The Time Keeper (The Guardians of Time Book 1) (3 page)


Justin!

‘Shut up, you little prude.  Just shut up!’ he shouted in her face, enveloping her in the odour of stale beer. 

‘Justin, you’re drunk, you’re not thinking straight,’ she pleaded desperately, tears gathering in her eyes.  He was scaring her.  Mostly because she didn’t know how far he was going to take this against her will.

He slid one hand between their bodies and squeezed her breast through the fabric of her toga.  ‘Don’t want to think… just feel.’  He laughed at his own joke.

She shoved ineffectually against his shoulders – he was too strong.  His wet mouth trailed down her chin and nuzzled sloppily against her neck.  At the same time, his other hand reached down her leg and shoved up the skirt of her toga.  When his fingers sought the waistband of her underwear, Emilia reacted instinctively, lifting her knee sharply and connecting where it would most hurt.

Justin howled and rolled off her, curling into a protective ball as he cupped his throbbing family jewels.

‘You bitch,’ he wheezed out.

But Emilia wasn’t sticking around to listen to his recriminations.  She raced for the gazebo, straightening her toga as she ran, only slowing to a walk once she’d rounded the corner and was back amongst the other revellers.  She made her way back to Stacey and Kevin, who were sitting on the grass, wrapped in each other’s arms.

Dropping to a crouch, Emilia lightly touched Stacey’s shoulder.  Stacey turned and examined Emilia through slightly unfocused eyes.  ‘Hey.  What took you so long?’

‘Just sorting things out with Justin,’ Emilia evaded uneasily.  ‘I’m going to head off.  Are you okay catching a taxi with Kevin?’

‘You worry too much, Em.  I’ll make sure my girl gets home safe and sound,’ Kevin teased softly.  He started to untangle himself from Stacey.  ‘In fact, to demonstrate what a gentleman I am, I’ll walk you out and make sure you get in a taxi okay.’

Emilia waved him down hurriedly.  She needed to get away from everyone before she lost her composure and, much as she loved him, Kevin was still Justin’s best friend.  ‘Thanks for the offer, but I’ll get the security guard to call me a taxi and wait with me.  I’ll call you tomorrow, Stace.’

She jumped to her feet and started quickly towards the front of the house before either of them could argue with her.

‘Love you, Em!’  Stace called from behind her.

‘Love you too,’ she called back and hoped Stacey didn’t notice the strain in her voice.

As soon as she cleared the side of the house, the noise level dropped significantly and the party suddenly seemed far in the distance.  The front lawn was eerily still, filled with the long shadows cast by the outdoor security lights.  She hurried along the gravel pathway and through the side gate.  A well-lit street had never been such a welcome sight.

‘Are you okay, Miss?’  The security guard materialised out of the shadows, startling her.  ‘Would you like me to call you a taxi?’

Emilia pulled out her phone and waved it in his direction.  ‘I’m fine, thanks.  I’ve got the taxi company on speed dial.’

‘No problem.’ He melted back into the darkness of the wall.

Emilia forced herself to walk calmly down the last couple of feet of driveway, but when she rounded the corner of the wall surrounding the property, her legs gave out and she slid down to the sidewalk, her back pressed against the warm concrete wall.

She swiped open her phone, but was shaking so hard she couldn’t press the buttons to find the taxi company’s number.  Dropping her head to her knees, she gasped for breath.  Her heart was pounding, her stomach was rolling queasily – she’d never been so freaked out.

Footsteps, sharp and rapid on the pavement, came running towards her and her head jerked up.  She tensed, expecting to see Justin and was surprised to see Seb instead.  He dropped to his knees beside her, unconcerned he was landing on concrete, and gathered her gently into his arms… arms that felt so safe and strong.

‘What happened, Em?’ he asked gruffly, with so much concern Emilia was startled out of her shaking fit.

‘You never call me
Em
,’ she mumbled against his t-shirt.

