“What can he do?” flew from my mouth before I could stop it.
Beatrice backed into the hallway as Mr. Miller lingered by the door. “He spins time, my dear. And so much of it, I haven’t aged in the last ten years. With both of you, we’ll stockpile time and sell it. Who doesn’t want to add extra time to their lives?” He cackled. This man was insane. “My stepson has recently come fully into his strength. He’ll teach you. I see amazing things in his future, as I do yours, Emma. Don’t worry, it will all work out.”
A pang in my stomach told me working out had nothing to do with my benefit.
The instant Mr. Miller sealed the door to this room, I was on my feet. I had to get out of here.
Rushing to the door, I manhandled the sailor-wheel doorknob, which was locked as I expected. I wiped my forehead with my forearm, feeling the rough edges of my gauntlet press into my skin. Instantly, I dug into the inner pocket and tugged out my metal hairpiece. It was perfect to pick a lock. But no matter how hard I tried or what angle I inserted the piece, the lock wouldn’t release. I chucked my useless piece of metal across the room and hit an oval window that was admitting light into the room.
The cumbersome drapery almost swallowed me whole, but I finally dug my way to the glass. My heart thudded, and the muscles of my limbs shook. I felt like throwing up. I rested my forehead on the glass, my will deflated.
Bars. Iron bars secured all escape from these windows.
I sank back, arms flailing for freedom from the drapery, until I bumped into the bed and collapsed. A foreign glaze coated my eyes, and no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t blink away. I’d always been tough—the girl most folks thought was a boy until I tugged my leather helmet off my head and dragged my goggles to hang round my neck. Tough girls didn’t cry. That thought didn’t comfort me like it usually did.
Gentle tears spilled over my bottom eyelashes and streamed down my cheeks. I rolled into a ball on this strange bed, hugging my legs to my chest. I was angry and hurt for so many reasons. My birth mother died when I was only three years old. I had no idea what it was like to have the sweet scent of my mother cuddle me or whisper comfort in my ear. I had Evil Beatrice, who’d been a nobody until she met my father. And my father, I missed him so much I couldn’t even think at times. I burned from the inside out.
Friends were null-n-void; girlfriends, in particular, were never going to happen. My only true friend—who I’d first loved as a friend, then as a brother, and now maybe something more—might lose everything. And there was one more thing, something I’d never admitted out loud. Memories that didn’t seem to belong to me had plagued me as long as I could remember, even before my father died. He could never explain it to me, and I’d probably never find anyone who could.
A ting, like water droplets bouncing off a metal pipe, echoed from somewhere in the room. I hushed my sniffling and heard it again, only stronger. Rolling to my stomach, I crawled backward off the mattress and tracked the sound to one wall.
The majority of the wall was sheathed in shelves, books, and trinkets. I continued to trail the sound until I came to one shelf in particular.
I knocked and heard the sound echo and hollow out until it faded away. The room spun on its axis. It sounded as though there was empty space behind this wall, but this wall didn’t border the outside of the estate.
I removed every volume and figurine with the deftness of a jewel thief. All was placed on the sound-absorbing mattress. Once more, I tapped my knuckles off the now bare shelf. An even deeper echo resonated back at me. My lips curled up in a soft grin. I was relatively sure there was a passageway hidden behind this shelf. I reached out my hand to search for a lever or a button of some sort. My pendant clanked against the wood, mirroring my frantic heartbeat. The enamel of my teeth squealed as I clenched my jaw too tightly. I’d found nothing.
“Come on,” I whimpered. “Let me find you.”
Both my palms flattened against the vacant space. Closing my eyes, I let my sense of touch see for me. My fingerprints swept over a series of deep indentations, slightly crescent-moon shaped, but with ridges. Thinking it was a knot in a board, I initially disregarded it, but then I opened my eyes. The shape wasn’t a crescent moon, but wings—meeting in the middle with faint feather markings appearing as ridges.
