Timepiece: An Hourglass Novel (2 page)

Screams and laughter filled the space as the crowd anticipated a prank. The emergency lights flashed on and illuminated a man holding a handgun. Raising it, he shot at the ceiling and hit the chandelier. The room erupted in chaos as tiny crystals rained to the floor.

One silent emotion carried over every scream. Paralyzing
fear
.

Emerson.

I took a better look at the man standing on the stage, holding a gun in one hand and a pocket watch in the other.

Jack Landers.

The bastard who killed my dad.

I grabbed Tiger Girl and dragged her behind me, fighting against the tide of the crowd.

After pushing her to safety under the staircase, I stood in front of her, scanning the room for Emerson and Michael. I caught a glimpse of blue silk and black tux as they escaped through the front entrance.

Jack had been on the run for more than a month, and now he was in my sight line. The rush of adrenaline through my veins sobered me up
real
quick.

My hand was still wrapped around Tiger Girl’s wrist. “Stay here and stay down. Don’t take any chances. He can’t see you from the stage.”

“He has a gun,” she said from behind me, her voice choked with terror. I could feel it coursing through my fingertips to my brain. “Have you lost your mind?”

“A long time ago.”

Riding the adrenaline, I let go of her and stepped into Jack’s view. Faint shapes hurried toward the doors in the glow of the security lights. I squared my shoulders with the stage.

Jack was here to do damage—his expression confirmed it.

I wanted to do a little damage myself.

Our eyes locked as I fought my way through the last few people in the crowd toward the temporary stage located at the end of the restaurant. I stopped halfway to try and get a read on his emotions. Nothing.

“Typical. Making a grand entrance.” I didn’t break the stare. “I’m surprised you didn’t hire an orchestra to play a theme song for you.”

“Shouldn’t you be somewhere brooding and angsting? You’re even wearing eyeliner.” He tucked the watch away, and then lowered the gun to his side. But he kept his finger on the trigger. “Or have you passed the brooding and angsting over to—”

“Don’t
say her name. After what you did to her, you don’t have the right.” He’d messed with the time line and truth of Emerson’s life so badly that she couldn’t sleep without having nightmares.

“I’d like to see Emerson. We do have some unfinished business. She might disagree with you about what I ‘did to her.’”

“You deserve to die for all the things you’ve done—all the people you’ve hurt.” My dad, my mom, Em. I’d wished Jack Landers dead for months, and now I had my chance. The muscles in my gut tightened as I prepared to make a move. “How about we make that happen right now?”

He smiled. “Killing me would be the worst mistake you could ever make.”

“I see it as a service to humanity.”

“Then you’re seeing it all wrong.” So egomaniacal. “Don’t force my hand, Kaleb. You’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“I don’t have a choice.” I took two steps toward him before he lifted his weapon and took aim. I ducked and rolled behind a table, expecting a blast of gunfire.

Nothing.

I carefully lifted my head to peer over the edge of the table and saw him shaking the gun, checking the barrel.

I didn’t think of what my choice would do to my father, or my mother if she ever woke up. I pulled the dull metal sword free from my costume, extended it, and rushed the stage.

Somehow, through all the mental noise from outside, I heard the bullet slide into the chamber. Time slowed down, and I wondered if this was what everything looked like right before you died. I kept running as he leveled the gun and sighted the barrel.

Everyone else’s emotions ceased to matter. All I could focus on were my own.

Rage.

Retaliation.

Revenge.

Taking what I believed could be my final steps, I leapt with the sword outstretched. As I flew through the air toward him, Jack flickered like a CGI ghost in a bad horror movie, anger twisting his features, a loud curse ripping its way from his throat. I watched his finger squeeze the trigger as my ribs caught the edge of the stage.

Before the bullet escaped, he disappeared.

The gun went with him.

Chapter 2

T

After Thomas and Dru cleared the general public from the premises, including a protesting Tiger Girl, they went outside to deal with the authorities. Michael still wore his masquerade costume, but Em had changed into street clothes and piled the mess of Southern belle ringlets into a hyperactive ponytail on top of her head.

I lay flat on my back on the stage, my Captain Jack wig and pirate shirt on the ground. A garbage bag full of ice from the bar covered my ribs. Jack’s words kept rebounding off the sides of my brain. He’d been so sure of himself. How would killing him be the worst mistake I could ever make?

Propping myself up on my elbows, I looked at Michael and Em. “I can’t believe you called Dad. What good is it going to do for him to come down here? Jack’s gone.”

“You’re hurt. He said he’d have Nate and Dune stay with your mom,” Michael said.

“I’m fine,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Then why do you have ice on your ribs?”

