35. Chapter 35
Chapter 35
E mily rushed from the bus and ran the three blocks to Sarah’s grandma’s house.
A taxi was parked in front.
She stopped a safe distance away, her heart racing half from the run, half from fear. They weren’t expecting any visitors, were they?
They found me.
She quickly brushed the thought away. There was no them —she only needed to be concerned about two disguised time travelers, and she knew exactly where they were.
Then, a woman clad in an orange skirt and a hot pink blouse, with voluminous bleached hair, stepped out of the taxi, and Emily’s fear turned into disbelief.
“Aunt Nicky?” She walked to the taxi.
Nicky turned, clutching a matching hot pink purse. “Emily, honey!”
“What …” Emily stared at her aunt and the taxi. “What are you doing here? ”
“Why, we’d come to visit you, of course.”
“Hi, Emily,” her dad greeted from the front entrance of the house. Debbie was next to him, looking sullen.
“Dad? Debs?” Emily turned around in a circle. Next thing she knew, the rest of their neighbors would also turn up here.
She decided to go to Dad for answers. “Okay, but what are you doing here?”
“We came to celebrate your birthday.” Nicky brushed past her, joined Dad and Debbie, and rang the bell. “It’s all right, honey. Aurelia expects us. It’s a surprise!” She did jazz hands, then turned as Sarah’s grandma opened the door.
“My birthday is in two weeks,” Emily said. A fist of panic clutched her heart. “You’re not—”
“We’re not staying for that long,” her dad assured her, a spark of empathizing understanding in his eyes. “And we’re not staying here. After Nicky greats Aurelia, we’re going to a hotel.”
“Which means we only need to wait three hours more,” Debbie muttered.
“Weren’t you supposed to be working at the summer camp?” Emily asked her sister.
“Well, I wasn’t gonna leave her alone, now was I? Her hormones have been raging the entire summer,” Nicky responded before she followed Aurelia inside, chattering all the way.
“What hormones?” Debbie objected, not that Nicky acknowledged her. “She’s crazy. She’s finally, determinately, gone insane,” she said to Emily as the two were left standing at the doorstep. “She pulled me out of my job and dragged me all the way here because, as she says, if she left me alone, I’d go ‘running away with some Yankee, as Mama did.’” Debbie threw her arms up in frustration.
“Does she realize the irony of then bringing you to Boston?”
“No. No, she doesn’t. By the way, here’s your mail.” Debbie brought a packet out of her bag, thrust it into Emily’s lap, and huffed after their aunt.
Sarah came down the stairs. “What’s all this ruckus?”
Emily slumped her shoulders. “My family.” Remembering why she rushed here, she signaled Sarah to go back upstairs, adding a wink.
“Sarah! Come help me with the canapés!” Aurelia called from the kitchen.
Sarah shot Emily an apologetic glance and joined her grandma. Emily, instead, took the cowardly way out and sneaked to her assigned bedroom. She could deal with her aunt in five minutes from now.
She tossed the package on her bed and phoned Gracie, pacing from the window to the door as she waited for the girl to pick up. But the ringing only ended in a bleep.
Foot . She sat down and worked the strings of the package, then tried calling again. No answer.
Does she know? No, she couldn’t. It was evening—surely Gracie would think Emily was calling her to invite her to the movies. While a lot has changed for Emily in the past, nothing has happened here—nothing that would alert Fenn or Gracie.
After two more failed calls and a roughly opened package, Emily couldn’t stand the pressure anymore. She tiptoed downstairs. Everyone was still imprisoned in the living room, Nicky and Aurelia chatting, Dad divulging the canapés, Debbie looking as miserable as if someone told her school had been canceled for the next year. Sarah sat next to her grandma .
Emily sent Sarah a text, but Sarah didn’t notice. Maybe she left her phone upstairs. And she couldn’t notify her without alerting everyone else.
In the end, she left her another text with instructions and snuck out.
Fenn’s street was quiet this time of the day, the street lamps casting gloomy shadows on the sidewalk.
