by Megan Crewe
“Probably a museum guard then,” Win says. “Safer to be at work than out there. If he comes this way, I can take care of it.”
The certainty under his flippant tone gives me pause. Does he have one of those awful numbing blasters?
The footsteps halt, then continue. We wait silently. There’s a touch on my hand; Win’s reached out, curling his fingers around mine. The thereness of the skin-to-skin contact sends an odd shiver up my arm, but it’s comforting too. A very solid reminder that I’m not alone. I peek at him warily just as he looks away from me, his expression going distant while he listens.
After a minute, I’m sure the sound’s getting fainter. In another, I can’t hear the steps at all. Win steps away from the display case.
“Keep quiet,” he murmurs to me, “and hopefully he’ll never know we were here.”
“What if Jeanant ran into a guard when he was here?” I ask softly as we continue down the hall.
“I’m sure Jeanant could handle that.”
I frown. “What exactly would you or he—”
And then Win’s gone. Vanished. Without a movement, without a sound—in the blink of an eye, except I haven’t blinked.
My voice dies in my open mouth. I spin around, one way and the other, but there’s not a single indication that seconds ago Win was standing there beside me.
13.
Win?” I say, my hands clenched at my sides. It isn’t like before, on the hotel roof, when all he did was step inside the time cloth. He didn’t have it out—he didn’t do anything. He just disappeared, right before my eyes.
I take a few steps forward, peering through the shadows. The hall is so quiet the thudding of my heart is deafening in my ears. Nothing stirs. The wide-open space that seemed so peaceful moments ago now feels horrifyingly lonely.
“Win, if this is some stupid joke . . .”
But as little as I know him, I find it hard to believe he’d suddenly start playing pranks when we could be mere minutes from stumbling on what he’s spent weeks searching for.
Which means . . . something else snatched him away? A trap set by the Enforcers? Some other danger he didn’t warn me about?
Oh God, what if he can’t get back here? If he’s trapped, if they take his cloth . . .
My skin goes cold as the full implications sink in. Without Win, I’m trapped. If he doesn’t come back, I have no way to get home, ever.
I waver on my feet, hugging myself. “Win?” I call again, my voice shaking. “Win!”
No answer. I hurry back the way we came, not knowing what else to do. I can’t go outside, into the smoke and the cannon fire. I don’t belong here, and I feel that right down to my bones. I can’t speak the language. I don’t know anyone. It’s a hundred years before the oldest people I’ve met will even be born.
Flashes of home flicker through my mind. Sitting with Mom and Dad at the dinner table. Joking with Angela and the others in the art room. What I wouldn’t give to be there instead.
I skid to a halt outside the series of rooms we passed through, hugging myself tighter. “Win!” I shout.
There’s a rattle of footsteps in the distance. Joy bursts in my chest as I whirl toward them, for all of the split second it takes before a voice carries with them. A thick, gravelly voice bellowing a demand in French.
The guard. I forgot about him. My legs lock. His footsteps are getting louder, running now. What kind of punishment was there in 1830 for breaking into a royal museum?
I duck through the interconnected rooms, searching for something large enough to hide behind. A second shout follows me, sounding as if the guard’s already in the hall I just left. I dash through another doorway, and then, like a miracle, the voice I wanted to hear reaches me.
“Skylar? I’m over here!”
Relief hits me so hard my sight blurs. I run in the direction Win’s yell came from, dodging stands and benches, through two, three, four more doorways. Win’s just saying my name again when I burst into the gallery he’s striding through.
He stops when he sees me, his mouth curved a little sheepishly and a matching relief in his deep blue eyes. I gulp air and swipe at the tears that have started to trickle down my face.
“Hey,” Win says, sounding startled. He grips my shoulder, and his voice softens. “I wouldn’t just leave you. I wasn’t expecting that to happen.”
Get it together, Skylar. I blink furiously, and a sharp command echoes from a nearby room.