“Stop fighting.” Em scrubbed her hands over her face and leaned back into Michael. No uncontrollable electrical currents now. Those disappeared if the two of them touched a lot, and Michael hadn’t taken his hands off her since she’d changed out of the poofy dress. For all I knew, he hadn’t taken his hands off her while she’d been changing.

The twinge I felt came from my ribs.

Had to.

“I wanted your dad to see the setup, get his opinion on how Jack got here.” Michael put his hands on Em’s shoulders. “How he got out so fast. If he could have been traveling.”

“He wasn’t traveling.” I sat up and threw the bag of ice to the ground. The crunching sound it made when it hit satisfied me. “He’s
not traveling
. Jack doesn’t have the travel gene.”

Emerson blew out a deep breath. “That didn’t stop him before.”

“Doesn’t matter.” I slid to the edge of the stage and grunted as I leaned over to scoop up my pirate shirt. Em kept her eyes averted as I pulled it over my head. I used the edge of the stage as leverage to stand up, and turned my grimace of pain into a frown. “He doesn’t have any way to travel. No one does.”

Em flinched. The formula she’d managed to steal from Cat and Jack hadn’t been complete. No exotic matter meant no one had traveled since Cat had disappeared.

“He has Cat,” Michael said. “There could have been a lead on a traveler in the Hourglass files he stole.”

“Maybe.” I shrugged and quickly regretted it. I hadn’t expected a simple shrug to hurt. “But even if Jack found another traveler, that doesn’t mean he can travel too.”

Em frowned and an unexpected wave of anxiety flowed in my direction.

“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“There are so many unanswered questions,” she said. I sensed from their expressions and the sudden tension that she and Michael had talked about this a lot, more than he’d wanted to. Probably because he didn’t have the answers. “We don’t know why Jack didn’t just change his past himself. Why did he need me or your mom to do it? Is he the kind of guy who’d worry about the consequences of messing with his own time line, or would he think twice about it?”

Michael’s jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth. “I still think there were limitations because of the exotic matter formula. Remember how much he’d aged when he came out of the veil in Liam’s office? I was shocked he was healthy tonight.”

“I can’t stop thinking about something Cat said.” Em stared at the floor. “That Jack piggybacked my travel gene to get out of the bridge when he was stuck. I know only travelers can move through time, but the continuum is so screwed up now. He could still be manipulating it.”

“That could mean …” I stopped cold and waited for Em to finish.

“If Jack could piggyback a gene to get
out
of a bridge, could he piggyback to get
into
one? And if he can get into a bridge, can he use it to time travel?”

The massive oak doors to the Phone Company swung inward to admit my dad, putting a quick end to our theorizing.

He picked his way through glass and overturned furniture to the stage. He kissed Em’s cheek and gave Michael a long look. My ribs gave another twinge before he turned his attention to me. “Show me.”

Keeping my eyes on the far wall, I lifted my shirt just enough for him to see the beginnings of a nasty blue bruise starting where my ribs had caught the stage.

“Do you think they’re broken?” He tapped the pocket of his brown tweed jacket and pulled out a pair of glasses.

I still didn’t look at him. “I don’t even think they’re cracked.”

He slid the glasses on and leaned in closer, furrowing his brows in concern. “You wouldn’t tell me if they were.”

I shrugged and dropped the shirt. There were lots of things I didn’t tell him. From the way he’d looked at Michael, he had secrets of his own.

Dad straightened and removed the glasses, dropping them back into his pocket. His eyes fixed on the exact spot where Jack had appeared and disappeared.

“A veil,” he murmured. “Is that where Jack showed up?”

“And where he disappeared.” Em shuddered. “Wonder when he’ll be back. And what he wants this time.”

Dad and Michael exchanged a look over Em’s head. I knew what they were thinking.

Jack wanted her.

“You can’t worry about that,” Dad said to her, with a gentleness he used to reserve for my mom, or me when I was a lot younger. “We can’t anticipate Jack’s every move.”

“We can anticipate that he doesn’t care about the continuum,” Em said, “or all the ways he can screw it up.”

I knew what was coming next, and not just from Em’s pointed stare at me. Bossypants.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you going to tell him?”

“Tell me what?” Dad asked.

Coerced
and
trapped. “I saw a rip today. I know it was a rip, because Em was with me.”

He didn’t say anything, just rubbed his beard the way he always did when approaching a problem.

“Why aren’t you surprised?” I asked, the uneasiness growing in my gut.

“Because it’s not a surprise.” He dropped his hand and sighed deeply. “I didn’t have to call Nate and Dune to come and stay with your mom. They were already at the house, along with Ava. They’ve all seen rips, too.”

