The Eighth Guardian

CHAPTER 21

When I land, I’m standing on an empty tract of land where Massachusetts General Hospital will one day be.

“Sixty seconds,” Yellow gasps beside me. “That’s all we have. More like fifty seconds now. Cut it, and we’ll project again!”

“This is crazy, Yellow, where do you expect to project to?”

“Forty-five seconds!”

I grab the scalpel from her. “Damn you!” I snarl. “Hold out your arm and grit your teeth!”

Yellow steadies her feet and turns her head to the side. “Do it.”

I take a breath and dig the tip of the scalpel into Yellow’s forearm. She gasps but doesn’t yell. But then I cut deeper, and she does. She lets out a scream that echoes across all of Boston. I’m hurting her. I flinch, but then there it is! I dig the little green chip out with the blade of the scalpel. The cut is much cleaner than the one I made on my own arm. Having a proper medical tool sure helps.

“Five seconds.” Yellow’s voice is all breathy and stunted.

“Done!”

I fiddle with her watch, giving it a half turn back. My hands are covered with blood, and my fingernails clatter against the face. I wipe my hands on the old lady’s dress before I turn my own dial.

“Here we go. We’re going to 1782. I’m sorry.” And then we project.

There are even fewer buildings than there were before. 1782. I try to remember my history. Is the Revolution still being fought? Dammit, are we going to walk into a battle? I should have been more careful.

But there’s no one around. I think it’s really early in the morning, judging by the sun. Yellow is grumbling beside me. She’s taken off her sweater and pressed it around her arm as a tourniquet, but blood still spills down her shirt and gray corduroy skirt.

“This hurts so much.” She pants.

I want to tell her it’s her own damned fault, but I don’t. “Come on.” I take hold of her shoulder and drag her across the empty plot of land, toward the Old State House. We need to find people.

Yellow stumbles, and her knee lands on the ground. I pick her up. And then in the distance I see a boy atop a horse, guiding a wagon. He can’t be more than twelve or thirteen.

“Help!” I shout at him. “Help, please!”

The boy turns his head and sees us, then turns the reins so the wagon heads toward us.

“Hold on, Yellow, he’s coming.” My head whips over to her as she stumbles. I loop my arm under her elbow and yank her up.

The boy’s face scrunches up into a confused expression the closer he gets. It’s understandable. I’m wearing an old lady’s blood-stained muumuu, and Yellow’s in a miniskirt. Not exactly colonial garb. But then he takes one look at Yellow’s arm, and his eyes grow wide. It’s clear our clothes are instantly forgotten.

“We need a doctor,” I tell him.

“Who are you?” He sounds horrified.

“Does that matter?” I snap as I guide Yellow into the back of the wagon. I jump up behind her. “Please, just take us to a doctor.”

The boy looks back at us, then snaps the reins, and the horse starts toward the harbor.

Yellow sits slumped over, cradling her arm.

“How are you?” I ask.

“This hurts,” she whispers. But I have to say, she looks a lot more coherent than I was. Of course, I did do a better job of cutting the tracker out of her arm than I did my own. I was more careful. More precise. I didn’t go digging around for the damned thing, probably nicking several arteries in the process.

A few minutes later, after we’ve passed the Meeting Hall, a very primitive form of Fanueil Hall—hard to believe that will be a tourist mecca someday—and a street that will one day house a line of bars, the boy stops the wagon in front of a shingled two-story house.

“Dr. Hatch lives here,” the boy says.

I jump from the back of the wagon. “Thank you.” As I help Yellow down, I turn back to him. “Is the doctor at home?”

The boy shrugs his shoulders. His eyes are wide, as if he’s afraid of us. He looks away, flicks the reins, and the wagon takes off.

Yellow pulls away the sweater to examine her injury. “Looks like the bleeding is slowing down.”

I peer in to look, too. She’s right. The blood’s still flowing, but it isn’t pouring out of her arm like it was before. And Yellow seems fine. Well, not fine, I guess, but she’s in no danger of passing out like I was. Although it probably wasn’t the smartest idea to use cashmere as a tourniquet. Little ivory fuzzies are now mixed in with the blood.

“Do you think we can just leave it?” she asks.

I glance at her arm again and shake my head. “The cut is too deep.” I reach up and knock on the door. “It won’t heal without stitches.”

