2
“You’re late, young lady.” Dad shoved a bowl of vegetables into my arms the second I walked in the door. “We’re going to have to hustle to get the jambalaya ready before Sara arrives. The knife is on the table. Chop-chop.”
I rolled my eyes at the lousy pun, even though I really don’t mind them. If Dad is making bad jokes, it means he’s in a good mood.
We both like to cook, but on school nights there’s rarely time for more than soup and sandwiches. On Sundays, however, we go all out. Usually Dad’s girlfriend, Sara, joins us to sample whatever gastronomic experiment is on tap for the week. Unfortunately, the kitchen isn’t really designed for anything more adventurous than microwave pizza. There’s barely room at the counter for one person, let alone two. So I sat at the kitchen table chopping the “holy trinity” of Creole cuisine—bell peppers, celery, and onions—while Dad stood at the sink doing his share of the prep work.
The envelope with Katherine’s will was on the far side of the small table so that it wouldn’t get spattered as I chopped the vegetables. I glanced over at Dad as I pushed the last bits of celery into the bowl. “Mom said to tell you hello. So did Katherine.”
Dad’s smile twisted a bit. “Ouch. How deep am I in it this time?”
I grinned and began slicing the pepper into narrow ribbons. “About chin-deep, I’d say. Katherine said that you helped her find a realtor.”
“I gave her the website of someone that Sara knows and said he might be okay. That’s hardly aiding and abetting the enemy.” He returned to the ham he was chopping. “So is she going to buy a place here?”
“She’s already bought it. Walking distance from Briar Hill, so it must be pretty close by. I thought you knew.”
He chuckled. “No. I think Katherine decided that my life might be easier if I knew less rather than more about her plans. But I will say I’m happy she’s back.” His eyes, the same deep green as my own, darkened. “How is she?”
“You know she’s sick, then?”
“Yeah. She told me in her last email. Really sad. I’ve always liked Katherine, despite your mom’s feelings about her.”
I stacked the thin strips of green pepper and turned them around to start dicing. “To look at her, you wouldn’t think she was dying. Her hair is super short—she said it was from the treatments. I can’t remember what she looked like before, though, except for some really old photos.” I paused for a moment. “Did you tell her about my… panic attacks… or was that Mom?”
“Um… that was me. I hope that’s okay? She emailed me a while back and asked how you were doing. I was worried about you and I wondered if maybe your mom went through something like that when she was your age. I guess I could have asked your mom directly, but getting that sort of information out of Deborah is like pulling teeth.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I just wondered. Did she tell you about the will?”
“No. Didn’t know there was a will. Is she trying to get your mom to take money again?”
“Well, not exactly.” I slid the diced peppers into the bowl with the back of the knife and started on the onions. “Katherine says she’s leaving everything to me, including the big house she just bought. A lot of other stuff, too. And unless Mom has a serious change of heart, I think you’re going to need to be executor or guardian of a trust or something like that.”
Dad narrowly missed slicing his forefinger. He set the knife down carefully on the cutting board and pulled up the other chair, wiping his hands on the dish towel. “A trust?” I handed him the envelope, and he was silent for a moment as he glanced through the legal documents. “I didn’t even know Katherine had enough money to buy a house, especially around here. I thought maybe she’d be looking at a townhome or something. Sara’s friend owes me a beer—hell, a six-pack—for sending him that commission.”
“There’s more,” I said. “Katherine wants me to move in with her—well, Mom, too, but I think she knew what her answer would be. She knows I’m here part of the week and with Mom the other, so she said if Mom said no, she would ask you instead.”
“That’s a condition of the will?”
“No. But I want to do it.”
Dad looked at me for a long moment. “Are you sure, Katie? I doubt the next few months will be easy ones for your grandmother. And this may sound a little cold, but the closer you get to her, the more it will hurt when she’s gone. I mean, I care about Katherine, but my first consideration has to be you.”
“I know, Dad. But I think she’s lonely.” I considered mentioning the medallion to him, but I wasn’t sure he would believe me. He wouldn’t think I was lying, but he might start worrying about whether I had a screw loose. And even though she hadn’t sworn me to secrecy or anything, it seemed like a breach of faith to talk about what I had seen with anyone else before Katherine had a chance to tell me more. “I want to get to know her. Before it’s too late…”
He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “What does your mom say?”
“Mom won’t move in with her, even on a part-time basis. But other than that, she says it’s up to us. And you could stay here on the days I’m with Mom so that you can spend some nights with Sara…” Dad’s face turned a deep shade of red and I mentally kicked myself. I’d realized months ago that Sara stayed over on the nights I was with Mom, but that probably wasn’t the smoothest way of letting him know that I knew.
