Time Thief: A Time Thief Novel (35 page)

He didn’t like it. I could tell he really did not like it, but he had to admit that we were stuck between a rock and a hard place, and there was just nothing else we could do.

“If I am responsible for your death—,” he started to say, his fingers biting into my arms.

I bit the end of his nose. “I promise I’ll come back as a ghost and haunt you mercilessly. Peter…”

“You love me,” he said, nodding as he made that statement.

“Dammit, I wanted to say it!” I pinched his side, then
leaned into him, my mouth brushing his. “I really think I do love you, you know. I don’t know when it happened, but it did. I love your gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor eyes, and your wonderful chest with the lightning flower, and your ass and Mr. Beefy, and your sense of humor, and the way you pretend you’re all business but really aren’t. I love you, Peter Faa, and when this is done, I am going to marry you and make you the happiest man who ever lived. Now tell me you love me.”

“What makes you think I do?”

I stepped on his foot.

“Ow!” He laughed, then kissed me swiftly. “I will tell you I love you when this nightmare is over.” He looked at me long and hard. “Kiya—”

“No.” I put my fingers over his mouth. “It’ll be OK. We’ll both be OK because the shuvani will realize we’re just trying to put things right and bring a murderer to justice.”

“That doesn’t concern the shuvani in the least,” he said behind my fingers.

I replaced them with my mouth. “Do it,” I whispered against his lips. “Take the time you need from me to Travel back four days. I give it to you freely. Do it now, Peter.”

His tongue swept into my mouth, tasting, claiming, and twining around my own until my body tingled as if I were holding a live wire. I opened my eyes as the kiss ended, and saw lightning in his violet eyes. The blue white light in them blinded me, consuming me, until I fell headlong into it, and was no more.

“Y
ou know that saying about lightning never strikes twice in the same place? Well, I’m the living proof that it’s totally false.” I blinked in surprise at the words, then stood up and cheered. “He did it! And I’m alive! Woohoo!”

“Who did what? Aaaa…aaaa—”

“—choo,” I finished for Dalton. I looked around the walk-in clinic’s small reception area, nodding when it appeared to be exactly the same as I remembered it.

Dalton was the same, as well. His nose was red, his eyes were swollen and weepy, and he was covered in hives.

“Man, you really are suffering, aren’t you?” I said in commiseration with his misery.

“Does it show?” He tried to crack a smile, but failed.

“Don’t worry, Dalton, the doctor will have you de-hived in no time.”

His eyes, red and running, looked startled. “I’m sorry, but do we know each other?”

I bit my lip, realizing I’d slipped up. “Urm…yeah. We met a little bit ago.”

“I don’t remember—achoo—telling you my name.”

“You did, though,” I said, crossing my fingers at the slight aberration from the truth. He had told me his name…but that was in the previous version of this day. “You told me you were Dalton McKay at the same time I told you I was Kiya Mortenson.”

“Kiya. What a very pretty name. Would you mind handing me that box of tissue, Kiya? I appear not only to be forgetful of meeting lovely women, but I’ve also gone through my supply of tissues.”

I handed him the box and winced in sympathy when he sneezed again, mentally trying to run over anything of importance we had said to each other. Peter had never mentioned it, but I had a horrible feeling that if I did something different this time, it might affect the future in some ghastly, unimaginable way. “You’ll feel better soon,” was all I could think to say.

“I hope so. I want to get away from the vicious plant life of this area.”

“Yeah, you might want to stay out of the forest, since it’s loaded with mountain sagebrush.”

He gave me another startled glance.

I smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. “You told me you were allergic to the sagebrush at the same time we exchanged names.”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember—I suppose it’s the allergy medicine I took earlier in hopes it would make the suffering bearable. No doubt it’s muddled my brain.”

“We can’t have you muddled,” I said carefully, gently patting a spot on his arm that was free of hives. “I’m sure you have lots of important things to do here.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You just might want to rearrange any scheduled
meetings you made in the woods to a less-sagebrushy area. Somewhere that isn’t—”

The thought struck me like the bolt of lightning that had left the mark on my skin. I stared at Dalton, feeling little tingles of electricity going up and down my arms.

