Timekeeper

by Alexandra Monir

  “You see, Michele, we have always cared deeply for you,” Walter said softly. “We kept things from you only because we felt we had no choice.”

  Michele reached for her grandparents’ hands.

  “I can’t imagine what these years must have been like for you,” she said. “It kills me to hear what Rebecca did to you and my parents. But we won’t let her win.” Michele’s teeth clenched with anger as she realized that everything in her life would have been different if it hadn’t been for this psychotic time traveler. She would have grown up with both parents and grandparents in her life, Marion wouldn’t have been left alone to raise Michele as a single mother—and most of all, Michele wouldn’t now be an orphan at sixteen.

  “Rebecca broke up my whole family,” she whispered as the horror of it all sank in. She looked up at her grandparents. “What does she want to do to me?”

  There was an agonizing silence as Walter and Dorothy looked at each other, unsure of what to say.

  “She wants me dead, doesn’t she?” Michele said flatly.

  After a pause Walter said, “But remember, she can’t do anything about it just yet. That’s why we have to take you away from here. We know you must miss your old home and your friends, so we’ve booked one-way plane tickets to Los Angeles. We can stay there until the danger has passed.”

  “No,” Michele said firmly. “Rebecca has been terrorizing our family since before I was born—it doesn’t matter where I go. She’ll find me. That’s why I have to be ready when she does. I have to finish this.”

  “But—but how can you?” Dorothy sputtered. “How can you stay here when she’s haunting the house, and go to school and act normal, when you might only have seven days? At least if we go away—”

  “It won’t change anything,” Michele interrupted. “How do we know she won’t just follow us there? The only solution is for me to find a way to stop her—for good.” As she spoke, Michele couldn’t help marveling at how calm she sounded, despite being thrust into the middle of a real live horror movie. But as she thought of the family Rebecca had stolen from her, fury and determination overrode her fear. Her mind suddenly filled with the image of Philip’s face, and the longing to stay alive, to be with him, was so profound that in this moment she felt as if she could defeat any obstacle in her path.

  Seizing the album, Michele flipped through it until she found the first visual she had ever seen of her father: his business portrait from the year 1900. He was thirty-one in this photograph, though there was a heaviness to his eyes that made him appear older. The cheerful boy of 1887 was barely visible.

  “What I don’t understand is, if Irving and Rebecca’s friendship ended in 1888, then why was he still working for the family so many years later?” Michele wondered.

  “The oddest part is that this photo of Irving was never in the album originally,” Dorothy said in a hushed tone. “It appeared the day after he left the 1990s.”

  “We did some research through the family to find out what we could about Rebecca and Irving,” Walter continued. “It wasn’t easy, as nearly everyone who knew them had died, but we did speak to her niece, Frances Windsor.”

  Michele felt a jolt of recognition at the name. She had seen little Frances, known as Frankie back in 1910, when she’d met Clara Windsor. Frankie was Clara’s little sister.

  “Frances was in her nineties when we visited her in ’93, but she still had a sharp memory. Rebecca was her father George’s sister, and she remembered her aunt being the strange, unfriendly black sheep of the family. Rebecca never married, nor did she make anything of her life. Frances remembered her always disappearing on mysterious travels, sometimes for years at a time. George inherited this house after their parents died, and Rebecca moved into a townhouse on Washington Square—though she was rarely in the city. According to Frances, her aunt never seemed to want much to do with the family. They only saw her when she made an occasional appearance at Windsor balls. On the other end of the spectrum, as Rebecca drifted away, Irving grew closer to them. Frances said that whenever he came to the house to discuss legal or business matters with her father, he would arrive early and linger after the meeting, as if he was waiting for someone.” Walter took a deep breath. “I always wondered if it was Marion he was waiting for—if she was the reason he kept so close.”

  Michele swallowed the lump in her throat. “Did my … my dad ever see Rebecca again?”

  “Not that anyone knows of. Rebecca was rarely around, and on the occasions that she did return to Windsor Mansion, Irving must have stayed away. Frances said that although he was invited for holidays and parties at the house, he never once attended.”

  “I have to find him,” Michele declared. “I have this feeling that—that he’ll know what to do.”

  Dorothy gasped, appalled at the idea. “But if you find him, then you could be walking straight into her trap. She lives in his time!”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t do anything until I’ve figured out more and made a … a plan.”

  Walter squeezed her hand. “We’ll help you. We’re in this together.”

  Michele took a deep breath. Seeing the worry written across her grandparents’ faces, she wondered if she was deluded in thinking she could take on this cross-century war with an adversary she hadn’t even known existed until today. But then … she had no choice.

  The Key of the Nile is the device that enables us to travel through time. These keys come from the very birthplace of time travel, ancient Egypt. More than two hundred keys are known to exist: one for each family in the Time Society. Though they all form the shape of the ankh, each key has its own unique feature, size, and design.

  The Key of the Nile is always given by a Timekeeper within the family before he or she departs this earth. Therefore, time travel is an inherited gift. The power runs in each family’s blood, through the Time Travel Gene. The gene is activated when you receive your key.

  The vast majority of our kind cannot travel without their Key. Only a select few extraordinary Timekeepers are able. I am one of them.