“Um. Right.” He stood up and went back to the cutting board. “I think I should have a chat with your mom before we discuss this further. Since I’m in chin-deep already, I’d like to avoid making things worse. But if she’s really okay with this and you’re sure it’s what you want…”
Once the jambalaya was bubbling fragrantly on a back burner, Dad picked up his cell phone and the will and went into the bedroom. I pulled my astronomy book out of my backpack and tried to read the assignment, but concentrating wasn’t easy. I kept expecting to hear raised voices coming from the bedroom—although that was probably silly since Dad never yelled, and it would be pretty hard to hear Mom over his cell even if she was screaming at the top of her lungs.
I had just gotten up to give the pot a stir when Dad returned. He handed me the will and a small scrap of paper, on which he’d jotted a phone number.
“That went better than I expected. Your mom seems kind of… subdued, I guess. And she says this decision is up to us… just leave her out of it as much as possible. The only time she got angry was when I suggested that she might want to think about spending some time with Katherine. She told me to mind my own business. Not in polite terms, either.”
He pulled the plates from one of the small overhead cabinets—a complicated process that required him to first move the cereal bowls and a small colander. “Sara will be here any minute. Why don’t we all have dinner and then you can call your grandmother with the news? I just hope she bought a place with a nice big kitchen.”
I was up well before dawn on Monday, with much more energy than I usually have in the early mornings. I showered and dressed, and then tapped on Dad’s door. He was awake, but he didn’t look happy about it. “You need to hurry, Dad, or we’ll be late.”
He yawned and stumbled toward the shower. “Patience, grasshopper. It’s a five-minute walk.”
When I called her with the news the night before, Katherine gave me directions to the house and asked if we would stop by for a quick breakfast before school. “I know it won’t give us much time to talk—really talk. I just want to see you. I’m so happy you’re going to be staying here. And I want you to meet Connor—and Daphne, too, of course.”
I didn’t have a chance to ask who Daphne was before she hung up, but I found out the second that Dad and I walked through the front door of the huge greystone house. A large Irish setter jumped up, placed both paws on my shoulders, and gave me a long, wet slurp on the side of my face. She had big dark eyes and little specks of gray on her auburn muzzle.
“Daphne, you beast, get down! You’ll knock Kate over!” Katherine laughed as she pulled at the dog’s collar. “I hope you aren’t afraid of dogs, dear. She’s really a sweetheart—just doesn’t think before she leaps. Did she hurt you?”
“No, she’s beautiful! She’s so light for such a big dog.”
“Yes, well, she’s mostly fur. And she’s a bit overexcited, I’m afraid. She’s been cooped up in a kennel while we were moving in. She’s so happy to have a whole new house and yard to explore that she’s acting like a pup again.”
Katherine closed the door behind us. “Harry, it’s wonderful to see you. Come, put down your things and let’s head to the kitchen so that the two of you can make it to class on time.”
The kitchen was a big, open space. The first tentative rays of sunlight were shining through the sliding door, which opened onto a small patio. At the far end of the room was a large bay window with an upholstered seat that looked like the perfect place to curl up with a good book on a rainy day.
“Harry probably remembers that I am the world’s worst cook,” Katherine said. “I decided it would be better to feed you bagels than to torture you with a grandmotherly attempt at blueberry muffins. There’s cream cheese, fruit, orange juice, and coffee. And yes, Harry, I do have the kettle on for tea. Earl Grey or English breakfast?”
I looked toward the counter where she was pointing, and at first glance I thought there was a lamp behind the big bagel box. Then I realized it was the medallion, shining as brightly as it had in the restaurant.
I was surprised to see Dad stop looking through the bagel options and pick it up. “You still have this!”
“Oh, yes,” Katherine said. “That goes everywhere I do. My lucky charm, I guess.”
“This really brings back memories for me. Katie, I’m sure you can’t remember this at all, but you were totally fascinated by this when you were a baby. Every time Katherine came to visit, you’d crawl into her lap and stare at it. I don’t think there was anything you liked better. You would smile and laugh like this thing was the best toy in the world. You used to call it…”
“Blue light,” Katherine said softly.
“That’s right,” Dad said. “We weren’t sure what you were saying at first—it sounded like ‘boo-lye.’ Even after you knew all of your colors, you still called this your ‘blue light.’ When your mom or I would correct you, you would get all serious and say, ‘No, Daddy, that’s a blue light.’ We finally gave up.” He tousled my dark hair, the way he’d always done when I was small. “You were such a cutie.”