Yellow nods.

A few moments later, the door swings open, and a very small man stands before us. He’s practically Yellow’s size. He’s wearing a white shirt with wide, puffy sleeves, brown short trousers that stop at his knees, white stockings, and black shoes with a big buckle on each of them.

“Are you Dr. Hatch?” I ask.

“I am.” He looks Yellow and me up and down. He has a distant, distrustful look on his face.

“We need your help, sir. My friend was . . . was stabbed. With a knife. In the arm. Can you stitch it for her?”

The doctor takes another look at Yellow, and his eyes fall on her supershort skirt. “No.” Then he takes a step back and slams the door in our face.

I recoil. I can’t believe that just happened. What about the Hippocratic oath? Is that just a load of crap? I look at Yellow, expecting her to mirror my shock and disgust, but she just shakes her head with a sad expression on her face.

“Dr. Hatch!” I shout as I bang on the door with my fist. “Dr. Hatch, you open this door this instant! You are doing harm by refusing to help us.”

A few seconds later the door swings open again, and Dr. Hatch is back. He’s staring at me with squinted, angry eyes that I can look right into, seeing as he’s about an inch shorter than I am.

“I know what you are,” he spits. “The both of you. I don’t help common whores. I am a God-fearing man.”

My eyes get really big as the door slams in my face again. Did I just hear that right? Whores. This asshole just called me a whore.

I whip around to look at Yellow. “It’s because of how we’re dressed,” she says.

I know, and I don’t care. I reach for the doorknob and turn it. The door swings open into a living room. It practically bangs into the staircase. There’s a fire going in a fireplace across the room. Only a few wooden chairs and a dining table stand between me and Dr. Hatch. He jumps.

“What are you doing? Get out of my house!”

“We need your help,” I repeat, enunciating every word. “I know what you think of us, but you’re mistaken. We’re not . . . what you said we are. We’re just two lost girls from . . . from Philadelphia.”

I shouldn’t have said that. Philadelphia is a long way from Boston. How the hell would two young girls have made their way from Philly to Boston alone in the middle of the Revolutionary War? I’ve always been bad at lying on the fly. Those were my lowest Practical Studies grades.

“Philadelphia?” the doctor repeats with raised eyebrows.

“Yes, our fathers are in Boston . . . doing business . . . with . . .” I’m making this ten times worse. I should just shut up. But instead I try to rack my brain to think of anyone I can remember from history class who lived in Revolutionary Boston. “With Paul Revere!”

Yellow’s face scrunches up into a disgusted expression. Paul Revere? she mouths. And then she turns to the doctor. “Please, sir, I’m a good Christian girl myself.” She reaches into the neck of her shirt and pulls out a small gold cross. It’s dwarfed by the owl pendant lying on her chest.

“What’s that?” The doctor points to the Annum watch.

“A gift from my father.” She pops open the lid to reveal the watch face. The doctor’s eyes light up.

“I’ll stitch you up, but that’s my price. I want that as payment.”

“No way,” I scoff. “Give me a needle and thread, and I’ll do it myself.” This isn’t true. I would have no idea where to start. But I could try.

“Okay,” Yellow says. “I agree to your terms.”

I grab onto Yellow’s other arm. “Are you insane?”

But Yellow just slips the necklace over her head and hands it over. The doctor takes it in his hands, examines it, and closes his fist around it. “I’ll be right back.” Then he disappears through a door into a back room.

“What is wrong with you?” I ask Yellow.

She shrugs. “I’m done with this. Chronometric Augmentation. Annum Guard. I’m so sick of it. I’ve always thought I belonged in another time period, so why not here?”

I blink. And then I blink again. “You’re going to stay here? Permanently?”

“Why not?” Yellow says. “It’s . . . what is it, 1782? Maybe I’ll hop a boat over to England. The Regency period is going to start in a few years. I’ve always loved Jane Austen. Maybe I’ll live in a manor house and fall in love with an earl or something. It’ll be nice.”

My mouth drops open. I close it, but it drops open again. “Are you out of your goddamned mind? I should have known you were one of those girls who’s all into Jane Austen just because she read Pride and Prejudice in an English class, but ugh.”

