Timesurfers (35 page)

“Let’s go in here.” Austin tugged her into an
opulent room. Enormous tapestries hung along three walls. Her
fingers brushed the heavy black velvet curtains fastened with
silver tassels. The starless night sky was visible through a
massive circular window.

Austin’s hands cupped her face, and her body
swayed toward him. His lips brushed hers, sending shivers rippling
along her skin. He pressed his face against her chest, his breath
hot against her skin as he kissed the base of her neck. “You make
my world beautiful.”

Her fingertips traced the scars down his
cheek, and her thumb brushed across his lower lip. She hugged him
fiercely and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. “I have to find Xavier
by myself.” It was a relief to get the words out.

Austin pulled back and wiped droplets of
sweat from his forehead. “Why?”

The anguish on his face sliced through Cate’s
heart. Choosing between her family and Austin was excruciating, but
she knew she was doing the right thing. “Naitanui and Mortez can
track you. I have to find Xavier and then keep him and Mum
safe.”

“They can track you too.” The confusion and
hurt on Austin’s face made her stomach turn.

“Yes, but there’s way less chance of them
finding just me. Two of us travelling together will be much easier
to spot.” Her argument sounded feeble even to her ears.

“Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I
don’t think you can find him by yourself. You
think
Elias took him, which is based on no substantial
evidence. It could have been any Timesurfer. Let me help you.”
Austin’s eyes burned with an intensity she hadn’t seen before.

“I can find him and I will find him. You have
this great life. I won’t be the one who messes that up for you. I
don’t want you to end up despising me.” Austin had to get on with
his life. She didn’t want the two of them to end up like Rose and
Jonah. Their love destroyed them a little more every day.

“I want you in my life, Cate.” He ran his
hands over his hair in frustration.

“Keeping my family safe has to come first.
There is so much more to this than how I feel about you. No matter
how much I want to be with you it can’t happen. I don’t want anyone
to be able to use my powers as a weapon. I don’t want to be part of
this world.” Fireworks exploded over the sky. Perfectly framed by
the round window, they looked like tears rolling down a cheek.

“You disappoint me, but I won’t beg.”

The disdain and sadness in his tone pierced
her chest like a dagger. “Can you please take me to Naitanui?”

His fingers were hot and slick against her
arm. “Naitanui!”

He released her the instant they arrived at
the Break. Beads of sweat rolled down his back as he walked away
without a backward glance. Guilt
twinged
her chest with each step he took away from
her, but this was what had to happen, regardless of how
unsavoury
she found it.

Naitanui appeared on the chair at the head of
the glistening black marble table. He wore a white dinner jacket
with a black silk shirt and tie. “You’re calling it a night early,
I see.” He tugged his diamond cufflinks and straightened his
sleeves.

“I’m ready to find my brother.” Her voice was
robotic and flat.

Naitanui gave her a tight smile that didn’t
reach his eyes. “I can’t help you with that yet.”

“You said you’d help me find my brother if I
competed in the GTs.” Hysteria bubbled through her chest, raising
her voice an octave.

“When the time is right, I will.” Naitanui’s
unemotional eyes narrowed, waiting for her to piece together the
puzzle of the last few weeks. For a long moment, silence bounced
off every undulating crevice of the Break.

“You never wanted me. You wanted
her
. When future Cate wakes up and remembers all this,
you want
her
to come to you. That’s the
only way to keep your precious history untainted,” Cate said
bitterly.

“I was clear from the outset I protect
history, good and bad. I was only ever going to deal with the
Catherine in my present.”

He had been
crystal
clear about that. She dropped her forehead against the smooth, cool
marble table, deflated like a balloon stuck by a needle. “You used
me to get to her.”

“I will lower the magic wards which prevent
unauthorised
access to
the Break by Mortez and her Timesurfers at 12:12 a.m. tomorrow for
two minutes only. If you want me to help you find your brother you
will come to me then, alone.” Naitanui handed her a piece of
paper.

She read the contents aloud. “12:12 a.m.
Tuesday 17th January 2017.” He wanted her to wait three years
before he would help her find Xavier. This was going horribly
wrong. “If I choose to do this, how do I travel to the Break?”

