Timepiece

“No!” The scream came from my very center, tensing all my muscles, making me shake. I attacked the veil with a vengeance, pounding my fists against it so hard I could feel the blood vessels bursting. “Emerson! Emerson!”

Poe didn’t watch me, he observed me, as if I were an animal in a cage. His expressionless calm was as unnatural as a walking corpse. Then he dropped her to the ground and carelessly dusted off his hands.

Grief and rage scrambled for purchase in my chest. Neither won. I tried to scream Emerson’s name again, but it caught in my throat, choking me. I kicked the veil repeatedly, over and over, until I hit the ground on my knees.

She lay unmoving at Poe’s feet, blood pouring from her throat. Her eyes were open, but empty.

Tiny. Helpless.

Gone.

“You need to deliver a message to your father.” Poe’s expression was blank. He reminded me of a robot, programmed for a specific task and nothing else. “Find Jack Landers.”

“Come out here. Come out here and bring her with you.” I held my fists down by my sides, speaking through my teeth but still trying to sound calm. I thought about his knife, and how I would get it away from him. Then gut him. I wanted to see his blood spilled, along with everything inside him. I wanted to grind his heart into the floor with my heel.

“If Jack is found, there’s a chance that everything that’s happened can be repaired. Then the Hourglass can choose the time line on which it would like to continue. If the request is refused, or not met, time will be rewound.”

In. Out. In. Out. I had to breathe. I had to make Poe think I wasn’t a threat so he’d come out of that veil. He had to come out of the veil so I could destroy him. “I don’t understand.”

“Time will be rewound, and your time line will be chosen for you.” Poe looked at me as if I were dense before he continued, speaking slowly. “There’s only one way to clean up the mess the Hourglass has made without consequences.”

“There are already consequences.” The flow of blood from Em’s neck was starting to slow. It just touched the edge of Poe’s shoe. He’d track her blood out of this restaurant and down the streets of Ivy Springs if he walked away.

But he wouldn’t be walking away.

“There’s a great possibility the continuum can be repaired without consequences to your personal time lines, and there are several time lines from which you can choose. The one where your father is a pile of ash or the one where he’s restored. Same goes for Michael. And Emerson could be in a mental hospital, or she could be part of the Hourglass.” It was as if he were ticking off something as unimportant as a grocery list. “You choose, or we will.”

“Why bother mentioning Em’s time line as a threat? She’s dead.” And you’re next.

“Is she?”

Poe extended his arms, still holding the blade.

The blood went from dark and dry to shiny and wet.

Em rose from the ground in backward motion, returning to Poe’s arms. The stain on her sweater faded from the bottom up, the pool of blood in her collarbone disappeared, but the life was still absent from her eyes.

Poe stopped then, staring at me. “You’ll pass on my message?”

“Yes.” My voice was a pleading whisper. “Please, yes.”

Slowly, so slowly, the knife made a return path across Emerson’s neck. The blood disappeared completely, and her hands once again pulled at Poe’s arm.

I froze, afraid to move. Afraid Poe would kill her again.

“You have till October thirty-first. Midnight.”

Poe lowered Em to her feet and smiled.

I shook with the desire to jump him and peel his face off. When they stepped out of the veil, I snatched her away and pulled her to my side. Her skin felt cold.

“Oh, and one more thing. Anything taken can be returned. Anything given can be destroyed,” Poe said, still smiling, walking backward to the exit. “Teague said your dad would understand.”

With that, he turned on his heel and left the Phone Company.

Em shook her head, looking confused. “What just …”

I grabbed her and squeezed her so tightly that now I was the one cutting off her air supply. She smacked at my arms, and I loosened my hold.

“Kaleb?” Her voice was muffled, her breath warm through the thin cotton of my pirate costume.

The shirt had seen entirely too much action, and not the good kind. When I got home, I was going to burn it.

“You’re okay?” A flood of relief replaced the anger in my blood as I released her, looking her over from head to toe. “You feel okay?”

“I don’t remember what happened, exactly. I thought … I thought Poe was going to stab you, so I jumped in front of you—”

I wanted to hand in my man card and cry. “Which was insanely stupid.”

“Protective instinct?”

“You, protecting me.” I cupped her face in my hands, knowing she wasn’t mine to touch, but unable to stop. “Insanely stupid.”

She shivered, and when she spoke, her voice shook a little. “I’d call you a sexist pig, but I’m feeling off my game.”

“I thought I’d lost you.”

“But you didn’t.” Reaching up to entwine our fingers, she pulled our hands away from her face. “Anyway, he pulled me into the veil, and then things got …”

“Em? Are you okay?”

She grabbed the hem of her sweater and pulled it out in front of her, her eyes searching for something that was no longer there. Then her hands flew to her neck. “He cut me … he slit my throat.”

“To make a point.”

She sank into a chair. “Which was?”

“We have to find Jack.”

Her mouth dropped open and the waves of her confusion and outrage swept over me. Before she could say anything else, the front doors slammed open.

Concern, then a split second later, fear so fierce it made my teeth ache. Michael.

“Are you two all right? Someone said a guy with a knife just walked out the back … what’s wrong?” Michael crossed the room in two heartbeats before landing on his knees in front of Em, gathering her hands into his. “What happened?”

Em looked up at me, and then at my dad, who’d followed Michael in. “I think … you’ll have to get the details from Kaleb. I was kind of busy. Being dead.”

Chapter 5

“Damn.” The morning sun flooding my father’s office temporarily blinded me. I pulled my baseball cap down over my eyes.

For my own safety, I waited for my vision to return before I walked any farther. The office had definitely become messier since Dad returned from the dead. Without my mother to clear them away, coffee mugs littered the top of his huge desk, and a stack of newspapers in the corner grew taller by the day.

“You’re late.” Em’s voice sounded hoarse, either with tears or with sleep. She and Michael sat hip to hip on the love seat.

“Didn’t realize it was a party.” I rubbed my eyes to pull the room into focus. Dune occupied the wingback chair in the corner, while Nate sat on the floor. I noticed the fresh neon green streak in his black hair when I dropped down beside him.

“We used our time wisely.” Dad leaned his head from side to side, stretching the muscles in his neck. Tense already. “Everyone knows about Jack’s appearance last night. And Poe’s, as well as his ultimatum.”