Frantically, I clenched my pendant—the one my father had said belonged to my mother—and examined the markings on the front side. Arching wings, touching slightly at the clasp. Delicate feather carvings in the silver. Three gears, two clustered together with one just above them and… I almost couldn’t breathe. This felt so silly, but I’d been wearing this pendant every day, and I hadn’t really looked at it in a long time. A purple amethyst glimmered in the center, just like the boy’s ring in the dining room.
Relatively sure my pendant fit the wood indentations, I pressed the two together. The wall shelf jerked outward, revealing a tunnel. I had no idea why my pendant fit, and frankly, it scared me. But I didn’t give either of those a second thought. I slipped behind the shelf and sealed it behind me.
Water droplets fell as though a light rain had begun. Damp, dank, and musty were to be expected in an underground cavern. Light was not so expected, but welcomed.
To my surprise, torches were lit, illuminating most of what I could see, almost as though planned out by someone. What I couldn’t see was probably for the best, anyway. I jogged down the tunnel, which quickly amped up to an out-right run.
The tunnel curved until I came upon a stiff breath of fresh air. It filtered through me like waves off a forbidden sea as I stole my first steps onto solid ground outside. But I didn’t allow my success to hamper my need to flee, distancing myself as fast as possible. Jensen will never believe this story.
Tall grass whipped at my ankles as I fled this open field in the direction of a cornfield. That would be a great place to remain undetected.
“Well, look what we have here.”
Even though I recognized Caesar’s disgusting voice, I wasn’t about to stop to chat.
“Any chance you know where Jensen is?” That halted me dead in my tracks.
“You were right,” snickered Elliot. “She does like Jensen.” He made kissy-face noises. I wanted to bash his face in with a wrench, but all my tools were back at the house.
“Did you do something to him?” I asked, terrified to lose Jensen.
“Maybe.” Caesar winked at me and jumped on his speedster board, racing for the cornfield. His goons followed suit on their boards.
No! That was nothing but an endless maze for me to hide in, not Caesar.
With my combat boots—thankfully, I hadn’t changed into that gown or its fancy-shmancy shoes—fully in gear, I sped off after him.
The tick-tock of the mechanical root system beckoned me deeper into the dense field. It had been a few years since farmers relied on the natural roots of plants and crops to sustain their growth. Mechanized tubing structures provided a quicker way to gather rainwater and distribute it to the crops. I didn’t like it. It was noisy and muffled the real sounds of nature.
I dodged stalk after stalk, trailing shadows and tripping over watering spigots. Ringlets of sweat coiled round my skin, now clammy and grubby. The air carried a stale stench that could only be rotting hay. Finally, a clearing opened up before me.
It only took me a moment to notice Jensen. Shades crept around his limp figure. Two of Caesar’s goons were tying him to a pole that normally held a robotic scarecrow with hollow eyes that could scare the feathers right off a raven. But his lifeless eyes were more frightening.
“Jensen,” I whimpered, rushing to him.
“Place your bets!” Caesar cupped his mouth with his hands. “How long will it take this poor sap to find his way out of the big bad corn maze? Oh, I almost forgot.” A few of Caesar’s goons held up phaser guns, which complicated things. Although phaser guns didn’t kill, the energy rays that shot from their barrels could make you feel like an egg frying under the desert sun.
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Pleading was unlike me, but I had nothing else at the moment. “Why are you doing this?”
“Insurance,” said Caesar. “The big man hired us to keep you here. And what Miller wants—”
“Miller? Mr. Miller?” I knew that guy was a crook.
“Apparently, he has special”—he paused, quoting the air—“plans for you. I want to make sure I get paid before handing over the goods.”
“I’m not goods, Caesar.”
“Now that’s up for discussion.” He laughed.
Unable to contain my rage over Jensen, my father, my evil step-mother, and this unbelievable predicament I was in, I rammed my body into his chest with all my might and knocked him over. He howled. Dried soil crumbled under rubber soles as Caesar’s thug brothers huddled around him.
A twitch towed one corner of my mouth into a faint smirk. It wasn’t nice, but it felt good. Still, I wasn’t so out of it to forget about Jensen. I stole a glimpse of him. With eyelids closed and lips slightly parted, he held a peace about him I knew I never wanted to leave.
