time he trusted someone, the last time someone trusted him. Does he even know how to do that anymore? Or has it been torn out of him, trapped by a slim white envelope of betrayal, burned out of him by the searing cold darkness of the black door?

He is not sure he knows the answer. He is not sure he
wants
to know the answer.

But she is waiting for him to speak. And as the reflection of fear grows in her eyes, he knows there is not much time.

If he says no, she will take flight and disappear.

His heart decides.

“Yes,” he says.

She meets his eyes. “Then don’t look back.” She jumps to her feet, pulling him with her. Their hands lock together. They run, heading into the vast unknown.

The bank slides beneath his feet, unsteady and uneven. He doesn’t know where they are going, but he keeps his eyes fixed on the girl in front of him. He doesn’t want to lose sight of her.

He can hear music rising in the distance behind him. But not the silvery, shivery chimes that accompanied him through time. This music is layered, a harmony that seems to reach out to touch the deepest part of his mind, the most secret part of his heart. This music whispers, cajoles, demands. This music is dangerous.

“Don’t,” she gasps, and he doesn’t know if she is talking to him or to the music or to whatever it was that she saw that caused her to run.

He stumbles a step trying to keep up with her. “Wait—”

“We’re almost there.” She increases her pace, lengthens her stride.

“Where?”

The music seems to increase in volume, dogging their every step, chasing them. He doesn’t want to know what might happen if it catches them.

The girl veers to the right, and even though nothing about the landscape has changed, he knows they have reached something different. Something special.

Skidding to a stop, he looks down. Just beyond his toes is a crack in the world. A deep chasm of light and motion. Fragments of shadow move in rhythm, coming together only to separate in a dance that has no beginning or end. Watching the ceaseless waves, he can hear the faint melody of the past, feel the delicate magic of the future rising up like mist.

He looks into the unspooling river of time, then down at his hands, at the shadows smudged across his wrists. He will never be free of the darkness. He knows that now.

The music is closer, heavy and insistent, trying to turn him inside out. The notes are sharp as claws, burrowing and searching and finding and taking. But the attack is not directed at him. The music wants the girl.

He sees her shoulders hunch under the onslaught. Her eyes fill with tears.

It is too much. He can’t stand aside and let her suffer. Not if there is something he can do to help.

He touches her back, her shoulder blades. She trembles like a trapped bird. He turns her to face him. He smooths back her hair, wipes the tears from her cheeks, and covers her ears with his hands.

She wraps her fingers around the black chains on his wrists. The pain is sharp. He grits his teeth. His blood smears. He shudders as a strange sense of foreboding fills him.

She closes her eyes as a flash of pain twists her face.

He can feel a shadow growing behind him, a presence close enough to touch. He can hear someone else breathing.

He tilts his head to the side, turning to see who—or what—has been pursuing them.

She tightens her grip on his wrists. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

And then she falls backward into the river.

He has no choice but to follow.

Braced for impact, he falls into the shifting, shining water. But before he goes under, he manages to catch a glimpse of the man they left behind. A man still standing on the bank of the river, a golden beam of light in his hands and a bone-white grin across his face.

For a moment, the river encircles him, embraces him, welcomes him home.

And then all is forgotten.

Chapter 1

Is this a joke?” Zo stood in front of me, all loose limbs and wide grins. “Did you really think you could escape so easily?”

I looked down at Orlando’s body at my feet. His first trip to the bank and back had left him unconscious, which was both good and bad. Part of me hoped he would stay that way, at least for a little longer. I had pulled him into the river specifically so he wouldn’t see Zo on the bank. But now Zo had followed us through the river and into a courtroom in sixteenth-century Italy.

And wherever Zo was, danger followed.

Zo strolled across the polished wooden floor. “I remember this place,” he commented as though we were on a sightseeing tour. “The judge sat there.” He pointed to a high table lined with chairs; in front of the center chair stood a golden set of scales with a small stone balanced on either side. Zo turned and pointed to a spot in front of the tall, black hourglass door, freestanding in its frame. “And I stood there.”

