25. Chapter 25
Chapter 25
Savannah
January 2009
T he ghost was a boy.
Emily’s second—slightly inappropriate for the situation—thought was: He’s kind of cute.
Then she got a better grip, both on her mind and the hammer, and stood, pointing the tool at him in defense. “Don’t come closer.”
He stopped a few feet away, by the hospital sign. He was about her age, perhaps a few years older, but something about him felt off. His clothes—a loose jacket, a vest, high-waisted pants—were vintage-looking, liked he fished them out of some grandpa’s closet. All he needed to complete the look was a beret. His black hair was slicked back, with a slight curl in the front.
He was the ‘ghost’ she’d seen before. Only this time, he didn’t disappear.
She tightened her hold on the hammer. “What do you want?”
“Miss Willburne, may I ask you not to damage that watch?”
He knows my name. “Oh, my god. You’re a stalker. I knew you were a stalker!” She moved in front of the watch. “You were spying on me.”
A faint blush appeared on his cheeks. “I allow I have been in the vicinity a few times. I attempted to make contact but was not certain how to do it.”
“You talk weird.” She shook her head. Focus . “Then why do it now?”
“You were about to destroy the watch. I could not let you do that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
He reached under his jacket, ignored her warning of “Uh-uh!”, and pulled out… another pocket watch?
Well, those were known to be kept in pockets.
He approached her slowly, holding the watch on his outstretched palm. It was like hers, with a solid hunter case, but where Emily’s had a floral engraving on the lid, his had a meander-like border. He clicked it open. No glass covering the dial, two small sub-dials with hands so fine she’d be afraid to touch them. The design wasn’t the same, but close enough to her watch.
Emily’s throat went dry.
“I’m like you, Miss Willburne. I’m a time traveler.”
She slowly lowered the hammer. The whaling of sirens and rush of traffic faded into the distance. “How?”
His eyes softened as he gave her a half-smile. “Like you have your watch, I have mine.”
“But how did you find me? How did you know I was one of them?”
“You put pictures of the watch in the library in the box.”
“The library in what now?”
“Where you can find things by typing them in.”
She frowned. She’d put pictures in the ad when she tried to look for an owner, but she’d only placed the ad—
“The internet? You mean the internet?”
“If that is the word, I certainly do.”
His strange way of talking reminded her of old movies, though the accent wasn’t the same. Time traveler.
An ambulance stopping near them reminded Emily of where they were. “You’ve got some explaining to do,” she said, “but not here.”
“I agree. What do you propose?”
She hated to be the dumb person in the horror movie, but they would need privacy. And the easiest way to get that… “I’m afraid to ask, but do you know where I live?”
“I am aware of your residence, yes.”
Yikes. “Uh, okay. Can you meet me there tomorrow? I’ll be home at half past two.” Debbie had her violin practice, giving them enough time for… whatever. Oh god.
“I’ll be there.”
She nodded awkwardly. He prepared his watch.
“By the way,” she shot, “what’s your name?”
“Will.”
“Miss? Excuse me, miss?” another voice called her. Emily turned. A construction worker extended a hand toward her. “May I have that back?”
Right. The hammer. “Sorry. I just needed it for… never mind.” She handed him the hammer, together with a Please Don’t Sue Me smile, and by the time she whipped back, the ghost—the boy—the freaking time traveler, Will—was gone.
She looked at her watch. Her untouched, unruined watch. She still believed Dad in saying it could be dangerous, but he and Emily were just two time travelers. Maybe two shitty time travelers who didn’t know how to do it right. Perhaps Will did. For now, she’d see what he had to say. She could still destroy the watch afterward.
“Fine,” she grunted and slipped the watch safely back into her bag. “You win.”
When Emily found Will the next day, he was by the side of the road close to her house, carrying a small wooden box with him. A car whizzed by; he watched it go with the wonder of a child in his first amusement park.
“Hey.” She jumped next to him. “Never seen a car before?”
“I have. But I cannot get enough of them.” Another car passed, and he followed it intently with his eyes. “They move like greased lightning. It’s fascinating.”
“O-kay.” She didn’t take him for a Grease fan, but what did she know? “Let’s get you inside, Gramps.”
Only once they were in the house did Emily realize she didn’t know what to do with him. Play it cool. Treat him as a normal visitor. “You can sit here.” She headed to the living room and patted the sofa.
Will sat, straight-backed, his hands wrapped protectively around the box in his lap. He looked both curious and afraid at the same time. “What’s that?” He nodded to their old tube TV.
