by Ann Charles
“What are you doing?” I asked when I saw Cooper reaching for his concealed gun. “That’s not going to work.” I grabbed his arm.
He shook me off and enunciated two words: Stay. Back.
“No, listen. Unless you’re Doc, what happens to you in this place happens in the other normal world. Trust me, you can’t beat that thing with his ax. This is my fight.”
“To whom do you speak, Scharfrichter?” the woman spoke, her voice strong, no quiver of age or timidity.
I stepped out from behind Cooper, batting away his attempt to grab me and pull me back behind him again. Instead of answering her, I asked, “Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
Her voice sounded familiar. “Not definitely, but I could hazard a guess or two.”
The juggernaut leaned down and spoke in the woman’s ear. She nodded, moving over to the rocking chair. “Does this help?” she asked, rocking.
The wave of déjà vu flooded over me again.
“Ms. Wolff.” I didn’t ask. I knew it, clear as my own name.
While the juggernaut was looking at Ms. Wolff, Cooper made a run at him. He tried to slam into the big guy, but flew right past him and disappeared through the wall behind him.
I frowned. What the hell?
As I stared at the wall, Cooper stepped back through, his eyes meeting mine. The confusion written all over his face undoubtedly matched mine.
Then it made sense.
Oh, shit.
Cooper stepped toward the juggernaut, reaching out to touch its back, but his hand passed through it. He confirmed what I’d already guessed—he was a ghost on this plane of existence, able to see and hear, but not speak or touch … well, not touch anyone besides me. How in the heck did that happen? Why couldn’t I hear him?
“The time has come, Scharfrichter.” The finality in Ms. Wolff’s tone snared my attention. Her English was very good, what sounded like a Slavic accent coming through only here and there. I tried to remember what she’d sounded like when she’d called me that day so long ago, but a lot had happened since then to blur my memory.
“The time for what?”
“You brought the picture, I presume.”
I fingered Layne’s picture, wondering how she knew I had brought it. “What picture?”
“Do not waste my time with games.”
Cooper returned to my side, frowning down at me. Only now, it was more of a worried frown than pissed off.
I pulled the picture from my pocket and held it up. “Yeah, I have the picture.”
“Excellent.” She turned to the juggernaut, speaking in what must be their language. It rolled off her tongue, sounding almost musical.
He nodded and took a step toward me.
I grabbed Cooper’s sleeve, holding my ground otherwise.
“You have been chosen, Executioner,” the juggernaut said in clear English, not even a hint of an accent.
Chosen for what? I covered my throat with my hand. Chosen to die by a sharp blade?
Wait a second! The juggernaut I’d battled in this very apartment in the past had a distinct accent. This one sounded different. I gulped. “You’re Mr. Black, aren’t you?”
He nodded once and held out the battle-ax toward me, handle first.
When I just stared at the weapon, Cooper nudged me.
I looked over.
Take it, he mouthed.
I tentatively stuck my hand out, afraid it was a trick.
Mr. Black held my guarded stare as I gripped the handle and took it from him. “Why are you giving me this?” I asked him. Were we going to battle fair and square, unlike when I’d taken on his brother?
“Death is required,” Ms. Wolff said from the rocking chair. “The loop will not be complete without the sacrifice.”
“Death?” I grimaced. Something felt wrong here. Very wrong. “Whose death?”
“Mine, of course,” she said.
I looked down at the ax in my hand, putting one and one together. “You want ME to kill you?”
“It’s not a matter of want, Scharfrichter, it’s a matter of need.”
A matter of need …
A scene replayed in my head. The big bad wolf breathing through the antique phone in this very room, answering my question of who killed the timekeeper. Scharfrichter, it had said.
I fast-forwarded to a couple of days ago with Dominick at breakfast: You are the one who killed the timekeeper … she wore one of your marks.
I looked down at the medieval ax, turning it in my hands. The lamplight glinted off the blade part of the ancient weapon. I killed the timekeeper?
Cooper grabbed my wrist. When I turned to him, he shook his head, his steely gaze troubled. He didn’t have to mouth the words for me to get his gist. If I did as they said, then I was fucked. I might as well just leave the Galena House and head straight to the police station and check myself into a jail cell.
“I can’t do this,” I told Ms. Wolff. “I’m not a killer.”
Ms. Wolff laughed. It had a musical lilt to it. “That is quite amusing coming from this Scharfrichter, yes?” she said to Mr. Black.
“She does not understand the gravity of the situation,” he told his counterpart.
“You’re right,” I said, lowering the blade to the floor. “I don’t. I don’t understand how I’m standing here talking to you right now,” I said to Ms. Wolff. I turned to Mr. Black. “And I don’t understand why you are standing here not trying to kill me like your twin did. None of this makes any sense.”
Mr. Black spoke to Ms. Wolff in their language.
“There is no time for that,” she replied.
“You must make time for it if she is to follow through as needed.”
“Make time for what?” I asked.
Ms. Wolff sighed. “Fine, but this will make us rush through the end.”
