Timepiece

The twinge I felt came from my ribs.

Had to.

“I wanted your dad to see the setup, get his opinion on how Jack got here.” Michael put his hands on Em’s shoulders. “How he got out so fast. If he could have been traveling.”

“He wasn’t traveling.” I sat up and threw the bag of ice to the ground. The crunching sound it made when it hit satisfied me. “He’s not traveling. Jack doesn’t have the travel gene.”

Emerson blew out a deep breath. “That didn’t stop him before.”

“Doesn’t matter.” I slid to the edge of the stage and grunted as I leaned over to scoop up my pirate shirt. Em kept her eyes averted as I pulled it over my head. I used the edge of the stage as leverage to stand up, and turned my grimace of pain into a frown. “He doesn’t have any way to travel. No one does.”

Em flinched. The formula she’d managed to steal from Cat and Jack hadn’t been complete. No exotic matter meant no one had traveled since Cat had disappeared.

“He has Cat,” Michael said. “There could have been a lead on a traveler in the Hourglass files he stole.”

“Maybe.” I shrugged and quickly regretted it. I hadn’t expected a simple shrug to hurt. “But even if Jack found another traveler, that doesn’t mean he can travel too.”

Em frowned and an unexpected wave of anxiety flowed in my direction.

“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“There are so many unanswered questions,” she said. I sensed from their expressions and the sudden tension that she and Michael had talked about this a lot, more than he’d wanted to. Probably because he didn’t have the answers. “We don’t know why Jack didn’t just change his past himself. Why did he need me or your mom to do it? Is he the kind of guy who’d worry about the consequences of messing with his own time line, or would he think twice about it?”

Michael’s jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth. “I still think there were limitations because of the exotic matter formula. Remember how much he’d aged when he came out of the veil in Liam’s office? I was shocked he was healthy tonight.”

“I can’t stop thinking about something Cat said.” Em stared at the floor. “That Jack piggybacked my travel gene to get out of the bridge when he was stuck. I know only travelers can move through time, but the continuum is so screwed up now. He could still be manipulating it.”

“That could mean…” I stopped cold and waited for Em to finish.

“If Jack could piggyback a gene to get out of a bridge, could he piggyback to get into one? And if he can get into a bridge, can he use it to time travel?”

The massive oak doors to the Phone Company swung inward to admit my dad, putting a quick end to our theorizing.

He picked his way through glass and overturned furniture to the stage. He kissed Em’s cheek and gave Michael a long look. My ribs gave another twinge before he turned his attention to me. “Show me.”

Keeping my eyes on the far wall, I lifted my shirt just enough for him to see the beginnings of a nasty blue bruise starting where my ribs had caught the stage.

“Do you think they’re broken?” He tapped the pocket of his brown tweed jacket and pulled out a pair of glasses.

I still didn’t look at him. “I don’t even think they’re cracked.”

He slid the glasses on and leaned in closer, furrowing his brows in concern. “You wouldn’t tell me if they were.”

I shrugged and dropped the shirt. There were lots of things I didn’t tell him. From the way he’d looked at Michael, he had secrets of his own.

Dad straightened and removed the glasses, dropping them back into his pocket. His eyes fixed on the exact spot where Jack had appeared and disappeared.

“A veil,” he murmured. “Is that where Jack showed up?”

“And where he disappeared.” Em shuddered. “Wonder when he’ll be back. And what he wants this time.”

Dad and Michael exchanged a look over Em’s head. I knew what they were thinking.

Jack wanted her.

“You can’t worry about that,” Dad said to her, with a gentleness he used to reserve for my mom, or me when I was a lot younger. “We can’t anticipate Jack’s every move.”

“We can anticipate that he doesn’t care about the continuum,” Em said, “or all the ways he can screw it up.”

I knew what was coming next, and not just from Em’s pointed stare at me. Bossypants.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you going to tell him?”

“Tell me what?” Dad asked.

Coerced and trapped. “I saw a rip today. I know it was a rip, because Em was with me.”

He didn’t say anything, just rubbed his beard the way he always did when approaching a problem.

“Why aren’t you surprised?” I asked, the uneasiness growing in my gut.

“Because it’s not a surprise.” He dropped his hand and sighed deeply. “I didn’t have to call Nate and Dune to come and stay with your mom. They were already at the house, along with Ava. They’ve all seen rips, too.”

Chapter 3

I stared at Dad, thrown by the implications.

“From what I can gather, anyone with the time gene can see rips now. Dune, Nate, and Ava were all alone in different public places, and yes, it’s happened more than once to each of them.”

“Do you think that means they can travel, too?” Michael asked, uncertainty drawing his voice taut.

“I don’t know.” Dad shrugged. “But without exotic matter, there’s no way to test it. I’m not interested in taking any risks.”

The sound of Thomas’s black boots hitting the floor made us all jump when he entered from the kitchen. His footsteps echoed as he stalked toward us, his anxiety preceding him.

“Thomas. I’m sorry for the mess and the trouble,” Dad said with regret. “I’ll be glad to cover anything your insurance won’t.”

“Absolutely not. You aren’t responsible. But I have a few questions about the ass-man who is.” His slicked-back Gomez Addams hairdo and drawn-on, pencil-thin mustache were at odds with the fierceness in his eyes.

“I’ll do my best to answer,” Dad said.

Thomas directed his words toward Dad but pegged Michael with an accusing stare. “I’d like to speak with you two outside.”

“Why can’t you just ask your questions here?” Em argued, her anger at being left out obvious.

“I can get any information I need from you later.” He gave Em a parental look when she made a sound of protest. “This is an adult conversation.”

Em’s spark of fury told me Thomas would pay for that comment later. I knew she was fighting hard to hold her tongue.

“Lead the way.” Dad gestured toward the doors with his head, and he and Michael followed Thomas outside.

Em watched them walk away. The second they were out of earshot, she let out a truly impressive stream of curse words and took out a couple of fall decorations with her fists, finally punching a plastic pumpkin to the ground and kicking it across the room.

Even though I was tempted, I knew laughing would prove deadly. “Are you picturing Thomas’s face on that pumpkin?”

“In my mind’s eye, his nose is bleeding.”

“At least he acknowledged you. My dad thinks I’m completely useless.”

“Don’t say that.” She pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the stage. “You aren’t useless.”

We were quiet for a few seconds, long enough for me to realize she was trying to figure out the best way to