Exist Once More

by Trisha Leigh

  “That’s what they always told us.” I shrugged. “But it turns out that many things we’ve been told aren’t exactly correct. I think that people change, Oz. We both know that things can happen the Projector can’t predict and they can alter us all the way down to what makes us, us.”

  “More than one True,” he mused, his higher brain power taking over. It was interesting, as Historians. As members of Genesis. It was something more to the two of us.

  “Yes. In certain circumstances, who you are at seventeen changes so drastically that so does the person who perfectly matches you. It makes sense. And no one has ever re-pulled a card, because what would be the point?”

  He shook his head, but I knew he’d considered all of this before now. He’d tried to lead me to the same conclusions, or at least onto the thought process, before he’d disappeared. I just hadn’t wanted to consider the implications at the time.

  “So you really think we’re True Companions?” he asked after several moments.

  “Honestly? I don’t know.” My heart went wild being near him now, I knew that. I was the only one who felt his absence when he’d been gone—that was true. I felt at ease in his presence, as if maybe nothing else mattered, not really. But Trues? Did I even believe in that anymore? “But I wanted to kiss you earlier. And I liked it.”

  “And you’d like to do it again?” he asked slyly, a dorky charm about him that somehow, I’d failed to notice until now.

  Despite the situation, a grin spread across my face. Our fate was up in the air, my own parents’ lives hung in the balance, and the rest of the System was at risk of disappearing, if the Elders were released back into the Academy.

  And yet, I found that feeling of wanting to kiss Oz was very close to swamping all the rest right then. “I think that’s fair to say.”

  Footsteps outside made it seem like a less than ideal option for the moment, however, and we were both on our feet, fingers twisted together, when Elder Price opened the door. Nerves jangled through me. I felt like I wanted to throw up. I thought maybe, just maybe, I knew the tiniest bit what Caesarion had felt like in those days before his death.

  “The Historian Elders have been detained,” she said by way of greeting. “All of them, for the time being, until we sort this out. Your evidence was compelling, and even though we do not condone the flitting around unaccompanied that you’ve done, Miss Vespasian, or the fact that you went along with your Elders without a second thought, Mr. Truman, we do appreciate all that you’ve done to try to put things back to rights.”

  I swallowed, hardly believing my own ears. They weren’t arresting us. They thought we were telling the truth, and the Elders were going to be stopped. For good.

  “Thank you,” I managed through dry lips. “But are you…are we going to be able to continue our training? All of us, I mean, not just us, us.”

  I was babbling, and bit down on my lower lip in order to stop. Oz’s hand tightened around mine, and reassurance flooded my veins.

  “We haven’t decided yet, though I promise you that the Genesis Council recognizes the significant positive impact the work of Historians both past and present has contributed to our ability to thrive. Whatever decision we make, we will not take it lightly. For now, please know that the warrants issued for your friends and yourselves have been rescinded. You’re free to return to your rooms, and the same offer will be extended to Miss Beckwith and Miss Frank, despite her dubious actions of late. We do feel that she wasn’t given much of an option after she was banished for her part in trying to uncover the truth.” She paused to take a breath, pinning me with a hard gaze. “You will return all illegal tech, and the pirates, including your brother, will not be pardoned.”

  I nodded, and swallowed. Jonah might have left because of the Return Project, but she didn’t know that. And they’d done some pretty questionable things in the meantime. “What about my parents?”

  “Already on their way home, my dear. You’ll be allowed to see them as soon as you’d like.”

  I wanted to shout but settled for a grin, one every bit as goofy as I’d worn when thinking about kissing Oz again. And again and again.

  “We’d like to meet with you all in the coming days as we sort this out,” she continued. “There have been some disturbing reports from people who, having been found to have appeared recently, ignored our requests to come in for a debriefing. We believe that they’re worried we’ll erase them, and, well…after your correction with Hiroshima, it seems that is the best course of action. They don’t see it that way, however.”

  The comment startled me. What had happened to the people who had appeared after Truman’s decision changed? Had we known any of them?

  A twist in my chest, much like the one that had accompanied my certainty that Oz was gone even when I couldn’t remember him, made me think we had.

  Oz snorted. “Small wonder. I can’t imagine anyone would agree to being wiped out without question. They’re surely not aware of how they appeared in the first place.”

  Elder Price frowned. “No. But until we understand everything that was altered, and who might be here, as well as who might be gone and what that means for Genesis, we need to keep tabs on people.”

  Oz and I had no answer for that, though after all of my Observations on Earth Before, the idea of keeping tabs on certain people didn’t sit well with me.

  Elder Price stood and moved toward the door. The whisking sound of her black robes was the only sound in Zeke’s office.

  Or, what used to be Zeke’s office.

  “I’ll let you two get settled back in before we discuss how to operate going forward.”