I exchanged raised brows with Cooper.
“Carnage is coming,” she explained. “A bloodbath such as we have not experienced in many generations. The cages have been opened and your skills as a Scharfrichter will not be enough to contain the waves of upheaval and ruin. We must act now to build your strength by means that those behind the butchery will not expect, or you will be slain by the next solstice. Now, do your job and cut off my head.”
I laughed.
And then I laughed some more.
I couldn’t help it. It was laugh or run screaming toward the door and pound on it until somebody woke me up from this nightmare.
Cooper grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. He pointed his index and middle fingers at my eyes and then pointed back at his own.
I nodded and stared into his steely eyes. Hiccups of laughter continued to bubble up and out, out of my control initially, but the longer I looked into Cooper’s familiar gaze, the more I quieted.
Finally, I was back at the reins. I took a breath and turned to Mr. Black. “Why don’t you kill her?”
“I cannot.”
“Why not? Your twin brother slayed three others like her in this very apartment. I saw it with my own eyes.” Well, I actually only saw him swing at the last one and then the head fall to the floor and shrivel up, but now was not the time to split hairs. Why did he slay them? I was about to add that question to the list when Mr. Black spoke.
“Because a timekeeper cannot slay another of their kind.”
Another of their … “You’re a timekeeper?”
He nodded once.
I frowned. “As in the ‘other’ timekeeper? The one I’ve been looking for since I found Ms. Wolff’s body?”
The same Ms. Wolff who was sitting in the rocking chair, impatiently rocking away right this moment.
“It is one of my many roles,” he answered.
“Why didn’t you approach me before now to tell me who you were?”
“Because you are a Scharfrichter.”
“What does that mean?”
“You would have tried to kill me, as you did the other like me
.”
He was right about that. His twin had me swinging at shadows.
“I did not want to experience that fate at your hands, so I had to choose the right time.”
“So you’re not some kind of morbid killer with a fetish for body parts?” That was what Ray had told me about Mr. Black.
“I am a killer,” he said as if announcing he was a plumber. “But I do not collect body parts, nor was the other like me my ‘twin brother,’ as you say.”
What was he then? That wasn’t important now. “So you’re a killer and a timekeeper?”
“Those are two among many roles der Zeitnehmer plays,” Ms. Wolff said. “Now, can we continue with the process before we miss the window in time?”
Window in time? What did that mean?
“I’m not going to kill you,” I told her again.
“It is what you do.”
“I don’t just go around randomly killing, I do it when it’s necessary.”
“This is necessary,” Ms. Wolff said.
“You must execute her in order to expand your abilities,” Mr. Black explained. “Without them, we will no longer exist.”
“When you say ‘we,’ do you mean you and me?” I asked. “Or you and her?”
“I mean all of us. You do not understand the enemy you will soon face.”
I turned to Cooper. “So if I have this straight, I must kill Ms. Wolff in order to obtain the skills of a timekeeper, which will be necessary in order to have a chance at surviving the wave of evil and death coming our way. Is that what you’re getting here? We could use your little police notebook to keep track of this shit.”
He scowled at me.
“I don’t like it either, but I’m not really seeing an out yet.”
Turning back to Ms. Wolff, I said, “Why did I need to bring a picture of my son?”
“As a reminder.”
“A reminder of what?”
“To return to finish the second loop.”
“I don’t understand.”
She sighed, clearly exasperated with my tiny part-human brain. “Tethering is a two-loop procedure.”
Tethering? What had Prudence said about tethering? That it was bad juju, right?
“Without the second loop, the process will not be sealed and all will be lost. My death will be a waste.”
“So we did this once before during a first loop?”
“Yes.”
“How come I don’t remember it?” That would explain my déjà vu sensation.
“Because you have been an apprentice, if you will. You had my abilities, but not the knowledge of how to use the skills correctly. After we complete the second loop, you will remember all. This is the process that must be followed.”
“So what am I supposed to do with this?” I held up Layne’s picture.
“Place it in the mirror in my bedroom where you found it.”
I paused to think that through. If I put it in the mirror, Cooper will find it and then tell me about it, which will start me freaking out about how Layne is connected, and then Mr. Black will show up and take the picture again. I grimaced. Thinking about that too much was going to hurt my brain.
My focus shifted to Mr. Black. “You took the picture from the mirror?” At his nod, I added, “And you are the one who mailed it to me with that cryptic note.”
“It was required for the final loop.”
“But what if I hadn’t brought it?”
“There was no chance of that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you already brought it the first time.”
“But this isn’t the first time.”
“Correct. It is the second.”
I scratched my head, glancing at Cooper. “Are you getting this?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, his lips moving in what I guessed were swear words probably aimed unfairly at me.
“To whom are you speaking?” Ms. Wolff asked.
“Myself,” I said. “Were those really strands of my hair the police found in your hand?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” I frowned at Cooper. “I’m fucked.”
“Not if you complete the second loop,” she said.
“Come again?”
