19
My jaw dropped. “Your boss? You mean, from the cabin? On the Wooded Island?”
“Yeah,” he said, his dark eyes imploring. “I’m sorry, Miss Kate. I shoulda tol’ you, but I’m not s’posed to tell anybody, ever. Even me dad agreed wi’ that part. And I was doin’ the same as you, watchin’ out for when those two showed up, so I thought maybe it would be okay, y’know, to join forces.”
“And exactly why were you watching for them, Mick?” I asked. “What were you supposed to do?”
“I…” He shook his head and let out a long breath. “You won’ b’lieve me, Miss Kate. There’s this book? It belonged to me dad. It sends her a message. Me granddad give it to him, before he died, along with this round thing that glows. It lights up the space around it with words ’n’ stuff when you touch it. They make all them inventions in the Expo look like cheap toys.”
Apparently Saul had figured out a way to use the diaries that Connor and Katherine had missed. The boy glanced up at me, but I kept my face composed and nodded for him to continue.
“Well, I’d just finished doin’ that—sendin’ her a message—when I looked aroun’ an’ there you were comin’ up the hill. An’ then I saw the letter you dropped, an’…” He trailed off, and the gears roared loudly as the wheel, with its last passenger on board, began to rotate, lifting us high above the Midway.
“Is your boss the lady from the church that you were talking about?” I asked. “The one who wants your mom to move back to the church farm?”
He nodded but didn’t say anything, so I pressed a bit further. “Why don’t you trust her, Mick?”
“Because me dad didn’,” he said fiercely. “Tha’s why we left. The church brought us over—they paid our way on the boat all the way from Irelan’—so I think they ’spected us to work longer and for me to keep takin’ their Cyrist classes, but me dad said we’d find another way to pay ’em back. There was a lot of arguin’ when we left, an’ me dad said we were done wi’ that lot. He got a job on the construction, and me mom found work and some odd jobs for me. Ever’thin’ was okay again, once we left.
“Then when the fair was all built, money was real tight.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and continued in a voice so low that I had to lean in to hear him over the excited chatter of the crowd as we climbed higher into the sky. “Sister Pru, she found us here and she said she forgave me dad for leavin’ the farm an’ for all the bad stuff he’d said ’bout the Cyrists. She pulled some strings t’get him on wi’ the firemen—an’ I tol’ you how that turned out.”
His mouth twisted bitterly. “Me mom says she couldna known me dad would get killed an’ I know here,” he said, tapping his head, “that me mom is right. But here,” he added, tapping his chest, “says she did know an’ she foun’ a good way to shut me dad up.”
His lower lip trembled, and I gritted my teeth in anger. I couldn’t say for certain whether Prudence had known that the Cold Storage Building would go up in flames and his father would be killed, but she’d certainly had the opportunity to know.
“I know it’s stupid, but it’s what I feel, an’ I wish I didn’ hafta work for her. Although,” he said with a weak laugh, “I guess maybe now I won’ hafta work for her. But oh, me mom is gonna be madder’n bloody hell.”
It clicked then, with his last two words, and I realized why I’d had the touch of déjà vu earlier when he rubbed his temples. I probably would have recognized those eyes earlier, but when I had seen them before—both through the medallion and on the Metro—they had burned with a type of passion that the little boy in front of me wouldn’t understand for several years.
He mistook my stunned expression for disapproval. “Sorry, Miss Kate. I ain’ ’sposed to say that. One more thing me mom would be mad about if she knew I was cursin’, ’specially in front of a lady.”
I smiled at him. “No, it’s okay, really. I told you, I’m not prissy.” He didn’t look convinced, so I leaned in and whispered, “Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody hell.”
His mouth twitched and then he finally looked me in the eyes as a smile broke free.
I breathed in deeply and tried to decide what to do. My stomach lurched as I glanced downward at the now miniscule buildings below us, but it was hardly noticeable since my insides were already clenched in a tight knot. How much should I tell him? How much could I tell him without causing even more upheaval in the timeline? What if something I did now was the key to him being there to warn me on the Metro? Or if something I did now kept him from being there on the Metro? Bloody hell was right.