“Just call my name and the magic will do the
rest.”

“I want to go home.”

Naitanui nodded. “Enjoy your first solo trip.
I hope you have a very happy nineteenth birthday tomorrow if I
don’t see you.”

Chapter 29

Another Plan

T
he twilight shadows shimmered as Rose
materialised
and strode with a
fierce grace toward the house. Jonah smiled from behind the bare
jacaranda tree. She was right on time. The curtains were drawn at
Cate’s bedroom window. Since the GTs, Cate had made the job of
surveilling her as difficult as possible. She hadn’t taken well to
being thwarted by Naitanui. Jonah jogged across the manicured
lawn.

Rose was all business. “Did you deal with
Pip?”

“Pip is sleeping peacefully courtesy of a
caramel latte laced with sleeping powder from yours truly.” Beads
of sweat trickled down Jonah’s back. Catherine was near delirious
from the raging temperature she had been running for close to
fifteen hours now. His temperature started at the GTs ball.
Whatever was going down now impacted him, Mortez, the boys, Rose,
Austin, and of course Catherine.

This was the last roll of the dice. He would
return from this trip just minutes before the midnight reset, after
which everyone’s temperatures would vanish and the altered time
line would be revealed. That altered time line would become their
new reality.

“This is risky, Jonah. If Mortez discovers
we’ve collaborated to have Cate murder Zach, she’ll make you hurt.
Regardless of the fact it’s the best thing for her. The guilt and
self-loathing Cate experiences after she kills him is paramount to
setting her on the correct path.”

He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his
shirt. “You mean the path she chose the first time?”

“Yes, the
correct
path. The one she will have to learn to live with. You’re running a
temperature and so is Austin. I can’t believe that little teenage
troll is even making
me
run a temperature.
That’s proof this alternate time line where she doesn’t kill Zach
affects us all. I’m confident in saying it won’t be for the
better.” Rose wiped droplets of sweat from her top lip.

“I think you might be right there.”

“How did you convince Zach that he was going
to be murdered? It’s worked like a charm so far.”

Jonah ran a hand through his damp hair. “He
thinks he overheard Cate and Eve hatching a plot to have Brittany
murder him with his super-duper hearing. It was a recording I
cobbled together on a mobile phone and played to myself in the
backyard.”

Rose sighed. “The young are so easily fooled.
Zach’s so full of his own self importance he wanted to believe
those two would collude to kill him. He texted Brittany to come and
visit him, and when he opened the door killed her without so much
as a hello. She’s dead, again. Zach is convinced the threat against
his life is real and he’s headed here to deal with Cate. I’ve sent
someone to keep an eye on Eve just in case he changes his mind on
the way.”

“Be vigilant. He’ll attempt to kill Cate at
the first opportunity.”

She dragged her hands down her face. “Never
have I been so tempted
not
to save
someone’s life. But I’ll do my duty. Like I always do.” Rose lifted
her damp black hair off her neck.

“How’s Austin?”

“Hot, literally. His temperature has
continued to climb since the GTs.”

Jonah brushed at the last few stubborn pieces
of hair plastered to the back of Rose’s neck. His fingers lingered
and traced the initials branded down her neck. “I’ve never wanted
to kill someone more than the animal who gave you these.”

“Let’s focus on one revenge death at a time
shall we?” Rose wriggled her phone from her back pocket. The warm
evening breeze carried the muffled ring of a mobile phone from
inside the house. Rose rolled her eyes. “Any normal teenager’s life
stands still for the phone. She doesn’t even have a signature ring
tone. The girl is so bland.”

“Hello,” Cate’s flat voice came through the
phone when she finally picked up.

“Come downstairs and let me in.”

“Well Rose, since you asked so nicely—”

Rose ended the call with a self-satisfied
chuckle. “That’ll piss her off, and guarantee she’ll tear down the
stairs to indignantly throw the door open. She’s bland
and
predictable. Go! She’ll see you.”

