Hallie took a step back. “You’re an Infinityglass, too.”
“I’m not.” Teague tilted her chin defiantly.
“She’s telling the truth,” I confirmed, staring Teague down. “Because she never activated, either because she didn’t want to or she didn’t know how. Or both.”
Hallie’s eyes burned with the truth. “How much of Dad’s ‘protection’ was really you? Did you feed his paranoia to make it easier to keep me under your thumb? How much did he know?”
Teague didn’t answer. She wasn’t even looking at us. She was staring at a rip.
It spread across the park like an extended movie screen, the edges undulating in the breeze.
Except the air around us was still.
It expanded into a rip world bustling with industry. Buildings under construction. Workmen busy at their tasks. Shiny metal signs hung everywhere, displaying the words WORLD COTTON CENTENNIAL, 1884.
“It’s the world’s fair,” Teague murmured.
“It’s a rip world. Your first one?” Hallie asked. Her mom didn’t acknowledge the question. “They get better. See the people in the present disappearing? It’s because the past takes over.”
Teague watched as the rip expanded again, and another building came into view. Electric lights hung everywhere, the name
My chest felt like a semi had parked on it. Hallie and I’d talked about the next rip she’d encounter, and what the last one had done to her. What would this one do?
Hallie stood, her back to the rip. “You know how I feel about Jackson Square after what happened. I won’t go there on a good day. There’s no way in hell I’d go past the place where Benny bled to death now.”
Teague’s head jerked up and she focused on Hallie’s face. “Why?”
“The rips come from the past, and they possess me. I troll around in their memories, and they live inside my skin. That’s what being the Infinityglass means. Thank you so very much.”
The rip world grew wider, taking over another section of land. A building made of glass appeared in the distance.
Hallie’s focus shifted to something behind us, her eyes following it in a circle. Horses on a track. “You can blame yourself for this, Mother.”
“I didn’t start it,” Teague said. “Jack Landers is the one who broke the rules.”
“You perpetuated it. You threw in with him,” Hallie argued. “You let him look for the Infinityglass, and the whole time you knew it was me.”
“I kept that information from him,” Teague argued back.
The rip grew wider, going around us instead of flowing over us. I put my hand on the small of Hallie’s back. I needed to get her out.
“I tried to protect you, Hallie.” Teague’s voice trembled.
“Really?” Hallie laughed without mirth. “Don’t pretend like you have feelings for me. You’ve never cared for me the way a mother should care for her own child, because you didn’t give birth to me; you bred me.”
“I created you.”
The smell of manure blended with the sounds of livestock, all of it too close.
“Hal, we’ve gotta go. It’s growing too fast to—”
The rip world moved like lightning, swallowing Hallie, and then Teague.
I did the only thing I could.
I followed.
A crowd of rips gathered, staring at me, just like ones we’d encountered in the alley in the French Quarter.
Two seconds later, my mother appeared.
I took off running, keeping to the Saint Charles side of the park, dodging in and out of crowds. It might be impossible to outrun a rip, but I was sure as hell going to try.
“Hallie, stop!”
I paused to look over my shoulder. My mother. The woman could move in heels, I’d give her that. “Enjoying the early nineteenth century? Because there’s a good chance it’s about to enjoy me.”
I took off again, but I’d chosen the wrong direction. The first rip caught me just outside the international exhibition.
The boy was Chinese. He sat beside a merchant, presumably his father, as they took items out of wooden shipping crates and cataloged them. He’d been crying.
He spoke a language that wasn’t my own, yet was. I understood it, and the source of the pain in his chest.
When I opened my eyes, I was on the ground, on my back.
My mother had seen the possession, watched it change my body, and she was afraid. “Your face …”
I didn’t have time to enjoy her fear. I was too busy anticipating an onslaught. What I saw when I looked around rocked me to the core.
The rips were watching us. Not me,
Some held back, and others surged forward to stare. Even though they drifted closer to me than her, they still hovered, unable to keep their eyes in one place. Unable to make a decision.
“Do you see that?” I asked her softly. “They can’t decide if they want to pick me or you. You might not be activated, but you’re still an Infinityglass.”
“Maybe. But you’re the powerful one.” She said the words loudly, like she wanted to make sure they could hear. And then she pointed. “She’s the powerful one.”
The rips knew their best option, and now they were advancing. I felt the pull, but it wasn’t as strong as usual. I guessed I had something to thank my mother for after all, even if it was only a momentary distraction.
I moved closer to her. The rips followed me, and once again split their focus between us. My mind scrambled for a way to draw out the confusion as long as I could. Then I caught sight of Dune.
He approached us at a run, grabbing me and pulling me away from Mom and the rips.
“Don’t give in, Hallie.”
He put his body between the rips and me.
It worked.
They were staring only at my mother now, and she gaped at them in horror. They began to circle her, and I held on to Dune instead of being absorbed into the lives of those already dead.
“Can you get us out?” he asked.
I’d have to make a choice.
