Sabotaged (29 page)

“Oh, that,” Second said. “It’s temporary. See?”

He rubbed the surface of the thing Jonah had thought was a stopwatch. Once again Jonah heard the pounding of the surf against the sand. The bird soared out of sight. Dare landed on the sand at Andrea’s side and brushed his head against her leg. The dog looked up at her as if he expected to be petted.

Brendan, Antonio, and John White laughed.

“Our canine friend admires you,” John White said.

Jonah turned his attention back to Second.

“That’s an Elucidator you’re holding, isn’t it?” Jonah asked, gesturing toward the watchlike object. “You can stop time with an Elucidator?”

“Not
really
,” Second said. “That’s just how it looks to the uneducated eye. In reality, I pulled the three of us out of time. It’s like—you’ve gone into time hollows with JB, haven’t you? And the time cave? This is the same kind of thing, except easier. Not so much travel and wear and tear. We just hide in between the nanoseconds.”

Jonah was only half-listening. He was keeping his eye—educated or not—on the Elucidator. After a moment, Second slipped it back into his pocket without pressing it again. He shrugged.

“We might as well watch what happens next,” he said.

In the canoe, John White was shaking his head at
Andrea.

“I have been confused these many days,” he said. “I have dreamed of you, my child, dreamed of your voice. . . .”

Andrea did not say,
You mean, because I’ve been talking to you for two days, but you’ve been too out of it to really listen? Or to open your eyes and see me?
Instead, she flipped her braids over her shoulder and said, “I’ve dreamed of you, too, Grandfather. My mother used to tell me stories of you. She promised you would do everything you could to come back.”

“I did,” her grandfather murmured. “I have.”

“Amazing,” Second whispered beside Jonah. “Even with the time shift, time can still adjust itself. The human mind can adjust itself. John White will never again wonder why he sort of remembers hearing Andrea before—he’ll always think that was just a dream. Because time would never have allowed him to see and hear her for real, to
recognize
her without her tracer. . . .”

“I thought he was unconscious and couldn’t see or hear her because you put a sedative in his food,” Jonah said. “
And
because of his head injury.”

“You don’t think time could have caused his head injury?” Second asked.

“Time’s not a person,” Jonah objected. “Time can’t make someone hurt his head.”

“Can’t it?” Second asked.

“But—” Jonah began.

“Shh,” Katherine interrupted. “Argue later. I’m trying to hear.”

In the canoe, John White was clearing his throat, peering down awkwardly at his hands, then back up at Andrea.

“I fear to ask,” he began. “Your mother, my Eleanor. And Ananias, your father. Are they . . .”

Andrea was already shaking her head.

“Their spirits took flight,” she said. “Five summers ago, when the sickness came. . . .”

John White had tears glistening in his eyes, but he spoke gently.

“And you, child. Who takes care of you?”

“The Croatoan tribe is kind, those few who are left,” Andrea said. “They count me as one of their own. We have moved in with distant relatives. . . .”

“Kind?” Antonio interrupted. “They sent you, a girl, alone, to an evil island? You call that kind?”

Andrea frowned.

“That is not their fault,” Andrea said. “The sickness has come back, and many are weak again. I chose this myself, as a way to make peace with the evil spirits. I thought if I could bury the dead, bury the animal bones, it would show that the Croatoans are worthy people . . . worthy to live on, not die, not all die out. . . .”

Her voice was thick with grief.

The fresh grave,
Jonah thought with a jolt. That’s
the explanation! It was Andrea—or, Virginia Dare, rather—she was burying all the skeletons of the dead Croatoans from some plague from years ago. Maybe she put them all in one grave, or maybe there were other fresh graves I didn’t see. . . .

Katherine turned her head to whisper in Jonah’s ear.

“Doesn’t it seem like they’ve forgotten we’re even here?” she asked. She waved her arms and raised her voice. “Hey, Andrea! Remember us?”

Second immediately clamped his hand over Katherine’s mouth.

“Shh! Stop interfering!” he hissed, which Jonah thought was a little funny, given what Second had done.

A flicker of irritation appeared on Andrea’s face, but she didn’t turn her head. Brendan and Antonio didn’t look up either. John White, however, squinted toward the woods.

“Do my eyes and ears betray me?” he muttered. “Or do I see more figments from my dreams, come terrifyingly to life?” He blinked—maybe his vision wasn’t the clearest. He looked back at Andrea. “Perhaps I was mistaken—are you but a figment too? Do I dream and think I am awake?”

“I’m real,” Andrea insisted. “You’re not dreaming. But lie back, Grandfather, and rest.”

Obediently, he slid back down in the canoe. It seemed barely a second before Jonah could hear the old man snoring.

A moment later, Andrea came stomping toward Jonah and Katherine and Second.