After a moment, I knelt down to his level and loosened the small pocket in my bodice, sliding the CHRONOS key out just a bit. His eyes grew wide and several conflicting emotions moved across his face—probably relief that I believed him, but mixed with a touch of what looked like fear. I realized that he associated the medallion with the Cyrists.
“I’m not a Cyrist,” I told him quickly, taking his small hand in mind. “I don’t like them, either. And I think you’re right not to trust your other boss.
“What’s your real name?” I asked, even though I knew beyond any doubt what his answer would be.
“Kiernan,” he said. “Kiernan Dunne, same as me dad was.”
“Kiernan,” I repeated. “It’s a nice name. Or would you rather I called you Mick?”
“No,” he said. “I don’ much like it, but ain’ many people c’n be bothered wi’ learnin’ t’ say me real name. Mick’s easier for ’em, so I don’ argue. Are you really called Kate?” he asked, with a skeptical twist of his mouth.
I nodded, deciding that, given his views of my aunt Prudence, he probably wouldn’t want to know that Kate was actually based on my middle name. “What color is the light on the medallion for you, Kiernan? It’s blue for me—a very bright blue, brighter than any sky you’ve ever seen.”
“It’s green for me, Miss Kate. A deep, pretty green like…” A blush crept over his face and then he looked back up at me. “Like your eyes.”
“That’s really sweet, Kiernan,” I said, squeezing his hand before I let it go to tuck the medallion back into its hidden pocket. “So tell me, do you know what this medallion does?”
“It c’n make you disappear, at least some of the folks at the farm could do that. It’s a holy object for the Cyrists. They said we were special, me and me dad, ’cause we could see the light and make the books send messages. Sister Pru wanted me to work on it ever’ day, but it gives me a headache somethin’ awful. Me mom ain’ never been able to see it and there were a lot of others who couldn’ see it either. Only a few of the people at the farm actually brung one of them—they call ’em keys—with ’em when they came to the farm. An’ other than me dad, they handed the key things over to Sister Pru and the other leaders.”
“Is that why Sister Pru and your dad fought?” I asked. “Your dad wouldn’t give up the key?”
He shook his head. “I don’ think so. She ain’ ever tried to take it from me, either. Tol’ me to keep it after me dad was gone.”
The wheel jerked slightly as it began its second revolution, and I could hear the squeals from those who were now at the top, where the movement would have felt much scarier. I looked at Kiernan for a long moment and tried to piece all of what he had told me into the larger picture. I couldn’t see any clear patterns, however, and eventually decided I would have to rely on my own instincts and give him just a basic outline.
“You don’t have to feel bad about not being completely truthful with me earlier,” I said. “I wasn’t a hundred percent truthful with you, either. I am really called Kate, and I am really following the same two people you were. The man is really a bad guy—all of that is true—but I’m not a newspaper writer. I guess you could say that I’m a messenger of sorts. And you were right to think that the lady with him is in danger. That’s what I’m here to tell her. But I’ve got to do it very carefully.”
He nodded and then tilted his head to one side. “So the lady in the purple hat… why did she cover for us if you aren’ really a writer? Or is that a real paper, that gazette you talked about?”
“No,” I said. “I made it all up. She just…” I pulled the chain of the bracelet away from my wrist and held up the tiny hourglass charm. “I think she recognized this. She knows the lady who gave it to me.”
“Oh, so it’s like a signal she should trust you?”
“Exactly,” I said, rising to my feet carefully as the wheel reached its highest point and then stopped, swaying slightly. I winced a bit as I caught my balance—the blister was clearly getting worse and it didn’t help that these compartments were standing-room only. “I’d rather not try to talk to her again now, given that your boss—Prudence—is still there. But the good news is that I know where the other lady will be later this afternoon. Can I count on you to help me get there?”
He smiled, clearly relieved to know that he hadn’t lost both of his jobs in one fell swoop. “Yes, Miss Kate. I’d be mos’ happy to help.”
