Redeemed (34 page)

Jordan gaped at JB for a long moment. Then he thought of a loophole.

“Someone could always go back in time and steal an Elucidator that still works to re-age him,” he said.

“Theoretically,” JB said. “Except that, after tonight, the time agency is sealing off all time travel. We'll be able to watch the past and learn from it, but nothing more.”

“But—” Jordan began.

“Time travel took us to the brink of total destruction multiple times,” JB said. “It's like when the people of your time decided nuclear energy was too dangerous to . . . oh, wait, that hasn't happened quite yet. Sorry. There, I have given you one tidbit of information from the future.”

Jordan's brain was reeling. He realized that he'd kind of thought that, now that the danger from Mr. Rathbone was past, he and Jonah and Katherine—and maybe some of their friends—could just zip off through time whenever they wanted. They could just play around with time travel, rather than having it always be something risky.

Instead it sounded like JB expected them to stay in the twenty-first century with a new baby brother who would be smarter than any of them when he grew up. And maybe he'd be dangerous, too.

“How do you know Mom and Dad even want another kid?” Jordan asked, shifting to the more immediate problem.

“Because they already offered,” JB said. “That night in Mr. Rathbone's office. They were both worried about what would happen to Kevin. And of course we told them he wasn't going to stay a baby, because we didn't know everything else.”

“Oh,” Jordan said numbly.

“Everything worked out so, so precisely right,” JB
said. “Even when I saw you in the hospital and I thought you were Jonah—do you know how many problems and paradoxes it would have created if I'd known who you really were?”

Jordan didn't answer that question. He didn't want to think about how close they'd been to disaster.

“And I thought you were giving me a warning about the missing children, when you were really talking about your family,” JB went on. “And that set up Angela and me being nearby when Charles Lindbergh kidnapped Katherine . . . and then that helped Jonah save time, and set up everything for you and Kevin to stop Mr. Rathbone. . . . Everything that worked out just right so far makes us think that this is just right too.”

Jordan felt frozen in a way that had nothing to do with the snow swirling around him.

“Here,” JB said, slipping baby Kevin into Jordan's arms. “You take him on in to your parents. Would you send Jonah and Katherine out to talk to me?”

The baby was surprisingly light in Jordan's arms as he carried him in through the front door. Instantly a group of girls clustered around.

“Oooh! He's so cute!” one of them cooed.

Maybe having a baby brother wouldn't be such a terrible thing.

“Who is he?” one of the other girls asked.

Jordan realized this was an important moment. Should he tell them everything?

No,
he thought.
Isn't that kind of the point of Second getting to be a baby all over again? So he really does get another chance?

“This is Kevin,” Jordan said. “My parents are adopting him.”

Jordan had underestimated what the girls did and didn't know. Their eyes widened and they looked shocked. But then one of the girls—whose name, Jordan remembered, was Emily—reached out her hand and patted the baby's head.

“He's a lucky kid,” she said. “He'll have the whole family watching out for him.”

“Yeah, but this means Katherine won't be the baby of the family anymore,” Jordan said.

He didn't realize Katherine had come up right behind him.

“I had my birthday last week, remember?” she said airily. “I'm
twelve
now. I'm not a baby anymore, no matter what.”

“Hey, everybody, let's sing ‘Happy Birthday' to Katherine,” one of the other girls, Daniella, shouted.

Jordan remembered that Daniella had been Russian royalty in original time. Maybe bossing people around
was in her blood: She was really good at getting everybody to join in singing. Jordan used the cover of the song to whisper to Jonah and Katherine that JB wanted to see them. Then he took baby Kevin on into the kitchen, where Mom was putting another tray of pizza rolls in the oven and Dad was refilling the ice bucket.

“Jordan, could you—” Mom began without turning around.

But Dad was staring at Jordan.

“Linda,” Dad whispered. “I think . . . I think it's really going to happen.”

Then Mom turned around. Her jaw dropped. And then she began laughing and crying all at once.