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.  ‘No?  Well tonight seemed a good time to start.’  His gaze swept over her pale features and wounded eyes and the smile abruptly disappeared.  ‘What happened?’ he repeated.

‘Nothing.  Can you please take me home?’

Seb wanted to argue, to force her to talk, but she looked fragile enough to break, so he held his tongue.  With a curt nod, he lifted her into his arms and strode towards his SUV.

She didn’t protest, which worried him more than anything else.  Something had shaken her up badly enough that she was accepting his help, and his touch, without question.  He thought about going into the party and demanding an explanation from Stacey or the loser boyfriend, but that would mean leaving Emilia alone.  His track record with damsels in distress was dismal, but he could at least get her home safely.

He shifted his hold so he could open the car door and settled her into the passenger seat with as much care as he would give a newborn baby.

Emilia rested her head back against the seat, closed her eyes and… relaxed.  The tension drained out of her body.  While he’d held her against his chest, Seb’s heartbeat had felt so reassuring and she knew while he was there, nothing bad could happen.  He might not like her, but he’d never hurt her.

Seb climbed into the driver’s seat, closed the door and started the car.  As he drove she wanted to ask him why he was always so brusque and unfriendly towards her.  Because tonight she’d discovered he wasn’t as unfeeling and rude as she’d always thought.  Surprisingly, he was capable of incredible gentleness and kindness.  Chances were, he’d probably stop talking to her again if she asked him that.  So she turned her head towards him and asked another question instead.

‘What were you doing there?  Outside the Halvorsten’s, I mean.’

A strange look crossed his face and she thought for a moment he wasn’t going to answer.  ‘This is going to sound odd, but I had this strong feeling something wasn’t right and I couldn’t shake it.  So I drove back about half an hour ago.  I figured I’d keep out of sight unless you needed me.  And, well…’

‘I
did
need you and you were there,’ she whispered.  She smiled shyly at him.  ‘That’s very sweet.  Thank you.’

He scowled.  ‘Yeah, well don’t read anything into it, okay?’

‘You’ve rescued me twice in one day – we’re obviously destined to be together.  Can’t you feel it, Seb?’ she deadpanned.

His head spun towards her, his expression a mixture of dismay and shock.  And Emilia couldn’t keep a straight face for a second longer; she laughed so hard tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘If you could see your face,’ she chortled.  Bantering with Seb made her feel like herself again and the fear had thankfully dissipated.

Returning his eyes to the road, Seb’s expression relaxed into amused chagrin.  ‘You’ll keep, Angel.’

They rode in silence for a while, but as they neared her house, Seb glanced quickly at her.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’ he asked quietly.

Emilia looked down at her lap and twisted her fingers together.  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Pulling up the driveway, he shut off the engine and turned in his seat to face her.  ‘I know I haven’t exactly given you much reason to confide in me, but you
need
to talk about it and I promise I won’t betray your trust.’

He paused.  He’d had time to think on the trip back and what he’d come up with he didn’t like one bit.  ‘Did Justin do something to you?’

Emilia glanced up at Seb and then looked back down at her hands.  ‘Not really.  He… he was drunk and he tried to push things further than I wanted to go.’

A slight movement caught her eye and she looked over to see Seb’s fists were clenched and the muscle in his jaw was pulsing angrily.

‘It’s no big deal… really.  He just frightened me.  I, uh, kneed him pretty hard before he could do anything and then I ran.  And that’s all, truly.’

A reluctant smile tugged at Seb’s mouth.  ‘That’s good, Em; that’s really good.’

He insisted on walking her to the door, but before she could say good night he put his hand out to hold the door open.  His face turned serious.

‘Any decent guy, and even those of us who aren’t quite so squeaky clean, knows that No means No,’ he said carefully and precisely.  ‘Don’t ever feel pressured to give out more than you want to, Em.  And if the guy won’t respect that, he’s not worth your time.’

His arm dropped away and turning, he jogged lightly down the porch steps.

