ARC: The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare

by M. G. Buehrlen

  “You said you were tuckered. You were headin’ to bed.”

  “Right. Right.” He glanced around at the campsite and the horses, almost as if he didn’t recognize his surroundings.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked.

  “Course I am. Walk with me?”

  He offered his arm, and I took it. We walked to my tent, though I seemed to lead him more than he led me.

  “Goodnight,” he said, stooping and disappearing through the tent flaps.

  “Good… night.”

  When I turned around, the guys around the fire were all staring at me. Especially Cask and Blue.

  “I don’t think he feels too well,” I said, returning to my seat beside Cask.

  “Must’ve been the soup,” Cask said, aiming a grin at Blue. Blue kicked a shower of dirt at Cask, and Cask threw his spoon at him.

  “My soup ain’t the only thing around here that can sour a stomach,” Blue said, tossing a glare at me. Cask’s booming laugh echoed throughout the rocky valley.

  I rolled my eyes and stared at the fire. I had to try to keep my mind on my mission. I could deal with the Blue Situation later.

  “Well, I think I’ll go for a walk,” Cask said, standing and stretching his back. He pulled the brim of his hat down over his already-shadowed eyes. “Don’t no one go followin’ after me, now.” He rested a palm on the revolver slung at his side. He handed each of us a pointed look. Especially me.

  We all got the hint. Except I was the only one fool enough not to take it.

  He hefted his saddlebags over his shoulder and started off into the night. He melted away, silent as a shadow, leaving me alone with Blue, William, and Yates, who all continued to stare at me. I had to move fast, or I’d lose sight of the chest for good.

  “I think I’ll go stretch my legs, too.”

  I made a show of heading the opposite way toward the horses, where I’d had my conversation with Judd, and then, when I knew they couldn’t see me anymore, I backtracked to follow Cask. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear his footfalls. He wasn’t exactly trying to be quiet, and I figured he didn’t have to be. No one in his gang would dare follow him, unless they wanted tonight to be their last. Or they were out of their right mind.

  I guess both of those applied to me.

  I fingered the cool steel of the pistol at my hip. It held a full round; I checked before I holstered it. Not that I planned on shooting Cask. I only wanted to see where he hid the chest. I wasn’t even going to move it like I moved the Raphael. If the chest had never been found in Base Life, then it was most likely still resting in the same hiding place. All I had to do was tell Porter where to find it. My gun was only a backup – in case I wasn’t very good at trailing someone silently in the dark.

  Thankfully, the moon gave off enough light for me to pick my way through the trees. I stepped gingerly over fallen limbs and gnarled roots, taking care to avoid loose rocks and sticks that might snap. I thought I was doing well, but after a few minutes, Cask’s footsteps stopped. I froze in my tracks, then slowly dissolved into the shadow of a tree to my left.

  I waited. And listened.

  I heard faint rustling, as though Cask were rummaging through his bags. Then came the squeak of a hinge. The strike of a match.

  Fire.

  The spark caught my attention out of the corner of my left eye. Cask was over a hundred feet away, hunched down, half his face lit by the tiny matchstick flame. He lifted a lantern out of his bag and fed the wick inside, snuffing the match afterward. The lantern bathed him in a sphere of amber light. He repositioned the saddlebags over his shoulder and resumed his walk, the lantern held out in front of him.

  I let the distance between Cask and I lengthen. Now that I had something to follow besides footsteps – that lantern light would pierce through the trees for miles – I could let in some space between us. Enough for a decent sound buffer.

  As I watched Cask’s lantern bob hypnotically up ahead, my mind found its way back to Blue. I turned the events of the night over and over in my hands, examining each facet. What was his problem with Shooter Delaney? With me? He was infuriating as Heath, this guy who glared at me and jabbed me with his words. He was infuriating as Jack Baker, being kind and helpful, then driving off into the horizon like he didn’t care about me at all. Like our friendship never existed.

  Which was the truth. I’d erased it all.

  Was that why he didn’t remember me? Had I erased it from his memory? Or was it because we were in 1876, and our meeting in 1927 hadn’t happened yet? But then, wouldn’t he have recognized me in 1961?

