Infinityglass

Chapter 3

Hallie, Mid-November

After the pawnshop job, I told my dad I’d be taking a paid vacation.

I did my normal Rapunzel-in-the-tower thing, with nothing to break it up except dance class three times a week, and I didn’t even leave the house for that. Dad had converted a detached building on our property into my very own studio and hired a private teacher. Things were lonely. Boring.

But not normal.

Something changed the night Poe and I did the job at Skeevy’s. It all started with the jazz funeral in the graveyard.

I’d known the timing was off. No one would be having a funeral at night, and anyway, sunlight surrounded the mourners. The group had entered from the front gate of the cemetery, going right past the waiters and waitresses from Commander’s Palace, but none of the waitstaff had noticed. New Orleans ladies were known for good hats, but the shoes and outfits were wrong. Too many prints. Boxy purses and heels.

Then, the next day from my bedroom window, I saw men putting the finishing touches on the Saint Charles Avenue line, which had already existed for almost two hundred years. Gone were the Mardi Gras beads that usually hung from the electric wires and gone was the grass that lined either side of the rails. I saw freshly turned dirt, and the southern live oaks that lined the street were way smaller than they were supposed to be. The streetcars were new and shiny, standing like soldiers awaiting their chance to serve the city.

The next day, from the kitchen, I’d watched a solid stream of ladies and gentlemen traveling by horse and carriage, going visiting.

I knew what I was seeing, but I didn’t know why.

Years ago, my mom had found a set of twins in the foster care system. She’d hooked them up with a family far out in the bayou. A family that was well compensated and therefore didn’t mind when the twins accidentally shorted out electrical appliances. A family that wasn’t privy to the fact that Amelia and Zooey were time travelers.

Countless things have been lost throughout time. The Titanic sank with untold riches on board. The Amber Room disappeared during World War II. Some of the biggest art heists of all time had yet to yield their spoils. That was how time travelers were useful to Chronos.

When Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, walked away from a suitcase full of his manuscripts at Paris Lyon to buy a bottle of water, Amelia and Zooey popped in. The suitcase was lost to history, but the manuscripts showed up in New Orleans.

A priceless Degas was thought to be lost in a fire, but miraculously appeared in the collection of a certain family that lived on Esplanade.

And so on and so forth.

A time-travel side effect was that Amelia and Zooey saw ripples all the time. Once I made the mistake of telling them I thought it was cool. They started describing them whenever we were together just to get on my nerves. Now people like me, who shouldn’t be able to see rips, could.

The space time continuum was screwed.

The jazz funeral I’d seen progressing toward Lafayette Cemetery was a rip, just like everything else I’d seen from my window. I was crossing the courtyard to go to dance class the first time I saw a rip face-to-face.

She sat perched on a bench in the courtyard, holding a porcelain doll in her tiny hands. It resembled her, with delicate, perfectly even features, and even wore a similar dress, adorned with an abundance of lace. Two guys from Dad’s security detail were standing outside, too. They didn’t see her.

When I walked past, she took no notice, just continued to play with her tiny doppelganger, singing a lullaby in French. Nowhere close to a ghostly specter, she was as solid as the stone patio beneath my feet. I ignored her. I had other things to think about.

Rips like her weren’t my only problem.

As usual, dance was my release. I spent a good two hours pretending everything was normal.

“The fund-raiser showcase for Southern Rep is in March,” Gina, who was my favorite pointe teacher, said at the end of the session. “You’re ready to perform. You barely broke a sweat today.”

“Maybe I’m just dehydrated.”

“You’re strong. You’ve always been able to dance circles around me, but I bet you could cover all the geometric shapes now.”

“You know what they say. Once you hit twenty-one, everything starts going downhill.” I stuck my tongue out at her and escaped into the dressing room before she could push me any further.

She knew I wouldn’t participate in the showcase. All of my teachers had mentioned it, and all of them had been blown off. My dad was too cautious to put me on display.

I untied the ribbons of my pointe shoes and pulled my feet out, preparing to remove layers of lamb’s wool and cotton to see how bad the damage was. I anticipated bloody toes, so I grabbed medical tape and scissors.

I’d ended up dancing because of an injury. Four surgeries and a pin in my shinbone—because I’d healed too fast from a gunshot wound. The doctor ignored the healing rate, probably paid off by my mother, and insisted that I do something physical beyond my three-times-a-week physical therapy. Dance was the answer. A few forced years at a combination tap, jazz, and ballet class as a child had taught me the basics, but rather than send me to a class out in the big bad world post accident, Dad had converted a building on our property and hired private teachers. My jail of a home life might have been all lock-down penitentiary, but at least my prison had a dance studio.

Dancing in the showcase wasn’t my dream, and if I had to put up a fuss, the fuss wouldn’t be for that. Newcomb, Tulane’s School of Liberal Arts, on the other hand, had a dance major. Whatever I decided to do with my life wouldn’t be easy. If I wanted out of the Chronos prison my father had built for me, I’d be in for a fight.

I removed the wrapping from my toes and geared myself up for the damage.

There was nothing there. My toes were whole and perfect, not a scab or a scrape to be seen.