And then Yellow’s face betrays her. She cracks a smile and laughs. “I’m joking, genius. Handing over the necklace was the quickest way to get him to stitch me up so we don’t waste any more time. Every hour we spend here is like four days. We need to get out, and soon. So while I’m getting stitched up, you go outside, sneak around back, break in, grab the necklace, and we’re gone. Got it?”

The door swings open, and Dr. Hatch is back. I stand there, shaking my head. I have to admit it. She got me good. Well played, Yellow. Well played. If I didn’t hate her so much, I think she and I might actually get along.

The doctor pulls out a flat tray that holds a needle as big as one you’d use for quilting and some stuff that looks like twine; and even though I’m not squeamish, looking at these downright primitive medical tools twists my stomach. I turn to Yellow, and she’s as white as a ghost. But then she makes eye contact with me and jerks her head toward the back door.

“I’m going to wait outside,” I say as the doctor picks up the needle. Yellow settles into one of the dining chairs and grits her teeth.

“Can’t stand the sight of blood, eh?” the doctor asks. He uncaps a plain glass bottle filled with amber liquid and hands it to Yellow.

“Something like that,” I mumble. I set the files and notebook on the table next to Yellow.

“Take a drink of that,” the doctor orders.

Yellow lifts it and eyes it. “What is it?”

“Whiskey. Strongest stuff I got. You’re going to need it.”

Yellow sets the bottle down on the table, untouched. “I’ll be fine. Just fix my arm, please.”

The doctor presses the needle to Yellow’s arm, and I fly out the door. I shut it behind me, but the heavy wood does nothing to hide the scream that Yellow lets out. It starts small, as if she’s trying to hold back but builds into an “Ah-ah-aah-aah-AAH!” My heart sinks for her. This is not going to be pretty.

I rest my back against the brick exterior for just a second to collect my thoughts. Yellow lets out another scream from inside the house. I’m wasting time. I take off around the corner to the back of the house. There’s a window and a door. I try the door first, but it’s locked. Dammit. This is colonial America. Aren’t people supposed to be trusting?

Window it is. I try lifting the glass, but it doesn’t budge. And then I let out a disgusted grunt. God, I’m stupid. It’s 1782. Windows don’t slide open in 1782. I’m going to have to break it. But first I press my face to the glass and look in. I hear Yellow scream again as I stare into a small kitchen. There’s a fireplace that doubles as a stove, and several pewter spoons and brass pots hang on the wall. And that’s about it. Tiny. There’s also the narrowest staircase I’ve ever seen in the corner, leading up to the second floor.

I need to find something to wrap around my elbow to muffle the sound when I break the window. I look around, but there’s nothing. A few other houses line this cobblestone street, but no one’s left out a spare sheet of fabric so I can break into their neighbor’s house. Shocking. I wish I’d had the foresight to grab Yellow’s cashmere sweater, but I guess my old-lady house dress will have to do. I lift it over my head and immediately wrap it around my elbow.

Come on, Yellow, scream again. I’m standing here in a bra and nasty, old underwear. I’m sure they lock you up for stuff like this in colonial times.

“Ah-ah-aah-aah-AAH!”

I don’t hesitate. I slam my elbow into the glass, and it shatters. I do it again, clearing away an area where I can climb through without worrying about impaling myself on broken shards of glass. The last thing I need is to injure myself even worse.

I jump back and throw the dress over my head. One of the arms gets snagged on my elbow, and I yank so hard I’m surprised I don’t rip it. I stare at the window, then through it at the closed door leading into the front room. And then I hoist myself up and in through the window.

There’s glass all over the floor, so I can’t jump down. Instead I stay crouched in the window frame, my arms outstretched and plastered to the wall to keep my balance. I have to jump. I’m waiting for Yellow to scream again, hoping it’ll muffle whatever noise I’ll make. How long does it take to stitch up an arm?

But Yellow stays silent. I’m wasting time! I take a deep breath and go for it. I push off the balls of my feet and sail over the glass. I land on the balls of my feet, too, and sink my knees into a squat when I land; soft but not completely silent. There was a thump. I hold my breath and stare at the door. Was I too loud?

“Ah-ah-aah-aah-AAH!”