“It’s a TV. It shows stuff. Like movies.”
No response. Maybe he needed time to acclimatize. “Why don’t I get us some drinks. You stay right here.” She skidded backward toward the kitchen and rummaged for a drink in the fridge, keeping her ears perked. But when she returned, Will was still in the same rigid position. She handed him a glass.
He accepted it with slight deliberation. “Thank you, Miss Willburne.”
“Please, stop with that. You can call me by my name.”
“All right.” He shifted awkwardly. “Emmeline.”
“It’s Em ily . Nobody calls me Emmeline. It’s creepy you even know that. But we’ve already established you’re a stalker.”
“I’m not—” He started too loudly and curbed himself. “Miss—that is, Emily—I believe I’ve made it known the intrusion upon your person was not deliberate. I apologize for any fright I may have caused you.”
Emily sat down next to him and swirled the drink with her straw. Will looked intently at his glass.
“It’s a horchata. Rice and milk,” she said. “So, who goes first? I show you mine, you show me yours?”
“I don’t understand you very well.”
“Yeah, same,” she muttered. “You know, time travel. Will you tell me what you know about it?”
“That is a very broad question. How long do we intend to drink this?”
She snorted. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, after all. “Just begin somewhere.”
“Very well. Do you know of the Watchers?”
“The guys with a horrible taste for naming groups. Heard of them.”
He gave her a slight, shy-looking smile. Did he find her funny?
Did she want him to find her funny?
“They used to be called the Tempisthians. From the Latin tempus , time. Their leader in the 16th century, Cedric Walkers, had a lisp. It made him rather undignified when he had to refer to the name of the group. At last, he had enough and renamed them into Watchers. Perhaps he thought it was a clever idea, as pocket watches were coming into common use.”
“Are you one of them?”
“The Watchers? No. They do not exist anymore, not even in my time.”
“And what time would that be?”
He sipped his drink. “Emily, have you done any travels yet?”
“Oh, no. You’re not derailing this. I deserve a proper answer. Like a year.” He had to be from somewhere in the past. That, or a very distant future, when humans had messed up badly and returned to their roots, and now they didn’t know what cars were. Or milk drinks.
He kept silent.
“Fine, give me a century. Is that too much of a spoiler?”
He grimaced. “Nineteenth,” he said, sounding like a child admitting to mischief.
“See! That wasn’t so bad.” No wonder he was out of place here. She did right by not going too far into the future. Just look at this poor guy. “Okay, Gramps. So you decided to pop in, say hey?”
He blinked.
“Come here,” she said slower. “Did you want to see how we’re doing in the future?”
“No. I believed I would find you here.”
“You needed a time travel buddy?”
So far, she’d recognized a few different looks. The Silent Confused one, the Silent Not Wanting To Talk one, and this— Silent Contemplating . His dark, straight eyebrows drew together. “I think you and I can be of assistance to each other.”
Like that man wanted to help Dad. But Dad didn’t know what he was getting into—Emily had been warned. She just needed to be careful.
“I may be open to collaborations.” Having a time travel buddy did sound awesome. Even if he was a little weird.
“May I show you something?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I will need a smooth, solid surface, somewhere light.”
“The kitchen?” She led him there and tapped a kitchen counter by the window.
“Perfect. Thank you.” He set the box on the counter and opened it. It contained a dozen sharp and pointy metal tools the length of an open hand, meticulously set in their respective indentations in the velvet-covered interior. Separate came a round disk with a screw at the top and bottom. With smooth, efficient moves, Will affixed it to the counter and secured his watch with the screws. He chose a thin-bladed knife from the toolbox and carefully prodded the back cover of the watch until it came off with a slight pop .
Emily let out a yelp.
“It’s fine. I’ve done this before.” Using a small screwdriver and a set of brass tweezers, he removed tiny parts from the watch. He held up a cylinder-shaped one. “This is the mainspring barrel. It contains the mainspring, a thin, spiral piece of metal that causes movement. You activate it by winding up the watch.”
“Is this leading somewhere?”
“May I have your watch? I will only do the same thing. It won’t come to any harm.”
Her hand closed around the watch in her pocket. Disassembling didn’t sound good.
Yesterday you wanted to destroy it.
Will clasped his hands behind his back. Why did he have to look so… decent ? Emily had never met a boy this age who would give off such a sense of respectability.
Sighing, she gave him the watch. “Don’t ruin it.”
“I wouldn’t dare. These objects are irreplaceable.”
He repeated the procedure. Emily’s stomach clenched as he picked apart the insides of her watch.
