Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) (18 page)

He didn’t say anything for about a minute. He walked to his jeep-thing and put his guitar in the back. Then he turned to me. “If she says no, how will you know I really asked her?”

“
Meg tells me
everything.”
That seemed to terrify him even more, so I amended it. “
Well, maybe not everything, but if she doesn’t tell me this, I’ll just ask her.”
I pointed at him. “So don’t chicken out.”

He smiled weakly. “I won’t.”

He hopped into the driver’s seat. I thought of something and ran up to him. “Don’t tell her I asked you to ask her.”

Now he looked disgusted. “What do you take me for?” And he gunned the engine and took off.

I
went back in the house
feeling pretty smug.
I
had made Alvin agree to ask Meg to Homecoming
, and I hadn’t used
Power to do it.

I found Meg dancing around her bedroom, alternately hugging herself and pumping her fists. “Yes!” she whooped when I came through the door. “He came to
seeeeeee
meeeee
!”

“Maybe he likes your mom’s cooking,” I suggested.

Meg threw a pillow at me.
Then she remembered what had happened. “
Omigosh
, I can’t believe you
skatched
here.”

Panic skittered through me. “Don’t say that!” I closed her door behind me. “Seriously, Meg, what if someone heard you?”

“They wouldn’t know what it meant.” But I noticed she’d lowered her voice. “Sorry. But I think we handled it pretty well, don’t you?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Well, don’t do it anymore. Because you will
never know
when Alvin might be here.” She was hugging herself again. “I can’t believe it! He just
dropped by.
I had barely gotten home—“

“Meg.” I hated to interrupt her, but if we started going over all the minutia attached to Alvin’s drop-by, hours would pass before we got to what was really important. Which was, I’
m sorry, ME and MY problems. “Don’t you want to know why I
skatched
here?”

“
S
ure.
I guess.
” She picked up the baby blanket. I had left it on the foot of her bed. “
Does it have to do with this thing
?”

She sounded a little miffed. I guess I can’t blame her. I’m sure Alvin dropping by was really huge—to her—and she would have appreciated a few more minutes of
squeeing
before I forced her to change the subject.

“Remember when
Nonny
told me last summer that she found me beside the bell at the commune gates, wrapped in a blanket?”

Meg’s
miffiness
vanished. Her eyes opened wide. “Holy cow.” She stared at the blanket. “This is it?”

I nodded. “Look at the stones.” I was whispering. Somehow it was really hard to talk about these things. My throat seemed to be closing up on me. If it were anyone but Meg, I don’t think I could have spoken of it at all.

She sat on the edge of her bed and examined the blanket closely. Her attention was utterly focused; all thought of Alvin had obviously been shelved for the moment. When Meg goes into her scientist mode, everything else takes a back seat.

“I think these rocks are
the
real
deal
,” she said at last. “And I think the pattern means something. Look at this.” She pointed to a bit of the embroidery. I sat beside her and bent over the tiny stitches she was showing me.
“
Whoever embroidered this was telling a story.
This is a man wearing armor, I think. See?”

It was very stylized, but yes, it looked like a man dressed for battle. “If you say so,” I managed to croak.
My throat was dry as toast.

“It’s not Crusader armor.
But
it’s not Japanese or anything like that—it’s Western European, I would say. But light. Maybe
seventeenth
century.”
She flew to her computer and started
Googling
while I frowned down at the embroidery.

“There’s a woman with him,” I murmured. “
At least, I think that’s what it is.
Holding his hand.” The two figures were
hard to make out,
reaching across a void filled with stars.
Or were those supposed to be sparkling jewels?

Meg had found the image she was looking for. “Plate armor wasn’t used in battle once guns came into vogue. So we’re talking early eighteenth century at the latest. Fascinating.” She bounded back to me and snatched the blanket out of my grasp. “Where’s the woman?”

I pointed.

Meg shook her head. “Nah. That’
s
a man i
n a kilt. Women didn’t wear
mini
skirts in the seventeenth century.”

“With all that long hair? And, excuse me, boobs?”

Meg looked closer.
“Huh. That’s strange. And what’s she got on her feet? Looks like Birkenstocks.” She started laughing.

But I
wasn’t laughing. I
felt a chill like a premonition going up my spine. Something was coming into focus. But it was so utterly fantastic—fantastic in the sense of impossible, a fantasy, an utter and complete fantasy—

“Zara, what’s wrong?” Meg dropped down beside me, her forehead puckering. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

My mouth was working, but no sound was coming out. I swallowed hard. “Lance…Lance told me … I’m
sure
he told me…” I took a shaky breath and tried again. “
Lance told me last summer.
Time travel is impossible.”

“Not according to Einstein,” said Meg promptly. “Why? What are you thinking?”

