“That you died with your work?” Andrea asked softly.
“No—that I’m supposed to be some famous artist,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I almost flunked art last year!” He stopped, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Because . . . I thought the teacher was wrong, always wanting to have separate categories of art. . . . You say we were famous for mixing things up?”
JB nodded.
“But . . . we weren’t really famous,” Antonio said, “not if everything was destroyed, and nobody ever knew what we did.”
He already looked sad at the thought that artwork he hadn’t created yet would never be seen.
“But time travelers saw the work, right?” Katherine asked. “They’re the ones who would have made you famous.”
“Right,” JB said. “There was a strong—and illegal, I might add—art-smuggling effort, where renegade time travelers managed to rescue all your work, right before it burned. It made for some very dramatic time-travel stories.”
“Wow,” Antonio said, puffing up his chest. “Famous artist! Worth having his work stolen!”
“But then Gary and Hodge decided, why steal the art when you can steal the artists instead?” JB said. “So they yanked you out of time right when they pulled Virginia Dare out, while they were in the neighborhood. Before you’d rescued John White. Before you’d done any of your art.”
“So that created a paradox, didn’t it?” Jonah asked.
“Exactly,” JB said. “If there’s no artwork, there’s no reason Brendan and Antonio are famous, so there’s no reason Gary and Hodge would kidnap them.”
“Not . . . paradox. If ripple . . . stopped,” Second murmured, from his position on the ground. He’d managed to roll to his side, but it looked painful.
“Ah, yes,” JB agreed, frowning. “As my former projectionist reminds me, there isn’t a paradox, or isn’t one yet, because we put up a time barrier to prevent the results of your kidnappings from rippling on into the future. So there’s still time to fix things.”
“So you still want me to move all these bones?” Andrea asked, looking down at the skeletons strewn along the sand.
“And we have to do all that artwork?” Brendan asked. His words made it sound as if he didn’t want to, but he had a faraway, dreamy look in his eye.
“We’ll help as much as possible,” JB said, looking toward Andrea. “And . . . I will make sure I get you out of this time period before your village burns, Brendan and Antonio. And before you drown, leaving Croatoan, Andrea.”
His voice was soft, saying Andrea’s name.
“What about my grandfather?” Andrea challenged.
JB sighed.
“I’ll see what we can do about him,” he said.
Jonah wasn’t quite sure what that meant. But he remembered what Second had said about JB, implying that he wasn’t such a time purist anymore, that he’d gone softhearted.
And JB said that Second didn’t lie to us, Jonah thought. Still, something nagged at him, something he’d missed.
He remembered what it was.
“Are you sure you’ve told us everything we need to know?” He asked JB, a bitter twist to his words. “Or are you still working on not keeping secrets unnecessarily?”
JB’s face flushed.
“Sam—Second—he told me I had to say it like that,” JB said. “To make Andrea feel like it was okay not to tell you about her parents from the beginning. I swear, I wasn’t saying it for my own benefit!”
Jonah believed him.
“Add that to . . . the list,” Second muttered.
“The list?” JB said blankly.
“Of reasons I’m . . . being fired,” Second whispered from the ground. “Tell me all of them.”
“Got a couple centuries?” JB joked. “There’s the time smack, of course, with Antonio coming into 1600 in the same space as Jonah. Though, actually, I’m grateful for that, because that was the clue that helped me find you. You camouflaged all your other tracks, but you couldn’t hide that. So maybe the time judge won’t charge you for that one. But I don’t think anyone will forgive you for forcing me to do a time smack, hitting you, because it was the only way I could get in to rescue these kids. . . .”
Second gulped.
“That was a time smack then too?” he asked. “An authentic one? Not just a very, very close call?”
“Perfectly planned, perfectly executed,” JB bragged. A hard look came into his eyes. “I did all the calculations myself.”
Second’s face went pale.
“But there was only a 38 percent chance that you would find us, only a 20 percent chance that you would take such a huge risk . . . ,” he whispered.
“Obviously you underestimated me,” JB said.
Second looked up at Jonah.
“That day in the canoe,” Second murmured. “Yesterday. After your . . . time smack. Did you have to sleep the rest of the day? Or were you just being lazy?”
“It just happened,” Jonah said. “I couldn’t help myself.”
Second’s face turned even paler.
“Then I don’t have much time,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to work things this way, but . . .”
With great effort, he forced himself up from the ground. He staggered toward Andrea, reaching his hand toward hers.
“You take . . . Elucidator,” he whispered. “You have the most interest . . . in seeing this through. Just press . . . No, wait, I can do that. . . . My one last . . .”
He collapsed to the ground at her feet. A hearty snore escaped from his mouth.
“He’s out,” JB said, sounding relieved. “He’ll sleep for hours. Except—Andrea, did he hit that button?”
Andrea was staring down at the Elucidator that Second had dropped into her hand.
“I don’t—” she began.
Just then, something like a movie screen appeared in the trees behind them.
“He did,” JB muttered. “But why? What’s he trying to do?”
Second’s face appeared on the screen, beaming and confident.
“I can answer that,” he said.