You’re only thinking they’re gloomy. Shadows have no feelings.
Emily paused a few houses away, waiting, deliberating. Hoping she’d hear a voice call her name. But unlike the first day she’d visited Fenn, Will didn’t show up.
Did he get my message?
Or was he too afraid to come? Too afraid to time travel?
She shook her head. This is fine. She’d only talk to Gracie; she didn’t need Will to help her with that. He had his own stuff to sort through.
But it would be nice if she could talk to Gracie alone.
The door of the house she was standing by opened, and a man looked out, left and right.
“Oh, hey!” Emily cleared her throat. “Hi. We’re having a meeting. At the café on the corner. The whole street.”
The man regarded her suspiciously. “What for?”
“The … the person who’s leaving dog poops all over the sidewalk? We’re ratting him out. For good this time.”
The man narrowed his eyes, tapping a newspaper against his thigh. “That’s good,” he finally said, and Emily high-fived herself in her mind.
“Can you help me call the others? I already did that side of the street. But Mr. Fenn isn’t answering, and I don’t have his phone number.”
“Sure, I’ll call him. ”
Emily waited until the man did so, then thanked him and headed down the street. She melded into the shadows of another house and stood still, barely daring to breathe.
Light seeped onto the sidewalk, interrupted by a shadow as Fenn stepped out and headed toward the café. Bingo . Emily waited until he was far enough away, then rang the bell. She fingered the watch in her pocket. Heartbeat …
Gracie opened the door, a smile spreading across her face. “Oh, hi, Emily. I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I called.”
“Must’ve left my phone upstairs. Uncle’s not here, though. He just left.”
“I know.”
Gracie opened her mouth.
“I didn’t come to see him.” Do I sound too much like a serial killer? Never mind. “I came to see you, Gracie.” Emily closed her fingers around the watch. “Or should I call you Penny?”
Gracie’s jaw dropped. “How did you know?”
“So it is you.” She was older than the girl in the photo—perhaps five years or so—but she was Ralkin’s daughter. Now that Emily thought of it, Gracie’s strange quirks and circumstances made sense. Homeschooled. Barely knew what movies were. Her tips about Boston in the past. Even the way she dressed—like a modern version of Victorian clothing.
Gracie looked to the street, then grabbed Emily by the arm and yanked her inside. She closed the door behind them. Emily sensed no threat from the girl and momentarily relaxed.
“How did you know?” Gracie repeated.
“I saw your picture in your father’s office.”
“You were there?” Gracie’s face shone with hope and homesickness .
“Yeah, I …” Emily chased away the gruesome picture of Ralkin on the floor. “Did you know about all of this? What he was up to?”
“I know he was working on a project.” Gracie walked to the living room and sat down on the sofa. Her voice sounded incredibly forlorn. “He was trying to help me. Cure me.”
Emily sat on the armchair. “With almonite?”
Gracie nodded, wringing her hands in her lap. “I had tuberculosis. He planned to develop a serum that would allow me to travel to the future and return once I healed. It would work like Leaders’ time travel, only I’d completely disappear from my time when I was in the present, and once I returned, I’d disappear from here.”
“But …” Emily scrunched her nose. “You’re cured now?”
“Yes. I can’t believe how easy it was. It took about three years, but still, it was just pills and examinations.” Gracie shook her head.
“Then why haven’t you gone back? I—I can give you a fauxmonite barrel for the watch if you need one to return.”
“I can’t. Not even with a watch. Something went wrong with the serum. It didn’t work like it was supposed to.”
“Oh.” Emily leaned back. “That makes sense based on what happened there.”
Gracie knit her eyebrows. “What happened?”
“Well, you died. Supposedly. Clearly, you didn’t, but your father said you did.”
“I died? I didn’t disappear?”
“I don’t think so. He was pretty adamant that something had gone wrong, and you were dead instead of … well, here.”