I jump. Straight up in the air. My heart hammers in my chest, and I reach up a hand and shove it against my breast, as if trying to keep it from escaping. I whip around and scan the small kitchen. I don’t see the necklace, and there aren’t a lot of hiding spots for Dr. Hatch to stash it. It’s not as if this is a fully stocked modern kitchen with twenty feet of cabinets. It’s barely bigger than a closet. The doctor must have taken the necklace upstairs.

The house is quiet as I put one toe on the corner of the first step. It doesn’t make a sound. So I lift off and put the toes of my other foot on the corner of the next step. Silence. I do this again, then again, going as slowly as I can. I only have a few steps to go when—

CREAK!

I shut my eyes. There’s always a creaky stair. Why is there always a creaky stair? I turn my head and stare down into the kitchen. That was loud. There’s no way the doctor didn’t hear that. He’s going to burst through that door any second now, and he’s going to catch me.

“Sarah!” the doctor’s voice calls out from the other room. “You get back in bed this instant!”

Sarah? Who the hell is Sarah? I whip my head back around and nearly fall. There’s a child standing at the top of the steps, staring at me. She can’t be more than four, and she’s as thin as a rail. A damp cloth nightgown clings to her skeletal frame, and stringy brown hair is plastered to her bright-red cheeks. A rash covers nearly every inch of skin that’s not hidden by the nightgown.

“Who are you?” she asks, her voice soft and weak. She’s sick, clearly. Sick with some kind of fever. I try to remember history. Scarlet fever? Yellow fever? Some other colored fever?

“Sarah!” the doctor’s voice booms.

“Answer your father,” I whisper to her. “I’m here to help you.” A pang of guilt surges through my heart as I lie to her.

“Yes, sir,” Sarah calls down the steps. Her voice is so weak, I’m not sure if Dr. Hatch even heard her. Then she turns and plods down the hallway. I follow after her.

Upstairs is a hallway with two doors on the right and another staircase at the end. And that’s it. Sarah walks into the first room. Her bedroom. It’s tiny, only slightly larger than the kitchen. There’s a little Sarah-size bed, and next to it is a wobbly, wooden table barely bigger than a stool. The table is filled with herbs and potions and all sorts of metal instruments that look even worse than the ones Dr. Hatch is now using on Yellow.

Sarah climbs into the bed, and I peer into one of the clay pots on the table. I pick it up, give it a whiff, and gag. It’s awful. It smells like rotting eggs.

“Who are you?” Sarah asks me again.

“I’m a nurse,” I lie as I set down the pot.

“What’s a nurse?” Death is on the tip of her tongue. The back is speckled with tiny white bumps resembling a strawberry.

“I’m here to help,” I repeat, and it’s in that moment that I realize it’s true. I have to help Sarah. This child is dying. But first I have to find Yellow’s necklace.

The necklace isn’t on the bedside table, and the only other piece of furniture is a small, closed armoire. If I had to guess, I’m going to say the doctor stashed it in his own room.

“I’ll be right back,” I whisper to Sarah. “Lie down and be a good girl.”

She has no reason to obey me, but she does. She closes her eyes, and I realize that even holding them open was a chore for her. My heart does a flip. I wonder how long she’s been sick. I wonder how much longer she has. But then I shake my head. Necklace first.

“Ah-ah-aah-aah-AAH!”

I want to clamp my hands over my ears so I don’t have to hear Yellow. But I can’t. I creep back into the hallway and tiptoe to the second room. The door is shut, so I turn the knob slowly and carefully. What if someone else is in the room? What if the doctor has a wife?

When the door is cracked, I peek in. There’s a slightly bigger bed, and it’s made and empty. A small wooden cradle sits beside it. Also empty. I breathe a sigh of relief and swing it open a little wider. A dresser lines the wall with the door, and the necklace sits right there on the corner. I pick it up and slip it into the pocket of my dress. Well, that was easy. Although, really, how hard is it to find something in a sparsely furnished house that’s like five hundred square feet max?

I shut the door to the doctor’s bedroom and tiptoe back to Sarah’s room. She hears me enter and opens her eyes. They’re a mixture of sadness and fear and resignation. Sarah knows she’s dying, and my heart shatters. I need to help her, but I don’t know what I can do here in 1782.

“Am I going to die?” Sarah asks. She coughs, and her entire body shakes.

I don’t say anything.

