Infinityglass

Chapter 20

Hallie

Suddenly, I was staring up at a bright blue sky rather than the gray one that had been there ten seconds ago.

A crowd of rips gathered, staring at me, just like ones we’d encountered in the alley in the French Quarter.

Two seconds later, my mother appeared.

I took off running, keeping to the Saint Charles side of the park, dodging in and out of crowds. It might be impossible to outrun a rip, but I was sure as hell going to try.

“Hallie, stop!”

I paused to look over my shoulder. My mother. The woman could move in heels, I’d give her that. “Enjoying the early nineteenth century? Because there’s a good chance it’s about to enjoy me.”

I took off again, but I’d chosen the wrong direction. The first rip caught me just outside the international exhibition.

The boy was Chinese. He sat beside a merchant, presumably his father, as they took items out of wooden shipping crates and cataloged them. He’d been crying.

“But I don’t understand why anyone would treat a human this way.”

He spoke a language that wasn’t my own, yet was. I understood it, and the source of the pain in his chest.

“There are slaves in China.” Father speaks with a discordant note, not to admonish me, but to teach me. “The number is small, and the practice is waning, but almost every culture has a race that they treat as half man, half thing.”

“I will never treat a human with anything resembling this contempt.” I make the vow to myself and to my family’s honor.

“I know, son of mine. This is why I brought you here, to America. To see the different ways people live, and so you can choose your own path. Kindness is always the answer. Turn your inner concerns outward, and live for others rather than yourself.”

My father grins and holds up a tiny golden Buddha. “It doesn’t hurt if you sell them a few things along the way.”

When I opened my eyes, I was on the ground, on my back.

My mother had seen the possession, watched it change my body, and she was afraid. “Your face …”

I didn’t have time to enjoy her fear. I was too busy anticipating an onslaught. What I saw when I looked around rocked me to the core.

The rips were watching us. Not me, us. Me and my mother.

Some held back, and others surged forward to stare. Even though they drifted closer to me than her, they still hovered, unable to keep their eyes in one place. Unable to make a decision.

“Do you see that?” I asked her softly. “They can’t decide if they want to pick me or you. You might not be activated, but you’re still an Infinityglass.”

“Maybe. But you’re the powerful one.” She said the words loudly, like she wanted to make sure they could hear. And then she pointed. “She’s the powerful one.”

The rips knew their best option, and now they were advancing. I felt the pull, but it wasn’t as strong as usual. I guessed I had something to thank my mother for after all, even if it was only a momentary distraction.

I moved closer to her. The rips followed me, and once again split their focus between us. My mind scrambled for a way to draw out the confusion as long as I could. Then I caught sight of Dune.

He approached us at a run, grabbing me and pulling me away from Mom and the rips.

“Don’t give in, Hallie.”

He put his body between the rips and me.

It worked.

They were staring only at my mother now, and she gaped at them in horror. They began to circle her, and I held on to Dune instead of being absorbed into the lives of those already dead.

“Can you get us out?” he asked.

I’d have to make a choice.

I stared at my mother, who even now was trying to wave the rips in my direction.

I took Dune’s hand and closed the rip world.

I left my mother behind.

My hair was still wet from the shower when I climbed into his lap, which was my new favorite place. If we had to be vertical. “She’ll get out. She’s not activated. She doesn’t have enough strength to sustain them.”

He held me close, and his big hand ran slow circles over my back. “Are you okay?”

“At least I know the truth now.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

I wanted to call my dad, see if he’d known the truth, any part of it. “Not right now. Right now let’s talk about how you got this scar.” I smoothed my finger over his eyebrow.

“I fell off the kitchen counter when I was three.”

“Why were you on the kitchen counter?”

“I was trying to get glue off the top of the fridge so I could attach my Matchbox cars to the coffee table.”

“I bet you were a mess of a toddler.” And got away with everything. No mother would’ve been able to resist those eyes. “Do you have siblings?”

“Three. Two of them own a kick-ass resort on the Kona coast. Obviously, I’ve never been to visit. The other is in med school at USC.”

“You’re the baby?”

“Yep.”

I tickled him, hoping he’d tickle back, because that got his hands near the places I wanted them. When he didn’t, I kissed him and slid my hands up the back of his shirt.

“Hallie. We need to talk about today. I don’t want you to swallow the truth. It’ll burn a hole through you.”

“Why can’t we act like everything is normal?” I removed my hands, put them in my lap. “Just for today?”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t rather be kissing you.” He laid one on me that made my toes curl for posterity. “Because I would. But I’d also like to be kissing you next week and next month and next year. If we can’t figure this out, that won’t—”

“Next year.” I leaned back to look at him. “You want to be kissing me next year?”

“Yes.” Straight and true. “But you have to be here.”

“You think there’s a chance I won’t be?”

When he didn’t answer, I pushed away from him to go to the window. To calm my breathing. So I didn’t have to see the truth on his face.

