Timekeeper (22 page)

—THE HANDBOOK OF THE TIME SOCIETY

12

Michele returned to Elizabeth’s apartment in a state of fluster.

“How did that
happen
?” she exclaimed as soon as Elizabeth opened the door. “Did I just disappear into thin air from your meditation room? And was it all from hypnosis, or did I actually travel through time without a key?”

Elizabeth was beaming with pride. It was clear she’d been hoping for this result when she set up the day’s session.

“You did disappear from the room, though I wasn’t worried. I knew you were still here—just in a different year,” she said simply. “And I believe it was a combination of hypnosis with your innate time-travel abilities that caused it. In fact, have you ever noticed brief moments when you feel as if you’ve slipped into a different time—without intending to or realizing it?”

Michele nodded, remembering the dance with Philip and when she ran to the Osborne while watching time change around her.

“You see, you were so conditioned to believe that you could only travel with the key, you needed a little help from your subconscious to show that
you
are the one with the power,” Elizabeth explained. “You have a true gift, Michele—unlike anything I’ve seen before.”

Michele sank into a chair in amazement. “I—I don’t know what to say! All along I thought I was just lucky to have found my dad’s key, and of course I still think that, but now to know it’s my own ability too, is an incredible feeling. Thank you for showing me.”

“Thank
you
for letting me witness something so extraordinary,” Elizabeth returned earnestly.

Michele noticed the hour on the overhead clock and stood up. “My grandparents want me home on the early side, but before I go, there’s somewhere in particular that I need to travel to. Do you mind if I make the jump from here?”

Elizabeth grinned. “Go for it.”

And so Michele closed her eyes, focusing on the headquarters of the Time Society … where she hoped to find the remaining answers she needed.

“And
who
might you be?”

Michele’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of a man’s surprised voice. She felt herself sinking into a carpeted floor as she gripped the key necklace.

“Ahem.” The voice was back in her ear again. “Care to tell me who you are? I know you’re not registered, so how on earth did you get into the Aura?”

The Aura
. Michele sucked in her breath at the realization that she had made it—that she was finally in the place she had read and wondered so much about. She looked around at the cavernous, dark-wood lobby and her mouth fell open at the sight of all the people.

A couple sat together by the fireplace, the man dressed in a three-piece striped suit and 1920s-style Panama hat, while the woman wore a sleeveless black mod dress reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn. Through the lobby’s double doors burst a young man dressed in a silver uniform made from a fabric Michele couldn’t identify. He spoke into a device that looked like a cell phone, and a hologram of a smiling woman appeared beside him. Michele shook her head in amazement. These people were fascinating.
Timekeepers
. Each of them from a different era.

Coming out of her daze, Michele realized that the voice she had heard was speaking to her. She turned around to find herself slumped in front of a long reception desk, while a middle-aged man wearing spectacles and a nametag that read “Victor” stood, peering down at her.

“Sorry, I’m a little out of it,” she told him apologetically. “I’m Michele.”

Victor glanced down at the key around her neck, and his spine stiffened. “And what would your last name be?”

“Windsor.”

Victor immediately picked up his phone. “Ida. Michele Windsor has arrived.”

Michele eyed Victor suspiciously. The way he had spoken, it sounded like this Ida person had been expecting her.

“Follow me.” Victor slipped out from behind the reception desk.

“Where are we going?” Michele asked. “Who’s Ida?”

“Who’s Ida?” Victor repeated, in apparent disbelief at such a question. “Only the president of the Time Society!”

“What about Millicent?”

Victor looked at her sharply. “How do you know about Millicent?”

Michele bit her lip. There was no simple answer to that question. “I … I read about her.”

She followed Victor through the winding corridors until they reached a tall bronze doorframe.

“Come in,” a clear, bright voice called from behind it.

As Michele entered, she realized that this must have been Millicent’s drawing room, the setting of Irving’s confrontation with Rebecca. It looked just like his description.

Ida stood up, a mercurial figure with catlike gray eyes and short, curly dark hair. She was dressed in what looked like a business suit of the 1950s, a short-sleeved powder-blue jacket with a peplum and a full skirt. Her face had the otherworldly look of someone far older than her generation, but without the lines and wrinkles that characterized the elderly.

“Thank you, Victor.” As he left the room, Ida’s focus turned to Michele, fixing her with a scrutinizing glance.

“Hello, Michele. Please have a seat. I always wondered when you would find us. Your story is one I know so well.”

“What do you mean?” Michele pressed.

“I met your father once,” she said, her expression far-off. “I wasn’t born until 1920, but I joined the Society in my teens and quickly rose through the ranks working for them.” She gestured to her presidential surroundings, as if proving her point. “One of my assignments—missions, we call them at the Society—when I was twenty years old, was to go back in time to February the second, 1888. Strange things had happened that day, and I was instructed to be another witness to the events.

“Another Timekeeper, Hiram King, and I were to lead a girl named Rebecca Windsor around the Headquarters and show her to then-president Millicent August’s office, as if she were joining the Society,” Ida recollected. “But it was all a setup. When Hiram and I brought Rebecca into this very room, Millicent and your father were waiting to confront her, to take back the key and the power that she had stolen from Irving. She was banned from the premises and escorted back to New York, while Irving Henry became our newest member. It was a day none of us could forget. It was the first and only time we have ever had an impostor attempt to infiltrate our world.”

