Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II (7 page)

“Hello… Ettie?” He pulled up short. “What…? My God! I’ll be right there!”

His head spun, and he stopped to catch his breath. What was happening? Was this even part of the plan?

His disorientation increased as his reality twisted into another dimension.

Six

AVA FOUND HIM asleep on her sofa. She couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten in. Her apartment was on the eighth floor, and the building boasted both an electronic security system and an actual human guard. Even she, with her key card, had been stopped and questioned a couple of times when there was a newly employed guard on duty.

Once, she had walked in next to a woman with a baby stroller, only to be waved on by a new guard assuming she was the nanny. I guess that’s one way of doing it, she thought, but doubted that Odell would ever be mistaken for the help.

He lay on his back. One long leg was stretched out on the couch and the other rested bent with his foot on the floor. His blond curls were in disarray, and she could see dried, matted blood along the left side of his head. He slept so deeply, she thought at first he might be dead. She held her breath until he moved restlessly and murmured something unintelligible before settling down again.

Ava went into the kitchen and set her bags on the counter. She had been out all night, mostly in her office, but also rummaging through the dusty records in the library basement. Her experience in the hidden art gallery had prompted a frantic search for answers. She had found none, but an unexpected piece of information had surfaced on the passenger list of a certain Pennsylvania packet out of Portsmouth in March of 1775.

Those late night hours among the documents of the long dead had helped to wipe away some of the grime of her encounter with Knightly Davis. After she had stared speechless and sickened for several minutes before the portrait of what could easily have been an adolescent Ettie, Davis had intoned, “An excellent example of erotic portraiture, don’t you agree? It puts the voluptuous colors of the eighteenth century to good use, and the rendering of the young lover is beautifully idealized, even somewhat mythologized.”

His admiration of the picture as well as the dry, academic speech infuriated her.

“
Really
?” She had turned to him, incredulous, eyebrows dangerously raised, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “
That’s
your takeaway from this painting?”

He smirked condescendingly, and his eyes took on the flat, opaque aspect she was beginning to recognize. “Dr. Washington, I’d hoped that your background in the liberal arts would have produced a more open mind. Art is beyond mere plebeian morality.”

“Is that what you think the liberal arts teach?” It was her turn to smile stiffly with condescension. “Just the opposite, Mr. Davis, my background informs me that this…” She waved to include the entire gallery. “…reflects an evil and disregard for human suffering that sickens the spirit. These paintings should be thrown onto a bonfire and release the suffering souls that inhabit them.”

“Very Nazi Germany of you,” he shot back at her.

“Spare me the Hitler comparisons,” she retorted, recognizing the typical fallback of the corrupt and dishonest. “These aren’t great, transcendent works of art. You don’t keep them to study or illuminate the society that allowed the creation of these atrocities. You admire them. They give you pleasure. And as long as they are used for that purpose, these children can never rest.” It was an impassioned speech for all that it was spoken in the calm, modulated tone she had cultivated long ago.

He had laughed abruptly and changed the subject. “You think you know her, don’t you? Dr. Cooper did as well. I could tell.”

Ava compressed her lips tightly together and took a deep breath. He had known all along why she was there, but she merely replied, “I’d like to see any verification of provenance you may possess regarding this painting.”

“Why would I share that with you?” he queried, amused. “You obviously don’t admire the work, and your interest is clearly only of a personal nature.”

He forestalled her reply with a shake of his head. “No, I have nothing more to show you. You can easily see his signature in the corner and will just have to take my word that it is authentic. Although, if it makes you feel any better, it is the only one of this nature that Jonas Bell was known to have painted.”

“Do you know who she was?” Ava persisted as he shepherded her toward the door.

He didn’t answer and maintained a cold silence as they had waited for the pressure to equalize. Once back in the library, Faith reappeared, smiling politely.

Davis gave a lazy wave of his hand. “Show her out,” he commanded.

