Timepiece

“Will you take no for an answer or will you bug the piss out of me until I say yes?”

“I like to think of it as persistence.” I made the mental stretch, looking for amusement behind her words.

None.

“One dance,” she said, relenting. “Then we go back to our separate corners.”

“You might enjoy it so much you change your mind about that.” I was either going to have to work extra hard for this one or move on to an easier conquest.

“And monkeys might fly out my butt, but I wouldn’t bet on that, either.”

An easier conquest it was.

To speed up the rejection process, I pulled her toward me and slid my hands down to cop a quick feel of what was truly the finest ass I’d seen in my entire lifetime, and I’d been paying attention.

She reared back and smacked me. So hard my ears rang.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Wide-open rage. It poured out of her, with no mental stretch required from me to read it. “I don’t care how much you’ve had to drink, you douche bag, no one touches me like that without my permission.”

Part of me felt like turning that rage around on her, letting all of it go, and something black and vicious clawed its way up my throat. At that exact moment, a loud whine came from the sound system. Everything went dark.

Screams and laughter filled the space as the crowd anticipated a prank. The emergency lights flashed on and illuminated a man holding a handgun. Raising it, he shot at the ceiling and hit the chandelier. The room erupted in chaos as tiny crystals rained to the floor.

One silent emotion carried over every scream. Paralyzing fear.

Emerson.

I took a better look at the man standing on the stage, holding a gun in one hand and a pocket watch in the other.

Jack Landers.

The bastard who killed my dad.

I grabbed Tiger Girl and dragged her behind me, fighting against the tide of the crowd.

After pushing her to safety under the staircase, I stood in front of her, scanning the room for Emerson and Michael. I caught a glimpse of blue silk and black tux as they escaped through the front entrance.

Jack had been on the run for more than a month, and now he was in my sight line. The rush of adrenaline through my veins sobered me up real quick.

My hand was still wrapped around Tiger Girl’s wrist. “Stay here and stay down. Don’t take any chances. He can’t see you from the stage.”

“He has a gun,” she said from behind me, her voice choked with terror. I could feel it coursing through my fingertips to my brain. “Have you lost your mind?”

“A long time ago.”

Riding the adrenaline, I let go of her and stepped into Jack’s view. Faint shapes hurried toward the doors in the glow of the security lights. I squared my shoulders with the stage.

Jack was here to do damage-his expression confirmed it.

I wanted to do a little damage myself.

Our eyes locked as I fought my way through the last few people in the crowd toward the temporary stage located at the end of the restaurant. I stopped halfway to try and get a read on his emotions. Nothing.

“Typical. Making a grand entrance.” I didn’t break the stare. “I’m surprised you didn’t hire an orchestra to play a theme song for you.”

“Shouldn’t you be somewhere brooding and angsting? You’re even wearing eyeliner.” He tucked the watch away, and then lowered the gun to his side. But he kept his finger on the trigger. “Or have you passed the brooding and angsting over to-”

“Don’t say her name. After what you did to her, you don’t have the right.” He’d messed with the time line and truth of Emerson’s life so badly that she couldn’t sleep without having nightmares.

“I’d like to see Emerson. We do have some unfinished business. She might disagree with you about what I ‘did to her.’”

“You deserve to die for all the things you’ve done-all the people you’ve hurt.” My dad, my mom, Em. I’d wished Jack Landers dead for months, and now I had my chance. The muscles in my gut tightened as I prepared to make a move. “How about we make that happen right now?”

He smiled. “Killing me would be the worst mistake you could ever make.”

“I see it as a service to humanity.”

“Then you’re seeing it all wrong.” So egomaniacal. “Don’t force my hand, Kaleb. You’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“I don’t have a choice.” I took two steps toward him before he lifted his weapon and took aim. I ducked and rolled behind a table, expecting a blast of gunfire.

Nothing.

I carefully lifted my head to peer over the edge of the table and saw him shaking the gun, checking the barrel.

I didn’t think of what my choice would do to my father, or my mother if she ever woke up. I pulled the dull metal sword free from my costume, extended it, and rushed the stage.

Somehow, through all the mental noise from outside, I heard the bullet slide into the chamber. Time slowed down, and I wondered if this was what everything looked like right before you died. I kept running as he leveled the gun and sighted the barrel.

Everyone else’s emotions ceased to matter. All I could focus on were my own.

Rage.

Retaliation.

Revenge.

Taking what I believed could be my final steps, I leapt with the sword outstretched. As I flew through the air toward him, Jack flickered like a CGI ghost in a bad horror movie, anger twisting his features, a loud curse ripping its way from his throat. I watched his finger squeeze the trigger as my ribs caught the edge of the stage.

Before the bullet escaped, he disappeared.

The gun went with him.

Chapter 2

The Phone Company was a disaster of glass and overturned tables. The lights that were still in working order reflected off puddles of spilled drinks and shattered chandelier crystals.

After Thomas and Dru cleared the general public from the premises, including a protesting Tiger Girl, they went outside to deal with the authorities. Michael still wore his masquerade costume, but Em had changed into street clothes and piled the mess of Southern belle ringlets into a hyperactive ponytail on top of her head.

I lay flat on my back on the stage, my Captain Jack wig and pirate shirt on the ground. A garbage bag full of ice from the bar covered my ribs. Jack’s words kept rebounding off the sides of my brain. He’d been so sure of himself. How would killing him be the worst mistake I could ever make?

Propping myself up on my elbows, I looked at Michael and Em. “I can’t believe you called Dad. What good is it going to do for him to come down here? Jack’s gone.”

“You’re hurt. He said he’d have Nate and Dune stay with your mom,” Michael said.

“I’m fine,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Then why do you have ice on your ribs?”

“Stop fighting.” Em scrubbed her hands over her face and leaned back into Michael. No uncontrollable electrical currents now. Those disappeared if the two of them touched a lot, and Michael hadn’t taken his hands off her since she’d changed out of the poofy dress. For all I knew, he hadn’t taken his hands off her while she’d been changing.