Chapter 3

I

“From what I can gather, anyone with the time gene can see rips now. Dune, Nate, and Ava were all alone in different public places, and yes, it’s happened more than once to each of them.”

“Do you think that means they can travel, too?” Michael asked, uncertainty drawing his voice taut.

“I don’t know.” Dad shrugged. “But without exotic matter, there’s no way to test it. I’m not interested in taking any risks.”

The sound of Thomas’s black boots hitting the floor made us all jump when he entered from the kitchen. His footsteps echoed as he stalked toward us, his anxiety preceding him.

“Thomas. I’m sorry for the mess and the trouble,” Dad said with regret. “I’ll be glad to cover anything your insurance won’t.”

“Absolutely not. You aren’t responsible. But I have a few questions about the ass—man who is.” His slicked-back Gomez Addams hairdo and drawn-on, pencil-thin mustache were at odds with the fierceness in his eyes.

“I’ll do my best to answer,” Dad said.

Thomas directed his words toward Dad but pegged Michael with an accusing stare. “I’d like to speak with you two outside.”

“Why can’t you just ask your questions here?” Em argued, her anger at being left out obvious.

“I can get any information I need from you later.” He gave Em a parental look when she made a sound of protest. “This is an adult conversation.”

Em’s spark of fury told me Thomas would pay for that comment later. I knew she was fighting hard to hold her tongue.

“Lead the way.” Dad gestured toward the doors with his head, and he and Michael followed Thomas outside.

Em watched them walk away. The second they were out of earshot, she let out a truly impressive stream of curse words and took out a couple of fall decorations with her fists, finally punching a plastic pumpkin to the ground and kicking it across the room.

Even though I was tempted, I knew laughing would prove deadly. “Are you picturing Thomas’s face on that pumpkin?”

“In my mind’s eye, his nose is bleeding.”

“At least he acknowledged you. My dad thinks I’m completely useless.”

“Don’t say that.” She pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the stage. “You aren’t useless.”

We were quiet for a few seconds, long enough for me to realize she was trying to figure out the best way to say something.

“Spill it, Em.” I grinned at her. “No need to sugarcoat.”

She uttered a sound of frustration. “Stop reading me.”

“You know I can’t help it.”

“Since it’s just you and me,”—she patted the stage beside her—“sit.”

I leaned back, putting all my weight on my arms before sliding carefully into a sitting position. It was rare we were alone together, and her nerves were skipping around like live electrical wires. “What is it?”

“I wish … you and Michael could … make up.”

“I didn’t know we were in a fight,” I lied, as smoothly as I could. “What’s it about? You?”

Her immediate blush confirmed it. “I’ve already capped my awkward quota for the year, and it’s only October.”

“I don’t hold back, Em. You and Mike both know where I stand when it comes to you.”

She stared down at her hands. “And you know where I stand.”

“Maybe we should arm wrestle for you,” I said, trying to make a joke. Failing.

“Stop.” Her voice was sharp and loud, the usual smooth edges disappearing in her anger. “I’m not a thing, and I’m not joking around. I care about you both.”

“One of us more than the other.” There was no reason to bother trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice.

“You aren’t being fair. I don’t want to be the thing that ends your friendship. You two used to be like brothers.”

A fat plastic spider hanging from a fake web in the corner fell to the ground with a thud. We both jumped.

It was time to put the truth out on the table. She could do whatever she wanted with it. “Michael and I were like brothers, because Dad wishes Michael were his son.”

Em started to respond, but I caught sight of movement by the dining patio and held up one finger. I looked up, expecting another spider to fall, or for one of the scarecrows in the corner to be wobbling on its bamboo stake. Then I sensed emotion.

I signaled to Em to keep quiet again and peered through the dim light.
Fearlessness and determination.

A guy I’d never seen before stepped inside the building.

A quick flash of light reflected off the knife in his hand.

I stood up on the stage in front of Emerson when he started toward us. Shorter than me by four or five inches, his shoulders were as wide as mine. His nose curved slightly to the left, as if he’d broken it in a fight and set it himself afterward.

“No one’s supposed to be in here. The police made everyone leave,” I said, pulling myself up to my full height. I inclined my head toward the front of the Phone Company. “They’re right outside if you’re looking for them.”

“I’m not.” He had an accent—either British or Australian— I could never tell them apart. He kept his tone low, regulated. Controlled.

“How can I help you?” I hoped Em would keep quiet and not draw attention to herself. I heard her climb to her feet, and stopped hoping.

“You’re Kaleb Ballard.” He climbed the stairs to the stage, stopping just in front of the veil.