Ava resisted Faith’s sweeping gesture toward the door and walked over to Knightly Davis. She stood directly in front of him. He wasn’t a tall man, so she didn’t have to look up far to meet his eyes.

“I want you to destroy every last one of those paintings,” she told him stoically.

“By all means, Dr. Washington,” he replied mockingly.

“I mean it. I’ll report you. I’ll go to the press and tell them exactly what the sainted Knightly Davis has hidden away in his lovely penthouse.”

He laughed. “You signed a confidentiality agreement. I’ll sue you.”

She turned her back on him and walked out the door. Once in the elevator, Faith warned her, “Don’t mess with him, really, I’ve seen…” She shook her head. “He can hurt you,” she insisted.

“He doesn’t scare me,” Ava lied yet again. “You should visit the neighborhood where I grew up.” Then she exited the elevator and out the building.

Once on the street, she brought shaking hands to her mouth. She felt sick. The drug dealers and gang members that roamed her old neighborhood had nothing on Knightly Davis.

“Dead-eyed creep,” she murmured under her breath, and had taken the entire subway ride back to the university to calm her shattered nerves.

Once there, Ava had spent the entire night searching for the girl. Her faculty key card got her into the documents room of the library, but she had found no leads. The rest of the night was spent in her office, searching the internet and firing off discreet email inquiries to trusted colleagues. She had even spoken briefly again with Tim—to warn him.

He had smiled fondly and shook his head. “Listen, no worries, Ava. With his reach, there’s a good chance Davis knew of my efforts to report the collection to the authorities anyway. If he’d wanted to hurt me, he would have done so already.”

Ava looked unconvinced, but only shook her head and apologized again. By the time she had signed off, it was near dawn, and a quick visit to her Facebook page found a news alert involving Ivy and the White Swan Dance Theater.

The rest was kind of a haze. She had called Ettie, but there was no reply. Finally, she had reached Marta at the house. Ettie had left with a man, and it was anybody’s guess where Odell was.

Ava gripped the kitchen countertop and blew out a long gust of air. Her place hadn’t even been on her radar of possible locations of Professor Odell Speex.

“Hey.”

Ava looked up and saw him leaning against the doorframe.

She had transferred to the White Swan Dance Theater after an incident at the prestigious studio she was attending forced her departure. Ivy had offered her a scholarship. Ava knew, even at sixteen, that dance would not be her life; Ivy knew it as well. But the studio was a lifeline, the calm eye of the storm that was her young existence. The discipline and constancy that was ballet taught her how to cope, how to strive and succeed.

Ivy was not a warm presence. She never spoke to Ava about her situation—never demonstrated any physical affection. But she had seen and understood. She had given Ava an escape, a way forward.

For the third time in less than twelve hours, Odell held a crying woman in his arms. But for the first time, he felt his own self-control crack. He leaned his cheek against her hair, and tears leaked out from his tightly shut eyes. He slid down the doorframe and sat, holding her close. Somewhere in that suspended moment, it all changed; her arms held him, and he gave vent to his grief and bitter failure.

Finally, they sat back and looked at each other.

“I think it’s only fair to tell you, I may be arrested at any time,” he said in his calm, collected way, as if the last few moments had never happened.

“You’re kidding.” She blinked at him disbelievingly and sat up on her knees. “The police think you killed your own mother?”

“I’m being set-up,” he explained succinctly.

She leaned back against the cabinet and marveled at how much everything had altered in only a few short hours. Just the day before, she had thought him certifiably insane. Now…? She brought the heels of her palms up to press against her eyes and slowly shook her head.

“What?” Odell asked with some concern. He scrambled over to her and, grabbing her wrists, brought her hands down so he could look at her. “What has happened?” he repeated.

She told him. From her attempts to contact Ettie to the painting and her encounter with Knightly Davis.

“I still don’t know what to think,” she concluded. “Are you crazy? Am I?”

He got up off the floor and held his hand down to pull her up next to him.