  She left, and Oz and I stared at each other in stunned silence for a moment before standing and tossing our arms around each other’s necks, performing a little happy dance that ended in our lips pressed together and my insides melting into goop. He tasted like excitement and possibility, like the future we would apparently get to have, and I wanted to drink all of him even if it meant I drowned.

  We broke apart a while later—a minute, ten, I had no honest idea—and grinned. An idea popped into my head, and somehow, I knew he’d had the exact same one.

  “Use that cuff one more time, since she didn’t take it?” he asked, a roguish smile on his face that was as unlike him as the suggestion that we break the rules.

  I nodded. “It’s her fault for not taking it, really. And I want to see Analeigh and Sarah’s face when we tell them in person.”

  We scrambled out of the office and flew down the hall to the trap door, then down the steps to the portal. I set the cuff to a few minutes after we’d left, figuring the Anne Bonny wouldn’t have moved, and pressed the button.

  This time, Oz was the one who grabbed and kissed me as we disappeared.

  Epilogue

  In the six months that had passed since half of the Elders at the Academy were replaced, Oz, Sarah, Levi, and me had become full Historians—a full semester early instead of a year late the way we’d been sentenced by Zeke.

  It was because of the Genesis Council. Once we decided to come back to the Academy and continue our work there, they insisted that we be a part of the team to root out all of the changes—however small—made by the rogue Elders so that we could decide what, if anything, needed to be done to correct them.

  We were leaving a meeting now, having spent the better part of the morning discussing the best way to go about altering the changes to the Midgley timeline. More people would die on Earth Before if we did, and there were at least a dozen families that had appeared on Genesis after that alteration. That we knew of.

  “I don’t like that they force us to report the appeared families.” Sarah frowned, toying with the ends of her hair. “It feels wrong.”

  “I know,” I replied. I did hate it; who were we to decide who could stay and who should go?

  “I don’t either,” Oz agreed. “But the Council has a point. What if we switch it back and they disappear, and leave some gaping hole
in society here. It’s better if we know who they are, just in case.”

  “Maybe.”

  It required trusting the Council, and none of us were very good at that after our experience with the Elders over the past couple of years. In the months since we’d taken up with this committee, we’d identified ten changes on Earth Before, and figured out how to fix four of them without killing the System. It was hard work, but it was rewarding, and none of us had thought about asking for a different specialty.

  “I’m going to see Analeigh later,” I informed them. “At the Martin Luther King speech. Anyone else want to come?”

  She’d never gotten to see him in person, and since she was a social justice crusader in her own right, now, I thought she should. I was strangely excited about going back to Alabama.

  “Sure,” Oz replied, giving me one of his shy smiles.

  I never knew one person could have so many smiles, or that I could love piecing out each and every one of them. Heck, a year ago, loving Oz was a concept as foreign as our Elders trying to destroy the world, and now nothing could be more true.

  “Me, too,” Sarah said, and Levi nodded, also.

  It was nice that we didn’t have to sneak around, and that we had our own cuffs, besides. Sure, going to spend time with pirates and not informing the Council of their whereabouts was technically illegal, but what was life without a little intrigue now and then?

  Funny, but even Oz agreed with that sentiment, now. I thought I was a good influence, too, in my own way.

  He backed me up against the wall outside of my room once we were alone, the chill of the glass and the hungry look in his eye combining in a series of chills that ran free over my skin. When his lips touched mine I caught fire, melting into the kiss with a sigh.

  “What was that for?” I murmured a few minutes later, trying to clear the stars from my eyes.

  “Nothing. I just love you.”

  “I just love you, too.” I pushed playfully on his chest after distracting us both with more kisses for a couple of minutes. “But we need to go. Analeigh doesn’t like to be kept waiting, you know that.”

  “She’s earned her paranoia, I suppose. But all the best criminals have,” he teased, but there was no judgment in his voice anymore. The pirates had saved our lives, and we all knew they were doing good in the System.

  “I still can’t believe she didn’t come back,.”

  Oz squeezed my hand as we made our way down to the portals. “They’re doing good in their own way. It took me a long time, but I can see it now—there are some things that can’t be accomplished within the confines of the rules. And as long as the Council ignores the fact that outliers exist, people like Analeigh and your brother are their only hope to survive.”

  “I’m seriously swooning right now. I’ve always wanted to know what this feels like.”

  “Shut up,” he told me with a smile.

  The others were waiting in the portal, all of us decked out in our nineteen-sixties finest. I knew that Analeigh could take care of herself as far as clothes—I’d been smuggling her things out of the wardrobe closet here and there just so she wouldn’t have excuses not to meet us in the past. I couldn’t not see her. My best friend.

  “Ready?” I asked, and then set the cuff when everyone nodded. Instead of going back the night before, the way we had with Booth, I set it for the morning of the arrival in Montgomery. We had another meeting this afternoon, and Analeigh never wanted to stay away more than an hour or two.

  I would take whatever she would give me.

