Timepiece

Chapter 10

Once Em was gone, I faced Lily. “I usually find bossy to be a sexy trait in a girl. You’ve broken the streak.”

“I don’t give a damn what you think about me.” Lily didn’t mess around; her words always matched her emotions. “You haven’t broken any streaks at all. I’ve met a hundred boys like you in a hundred different scenarios, even dated one or two, and you’re all exactly the same.”

“It’s not nice to stereotype.”

“Don’t talk to me about stereotypes.” She stared up at the pale pink sky and frowned. Her eyes matched the tiger’s-eye pendant that hung from her neck. “I’m not here for friendly conversation. Michael’s solidly on Em’s side, so I’m not going to get any information from him. But you’re selfish enough to tell me the truth.”

“Perceptive.”

“Very.”

“Maybe Em’s already told you the truth,” I countered. “Catch me up on what you know.”

“Smooth.”

“Very.”

Lily sighed. “I know that Jack Landers messed with her time line. I know what the Hourglass does, sort of, and that you all have to find Jack.” Worry. Helplessness. “I knew there was an ultimatum, but I didn’t know what it was, or the consequences of it. Until you.”

“Now that you do know, why did you ask me to stay out here with you, alone?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her chin up at me. “Do you have any other way to find Jack, or am I the only option?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Dad says he’ll handle it. Well, that he and Michael will handle it.”

“So Em’s being her usual self by trying to circumvent the problem and take care of it herself?”

“Yes.”

Lily’s face was screwed up in concentration, her features smoothing out as she put puzzle pieces in the right places. I didn’t want her to fit in the piece about how she ended up in this exact time and place.

“Ivy Springs isn’t a magnet for freaks,” I said abruptly, trying to derail her train of thought. I fished a stick out of a pile of leaves and peeled off the bark, throwing it on the ground.

“This many ‘special abilities’ in one tiny town makes it a magnet,” she said, disagreeing.

“How do you know there aren’t fifty freaks living in Nashville? Or five hundred in Atlanta?” I peeled off another piece of bark. “Maybe they’re keeping it a secret, too.”

“There are at least five hundred freaks in Atlanta, but that doesn’t mean any of them have a special ability.” She jerked the stick out of my hands and snapped it in half.

“Okay.” I raised my eyebrows.

“You’re trying to change the subject.” She chucked a piece of the stick toward the woods. “I don’t know why, but if you want to succeed, you’ll have to try harder.”

“One point to Lily.”

“If you don’t find Jack, and time is rewound, how do you know things wouldn’t play out the exact way they did the first time?” she asked. Too perceptive. “How do you know people wouldn’t make the same choices, live the same lives?”

“I think the people who want Jack will take him out of the picture. From what point do they take him? After he killed my dad but before he changed Emerson’s time line?”

She threw the other half, harder this time. “That sucks.”

“That sucks,” I agreed.

“If I do help…” She stopped, catching her breath, and stared over my shoulder. I turned around.

A man sat on a horse twenty feet in front of us.

“That’s… not… right,” Lily choked out from behind me.

One end of a long rope circled the man’s neck in a makeshift noose, and the other end draped over the highest branch of a black walnut tree. None of it had been there two minutes ago. His hands were tied behind his back, his feet tucked into stirrups. A shotgun came into view behind the horse he sat on, aimed at the sky.

The man attached to the gun came into view next.

“We don’t take to thieves here.” He leaned the gun against the trunk of the tree as he took the rope and tied it tightly, working it into the grooves of the bark. “Not of our livestock or our women.”

“I didn’t touch your wife.”

The sound of the shotgun pump echoed across the empty landscape. Lily’s shoulders jerked at the sound.

“I didn’t, and I’m not a thief. I thought it was my horse, I thought…” Desperation tainted the excuse. Sweat beaded on the thief’s forehead.

“I caught you red-handed with both. I took care of the woman, but you’re welcome to another turn on the horse.” The man holding the gun curled his index finger around the trigger.

“You’ll be sorry,” the thief said. “My men will make you sorry.”

“They’ll have to find me first. Enjoy the ride.”

I jumped forward, grabbing Lily’s arm. She made a sound of protest as I spun her around and pulled her into my chest.

A shot echoed through the twilight air.

The horse reared and took off at full speed, and the man jerked backward with a loud snap. His feet twitched as his face turned red, and then blue.

Lily struggled to free herself from my arms. I held her tighter. “Don’t look. Please don’t look.”

The man who shot the gun had disappeared.

“Kaleb? Lily?” A voice broke in, faint, sounding far away. I looked toward where the house was supposed to be. Em.

The three of us stood in the middle of a field, empty, except for a dead man hanging from a tree.

Em watched the man swing from side to side, not looking at his face. Her voice remained calm, but she kept swallowing as if she was trying not to throw up. “Lily?”

Lily pushed her way out of my arms before I could stop her. Her focus shifted from Em to the man hanging to the tree and back again. “What the hell…”

“You can see him?” Em whispered.

“Where are we?” Lily asked, spinning around in a complete circle. “What happened to the house?”

Em and I exchanged a look that asked a singular question. If Lily could see the full-blown rip, did that mean the rips were changing? Or did it mean Lily had the time gene?

Em turned toward the hanging man and walked the twenty feet to the trunk of the walnut tree. She tried touching it first, but nothing happened. Squeezing her eyes shut, she gingerly reached out in the direction of the man’s foot.

When she made contact, the scene in front of us melted from top to bottom.

To reveal Thomas and Dru standing on the back porch, staring at us.

Em gazed back in horror. “What are you doing?”

“Checking to see what was keeping the three of you,” Thomas said. “What are you doing?”

“Did you… did you just see that?” Em waved her hand in the direction of the place the rip had disappeared seconds before.

Thomas and Dru replied in unison.

“See what?”