“My mama died,” she whispers. “And so did Ben. My papa won’t say it, but I think I’m going to die.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m done,” the doctor’s voice says from the floor below.

Oh, not good.

“I’m going to get you medicine,” I whisper to Sarah as I glance into the bowl of herbs next to her bed. “Real medicine. It’s going to make you better.”

I hear the door to the kitchen open downstairs.

“What is this?” the doctor’s voice yells as he spots the broken window. “Sarah!” His feet land on the first step, and I fly out of the room, down the hallway, and into the other stairwell. I thump down the stairs.

“Who’s in here?” The doctor’s voice is now coming from the second floor.

Yellow is still sitting in the same chair, slumped back. Her face is white, and her breath reeks of whiskey. There’s a bucket on the floor that’s half full of vomit. I try not to gag as I pull Yellow’s necklace out of my pocket and spin the year dial two full turns. I toss it to Yellow, and she catches it.

“I set it,” I bark. “Go! Grab the files!”

I’m spinning my own dial as Yellow slips the necklace over her head and tucks the files into her waistband. She tries to stand but staggers backward and falls to the floor.

“The necklace!” the doctor roars from the second floor. “She stole it!”

His footsteps thunder down the stairs. I throw myself over Yellow, grab her pendant, and shut its lid a second before I shut mine.

Yellow and I are ripped through time. I hear Yellow scream. We land, and she stumbles back onto the street. She looks around, and familiarity crosses her face.

“When are we?”

“1894.” I drop my head, grab Yellow’s hand, and pull her into an alley as a policeman rounds the corner, swinging a nightclub.

Yellow looks up at a redbrick building that casts a shadow over us, then leans her back into it and sinks onto the ground. “This is my time.”

“Excuse me?”

“My time,” she says. “My time period. We’re all assigned different eras that we specialize in. I’m the late-nineteenth century. I feel at home here.”

“Except that we’re not staying.” I hold down my hand to help Yellow to her feet, but she doesn’t take it. “Every hour we stay here is like, what?”

“Twelve hours in the present, more or less.”

“So if we stay two hours, we lose an entire day. We can’t do that.”

“Well, I don’t want to project again.” Yellow sighs. “Look at this. Look at what he did to me.” She holds out her arm, and I recoil. Her stitches are crude, thick black strings snaking up half her forearm. “I can’t project again. Physically. I need to recover, at least for a night. I don’t care if I lose a day or a week or even a month. If I project again, I might die.”

I rest my head in my hands. My life is literally racing past me. When I left the present yesterday, it was November. I’m not sure exactly how much time has passed, but it has to be weeks later, maybe even a month or so. And I’ve only passed a few hours.

I could leave Yellow here. I never wanted her tagging along in the first place.

I look down at her, sitting in the street with her legs straight out in front of her. Her patterned tights are ripped, her once crisp dress shirt is ruined, and her skirt is dotted with blood. Because of me. Yellow chose to leave Annum Guard and help me. I can’t abandon her. It would be like leaving an injured man behind on the battlefield. There are some things you just don’t do.

I hold up my index finger. “One night. We’ll develop a game plan and figure out how we’re going to bring down Alpha. So tell me, Miss Nineteenth Century, is there a hotel we could check into or something?”

“The Parker House,” Yellow says. “It’s the best hotel in Boston. I’ve eaten in the restaurant a bunch of times, but I’ve never stayed there. I’ve always wanted to.”

I scrunch my nose. “And how exactly are we going to pay for that?” It dawns on me that when I ran away, I didn’t count on having to pay for things. Ever. I have exactly zero dollars on me. I haven’t eaten in a day. As the thought crosses my mind, I realize that I’m hungry. Starving. And thirsty. It’s as if I was blocking out all the discomfort because I was so high on adrenaline, but now that I can finally breathe, I’ve come crashing back to Earth.

I place my hand on my stomach. “We need to eat. Do you have any money on you?”

She pushes up, pulls a twenty out of her pocket, and looks at it. “This would more than cover a room and dinner, except that we might run into a problem right here.” She holds it in front of my face and taps on the lower-right corner, where the words 2008 SERIES are printed.

I sigh. “So we have no money.”

“And you’re in a muumuu, and I’m in a corduroy miniskirt.”

“You sure you can’t project again?”