  Montgomery, Alabama, United States of America, Earth Before - March 25, 1965 C.E. (Common Era)

  The six of us—Jonah had decided to tag along—sat on the outskirts of the crowd, on the tailgate of an old, rusted truck my glasses said belonged to a man who was way up in the front of the crowd. We were smashed together, legs and arms and sides touching in the cool morning, as we waited for Martin Luther King, Jr., to take the stage.

  Analeigh and Jonah were closer than necessary, even, and his hand rested softly on her thigh. My feelings were jumbled—as her friend, I hated that she hadn’t returned to the Academy, and wondered how much her budding relationship with my brother had to do with her choice to throw away a normal life.

  As Jonah’s sister, I was happy that he wasn’t alone out there in space.

  “How are things?” I asked, nudging her side.

  “Good. We’ve got a pretty regular schedule of donations, now, and Sarah’s tech help did wonders for being able to move around.” She paused, squinting at my face in the sunshine. “I’m happy, Kaia. It’s okay.”

  I slung an arm around her shoulder, pulling her tight as Martin Luther King took the stage. He stepped to the mic and everyone fell silent, including my friends and me, most of whom had been here before.

  It didn’t matter. His voice, his manner, his charisma, were as magnetic as they had been the first time, and I doubted a hundred trips would change that.

  Tears filled my eyes as he excited the crowd, as he moved them with his very sincere belief that the world would, one day soon, be a better place.

  It wouldn’t be, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be—we had proven that once again, nearly a thousand years in the future and light years away from this place.

  The speech climbed toward its conclusion, and my heart seized. I didn’t want to leave my friends, didn’t want to leave this place of hope, actually, but we had responsibilities—ones that no longer felt too much for my small shoulders.

  “How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.”

  “How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow. How long? Not long.”

  “How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

  We weren’t part of a circle, I was sure of that, now. There was an end to this arc, like he said, and like Booth still believed—it was just longer than anyone had guessed. We weren’t there yet, but as long as we were traveling in the right direction, we were getting closer to the world Martin Luther King, and people like my grandfather, believed was possible.

  I believed it too, and wouldn’t stop working. Not until the day true justice prevailed.

  Thank You!

  I appreciate each and every person who reads the books that I write, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for buying and reading Exist Once More. If you enjoyed it, please consider taking the time to leave a review - they help authors immensely. If you’re interested in what’s coming up next for me, please sign up for my newsletter. I only send it out when there is news, so no need to be worried about spam in your inbox.

  If you enjoy adult romance, thriller, or mystery titles, please check out my titles written as Lyla Payne. If The Historians was the first series you read by Trisha Leigh, check out my first (The Last Year) or second (The Cavy Files) YA series, too.

  Also By TRISHA LEIGH

  THE LAST YEAR

  Whispers in Autumn

  Winter Omens

  Betrayals in Spring

  Summer Ruins

  THE CAVY FILES

  Gypsy

  Alliance

  Buried

  THE HISTORIANS

  Return Once More

  Exist Once More

  Adult Novels Written By

  LYLA PAYNE

  WHITMAN UNIVERSITY

  Broken at Love

  By Referral Only

  Be My Downfall

  Staying On Top

  Living the Dream

  Going for Broke (published in Fifty First Times: A New Adult Anthology)

  LOWCOUNTRY MYSTERIES

  Not Quite Dead

  Not Quite Cold

  Not Quite True

  Quite Curious

  Not Quite Gone

  Quite Precarious

  Not Quite Right

  Not Quite Mine

  Not Quite Alive

  Not Quite Free (January 10, 2017)

  THE PIACERE PRI
NCES

  The Playboy Prince

  A Royal Wedding

  The Dutiful Prince (January 27, 2017)

  The Crooked Prince

  Mistletoe & Mr. Right

  Sleigh Bells & Second Chances

  SECRETS DON’T MAKE FRIENDS

  Secrets Don’t Make Friends

  Secrets Don’t Make Survivors

  Secrets Don’t Make Lovers (2017)

  Acknowledgments

  This book is intended to serve as either the end to The Historians series or, at the very least, ta satisfactory stopping point. I haven’t decided whether to write more in their world, but wanted to leave myself the option. I hope that those of you who love the books are satisfied, but would also eagerly read another if and when the day came. Thank you for sticking with this series that has been not only hard for me, but slow to come for you. I appreciate it.

  I also appreciate my readers, Leigh Ann Kopans, Denise Grover Swank, and Amalia Dillin, for always being willing, honest, witty, and supportive. You are, without a doubt, the best part of this career of writing.

  Shannon Page, my copy editor, never lets me down. My proofreaders – Mary Ziegenhorn, Cheryl Heinrich, and Diane Thede always manage to pick up where the others drop, and you’re all indispensible to the process of putting out these stories of mine. Thank you.

  As ever, to my family, friends, husband, and dogs, thank you for putting up with all of the eccentricities that go along with not only living with a writer, but with me in particular. I love you all.