“Take it to Mrs. Washington. She’ll know what to do.”
“She knows what you are?” asked Oren.
“She’s the only one. I had to trust someone. And today, I’m glad I did.”
Oren didn’t look pleased, but at the moment, Mrs. Washington could possibly save their lives.
“I’ll do everything I can, Professor,” said Hazel, and she touched his hand through the bars. Her fingers were cold.
“Oren and I are both of us murderers,” he said. “They’re right about that. We’re both guilty of killing men. We’ve run from prison and built a life on lies. Neither of us went to any fancy university for our degrees. We’re frauds. Murdering frauds. Why would you want to help us?”
“I wasn’t always what I am now,” she said, looking down at her dress which was perfectly ordinary. But he knew she was looking past the dress.
“In my dreams, you took care of me,” she said. “I was your ward. I lived with you and you were kind to me. You treated me as if I were your own daughter.”
Chapter 22
“Record!” Elliot shouted, and a small light appeared at the corner of his vision, indicating that his eye implant was recording.
He dropped to the deck as a winged, legless dragon soared past overhead. It turned, made another pass over them, but did not burn anything. Then it twisted in the air, the sunlight gleaming on its bronze scales and headed toward the west, toward land, its feathered wings beating slowly, the feathers around its head bright in the sunlight.
The sky was blue now, but a moment before, it had been orange. Was it because of the dragon? The sky darkened to a deep purple and thunder rumbled so loudly he could feel it in his chest.
Sister took his arm and tried to pull him up, but he grabbed her and pulled her down beside him.
“See that?” he pointed into the distance. “See where the dragon went? Look what’s coming now.”
“It’s nothing,” signed Sister.
“See the black dots? Those are the slaugh, the Wild Hunt.”
“No, it’s not,” she signed, pulling away from him and standing up. “You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”
He looked again, but the Wild Hunt must have diverted their course, for the sky was clear once more.
“I saw it,” he said.
“I heard you record it. Play it back,” Sister signed.
He did, and saw only a blue sky, clear and empty.
Sister texted someone on her phone, and Elliot stood and took a look at the monkey crew. They were working as if nothing had happened, as if no dragon had just threatened their lives. Mr. Escobar, the first mate, was watching him, but then glanced away.
“Again?” Elliot said, understanding at last. Sister gave him a sympathetic look. She signed something to Mr. Escobar and he gave a sharp nod, then shouted orders to the crew.
Astrid appeared on deck a moment later, and Elliot watched as she looked him over, assessing his condition.
“Stop it. I’m fine now, but it happened again.”
“They’re getting worse,” signed Sister. “The crew is worried.”
Elliot knew what happened on a ship when the crew lost faith in their captain. Though Skidbladnir’s monkeys were good and loyal, they were not stupid. They would not follow a mad captain.
“We should go to your quarters,” said Astrid. “Somewhere quiet.”
Elliot knew that it wasn’t quiet they needed, but privacy. The crew did not need to hear their discussion. They went below decks, to the captain’s quarters that Sister and Elliot shared. Elliot sank down into his plush reading chair. Astrid pulled up the desk chair and Sister sat on the floor.
“I can’t tell when it’s not real,” said Elliot. “I suppose that’s the nature of being crazy, right?”
Astrid didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t lie to him, he knew. But he also knew it was hard for her to be unkind to him, even to tell the truth.
“I know what’s happening,” he said. “I know I’m going insane. I’m fine now, and I can tell now, but not when it’s happening.”
“You’re sensing time slips. It’s what you do. You were never crazy before. Was it the walking Egyptian statues and the void wyrms again?”
“No. A dragon and the Wild Hunt.”
“A dragon? You’ve never encountered a dragon before.”
“I’ve never encountered any of those things before.”
She didn’t argue with him, but he already knew what she would have said. She had memories of a different past, one where he had been imprisoned in a terrible library, one where he worked with the Time Corps.
“What did the dragon look like?”
“It was metallic. Bronze. Long neck. Feathered wings. No legs, like a snake.”
“And it attacked you?”
“No,” he said, surprised. “It just looked at us. I was so sure it was going to burn us, but it didn’t. It just looked at us, circled around and flew off.”
Astrid got a faraway look, as she always did when deep in thought.
“I’m not too surprised you see the past. Sister dreams of her other past too. But since you sense time slips, I think you might be able to see into the future.”
“A dragon in my future?”
“It’s possible. Anything is possible, right?”
Sister was looking at them with wide eyes.
“Not all of the things I see are bad,” said Elliot. “I saw a beautiful woman reading. She had these silvery markings on her face. And the sky is sometimes pale orange or lavender or dark blue. Once it was a gold so bright it hurt to look at.”
