The notion sank to the pit of his stomach like a rock.
But Carla smiled. She leaned over, whispered in his ear. “I have a plan.”
“If it involves us staying safely in this car forever, count me in.”
“Not forever, but we will take a little drive in it.” She put the wipers on high and threw the car into gear. “You and I are going to Manhattan together. We’ll go into a subway station together, we’ll sit on a bench together until a train goes by, and I won’t die. Then, I’m going to kiss you good-bye, drive to Northbrook, and meet Brewster DeLay in my world, 2012. We’ll be changing my future and your past, thanks to Gabriella.”
He shook his head. For two puppets on a string, that plan held equal doses of logic and risk. “Why go to Manhattan at all?”
Carla hit the gas. “Because the best way to end a nightmare is to defeat its monsters.”
* * *
They’d driven south of the snow country. The pavement had dried and become much more manageable, but Carla slowed the car. Her face had gone pale.
“Want me to take over?” he offered. “You look tired.”
A tear ran down her cheek. She wiped it away with one hand, turning the wheel with the other. “You’re shimmering, Brewster.”
“What do you mean?”
She pulled onto the shoulder and stopped.
He tried to shift over and wrap an arm around her.
“Wait,” she said. “I have something in my glove box for you.”
Brewster popped the button. A snow globe fell into his hands, heavy as a paperweight.
“I bought it in Pulaski,” she said. “Shake it for me?”
He shook the globe, creating a blizzard that blurred the log cabin within.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Carla’s voice cracked. “Take it back with you, Brewster. If I don’t make it, you’ll have something I loved.”
“If you don’t make it?”
The bright, sunny day turned to midnight black. Brewster shuddered. He’d realized what Carla meant by shimmering.
The wormholes had hold of him again.
“Don’t go down to Manhattan alone, Carla.”
Everything went black.
CHAPTER 22
Three hours later
“I can do this.”
Alone.
But she could do it.
Carla stood at the top of the subway stairs. The sun’s rays cut through the cold air to energize her while scattered clouds puffing across the turquoise sky spared her their shadows, casting them on the other side of the street. Luck seemed on her side, and her earlier sadness dimmed like the remnants of a broken dream.
No reason for sadness anymore. She had a plan. For happiness. She’d exorcise her demons alone, down in the subway, glued to the bench until the first train swept by. Then she’d go after Brewster in her year.
Two thousand twelve.
Time to roll. Passengers exiting the station brushed past her, just as they had in her dreams. City smells of exhaust and street-vendor hot dogs came at her again, along with the clatter of jackhammers and the impatient horns of taxicabs painting the traffic with their signature splotches of yellow. All seemed the same except for the mood. A pall of gloom no longer shadowed her world.
She headed down.
At the halfway landing, she bought tokens from a machine and smiled at a transit officer standing at the cashier’s booth. He’d been chatting up the woman inside the cage, but he paused for a moment to flick a wave at her. Who says New Yorkers weren’t friendly?
She approached a turnstile, glanced at a ponytailed girl struggling to get past the bar in the next aisle, and stifled a laugh when she noticed the reason. “Honey, that doesn’t take pennies. You need to use a token.”
“Oh.” The girl looked up at her—a cute thing, perhaps twelve or thirteen, blonde, bright-eyed, all sheepish smile and red cheeks. She thrust thumb and fingers into her blouse pocket, as if a treasure trove of tokens waited inside, but she came up empty. She shoved a hand into the slit pocket of her skirt and failed again. Her smile faded.
“I’ve got extra ones.” Carla had purchased them as souvenirs, but she could certainly spare one for the poor kid. She fumbled in her purse, glanced up, shrugged. “They’re in here somewhere.”
The girl stared back with the strangest unsettling eyes.
Carla shuddered. A sudden urge to be done with the transaction set her heart pounding. She came up with a token and held it out. “Here.”
Their hands touched. The world went into a spin.
She clapped her free hand onto the railing between aisles to keep from collapsing to the floor. She couldn’t break eye contact with the girl. Two bottomless orbs probed her with a cold, appraising stare in total contrast to the innocence portrayed by the girl’s simple dress, her blushing cheeks, and that ponytail with its cute little bow.
Gabriella. But the halo Carla had earlier pasted over the girl’s head didn’t fit. Gabriella’s eyes held no kindness.
Carla screamed, but no sound escaped her lips. The transit officer off to the side kept flirting with the cashier. Neither he nor the woman showed any sign of noticing her silent plight.
Not one other soul stood on the landing. No one climbed up the stairs from below. Nobody came down from above. How had a Manhattan subway station gone empty in the middle of the day? Where the hell was everyone?
“Don’t be frightened.” The girl who was so not a girl summoned a childlike gleam to her eyes, fading the horror-show agelessness she’d flashed moments before.
Carla tried to snatch her hand back, but her puppet master clenched it with an iron grip.
The bars of their turnstiles went into motion, ushering them through. Tokens be damned.
“I can sweep your fears away like so much dust,” Gabriella said.
“Please, no. I don’t want—”
The buzz of the creature’s touch intensified, and Carla’s immediate terror evaporated, along with every other fear, large and small. All the nagging