“The guard,” I murmur around the lump in my throat. “He heard me calling for you—he’s coming this way.”
Win’s already yanking the cloth out of his satchel. He pulls it over us.
The room outside goes gray and hazy. I bite my lip, fighting to calm my rasping breaths. I’m okay now. I’m not lost, not trapped in the past.
Win takes my hand like he did before, squeezing it. I have to stop myself from clinging to his fingers. He must think I’m weak enough as it is.
The guard’s footsteps approach. My shoulders hunch automatically, even though I know the cloth is keeping us invisible.
A thin man in a charcoal-gray uniform marches into the room. He scans it with narrowed eyes, drumming his fingers against his thigh just below his holstered pistol.
As the guard peers behind a statue in the corner, Win lets go of me to open his satchel. He pulls out a small blue-gray sphere about the size of a pea. When he slides his thumb over it, it gives a soft ping. Two flat edges materialize like wings. He brings it to his face and exhales over it. Then he propels it between the flaps of the cloth.
The sphere vanishes into the grayness on the other side. For several seconds, nothing happens. The guard mutters to himself and eyes the room one more time. Then a distinct pattering sound carries from off to our left, beyond the rooms he hasn’t checked yet.
The guard spins around. He hurries through the doorway, bellowing a warning. His footsteps thunder across the floor, and gradually fade as he chases the fleeing noise.
Win peels open the time cloth, grinning. “That little piece of tech is what you’d probably call a distractor,” he says, his voice low. “It’ll make enough noise to keep him after it for a few hours, and never enter the same space we’re in.”
I’m a little impressed, but Win looks so impressed with himself I don’t feel the need to mention it.
“What the hell happened?” I say. “How did you get over here?”
“I was, ah, doxed,” Win says, heading back toward the hall where he disappeared. “We ran practice scenarios in training to prepare us to recognize the feeling when it’s about to happen, but it comes on fast, and I guess I was distracted.” His sheepish expression returns. “The time field doesn’t allow certain types of paradoxes, like meeting someone from your future. It’s as if we all carry around this big bubble of our present, whatever time it is for us outside the field, and if two bubbles clash”—he bounces his palms off each other—“whoever’s from the later time gets bumped out of the way.”
Suddenly I’m picturing Win as a goldfish floating around in our fishbowl Earth in a bubble of air. Colliding with another goldfish . . .
“So there’s someone else here?” I say, my head whipping around. “One of your people? The alarm band didn’t go off.”
“I’d have been doxed before there was any chance of even hearing them,” Win says. “Which is going to be a wider range than the alarm has.” He pauses as we step out into the hall. “But you weren’t.”
“Obviously.” I consider his explanation. “I’ve never been outside the field. Does that mean I don’t have a ‘bubble’?”
“Apparently not. We never discussed how Traveling would work for Earthlings, since Earthlings are never supposed to Travel.” He stares down the hall, understanding dawning on his face. “There’s a good chance it’s Jeanant who doxed me. If he’s here right now—if you can’t g
et doxed—you could talk to him, find out everything we need to know!”
Before I can respond, he’s tugging me toward the display case we hid behind earlier.
“How do you know it’s him?” I ask.
“We know Jeanant was planning on being in here sometime in these three days. There’s no reason any other Traveler should have been in the same place in that short a period of time.”
He stops when we reach the case, just a few steps from where he disappeared before.
“I shouldn’t go any farther,” he says. “It is possible it’s not him, so be careful. But hurry. I don’t think Jeanant would stay here very long.”
My mind hasn’t quite caught up with this new development. “What do I do if it’s not him?”
“Run back here. I won’t move from this spot.”
I hesitate, and Win grasps my arm. “Please,” he says, turning the full force of those blue eyes on me. “You know how long it’s taken us to get this far. If you can talk to him, we won’t need to worry about decoding any more clues. You can get him to tell you exactly what we need to know. Say—say Thlo sent you. If he knows you’re here for her, he’ll explain everything.”