“The orange and the purple are the Seelie and Unseelie skies,” said Astrid. “But even if you see nice things, most of them are bad. Monsters and rips in the sky. The void wyrms. Terrible things.”
They sat in silence, and Elliot knew what had to happen. “I have to give up the ship,” he said. “I can’t captain like this. Sister, you should be captain. The crew understands your signing. You can do it.”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t be in charge of all those monkeys. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“Astrid?” he looked to his cousin.
“I can’t be a captain and leave the ship at a moment’s notice to do psychopomp jobs. Besides, I don’t want to live at sea. But there’s another option, one to think about. Yelbeghen would take care of the ship. He would pay you well, and you can split the gold among the crew. You could let the crew off on their home island in the Gulf of Mexico, and Skidbladnir could live in the waters around Yelbeghen’s island.”
Elliot wanted to say no, that it wasn’t fair to the crew or the ship. But what other choice did they have? He needed to think it through, when he was calmer and wasn’t still pulsing with adrenaline from facing death, even an imagined one.
“Do you think it’s Yelbeghen I saw?” asked Elliot.
“I don’t know what he looks like as a dragon.”
“You said you have been dining with him for years, and you’ve never seen him?”
“He’s sort of shy about it.”
He knew her look, the longing, wistful look, the little sideways glance, and then her attempt to hide it. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets, which meant she was withdrawing, concealing herself.
“You like him,” he said, not bothering to hide the accusation in his tone. “You really like him. He forces you to eat with him. He collects people. He’s not even human.”
“Neither am I.”
“Oh, come on. You’re more human than he is. You’re not a monster.”
“He’s not a monster. He can be kind.”
“It’s called Stockholm syndrome. You were like that with your mother too, defending her even after she tortured and abused you.”
He saw the anguish on her face and knew immediately he had been too harsh. The subject of her mother needed to be broached delicately, and he had been too blunt and hurt her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though he really wasn’t. “I just hate when you don’t think you deserve better. You take scraps when you deserve a meal. Fulfill your obligation to the drake, but don’t let him make you think he actually cares about you.”
She was looking at the floor now, shutting herself away from him, but he knew her thoughts.
“He can’t care about you. He’s not a man, no matter what he looks like. He’s not your friend.”
“I don’t have real friends, Elliot. My friends from art school are fine, but they can’t ever know what I am. Same with the guys I dated. The only friends I can be myself with are the psychopomps who don’t remember me and the Time Corps who are in another world. So what else do I have, really?”
“You have us,” said Elliot.
Sister looked from one of them to the other and then signed her agreement.
But Elliot understood what Astrid meant all too well. She was right about being alone. He didn’t know how much Sister understood, but if he knew anything about her, it was that in her forced silence, she was always listening and watching.
Sister stood up. “I’ll be acting captain until we get home. We have one more delivery before we can go back to Los Angeles.” She left to speak with Mr. Escobar, and Astrid poured a glass of water from a jug.
“I’ll stay as long as I can,” she said.
Elliot climbed into his hammock, hating his uselessness and helplessness. A deep anger burned in him at the thought of being dependent, of needing others, especially his cousins, to watch after him, like a child.
He read for a while, then dozed off. He woke to the sound of Astrid pushing back the desk chair and coming toward him.
Her skin was mostly gone and what was left hung from her form in dried slivers. Her short blonde hair was patchy with white, as if her skull had been out in the sun too long. She held a cup in her hand and said, “Drink.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I see you wrong. I see you dead.”
The skeleton stopped and her head tipped to the side, regarding him with her dark eye sockets filled with rotted flesh, the remnants of eyes. He felt the world spin, gently, so gently, around him. It was like a mother, holding him and twirling to soft music. The piano played in his mind, and he heard a person’s steps, the gentle thud of feet on the floor, the swish of the shoe soles, the tinkling of the notes.
Then Astrid changed, her eyes became a sharp, clear gold, unmoving in their sockets, like a reptile, but the pupils of the eyes, instead of being shiny with moisture were dull black. They pulled at him, and he knew the sensation, the thread of his mind being pulled, unraveling, the pull of the void.
“You never should have come through the mirror,” he said. “You’ve touched the mirror, and you know what it is to see yourself there, your hand touching your own hand. We all felt the cold glass, but it’s not the truth, not really. We touch our own hand, not the glass.
“You and Sister are the same person, or you should have been before you came through. See, she was there, trying to protect you. You thought it was you saving her, but it was the other way round. She was pushing you back when you touched your hand to the glass. She was trying to save you, to keep you from the world, the terrible world, to keep you from coming through the mirror. It was a hell there. Both of you knew it, but you knew opposite sides of it. And she tried to save you, to push you away.