I stared at the blanket again. “Look,” I whispered. My finger traced the images. “A seventeenth century man.
A warrior. And a
hippie
chick from the twentieth century
. Reaching each other past the stars. Through the stars. Over the stars. Something.”
My finger traveled lower, to the embroidery directly beneath the two arching, yearning figures.

It
was my name.

“Zara.
Look,
Meggie
. Together, they made
Zara
.
”
My arms were covered in gooseflesh.

“Holy
Toledo
,” Meg breathed. Her eyes were like saucers. “You’re right.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. I had to get a grip. “But it can’t be.”

Meg snorted. “As your best friend, Zara
, I have to say—you’re in no
position to call anything impossible. Most of the stuff you do is impossible.”

“But Lance specifically
told
me it’s impossible. He ought to know.” I wracked my brain, thinking back. Is that what he’d said? Or was I remembering it wrong? “
Spellspinners
can
skatch
through
space, but not time.
It’s like the way w
e can mess with objects—you know, alter physical properties—I used to turn broccoli into ice cream
when I was little
—but we can only mess with stuff that already exists.
Here.
With us. In the present.
We
can
move things that are around us—“

“Telekinesis.”

“Okay. A
nd we can change the p
roperties of inanimate objects—“

“Alchemy.”

“Whatever. B
ut we
can’t conjure gold
out of thin air.
We can’t raise the dead.
And
we
can’t time-travel.
”

“But time travel isn’t like raising the dead. Anything that’s dead is
gone
,
it’s not here anymore. S
o bringing it back would be like conjuring gold out of thin air—that makes sense to me. If the
spirit has moved on, you can’t call it back
. But time—”
She shook her head slowly. “Zara, time is different. It’s here.
The past, the present and the future surround us simultaneously.
People
always move through time in one direction—from the past, through the present, to the future.
It’s like
time is a river, and
we’re stuck in a current.
But if
a person
knew how to swim
…” She looked at me and shivered, then shoved her glasses higher on her nose.
“Zara, if anyone can manipulate time, you can.”

“Excuse me, but I’m about to seriously freak.”

“Me too.”

…

That night, I gave the blanket back to
Nonny
. I
didn’t even take
my power stone out. I figured I’d lived without it this long, I could live without it a little longer.

Sometime
before midnight
, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. I was amazed when it turned out to be Lance.

“You’re
calling
me? I didn’t even know you had a phone, let alone my number.”

“Can’t reach you any other way, babe. You’
re too far
away
from me
.”

“What’s up? And don’t call me ‘babe.’”

“Come to the well and I’ll tell you.”

I didn’t like this, but couldn’t put my finger on why. It
was unnerving, somehow,
to be talking to Lance and—for the first time—have no clue what he was thinking.
It
was like talking to just anybody
!
I sent my feelers out and received only the barest sense of him…not enough
to pick up emotions. Although, had they been strong, I suppose I would have. Like if he’d been furious with me, for example—which he would be, if he knew I’d found my power stone and wasn’t planning to tell him anytime soon.

Now I was glad he couldn’t pick up my thoughts.

“Is it important?”

“It’s always important.”

“Can’t you just
tell
me?”

Silence fell. I didn’t have to read
his mind to know how hard it would be
for him to tell me stuff on the phone. Lance is the most secretive person I’ve ever met.

“It has to do with your protection. Come on, Zara. Meet me somewhere. You don’t have to come here if you don’t want to.”

“Can’t
sk
… go to the park on a Saturday night.
Might
be people around.
”

“Right. And Foster’
s Freeze
is probably
open
late
on the weekend
, so that’s no good
either
.”

I thought for a couple of seconds. Then smiled. “Homeroom?”

His laugh was so subtle, I almost didn’t hear it. “Okay. I’ll be waiting.”

And he was gone.

I slipped on my shoes, counted to ten—since, if I got there first, he coul
dn’t
skatch
to me—and
skatched
.

This probably says something about us: I
skatched
to the front of the room, by the teacher’s desk. Lance was waiting for me in the darkness at the back of the room.

It
was strange to be in a schoolroom
on a Saturday night. The
green
emergency lights in the hall shone through the t
ransom with a faint, eerie glow. A
streetlight
across the parking lot
outside sent a bit of pal
e illumination through the wall of
windows
that lined one side of the room
, but most of the room was completely in shadow.
The empty d
esks looked haunted. Unnatural.

Lance strolled out from the darkness, looking completely at home—as always. “Hi,” he said.

I do wish the mere sight of him didn’t turn my bones to mush.

I leaned back against the teacher’s desk, trying to look as cool and collected as Lance. “Hi. So what’
s the deal
? I thought we took care of that protection thing this afternoon.”

“I just have to warn you, that shield we made works against all
spellspinners
.”

“That’s good.”