Boys wouldn’t have that unearthly glow—these boys gave off nearly as much light as the candle. Boys also wouldn’t be see-through. And Jonah was sure that he could make out the exact curve of stone in the wall behind the boys.
But he could also make out their distinct features: their dark blue eyes; their shoulder-length blond curls; their odd dark clothes, a sort of tunic-and-tights arrangement that Jonah associated with Shakespearean plays. The boys sat with their heads together, whispering intently. But Jonah couldn’t hear what they were saying. It was like watching a silent movie. And, like actors in a movie, they took no notice of their audience—the four kids staring at them from across the room.
“Hello?” Alex said experimentally. Neither boy budged. “Hello?” Alex said louder.
Still nothing.
“Maybe it’s the time travel,” Alex said. “Maybe that’s just how people from this time period look to us, because we’re coming from the future. And maybe they can’t see or hear us at all—maybe that’s how time protects itself from all those paradoxes.”
“But we saw JB and Gary and Hodge when they came to our time,” Katherine objected. “They looked normal.”
“Oh, yeah,” Alex said, shrugging. He stared at the eerie figures on the bed and added stubbornly, “But those aren’t ghosts. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
They sure looked like ghosts to Jonah.
But he could understand how Alex—and Chip—would be freaked out after what Katherine had said. Jonah gave her a little shove on the back.
“You were wrong, Katherine,” he said. “Those aren’t Chip’s and Alex’s ghosts. They’re just … ghosts of some other boys. Or something,” he finished weakly.
“They’re girls!” Chip insisted, his voice cracking. “Don’t you see those curls?”
“Girls would be wearing dresses,” Katherine said scornfully. “And are you guys blind? Don’t look at the clothes and the curls. Look at the faces. That’s Chip and Alex!”
Jonah squinted, concentrating. Block out the girly hairstyle and the weird clothes. … For a moment he thought he saw the resemblance. Then it was gone.
“They’re younger than us,” Alex said. “Like, nine and eleven, maybe? Or ten and twelve?”
“Remember, the people who kidnapped you messed around with your ages,” Katherine said. “They made you babies again. So you wouldn’t have to be the same age as your, uh, ghosts.”
She said the last word apologetically.
Suddenly Jonah felt someone grabbing his left hand, prying his fingers off the Taser, jerking it from his grasp. By the time this registered and Jonah turned his head, Chip was aiming the Taser at the ghostly boys on the bed. He squeezed the trigger.
“That’s not me!” Chip said. “It’s not!”
The barbs shot out but fell harmlessly through the ghostly Chip, onto the bed. The ghostly Chip and Alex just kept whispering soundlessly, their expressions solemn and intent.
“What just happened?” JB demanded, his tense voice coming from the Elucidator Jonah still clutched in his right hand. “What was that?”
Alex snickered.
“Chip just tried to Taser his own, uh, ghost,” he mumbled. “It wasn’t very effective.”
The next thing Jonah knew, the Taser had vanished. Even the barbs on the bed disappeared. Chip stared at his empty hand, a dumbfounded expression on his face.
“Hey!” he exclaimed. “How’d you do that?”
“You do not use future technology in the past,” JB said, and Jonah could tell that he was speaking through gritted teeth. “One of the first rules of time travel.”
“But you just did,” Alex said. “Making things disappear—I don’t think they could do that in the 1400s.”
“I had to,” JB said, still sounding as though his jaw was clenched. “Chip just proved that the four of you can’t be trusted with a Taser in the fifteenth century.”
Chip was flexing his hand, as if he still couldn’t believe that the Taser was gone.
“Wait a minute,” Jonah said. “If you can just zap things out of time, why didn’t you do that to Katherine and me?”
Katherine, Chip, and Alex all turned to glare at Jonah. Oops. It probably wasn’t too brilliant to point out how easily JB could just do whatever he wanted to them.
“It wasn’t safe to do that while you were traveling through time,” JB said. “And then you convinced me … I did promise to let you try to help Chip and Alex.”
JB’s voice was soothing now, like he wanted to calm them all down. Jonah couldn’t decide how he felt about JB. It was nice to know that JB wouldn’t break his promises. But he hadn’t exactly given them much information. And how could Jonah trust JB’s motives in sending the stolen kids back in time, when it was pretty clear that history hadn’t been kind to any of them?
“So who are those boys?” Katherine asked. “Are they Chip’s and Alex’s ghosts from the past?”
For a moment Jonah wasn’t sure that JB was going to answer. Then he said, “They’re tracers. They show you exactly what would have happened if no one had interfered in their time.”
Jonah watched the ghostly boys on the bed. Together they were standing up—no, now they were kneeling beside the bed. They bowed their heads and clasped their hands.
They were praying.
One solitary tear slipped out of the younger boy’s eye and began to roll down his cheek. He opened one eye and glanced anxiously toward his older brother, then quickly wiped away the tear before his brother could see.
“I wouldn’t have done that,” Alex objected. Jonah wasn’t sure if he was referring to the praying or the crying.
“Oh, but you did do that, the first time through history,” JB said. “That’s what you would be doing right now if Hodge hadn’t stolen you away.”
The tracer boys were still praying, the picture of piety.
“This is too weird,” Chip said. “It creeps me out.”