The Shape Stealer (21 page)

I shuddered. “How awful. How can we stop that from happening to Will?”

Annick shook her head. “There’s no known cure. We can send him back to his time, but the other Will is there as well. Perhaps we could send him back to a more distant past … my grandfather would know what to do…” Her brows creased with worry as they did every time she mentioned her grandfather.

“If your grandfather and the other
chronologistes
had time to escape when the Malefactors attacked, they must have gone to another institute. They may well be in San Francisco waiting for us,” I said soothingly.

Annick nodded, wiped away a tear, and firmed her mouth, trying to look hopeful. “And perhaps someone there will know how to help young Will.” Then, with an impish smile, she added, “I see you’re coming to care for him, eh? Has he replaced his older self in your affections?”

“No,” I told her abruptly. “I still think he’s a silly, vain boy—but that doesn’t mean he deserves to vanish into the time stream.”

*   *   *

By the time we reached New York, though, I had revised my opinion. Young Will had spent the seven-hour flight pestering me with questions. How did the plane stay in the air without flapping its wings? Why was the food sealed in transparent wrappings? Why were the bottles of spirits so small? Why did the sunset last so long? When I explained time zones to him he’d become agitated, suspecting that I was tricking him into going back in time. As we approached our destination his questions had turned in a different—no less irksome—direction.

“Who are these friends Jay and Becky? Are they married to each other?”

“No. They’re just friends … and band mates. They play in a band called London Dispersion Force.”

I thought the name of the band would interest him, but he remained fixated on my friends—or rather, one of them. “So this Jay, he’s unmarried? And you’ve known him since you were children?”

I sighed. “Yes, but we’re just friends, not that it’s any of your business.” I didn’t mention that I’d realized last winter when I’d acquired mind-reading abilities that Jay had more amorous feelings toward me. The last thing I needed was Will feeling jealous of someone else. Hopefully Jay had gotten over his feelings for me. Becky had mentioned something in an e-mail about a Dutch girl he’d met on tour …

Mistaking my preoccupation for mooning over Jay, Will subsided into a jealous sulk for the rest of the trip, giving me time to brood over what would await me in New York. Although I’d only left for Paris two months ago, it felt as though I’d been gone much longer. Of course I had traveled back in time four hundred years in the interim, making the time seem longer. But while I might be able to explain that to Jay and Becky, who knew about the supernatural nature of last winter’s events, I had no such excuse to explain to my father why I hadn’t sent him so much as a postcard all summer.

“What troubles you, my lady?” Will asked as the plane began its descent. “Is it this Jay fellow? Are you worried he will be jealous when he sees you with me?”

“No,” I snapped, although now that he mentioned it, that
was
another possible complication. “I’m thinking about my father. I haven’t talked to him all summer.”

“And you’re afraid he’ll be angry with you? My own father had a terrible temper. Is your father … um … an able swordsman?”

I glimpsed in Will’s worried eyes a scene from his past—an angry man in a jerkin and doublet wielding a sword … and then caught a wisp of a thought.
Will Garet’s father challenge me to a duel?
I laughed out loud. “No, Roman is definitely more of a make-love-not-war kind of guy—although he does have his World War II service revolver, which he’d reported as lost in 1946 … but I’m not worried that he’ll be angry with me. I’m afraid he’ll be hurt I haven’t been in touch with him all summer. I can’t explain to him all that’s happened.”

“Don’t worry, m’lady, I have an idea…”

I would have liked to know what that idea was, but a sudden lurch in the plane as the landing gear descended wiped Will’s face clean of everything but alarm. “It’s okay,” I told him, taking his sweating hand, “we’ll face our fears together.”

*   *   *

Although I’d e-mailed ahead to tell Becky what flight I was returning on, I’d assured her that because of the ungodly five a.m. arrival time we would take a taxi into the city. I was surprised, then, to find a welcoming party waiting for us beside the luggage carousel. Becky spotted me first and let out a whoop that woke up my fellow jet-lagged, bleary-eyed passengers. She tackled me, all four feet, eleven and a half inches of pent-up energy nearly knocking me to the floor.

“James! You’re back! You look like shit! What happened to you over there? Did you—?” Her voice froze as she spotted Will. “You found him?”

Because of the complicated state of affairs, I hadn’t written to tell her that I’d found young Will and would be bringing him with me.