He set the medallion back on the counter and I picked it up for a closer look. It was amazingly lightweight for its size. I could barely feel it in the palm of my hand. Curious, I brushed the glowing center with the fingers of my other hand and felt a sudden, intense pulse of energy. Small beams of light shot up at random angles from the circle and the room seemed to fade into the background. I could hear Dad and Katherine talking, but their conversation sounded like something on a radio or TV playing in a distant part of the house.
The kitchen was replaced by a swirl of images, sounds, and scents flashing through my head in rapid succession: the wind blowing through a field of wheat, large white buildings that hummed softly and seemed to be perched near the ocean, a dark hole that might have been a cave, the sound of someone—a child?—sobbing.
Then I was back in the wheat field and it was so real that I could smell the grain and see small insects and specks of dust suspended in the air. I saw my hands, reaching toward a young man’s face—dark, intense eyes staring down at me through long lashes, black hair brushing my fingers as I traced the contours of his tanned, muscular neck. I could feel a strong grip at my waist, pulling me toward his body, warm breath against my face, his lips nearly touching mine—
“Kate?” Dad’s voice cut through the fog surrounding my brain as he grabbed the hand holding the medallion. “Katie? Are you okay?” I took a deep breath and put the medallion down, clutching the counter to keep my balance.
“Um… yeah.” I could feel the blush rise to my cheeks. I was pretty sure that this was exactly how I would feel the first time Dad saw me kissing someone—which was very nearly what had happened, or so it seemed. “Just dizzy… a bit.”
Katherine pushed the medallion toward the back of the countertop. Her face was pale, and she shook her head once, almost imperceptibly, when I caught her eye. “I would imagine she just needs her breakfast, Harry.” She took my arm and led me toward the breakfast nook.
It was a good thing, too. I was feeling very shaky on my feet. I’d never had any sort of hallucination, and the sounds and images had seemed so real, like I was actually experiencing them firsthand.
Dad insisted that I stay seated while he brought me a bagel and some juice. He had just returned to the table and was starting another “Do you remember…” story, when a tall, red-haired man of indeterminate age appeared in the doorway.
“Good morning, Katherine.”
“Connor!” said Katherine. “I was just about to ring you to say our new housemates have arrived. This gentleman is Harry Keller. And this is my granddaughter, Kate.”
“Connor Dunne. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He shook Dad’s hand briskly and then turned to me. “And Kate—I’m glad you’re here. We have a lot to do.”
“You need help with unpacking?” I asked.
Connor cast a quizzical glance at me and then looked back at my grandmother.
“Connor,” she said. “Relax. We’ll have plenty of time to discuss arranging the library once Kate and Harry have settled in. Have a bagel and enjoy the morning sunshine. You’ll be happy to know they actually had the pumpernickel this time.”
She turned to Dad. “Connor has worked with me for the past two years and I simply couldn’t manage without him. He was helping me digitize the collection, but we were only about halfway through when…” She paused, as though searching for the right word. “When we decided to move.”
“Do you have a lot of books?” I asked.
Dad snorted as he slathered some cream cheese on his bagel. “Katherine’s collection puts Amazon to shame.”
Katherine laughed and shook her head. “I don’t have nearly as many books as that—but I do have a lot of volumes that you won’t find there or much of anywhere else.”
“What kind of books?” I asked. “Come to think of it, I don’t really know what you do…”
“I’m a historian, like your mother.” She paused. “You’re surprised that Deborah would go into the same field that I did, aren’t you?” I was surprised, but I didn’t think that would be a very polite thing to say. “Deborah fought it, but I’m afraid it’s genetic. She had no choice. She studies contemporary history, however. Most of my research deals with more distant eras…”
Connor chuckled softly, although I really didn’t get the joke, and then grabbed a couple of bagels from the box and headed for one of the two staircases in the foyer. Clearly, he was a man of few words and a big appetite.
“And I’m a researcher more than a teacher,” Katherine continued. “I haven’t taught since your grandfather died.”
“Grandfather and Prudence?” I regretted the words immediately—it had to be hard talking about the death of a child, even many years later.
But if it bothered Katherine, she didn’t let on. “Yes, of course. And Prudence.”
After breakfast we were given the grand tour, with Daphne padding up the stairs behind us. It was a very large house, with one curved staircase going up to the right and another, the one that Connor had followed, going up to the left.