  —THE HANDBOOK OF THE TIME SOCIETY

  3

  When it was time for bed, Michele left her bright desk lamp shining and locked her door, dragging an armchair against it for good measure. She knew logically that none of these precautions could stop a time traveler from entering her room, but it still made her feel a bit safer. Retrieving the newspaper photo of Philip from the 1910 Halloween Ball, she climbed into bed, gazing at it until she finally fell asleep.

  * * *

  “My grandfather’s clock

  Was too large for the shelf,

  So it stood ninety years on the floor.…”

  Michele stepped forward, toward the sound of a young girl’s hushed singing. The tune sounded like a children’s nursery rhyme, yet the girl sang it in a sinister tone. Michele felt an odd sense of foreboding as she moved through the grass.

  I’m in Central Park, she realized as she passed the rippling lake and took in the verdant greenery on either side. But how did I get here? Where are all the people?

  A drop of water hit her fleece pants, and Michele looked down to see that she was in her sleepwear, with soft slippers in place of shoes. What in the world?

  A drizzle had begun to fall, and she quickened her pace until she found herself standing in front of an old merry-go-round. The creaky carousel moved in slow motion while droplets of rain hit the colorful carved horses. And then Michele saw them—two children, around eight or nine years old, moving through the mist on the ride. The girl was dressed formally for the park, wearing a white pinafore tied with a yellow sash. The tiny hands holding on to the horse’s neck were adorned with kid gloves, and an old-fashioned bonnet framed the girl’s jet-black hair. Meanwhile, the little boy was adorably dressed in a petite Norfolk jacket with knee-length trousers.

  “Ninety years without slumbering,

  Tick, tock, tick, tock.”

  The sweeter voice of the little boy voice joined the gi
rl’s in song.

  “His life seconds numbering,

  Tick, tock, tick, tock,

  It stopped short,

  Never to go again,

  When the old man died.”

  As they finished singing, the little girl suddenly turned her head to face Michele with an expression that made her stumble backward in alarm.

  Instead of the innocent look of a child, the girl’s pale face was hard and severe, her dark eyes menacing. There was something disconcertingly familiar about her face. Michele knew she had seen it before.

  The little girl slid gracefully off the carousel horse and walked toward her, eyes focused on Michele’s neck, hands outstretched. Michele reached up protectively, shielding her key necklace.

  “What are you doing?” the little boy called out nervously, hopping off his carousel horse.

  “Be quiet, Irving.” The girl dismissed him.

  It’s Irving and Rebecca.

  Michele lost her breath as the little boy turned around to look at her. His face was like a younger male version of hers.

  “Dad,” she mouthed, but no sound came out. And then the scene turned black.

  DAY TWO

  Michele awoke to the music of the Black Keys blaring from her iPod alarm, and at first she couldn’t remember where she was. The strange dream had disoriented her, leaving an unsettled feeling in her stomach. But soon she registered the familiar sight of her bedroom and remembered that it was a school day. She might have a nineteenth-century time traveler to defeat, but first she would be seeing Philip again. The thought was enough to momentarily distract her from Rebecca and her father. Jumping out of bed, she hurried into the bathroom, butterflies dancing in her stomach as she wondered if today would be the day he remembered her—or if it would be the day she discovered who he really was.

  But when she reached the bathroom, the sight in the mirror caused her to yelp in alarm. Wisps of grass were stuck to her pants … and there were water marks on her T-shirt. She racked her brain, trying to come up with a memory of having gone outside before bed, but she knew she hadn’t. It hadn’t even rained last night.

  The Central Park of her father’s youth hadn’t been a dream. She had really been there. This wasn’t the first time she’d traveled against her will, but it was the only time she had mistaken it for a dream.

  Michele sank onto the edge of the tub, head in her hands as she tried to make sense of the madness that was fast becoming her new reality. She might have stayed there, frozen in thought, if Annaleigh hadn’t buzzed her on the intercom, letting her know Fritz had arrived to take her to school.

  Michele hurriedly blow-dried her hair into natural waves and paired her plaid school skirt with a snowy blouse that reminded her a little of the dress she had worn to the Windsor Ball of 1910. She dabbed on concealer to camouflage the dark undereye circles from her lack of sleep, and after a coat of mascara and lip gloss, she felt ready.

  Berkshire High, a 110-year-old private school housed in a museumlike building, looked nearly as intimidating as Windsor Mansion. Corinthian columns framed the white stone structure, and the glamorous teenagers of Manhattan’s rich and famous leaned against them as they laughed and chattered in the final moments before the morning bell rang. Michele hurried past them, her heartbeat picking up speed as she scanned the crowds for Philip.

  When she arrived in U.S. history, she instantly saw him across the classroom. He looked up from his desk as if sensing her, and their eyes locked. Michele clutched the doorframe, his presence still a shock. She could never seem to stop her overpowering, full-body reaction to him, from the lightheaded giddiness to the flip-flopping sensation in her stomach. She knew from experience that the only remedy was for Philip to hold her close, kiss her lips. But as he broke their eye contact and turned back to the textbook on his desk, Michele felt as if she might as well be just a girl with a crush, longing for the boy to notice her. It was such a jarring change from the Philip who had spent his life waiting for her. Michele swallowed hard, lowering her eyes as she made her way to her seat.