Ida paused for a moment, as if seeing that day all over again in her mind. She continued, “After Irving was inducted into the Society, he decided to stay here at the Aura for a while, and he chose the year 1991 for his first mission. All of our rooms are decorated and furnished in the style of the date that denotes them, and we also provide documents and literature on the era in each guestroom. So after spending a few days immersing himself in 1991, he disappeared into the future.

“One of the young Timekeepers who helped prepare Irving
went upstairs to check on him and found his room empty. We were all pleased for him, knowing this meant he must have made a successful trip into the future. But that was the last our Society ever saw of Irving Henry. He was thought to have so much potential, especially with his father having been one of Millicent’s favorites—but he never set foot near Society Headquarters again.

“Rumors floated back and forth, but no one knew the truth about Irving’s disappearance—not until the Windsors’ Halloween Ball of 1910. That was the night when you were seen dancing with Philip Walker, by the very Timekeeper who had become friends with Irving all those years ago, the girl who helped prepare him for the 1990s. She spotted your resemblance to Irving right away, but more importantly, she recognized the key. The fact that most of the guests couldn’t see you further proved that you were his daughter—a time traveler.”

Michele stared at Ida, stunned. The night of the Ball, she’d been so certain that only Clara and Philip had seen her. The knowledge that she had been watched the whole time, her actions reported on, left her speechless.

“A little digging was all it took to confirm what we had suspected: That you are not a natural child, but a child born across times. By remaining in the 1990s for so long and conceiving a child, your father broke two of our greatest laws,” Ida said frankly. “And that’s not the worst of it. One week after the Halloween Ball, Millicent August was found dead—her key stolen. Her great-niece, who was supposed to inherit Millicent’s place in the Society, never got the chance.”

Michele covered her mouth with her hands, sickened by the story. “Who would do something so evil?”

Ida looked her straight in the eye. “Rebecca. Her fingerprints were recorded when she first entered the Aura back in 1888, and those same prints were found on Millicent’s clothes the night of the murder. Two different witnesses saw a figure matching Rebecca’s description enter and exit Millicent’s house that fatal evening. There is no doubt: Rebecca killed Millicent. And now she can travel through time, she can Age Shift and thereby exist beyond her death—all because she has Millicent’s key.”

Michele gripped the sides of her chair, her stomach churning. “And now she’s after me. She’s been haunting me, trying to hurt me—and I can’t understand why.”

“It’s because you represent everything that, in Rebecca’s mind, was taken from her,” Ida explained. “She feels that your power, your key, all should have been hers instead, and would have been had she not gotten caught in her scheme. Moreover, you represent her heartbreak. The idea that Irving found love with someone else in her own family, and actually went on to have a child—it drove her mad. For some people, especially the entitled, disappointment can be the most dangerous of emotions.” Ida took a deep breath. “Rebecca found out about you the same way we all did, at the Windsors’ Halloween Ball. The one honest gift she ever had was the Gift of Sight, and she saw you too.”

“She was
there
?” Michele fought back the bile rising in her throat. “Why—why can’t someone just rip the key off her neck? She’s powerless without it.”

“It’s not that simple,” Ida said grimly. “She knows to stay away from the Society, so we have to find
her
—and that’s nearly impossible when she is no longer a living human being, but an Age Shifting spirit who can disappear at will. Death coupled with the power of Millicent’s key has made Rebecca nearly invincible.”

Michele’s head was spinning. “Wait … what do you mean, she’s an Age Shifting spirit?”

“Age Shifting is the ability to travel through time in the body of your older or younger self. So let’s say a Timekeeper the same age as Rebecca, a woman of thirty-nine in 1910, has a mission taking her to your time, 2010. But for the purposes of the mission, she needs to appear seventeen in your era. The thirty-nine-year-old would first travel back in time to when
she
was seventeen, in 1888, and must come face to face with her younger self. One person cannot physically exist in two different bodies in the same Time and place. So when the older Timekeeper grabs hold of her seventeen-year-old self, the two merge into one body. Now she is physically seventeen, but still nearly forty in mind and maturity. This ability is one of the great temptations of time travel,” Ida revealed. “The power to be young without having to relearn the lessons of youth. Larger than that, however, is the idea that through Age Shifting time travel, a Timekeeper who technically died in the twentieth century could appear in your twenty-first century as a young adult. This is what we mean by Rebecca existing beyond her death.”

“And can she stay that way indefinitely?” Michele asked, aghast. “How am I ever supposed to get rid of her if that’s the case?”

“No one can Age Shift forever,” Ida clarified. “It takes a tremendous toll on the body. We are particularly able to control it in the Society through our law that forbids Timekeepers from staying in another time past the Seven Days. Before reaching Visibility, Age Shifting can only last for hours at a time—then you are returned to the body you came from, the body of your true age. However, those who break the law and stay in another Time past the Seven Days can maintain their Age Shifting identity for much longer. Though again, it can never be permanent.”

Michele swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry.

“Tomorrow will mark the seventh day that she’s been in my time. So tomorrow she will be strong enough to—to kill me … right?”

“She’s staying the full seven days?” Ida’s face turned ashen. “Yes. Before time travelers reach Visibility, they are inhibited from affecting life. They cannot kill, nor can they conceive. But after the Seven Days have been attained … I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do but fight. Because of the laws your father broke, the two of you are not legitimate members of the Society, so I’m afraid we cannot offer you protection. But what you can do is use your key to outsmart her, by concealing yourself in different Times.”

“But I don’t want to live in hiding,” Michele said in frustration. “I want to
end
this, not continue to be at Rebecca’s mercy. Please … isn’t there
anything
I can do?”