Suddenly Jordan realized why JB had wanted him to deliver Kevin to his parents. Jonah had gotten to give them the baby version of Jordan, and now Jordan was getting the same kind of experience.

“You don't know how he's going to grow up this time around,” Jordan warned, even as Mom and Dad circled him and Kevin and started hugging them both.

“Silly, we didn't know how you and Jonah were going to grow up either,” Mom said. “Or Katherine. We just hoped, and prayed . . . and loved you . . .”

“We brought Christmas cookies!” someone called behind them, and Jordan was glad of the interruption.

He turned around to see the adult version of Angela and the bearded time agent that Jordan recognized as her boyfriend, Hadley Correo. But something really odd was going on tonight, because Angela and Hadley weren't just holding giant tins of cookies—they were also each holding a baby.

Jordan looked a little more closely. He'd seen those babies before . . . in a snippet of 1932 he'd watched from the time hollow with Kevin.

“You brought the baby versions of Gary and Hodge to the party?” Jordan asked incredulously.

“We're going to call them Gregory and Henry,” Angela said evenly.

“It came through?” Mom asked eagerly. “The time agency accepted your proposal?”

Angela nodded. “We solved a lot of their problems,” she said. “Gary and Hodge were kind of . . . orphaned by time and circumstances, and Second
didn't
do anything to re-age them, so . . . how do you prosecute babies for crimes they did as adults, in a totally different life? Hadley and I made the case that they deserved another chance. We're hoping growing up in a different time and place will make them different people.”

She was looking at Jordan like she desperately wanted him to agree. He shrugged.

“Hey, Gary and Hodge helped
me
,” Jordan said. “It was kind of by accident, and what they were really trying to do was torture Jonah with my existence, but . . . maybe this time around you'll get them to do good things on purpose!”

“Let's hope so,” Hadley chimed in. He looked grateful—evidently he and Angela were already thinking of the babies as their own.

“The time agency was always worried that one of the things the plane crash interrupted was my intended future as the mother of five,” Angela told Jordan. “Time travel sort of already gave me two, since I took in Leonid Sednev and Maria Romanova when they escaped from 1918. I figure, we'll add these two and go from there.”

“And the time agency approved my request to stay in the twenty-first century, to keep an eye on this pivotal era,” Hadley added. “So . . . Angela and I are getting married next week!”

This made Mom hug Angela and Hadley—and all three babies. Jordan decided he didn't need to stay in the kitchen any longer.

But walking back out into the cluster of kids felt different now. Maybe he was seeing everyone from the perspective of being Kevin's older brother, rather than as the outsider. He knew these kids, even if they didn't really know him. He'd have to make sure nobody treated Kevin
badly because of what they knew about Second. Or he'd have to make sure that they knew the good things about Second as well. Or . . .

Jordan bumped into Katherine, who was apparently back from talking to JB outside.

“Watch,” Katherine whispered to him.

“Huh? Oh . . .”

He followed her gaze. She was staring at Andrea, the girl who had come in looking for Jonah. Now Jonah was standing right beside her.

“I've been trying all night to figure out how to say this,” Andrea was telling Jonah. “And I kept chickening out. But I think . . . I think I've recovered. I told Aunt Patty everything, and she didn't think I was crazy, and now she's going to let my grandfather come celebrate Christmas with us. . . .”

“That's her grandfather from the sixteen hundreds!” Katherine muttered. “The one who came to live in our time because Andrea wouldn't leave the past without him.”

Jordan nodded, because he knew this story as well as she did.

“But, anyhow,” Andrea continued telling Jonah, “maybe I waited too long, maybe you're not interested anymore. But—”

“You're willing to be my girlfriend now?” Jonah finished for her.

Andrea nodded, and the whole roomful of kids broke out in applause.

“Um, a little privacy here?” Andrea muttered, and she and Jonah ducked into the living room by themselves.

Katherine elbowed Jordan.