  None of it made sense.

  I clenched my teeth and fists. I couldn’t wrap my head around it all. I wasn’t used to not having an answer. Normally, no matter what the problem, I could find a fix. I’d have all the right tools to choose from. But in this situation, I had nothing. All I knew was that he couldn’t be the same person from Chicago. He couldn’t look exactly like the same person. It was impossible. Insanely and undeniably impossible.

  And yet… here I was. Living. Breathing. Possible. A time-traveling, pistol-wielding, Corvette-driving, gang-fighting, outlaw from the future.

  That proved anything was possible, didn’t it?

  A twig snapped somewhere off to my right. I went rigid, my muscles seized, my breath clutched tightly in a ball. I slowly, slowly, turned my head to the side. I squinted at the black forest shapes all around me for what felt like forever, scanning left to right. My breath was the color of moonlight.

  Another twig snapped. Behind me this time. My heartbeat moved to my ears. My breath came in quick, shallow bursts.

  Someone followed me.

  With a dart of my eye, I glanced back at Cask’s lantern. It still bobbed up ahead, but it grew steadily smaller as the distance between us stretched further. I had to keep moving or else I’d lose sight of him, but before I started again, I chanced another look over my shoulder.

  At first, I saw nothing, just more dark forest. Then there was a faint shift of shadow out of the corner of my eye. I turned to run but it was too swift for me. A hand, deft and quick, reached out of the darkness and clamped over my mouth. Two strong arms wrapped around me. A rock solid body pressed against mine. I struggled and bucked, one hand beating at whoever had hold of me, the other hand grasping for my gun.

  “Stop it, will ya? Shooter, stop it now, it’s just me.” Blue’s harsh whisper filled my ear with hot breath. The moment I stopped struggling, he let me go.

  “What the hell has gotten into you?” I hissed, driving my palms into his chest to shove him away. “Why did you follow me?” I slammed another fist into his chest for good measure. He’d scared me absolutely silly.

  “I needed to talk to you.”

  “Now? You couldn’t wait for morning?”

  “I needed to talk to you alone.” He looked apologetic and confused, and more like my Blue from Chicago than ever before.

  I hated to send him back to camp, but I had to finish my mission. Alone. And quietly. “I can’t talk now. I’m busy. Go back to camp.”

  I turned around to locate Cask’s lantern, but it had disappeared. Vanished. I searched frantically for any sign of it, but there was nothing. Just black. And Blue. And me.

  “Dammit,” I said, rounding on Blue. “Look what you made me do.”

  “What?”

  Cask had heard us and snuffed his lamp. I was sure of it. Now I’d never be able to find him in the dark. I groaned and pinched the bridge of my nose. Everything was ruined. I’d have to go back and do the entire mission over again.

  Blue took a step toward me, his head cocked to the side. “Were you followin’ Cask?”

  I shook my head. It was all over. Time to head back to Limbo and face Porter. Tell him I failed. Tell him I’d have to go back. Ask him why I saw Nick again. See what kind of lie he handed me this time.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to go.”

  “Go where?”

 
; I marched back the way I came, prepared to ascend the moment the campsite came into view. But I only took a few steps before I heard Blue say something that made me stop dead in my tracks. My blood frosted in my veins. My tongue fused to the roof of my mouth; my feet threaded roots in the ground.

  He called out my name. Only he didn’t say Shooter. Or Cora. Or Delaney.

  He said Alex.

  CHAPTER 23

  BLUE AND SOUSA

  “What did you say?” I turned around slowly, carefully, as though Blue – the real Blue – might bolt if I made any sudden movements.

  He still looked confused. “I said your name.”

  “Which name?”

  “Shooter.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head, “no, you said Alex. I heard you.”

  “Why would I say Alex?”

  I opened my mouth to reply, to say it was because he remembered me, but I couldn’t. It didn’t make sense for him to remember me. How could he have memories of something that hadn’t happened yet?