Stealing a few steps backward, I reached for him and brushed my fingertips along his cheek. Static energy crept across my palm. It glowed blue and pulled like taffy, sticking to my fingertips, then snapping back to his skin. My hand jerked back so hard I hit myself in the chest. My eyes traipsed down his neck, his shoulders, finally stopping at his midsection. It was almost as though I could see inside him.
“What did you just do?” I heard Elliot ask from behind me.
Strong winds howled down the lane of vegetation, shoving Elliot off balance into Caesar and the rest of his circle of friends. The force knocked all to the cold earth. They screamed at each other and struggled to lift themselves up.
My fingers shook as I began untying the ropes binding Jensen; they were so tight. I felt him try to bend his knees to lighten the tension on the ropes, but only scraped the soles of his boots on the ground. His eyes fanned open, his gentle gaze so undeserving on me.
“I’ve got to get you out of here. I’m so sorry,” I said, knowing this was my fault, even though I didn’t know how.
Caesar squeezed my shoulders from behind and rammed his chest into my back. “You might not want to do that. There’s still the subject of Jensen’s mother and crippled sister to discuss.”
My stomach did a somersault, my eyes widening to take in more of Jensen whose innocent gaze hardened. Caesar tossed me aside and chuckled. Even with the wind rattling like tin cans, I heard him. Every sound and movement enhanced, out-of-place odors of burnt mushrooms and metallic salt wafted up my nostrils.
A flash sparked up behind Caesar. The hiss of gas-powered lights filled the air, though I knew this had nothing to do with artificial illumination. Flames slithered and coiled up the nearest cornstalks, gears and levers melting any mechanical parts to liquid copper and silver and gold. A silhouette walked out of the light.
My breath struggled in my throat. It was the boy from the house, crowned in crimson hair with tips of blond, and I knew it was natural. Not sure how; I just did. I’d never seen another with hair like this except for… me. It was how I was born.
I staggered forward, rounding the intimate crowd of Caesar’s onlookers; no one but me moved. My eyes shifted to the front of the boy, and there on the inner skin of his right forearm was a tattoo, which I could make out much clearer now.
“Silas?” The name spilled off my lips effortlessly.
His grin of recognition flamed a place inside me I never knew existed, and also a few of those memories I’d never understood.
“Hello,” Silas’s voice rippled gingerly in my ears. His blue eyes glimmered to a deep sapphire and electrified my skin as if we were connected. The scent of copper ash engulfed me. My lips cracked, and I swallowed.
Before my brain could absorb any of this, Caesar escaped his daze and lunged at Silas, snatching something from Silas’ hand.
“Emma,” Jensen weakly whispered. “Untie me. My mother and…”
As I turned to loosen Jensen’s ropes, a spinning wheel erupted from the ground. Soil exploded, peppering all surfaces nearby, but didn’t dirty the wheel one bit. Glowing in gold and hews of the rainbow, this was the most beautiful spinner I’d ever seen. And somehow, it was familiar.
Silas climbed into his seat. Rows of cornstalks parted as he spun, winding and weaving ribbons of light around his spindle. Elliot was the first to clutch his chest. He dropped to his knees, his breathing labored as though being siphoned from him. The others distanced themselves; some deftly while others attempted to sprint away. But eventually each fell as Elliot had. Caesar gawked at Silas and then at me as though reality had finally gripped him. He dropped whatever he’d taken from Silas and it rolled at my feet.
Strips of rope imprisoning Jensen melted away and he crumbled to the ground in a heap of exhausted flesh and emotions. The night stilled, all except for Jensen.
From his puddle on the ground, he whispered, “Emma, please.”
Though his voice stung deep within my heart, I couldn’t look at him, not with Silas’ gaze concentrated on me. It penetrated my soul, steadily awakening a hunger inside me. My fingernails lengthened. The crown of my hair flamed to a deep scarlet, my blond tips glowing.
“What are you?” I asked Silas.
“I’m your twin,” he answered. “The pendant you wear marks you as mine marks me.” He lifted an identical pendant from beneath his vest. “The house, this property, belonged to our ancestors.”
