“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like you,” she told Theo. “You have no idea how much power you’re carrying in that stubborn brain of yours. There’s a great prophet buried in there. Now he’s clawing his way up through all that trauma and liquor damage. I wish I could tell you the process will tickle, but those headaches you’re getting are just previews. Come tomorrow, you’re really not going to like being you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What does it matter? You don’t believe me anyway.” The girl looked to Mia. “I’m hoping you’ll be a little more receptive to what I have to say. You’re a sweet and pretty girl with a sharp mind and killer hair. But one thing you’re not and never will be is an augur.”
Mia’s heart lurched. “What . . . what do you mean?”
“You don’t have the sight like me and Theo. You just have your portals, and they aren’t meant to be used the way you’re using them. It’s not your fault. Nobody told you. It’s just that there are a lot of Mias out there in the future. The stronger you get, the more of them you’ll hear from. If you’re not careful, every minute of your life will be a ticker-tape parade. I don’t think you want that.”
The thought turned Mia white. “I don’t! What do I do?”
“Talk to Peter. He’ll set you straight. The man can be a pigheaded fool sometimes, but he sure knows his portals.”
Theo eyed her cynically. “Is that what you are? A Gotham?”
“No, but I’ve met a few. They hate being called that, by the way.”
The girl rose to her feet and slung her purse over her shoulder.
“You know why Merlin McGee only predicts natural disasters? Because he’s lazy and they’re easy. They’re constants across the many branching futures, well outside our influence. It doesn’t matter which way we zig or zag. It’s still going to rain in Nemeth tomorrow.”
She fixed a heavy gaze on Theo. “Bad times are coming. First for you, then your friends. If there was a way around it, I’d tell you. You’re all just going to have to stay strong and weather the storm.”
The girl walked ten steps to the bookshelves, then took a final look at Mia.
“I really do love that hair.”
She disappeared in the aisles, leaving her new friends in quiet turmoil. Theo aimed his dull stare out the window. Mia’s gaze danced around the letters of Quint’s book jacket.
“Are you okay to drive?” she asked him, a half hour later.
“I think so.”
“Okay. I think I’d like to go home.”
“Yeah.”
They left the library in grim silence, without looking back. They didn’t need foresight to know that they wouldn’t return here. They’d already learned more than they wanted to know.
—
The grandfather clock ticked away as the Silvers sat behind the remnants of their supper. Ten elbows rested on the dining room table, ten fists propping five chins. Only Theo sat slouched in his chair. He wished Mia hadn’t told the others about the girl with two watches.
“She’s either a skilled augur herself or a time traveler,” David surmised. “I can’t see how else she’d profess to know about Theo’s potential.”
Amanda peered at David’s plate, still half-filled with boiled peas. The sisters had initially tried to prepare more elaborate vegan dishes for him. He never took more than a few polite bites before returning to his vegetable piles.
“And we’re absolutely sure this woman wasn’t Esis?” Zack asked.
David squinted at Mia. “Describe her in detail.”
“I don’t know. She was thin. Pretty. Short.”
“No,” said David.
“No,” said Amanda. “Esis is not short.”
The cartoonist shrugged in grim surrender. After exploding a deer today, he wasn’t confident in his opinion about anything.
Hannah sat back in her chair and seethed. In the four hours since the death of the fawn, her melancholy had turned into something hard and prickly. She found herself despising everyone at the table for reasons of little merit. She hated David for his stupid vegan diet. She hated Mia for her inexhaustible sweetness. She hated Zack and Amanda for not screwing like rabbits already. She hated Theo for all the usual reasons.
At the moment, she hated the fact that her companions were all brilliant in one way or another, and yet none of them considered the obvious.
“She’s an actress.”
The others glanced up at her with blank expressions. She met their gazes one by one.
“Evan’s messing with us again, only this time by proxy. He hired that woman. Coached her through and through. And now once again we’re all dancing to his tune, wondering if up is down, left is right. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.”
The clock ticked five more times before David broke the silence.
“That’s a very solid theory.”
Zack nodded. “I’ve been wondering why we haven’t heard from him in a while.”