“The first loop requires your hair for the tethering process to begin. If you follow through with the second loop, the hair will no longer be in my possession at death.”
“Your problem with the lawman will no longer be,” Mr. Black said.
I paced between them, ax still in hand. “So, you’re saying that if I kill Ms. Wolff a second time right here and now, then the hair Detective Hawke is using to build his murder case no longer exists?”
“Correct.”
“You both know about this situation of mine with the law then.” It wasn’t a question and they didn’t bother answering. Of course they had known. “This is blackmail.”
“Nein. It is a necessity, Scharfrichter. Accept your responsibility.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked her. “Why are you willing to sacrifice yourself to help me?”
“I told you, our strength is no good separated.”
“Why not kill me and take mine?”
“That is not how it works. Executioners are bred, timekeepers are made.”
“But …”
“I am tired, Scharfrichter,” she said. “I have been here a long time. I have loved and lost more times than I can remember. You have no idea how fortunate you are to have a short lifetime.” She gripped the arms of the rocker. “I no longer desire to continue in this world, but you do. You want to live, to watch your children grow old. Of greater importance is the fact that your existence is necessary to bring balance yet again, but mine is not. If I can offer help via a sacrifice, then so be it.”
“I don’t think I can kill you.”
“You already have once,” she said. “Take the photo of your son to my bedroom now. We are out of time.”
I did as told, my thoughts twisting in turmoil. When I returned to the living room, Cooper blocked my path. He shook his head.
I closed my eyes, torn between what was morally wrong and what Ms. Wolff insisted had to be done.
“Violet Parker?” I heard Ms. Wolff whisper with a hitch in her breath.
What? I looked at Ms. Wolff. She was holding the antique phone to her ear. The one that had no dialtone when Cooper and the cops listened. The one that I’d heard ringing a month later and had picked up to hear the big bad wolf ordering me to open the door.
“I need to talk to you,” she continued. Her voice echoed in my head, replaying across time.
Cooper turned to stare at the timekeeper, too. Mr. Black stood off to the side, peering out the window.
“It’s about what you are,” she repeated what she said to me that cold October day on the phone.
“Nein, Scharfrichter.”
I remembered my question that followed: “Nine what?”
“I must see you immediately. Come to the Galena House on Williams Street, apartment four. Knock seven times.”
Why seven times, I wondered just as I had then.
“You will come now,” Ms. Wolff said, loud and clear. “I will be dead soon.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. This wasn’t really happening, was it? I squeezed the all-too-real handle of the battle-ax.
“Do not delay!” She paused before adding, “I will be waiting.” Then she hung up.
“Oh God,” I said, my stomach fluttering.
“Now,” she frowned at me. “Kill me.”
“What if I don’t?”
“You will die,” Mr. Black said.
“What? Why?” By his hand?
“We are tethered, Scharfrichter,” Ms. Wolff answered for him. “If you do not kill me and return to your time, the loop will break and we will both die.”
“So my body up in the attic will just keel over.”
“Your body is here. You will never return to the attic.”
Fuck me. It was like t
he story in my family history, the one Doc told me about. Tears filled my eyes, frustration and fear overflowing. I was trapped.
I looked at Cooper. “And the executioner was never seen again,” I whispered.
He stared down at me, his face tense. The area around his left eye was swollen now, turning blue around the edges. He scrubbed his hand down the right side of his face, his lips moving. But his words never reached me.
“I don’t know what to do,” I fretted, chewing on my knuckles, my gaze darting from one player to the other in this macabre game.
Cooper took me by the shoulders. When I frowned up at him, he mouthed: Do. It.
Then he released me and walked through the bedroom doorway, turning his back on me as he stared into the dresser mirror.
“Now, Scharfrichter,” Mr. Black said. “You need to return in order to complete the loop.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?” I said, whirling on him. “That you’re not using me as some sort of tool to accomplish a deed that will set me up for something even worse than a life in prison?”
“Violet,” Ms. Wolff said. Her use of my name snared my attention. “We are not your enemy.”
“Then who are you?”
“We are sentinels, acting as your allies. Who do you think sent you the war hammer?”
“You?”
She shook her head, pointing across the room.
I frowned at Mr. Black. “But you’ve been asking about my son,” I said, remembering Eddie Mudder’s warnings about the “other” juggernaut asking questions. “You were watching him play in the schoolyard. Why?”
“He must not be harmed.”
Harmed by whom, if not Mr. Black?
“Scharfrichter,” Ms. Wolff snapped. “Come here.”
I moved closer, glancing toward the bedroom to see if Cooper was watching. Only Cooper wasn’t there. He was gone!
I peered into the room. Where was he? The closet door was closed, the room empty. What had Doc said? If Cooper followed me into another plane, Doc didn’t know if he’d be able to find him to pull him back? I needed Cooper to stick close to me so I could make sure he got back, dammit.
“Scharfrichter!”
“I’m coming!” I felt pulled along, rather than walking of my own volition. As I neared her, Ms. Wolff scooted forward in the chair.