“The living quarters are on this side. You each have a small suite of rooms—we can redecorate if they don’t suit you.” We walked down the hallway a bit and she pointed me toward a suite that was about the same size as our entire cottage at Briar Hill. Then she disappeared down the corridor, chatting with Dad.
I stepped into the main room in the suite, which was painted a very pale blue. The canopy bed in the center was white wrought iron, with scrollwork and a blue and white gingham quilt. It looked much more comfortable than Dad’s sofa bed. I sat on the edge of the mattress and looked around. There was a private bath and dressing area to the right of the bed and a sitting area to the left with a sofa, a desk, and two tall windows that looked out over the back gardens. It was beautiful and spacious, but I was also glad that I wouldn’t be leaving my small nook in the townhome behind entirely. I liked my glow-in-the-dark stars, my clutter, and my skylight, and I wasn’t sure that this room would ever feel like it was mine in quite the same way.
“So… will it do?” I jumped slightly, startled to find Katherine at the door. My expression was apparently answer enough, because she didn’t pause. “I sent your father up to the attic to check something for me. Hopefully, he’ll get distracted by the chaos there and we’ll have a few minutes to talk. We have more work to do in the next few months than you can possibly imagine, my dear.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, placing a ziplock bag that contained a small brown book between us. “So much depends on you and your abilities and we haven’t even begun to test them. I just thought we had more time.”
“My abilities? Is this related to the medallion?”
Katherine nodded. “It is. And to your so-called panic attacks. I’m sorry you had to go through that alone—I know it was scary.”
I made a small sick face. “It was awful. I felt like something was wrong—really wrong. But I didn’t—don’t—know what it was. Every inch of me just… I don’t know… screamed that something was out of place, out of kilter. And it’s not like it ended. It’s more that it faded. Whatever was wrong was still not… fixed, but I became accustomed to it, maybe? That’s not right, either.” I shook my head. “I can’t explain it.”
Katherine took my hand. “The first time was on May 2nd of last year, correct? And the second began on the afternoon of January 15th?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Yes. Dad told you the dates?” I was surprised to know that he even remembered the exact days.
“He didn’t have to. I felt it, too. But I had an advantage in that I understood immediately that I was experiencing a temporal aberration.”
I could feel my eyebrow beginning to arch upward, but I tried to keep my expression neutral. It was so nice to have someone believe they weren’t panic attacks, but what on earth did Katherine mean by a temporal aberration?
“And unlike you,” Katherine said, “I had the medallion. You must have been frightened half to death.” Her blue eyes softened. “You look like her, you know.”
“Like my mom?”
“Well, yes, a bit—but more like Prudence. They aren’t identical twins. Your eyes are your father’s, however. There’s no mistaking that green.” Katherine’s thin hand reached out to tuck in one of the stray dark curls that always seem to escape any hair band or clip.
“Deborah’s hair is a much tamer version—you have Pru’s wild head of curls. I could never get the tangles out…”
After a long moment, she smiled and shook her head, back in the present now. “I’m wasting time.” She lowered her voice and spoke quickly. “Kate, it is going to happen again. I’m not sure when there will be another temporal shift, but I suspect that it will be soon. I don’t want to scare you, but you’re the only one who has the ability to set this right. And you must set this right. Otherwise everything—and I do mean everything—is lost.”
Katherine pressed the book into my hand as she stood to leave. “Read this. It will give you more questions than answers, but I think it’s the quickest way to convince you that this is all very real.”
She reached the door and then looked back, a stern expression on her face. “And you absolutely must not hold the medallion again until you are ready. It was careless of me to leave it on the counter like that, but I had no idea that you would be able to trigger it.” She shook her head briskly. “You very nearly left us, young lady, and I’m afraid that you would not have found your way back.”
Dad and I made it to class with only a few minutes to spare. He’d chatted on the way there about a telescope that was mounted in Katherine’s attic, left by the previous owners. It was too bright in the DC area now for the thing to be of much use, but back when the house was built, he said, that wouldn’t have been the case. I nodded in the right places but barely heard his words.
I had a hard time focusing in class that day. Too many things were racing through my head for trigonometry or English lit to be of much interest. One minute I would remind myself that Katherine did have a brain tumor and her comments could be the result of too much pressure on the hippocampus or whatever. Then I’d remember the sensation of touching the medallion—the roaring sound, the scent of the field, and the warmth of his skin beneath my hand—and I would know beyond all doubt that my grandmother was telling the truth, which led to the question of how on earth she expected me to fix things. And then, two minutes later, I was back to doubting the whole experience.