“Isn't that sweet?” she said. “But don't feel like you need to keep up by getting a girlfriend too. Really, it's almost like Jonah and I are years older than you, because we traveled through time so much. . . .”

“And I at least
saw
every bit of time you traveled through,” Jordan reminded her. “So maybe I'm even more mature. Anyhow, I was kind of thinking . . . Emily is really nice.”

“Whoa, nothing like starting at the top,” Katherine said, gaping at him. “You know she's Albert Einstein's daughter, right?”

Jordan hadn't even been thinking about that. What he'd noticed was how kindly she'd patted Kevin's head even after she knew who he really was.

“Hey, I managed to hold my own with Second and Kevin,” Jordan said. “Well, sort of. I got them to trust me, anyway.”

“And thanks to you, now I have a third brother!” Katherine complained jokingly.

“There are worse things,” Jordan said. “You could be an only child, remember?”

He thought about how lonely she'd looked in the glimpse he'd gotten of that dimension. He could still hear Mom and Dad and Angela and Hadley exclaiming over baby Kevin in the kitchen. But he couldn't tell how Katherine really felt about getting another brother—especially one who happened to be the baby version of her former worst enemy. She and Jonah were the ones who'd been angriest with Second from the very beginning.

“I was thinking,” Katherine said. “Now I know what we should get Mom and Dad for Christmas. A picture of you, me, Jonah, and Kevin. Together.”

So maybe Katherine was fine with everything, after all.

It was much easier to forgive a baby.

Across the room, a group of kids in Santa hats started singing “Jingle Bells.” Jordan recognized Gavin and Antonio in the group, and realized it was a lot of the same kids who'd worn skull sweatshirts and acted mean in the time cave back when everything started with Chip and Jonah and Katherine. It seemed like they'd all changed a lot.

So maybe time travel really is good for some people,
Jordan thought. He wondered if maybe he should go out and make this argument to JB. Jordan went over to the window and glanced out, but JB was nowhere in sight.

So that means it's all over,
Jordan thought.
It's really over.

He felt like some old person who had nothing left in his life but memories of the past. Then he heard someone behind him say, “Psst.”

It was Jonah, and he was alone.

“You and Andrea broke up already?” Jordan asked.

“Very funny,” Jonah said. “No—she wanted to go call her grandfather on his cell phone and let him know everything was okay.”

He grinned in a goofy way that made it clear he and Andrea thought things were much better than okay.

“Some dude from the sixteen hundreds is really using a cell phone?” Jordan asked.

“I guess so,” Jonah said.

Somehow this made Jordan sad. If there was no more time travel, how could fun things like that ever happen again?

Jordan saw that Jonah was motioning for somebody with his head. Katherine sidled up beside them.

“Is it time?” Katherine asked.

“I think so,” Jonah said. “If we can just go somewhere private.”

Katherine and Jonah led Jordan to the same spot in the dining room where Jordan had once hidden from JB.

“Now,” Katherine said.

“JB wanted us to tell you that a hundred years after
people ban nuclear energy, they figure out a way to make it safe and start using it again,” Jonah said.

“Okay,” Jordan said. “So?”

Jonah slipped something out of the pocket of his blue jeans.

“JB also gave me this,” Jonah said. “For you, me, and Katherine.”

It looked like a thumb drive. But Jordan saw a little flash of light—not quite words, but the promise of words.

“Oh!” Jordan said. “It's an—”

Before he could say the word “Elucidator” Jonah and Katherine clapped their hands over his mouth.

“We have to keep it secret,” Katherine said.

“And it's only for emergencies with Kevin,” Jonah said. “Or . . . just times that we think are necessary.”

Jordan reached out and touched the Elucidator.

“And he really trusted
us
with it, instead of Mom and Dad?” Jordan asked.

Katherine nodded. “We have the most time-travel experience,” she reminded him.

Jordan pulled his hand back. It wasn't actually that he was longing to travel through time right now. Just knowing it was possible was enough.

Life right now was exactly enough for Jordan.