Chapter 18 Mariella
The sun has set by the time I return to Bromley House, and Anna’s sweater is doing little to combat the chilling evening breeze.
I’m a few yards away from the door when shadows shift beside the building, and I freeze.
Heart racing, I squint through the darkness at the figure moving toward me.
Parker steps from the shadows with labored steps, carrying Rose in his arms. His body’s fading and reappearing, like a flickering lightbulb about to burn out.
“Parker?” I run toward him. Dark red blood is smeared over his and Rose’s bodies. “What happened?”
He looks past me, scanning the perimeter before one of the hands supporting Rose holds out a tattered book. He grunts with the movement. “Take this,” he says. “Keep it safe.”
I tuck the book against my chest and enter the code at the front of the building. Parker tenses with every step on the staircase, but he doesn’t stop moving until we’re inside their apartment. I place the book on their tiny dining table and follow Parker into the bedroom.
“Where’s all the blood coming from?” I ask.
“It’s mine,” Parker says, laying Rose on her bed. He turns toward me and my stomach drops. Slick, dark red blood saturates his shirt. The fabric’s torn over the left side of his rib cage like a jagged window to the mangled skin beneath.
Lowering his head, he peels up the wet fabric and I shudder. His tan skin is split, tainted by the blood oozing down his torso. “It’s just a bullet graze,” he says.
Just a bullet graze? “You need to put pressure on that.” I reach for him, but all I meet is air.
He steps away from me. “You can’t do anything to help me, so please, help Rose.” His lips turn upward as he feigns a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“You’re losing too much blood. You need stitches,” I say.
“I’ll be fine,” he grunts, and his body fades to a new shade of translucent.
I turn back toward Rose, blood smeared across her forehead. A sweaty sheen coats her olive skin, which has taken on a grayish hue. Underneath her closed lids, her eyes race back and forth.
“What happened?” I ask over the broken, incoherent sentences pouring from Rose’s mouth.
“She traveled, and when we came back, she was like this.” Parker runs his hands through his hair and flinches. “I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen.” He leans down, brushing a strand of damp hair off her face. “You’re safe now, Rose. You did so well,” he says in a low voice.
I avert my gaze to the carpet. “Is it normal to be unwell after time traveling?”
“No. Not like this.” Parker straightens. “But normally you aren’t staying for extended periods of time while carrying another person. She’s never been this bad before. I don’t know if it’s exhaustion or something else.” Parker’s gaze darts to Rose as she draws a stilted breath.
I edge toward her and press my hand to her forehead, while Parker steps back to give me room.
“She’s burning up,” I say. “We need to cool her down.” I remove my now blood-stained leather jacket from Rose’s body.
Now I know where it went. My mother’s necklace is no longer around Rose’s neck.
Did my future self really part with it? Where is it now?
I find a washcloth in the bathroom and place it over Rose’s forehead. Parker sits on his bed and slips a hand into his pocket with a grimace.
“She takes about eight of those a day, so she’ll need something stronger than paracetamol,” Parker says, when I pull painkillers from my handbag.
“Eight? What for?”
“Headaches. You need to remember, time travel isn’t exactly normal. I mean, traveling to a place and back is fine, but extended stays make you sick. And we’ve been here for seven months.”
“Why so long?” I ask.
“Rose hated traveling with a passenger at Neurovida. The first time we tried to come here, she accidentally took us back five years from now. I knew she was exhausted, but she wanted to try again. The second time, we were closer, but still six months off from when McGregor started work here on campus, and he’s the reason we came here.
” His face falls. “She needed to rest for a week. Then the migraines started, and we decided it was easier to just wait. But holding me in this time for so long…”
He searches Rose’s face with drawn brows and there’s no mistaking his guilt. I hate that he blames himself for Rose’s poor health and the situation they’ve found themselves in. “I’ve never seen her like this,” he says. “I think she’s losing her grip on reality.”
Rose’s haunted look in the restroom at Tilly’s flashes across my mind and I shudder. “She must be getting better at it—traveling with you, I mean. I only saw you last night.”
“I think it’s different now that she has a tether to this time.” He shakes his head. “I’m not sure.”
I fiddle with the painkillers in my hand. “What does she usually take when she’s unwell like this?”
“Take your pick.” Parker gestures to a small bag hidden beneath Rose’s bed that I missed this morning.
I grab the bag and rifle through packets of painkillers and sedatives. I read the information on the back of each packet and settle on one. “These should reduce her fever.” I sit beside Rose and ease her head onto my lap. “Rose, I’m going to give you some medication.”
She mumbles something and Parker winces.
“She’s confused,” he says.
I pour water into Rose’s mouth and feed her the tablets one at a time. “We should take her to the hospital. They’ll be able to do more for her there.”
Parker shakes his head. “No. It’s too dangerous.”
“We can go to the police,” I say, easing Rose back onto her pillow. “My friend works undercover. We can go to him and—”
“No. If we talk to the police there will be records, which make us traceable. Nowhere’s safe. Not from the kind of people looking for us.”
“Do you mean other time travelers?” I hesitate. “What will happen if they find you?”
His face hardens, and he looks away.
“Why are they chasing you?” I ask, staring at the side of his face, wishing any of this made sense. “What do they want?”
Parker swallows, the corners of his mouth tense. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why?”
His defeated gaze locks with mine. “Because I don’t want to scare you.”
“I’m already scared, Parker. Someone shot you, and you look like you’re about to disappear.” I turn to Rose, muttering against her pillow. “Rose is unconscious, and I have no idea how to help her. I don’t even know what’s wrong with her.”