When the final bell rang, I stopped by Dad’s office to give him a quick hug and then walked the half mile to the Metro station at a rapid clip, hoping that I’d make it to karate class on time for a change. I sank into an empty seat on the train and automatically put my backpack next to me to discourage unwanted company, just as Mom taught me to do when riding alone. The car was pretty empty, anyway—just a girl filing her nails and listening to her iPod and a middle-aged man with a legal file full of papers.
The trip rarely took longer than fifteen minutes this time of day, and I usually just put on my headphones and zoned out, watching the graffiti on the buildings for the first mile or so until the train submerged below ground. Some of the artwork has been there for years, with new layers piled on top of the older, faded images. Occasionally a building owner would paint over a wall, but the artists were soon back, drawn to the fresh blank canvas. Only a half dozen or so buildings remained blank for long. Some, like the tire warehouse, had built tall fences topped with razor wire around the wall that faced the tracks. The Cyrist temple we passed was also clean—a dazzling, pristine white like all of their buildings, which were repainted regularly by church members and, rumor had it, guarded by large and aggressive Dobermans.
Today, however, I was too distracted to pay much attention to the urban artscape. I carefully removed the book Katherine had given me from its ziplock bag. The cover had clearly seen better days, having been patched at least once with binding tape like the older books at the school library. It looked like a diary of some sort, and this was confirmed when I opened it and saw the handwritten pages inside.
The paper was in remarkably good shape compared to the cover. It wasn’t yellowed in the slightest. My first thought was that newer pages had been bound inside the old cover for some reason, but as I ran my fingers across the lined paper and took a closer look, that seemed unlikely. The pages were a bit too thick, for one thing—even thicker than cardstock. The weight of the book suggested that it should contain at least a hundred pages, but I did a quick count and there were only about forty individual sheets.
I tentatively bent a corner down and was surprised to see the odd paper pop back up, unwrinkled. I tried to tear a small piece from the edge, to no avail. A few quick experiments later, I had determined that you couldn’t write on the paper with ballpoint pen, pencil, or marker. Water beaded right off, even though the surface didn’t feel laminated. Chewing gum stuck momentarily, but it peeled up quickly and didn’t leave any residue. Within a few minutes, I had decided that the stuff was just plain indestructible—except for fire, perhaps, but I couldn’t try that on the Metro.
I then began to examine the writing on the pages, and I noticed that only the first quarter of the diary had been used. Each of the written pages, except for the first, appeared to begin in midsentence. There didn’t seem to be any continuity at all from one page to the next. It was most definitely an odd little book. The only thing that looked normal about the diary appeared inside the cover, in very faded ink.
Katherine Shaw
Chicago, 1890
The train was nearing my stop. I slipped the book back into the plastic bag and then paused, sensing that I was being watched. That probably wasn’t too surprising given that I had been trying to systematically mutilate a book—strange conduct, even by subway standards.
I glanced up and saw two young men, now seated at the very end of the subway car, three rows away. I didn’t recall anyone getting on at the last stop, and although I had to admit that I had been a bit preoccupied, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they had just appeared out of nowhere. They were facing me, so I could see them clearly. One of the two was a bit overweight, about my age, with dark blond hair and sallow skin that looked like he rarely ventured outdoors. The emblem on his rather worn T-shirt reminded me of an album cover, but I couldn’t place the band. His eyes darted down to his lap and he began writing on a small pad as soon as I looked in their direction.
The other guy was tall, several years older, and very handsome, with longish black hair. I felt a slow flush spread to my cheeks as I recognized the dark eyes that I had seen when I touched the medallion. My hands tingled slightly as I remembered the warmth of his skin beneath them, the feeling of his hand at my waist, and the warmth that had rushed through my body at his touch. I couldn’t imagine how he had stepped out of my hallucination and into the Metro, but I was absolutely certain that this was the same guy.
He looked a bit older now than when I’d seen him earlier, and his expression was an odd mix of sadness, fear, and the same longing that I remembered from my vision. He gripped the seat cushion and didn’t look away, even when the other guy elbowed him sharply. I was the one who finally broke our locked gaze.
The train began to slow almost immediately after I glanced away, and I quickly looked up again. The doors hadn’t opened yet, and only a second had passed, but both of them were gone. I walked toward the bench where they had been seated and put out my hand, half expecting to encounter a solid form—or lose a finger—but the space was empty. I was almost convinced that I had simply imagined them, but two indentations in the orange vinyl subway cushion were gradually smoothing out, just as they always did when a rider left. I brushed my fingers along the edge of the cushion that the tall young man had clutched so tightly and found that it was still warm from his hand.