“That’s why none of us had duplicates in the other worlds. Our twins saved us. They pushed hard so we couldn’t go through the mirror. Except yours.” He sighed. “Except yours.”
She set the cup on the bolted-down table beside his hammock and left. He didn’t understand why she wouldn’t answer him. He was only trying to help.
Chapter 23
“I’ve seen many void wyrms in my time,” said the strange man to Felicia. “And that one was after you specifically. Now, why is that?”
Felicia watched as he looked her over again, paying special attention to her hands and feet and then took a few steps to view her from behind. She turned with him, unwilling to be looked over and too wary of him to turn her back.
“How did you close the hole?” she asked. “What did you do?”
“Were you in Los Angeles recently?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “And I suppose you’ve been in the hospital recently?”
“I work there.”
“It makes no sense. You’re not special. You’re not unusual. You’re just … nothing.”
“You’re too kind. But tell me how you did it.”
“But that’s just it,” he said. “There’s no reason for it to be happening.”
“What is it that’s happening, exactly?”
“You noticed the earthquakes, right?”
“I think they’re following me.”
“Yup. Now, what’s your name?”
“Felicia Sanchez. Yours?”
He appeared to be deep in thought. “Doesn’t ring any bells. Do you go by any other names?”
“No.”
“Janeiro.”
It took her a moment to realize that he was giving her his name.
“You’re related to that other man who can make the rips, right?” she asked.
“What man would that be?”
“He’s short and pale. I don’t remember his name.”
She felt the memory inside, part of her dream. Perhaps the name was in her dream journal, but she doubted it. She had read and reread it enough times to have it memorized.
Janeiro spun around, throwing an arm in front of her as if an attacker was coming. A moment later, another rip opened, a terrible void wyrm head pushing forward. Janeiro said a word, and then said it again, more forcefully.
She tried to remember the word. It was short, or maybe it was a few syllables long. And the beginning sound was a hard consonant. Or was it something softer? She wanted to write it down, but already, the word was gone.
The rip closed.
“They’re hungry, and you’re attracting them,” he said.
“Why? What do they want with me?”
“An excellent question. We should leave New Orleans immediately. It’s an unstable place, and you’re only making it worse.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“I understand. You are wary of a strange man, and that’s sensible. But honestly, you saw the void wyrm, you know the earthquakes are following you, and you know I can close the rips. There are not many others who can do that, and the ones I know of won’t help you. So think about it.”
He crossed his arms and watched her, as if she was going to make the decision on the spot.
“Where would we go?”
“Lots of places. There are more stable areas, and I can feel the rips just before they happen. I can keep you safe.”
“Why? Why not let them eat me? Then they won’t come any more, right?”
He tipped his head to one side. “What a strange thing to say. First, there’s no guarantee that your death would stop them from coming. Second, I want to know why they’re after you specifically. Call me curious. And third, I’m one of the kinder of my sort of being. If you know my brother, the pale man, then you know that not all of us are so charitable. I am obligated to help you, and I want to.”
“What are you? You and your brother?”
“Fair enough. I’ll tell you, but we need to get away from Jackson Square. The whole city is a big instability, but this place especially.”
“I’m not getting in a car with you.”
“I don’t even own one.”
/> They walked along the river, and Felicia tried not to look at the water too often. In saner times, she would never consider Janeiro’s offer, but here she was, thinking about it, wanting to satisfy her curiosity about her dreams and the rips, and more than anything, to keep her baby safe from those terrible void wyrms. He walked beside her, his rubber-soled work boots silent on the pavement, his windbreaker buttoned up to his throat.
“Will the wyrms come for me until they eat me?”
“Most likely. Wherever you go, it’ll become unstable. So we’d have to keep moving.”
“Where?”
“Other times, other worlds, anywhere we like. I’d pick, of course, since you wouldn’t know where to go.”
“For how long? I mean, I can’t just run forever.”
“Until we figure out why you’re attracting them.”
She knew already why she was attracting them, and she didn’t want to tell Janeiro. But whatever sort of thing he was, he was her only hope of understanding anything. Her only hope of keeping her baby safe.
A rip opened at the riverbank, and this time Janeiro had to shout the word four times to make it close.
“It’s getting harder to close the rips,” he said.
She made her decision, for her child’s sake.
“I’m pregnant.”
He pressed his palm to his forehead and muttered a string of profanities. “They didn’t know, did they?” he said. “They couldn’t have known. Or maybe they did.” He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “Do you remember the worlds splitting?”
She said she didn’t, but then another earthquake shook the city, and a rip appeared on the sidewalk ahead. Janeiro closed it and took her arm. An instant later, they were in a forest, redwoods soaring overhead and a chilly bite in the air. The place was quiet but for the wind in the leaves and the harsh sound of a distant bird.
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” he said. “I can still take you back.”
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 128