“We’re still with them!” Jonah said.
“They’re not within earshot,” JB said with exaggerated patience.
Jonah wanted to pull Katherine over to the side and confer with her, out of JB’s earshot. But if JB could make the Elucidator work again from the distance of centuries away, he could probably hear anything they said, no matter where they were.
Actually, if he wanted to, he could probably just yank them out of time, like he’d done with the Taser. Why wasn’t he doing that? Why was he asking permission? Somehow the fact that JB had given them a choice made Jonah more inclined to trust him. But what if JB knew that and was just asking in order to trick them?
Jonah shook his head, trying to clear it.
“I’m going to ask Chip and Alex what they think,” he said firmly. “Whether it’s okay with them if we leave for a while.”
“You don’t have to do that,” JB said. “Really, that’s not the best—”
And then he broke off because Jonah shoved the Elucidator in his pocket and stood up.
“This should be quick,” he told Katherine with a confidence he didn’t feel. Katherine stared up at him, wide eyed.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
They tiptoed silently back into the royal family’s room. This was hard to do, since the floor was covered with mats of woven rushes that rustled easily. But Chip and Alex didn’t seem to see or hear them approaching.
Chip and Alex were eating now, scooping up handfuls of berries and grains—maybe the fifteenth-century version of granola. Jonah had never been a granola fan, but it sounded almost as good as pizza right now. Had Chip or Alex thought about how Jonah and Katherine might be starving too? Were they making any attempt to save some food to give to Jonah and Katherine later, when the queen and princesses weren’t watching?
The answer to that, clearly, was no. The boys were tossing strawberries in the air and catching them in their mouths, very dramatically. There was no way to hide food doing that. It was almost as if they were trying to show off how they had food and Jonah and Katherine didn’t.
Jonah stopped a few inches from Chip’s ear.
“Chip, listen,” he whispered quickly. He hoped he could say everything he needed to say before an errant strawberry landed on his head and appeared to bounce off empty air. “Find some excuse for you and Alex to get away from everyone for a few minutes. Say you have to go to the bathroom or something.”
Chip turned his head toward Jonah, but his blue eyes focused on a point far past Jonah. Chip caught a berry in his mouth and turned his head back in the other direction. He seemed every bit as oblivious as the serving girl and the men with torches back at the Tower of London. He, too, seemed to be looking right through Jonah.
Jonah felt his heart clutch with fear.
“Chip? Can you hear me?” Jonah whispered. “Do something to show you know I’m here. Blink three times, or … or …”
Chip didn’t blink.
“You’re just acting, right?” Jonah pleaded. “Because the queen and the princesses are watching you? That’s okay, I understand, but …”
It was too agonizing to just stand there waiting for Chip to react. Jonah grabbed Chip’s arm. Though Jonah could see Chip’s red sweatshirt faintly, along with his tracer’s fifteenth-century clothes, all Jonah could feel was stiff velvet. Jonah tightened his grip.
Chip didn’t seem to notice.
“Katherine, please, help,” Jonah whispered urgently.
Katherine grabbed Chip’s other arm. Jonah hadn’t exactly told her what he wanted her to do, but she began tugging, as if she was determined to separate Chip from his tracer. Jonah forgot about the queen and the princesses sitting on the other side of the room. He began yanking on Chip too.
And then suddenly Jonah’s hands held nothing but air.
TWENTY-FOUR
Chip was gone. So was Alex. So were their chairs. So were the woven rushes on the floor. So were the stone walls. Jonah looked around to see if Katherine had disappeared too, but seeing required light, and in a split second all of that had vanished too.
But a second later—a second or an eternity, who could say?—Jonah felt bathed in light. He wasn’t conscious of moving, but somehow he was sitting down now, his legs dangling from an oddly contoured chair, his back cushioned by soft pillows. He turned his head, and Katherine was there in another chair beside him. He turned his head back because he’d missed something.
JB was standing in front of them.
Jonah had gotten so used to JB as a disembodied voice coming from a rock that he had to blink a few times to make sure that it really was him. Same dark hair flopping over his forehead. Same intelligent green eyes and handsome face that had made Katherine call him “cute janitor boy”—back when they thought he was only a janitor for the FBI. Same nondescript clothes he’d been wearing the last time they’d seen him. Vaguely Jonah wondered if regular time travelers like JB had special clothes that blended in no matter what century they were in.
“You pulled us out of time, didn’t you?” Katherine accused, blinking in the unexpected glare. “Weren’t you waiting for us to give you permission?”
“I don’t need your permission if you’re caught breaking a time law,” JB said, a slight smirk traveling across his face. “Trying to separate Chip from his tracer right in front of his mother and sisters—that’s a clear violation of Time Code 6843J6. I was just waiting for you to do something like that.”
The smirk turned into a cocky grin.