‘Seb,’ she called after him.  He stopped and looked back over his shoulder, his brow lifted in silent enquiry.  ‘Thank you for being there tonight; it meant a lot.’

‘You’re welcome, Angel,’ he said quietly, his turquoise eyes sombre.  ‘Catch you later.’

 

 

Chapter 2

 

Emilia woke the next morning, surprised to have slept so well.  In her haste to slip into the oblivion of sleep, she’d forgotten to draw the curtains and now the sun was streaming through her windows, bathing the room in warmth.

She didn’t particularly want to dwell on the events of last night, but there was one fact that had to be faced – despite her self-defence courses and regular mixed martial arts classes, when pinned beneath a male almost twice her size she was virtually helpless.  If she hadn’t been able to get her knee up, things would have ended very differently.  It was a sobering thought.

Emilia grimaced as she threw back the covers, got up and stretched.  She needed to be more aware of her surroundings, more conscious of potential threats and learn how to pick up the signs earlier.  Last night had taught her that even someone you thought you could trust could be a potential danger.  She must not become complacent.

Rifling through her walk-in-robe, she pulled out fresh underwear and gym gear and headed for the shower.

It was still early when she jogged downstairs with her backpack, but David was already gone.  She read the note he’d left on the kitchen bench telling her he was at the University for the morning but would be home around lunchtime and would she please make sure she was home in the early afternoon as he had something he needed to talk to her about.  Emilia smiled fondly.  Her father had a mobile phone but still wrote notes instead of texting.

She grabbed an apple, locked up the house and started to stretch for her run to the gym.  Her car was sitting in the driveway!  It must have been there last night when Seb had dropped her off but she hadn’t noticed.  It was a welcome sight; now she wouldn’t have to turn up to brunch with the girls all sweaty.

Emilia pulled out her phone and sent Seb a quick text:
Thanks for taking care of my car.  How much do I owe you?

The phone buzzed a reply as she slid behind the wheel of her beloved Beetle. 
Nothing.  Called in a favour.

Well I owe you one then.

I’ll be sure to collect!

 

*

 

After her Cardio Box class, Emilia had a speedy shower and pulled on jeans and a cornflower blue casual shirt.

She and Stacey had a standing Saturday brunch date with two of their other girlfriends at The Carriage House Café, which served to die for Brie-stuffed French Toast.  The three girls were already there when Emilia arrived and had ordered her usual for her.

Emilia slid into the fourth seat and studied each of her friends with some amusement.  They were various shades of pale, borderline green.  Maddie couldn’t quite control the tremor in her hands; judging by the number of empty cups in front of her Stacey was onto her third strong, black coffee and Jessica’s eyes were hidden behind dark shades.

‘The sun is like shards of glass stabbing into my eyeballs,’ Jess moaned.  ‘We totally should have cancelled today.’

‘I’m never drinking again,’ whispered Maddie.  She looked wildly around the table.  ‘If any of you see me reach for a drink you
must
stop me and if I promise I’m only having one, don’t believe me.’

Emilia grinned but didn’t say anything.  She’d heard all this before.  Stacey caught her grin and commented sourly, ‘I suppose Miss Health and Fitness here has just come from the gym?’

‘Yep and, unlike you sad sacks, I feel great!’

‘How can you be so disciplined?’ Maddie wailed.  ‘I didn’t mean to drink so much, but by the time I’d had a couple I forgot I was going to behave myself and then look what happens!’

‘What happened
this
time?’ Emilia asked curiously.  Maddie had a habit of getting herself into fixes when she was drinking.

Their brunch arrived, much to Emilia’s delight.  She was starving.  The other three looked a little queasy but gamely picked up their forks.

‘So are you going to tell me what happened?’ Emilia prompted Maddie as she forked up her first delicious mouthful.

