“We made a place for him over there,” she explained, “so the rest of us don’t get sick too.”
Adam realized she was talking about Tito. “He should see a doctor,” Adam said.
Francine shook her head. “The hospitals are full of polio patients these days. Ones who can pay. Orphans like us rarely get seen.”
Francine walked over to a pile of items, rummaged through it, and produced a thin, red, rectangular box. She lifted the lid and held the box up to Adam.
“Special treat?” she asked. It was clear she wanted to change the subject.
Adam peered inside. The candies in the box were round and patterned like peppermints, except they were transparent like glass and had scarlet and black spirals. Francine wasted no time. She eagerly took two pieces and popped them in her mouth. She winced, then grinned.
“Try it,” she urged Adam. “Daisy makes the best sweets in the city.”
Somehow Adam doubted that. He had been taught as a young kid not to take sweets from strangers. But Francine had trusted him enough to invite him to her secret home, and she looked at Adam expectantly. So, against his better judgment, he tried a piece.
The candy tasted terrible. It was bitter and salty. Adam almost spit it out, but Francine said, “Give it a few more seconds.”
The flavors made Adam think of thunderclouds and broken floorboards—and black crows, which had gathered in a cluster at his parents’ funeral. His second-grade teacher had taught the class that a group of crows was called a murder of crows. Murder. Death. The thought dampened his mood considerably, and he wondered what he’d gotten himself into, following a strange girl to a warehouse in a completely different era.
Then, with a twang, the flavor changed. All at once the candy tasted wonderful, like vanilla, strawberry, honey, and something fizzy melted together. Adam bit into it. The pieces crunched between his teeth. He found himself grinning from ear to ear, just like Francine.
“Told you,” Francine said with a nod. “Bittersweet Bonbons, Daisy calls them. Made with her special formula. Once you get past the bitter part, you taste heaven.”
“Who is Daisy, exactly?”
“I told you, she’s a friend. We met downtown a while back. She works as an apprentice for one of the city’s most famous candy shops, and she’s moving up the ranks.” Francine sounded proud. “Did you know, she doesn’t have a family either? Her family disowned her for some reason or another. She left home to become a candy maker.”
“That’s sad…but also neat.” Bittersweet was the right term for it.
Francine looked at her hands. “I wasn’t always an orphan, you know. I had a family too, until I was seven.”
“Oh.” Adam didn’t know what to say. “What happened?”
“We were at the carnival,” Francine answered shortly. “There was an accident. Here, have more.”
Adam and Francine each enjoyed two more Bittersweet Bonbons. Adam found it akin to taking fever medicine whenever he got sick—one quick gulp, with a pinch of the nose, and then shortly after, you feel much better than before.
“How old are you?” Francine asked, swallowing the last of her candy.
“I’m twelve,” said Adam.
Francine reached into her canvas bag and counted out twelve white-and-green candles. She handed the bundle to Adam.
“A thank-you present,” she explained. “For helping me escape that butcher.”
Adam hesitated.
“Plenty more where those came from. Take them.”
Adam thanked her. “I’ll try to help Tito,” he murmured. “In the future, they have a vaccine for polio. Not a cure, exactly, but almost.”
Francine suddenly sounded weary. “Don’t,” she said simply.
“What do you mean?”
But Francine clamped her mouth shut and refused to answer. She avoided Adam’s eyes. Instead, her gaze fell on the snow globe.
“Your snow globe city just disappeared,” she pointed out.
Adam glanced at the tilted snow globe in his hand. He noticed too late the confetti sliding behind the glass—and the missing cityscape inside.
When he looked up again, Francine was gone. In fact, the whole warehouse had disappeared. Adam was back in his bedroom, standing next to his dresser, his hands clutching the candles and the snow globe. He could hear Uncle Henry still snoring in the living room.
Afterward, Adam lay wide awake in bed for a long time. Then, in the quiet stillness, he suddenly realized something.
In the piles of random items along the wall at Francine’s, there had been a silver cassette player.
A cassette player. Adam no longer listened to cassette tapes—hardly anyone did in 1999, thanks to CDs—but even he knew that such an invention was completely out of place in Francine’s time.
Its presence meant one of two things:
Either Francine was a time traveler too, or Adam was not the first person to have traveled through time to visit her.
CHAPTER EIGHTTHE CLOCKMAKER’S SECRET
One month after Elbert Walsh turned eighteen, he discovered something truly remarkable.
He had just emerged from the stage with his trusty golden pendulum. It had been a particularly noteworthy performance. He’d hypnotized the mayor into a deep trance, and the audience had watched in awe as the mayor began doing whatever Elbert instructed him to do. The mayor did three cartwheels and yodeled for the audience for two minutes before falling out of the trance, with no recollection of what had happened.
As usual, the cheering crowds gathered around him in the lobby. Journalists jotted down notes about the spectacular performance for the next day’s press and pelted the magician with questions.
“Elbert the Excellent,” cried a reporter with slick black hair. “Is it true your pendulum is pure magic?”
Elbert had heard this question numerous times. He merely winked in reply.
“Elbert the Excellent, are you going to duel the Great Houdini?” someone else shouted.
“Elbert, Elbert! What’s your favorite color?”
“Elbert the Excellent—what’s your secret?”
“Sorry,” answered Elbert. “A good magician never reveals his secrets.”
He managed to escape the crowd. Outside, Elbert put on his spring cloak and