Squinting at him in the dark, I tried to remember if I’d seen him somewhere before. He didn’t look much older than me, but there was a weird air of maturity about him. “Who’re you?”

“Call me Poe.” He scanned my costume, and I pulled at the strings of the pirate shirt. “You need to pass on a message.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Do I look like an envelope?”

He didn’t laugh, and from the way his body stiffened, the efforts to keep his temper restrained were considerable. “The space time continuum is compromised.”

“Thanks.” My muscles tensed, too. “I’ll alert Doctor Who.”

Em’s fingers closed over my wrist. She was staring at Poe’s right hand. The knife. Her fear made me bite down on my tongue to stop any more smart aleck responses.

“The continuum is compromised because of the choices those associated with the Hourglass have made.” He sounded muffled through the veil.

I didn’t respond. The first rule of Hourglass is that you don’t talk about Hourglass. Like Fight Club, but without the merciless beatings.

Em let go of my wrist and took a step closer to Poe. “What if those associated with it didn’t understand their choices?”

I gritted my teeth. She’d given us away.

“Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.” He spoke in a creepy monotone, as if he were some kind of puppet. The anger inside him didn’t match his voice at all.

“The
law
?” Em snorted. “I guess you’re the sheriff?”

Her response snapped a tenuous thread. Instead of acknowledging her, Poe stared directly into my eyes and smiled. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

It didn’t happen in slow motion, more like stop motion. I felt no fear or anxiety coming from Poe at all, just a dark resolve as he lunged, knife pointed directly at me.

Emerson jumped forward to block him. Before I could react, he grabbed her upper arm and jerked her into the veil.

The same one Jack Landers had used.

Em kicked to find leverage so she could do damage, but Poe was holding her off the ground. She growled with the effort, her fury hot. I kept my eyes on the knife. “Let her go.”

When he shook his head, I launched myself at the veil.

And slammed against what felt like a rock wall.

I hit the ground, landing on my back, disoriented, my ribs screaming in protest. Something that looked like water shouldn’t be so solid. I tried again, putting my shoulder into the attempt this time. Still no give.

There was only one way for Poe to get into the veil. He was a traveler.

I pushed at the veil with my palms, hoping against hope that it would somehow give way. “You can’t travel with her. You don’t have what you need.”

“Who says I’m a traveler?” His voice sounded slightly muffled.

I pulled my head back. What the hell? “How did you get through the veil?”

He shrugged and smiled.

“Let her go,” I repeated through clenched teeth, punching the veil with each word. “And I’ll deliver whatever you want.”

Keeping his eyes on me, he lowered Em enough that her tiptoes touched the ground. He kept one arm around her neck, the knife pointed toward her chin. Her fury cooled as fear started to set in. “The Hourglass has made some very poor choices.”

“People make poor choices every day,” I said, throwing his words back.

“People like Emerson. Michael. Your father. Jack.”

“We aren’t responsible for what Jack did.”

“Your father is.” Still the monotone voice.

“My dad wasn’t alive when Jack betrayed us,” I argued, his lack of reaction sparking a bigger one from me. “Because
Jack
killed him.”

“But he was alive when Emerson went back to save Michael. Jack didn’t throw the continuum off by himself.”

“She was
tricked
.” I dug at the veil with my fingers, but it remained as unyielding as stone. “Cat purposely misled her. Em didn’t know what she was doing when she went back to rescue Michael. Dad didn’t know she was …”

The words died on my lips. All of Em’s anger was gone, and she was pulling frantically at Poe’s forearm.

He was cutting off her air supply.

“Time,” Poe said, “the natural order of things, is not something you can alter. I believe Emerson knew that there would be consequences.” The tip of the knife touched Em’s throat, just under her ear. An ominous prickle slid down my spine. “The pattern woven into the fabric of time is changing, and we know exactly where to place the blame.”

“It’s not her fault. We can fix it.” I kept talking, not fully aware of what I was saying, unsure of whose fear was the strongest, mine or Em’s. Hyperfocusing on the point of the knife and the fact that Em couldn’t breathe. “The Hourglass will fix it.”

“The Hourglass can’t fix it.”

My hands formed fists as I spoke through clenched teeth. “We can try.”

Em gasped for air, digging her fingernails into Poe’s flesh. Now there was no emotion coming from her. There was nothing coming from her at all.

“No,” Poe said, entirely too self-satisfied. “You can’t fix anything.”

He moved so slowly, so deliberately, that if he’d been outside the veil, I’d have had him pinned to the ground with my elbow in his throat in less than a second. But he was inside, with Em, and he knew he could take his time.

He met my eyes, smiling, and executed one swift slice with his blade.

Across Em’s throat.

Everything went quiet.