‘Em, it was awful!’  Maddie’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.  ‘I kissed
Elton
!  Why did you let me do that?’  She glared accusingly at Jessica and Stacey, who giggled maliciously.  Elton was a stuck up, know-it-all prig with bad breath, greasy hair and a strong aversion to showering.  He was also about a foot shorter than Maddie.  Well maybe not a foot, but a whole lot shorter.

‘You were
most
insistent!’ Jess said.  She waved her hand dismissively.  ‘You kept going on about princes turning into frogs and frogs turning into princes or some such rubbish.  You were out of your head, Maddie, and none of us could stop you.’

‘It’s all a bit of a blur, but I distinctly remember him asking me to be his girlfriend.  He said we were a genetic match in heaven!’ Maddie shared morosely.  ‘Just as well there’s no more school
ever
, or I wouldn’t be able to shake him.’

‘Oh dear.’  Emilia bit back a smile and patted her friend’s shoulder reassuringly.  ‘Next time stick with me and I’ll keep you in line.’

‘Next time don’t
disappear
!’ Maddie accused pointedly.

Emilia winced.  ‘Sorry about that, but parties get kind of dull when you’re not drinking.’

‘You wouldn’t have found it dull if you’d hung around a bit longer,’ Stacey said.  ‘It was an extremely eventful night.  Jimmy started flirting with Annabel, so Rebecca lost it and started the catfight from most guys’ dreams.  The two of them were rolling around on the grass out of their minds with rage and the next thing you know they’d rolled into the pool.  It was hilarious!’

‘Yeah, and then Chris jumped on the table and started doing this really weird dance, but half of everyone was so trashed they joined in anyway.  It was like the Macarena mixed with Gangnam Style weaving across the lawn and along the edge of the lake,’ Jess added.

‘I missed that bit,’ Maddie interjected.  ‘That must have been during the Elton episode.  Hey guys, what happened to Justin?’

‘What do you mean?’ Emilia asked, though she thought she knew.

‘I don’t know.  He disappeared for a while and when he came back he was limping but he wouldn’t say what had happened.’

‘Probably can’t remember,’ Stacey opined.  Her eyes darkened.  She obviously hadn’t yet forgiven Justin for being such a jerk the previous day.  ‘Have you talked to him today, Em?’

Emilia looked down at her plate, making a great show out of gathering the last few crumbs onto her fork.  ‘No.  I don’t imagine he’ll be up yet.  I’ll call him later on.’

‘Yeah, well, he better be nicer today than he was yesterday or you should tell him where to shove it,’ Stacey whispered under her breath so only Emilia could hear.  Then she continued more loudly.  ‘Right, well I’m feeling a bit better now, so let’s go and do some shopping!’

 

*

             

Emilia pulled up the driveway in the early afternoon, as requested by David. Seb’s car was parked out the front and she wondered what he was doing here.  She hesitated, not sure how she felt about seeing him again this soon.  She was a little embarrassed about last night but also really grateful he’d been there, which kind of meant she couldn’t go with her usual defensive tactics.

She needn’t have worried about making awkward conversation.  As she reached the bottom step of the porch, Seb came storming out of the house, his face like thunder.  Taking the steps two at a time, he brushed past her without a word and all but ran down the drive.

Emilia stared after him in surprise.  Clearly yesterday’s
amiability
was a one-day special.  Whatever!  A return to his normal behaviour was a whole lot less unsettling.

She bounded up the steps and headed for her father’s study.  It was one of her favourite rooms in the house, filled with shelves and shelves of all kinds of books and antiquities.  David was staring out the window in the direction of Seb’s SUV, which by the sound of squealing tyres, was peeling away from the curb at greater than usual speed.

‘Dad?  What’s going on?’

David sighed heavily and turned away from the window.  He looked drawn, tired and every day of his fifty-six years.  He was a tall, solid man, with a thick head of steel grey hair and rather austere features, softened only by a pair of warm brown eyes flecked with gold – the same eyes Emilia had.