I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Why don’t we enjoy the rest of the ride, then?” I said. “Afterward, you and I can find someplace quiet to sit down and figure out our next steps. And maybe we could make it a place where I can take off these bloody shoes?”
The spot that Kiernan found was nicely secluded—a patch of grass just below one of the bridges that led to the Wooded Island, where I could not only remove my shoes but actually soak my feet. The water looked clean enough and felt wonderfully cool on the back of my heel, which sported, just as I had suspected, a very large blister. The only thing that kept me from hurling the stupid shoes into the lagoon was the fact that there was no Finish Line nearby where I could find functional replacement footgear.
I leaned back against the embankment to relax, glad the dress was green so that I didn’t have to stress too much about grass stains. Kiernan had volunteered to go in search of some lunch, and I was happy to take him up on the offer. It wasn’t quite noon yet, but I had forgotten about dinner in my own timeline, after the huge sandwiches from O’Malley’s for lunch, and I was now starving.
Kiernan came back about ten minutes later with hot dogs, fresh fruit, and more lemonade. Having read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in history class, I wasn’t too keen on any hot dog from 1890s Chicago, but I took a few bites, mostly of the bun so that Kiernan wouldn’t think I was too prissy to eat it. He seemed quite happy to trade off the rest of my hot dog for his apple. When we had finished, I pulled one of the energy bars out the brown paper I’d wrapped them in and offered him a piece.
“Not bad,” he said. “Chewy and sweet, too. They sell these in New York?”
I nodded, washing it down with lemonade. That wasn’t where Connor had bought it, but I was pretty sure they sold them in New York and pretty much anywhere else in the country, although definitely not in 1893. I wondered how much Kiernan knew about the CHRONOS key from his time on the Cyrist farm, and what his reaction would be if I told him he was eating something purchased by his great-grandson.
When we finished eating, I reluctantly drew my feet out of the water and propped them against a large stone to let them dry in the sun.
“Miss Kate!” Kiernan exclaimed, pointing. “What happened to your toes?”
“What?” I glanced down, half expecting to see a leech or a cut or some other trauma, but there was nothing odd. “What are you talking about?”
“Your toenails. They’re all red—it looks like blood!”
“Oh,” I laughed. “That’s just nail polish. It’s chipped off in a few places.”
“It looks like paint.” Kiernan sniffed disapprovingly.
I sighed. This was one of the anachronisms that Katherine would probably have caught as I prepared to leave. Did young women paint their nails in the 1890s? Had nail polish even been invented yet? I had no clue.
“Well, it is paint, sort of,” I said.
“Me mom says…” He shook his head and fell silent.
“What does your mom say, Kiernan?” He didn’t answer. “No, really, I won’t be angry. What does she say?”
“She says only whores wear paint,” he said, staring down at the grass. “They usually wear it on their faces, though. I never even heard of painted toes.”
“Well,” I replied, “what your mom says might be true in Ireland and maybe even in Chicago. I don’t know, since it’s my first time here. But in New York, all of the finest ladies polish their nails—toes and fingers. Some of them even glue tiny sparkly stones on the middle of their fingernails.”
“Really?” he asked, sliding a bit down the bank to look more closely at my toes. “It looks like the paint is still wet. C’n I touch it?”
“Sure,” I said with a laugh, holding out one foot toward him. “The polish is completely dry—it’s been dry for days.”
He reached out a tentative finger, touching the nail of my big toe, and I had a sudden vivid memory of Trey tracing the outlines of my toes as we sat on the couch in my room, just after Katherine disappeared. I felt a bit guilty—I’d promised Trey I would stay away from tall, dark strangers at the fair. Kiernan certainly didn’t fit the tall part of the description yet, and there wasn’t anything even remotely romantic about his interest in my toenails, but I was pretty sure that Trey would be jealous if he knew. So after a moment, I tucked my foot demurely back under my skirt.