I shivered when I saw the dark wooden door. It was still hard to believe what I had done. I had stepped through my own time machine door and walked my way back more than five hundred years to sixteenth-century Italy. I might have doubted it for an instant, but the evidence was all around me. The room where we stood was clearly not from my time or place: no electric lights, no hum from an air conditioner. The furniture looked handmade; each chair had an individual feel to it instead of the uniform look of mass-produced materials. Even the air tasted different.

I had done it. I was here. Really here. It felt impossible, but I knew it was true.

I wished Orlando was awake and that we were alone and that we had time to talk. I knew Orlando still had questions; so did I. Like, how had we understood each other on the bank in the first place? Orlando didn’t speak English; I didn’t speak sixteenth-century Italian.

Then again, maybe it was good that Orlando was unconscious. There were some things I
couldn’t
explain. I had told him as much of the truth as I could while we had been on the bank—the rules, the warnings—but Orlando couldn’t know the rest. Not about Zo coming through the door. Not about Dante, either. Not yet. Not until I closed the loop and protected the river from Zo’s interference once and for all.

“Tony and V were over there.” Zo crossed his arms thoughtfully. “You know, they shouldn’t have sent all three of us through together. That was just asking for trouble.”

“Why did they?” I asked.

Zo shrugged. “My guess is they were still experimenting with how the machine worked and wondered if it could handle multiple people at the same time.” He looked down at Orlando on the floor. “Though clearly the machine could handle the weak and the useless.”

“He was your friend,” I snapped.

Zo shrugged again. “Friends come and go. Enemies, on the other hand, last forever.” He did his flickering trick and was suddenly standing behind me.

His quickness was disorienting, though this time I managed to follow his travels. I hadn’t been able to last time. Back when we were in the burned-out basement of the Dungeon, he and Dante were flickering too fast to track. Of course, back then, I was different. I hadn’t come through the door yet. I hadn’t traveled through time.

Zo’s mouth was too close to my ear, his hand too tight on my arm. His breath was hot on my neck. “I have something special planned for you, sweet Abby.”

“I don’t want it,” I managed to say. His nearness was unnerving.

“Too bad,” Zo said.

And this time, when he flickered, he took me with him.

• • •

I hated the bank.

Before, whenever I had traveled here I had been with someone else: Dante, Leo, even V. Or I had been safely cocooned in a dream where Dante’s voice sounded like home. Before, my trips to the bank were anomalies.

Now I had passed through the door. Now I belonged on the bank.

But I still hated it.

I hated the flatness, the emptiness. I hated how much it hurt my eyes to follow the horizon line in the distance. I hated the crushing pressure that squeezed my lungs and crushed my heart.

I remembered the first time I’d felt that overwhelming weight and how it had been Dante’s kiss that had helped protect me, acclimated me to my surroundings, and taken away the pressure and the pain. But there were no kisses for me now. There was no need.

The bank was part of my life. No one needed to protect me from it anymore. No one could. If I was going to survive here, it was going to be up to me.

So as soon as we appeared on the bank, I immediately pushed away from Zo, heading toward where I could see the river cutting a path nearby. I stumbled a step or two in my haste and had just found my footing when Zo’s voice rang out behind me.

“Don’t move.”

My body stopped cold.

“Have you forgotten the rules so soon?” Zo said. He sauntered over to where I was standing. He reached out and touched the back of my neck, and I immediately felt a zing of warmth travel down my spine. His breath lingered on my skin. “Here on the bank you have to do what I say. And I say stay.”

Part of me chafed against his command, but I had no choice. I couldn’t move a muscle, not to bend or blink. I could barely breathe.

“You are surprisingly hard to compel, Abby. Even that very first time on the bank, when you crossed the bridge and opened the door for me, I found that controlling you was a bit of a challenge. And it seems like the more you learn, the stronger you are.” He shook his head. “I foolishly thought the music alone would be enough to stop you. But then you ran from me, dragging Orlando with you, and now I see that stronger measures are required.”

Zo circled around me as he spoke, finally coming to a stop in front of me. He wore the same clothes I’d seen him in last time: heavy black boots, dark jeans, and a long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled back to display the golden chains around his wrists. His dark hair, tipped in white, was slicked away from his face. Slung over his back was a guitar, and the strap crossing his chest was embroidered with a maze of golden circles and crescents and stars.

Power emanated from him, glinting off his eyes, sparking in his smile.