“Positive.”

I nod my head. “Okay.” I look down at the charm bracelet dangling from my wrist. My Hanukkah gift from Abe’s family. I hate to part with it, but sometimes you have to make hard choices. “We can sell this.” I shake my wrist.

Yellow shakes her head. “No, you’re not selling that. It was a gift from your boyfriend, right?”

“How did you know that?”

“You told me it was a gift when you first started at Annum Guard. I just guessed it was from a boyfriend.”

I can’t believe Yellow remembers something I told her in passing about my bracelet.

“We’ll sell these,” she says. “Or one of them, at least.” She unscrews one of her diamond stud earrings and holds it up, then she drops it into my hand. “You have to do it, though. Those suckers were five thousand dollars apiece, and I think I might pass out when they give me, like, a hundred and fifty for it.”

Yellow leads me down Washington Street and stops in front of a door. SHREVE, CRUMP & LOW is written on a sign out front.

“Tuck your hair up and pretend you’re a man,” Yellow tells me before I go inside. “They’ll give you a better price.”

“I’m in a flowered muumuu. They’re going to think I’m an asylum patient.”

“Oh. True. Well, then, just do your best.”

The man standing inside the jewelry store gives me a very blatant once-over, but all appearances are overlooked when I pull out that diamond stud. He tries to lowball me, but I talk him up to $175. I honestly have no idea if that’s a fair price or if I’m getting ripped off, but, oh well.

Next, Yellow and I duck into a small clothing shop down the street and buy dresses and shoes that are good quality but at least ten years out of fashion. At least that’s what Yellow says. But we can afford them; that’s the important part. Then it’s on to the Parker House.

The lobby of the hotel takes my breath away, even in 1894. Massive Corinthian columns line the room, stretching all the way from the marble floors to the coffered ceilings. Dozens of dome chandeliers dangle above our heads. We go to the desk, money in hand, ready with our cover stories. Yellow and I are the daughters of a foreign dignitary here in town on business. Our father sent us to check into the best hotel in Boston. But the man behind the counter doesn’t even blink. He gives us a metal key to room 303 and that’s that.

Finally. Something is simple for once.

The room is small, with two beds, a dresser, and a night table. Yellow collapses onto one of the beds, but I refuse.

“Uh-uh. Get up. I’m starving, and we have to figure out a plan. We can rest later.”

Yellow grumbles but pushes herself up off the bed. I grab the files and Alpha’s notebook, and we head downstairs into the restaurant, which is already filling up, even though it’s just five o’clock.

When we sit, I glance around, sort of to make sure no one is eavesdropping on us but mostly to see where the damned waiter is with the dinner rolls. I toss Alpha’s notebook onto the table, and Yellow scoops it up at once.

“Is this Alpha’s?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I drum my fingers on the table and look around again. “I took it from his office. I haven’t gotten a chance to look at it yet.” Yellow’s already flipping through it. “There’s so much to process here. What I don’t get is why Alpha wants Ariel Stender dead.”

“Who’s Ariel Stender?” Yellow asks, flipping a page. She doesn’t look up at me.

“He invented these,” I say, fingering the watch hanging from my neck. “I already told you that.”

I look around. Seriously, where the hell is the waiter?

Yellow flips another page. “But who’s Ariel Stender? Was he part of the original Annum Guard?”

“No, he’s still alive in the present. He’s . . . he’s my boyfriend’s grandfather.”

At that Yellow looks up at me over the top of the notebook. Her eyes are wide with surprise.

“Alpha told you to kill your boyfriend’s grandfather?”

I nod.

“And you considered it?”

“No!” I hiss. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t ever—”

And then the waiter sidles up to our table. Finally. Yellow ducks her head back to the notebook.

“Good evening, ladies.” He sets a small basket of bread on the table. I have to restrain myself from jumping on it. “Have you had a chance to look over the menu?”

I haven’t even opened it. Yellow’s sits untouched, too.

“I’ll have the green turtle soup and the filet of beef,” Yellow says, her head still down. “Rare, please. Oh, and a side of the truffled duck in jelly.”

I blink. Most of that sounds absolutely disgusting. I quickly glance at the menu and want to gag. Larded sweetbreads, kidney, mutton, tongue. I could never live in 1894.