I didn’t have a watch, but since Kiernan already knew about the CHRONOS key anyway, I looked around to make sure that no one else was watching and then pressed the center to pull up the display. It was a little after noon. The mayor’s group would be leaving the grounds of the Exposition around a quarter to one to take the train into the city, where the large Auxiliary Building was located. I pulled the Expo map from my bag and flipped it over, spreading it out on the grass in front of me.
“You don’ need the map,” he said. “I c’n find any of the exhibits…”
“What about in Chicago itself?” I asked, and he responded with a crooked grin.
“Prob’ly. I been there three times—all the way to the main downtown. Our room is closer here to the fairgroun’, but I went in wi’ me dad when he was lookin’ for work las’ spring.”
“Do you know how to find the Auxiliary Building?”
“Easy,” he said. “I been there once already. The ladies from London were here for some World’s Congress for Women or somethin’ like that, an’ they wen’ there t’ listen t’ speeches. That’s pretty much all they do there—people stan’ up an’ talk an’ then more people talk. It’s no fun at all—but I s’pose that’s where the lady wi’ the purple feather is goin’?”
“You guessed it,” I said. “I’m really hoping to avoid the trip into the city, if we can. The plan is to try and catch her before she gets on the train, but if I can’t get a moment to speak to her alone, we’ll need to follow them.”
“There’s a lot of differ’nt stations here, though…”
“They’ll be at the Sixtieth Street station—the one closest to where they’re having lunch.”
He looked as though he was about to ask how I knew this, so I tried a bit of redirection.
“Can you go find a garbage bin?” I asked, handing him the wrappers and banana peels and other remnants of our lunch. “I’m going to see if I can squeeze my feet back into these blood-y aw-ful hor-rid rot-ten shoes,” I added, whacking the boots with my hand with each syllable. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to trade with me? Yours might be too small, but I bet they’d still be more comfortable.”
He giggled and shook his head. “No, Miss Kate. I don’ even think me mom would trade you—those boots are pretty enough if all you gotta do is sit, but not too practic’l for workin’ or walkin’ or stuff.”
“Amen to that, kiddo.”
“So why did you buy them?” he asked.
I felt a slight pang as I remembered asking my mom that same question about her heels the night we had dinner with Katherine. It seemed like an eternity had passed instead of only a little more than a month.
“They were a gift. I’d much rather have on my Skechers,” I answered, holding up my hand as he started to ask the inevitable question. “And yes, those are something else they sell in New York.”
I waited until he was out of sight to pull a small tube of antiseptic cream and an adhesive bandage from my bag—both of which were almost certainly not for sale in 1893, even in New York. After taking care of my feet, I pulled on my stockings and tackled the shoes. They took forever to get on without Connor’s buttonhook thingy, and they were still uncomfortable. The long soak in the lagoon seemed to have reduced the swelling a bit, however, and a quick test proved that I could walk without too much pain.
The embankment where we had eaten lunch was on the side of the lagoon closest to the Midway, only a few minutes’ walk to the Sixtieth Street station. We arrived a bit ahead of the expected twelve-forty-five departure so that we could, once again, find a place to sit relatively unobserved before Katherine’s group arrived. I sent Kiernan off to buy us a couple of subway tokens, just in case we did have to board, and to find us a spot on a bench.
Meanwhile, I doubled back one block to visit the “necessary” that I had spotted on our walk over. The “Public Comfort Station” was much larger and more modern than I had feared it might be, although the multiple layers of clothing were still a royal pain.
I was rearranging my bonnet in the small dressing mirror above the sink when I felt a light tap at my elbow. It was Katherine. She grabbed my arm and yanked me around the corner.
“I thought that I saw you coming in here,” she said in a low whisper. “Mrs. Salter—or whoever she is—followed me. She’s in there.” She jerked her head toward one of the stalls. “If you want to talk we need to leave now—we have only a few moments. I can’t seem to shake that woman.”
We dashed across the street toward the buildings that the various states had sponsored to parade their individual accomplishments, history, agriculture, and industry. The California Building was directly opposite the restrooms. I followed Katherine through the doorway and over to a gigantic tower made entirely of oranges, which I had to admit looked much more impressive in living color than it had in the black-and-white photos that I had seen. The display was apparently getting a bit overripe, however, as the unmistakable tang of molded citrus swirled in the air around us.