She let me go, approached Will who was trying to assemble his best courtier’s smile to greet Becky. “Ah, you must be the fair Rebecca—”

Becky socked him in the jaw. Will fell back into a pile of luggage.

“That’s for abandoning my friend and leading her on a wild goose chase across Europe!” Becky said to the astonished, reeling Will.

“Beck, hon, I thought we agreed to no violence.” Joe Kiernan inserted himself in front of Becky, his eyes warily on Will. For all he knew, this was the old Will—the vampire—who could snap Becky’s neck in an instant.

“
You
agreed. I never agreed to anything,” Becky sniffed, shaking her hand out. “Hey, James, your boyfriend crumpled like a piñata. What’s the deal?”

“He’s sick,” I said, helping Will up. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

“You mean you went all the way to Paris to find the schmo and he’s
not
your boyfriend?”

Hearing my father’s querulous voice, I turned and embraced him. He felt frail in my arms, and when I held him at arm’s length he looked older than I remembered. And smaller. But somehow being in his arms made me feel safe for the first time this summer.

“It’s complicated, Dad…”

“Only because your generation makes it so,” Roman James said with an expressive roll of his eyes. “You loved this Will Hughes fellow enough to travel across the ocean to find him, right?”

“Yes,” I admitted, “but—”

“No buts from you, young lady,” he said, holding up an admonitory finger and turning to Will. “And you, young man, do you love my daughter?”

Will straightened himself up under my father’s gaze, summoning all the dignity that a man who’s just been decked by a 103-pound woman can, and bowed deeply. When he lifted his head he met my father’s eyes. No mean feat when Roman James was taking you to task. “Yes, sir, I do, and what is more I most humbly beg your permission to seek her hand in marriage.”

“Harrumph,” my father said, turning to me. “See, now what’s so complicated about that?”

*   *   *

Jay met us outside the terminal with the van—an ancient sixties VW van painted in Day-Glo green and teal.

“Ohmygod,” I said, hugging Jay. “You stole the Mystery Machine from the Scooby gang.”

“We needed more room for Becky’s enormous amp,” he told me, looking over his shoulder at Will. “I see you found him. Good to see you, man.” He curled his hand into a fist and jabbed it in Will’s direction. He was only attempting a brotherly fist bump but after his experience with Becky, Will threw up his hands in self-defense.

“It’s all right, Will, Jay’s just being friendly.” I demonstrated the fist bump, and gently probed Jay’s mind. It
was
okay. Although Jay was happy to see me and still loved me like a friend, his thoughts were full of a blonde named Gisela. I didn’t probe any further.

Will returned Jay’s greeting and climbed into the back of the van with Roman, whom he’d taken an obvious liking to. Jay and Joe took the middle seats, as Becky insisted on driving and on me sitting up front with her. I had a feeling that all of this had been arranged. Jay and Joe’s loud contentious discussion of the New York Jets’ apparent decision to roll the quarterback dice on rookie Mark Sanchez formed a sound barrier between us and Will and Roman.

“Okay, James,” Becky said as she navigated out of JFK. “Spill it. Something went wrong over there. That guy … he’s not the Will Hughes you fell in love with.”

“No,” I admitted, glancing guiltily back at young Will chatting amiably with Roman. No doubt he thought he was charming my father in order to win his permission to marry me. While the idea that my father had any say in that decision rankled me, it was a natural perspective for Will, and it also softened me toward him. “He’s a younger version. You see…”

I launched gamely into an explanation of everything that had happened to me in France—modern and Renaissance. Becky listened without interruptions—a rare feat for her—and without once taking her eyes off the road as she deftly negotiated the pre-dawn traffic. When I got to the part about young Will’s increasing intolerance to sunlight, though, she glanced in her rearview mirror. We were on the Belt Parkway heading west. The sun had just appeared above the long low peninsula of Coney Island behind us.

“Hey, Roman,” she called back to my father, “would you close the curtain on that back window? The glare is distracting me.”

“Thanks,” I told her after my father cheerfully complied. “So far the sun doesn’t seem to actually burn him, but it bothers him and he’s getting weaker, while his counterpart,
my
Will, is gaining a tolerance for sunlight and getting stronger.”

“
My
Will? Are you sure that’s the one you love?”