The waiter clears his throat.

“The filet of beef, too,” I tell him. It’s like the only edible thing on the whole menu. “But medium, please.” On the outside, I might seem like a rare-meat kind of girl, too; but really, meat that is too pink and bloody and, well, raw makes me want to hurl.

The waiter raises an eyebrow. “Medium? I don’t understand.”

My head whips over to Yellow, and she quickly shakes her own. People haven’t heard of medium in 1894? I look back to the waiter. “Um, just not rare. A little more cooked.”

This doesn’t seem to clear much up, but the waiter takes our menus and leaves. I pounce on the bread basket and rip open a half moon–shaped roll with my teeth. I don’t pause to bother with the butter, and I sure as hell forget my manners. The roll is warm and buttery, and I could eat seventy of them.

“Anyway,” I say. “It’s clear that Alpha’s up to something, so we need to figure out what it is and then come up with a way to stop him, which is going to be difficult, considering I’m apparently a wanted felon these days. Any ideas?”

Yellow doesn’t even acknowledge that I asked her a question. She still has her nose buried in that damned notebook.

I clear my throat and grab another roll. “Ahem, I asked if you had any ideas.”

Finally she looks up. She has a bewildered expression on her face. “You haven’t read this?”

“No,” I mumble with a mouth full of bread. I should have ordered an appetizer. “When would I have had a chance to do that? When I was running from you guys? When I woke up in a hospital room, and you showed up like a minute later? While I was breaking into a colonial house to get back your necklace? Huh? When in all of that free time was I supposed to sit down and do some pleasure reading?”

Yellow shakes her head. “You don’t have to be so snippy about it.” She tilts the notebook at me. “It’s our missions. Every single one of them. I think Alpha was selling them on the side.”

I reach over and snatch the notebook out of her hands. It’s open to an entry marked June 5 from last year. It reads:

JL

7.5

I scrunch up my nose. “And how exactly did you come to the conclusion that this is a mission?”

“Because of the date. June 5. I remember that mission. Green and I tampered with a Supreme Court decision on some transportation statute, then he tried to cop a feel before we projected back. I kneed him right where it hurts. I’ll never forget that day.”

“What’s seven point five?” I say. “This doesn’t strike me as having anything to do with money.”

Yellow grabs back the notebook and flips it to the beginning. “Look, here.” She holds it up and points to a page of entries. My eyes scan them.

RF

$5.75

BB

$2.8

KP

$3.0

“He stopped using the dollar sign almost right away, probably because it was too obvious,” Yellow says.

I take the notebook from her and flip forward a few pages. She’s right. The dollar sign is on that first page and then it disappears. I thumb through and find the JL entry. “So what’s seven point five? Seven and a half million?”

“No way,” Yellow says as she shakes her head. “There are hundreds, thousands of entries in there. Alpha isn’t making several million dollars off each of them. He’d be a billionaire or something. Alpha doesn’t have billions of dollars, I can tell you that much. Seven and a half thousand, maybe? Or seven hundred and fifty bucks?”

“Who’s JL?” I ask.

Yellow shrugs. “Code for one particular person, I’d imagine. And I’d really doubt that those are initials. Alpha’s smarter than that.”

She drops her napkin into her lap and reaches for the bread basket.

“You ate all the rolls?” she asks in horror.

I barely hear her. I’ve already flipped the notebook to the last few pages and am staring at the dates. The Boston Massacre mission is there. KA bought it for 50.0. Well, tried to buy it, at least. I failed that mission, as evidenced by the angry blue scratch mark through the number.

Fifty thousand dollars. Yellow’s right. It has to be thousands. Alpha would have made fifty grand off that.

The mission in DC with Senator McCarthy is there, too. OO bought it for only 3.0. Small potatoes. The Gardner mission’s there, too. That one went for a million dollars. Holy shit.

I flip to the very front of the notebook. Looks as if Alpha started selling the missions in the early 1990s. Which means . . .

I flip forward a few pages and feel the rolls I just pounded start to rise in my throat.

It’s there. It has an entry. Alpha knew about the JFK mission. It wasn’t unauthorized at all. Alpha might have set up my dad.

I stare at the entry. Alpha was set to make ten million off stopping the JFK assassination.

Instead there were two assassinations that day.