Once we were out of view of the entrance, Katherine held up my wrist to compare my bracelet to her own. The chains were different, but the charms were identical—a single jade and pearl hourglass, with a small chip in exactly the same place. “Tell me who you are, where you got this bracelet, and why you are here,” she said.
“I can’t answer the first question,” I told her. “But the answer to the second question is that you gave it to me. And I’m here to tell you that you need to return to CHRONOS headquarters immediately. Go straight to the stable point near the cabin. I’ll get a messenger to contact Saul—”
“But why? This isn’t standard protocol!” she said. “I’ll be back at the same time whether we finish our work here or not. CHRONOS doesn’t interrupt the jump even for a family emergency.”
“What is standard protocol if the historian is in danger?” I asked. “You are in danger, even if headquarters doesn’t know it.”
She didn’t answer, so I continued, looking her directly in the eyes. “Listen carefully. I’m going to tell you as much as I can. I can’t tell you everything without—well, you understand, right?”
“You don’t want to mess up the rest of the timeline if you can avoid it.”
“Right. Tell HQ that you’re sick and cancel your next jump.” She started to interrupt again, but I held up a hand. “You’re creative—you’ll think of something. A stomach bug might be convincing given recent events. Oh, and keep that appointment with your gynecologist, okay?”
Her eyes widened, and I continued. “Your suspicions about Saul are correct,” I said, and then paused, trying to decide how much I could tell without changing her actions. “He’s been bringing medicines from your era back to this one. But you cannot confront him about it until he returns from the next jump to Boston—the one you’ll be skipping.”
“Why do I need to skip that jump?” she asked.
“Because I don’t want to have to travel back, track you down, and extract you again at that location!” I said, a bit exasperated. “You need to stay put in your own time for the next few days.”
I made myself take a deep, calming breath and continued. “When Saul gets back, try to convince him to talk to Angelo—but wait to tell him about the baby, okay? You’ve got a solo trip planned next week, correct?”
She nodded. “To Boston, 1853.”
“You do need to make that trip. It’s…” I hesitated. “It’s safe.” I didn’t sound very convincing on that point, even to myself. The image of Katherine’s face after her fight with Saul floated before me, and I couldn’t help but remember her description of Angelo’s and Shaila’s deaths, but I pressed on. “And it’s important.”
“Is that all?” she asked.
“Try to avoid Mrs. Salter?”
“Who isn’t actually Mrs. Salter, according to you. A woman, I might add, who looks quite a bit like you, beneath the superficial differences in hair color and the glasses. Who is she? Is she the reason I’m in danger?”
I shook my head. “I’m going to have to follow the lead of my mentor here and tell you that’s strictly on a need-to-know basis, and—”
“And I don’t need to know. Funny. That’s the same line my mentor uses.”
“Well…” I shrugged. “It’s not exactly an original thought. Suffice it to say that if you can avoid her on the way back to the stable point, it would probably be for the best.”
“That may be easier said than done.” She narrowed her eyes slightly, and I could tell she was still trying to decide whether to trust me. “So tell me, how did that charm get chipped? The little hourglass?”
“An altercation between a carriage door and a starstruck young CHRONOS agent, as I understand it. Mr. Douglass is over at the Haiti exhibit, so you might want to avoid him as well—just in case he remembers the incident and asks you to return his handkerchief.”
Katherine gave me a cool, measured stare. “I’m the only one who knows that story, so you must have gotten it from me… but I have a very hard time believing that I would have directed you to interfere like this. It’s entirely against—”
“Yes,” I said with a tight smile. “I know. Against CHRONOS regulations.”
There was another long look and then she sighed deeply. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to tell Saul that I’m leaving. I’ll make some excuse. He may want to come back with me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t, given his recent behavior.”