  At lunch that day, Michele sat at her usual table in the dining room with Caissie and Matt, but she was silent during most of her friends’ banter. Her eyes kept drifting to the table where Philip and Kaya Morgan sat alone, acting even cozier than the day before. She couldn’t hear their conversation, but could see Kaya talking animatedly while Philip nodded and smiled.

  “You would think the new guy has superpowers, the way the girls here are freaking out over him,” Matt said unhelpfully as he followed Michele’s gaze. “You too?”

  Michele didn’t see much of a point in lying to Matt. “There is something about him,” she admitted.

  “What about Ben? Aren’t you going to the dance with him?” Matt asked.

  Michele winced. In all the craziness from the past two days, she had completely forgotten about agreeing to be Ben Archer’s date to the school’s annual Autumn Ball—which was this Saturday. Ben had seemed cool with going just as friends, but he’d made his crush on her clear. She couldn’t imagine dancing with Ben all night while Philip was in the same room. As if reading her mind, Caissie shot her a look.

  “You’re not turning Ben down now,” she said, her voice stern even through a mouthful of salad.

  “I would never do that!” Michele said indignantly. “I just—”

  But she didn’t finish her sentence, because at that moment Kaya let out a flirtatious laugh, squeezing Philip’s hand as he grinned at her.

  “Never mind. I’m lucky to be going with Ben.” Michele took a deep breath. It’s going to be okay. He’s only acting so close with her because she’s the one person he knows at this school. She refocused on her friends, casting around for a change of subject. “Are you guys going to be here for Thanksgiving?”

  As Caissie and Matt commiserated over splitting the holidays between their divorced parents, Michele subtly scooted her chair around so she’d have less of a view of Philip and Kaya. For a good ten minutes she managed to keep herself from looking at him, until they stood up to leave. That was when Michele saw the veiled figure materialize through a fog in the middle of the dining room—Rebecca. Her image flickered like that of a ghost, but Michele could see her watching Philip closely. What could Rebecca want with him?

  “Um, Michele. What are you doing?”

  Dazedly, Michele glanced over at her friends, who were eyeing her in bewilderment. She realized she had stood up at the sight of Rebecca—and it must have looked to Caissie and Matt like she’d gotten up to blatantly stare at Philip and Kaya.

  “I, uh, thought I saw someone from California,” Michele fibbed, blushing as she sat back down. She breathed a sigh of relief as the dark fog of Rebecca evaporated just as quickly as it had appeared. Philip was safe … for now. Michele would have to make sure he stayed that way.

  Michele dialed the Windsor Mansion from her cell as Fritz drove her across Midtown after school. She heard Annaleigh answer as the SUV passed the busy lights and bustle of the West Fifties.

  “Hey, Annaleigh. I just wanted to give you the heads-up that I’m on my way to, um … study with a friend. Fritz is driving me. I’ll be home for dinner, but I just thought my grandparents would want to know.” Michele silently prayed that Walter and Dorothy wouldn’t have a panic attack over her going out after school when Rebecca was at large—but then, Michele knew she wasn’t any safer at home. If anything, she needed to get as much accomplished as she could during the next six days, before Rebecca became far more threatening.

  Fritz dropped her off at the corner of Fifty-Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue, across from the stately Carnegie Hall, but she only had eyes for the building farther down the block, the Osborne. The apartment’s brownstone exterior seemed to beckon her, and a sudden breeze felt like a whisper urging her forward. She didn’t have any sort of plan, and she knew that showing up at his apartment could give off a total stalker vibe. Still, she had to talk to him, away from the distractions of school. She needed to f
ind out why he couldn’t remember her, who he really was—and why Rebecca might be following him too.

  Her heart thudded in her chest as she approached the building and noticed the plaque above the front door: Established 1885. A New York City Designated Landmark. Street-level storefronts surrounded the Osborne, with a break in the center for its main entrance. She peeked into the window of the lobby, and drew in her breath.

  It looked as if the interior of a Renaissance palace had been transplanted into this Manhattan apartment building. The Osborne lobby was an artistic masterpiece, its walls and floors completely covered in decorative marble and mosaics. The curved and coffered ceilings were just as ornate, while the entrance was flanked by painted medallions illustrating the subjects of music and literature. Antique wall sconces shined a spotlight on the focal point of the lobby: a gold-and-bronze antique Roman clock, sitting proudly on a heavy pillar at the back of the room. Michele stared at the clock, and without thinking, slowly reached for her key.

  The breeze in the air escalated into a high wind swirling around her body, and Michele gasped as her feet were lifted off the ground. Spinning so fast that she could hardly see, she realized with amazement that it was happening again. She landed with a stumble in front of the Osborne at dusk—but everything else had changed.

  The first thing she noticed was the noise. The city sounded altogether different. She heard the chug-chug of a train, the rumble of old-fashioned cars, and the musical quality of voices speaking in refined tones, as if they were acting in a play. Michele turned around slowly, her eyes growing wide.