And then this will be over, Win’s group will have what they need, and I can return to the world I belong in.
“Okay,” I say. “Just . . . don’t move an inch.”
He nods. “Go!”
I can feel his gaze following me as I jog down the hall. I’m about to do something he thought was impossible. Underneath my nervousness, excitement tingles through me.
I’m going to meet the guy from the recording. Talk to him, face to face. Show him that it’s not just his people taking a stand for both our planets.
That thought emboldens me. I walk faster, past a series of paintings. A huge vase decorated with geometric patterns. A line of busts of presumably famous men. An intricately carved stone box that appears to be a coffin.
Halfway down the hall, the band around my ankle starts to quiver. A hundred feet. I slow. The quivering rises to a frantic vibration as I approach a wide doorway that leads into a side gallery.
Peeking through the entrance, I see only a large maroon-carpeted room filled with paintings. But there’s another, smaller doorway on the other side. A faint scraping sound carries from it.
I pad across the room. The adjoining gallery is equally vacant, but the sound has gotten louder. Then, when I’m halfway to the next opening, it stops. Shoes tread lightly against the floor. I edge over to the doorway and peer beyond it.
It’s him.
I recognize the guy from the recording in an instant. Jeanant. He’s poised by the cushioned bench in the middle of the room, studying the paintings on the wall before him. A shading of stubble has darkened the bronze skin of his jaw, and a bluish smudge colors his right thumb, as if he got paint on it and couldn’t wash it completely off. A top hat like the ones some of the gentlemen on the street are wearing is tipped over his curly black hair. He’s dressed in one of their trim jackets over a shirt and pants identical to Win’s Traveler clothes, but somehow he makes it look like a proper outfit instead of a bunch of random clothing thrown together. The assurance I saw on the screen, it wasn’t just a performance. It’s in him now, in his expression, the way he’s standing, when he’s unaware anyone’s watching.
I gather myself and step through the doorway.
Jeanant’s head snaps around. His dark brown eyes connect with mine, and the full impact of his presence hits me: the thereness that felt like attraction when I first stood close to Win, like terror when faced with the pale woman. I’m struck by the sense that we are exactly where we need to be—not just Jeanant, but me too.
His name catches in my throat. Before I can recover, he’s turned, his composure regained, and lifted his hat to give me a slight bow. As he straightens up, he says something in that low, measured voice, something that sounds quite friendly although I have no idea what the words mean. Because he’s talking in French. Of course. He’d assume anyone wandering around in here looking clueless has to be a local.
But even though I’ve interrupted him and as far as he knows I’m just an inconvenience, he’s waiting patiently for me to respond.
“Jeanant?” I say. “I need to—”
The moment his name passes over my lips, I know I’ve made a mistake. His expression shutters. He flicks his hand toward his side. A sliver of cold jabs the center of my abdomen, making my sentence cut off with a gasp.
As he sweeps up the canvaslike bag on the bench and pulls out a familiar puddle of silky cloth, Jeanant says something in the lightly slurred tones of the alien language I’ve heard Win speak a few times. His voice is defiant.
He must think I’m an Enforcer, here to apprehend him. “No!” I cry. I try to step toward him, but the cold has seeped through my limbs, and my legs won’t budge. “I’m not—”
He’s already tossing the cloth around his body. His form vanishes amid its oily surface, which shimmers to reflect the room around us. “I’m a friend of Thlo’s!” I force out, a second before the cold grips my jaw.
The cloth has vanished, and I can’t do anything but stand there. Jeanant doesn’t reemerge. I don’t know if I got my last words out in time for him to hear.
I’m frozen solid. Win’s too far away to hear me if I call out—if I could call out. My chest tightens, but I’ve hardly started to panic when a prickling creeps over my skin. My fingers and toes twitch. The paralysis is easing already.