Gracie covered her mouth. “Poor Papa. ”
“How did you survive here, anyway?” Emily asked. “I doubt you could just walk into a hospital and demand treatment.”
“Fenn had been waiting for me. He already knew everything, and he had an identity ready for me. He’d been instructed to take care of me.”
Fenn. The third partner.
“And his partner had promised a serum that would enable us to travel back again.”
Ross? Is that why he chased Sylvia to Paris? Because he needed more of her special almonite?
But why would Ross care so much about a random girl and her father?
“Fenn says he’ll have it soon. And then I’ll see my father again.” Gracie gave her a sad smile. “I can’t imagine what he’s been going through, thinking I’m dead.”
“No, Gracie …” Emily clutched the armrest, then stood, too nervous to keep sitting. “I don’t think you ever … I don’t think what they told you is true.”
“What do you mean?”
Oh god, I’m not trained for this. “Your father is dead.”
Gracie wrinkled her forehead. “Well, of course, he’s died by now. It’s been over a hundred years. But if I go back to after I left—”
“No, he died then. In 1889. Only a few days after you had supposedly died.” Emily bent her head.
“No.” Gracie stared at the floor and shook her head, wilder and wilder. “No, no. Papa didn’t die. He said he’d wait. He promised he’d be right there … He was healthy, he …”
“They killed him.” Emily gasped as the full realization hit her. The third partner. “I think Fenn killed him. He lied about everything—Gracie—Penny—we have to get away, he’ll be back soon, and … ”
Emily grabbed Gracie by the hand, but she resisted.
“He couldn’t have,” she said.
“Look, I know he took care of you, and you might have some sort of Stockholm Syndrome …”
“No.” Gracie’s nails dug into Emily’s arm. “He couldn’t have been there. Fenn can’t travel back in time.”
“Well, yeah, he told me he doesn’t have any more almonite, but clearly, he lied.”
“No, it’s not that. He’s like me. From the same time. He’d been injected with the same kind of serum, more than a decade ago. It transported him to this time.”
“But …” Emily shook her head. “He’s a regular time traveler. He found a stash of almonite and took that—he took the same serum he gave to my dad. And my dad and I are both fine.”
“He took that, but it didn’t work. He says the first serum we took, the tainted one, must’ve made us immune to the normal serum. It doesn’t stick. Which is why we need the special one.”
“So all this time, Fenn wouldn’t have been able to travel, even if he had a watch?”
“No. I’m sorry we lied, Emily. But you see how it can be a rather difficult and strange thing to explain, and I didn’t know how much you knew …”
Emily nodded absentmindedly while the wealth of new info ran through her mind, trying to arrange itself into a sensible formula.
Fenn had received the serum, too. Ralkin had told her he used one vial—the only vial he had—on his daughter. So where did Fenn get his?
From Sylvia.
But when? Not back when she’d been kept in the basement. And once Emily saved her, she’d always been in the company of at least one of them. Then Will took her to Paris and they did the almonite-removal procedure. Could Fenn have stolen a new vial from there?
But he was in Boston at the time. He had to have been, if he killed Ralkin …
Emily’s mind whirred, making her nauseous. Nothing made sense.
Inject the serum. The person dies, but not really. They end up in a random other time. Gracie had been here for a few years. Fenn for at least fifteen.
Inject the serum. Death right afterward …
The serum. Sylvia’s almonite …
Death …
A door slammed behind them. Emily and Gracie both jumped.
“Emily. How lovely you came to visit us.” Fenn barred the closed door, the only exit. He gave Emily a polite smile that, before all of this, she would’ve thought pleasant.
Now, there was something chilling about it. And the cold spread to his pale, gray eyes.
Will said Ross had been injected with almonite—but then he died anyway.
Or was that an and , not a but ?
“U-uncle,” Gracie stammered.
Emily moved closer to her, as if that would protect them both. She faced the man who, in a sense, was responsible for her becoming a time traveler. “Ross.”
The smile on his face spread. “We finally meet properly.”