“I almost wish it were that simple,” he replied as he walked back into her small living room. “At the risk of further illustrating my madness, there is a complicating factor I didn’t tell you about yesterday.”

His narrow escape from the police had required navigating a maze of connecting rooftops. Odell had found this labyrinth to be a particular characteristic of the alternate reality and had explored it extensively during many of his involuntary trips there.

The dramatic leap into the elevator shaft had been just that, mere drama. He had landed squarely on one of the concrete ledges that served as perches for elevator maintenance and grabbed at the cables for balance. As he scrambled up the shaft, he could only hope the officers were running to the basement anticipating the discovery of a gruesome corpse, while he made his getaway over the rooftops. The laser graze alongside his head bled copiously, but otherwise did not impede his progress.

Many of the catwalks, ladders, and ledges that constituted the rooftop byways were old and rickety, but it still surprised him that the police had no patrols through the area. He supposed it was too dangerous even for them, the rooftops being the last refuge of some of the most desperate members of this oppressive society.

Odell had almost become a crime statistic himself when first traversing the rooftops, one of many that were found on a yearly basis thrown from the tall buildings and smashed on the streets below. Only the fortuitous intervention of an old friend had saved his skin and given him safe passage.

He had just made Ava’s building when the time shifted again, and the fire escape by which he had gained entry, disappeared. Odell could never be sure how much had changed from one reality to the other.

He knew from Ettie where Ava lived and, while he was familiar with the building, he had never actually been in her apartment before. A quick survey of the room had assured him that this was indeed Ava’s home. The piles of books and old documents, as well as the shabby chic furniture and African art mixed with old photographs of suffragettes and famous ballerinas, gave credence to his certainty. Of course, the framed photo of her and Ettie, arms linked and smiling in front of the White Swan Dance Theater, was also a dead giveaway.

It was late, and he had been surprised she wasn’t home. He had sat down to wait, but exhaustion combined with multiple time shifts weighed down his eyelids and rendered him helpless in sleep.

Odell hadn’t known what to expect when he’d awakened to find her in the kitchen. It was impossible to tell from his outward calm, but that they had shared such a profoundly intimate and emotional moment shook him to his core. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, much less sobbed like a small child.

He took a moment now to gather his thoughts. He was soothed again by the comfortable clutter of the room. The familiar ambiance of study and research hung in the air, and he smiled to himself when he spied her stash of graphic novels shoved under an end table.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he turned to face her. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess, but I honestly didn’t know where else to turn.”

She waved him to the faded, overstuffed couch and sat down on the edge of a heavy oak coffee table. Placing clasped hands between her knees, she blew out her breath and replied, “It doesn’t matter now. You may be crazy, but something is going on, and I want to get to the bottom of it.”

“You know most of it. Though what I didn’t tell you is that the timeline is shifting,” he explained bluntly, “from the prime timeline, the one we are in right now, to an alternate timeline, the one I told you about, the one in Odette’s—the other Odette’s—journal.”

She blinked and then nodded her head. “Okay. How do you know this?”

“I think I’ve known it for a while now,” he replied. “But, well, I wasn’t really aware of it. Before I received the journal and letter, I’d been having these dreams. At least, they seemed like dreams. I guess they could have been time shifts. It’s hard to know. And then after I read Odette’s message… well, I explained it to you before. I regained my memories and also became fully conscious of the time shifts.

“When I came to see you the other day in your office, before you turned around, you were sitting in an old wooden swivel chair. You had long hair piled on top of your head and wore a dress that would not have been out of place at the turn of the twentieth century.”

Ava remembered his hesitancy when she had seen him standing in her office doorway, the look on his face. She had attributed his uncertainty and awkwardness to a lack of social graces.

“Time shifts? Why don’t I feel them?” she asked. “Why are you the only one?”

“I’m not sure why I feel them.” He shook his head. “But I’m not the only one. It wasn’t until yesterday that I knew Ettie was aware of them too.”