“And this one is yours.” Will held up the barrel. It was a deep, dark blue. Despite the polish, its structure looked grainy, as if made from fine sand.
“Okay. When do we start with the explanations?”
“I am explaining it.” He took a knife from the stand and jabbed the tip against his finger—just enough for a drop of blood to show. Emily stared, eyebrows raised, as he took the mainspring barrel from his watch and brushed it against the wound.
Oh, no. She’d let a creepy fetishist into her house.
From the cut, a blue rash spread under his skin, reaching down his finger and coloring his palm.
Emily jerked back, nearly overturning a fruit bowl on the counter. “What the hell!”
Will flinched at the curse, but otherwise appeared calm. “The same thing will happen to you. The mainspring barrel is made of almonite, an element that enables time travel.”
“Never heard of it.” And she wasn’t bad in chemistry.
“It was kept secret. The only known supply came from a meteorite that landed on Earth millennia ago.”
“This stuff is alien?”
He nodded. “A group of people discovered it back when it was still liquid. It carried a tiny life form that infected people, like a disease. Those who survived developed the ability to shift their consciousness to any time in their life.”
“You mean, like bacteria? Or a virus? This thing is a virus?”
“It might be so. I have not heard of the naming before.”
That would make sense with the serum Dad was given—and her getting the infection from him. “How did it develop, then? Did people just infect each other?”
“In a way. The original affected kept it to themselves, only passing the knowledge to select individuals. Those who wanted the ability willingly infected themselves and hoped they’d survive. Later, they devised a serum from the blood of those who’d succeeded.”
“Like a vaccine.” She sat at the kitchen table; Will followed, bringing along the two almonite pieces. His hand had returned to normal.
“So this thing’s inside me,” she said. “Can it still harm me? Does it affect me—other than making me able to time travel?” Was that why her farts smelled weird sometimes? It all made sense now.
“Since you’ve already gone through the infection, I believe not. If any effects arise, they do so at the time of first contact.”
And they did, when she was little. Her mysterious disease.
“And the watch? What’s the point of it if we can time travel by ourselves?”
“The almonite virus in your body recognizes the almonite in the watch and establishes a bond. The watch is an instrument to allow you better control. Without it, time travel is difficult and dangerous. No one has practiced it on their own for centuries. I don’t even know how one would practice it.”
“Are you saying there’s something you don’t know, Gramps?”
He blushed and lowered his eyes. “I’m only a student.”
Emily smiled. He was pretty adorable when he didn’t do strange stuff.
She toyed with the pieces on the table. “Yours is darker,” she remarked. “The mainspring thingy. Mine is a dark blue, and yours is almost black.” It was different in texture, too; smoother.
“Yes. It has been through an accident.”
“Were you playing scientist and not up to the task?”
“It had happened long before my tinkering. It affected its ability, cutting off time travel. I was able to get it to a partially working state.”
Of course he fixed it. Silly her, to think he’d ruined it instead. “Wait, partially working?”
“It has a few inconsistencies. But it works well enough.”
“You’re a regular mad scientist, aren’t you?”
He gave her the Silent Confused look.
“Never mind. I guess there’s a lot here for you to get used to. If you intend to visit more.” Did he? She didn’t even know what he came here for. He only said he was… looking for her .
“Emily,” he said, his tone dead serious. “When I said I’m like you, I meant it. Not only as a time traveler. Every once in a while, an additional mutation happens when the serum is injected. Usually, people aren’t meant to travel beyond their lifetime. It’s impossible.”
But she traveled way beyond her lifetime. Easily. So, apparently, did he.
“The odds are about one person in one or two generations.”
She stood abruptly. “Are you telling me I’m the Chosen One?”
“I do not—”
“Know what it means. Yeah.” She sat back just as the front door slammed closed.
“I’m back. Violin got cut short.” Debbie rushed down the hallway, luckily sparing no glance toward the kitchen and Emily, who’d frozen in panic. She pounded up the stairs.
“My sister,” Emily whispered to Will, who’d wisely stayed silent.
“It’s probably better I absquatulate.”
“If that means go, then yes. But can we meet some other time?”
“I would like that very much.”
“Downtown? I could do Monday after school.”
He nodded and began packing up his tools. Her almonite barrel still lay on the table. Emily picked up a knife, quickly pricked her finger and ran the barrel over it. In a second, the skin around the wound turned blue.
She’d known it already. But it felt different seeing it. She’d better find something that resembled a smashed pocket watch and send the pictures to Dad, because she didn’t think she could destroy it now.
This was only the beginning.