Dalton had been in the woods. He had met Peter there the evening that we had been caught in William’s RV. But he hadn’t been affected by the sagebrush. I cast my mind back to the entrance of the lumber camp, where Peter said that Dalton had met him. Yes, it was lined with sagebrush, long arms of which brushed against Eloise’s side every time I drove in or out.

“Holy jebus!” I shouted, standing up. No allergy medicine in the world worked so fast or so well that an allergic person would stand near a known allergen shortly after starting treatment. Which meant the man who had stood next to the sagebrush while he talked to Peter wasn’t Dalton. I had to tell him immediately. Sometime between now and four nights from now, Dalton would be killed, and someone would take his place.

I twirled around, ready to bolt, but where was I going? I had no idea where Peter had been while I was at the doctor’s office. What I needed was a way to contact him and warn him.

Like a cell phone.

I pulled out my phone, but the number that Peter had put in it wasn’t there.
Of course it isn’t,
my ego pointed out to me in a smug voice that I could have done without.
That meeting hasn’t happened yet.

“Peter!” I shouted again, and grabbed Dalton’s arm, heedless of the poor man’s hives. He squawked. I released it and apologized. “Sorry, didn’t mean to make you itch worse. What’s Peter’s phone number?”

He reared back like I had struck him. “I beg your pardon?”

“Peter’s number. Peter Faa. I need it. Desperately. I have to tell him that the you he met wasn’t really you, and that the body I found
was
you. I’m so sorry about that. I didn’t mean to step on you, but if you would just give me Peter’s cell number, I can call him and we can figure out when you were killed, and thus keep it from happening again.”

Dalton’s expression went from startled to completely blank. I realized with hindsight that I had gone about getting information the wrong way—he was a professional detective, or whatever they had in the Watch, and I had just mentioned one of the men working for him without any warning.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said stiffly, or as stiffly as he could, given his runny nose, eyes, and hives. “I would, however, like to know just who you are, and what sort of glamour you’re using on me. I’ve heard that there’s a magician in this area who is doling out unauthorized magic, and if you do not have the correct paperwork for whatever deceptive magic you are using, I’m afraid that I will have to bring you before the committee to face charges.”

“I’m not the one using a glamour. Andrew was.” The second big thought hit me then, causing me to gasp, literally gasp in realization. “That’s what he wanted it for! Don’t you see? Andrew was pretending to be you. Somehow, he found out about Peter working with you, and he did whatever it is you do to appear like someone else, and whammo! He was you. But he couldn’t be you if you were still here, so he had to off you.”

Dalton pulled out his phone and, with a wary eye on me, spoke into it softly.

I wrung my hands, ignoring my id when she warned me that such a dramatic gesture was becoming a habit. “We have to find Andrew and stop him from getting that glamour. And killing you. That’s really important. Oh, don’t you see that I have to talk to Peter? He’ll understand all of this. At least I hope he will. He should, because he said that people who were in close proximity when the time theft was conducted would remember what happened during the lost time. Oh man, what if he was wrong? What if I have to seduce him all over again?”

“That’s it,” Dalton said, getting to his feet, and immediately sneezing. “I am authorized by the L’au-dela to place you under—”

“Gah!” I yelled at him, realizing that nothing I could say would get him to give me Peter’s phone number. “Fine, I’ll go find him the hard way. But if you’re killed because I’ve spent two days trying to find him, don’t come whining to me!”

His expression was priceless, but not one that I had time to stay and enjoy. I dashed out of the doctor’s office—there was no need to stay, since I knew the lightning strike had not harmed me—and begged, pleaded, and cajoled Eloise to start.

What had Peter been doing before I had seen him in the woods, that first day when I was walking the pugs? “I don’t think he ever told me,” I said aloud as I drove down the winding mountain road toward Rose Hill. “But I bet I know someone who was completely aware of where Peter was, and what he was doing.”

I gritted my teeth as I drove the roads, aware of the
logging trucks that rumbled so ominously toward me, and careful to keep Eloise from being driven onto the side of the road again. Because I hadn’t waited at the doctor’s office as I had done the first time, I knew Gregory wasn’t right behind me on the road, but chances were fair that his cousin was at the family’s camp.

The lumber mill was just as I remembered it, from the mildewy sign on a chain across the track leading up to the mill proper, to the shiny RVs, the handful of children and women, and the shrill yapping of the pugs as Mrs. Faa hobbled forward.