“What the hell?” I stared at the stained wool in my hands and sorted through all the layers before doing the same with the cotton. I’d always healed fast.

But never this fast.

It was in line with everything else that had been wrong lately. I wanted to talk to Poe, and I’d texted, but he wasn’t answering.

I pushed up off the floor and headed for the shower, stripping my arms out of my leotard before I shut the door.

I couldn’t sleep. Or eat. I didn’t need to. My vision had sharpened. The simplest of sounds echoed inside my brain like monosyllabic earworms. When I practiced changing my body, I could hold shapes without tiring. At all. I’d even been able to manipulate my vocal cords.

I stared at my God-given body in the full-length mirror. Hours of dance kept me thin, but I’d finally gotten past the awkward side of it, thanks to muscle tone. Smooth, fair skin, even though there should’ve been scars on my shoulder and my leg. Dark brown hair and hazel eyes, like my mother.

I turned away from the mirror and stepped into the shower.

When I got out, I had a new text. Dad, requesting an audience.

I avoided looking at the bench as I crossed the courtyard. No little girl, but the lullaby still hung in the air, floating on the cold autumn wind.

The Chronos offices occupied a full square block in the Central Business District, just off Canal, in a building designated for Girard Industries. Heavy security discouraged most visitors, and if anyone managed to get through, two floors of apparent telemarketers would’ve bored them away. Most days, my dad worked from that building. But today, I’d been called to his home office.

I liked to call it the throne room. He didn’t like it at all.

“Poe is where?”

“Tennessee.” Dad wore his usual poker face. “ICU at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He was hurt, badly, but is expected to recover.”

“How—”

“I don’t know how, Hallie. Just that he had a terrible knife injury and almost bled to death. But he didn’t.”

I blew out a deep breath. Dad’s words rolled through my brain like the crawler at the bottom of a news broadcast.

“When’s he coming back to New Orleans?” I asked.

Dad’s eyes closed briefly, and he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger.

“Dad?”

“No idea.” He dropped his hand. “But if I let him come back, things are going to change.”

If. I wanted to let loose, like Godzilla on an unsuspecting city, but people crossed oceans to avoid Paul Girard’s anger. Not a good idea to cause more if I wanted to get Poe back.

“No one else has the same skill he does,” I said, trying to reason. “Are you really willing to let him walk?”

“Possibly, yes.”

“Can we talk about why?”

My father went to the mahogany liquor cabinet, took a few ice cubes from the ice bucket, and dropped them into a glass. He poured a glass half full of amber-colored liquid. It was only on the rocks because lunchtime hadn’t rolled around yet. After that, it was straight-up.

“Poe’s loyalties have come into question.”

“Who would he be loyal to besides us?”

Dad set his glass down firmly and wiped his mouth with his thumb. His hands went to his hips, pushing back his suit jacket, exposing the lines of his holster.

“No,” I said. “No way. Not Poe.”

The cutting edge of betrayal overrode the feeling of dread she usually conjured up.

My mother.

“How did you find out?” I asked.

“She called. As a courtesy.”

I could imagine how courteous that conversation had been.

Dad and I didn’t talk about her, and only in business terms when we did. She’d done a bunk when I was ten, though she’d stayed at Chronos. I rarely went on jobs for her and had started to refuse them altogether, so a couple of years ago, she’d “made things easier for all of us” by choosing to operate out of her own office. She’d only made things easier for herself.

Teague Girard might be able to give up her family, but she’d sure as hell stick around for science.

“Why? Why would Poe do that?”

“I think you should sit down,” Dad said.

My head came up sharply. Weakness wasn’t in Paul Girard’s vocabulary, yet he sounded unsure.

“You know I’m about business. Always have been.” He filled his glass a little higher than halfway this time. “That’s why your mother pursued me, because of my connections and business sense.”

Not because she loved him.

“She brought Chronos to me.” He took a drink. “This much you know.”

I nodded.

“Chronos had chosen to be esoteric instead of savvy, and she wanted to change that. Time is money, and things were going downhill. There are people with special time skills all over the world. I didn’t know about those talents until your mother. Once I believed, I threw my backing behind Chronos. It didn’t take me very long to see the benefits, so I got involved.” He swirled the Maker’s Mark whisky in his glass. “There were people who didn’t agree with the way your mother wanted to handle things. One is the head of the Hourglass.”

“The ones who do the squeaky clean jobs?”

“The perfectly legal ones, yes.” He took another drink, a long one. “Your mother has recently been involved with them.”

“If they’re into legality, why would they hook up with her? Don’t they know who she is?” How she is?

“I don’t think they had a lot of choice in the matter.”

Mom had sacrificed our familial relationship, and now she’d ditched our business one, too. She couldn’t cut us out any more clearly if she’d used an X-Acto knife.

“And as far as Poe is concerned, I believe your mother persuaded him to help her instead of us.”

The hits just kept coming.

“He wouldn’t betray me like that.” He couldn’t have. He was my only friend.

“I hope not, Hallie, but I’m not sure what to expect from anyone anymore, and until I know exactly what your mother is up to, I’m going to hire extra security.”