“I’m going. Make it happen.” He slipped into
the shadows as the painted blue door opened. As predicted, Cate was
fuming. Rose dismissed her ranting with a wave of her hand and
sauntered inside. Game on.

***

“Is anyone else home?” Rose checked the newly
redecorated lounge with a nonchalance that made Cate want to smack
her in the mouth.

“NO!” Cate threw her head back. “The boys are
at the detention centre with Mum, and as I’ve recently become an
only child, that leaves just me. What do you want?” After each
breath, her chest snapped back like a taut rubber band.

Rose’s faded black jeans fit her perfectly.
There was no way she had any weapons concealed in them. When she
lifted her arms, Cate glimpsed knife holsters under the cropped
leather jacket.

“I’m on Cate Watch tonight, so I thought I’d
come in and see how you were dealing with...everything.”

“That’s all you people do. Watch! It’s
so...insipid,” Cate growled.

Rose tapped her silver fingernails against
the railing of the polished wooden stairs. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” Cate stated emphatically. “If you
turned up and laid all the cards on the table, people would be a
hundred times more likely to do what you want.”

Rose languished on the step. “People have to
make their own decisions.”

“That is the biggest load of CRAP!” Cate
slammed the front door. “That’s your pathetic excuse for protecting
history in a passive way. Naitanui is weak. He should be helping me
find Xavier if he’s so wedded to keeping his precious history free
from manipulation.”

Rose shrugged. “Get over yourself. More than
600 people go missing without a trace in the world every day.
That’s over a million during the last five years. Naitanui doesn’t
look into all of them. Now he knows about Xavier and his connection
to you, I’m sure he’ll investigate his disappearance further.”

“Elias kidnapped him.” Cate flopped on the
step below Rose, suddenly exhausted from being angry all the
time.

“Someone
may
have
kidnapped him. That someone
could
have
been Elias. However, most Timesurfers who disappear have
inadvertently fallen in a different time line or dimension.”

“Is there a manual or something to teach
Timesurfers all this stuff?”

“You can get by with remembering four things.
Time is linear and definitive. History resets at midnight and on
February the twenty-ninth each leap year. Timesurfers should be
home by midnight to avoid the worst of the side effects of an
altered history and they always follow orders. Simple.”

“So I have to be home by midnight, or I’ll
turn into a pumpkin?” Cate snorted as she pressed her thumb into
her eye socket.

“The majority of changes will have absolutely
no impact on you. If you’re awake at midnight when history resets
and a change
does
impact you, it makes you
violently ill. There’s vomiting, fever, and other nasty things.”
Rose screwed her nose up and shuddered.

“Great.” Cate rubbed her eyes. “I’ll turn
into a sweaty, vomiting pumpkin if I stay out past midnight. Even
Cinderella had it better than me.”

Rose pointed a finger Cate’s way. “You can
learn a lesson from Cinderella. Never leave anything on a mission
someone can use to track you. She was stripped of her powers and
had to live with an insipid prince as punishment for her
carelessness with that glass slipper.”

“Cinderella wasn’t a Timesurfer,” Cate
scoffed.

“She was until she was careless,” Rose said
without cracking a smile. “History is rampant with Timesurfers who
didn’t respect their powers and follow orders.”

“Tell someone who cares.”

“Here’s another fun fact. The midnight resets
are what cause most of those nasty twenty-four hour illnesses
people say they’ve had.”

When Rose tossed her hair to the side, Cate’s
stomach clenched as she glimpsed the red marks down her neck.
“Naitanui doesn’t want me. He wants
her
.
Future Cate. I think I like Mortez better anyway. At least she does
something.”

“I’m very supportive of you continuing on
your chosen path with Mortez,” Rose growled under her breath.

Cate squeezed past Rose and stomped up the
stairs toward her bedroom. “The boys told me that Mortez was
helping me search for Xavier.”

Rose strode across the room and yanked the
gold, heavily embossed curtains open. “Well she’s either really bad
at it or just pretending.”

“Naitanui didn’t take Xavier. So it’s either
Elias or Mortez. I think it was Elias.”