Chapter 18
“Put down the fire extinguisher,” Aggie said from behind me. “Now.”
Did she have a knife? A gun?
I looked into the future…
“Don’t!”
Futures fuzzed and blanked out.
“You don’t get to manipulate it,” she said. “You don’t get to change it. The future is what I say it is. Extinguisher. Down. Now.”
“Really?” I huffed. Yes, I was terrified, but I was also a little miffed. “Why do you and Vandre get to know how to mess with the future and I don’t?”
Aggie scoffed. “Oh, poor little Piper. Like you aren’t Ordinary’s favorite. Like you aren’t pals with witches, monsters, and gods. You thought your friends would keep you safe, didn’t you? Friends just use you, then stab you in the back. Extinguisher. Down. Don’t make me say it again.”
“Jeeze. All right.” I leaned and shuffled a step forward toward Vandre, pretending to lose my balance.
“Stop.”
“I’m a little dizzy,” I lied. “Not being able to see the future is really messing with my balance.”
“Put it on the floor.”
How was I going to get out of this?
I placed the extinguisher as close to Vandre as I could. If he regained consciousness maybe he could help before…before Aggie killed me.
Was that how she thought this was going down?
Oh, I was so not going to let that happen.
Enough was enough.
I turned to face her.
Gun. She had decided a knife wasn’t good enough. So now she had a gun—which was no bigger than her hand but somehow seemed to take up way too much room in the kitchen.
“You’re wrong about friends,” I said. “Having friends is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.”
“I am never wrong.” She put her finger on the trigger. “Now, tell me where it is.”
“The bear?”
“The box. Where is Pandora’s box?”
I laughed, then pressed my fingers over my mouth. “You think I know where the box is? I’ve never even seen it. I have no idea where it is.”
“You know. You have to know. All the futures say you have it. You hid it or smuggled it to someone else. But you know where it is.”
“I don’t. Aggie, I have no idea. Any future that says I have the box is lying.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”
“You know I’m not.”
She paused, staring into the middle distance for a second, just long enough I thought about making a run for it. But she jerked the gun. “Go. That way.” She pointed at the dining area. “Away from the land line.”
“Land line?” I said innocently. “Is it even working? In this weather?”
“We aren’t going to find out. Move.”
I snuck a look at Vandre. His hand was flat on the floor, and I swear his fingers tightened. Was he conscious? Was he trying to manipulate the future?
For real, how could I get in on that action?
“Booth?” I asked angling toward the door.
“No. The table. There in the middle. Sit.”
I did as she said, mind racing for a plan. The rain was a torrent, an ocean above drowning us below. Wind gusted hard enough, I wondered how many roofing tiles Buzz would have to replace.
Than’s comment from the book club rolled through my brain. This is not the end.
Right. I refused to let my story end here. Vandre could do things to the future by pressing his palm against something. Why not give it a whirl?
I mean, if not when a woman was holding a gun to my head, then when?
But if I put my hand on the table, she’d notice. Instead, I put my hand on my thigh, over my apron.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know about Pandora’s box,” she said, walking backward slowly so she could lock the front door.
There went that quick escape.
“You know Hugo found it,” she said. “Where did he put it?”
“I don’t know if Hugo found it or not,” I said. “It was stored in a storage unit in Ordinary.”
“Yes.” She sounded excited now. “Yes. It was in Ordinary in the storage unit. Hugo got to it. He was going to give it to me. I almost had it. Then he lied! Dirty thief.”
“So, you stabbed him?”
“I only stabbed him because he wouldn’t give it to me. He wouldn’t tell me where it was! It was his fault. If he’d just told me, I wouldn’t have stabbed him.”
Okay, this was starting to make sense. Hugo contacted her to sell Pandora’s box because she could get big money for shady antiques.
But Hugo wasn’t new to the black-market game. He’d been smart enough not to bring Pandora’s box with him to their first meeting in case Aggie showed up with a gun. Or knife.
He’d also contacted Vandre so that another person would know what he had found.
Unfortunately, none of that had helped him.
“You knew there weren’t any security cameras behind the diner, didn’t you? Is that why you killed him out there?”
“It wasn’t…” She shook her head. “I don’t go around randomly killing people. Too messy. Leaves a trail.”
Hugo, Kenny, I thought. Maybe not random, but you killed them.