  When I didn’t answer, he heaved a frustrated sigh and adjusted his hat. “Look, I just came out here to ask you to stop doin’ what it is you’re doin’.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “Whatever it is that’s makin’ my head so foggy.”

  “I’m not doing anything to your head.”

  “Yes you are. Ever since you came back tonight, I’ve had thoughts I can’t get outta my mind. Thoughts I didn’t think up on my own.” He stepped up to me, his body a solid, warm silhouette in the moonlight.

  “I can’t put thoughts in your head,” I said. “I’m not a witch.”

  “But you are. You must be.” He stepped closer, so close the brim of his hat cast a shadow over my face. “You bewitched me. You must’ve. There’s no other explanation. Cuz no matter how much I try, I can’t stop thinkin’ about you.” His eyes fell to my lips. His fingertips grazed my chin. “About kissin’ you.”

  I sucked in a breath and pressed my lips together. He remembered me. There was no doubt.

  “How else could I have thoughts like that?” His breath brushed my skin. His thumb swept across the hollow of my throat. “It ain’t makin’ sense. Just this morning, you and I were as sick a’ each other as we’ve been for the past three weeks. And Judd’s my cousin. So explain to me why I’m contemplatin’ stealing away with his girl all of a sudden.”

  I bit my lip, feeling sorry for him. He truly didn’t understand. And leave it to Blue to want to do right by his cousin.

  He was still so good.

  “I can’t explain it,” I said. “At least, not in a way you’d understand.”

  His thumb moved across my collar bone, making me shiver. “Try.”

  What did I have to lose? I had to redo the mission anyway. I could make all the impact on him I wanted. It wouldn’t change anything.

  I took a deep breath, then came right out and said it. “This morning I was Shooter. Now I’m Alex. The same Alex you met in Chicago outside Sloan’s Bakery. The same Alex you stopped to help on the side of the road in Ohio.”

  His eyes searched my face, his brow pulled down. “I ain’t never been to Chicago.”

  “Maybe not. But you will one day. Fifty years from now, you will. Your name will be Nick Piasecki, and you’ll be a deli delivery boy.”

  I expected him to shake his head, to look at me like I was crazy and tell me I was talking nonsense. But he didn’t.

  “You remember me,” I said, placing my palm on his chest. “I don’t know how you do, but you do. You remember Chicago. 1927. Blue and Sousa. We kissed by the fountain. You played Stardust on the piano. You held my hand in yours, skin to skin.” I entwined our fingers together, and he looked down at our hands. Couldn’t he feel it? We were the same people. We had the same hands. The same lips.

  The same souls.

  He swallowed. His thoughts were far off, treading the horizon. Our hands were warm. “I don’t know how to play the piano,” he said.

  I tipped his chin up to look at me. “You do. You play beautifully.” I found myself caught in his eyes, unable to look away. My breath came quicker. His face was so very beautiful. His blue-green eyes, the dark stubble on his jawline, his perfectly shaped mouth. What I wouldn’t give to see his teasing smile again. To see him laugh. Call me up onto the roof. Hear him call me Sousa.

  Taste his lips again.

  “After that night,” I said, “after our night in Chicago, I went home and found Stardust on one of my grandparents’ old records. I listened to it over and over, just lying there on the hardwood floor. I thought you died because of me.” My throat was thick, turning my words to whispers. I pulled myself against him and spoke into his shirt. “I need you to remember. I need you to tell me you’re real. That you’re alive. However impossible it may be.”

  I needed to know his life didn’t end in that delivery truck on Christmas Eve. That erasing our time together hadn’t ruined his life.

  He was still for a long moment, his pulse matching mine. Then he dropped his hand from mine, and I thought he was going to push me away. Tell me we couldn’t do this to Judd. I thought I’d lost him – lost my chance.

  But he didn’t push me away.

  Instead, he slipped both his arms around me, slid his hands up my back beneath my coat, and gathered me gingerly against his chest. He rested his forehead against mine under the brim of his hat. Our breath mingled in the thin space between us.

  “You had brown eyes,” he said.