“You aren’t the only one who loses if this situation goes wrong,” he said. “I didn’t see you coming, and then you were there, and now … you’re everywhere.”

“I never wanted to belong to someone.” After Benny, I never wanted to risk loss like that again.

“You belong to yourself, Hal. More than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“But I—I need you.”

“You don’t think I need you?” he asked.

I turned around to face him.

“I didn’t come to New Orleans looking for this. I was trying to do a job, to carry my weight for the Hourglass. But now I’ve come to believe that my place is with you.”

“Dune—”

“I’m going to be with you until we fix this. And I want to be with you after that.” His shoulders raised and lowered. “All I need to know is what you want, and you don’t have to tell me now, okay?”

“I already know,” I said, crossing the room to him. “It’s you.”

Dune

Decorative pillows littered Hallie’s bedroom floor the way confetti littered the city at Mardi Gras. At least the Mardi Gras I’d seen.

“How long do you think we can hold Mom off once she gets out of the rip?” Hallie tucked her head in the crook of my shoulder.

Her hair was a mess again, and I realized how much I loved her like that. Breathless and ravished. Thanks to me.

“Since I’m assuming that at least half your determination comes from your mom, I don’t expect her to take too long.” I kissed her soundly and started picking up the cushions, tossing them to her one by one. “Hopefully, she thinks it’s just you and me without backup. We need an advantage.”

“I’m not sure she’s anticipating a team of X-Men, but who knows?” She caught a pillow right in front of her face, and then peeked out from behind it, grinning. “Is Liam Ballard bald?”

“No, actually, but he’s still more Professor X than Magneto.”

“Speaking of hair,” she said, “yours is a mess.”

I looked in the mirror. I had enough hair for it to be a mess. “What day is it?”

“December tenth.”

Christmas was a couple of weeks away. I felt like I’d known Hallie for years, but it wasn’t enough. She stepped up beside me, and we looked at our side-by-side reflection. My skin was tan, hers was pale. We both had light eyes and dark hair, but her features were delicate. Mine were big and broad.

“I like the way we look,” she said, meeting my eyes.

“I concur.”

“I’ve been waiting to give you my Christmas wish list, and I think this is the perfect time.”

“Because we have the opportunity to shop right now?” I faced her, smoothed her messy hair. “Kidding. Spring it on me.”

“Spend Christmas here. With me. That’s all. That’s the only thing I want.”

The statement was reminiscent of what she’d said to me on the stairs the day she’d threatened to get me fired. Forever ago. “I thought the only thing you wanted was to know my name.”

The kiss she gave me was sweet. “I knew you’d catch that.”

A knock interrupted the moment. Hallie opened the door to Michael and Em. They both looked serious.

“Any word on Teague?” Michael asked. His eyes widened, like he was trying to communicate something silently.

“Not yet,” Hallie said, looking back and forth between us, pulling her hair into a knot on top of her head.

“Hallie, can I borrow you for a second?” Emerson asked. “I wanted … I needed you to …”

“Talk to me alone so that Michael will stop doing the eyebrow-raise thing, and he and Dune can have a private conversation?” Hallie asked.

Em let out a sigh. “Thank you.”

Grinning, Hallie stood on her tiptoes to kiss me. I gave her one last squeeze. Michael followed me downstairs to the living room.

“Sit.” I gestured toward the couch.

He rubbed his hand over his face. “I’ve been reading through the Infinityglass research, the part you told me to focus on. I talked to Liam, too. This isn’t a sit-down conversation.”

I disagreed. Michael was pacing, and it made my stomach threaten an out-of-body experience. I sat.

“If you follow it to its logical conclusion, transmutation is about cell regeneration. Regeneration, making things new. Renewal. Fixing what’s broken.”

“I understand the definition. Hallie does, too.”

Being a smart-ass wasn’t in my wheelhouse, so Michael let the comment go. “Regeneration, especially if it happens that fast, could heal the continuum.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“I believe Hallie could heal the continuum.”

“You think she has enough power to do that?” I heard the strain in my own voice, felt the kick in my gut.

“If the rips continue to possess her and she continues to fight them, she’ll eventually burn out.” He shoved his hands in his back pockets. “The Skroll info proves the Infinityglass was never meant to bear a load like this. Healing individual rips could’ve been manageable, possibly her purpose. Crowds of them, no. Entire rip worlds, no.”

His words echoed in my head.

“I agree with your theory. They possess her because they want to live through her,” he continued. “But they want more than that. They want her to fix them.”

I stared at him as things from the Skroll shuffled into place. Information I hadn’t understood in the context of an object. “The amount of regenerated cells she produces could heal the rifts in the continuum.”

“Only if she’s inside it.” Michael’s eyes clouded with concern. “The rips are multiplying; their worlds are taking over. Time is ripping apart around us, Dune, and Hallie might be the only one who can repair it.”

She could repair it.

But could she survive it?