“Just be sure that you don’t let him know the reason why…”
“I won’t,” Katherine said. “I’m going to follow your instructions to the letter. Skip the next jump, keep the gyno appointment, and avoid discussing my suspicions about Saul’s actions—and that’s all they are, I would remind you, suspicions—until the 26th. I’ll make the jump on the 27th. I just hope you—or maybe I should say we—are doing the correct thing here.”
I thought back to Connor’s comments a few weeks earlier. “So do I. But as a good friend of mine—of ours, actually—recently told me, I’m pretty sure that what we’re doing is right. Sometimes, right and correct aren’t the same thing.”
She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she nodded and took a few steps toward the exit, before turning back. “Just in case we run into the ersatz Mrs. Salter, perhaps we should leave separately? She seems to have taken a rather intense dislike to you and your young friend.”
I agreed, and Katherine headed toward the door. I don’t know if it was a premonition or just that I was feeling nervous, but I only gave her about a twenty-second lead and then I headed toward the same exit that she had taken. As luck would have it, a large group burst through the door and I shoved my way against the tide of the crowd, which was almost entirely over the age of sixty. I muttered apologies and stood on tiptoe to look for Katherine over their shoulders as I pushed through the last few people and began to make my way down the steps in front of the building. One old woman rapped me on the leg with her walking cane. I really couldn’t blame her, since I’d nearly knocked her down.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t—” I began, and then stopped short as someone shoved the woman directly into me. I stumbled on the first step and just barely caught her before she fell. I was busy trying to set her back on her now very shaky feet when her assailant put his palm against my chest and pushed hard.
I fell down the last two steps and landed ungracefully on my backside. The man’s suit threw me off for a moment, since I’d previously seen him only in a ratty T-shirt and jeans. The jagged scar near his right temple was new, and it looked a bit like something that one might get if he were whacked very hard with a tire iron. He had added a truly pathetic little mustache, but there was no mistaking the face. I’d seen it too recently and much too closely for my liking.
“Hi, Katie,” Simon said with a glint in his eye. “Imagine meeting you here. Catch you later, okay?”
And with that, he began walking at a rapid clip toward the Sixtieth Street station. Several members of the crowd I’d just pushed my way through came over to help me up, and one rather gallant gentleman, who was eighty if he was a day, tottered a few steps after Simon, shouting and shaking a fist in the air.
By the time I was on my feet, Simon was halfway to the station. A bit farther ahead I saw Katherine, who hadn’t managed to shake Prudence. The two of them were approaching the platform where the mayor’s group had assembled to await the train, which was chugging toward the stop. I raised my skirt and managed a weak imitation of a run, but it was clear that I wouldn’t reach them before Simon did.
The only thing I could hope was that my voice would travel better than I could. I pulled in a deep breath and shouted, pointing directly at Simon, “He’s got a gun! Stop him—he’s got a gun!”
I’m not sure if the group at the station heard me, or if they heard one of the many fairgoers who screamed and repeated “a gun” in the chaos of the next few seconds. But the mayor’s party all looked in our direction. Simon glanced over his shoulder once and then turned back toward the platform, his hand still in his pocket, as Prudence, with a maneuver worthy of a defensive lineman, tackled Katherine to the ground.
They both fell forward, Katherine’s sleeve snagging against the wooden railing, ripping the cloth from shoulder to elbow, just before her head smacked the edge of the platform. The screams of the crowd were now mingling with the roar of the train as it pulled to a stop. Saul knelt beside Katherine, and Prudence jumped to her feet, scanning the faces in the station.
I rammed my way through the mass of people, trying to get closer to Simon, but I couldn’t find him in the crowd. I didn’t think that he would have been brazen enough to make a temporal jump in broad daylight with hundreds of people nearby, but then he had been perfectly willing to make a jump in a crowded Metro station after snatching the diary, so who knew?
Two men in matching suits were walking purposefully toward the mayor. A Columbian Exposition security badge was visible on one of their shoulders. “False alarm, everyone. False alarm—the young lady was mistaken. We have everything in hand.”