Whatever Jeanant threw at me, it isn’t half as powerful as the Enforcers’ weapons. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. Just to delay me, so he could get away.
I grimace inwardly. He was right there and I couldn’t manage to say anything useful. I should have known he’d be worried about the Enforcers tracking him, just like Win. The whole reason Jeanant’s here, hiding the weapon, is that they almost caught him already.
At the same time, that weird sense of purpose lingers inside me. I really am a part of this mission now. And if I get another chance to talk to Jeanant, I won’t screw it up.
My gaze wanders the room as my body comes back to life. I’m sure that was paint on his thumb, but I don’t see any message or hint that he’s covered one up. There’s no gleam of wet color anywhere.
The cold seeps out. I shake myself, rub my arms, and head back for Win.
14.
Why didn’t you explain it to him?” Win demands as we march down the hall to the room where I found Jeanant.
“He didn’t give me the chance!” I say.
“I can’t believe he was here, you talked to him, and we still—” He cuts himself off with a strangled huff.
Neither can I. But it’s not like Win’s in the best position to criticize. “You didn’t exactly do much to prepare me,” I point out. “ ‘Go, hurry, get him talking!’ I tried.”
“Well, we’ll have to try again,” Win says, sounding like he’s talking more to himself than to me. “Now that we know it can be done, we just have to find the right moment.”
So I will get another chance. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “You could come with me next time, so he knows I’m with your group, couldn’t you?” I say as I motion him into the string of smaller gallery rooms. “I mean, I know that whole doxing thing happens if you’re from two different times, but you’re not that far in his future, are you? A few weeks?” My mind starts spinning, working through this warped physics equation. “You’d just have to find out where he was a few weeks after he first came to Earth, so your . . . bubbles would line up.”
“Ah.” Win clears his throat. “It’s actually years.”
I stop in the doorway and stare at him. “Years? But you said you’d only been waiting to hear from the others—I know you said it was a few weeks.”
“And that’s true,” Win says slowly, as if I’m dense not to have
figured this out on my own. “Thlo and I and the others, we’ve only been on Earth for about four weeks. But we couldn’t race over here the second Jeanant disappeared. Thlo didn’t even get his message, explaining what he’d done, until a long time after. He knew that as soon as the Enforcers realized he was responsible for the attempted attack, they’d start investigating anyone who’d been associated with him. If Thlo had been caught too, we couldn’t have gotten anything done. So he programmed the message to transmit after there’d been plenty of time for suspicion to die down. And then—it’s not easy to zip across the galaxy from Kemya to here. Especially when you’re doing it without official permission. Putting the plan together, gathering equipment and supplies secretly, arranging a ship—it took a while.”
My mind’s spinning in a totally different way now. “So, wait, how many years are we talking?”
“Almost eleven by our sun,” he says. “Which is something like seventeen for you.”
“Jeanant’s from seventeen years in the past? Then why—”
“No,” Win says. “I told you before, Jeanant’s present, the time when he came down to Earth, is the same as your present time—where I met you. I jumped back seventeen Earth years to get there.”
Win is from my future. He could have seen me, seventeen years older?
No. Because I didn’t have a future before Win came. I died in a courthouse bombing.
I press my hand against my forehead, as if that will still my thoughts. None of that matters now. I should focus on what’s in front of me.
Two rows of ivory buttons on the bench’s cushion. Three grooves running down each of the bowed legs. Two paintings on the wall across from me, seven there, where Jeanant was looking. Reds and greens, blues and yellows, in the rich tones of oil paint.
“Can we jump back a little earlier?” I venture when I feel steadier. “I could catch up with Jeanant when he first got to the museum.”
“We’ve been wandering around for a while,” Win says. “I doubt he arrived earlier than us. And two versions of you in the same building at the same time . . . It’s just a bad idea. At least we know what room he picked. Tell me again what happened, what he was doing.”