“We’ll be okay,” he says, running his hands through his hair for the fourth time since we entered the room.
Beside me, Rose’s body tenses and she lets out a strained cry. I look to Parker and gasp; his body is so faint I can barely see him.
He jumps to his feet, staring at his translucent hands with wide eyes.
“What’s happening?” I ask, meeting him in the middle of the room with my heart in my throat.
“I don’t know.” His gaze flickers to Rose, and he’s biting the inside of his cheek as if he’s deciding something. “But I think you might be able to help.”
“How?”
“There’s something I used to do at Neurovida—to help someone along when they were struggling. To sort of anchor them. It might not work, but seeing as you’re from this time…”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“You can use your powers to anchor her in this time. It might give her mind and body respite.”
Power? I don’t have any power. “Parker, I—I don’t know how. I can’t.” I take two steps away from him, tugging my sleeves over my hands.
Parker follows me step for step. “You can,” he says, and I want to turn and run from the blind faith brimming in his eyes.
Rose stutters and Parker’s body disappears and reappears.
“Parker,” I scream. I need to do something. Now. Before he vanishes to a place I can’t reach. “Tell me what to do.”
“Quick, grab her hands.”
I drop to the floor at Rose’s side and clutch her tense hands in mine, the rough carpet burning my knees.
Parker’s immediately at my side. “Think about the electricity you feel when you wake from your dreams. Focus on Rose. See if you can feel it in her hands.”
I press my fingertips into Rose’s palms, her skin cold and clammy. “I can’t feel anything.”
“Keep trying,” he says, his voice smooth and even.
I close my eyes and concentrate on the warmth growing between our skin, but there’s nothing.
I adjust my grip and wait, but I don’t know what I’m waiting for.
I ignore the blood draining from my arms, and the numbness in its wake.
Maybe there’s a reason nothing’s happening?
Maybe Parker’s made a mistake, and I don’t have special skills.
I’m just Mariella. The weird girl who can’t speak out in class.
The loner who’s more alive when she’s absorbed in a book than in real life.
Tears build behind my closed eyelids but I scrunch them tighter and concentrate.
Another five minutes pass before I drop Rose’s hands. “I—I can’t do this.”
Parker’s golden eyes are ablaze, as if lit from within. “Yes, you can.”
“I can’t, Parker,” I cry. “Nothing’s happening.”
He kneels beside me, only space where our shoulders should be brushing.
His amber eyes lock on mine. “I know you can, because I’ve seen you do it before.
I’ve seen you push yourself to breaking point.
I’ve seen you get knocked down time and time again, and never once did you give up.
You need to stop running from what you are.
You have no idea how much power you have. You can do this, Ella. Now focus.”
Drawing in a deep breath, I clutch Rose’s hands, focusing on the tips of my fingers.
I imagine the layers of skin, blood and bone separating Rose’s from mine, searching for anything beyond my racing pulse.
I’m about to give up when the tiniest spark licks my finger, so small I might have imagined it.
I tense but grab hold of it, and it happens again, a flicker of warm energy, humming against my fingertips.
“I feel it,” I say, not daring to open my eyes.
“Good,” Parker says in my ear, his tone warm with approval. “Now imagine that current is a string you’re pulling through her body to yours.”
I nod and envision the energy at my fingertips flowing into me. And like the flicking of a light switch, fiery, crackling electricity races up my arm and into my chest, pooling beneath my sternum. “It’s working.”
Rose groans, but I keep my eyes clamped shut.
“Okay, Ella,” Parker says. “I want you to send it back the other way. Now.”
I focus on the energy swirling in my chest and envision it flowing down my arms and back into Rose. Power ignites in my chest and that familiar ball of unstable energy bursts to life, pulsing against my rib cage.
I immediately force it away and energy gushes from me, through every skin cell coating my body.
I push what I can toward Rose, but the moment the current passes through my fingertips, a band of tension clamps over my head.
I double over, as if the air’s been ripped from my lungs.
Scrunching my eyelids tighter, I will the energy to flow into Rose, who’s now silent on the bed.
She draws in a deep, steady breath, and her rigid hands slacken.
“That’s it. See how long you can hold it,” Parker says.
It won’t be long. Within seconds my limbs grow heavy, and the power inside my chest dims. I need to let go, but the memory of Parker’s fading form has me gritting my teeth, shutting out every thought except pouring energy into Rose.
The band of pain around my head tightens, pressure building inside my skull.
Gasping for breath, I release one of Rose’s hands and sink back onto my feet. My sweaty, pounding forehead presses against the mattress, but I don’t dare break contact with Rose.
Parker’s voice is a warm caress against my shaking core. “Let go. You’ve given her enough.”
The energy is dwindling, but I keep drawing on it, willing every ounce into Rose. Sharp, stabbing pain rips through my head, but I cling to her hand like a drowning swimmer to a lifebuoy, ignoring Parker’s panicked pleas for me to stop.
Rose has spent months sacrificing her mental and physical health for Parker, and if this is my one chance to ease the burden, I need to give it everything I have.
I hold on until each breath is a gasp and my body feels lined with lead. Warm liquid trickles from my right nostril.
“Ella!” Parker yells.
Without warning the current breaks, leaving nothing inside my weary chest but a sluggish heart and burning lungs.
I have nothing more to give, and there’s relief in the knowledge I can let go.
The hand holding Rose’s falls to the floor.
I open my eyes, but the room spins and I collapse, Parker’s voice a distant call as I plunge into darkness.