“Come on, Dad,” I whined in protest. “What are you going to do, put a guard on every inside door?”

“Just yours.”

I put my face in my hands to stifle the sound of my groan. “You can’t—”

“I can. I’m making my final decision this afternoon.” He set his jaw. “Whoever I choose will start tomorrow. Prepare yourself.”

My phone rang just as I reached the top of the stairs.

I didn’t want to answer, but I always did. I stopped in front of the window seat in the upper hallway that looked out over the street. “Hello, Mother.”

“Good morning, Hallie.”

“It’s already afternoon.” I wondered if she was in a different time zone. I strained to listen for background noises on her end of the line.

“Why must you always split hairs?”

“What do you want?” I dropped down onto the red velvet cushion and watched a dragonfly repeatedly crash into the window. I figured they’d all have taken to the swamps with the recent cold snap.

“You’ve usually hung up by this point in our conversations. What’s stopping you today?”

Poe. The fact that my mother always had me on a hook. The endless pull between wanting her approval and wishing she didn’t exist at all. It tore at me constantly, leaving my insides busted up and oozing. “I know you want something. Might as well find out what it is now.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“Please.”

She sighed. “There’s something you and Poe retrieved for your father. I need to know its location.”

“Oh. That’s why I rank a phone call.”

“You rank a phone call because you’re my daughter.”

“Don’t.” I knew it was wrong to roll around in all my upper handedness, but damned if it didn’t feel good. “You know my involvement ends after the jobs are done. I’m not privy to the location of things, and I seriously doubt Dad would leave whatever you’re looking for lying around for some idiot to come across.”

The implication that she was the idiot remained unspoken, but I rolled around and got dirty in it, too.

She paused. “It doesn’t have to be this way between us.”

I stared at the dragonfly, still bumping against the glass. You’d think it would’ve given up by now.

“Yes, it does. Maybe you should call Dad. Maybe he’ll accidentally pick up, and you can try to weasel the answer out of him.”

I knew she’d already tried. The Poe information had been offered up to try to grease the wheel, and when she hadn’t gotten anything from Dad, she’d bounced to me. Good thing Dad and I could always see her coming.

“Don’t hang up on me, Hallie.” It was said in a definite “mother” tone.

“You almost sound like you’re pulling the parent discipline card. And I know that didn’t just happen.” My grip on the phone was deathly. I breathed in through my nose, down to my stomach, like Gina taught me. When I exhaled through my mouth, I loosened my fingers. “Can we be done now?”

“Did you tell your father that you were seeing ripples?”

How did she know?

“I’m not a traveler,” I said cautiously. “Why would I see rips?”

“You aren’t the only one. So am I. It’s impacting everyone with the time gene. Poe, too.”

The mention of Poe sparked my anger, but I didn’t show it. Giving her the satisfaction of knowing how much it bugged me would burn me from the inside out. I wanted to ask her where he was, but held back on that, too. It wasn’t like I could trust her answer, anyway.

“I talked to Amelia and Zooey,” she continued, and I could swear I heard a tinge of smug. “They both tell me the usual rules don’t apply anymore. They used to be able to talk to a rip when they saw one, singular. Now they see multiples, and the rips don’t acknowledge them.”

Someone was going to need to get on the horn and tell A. and Z. to keep their traps shut when it came to my mom.

“Thanks for the info.” If she thought I was giving her anything in exchange, she’d cracked. “I’ll take it under consideration.”

“Seeing rips isn’t all that’s happening to you, is it, Hallie?”

So sly. Trepidation coiled in my gut. “What do you mean?”

She paused for a minute, and I could see her pacing as she considered what to say, looking out a window onto an unknown city.

“Your cells are regenerating faster and faster. All your faculties now operate at optimal performance. You’re getting stronger every day.”

I sniffed. “I hope it’s after five wherever you are, because you sound like you’re three sheets to the wind.”

“You aren’t sleeping. Your mouth can’t keep up with your brain. I can help you, Hallie.” Her voice was soft, but there was nothing gentle about it. “I’m your mother, and you can trust me.”

I bit back a laugh.

“Say the word. All you have to do is say the word and I’ll be there.”

“Here’s a word. Good-bye.”

“Remember the bedtime stories?” she asked before I could hang up.

I stilled, my grip on the phone tightening again. She was persistent. I’d give her that.

“The ones I used to tell you about an object with abilities that couldn’t be imagined. The Infinityglass had power that could change worlds. You used to believe in that power.”

Our bedtime ritual had been my one constant when Mom lived with us. From the time I was a preschooler until I was ten, every night, I had my bath, a cup of chamomile tea, and story time with my mama. Then she left.

To this day, the smell of chamomile gave me a stomachache.

“Turns out it wasn’t an object, Hallie. It was a person. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? You can feel it.”

“I can’t feel anything.” I meant it, just not in the way she was referring to.

“When you decide you want to know the truth, I’m a phone call away.”

“If I wanted the truth, Mother, I most certainly wouldn’t get it from you.”

I disconnected, and dropped the phone on the red velvet cushion.