  And that was all it took to convince me. Heath, Jack, Nick, whatever his name was, it didn’t matter. He was Blue. My Blue from Chicago.

  I couldn’t resist any longer. I reached up, sliding my hands to the back of his neck. My fingers tangled in his hair. My nose brushed his. I parted my lips, inviting him to kiss me.

  A pause settled between us then, heavy and anxious. There was a reservation, a hesitation, a battle beneath his skin. I could feel it. I held my breath, waiting and hoping, eyes closed.

  It didn’t take him long to decide what he wanted. He clasped my shirt in his fists and pressed his lips to mine. He kissed me thoroughly, his hands hungry and searching the curves of my body underneath my coat. The small of my back, my waist, my hips. He kissed me until he’d stolen all my breath and pulled every last ounce of November chill from my body. And I would’ve kept kissing him, kept letting him touch me, until the sun came up, if fate would’ve given us half a chance.

  Turns out, it didn’t.

  As we kissed, a sphere of amber light fell upon our shoulders. It slid across our closed eyelids, and the hair on the back of my neck bristled.

  Cask was behind us.

  What happened next was completely out of my control. My host body reacted before I could. In one swift, deadly motion, I yanked Blue’s revolver from his holster and drove the grip into the tender spot right behind his ear. His body went limp, and he collapsed in my arms, his lips ripping softly from mine.

  I had him on the ground, slumped against a tree, before I fully understood what I’d done. I’d knocked him out cold with one blow. I went to reach for him, to check his pulse and see if he was all right, but my host body wouldn’t budge. Instead, I spun on my heel and faced Cask dead on. A waterfall of lies spilled from my mouth with dramatic flair.

  “He went after you, Cask. He wanted to see where you were hidin’ the chest. Said he didn’t trust you to divvy up our shares. I confronted him, and he attacked me. Forced himself right onto me.” I pretended to be out of breath and pressed the back of my hand to my forehead.

  Cask stared at me. His coal black eyes glinted in the lantern light. Trying to read Cask Carter was like trying to read a book in the dark. You could see the print, but you couldn’t make out the words.

  Fear clawed inside me, and I tried not to let it show. He was the only Carter I was truly afraid of. I feigned a sigh and pretended to care about the state of my hair. “Judd will have to hear of this. Can you help me carry Heath back to camp?”

/>   “Naw,” said Cask. He spat at the ground. “We’ll leave him here for a while.”

  “But it’s so cold out.”

  “We’ll only be gone a few minutes.”

  “We?”

  He nodded. “You’re comin’ with me. I need your help.”

  I drew in a deep, shaky breath and forced a smile. “All right.”

  There was nothing else I could do. Cask took Blue’s gun from my hand and tucked it between his back and his belt. Then I followed him the way he headed originally, before I lost his trail. I decided I would go with him as far as it took to discover if he still had the chest in his saddlebags. If he didn’t, I would ascend and do the mission over. If he did, then maybe the mission hadn’t been ruined after all. And maybe “Heath” wouldn’t remember a thing.

  Another kiss lost from his memory.

  But fused forever in mine.

  STARDUST

  I walked along beside Cask, rubbing my arms, my teeth chattering. I was frigid now without Blue there to warm me, without his hands on my waist. And the cold wasn’t the only thing making me shiver. I had no idea what Cask wanted my help with, and honestly, I was petrified it was some kind of guise to get me alone.

  So he could plant me in the ground.

  “Do you love my brother?” he asked out of the blue. He didn’t look at me. His eyes were fixed ahead.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Judd. Do you love ‘im?” This time he stopped and faced me. He held the lantern up so he could see my face.

  I relinquished control and let Shooter speak for herself. “Yes.”

  Cask stared at me for a long moment, trying to decide if he believed me. In the end, he started walking again, shaking his head. “No woman’s ever loved Judd. Especially no woman as pretty as you. So you wanna tell me what you want from him?”

  “Want from him?”

  “There must be somethin’ you want. Somethin’ I ain’t got. Cuz you see, women, they don’t look at Judd.” His lips broke into a handsome, arrogant smile. “They look at me.”