Infinityglass (5 page)

“Come in.” Girard stood. He was your basic slick-haired, shifty-eyed, moneyed gangster, with excellent taste in suits.

After introductions, Girard asked about our flight and general well-being, but the chitchat didn’t last long. Liam sat down, and so did I, balancing on the edge of a masculine couch.

“You’re the guy who’s supposed to help my daughter?” Girard sounded doubtful.

“Yes, sir.” I nodded.

He looked me over, summed me up. “Try to relax.”

I slid back on the seat. It was the best I could manage.

Girard continued the stare-down. “Try to relax
more
.”

I put one arm on the back of the couch and smiled. Felt my lips wobble. Wanted to go home really, really, desperately.

Liam took pity on my inner introvert. “Dune has been with the Hourglass for several years. I’ve told you about his
work history, so you know he’s reliable. He also happens to have more knowledge about the Infinityglass than anyone, even myself.”

“Knowledge. Great.” Girard tilted his head to the side, regarding me. “Does he talk?”

“He … yes.” I’d never seen Liam falter before.

“I do.” I moved back to the edge of the couch. “Talk, I mean.”

When Girard shifted, I saw the gun holster under his jacket. Everyone in this house was armed. “The Infinityglass. What do you know?”

This was my chance. “Horologists name it as one of the biggest finds in the field, at least the ones who cop to its being real.”

“I’m certain my daughter is real.”

I made a sound somewhere between a gulp and a laugh. “Well, horologists believe it’s an object, not a human. I should explain what horo—”

“I know what horology is. Liam started out doing all your talking for you. Do horologists do all your thinking for you? What makes
you
believe it’s a human?”

I looked at Liam, and he handed over the briefcase I’d felt too self-conscious to carry. I flipped the latches and pushed it toward Girard. “That’s my personal external drive. It holds every shred of evidence ever collected on the Infinityglass, a couple of hundred years’ worth, and includes new information that was recently discovered on a Skroll.”

“A scroll?”

“Not the old-school kind. A digital storage device, kind of like a tablet on steroids, with holograms.” This specific Skroll held information about the Infinityglass, and had changed hands too many times to count. “The Hourglass stole the Skroll from your wife. She never managed to get it open. I did.”

It had taken me two weeks to crack it.

“Do you still have it?” Girard asked.

“No. We gave it back to your wife. I have everything that was on it. And I left it altered. Now it’s missing some vital documents.” Taking information off the Skroll had been a gamble, and one that could have cost lives. From where I sat now, the risk had been worth it. “The information on this Skroll is the key to the Infinityglass. I’ve read through everything I can, and I’m in the process of translating the rest. There’s centuries of information to cover.”

“You’re here because a man I trusted deeply believed in you.” He looked at Liam. “All I’m interested in is what being the Infinityglass means to my daughter.”

Liam gestured to me. “That’s why I brought you Dune.”

I nodded. “Finding out is my goal, sir, and I’m one hundred percent committed to it.”

“If you work for the Hourglass, you have an ability. What is it?”

I swallowed, hard. “I can control water. The tides. Moon phases—that’s how it’s connects with the time gene. It’s not something I mess with very often. Too hard to control.”

“Yet you come to New Orleans. ‘Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.’ ” The man had been in my presence for all of five minutes, and had already zeroed in on one of my biggest fears and quoted “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in the process. “How are you going to handle the mighty Mississippi so close by?”

“I don’t plan on spending much time by the river. Or lake. Or the ocean. Nothing volatile. If working for you requires me to do so … I’ll find a way around it.”

I didn’t look at Liam. He knew what a job involving that much water would do to me. The last job I’d been on for the Hourglass that involved my ability had been the previous summer. A tiny country stream had required a reroute from a floodplain. I’d shaped the water as I controlled it long enough to move it to the new trench that had been dug. Then Nate and I had helped fill the now-dry section of creek bed with clay mud.

I’d acted like it was simple, no problem at all, but I’d seen a dead fish on the grass, a result of my shoddy navigation, and I’d had to fight off panic.

“I don’t foresee a circumstance in which your being on the water would be necessary. Unless you can’t handle the pool in the back.”

“That’s not a problem.”

Girard sat back in his seat. “Tell me what you know about my business.”

I gave him the short version because I didn’t know how to
approach the long one. “You deal in rare antiquities. People with time-related abilities assist.”

“Succinct. Diplomatic. Nice.” Girard crossed his ankle over one knee. “The Hourglass has a very high bar when it comes to morality. I acquire antiquities under certain furtive circumstances. If you’re going to come to work for me, you are, indeed, going to work for
me
. Jobs that could cause the wrong sorts of people to ask questions. Are you prepared to answer them?”

I didn’t know if the wrong sorts of people were the good guys or the bad. Paul Girard had no time-related ability, but businessmen like him were genius judges of human nature. Uncertainty wouldn’t do in this situation.

“I’m prepared.”

“Good. Ideally, I can keep you out of that end, since your main purpose is helping my daughter. But if it becomes part of your cover, so be it. I don’t want Hallie to know what you’re really doing here.” He stared at me and I nodded, confirming I was totally on board. “I told her I was planning to hire new security. We’ll let her believe you’re part of her new detail.”

“I don’t—I have no idea how to be a bodyguard. I don’t even know how to fake it.”

“It doesn’t matter. I rarely have anyone on her in the house. She’ll be really, really pissed off, and my daughter, pissed off …” He looked at me like he felt sorry for me.

“Does she have any idea she’s the Infinityglass?” Liam asked.

“Her ability is transmutation. I don’t believe she knows she’s the Infinityglass.”

Liam’s frown went wrinkle deep. “Do you plan on telling her?”

“That depends.” Girard asked, focusing on me, “Do you have answers for her?”

“I need to observe her for a little while. I need time to try to reconcile the differences between what I thought the Infinityglass was and what it truly is and to finish translating and studying all the information on the Skroll.”

“Then we’ll wait until you know something solid. I don’t want to scare her with half-truths.” He stood, and so did Liam and I. “If Liam says you’re my best option, I’ll believe him, because I have every reason to believe in the Hourglass. I know what you stand for and what you do. But if you prove him or me wrong …”

Girard left the threat unspoken.

And somehow that was scarier than if he’d said it aloud.

Chapter 3
Hallie, Mid-November

A
fter 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.