The markings behind that shelf, I thought silently.
Yes, I heard in my head and recognized Silas’ voice. He raised two fingers, instructing me to keep quiet. Pick it up, Emma.
Glancing down, I recognized what Caesar had taken from Silas’ hand. “The missing timepiece of my spinning wheel.” Suddenly, I knew what to do. “Έλα σε μένα,” slipped from my lips as I extended my arm and called to the metal timepiece. Its glimmer coated me, giving my clothes sparkle and my skin a deeper lapis gleam.
A spinning wheel appeared out of the nothingness, one timepiece missing from its mechanics. My tubular timepiece fit just right. I grinned as my foot lay flush to the pedal and Caesar’s flesh turned transparent to my eyes; his juicy soul exposed beneath. My nose twitched, and I realized the strange scents I smelled a few moments ago were their souls.
“Emma, don’t!” cried Jensen.
I should have heeded Jensen’s plea. But this burning hunger to make things right had a grip on me. I had to make it go away.
Silas focused on Caesar and he said to me, “Spin.”
I glanced at Jensen. “But your mother and sister…” And I began to spin.
Glowing rivulets flowing from my wheel like musical notes became visible, chains of life wafting in the air. They were pulled from Caesar like tacky strands of a spider’s web. Each spin caressed me with a sugary tartness that filled my senses as it channeled through me. My missing timepiece pulsated. Energy infused my limbs as the streams wound round my spindle; each revolution weakening Ceasar’s bodily link to the mortal plane. He thrashed about and begged for his life, clawing at his throat. His skin paled, eyes sinking into his skull, as life leaked from his pores. Finally, he was no more.
Silas plucked my pendant from my neck and set it atop his ring. In reaction to contact with his ring, my pendant popped open and all was made clear to me. I watched Silas scoop Caesar’s soul into our joined timepieces and drop his dried-out flesh in a mound.
Jensen’s face brimmed in horror. Rushing to him, I knelt down and brushed my fingertips across his cheek. He flinched away.
“Jensen, I would never hurt you.”
“Are you sure?” His voice was hoarse. “What you just did… what you both just did—”
“Is what needed to be done,” interrupted Silas. “Do not fear us. We are human, but only partly, sent to keep the sins of man balanced.”
That gave me pause. “So what are we, Silas?”
“We cleanse worthy souls, repairing th
ose we can through our spinning”—he stepped closer to us—“and consume the undeserving ones.”
“Emma, listen to me.” Jensen tried to stand. “Who are you to say one is worthy over another?”
The idea of soul eating and sin cleansing should have been easy, at least concerning the people who’d wronged me in my life. But Jensen had a point. Who was I to pass judgment? Was this a gift I had to aid God in the fight against evil, or was it a curse to further evil’s dwelling within mankind?
Both sounded beyond the realm of sanity, but I had just seen what Silas could do, and I knew who I was now. And I’d been wronged by a woman who deserved far less time to breath than had been allotted my father.
“Jensen, I’m sorry. But they will not stop, and your mother and sister need help.”
“Not this kind of help.” Fear and disappointment flooded Jensen’s voice.
I had to believe he’d eventually understand. Our friendship and maybe more was a great risk, but so were his mother and sister—who I’d grown to love as my own family.
“Brother.” Stepping up next to Silas, I dipped my finger inside our timepiece to swirl the soul. “We still have work to do, don’t we?” He knew exactly who was on my mind.
“Nice to have you on board, sister.” He leaped on his speedster board.
Before I joined him, I took in Jensen one more time. “Forgive me, but you know there’s no other way. I’ll be back for you.”
With that, I sped off with Silas, leaving Jensen behind. I could hear him, his voice, his heart yelling for me, “Emma, wait! You don’t have to do this. You can choose…”
But I already had.
heina stretched, hoping she looked like a cat as she arched her back and angled her hips toward the young man beside her. He couldn’t really be sleeping since his breathing had shifted, the breaths shorter with wakefulness.
She slid across the silk sheets to trail her fingernails over his chest and nipped his chin between her front teeth. “Good morning, lover.”
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