Mayor Harrison walked over to talk to the men, shaking their hands and clapping them on the shoulders as he spoke. I couldn’t help but wonder how this incident would affect him, just hours away from the moment when an assassin would show up on his doorstep, requesting a word. Would he be less inclined to let a stranger into his house without having someone at least do a quick frisk for weapons? Or was this type of scare a pretty routine occurrence in a Chicago that was only slightly tamer than the Wild West?
I spun around again, still searching for Simon, but there was no sign of him. Saul was holding a handkerchief against the side of Katherine’s head. I could see a bit of blood on the white cloth, but it didn’t look as though she was badly hurt.
Kiernan had now spotted me and was running toward the platform. I held up one hand and motioned for him to wait on the bench—the last thing I wanted was for him to be in the middle of all this. He nodded but flicked his eyes behind me in a worried fashion.
As I turned back toward the platform, I came face-to-face with the reason Kiernan looked so concerned. Prudence was directly in front of me, her eyes intense enough to burn a hole through the lenses of her wire-rimmed glasses. “I had this covered, Kate,” she said in low whisper, grabbing my upper arm and squeezing hard. “Katherine would have been perfectly okay and we would have avoided a spectacle. You’re meddling in things you don’t understand.”
I fought down the urge to laugh—she sounded like the villain in a Scooby-Doo episode. “What do you mean you had this covered?” I asked. “You’re the one I’m trying to protect her from—you and your Cyrist thug. I need to find him…”
“Don’t bother, you silly little cow,” she said. “Simon is gone.” She jerked her head toward the two large security guys who had spoken with the mayor. “I had men in place to grab the idiot. He would never have gotten near her. And if I had ever gotten two minutes alone with Katherine, she would have been back in her own time by now, with Saul none the wiser, and I might have actually had a chance to lure Simon over to my side.”
I was thoroughly confused. “You’re trying to save Katherine? But your group is the one—”
“You think this is for her sake?” Prudence asked with a harsh laugh. “Oh, no. This is personal. Did Saul really think I would give him that much power? Over me? All he has to do is yank hard on this damned medallion and I’d go out the same way she did.”
“So you’re going to help us fight them?” I asked. Having Prudence on our side would be an incredible advantage, and I could only imagine the joy on Katherine’s face and my mother’s if—
Her lip curled in a sneer, bringing my fantasy to an abrupt end. “I’m not fighting the Cyrists,” she said. “I am the Cyrists. There would be no Cyrist International without me. I was willing to share power with my father, but if he thinks he can push me aside without consequences, he is sadly mistaken. This ends here.
“And you need to listen well, my little niece,” she said, her eyes once more drilling into mine. “I’m letting you go for one reason only—your mother. Deborah had nothing to do with any of this, and it’s possible that she values your life more than my mother valued mine, so—”
“That’s not true, Prudence. Katherine tried to find you, but she can’t use the medallion any more than Saul can.”
Prudence’s expression made it clear that she wasn’t buying it even before she spoke. “You can drop the pretense, Kate. I know about the bargain she made with Saul. The funny thing is that I got the better end of the deal. Poor Deborah had to stay with her.”
Prudence shot a glance back over her shoulder. The train was pulling away from the platform and several of the passengers were craning their necks to look out the windows, just in case the excitement wasn’t really over. Katherine had gotten to her feet and Saul was leading her away from the platform, back toward the main fairground. We couldn’t have planned it better if we had tried, since the minor injury gave Katherine a plausible excuse to terminate the jump early.
Prudence let go of my arm. “Damn it,” she said. “I have to go. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her.”
“Wait,” I called, running a few steps after her. “Don’t bother. She knows—she’s going back to HQ.”
Prudence turned back toward me as I continued. “Katherine will skip the next jump,” I said. “She understands what she needs to do—and not do—over the next few weeks in order to keep the timeline intact.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Well, maybe you’re not entirely worthless,” she said. “I just hope you didn’t screw it up—otherwise it’s going to be very difficult to get back in here to fix things, due to the mess you’ve made. I was trying to do a surgical strike and then you come through like a tank… There’s no telling how many ripples this will create in the timeline.”
