“No. If I wanted to upset you, I’d tell you how David turns out.”
He’d called Zack at the crack of dawn in the hope of dulling his sharp edge. And yet in the first four run-throughs of the conversation, Zack kept finding new and clever ways to gain the upper hand. Evan was determined to keep him off balance in Round 5.
“Why do you hate us so much?” Zack asked. “What did we ever do to you?”
Evan exhaled impatiently. It was like living in a world full of senile people. They never remembered.
“It’s not worth getting into. Just know that I only really have it in for the Givens. Theo and the kids? Meh. Take them or leave them. But you, mein Freund, I can never stay mad at. Truth be told, I really miss our chats.”
He grinned at Zack’s furrowed perplexity. “Strains the brain, doesn’t it? Once upon a time warp, I was part of the gang. We started out as an eight-piece band. You guys, me, and Jury Curado.”
“You mean the guy on the driver’s license.”
Evan laughed. “You’re lucky that’s all you know him from. You should be thanking me. He was a real asshole. Always yelling. Always convinced he was right. He was decent enough to the womenfolk, especially Hannah. He wasn’t so nice to us beta males, especially me.”
“So why don’t I remember any of this?”
“Because the story changed. I changed it.”
“How?”
Evan waved a curt hand. “Ah, I’m sick of talking about it. Let’s talk about culture.”
“Why don’t you just get to the—”
“I know you weren’t crazy about your old life. I hated mine. But man, do I miss the culture. You must have noticed how bad it is here. The shit that passes for entertainment.”
Zack sighed with forced amenity. “The movies are pretty bad.”
“It’s all bad. You know why? No foreign geniuses to shake things up. No Charlie Chaplins or Alfred Hitchcocks or Sergio Leones. Foreign films are illegal here. You think George Lucas would have come up with Star Wars if he hadn’t been able to see The Seven Samurai? Of course not. But they sealed the doors and nailed the curtains shut. So now all we have are five hundred brands of American vanilla.”
“I do miss Star Wars,” Zack admitted.
“God, I’d kill to see the original trilogy again. I’d only maim for the prequels.”
Zack was amazed to find himself smiling. “If I had known what was coming, I would have packed a portable movie player and a suitcase full of discs.”
“You and me both, brother. It kills me that I only had a few minutes to prepare. I think about all the things I could have grabbed from my room. Even the cheapest piece of crap would have been a treasure to me now. But oh no. Azral, King of Time, was running late and had to rush me.”
Zack tapped the railing, debating whether or not to press Evan for intel. Could his information be trusted?
“I’m guessing you know a lot more about him than I do.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe the things I know, Zacky. I’ve seen this tale from start to finish. You really want to know about the Pelletiers?”
“Tell me.”
Evan took a deep breath. He knew he was sailing into dangerous waters now.
“They’re Gothams,” he explained. “But from way the hell in the future. Distant descendants of Peter Pendergen’s people. Fiftieth generation, hundredth—I have no idea. I just know they’re insanely powerful. They’re one family you don’t want to mess with. And yet you always do.”
“How many are there?”
“There are three. Papa Bear’s on special assignment. He’ll rear his ugly head next year. That won’t be a fun day for any of you.”
Zack thought back to the scary man in the tempic mask, the one who gave him his silver bracelet.
“What do they want with us?”
Evan cracked a dark laugh. “If I told you that, they’d come down on me like the Monty Python foot. They don’t want you knowing yet. All I can say is that we share a rare quirk in our DNA. Nothing that ever made us stand out from the crowd, though we do tend to fall on the brainy side. Even Hannah’s got some wattage in the noggin, though it sure did take a thumping, didn’t it?”
Zack slitted his eyes at Evan, swallowing his wrath. “How many of us did they bring over?”
“They gave out ninety-nine bracelets in ten different cities. Not sure how many of us are still breathing. Our group lost two. The Violets are down five.”
“The Violets?”
“Pelletier lingo. They like to call us by the color of our bracelets. Isn’t that cute? The Violets are the London folk. The ones in Osaka are the Rubies. The Pearls of Guadalajara are my favorites. All-girl group. Eight Mexicans and one hot Cuban.”
Zack remembered what the masked Pelletier had whispered, shortly after sealing the bracelet around his wrist. Any other weekend, you’d be one of the Golds.
His heart lurched. “There’s a New York group . . .”