Timepiece

Chapter 2

The Phone Company was a disaster of glass and overturned tables. The lights that were still in working order reflected off puddles of spilled drinks and shattered chandelier crystals.

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.”