It was beyond hypocritical for Prudence, who was working for a radical overhaul of history, to be lecturing me on the sanctity of the timeline, but I suspected that fine point would be lost on her. Rather than stick around and argue, I turned on my heel and headed toward Kiernan, who was still watching us from the sidelines.
Prudence grabbed my arm again, yanking me back to face her. I had an intense desire to flip her over my shoulder and see how pushy she would be when she was flat on her back, but I gritted my teeth and returned her stare.
“We’re not finished here,” she said. “I will keep Simon and anyone else from threatening Katherine on these jumps. Your existence and Deborah’s and mine will be protected. But. Don’t cross me again, Kate. You don’t want to end up on the wrong side of history. You could have a nice, comfy little life if you play things smart. The Cyrists are the future and, given your obvious gifts with the equipment—”
“No.” I opened my mouth again to elaborate, but there was really nothing more to add. So I just repeated it, shaking my head. “No.”
“Suit yourself,” she said, shrugging one shoulder dismissively. “You can’t fight the Cyrists on your own, Kate. You can be one of the Chosen or you can line up with the other sheep to be fleeced and slaughtered.”
I strongly suspected that she was right on the first point, but the casual way she referred to the destruction of those who were not “Chosen” turned my stomach. It also strengthened my resolve. No amount of power should be in the hands of a person who could say something like that with such conviction.
There was, however, little gain to be had in arguing with her. “Are you done?” I asked, my jaw set.
“Just one more little thing,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Stay away from Kiernan. He will be one of the Chosen—and he will be mine.”
I glanced over at the boy who was watching us nervously from the bench. “He’s eight years old, for God’s sake!”
“Now, yes. But he most definitely wasn’t eight when I knew him. And not when you knew him, either,” she added with a smug little smile. “But I guess you lost that bit of memory when the timeline shifted, didn’t you? You’re not the Kate he was in—infatuated with. And I intend to make certain that it stays that way.”
The fact that Prudence could remember a version of me that I would never know bugged me much more than I was willing to let on. Katherine had said I wasn’t the same Kate she would have met if we’d been able to start my training six months earlier, and while I understood this on one level, it was an inconsistency that kept nibbling away at the back of my brain. If I understood Connor’s explanation of the changing timelines, that other Kate shouldn’t exist. Katherine’s cancer would have been a constant in all versions of the timeline. And if so, I would always have started the training when I did and I wouldn’t be listening to stories about this rogue Kate who was off somewhen having adventures I couldn’t recall.
But I had glimpsed that other Kate’s life briefly in the medallion. And Kiernan—the very much grown-up version of Kiernan on the Metro—was clearly thinking of that other Kate when he pulled the band from my hair and slipped it onto his wrist.
Remembering the expression on his face when he looked at me, I felt a sudden rush of empathy. How would it feel to stare into the eyes of someone you loved, someone who had loved you, and see no recognition, no love in return? I would soon know firsthand, assuming I made it back to my own time and found Trey.
I glanced back over at Kiernan. The trains ran on the half hour, and the crowd around the platform had now cleared out entirely, except for an older black groundskeeper who was using a large push broom to sweep bits of debris into a pile behind the ticket booth. Kiernan was still waiting, his face tense and his hands clenching the wooden slats of the bench. He had already been through so much at such a young age.
Despite my decision not to antagonize her, I couldn’t ignore that issue. “What about his dad?” I blurted. “Kiernan said that you were responsible—”
“Kiernan is a little boy with a big imagination,” she snapped, cutting me off. “He doesn’t really believe I had a hand in his father’s death. His mother most certainly doesn’t believe it. And when Kiernan is all grown-up with”—she paused, giving me a suggestive little smile—“adult appetites, he’ll be quite eager to follow me back into the Cyrist fold. Or anywhere else I want him to go.”
Prudence reached into the bodice of her dress and tugged out a thick gold chain with a CHRONOS key at the end. She quickly scanned the area around us and then activated it. “Stay away from Kiernan and stay out of my way. If you can remember those two little things, you should be okay.
“Oh, and be nice to your mother,” she added. Her eyes twitched down to the CHRONOS key and then she was gone.