“Andrew!” I yelled as I crawled out of the window of my car. “Where’s Andrew?”

“Who are you?” asked one of the grandsons—to be honest, I couldn’t tell Piers from Arderne. “What are you doing here? What do you want with Andrew?”

“Mrs. Faa, this is very important. I know you don’t give a damn what happens to me, or Peter for that matter, but an innocent man’s life is at stake, not to mention all the people who Andrew has killed.”

She stiffened up, but the pugs gamboled and frolicked around my feet. “What family are you from? You are mahrime.”

“Yes, I am, not that I appreciate you greeting me with that statement, although I guess I did just greet you with the news that I knew Andrew is the one behind all the murders that Peter is investigating.”

“Peter?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “You are a friend of Peter Faa?”

“I’m going to marry him,” I told her. “And you don’t remember this, because Peter used up a bunch of my time to Travel back four days, but I used to work for you.
I took care of the pugs. Terrance, you’ll get slivers in your naughty bits if you try to get it on with that log.”

Mrs. Faa was silent for a moment. I couldn’t tell if she was stunned or angry, or what—her wrinkled face seemed to be slack and devoid of any emotion. “Peter Faa…Travelled?”

“Yeah. And your shuvani person evidently decided it was OK, because my lips are perfectly fine, and I’m not dead and all. Look, I know this is a shock, but it really is important that I find Peter before it’s too late. Before Andrew—”

“Before Andrew what?” came a low, mean voice behind me.

I spun around to face the man himself. “Before you kill Dalton McKay. Oh, don’t look so surprised—I know it was you who killed him and used the glamour you got from some magician to pretend you were Dalton. I’m sure your plan all along was to get the evidence from Peter so he couldn’t turn you in, but it’s over, do you hear me? I know what you were doing.”

The world twisted for the space between a second.

“What family are you from? You are mahrime.”

I looked at Mrs. Faa, then turned around and ran at the man who lurked at the far edge of his RV. “You do that again, and I’ll see to it that you never steal time again!” I bellowed at Andrew.

But it wasn’t Andrew who stood there. It was William, and he caught me as I flung myself forward, intending to beat the snot out of him, or at least subdue him until Peter showed up to accost me in the woods. He swung at me, sending me flying until I slammed into the side of the RV. I hit it hard enough that my vision went black for a
few seconds, but I did hear William order someone to fetch a rope.

Groggily, I tried to rally my wits, but my body didn’t seem to want to respond to my wishes. Before my vision could clear, I felt a harsh, scratchy object wrapped around my neck, following which I was jerked to my feet.

“Get the children in the caravans,” someone ordered, at the same time I was dragged backward. My eyes slowly began to focus, the blurred colorful shape before me resolving itself into Andrew’s face as he followed the person hauling me. Behind him, Mrs. Faa stood, her expression black.

“You can’t hang the girl,” she said. “She has done no crime.”

“She’s dangerous,” William growled. “I told you Peter Faa is trying to make trouble for us. She’s obviously working with him.”

“Peter’s innocent,” I choked out, struggling to pull the rope around my neck slack enough that I could take a proper breath. “It’s Andrew who is the murderer. Mrs. Faa, help me.”

She shook her head, but at the same time said loudly, “Vilem, I forbid this. She is a Traveller, although she is mahrime. We do not kill our own kind.”

“A Traveller?” William stopped for a couple of seconds as he looked down on me. “You are sure?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated, then with a grunt slammed me up against a tree trunk, throwing the rope up and over a couple of branches. “It matters not. She is mahrime. The loss of her kind will not harm us.”

I didn’t wait for him to string me up; I grabbed the rope with both hands, and bolted.

Smack-dab into Andrew.

Andrew threw a left hook that caught me under my chin, making my head snap back with an ugly sound. I was dazed, dimly aware only of the extreme pain in my head, and growing pressure on my windpipe. My id, ego, and superego all screamed at me to get a grip before it was too late, but when I finally did manage to clear my head, it was to find myself being hoisted up by the rope around my neck. I kicked and fought and tried desperately to get my fingers between the rope and my flesh, but the black spots that had appeared began to grow and leak into one another. I realized that I would asphyxiate if something wasn’t done in the next few seconds.