Chapter Eighty-Eight Weave Me Out of It
My stomach flips over even as I retrieve the nightmare Jude sent flying. Because I don’t even know my father’s name, let alone what kind of paranormal he is. I used to ask about him when I was younger, but no one in the family would tell me anything.
Carolina used to promise we’d figure it out some day, that she’d find a way to get me the answers I needed. But then she was sent away and Jude broke my heart, and for a long time I was too sad to worry about anything but getting through the day.
“Do you really think I broke time?” I ask, reeling under the implications as I hand him a dozen or so more nightmares—including the one Jude set loose after Remy’s daddy comment.
“You didn’t break anything,” he answers, sliding them effortlessly into the tapestry. “But you definitely caused some time slips—you and Jude.”
“Are you talking about time travel?” Mozart asks, eyes wide, and I realize everyone else in the room is as spellbound by this conversation as I am.
Then again, it is pretty wild.
“No.” He pauses for a second, nightmares hanging half in and half out of the tapestry as he contemplates her question. “I mean, there are multiple schools of thought. But that’s not what I think is happening here.”
“So what exactly do you think is happening?” I ask as Jude hands me several more nightmares.
He starts to give me another mysterious look, and something inside me snaps. “Look, enough with this Jedi-master-you-must-figure-it-out-by-yourself bullshit that you’re pulling. My brain feels like it’s about to explode. I haven’t slept, I haven’t eaten, I’ve spent days seeing triple and being attacked by flickers, two of my best friends have died in the last forty-eight hours, I’m bruised and battered and bitten, and I just mated with the Prince of Nightmares while in the middle of helping unravel a tapestry to save the whole damn island from the most disgusting monsters in existence. So, if you could spell it out, that would be great.”
“Attacked by what?” Luis stage-whispers.
“She said flickers,” Mozart answers the same way. “But I don’t know what those are.”
“Ghosts from the future!” I snap at them just before Jude stops unraveling the tapestry and pulls me into his chest.
And though I want to say I’ve got this on my own—and I probably do—it still feels really nice to rest against his big, solid body for a few seconds and just breathe. Even still wet from the rain, he smells like honey and leather and sweet, sweet spices, and I let myself breathe him in as I listen to the steady beat of his heart beneath my ear.
The last half hour has been a lot, and I barely keep my thoughts straight. Between the flickers’ bombshell about my mothers and now Remy’s bombshell about time and also the whole mating bond thing, I’m amazed I still remember my name.
Jude gets it, too, because he murmurs, “We’re almost there,” in a voice so low it’s almost inaudible.
I nod against his chest. “I know.”
And take one more deep breath so I can pull his comforting scent all the way inside me before turning back to Remy.
“Sorry,” I mutter begrudgingly.
“Me, too.” He smiles in that way he has that makes you feel better for no reason. “I just feel like you can answer some of these questions better than I can—you just don’t know it yet.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I grumble.
“I am.” He inclines his head. “But—that said—flickers aren’t ghosts from the future. They’re time slips.”
“Okay, I’ve been attacked by time slips.” I throw up my hands in exasperation. “What does that mean?”
Remy goes back to weaving. “It means all time exists simultaneously, we’re just in different timelines. So something about you and Jude—”
“I vote for the fact that they refused to get their shit together for three fucking years,” Izzy interjects from her seat on the rickety old steps.
Remy rolls his eyes at her as he takes a few more nightmares from me. “Sometimes it just takes the time it takes, Isadora.”
“So, while they figure it out, Ember gets yo-yos tossed at her?” Simon asks, brows raised.
Ember glares at him. “To be fair, I don’t think it was at me.”
He and Mozart exchange a yeah, right look. “Oh, it was at you,” Mozart teases her, while Jude hands me more nightmares.
He’s almost done unraveling the tapestry, and Remy is almost done weaving the new one. There’s obviously a picture in it—it already looks a million times better than the broken one—but for some reason, I can’t distinguish what it is. It’s almost like it’s deliberately blocked.
“Either way”—Remy rolls his eyes at the group of them—“Jude has the nightmare thing going on, and everyone knows dreams exist out of time. You’ve got past, present, and future at your fingertips. Put those things together and you get a hundred-year-old yo-yo flying at your shins.”
Shock reverberates through me at his words, and I’m suddenly very glad Jude was just holding me, because I can still feel his warmth even though a chill is shooting up my spine.
“But they just mated twenty minutes ago,” Luis questions. “How the hell could that have messed up all this other stuff?”
“Because our mating didn’t break anything.” Jude sounds adamant about that, his hands flying as he unravels the last bit of tapestry. “It fixed what was broken.”
He’s right. It did. Including the two of us.
I think back to all the times over the last few days when weird shit happened.
Jude and I got paired up for the Keats project, and I saw my first flickers.
He kissed me, and the forest went batshit crazy.
He told me he loved me, and I started seeing the past, present, and future all together.
And through it all, these little time slips were happening, getting worse and worse each time we walked away from each other. Each time our mating bond didn’t snap into place.
Because we’ve always been meant for each other.
Just a few days ago, I thought Jude was the puzzle that I was missing a bunch of pieces to. But now I realize the puzzle is so much bigger than I first thought. Because all the pieces of the last few days—everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve learned, everything I’ve done—are all spread out in front of me. I just need to put the picture together. And something tells me this tapestry will help.
Jude hands over the last nightmare strands to me, and I pass them to Remy. Then he comes over and wraps his arms around my waist as we watch it all come together.
But no matter how hard I study it, I can’t see that picture.
Until, suddenly, I can.
Remy finishes weaving the last thread, and as he steps back, we all stare at the picture of a smiling man, right in the center of the tapestry.
“Who do you think that is?” Simon asks Remy.
“I have no idea,” Remy answers, shaking his head. “He looks a little sleazy, though.”
“More like a lot sleazy,” I tell him.
“So what now?” Ember asks. “How do you want to try to catch the—”
She breaks off, eyes widening as the man in the picture suddenly steps right out of the tapestry and into the cellar with us. He’s got shaggy brown hair, a long beard, a deep-purple smoking jacket that has seen better days, and the oldest, most run-down pair of slippers I’ve ever seen.
He’s also, apparently, got an attitude because the first thing he says to us is, “Well, it’s about time. It certainly took you guys long enough.”