‘Are you okay, Dad?’  She hadn’t been worried about this conversation; it was fairly normal for him to make “appointments” to spend a little father-daughter quality time.  However, now she began to wonder if there was something more to this conversation. 
Please God, don’t let him be dying
, she sent up in a quick prayer.

He waved towards the leather club chair in front of his antique mahogany desk.  ‘I’m fine, Emmy.  Sit down.’

Relieved, she plopped down in the chair without argument.  Picking up a small square box, he came around the front of the desk and perched on the edge.  He studied the box, turning it this way and that, before he looked up at her.

‘I have a gift for you, though you may not thank me for it,’ he said cryptically.

He held out the box and Emilia took it tentatively.  Lifting the lid, she found an old, heavy pendant, the gold on it worn and dulled with age.  She looked enquiringly at her father.

‘Turn it over.  There’s a slight depression in the centre.  Press it,’ he instructed.

The pendant popped open, revealing what looked like a timepiece of some sort with a series of dials and cogs.  She’d never seen anything like it and, while it was interesting, she couldn’t understand why he was giving it to her.

‘What is this, Dad?’

‘It’s a time travel device,’ he said simply and waited for the inevitable.

Emilia lifted puzzled eyes to meet David’s expectant gaze.  ‘What, like off a movie set or something?’

‘No honey, this is the real thing.’  He paused, giving Emilia time to respond, but she honestly didn’t know what
to
say.  Had her dad had a mental breakdown?  ‘You come from a long line of time travellers, including myself.  We have all, at one time or another, chosen to serve a higher cause to bring balance to the world.’

‘Uh, you’ve lost me.’  Emilia knew her eyes were wide with bemused dismay… or wonder – she really wasn’t sure which at the moment.

David smiled, his eyes sparkling mischievously.  ‘Don’t worry, everyone reacts this way when they’re first told.’

‘There are others?’

‘Yes.  Quite a few of us actually, scattered around the world.  The vast majority of us are members of the Human Preservation Society led by seven Elders.’

She decided to humour him to find out how serious his delusions were.  ‘Right.  What’s the purpose of this
Society
?’  She wiggled her fingers in the air, imitating speech marks.

‘You’ve heard of the Mayan predictions that the world as we know it would end on December 21
st
, 2012?’

Emilia nodded.  It would have been hard to miss considering it had been all over the news.

‘Obviously that didn’t happen since we’re still here,’ David continued.  ‘But it’s possible it could have, if not for the work we do.  Our goal is simply to preserve humanity and this world by effectively adding time onto the “end date”.  Delaying Armageddon, so to speak.’

Emilia couldn’t help the sceptical look she knew was on her face.  ‘And how exactly do you do that?’

‘The Elders have an incredibly complex data system, something like an exhaustive family tree of everyone who has ever lived.  They use it to pinpoint those people who were destined to be harbingers of positive change, but through circumstances were prevented from being so.’

She must have looked baffled, because David changed tack.

‘Imagine if Thomas Edison had died before he invented the light bulb.  Would candles still be our only source of light?  Or how much longer would it have been before someone else invented the light bulb?  How would advances in the technology we live with today have been delayed or not yet discovered because the light bulb wasn’t invented at the exact moment Thomas Edison invented it?’

‘No one can know the answers to those questions,’ Emilia pointed out smugly.

‘True.  But what if someone had the ability to travel through time and make sure Thomas Edison didn’t die before he invented the light bulb?’

‘Right…’ Emilia said thoughtfully.  ‘So that’s what you do?  You go back in time and stop certain people from dying?’

David nodded.  ‘Dying, trusting the wrong person, preventing the destruction of environmental advancements by natural disasters or wars… that sort of thing.’

It almost sounded real, but how could it be possible?  Time travel was a thing of fantasy, the imagination run wild in movies like
Back to the Future
or
The Time Traveller’s Wife
.

‘So you’re telling me,’ she said slowly, ‘that using this time piece, I can jump back in time whenever I feel like it?’

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