She had that smile on her face, the one she always got when she thought she knew me better than I knew myself. It had always bugged the hell out of me. “Yes,” I answered firmly.

The corner of Becky’s mouth twitched.

“What?” I asked. “You recognized right away that that man back there is not the man I fell in love with.”

“Yeah, but he’s part of him, right? He’s his past, and if you really love someone, you love his past too.” Her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror where she could see Joe still animatedly discussing football with Jay, and she smiled again. “Even if that past included Catholic school, dating a girl named Mary Margaret McDonald, and voting for Bloomberg for mayor in 2001 and 2005.”

“Or if it included sixteen parking tickets and an arrest for making a public nuisance of herself at a demonstration for Greenpeace,” Joe remarked back without missing a beat in his conversation with Jay.

“And besides,” Becky continued, “from what your friend Annick said, it sounds like they really
are
the same person. They share the same soul—that’s why they can’t exist in the same time frame.”

“Oh man,” Jay said, leaning forward and resting his arms on the back of my seat. “It’s like that episode of
Star Trek
. The one where Kirk gets split in the transformer into Good Kirk and Bad Kirk and they fight—only they need each other to survive.”

Leave it to Jay to find the appropriate sci-fi geek reference. “How’d they get them back into one body?” I asked.

“They sent them through the transformer,” Jay supplied readily.

“Great. We don’t have a transformer.”

“Yeah, but you have this time portal thingy in San Francisco,” Becky said.

“A time portal!” Jay said loudly enough to draw Will and Roman’s attention from the back seat. “Cool!”

“We’re not even sure it’s still there,” I hissed back at Jay, hoping he’d get the hint to lower his voice. “It could have been destroyed by Dee or Marduk or the Malefactors…”

“So let me get this straight,” Becky said as she honked at a BMW trying to take the parking spot she’d spied right in front of our town house. “You have to stop Dee and Marduk from killing, and whatever other evil they’re up to, stop these crazy time-thief bastards from destroying time itself, and you have to send young Will unwillingly back in time to save your present Will. Did I leave anything out?”

“That’s about the size of it,” I admitted, sighing at the hugeness and diversity of the tasks Becky had outlined.

“Uh huh. One minute.” Becky twisted herself into a pretzel to get a good view over her right shoulder and then swung the VW van into the parking spot with barely an inch to spare. With that accomplished she turned to me and grinned. “Right, then—let’s get cracking.”

28

A Brownie Tries to Help

First, though, we had to have bagels. Maia, who managed the gallery on the first floor of the town house, had bought two dozen assorted bagels. “I bet you didn’t get these in France!” she told me, giving me a fierce hug.

“No, nor do I think I saw a single French woman to equal your sartorial splendor.”

Maia laughed and brushed away my compliment, but it was true. Today she was wearing an elegant white pleated skirt with a sleeveless black turtleneck and black ballet flats. Will was goggling at her. I introduced them and left Maia to explain to Will what a bagel was while I greeted Zach Reese, my father’s oldest friend and the gallery’s most illustrious and profitable painter. I hugged him, gratefully inhaling the scent of turpentine on his clothes. For the last decade I’d far more often smelled liquor on his breath. After my mother (whom Zach had loved) had died, Zach had stopped painting and started drinking. But last winter, shortly after I’d found the mysterious silver box and encountered an assortment of supernatural beings in New York City, Zach had started painting again—to spectacular effect. He’d had a successful show in the spring just before I’d left for France. I knew, though, through experience with artists, that success could just as often lead to chaos or failure as it could to more success.

I held Zach at arm’s length and looked at him. His eyes were clear, his skin glowed, and there were flecks of paint on his blue workshirt. “You’re painting,” I remarked.

“Am I ever!” he replied, laughing. “Like a man possessed! I’ll show you later. Eat! I bought your favorite lox from Grimaldi’s Deli.”

Since we couldn’t discuss supernatural events around Roman, Zach, and Maia, I settled down to a feast of New York bagels, lox, and cream cheese with my friends and family and heard about their lives over the last two months. The gallery was doing amazingly well, considering we had thought we were on the verge of bankruptcy last winter. Zach’s show had pulled us out of our slump, and then there’d been the unexpected sale of the two Pissarros, which I still suspected had been purchased by Will Hughes. Since then, there’d been a steady stream of new customers flocking to the gallery.