“Vandre was never stalking you, was he?”
She made a sour face. “He thought I stole from him.”
“An antique?”
“His powers.”
I blinked. “Can you do that? Is that one of your abilities?”
“I’m a demigod, Piper. Unlike you, and unlike Vandre,” she sneered, “I use my power any way I want to. If I want to make it so Vandre can’t see into a future, well, I’ll choose a future where he’s blind to it.”
“Is that what you did to Jean?”
“Jean was in the way. But she turned out to be useful. She doesn’t remember me being out there that night, doesn’t remember me putting blood on her hands because I chose a future where she wouldn’t. And that meant Delaney couldn’t investigate the crime her sister committed. Win and win!”
“You blocked Yancy’s vision too.”
She shrugged. “Nah. Seers not seeing was just the collateral damage of the futures I wanted to become real. Worth it. Hugo needed to get into that storage unit, and I needed to make sure no one would see our plan.”
Our plan. So, she’d been in on this from the beginning.
“Why did you even have Hugo steal it? If you knew it was in the storage unit, why didn’t you steal it yourself?”
“Ordinary. Rotten little town just filthy with magic. A demigod entering Ordinary alerts Delaney now, especially if I use my power. It didn’t used to be like that. I used to be able to slip in and out without her noticing. But not anymore. It’s annoying.”
I had a good idea why Delaney had set a magical alert to warn when a demigod was near: me. I’d come here and made some huge mistakes.
I’m sure Delaney had decided it would be best not to repeat the process with another misguided or misbehaving demigod.
“So, you needed Hugo to get the box out of storage. What did you promise him?”
“Money, of course. Enough he could leave this life behind. I would have been good for it too. But the little rat stabbed me in the back.”
“You stabbed him—wait, why didn’t you see that he wouldn’t bring the box with him to meet you here?”
“Petty little Vandre was pushing on the future too. He thinks he can tell the rest of us what we can do and how we can do it. He thinks we have to follow mortal laws. No stealing. No killing. Why should we listen to him? Why should we follow a law? We’re not mortal!
We’re better than them. We deserve better than what they have. ”
“So, you killed him too.”
She glanced over my shoulder back at the kitchen. “He’s probably still alive. He’s like that. After I’m done with you, though, I’ll take care of him. For good.”
Welp. Now was the perfect time to try to do a little choosing the outcome I wanted no matter how it messed up time.
I pressed my hand down on my thigh, hard, but I didn’t look for the future.
I looked for the past.
Maybe I couldn’t manipulate the future like Vandre and Aggie. Maybe I was stuck here in the Now facing down a woman with a gun in her hand, a grudge bigger than the storm roaring outside, and no cell signal.
But I still had choices. I still dabbled in power.
Time to see if I could do more than dabble.
“But you forgot Vandre also has a gun,” I said.
Pasts spun out like cast fishing lines, filaments of possibilities zinging out, splitting, growing, careening into pasts that had never happened, pasts that had, and sparking a thousand other images of what may have been.
Vandre driving here to the diner. His car parked around back so he wasn’t seen.
Aggie already here, hiding out, having been dropped off hours ago.
Aggie pushing on every future she could to force me to come here.
Even in the storm.
Even in the dark.
Even when I knew it was a bad idea.
She had done that. Aggie had forced this future, this Now.
Well, I was going to force the past.
All I had to do was find a past with Vandre in it. A past where he had been warned. Where he knew Aggie was luring him in.
A past where he brought a gun instead of a knife.
Except I couldn’t see that. There wasn’t a single past where Vandre had a gun on him. Not a single past where Aggie didn’t get the jump on him and he didn’t pass out in the kitchen.
Aggie laughed. “As if Vandre would ever touch a gun,” she mocked, somehow seeing what I was trying to do. “He’s too goodie good to get his hands dirty. But you know what Piper? I’m not.”
She pointed the gun at my head. “Tell me where you hid Pandora’s box or I will shoot you dead and find it on my own.”
I strained to focus on a past I could use, any past.
Aggie was leaning on her chosen future like she’d stuck her foot on my neck and was ready to stomp.
There! A past! It might work, it might not.
But it was the only chance I had. My last chance to fix this.
“All right,” Aggie said. “We’ll do it the hard way. Good-bye, Piper. I never liked you.”
Aggie squeezed the trigger.