“Don’t ruin it!” she ordered Katherine. “When my grandfather sees or hears something he doesn’t understand, he gets confused. He has to fall asleep again. And you and Jonah don’t fit for him. You—”

“What, you’re saying we don’t belong here?” Katherine asked indignantly. “After all we’ve done for
you? The help we’ve given you?”

Impatience played over Andrea’s face.

“That’s not it,” she said. “I’m grateful. I appreciate everything you’ve done. But can’t you feel how fragile this is? One wrong move, and time could snatch me back. I’ll be running toward the woods”—she pointed into the trees, and for an instant, Jonah thought he could see the other ghostly tracer again—”and my grandfather will be floating away. Out of reach.”

“Really?” Second said, as if Andrea had just provided him with an amazing detail. “You still feel the pull of the original tracer?”

“Less and less with each moment that passes,” Andrea said. “But still . . .”

Second frowned.

“But I was so sure,” he muttered.

Jonah decided it was time to take control of the conversation.

“Don’t worry, Andrea,” Jonah said. “Remember, this is all just temporary. We’re going to fix time—well, whatever that means
now
—and then we’re all going back to the twenty-first century and have our normal lives.”

Normal
was sounding especially good to Jonah right now. Even the most boring moments of his ordinary twenty-first-century life seemed achingly precious. The
time he’d spent brushing his teeth. Opening the refrigerator to look for a snack. Flipping through the TV channels with the remote control. Waiting for the computer to fire up. Sitting through Social Studies class at school and feeling like none of it really mattered—it was all history and dead and gone and past. . . .

“Oh, Jonah,” Andrea said, shaking her head sadly. A hint of tears glittered in her eyes once again. But, oddly, this time it seemed as if she was about to cry over
Jonah
. She was staring straight at him, just as intently as she’d always stared at her grandfather. “You never give up, do you? I just hope . . .”

She broke off, because something strange was happening to Second. He let out a strangled cry: “Erp—” It sounded like he was having trouble swallowing.

No. It was more like he was
being
swallowed.

In the next moment, Second seemed to age several years at once. His blond hair suddenly looked blond and brown, all at once. His face seemed to unravel and reknit itself into a completely different form.

And then Second pitched forward, looking like himself again. But he left behind someone else in the space he’d occupied a moment earlier. Someone taller and older, with darker hair.

JB.

JB glared down at Second on the ground before him.

“Traitor,” JB said.

The next thing JB did was surprising: He reached out and grabbed Katherine with one arm and Jonah with the other, so he could draw them both into a tight hug.

“I was so worried about you,” he murmured. “Are you all right?”

Jonah pushed away, because he wanted to show JB he could stand on his own two feet.

“We’re fine,” he said. He couldn’t stop himself from adding the rest: “Now that you’re here.”

It was such a relief to know that JB would fix the mess that Second had made of time. It was such a relief to see the smug look wiped from Second’s face. He seemed almost harmless now, lying stunned in the sand.

“I’m sorry,” Jonah told JB. “We let him manipulate us.”

“You did the best you could, under the circumstances,” JB said. “Nobody could expect any more than that.”

Katherine surprised Jonah by pulling away from JB and kicking Second’s shoulder.

“You lied to us!” She cried. “You were working for Gary and Hodge the whole time, weren’t you? You were going to steal Andrea and Brendan and Antonio—and, and Jonah—and take them off to be adopted in the future . . . and you probably would have left me here alone. . . .”

She would have kicked him again, except that JB
pulled her back.

“Katherine,” he said warningly. “He actually didn’t tell you any lies. A few evasions, yes, a few partial truths, but no actual lies.”

Katherine stopped in confusion.

“But—he said he worked for you! He said he was your projectionist!”

“That’s true,” JB said grimly. “Or—it was.” He narrowed his eyes, peering down at Second. “You’re fired.”

“Wh-what?” Second moaned.

“You heard me,” JB said. “Would you like to hear my reasons? Number one, for sabotaging a crucial time mission, completely subverting the purpose of sending these kids back in time. Number two, for repeatedly endangering six lives—all the kids’, plus John White’s. No, make that seven lives. I’ll count the dog, too. Number three, for double-crossing my every effort to find Jonah and Katherine and Andrea after they disappeared from contact.”

Jonah felt oddly cheered by this item on the list. He
knew
JB wouldn’t have left them stranded and scared on Roanoke.

“Weren’t you looking for Brendan and me?” Antonio interrupted. Jonah was surprised—he hadn’t even noticed when the other two boys and Dare had shown up beside them.

JB glanced sympathetically at Antonio and broke off
his list making.

“To the best of my knowledge—which, obviously, wasn’t very good—I thought the two of you were still safely in the twenty-first century,” JB said. “You were supposed to be going on with your lives, waiting your turn to go back in time. And”—JB glared at Second again—”it wasn’t their turn yet.”

“But—but—Andrea and us,” Brendan said. “We’re connected.”

“Not really,” JB said. “Only because Gary and Hodge were supremely lazy and sloppy in the way they pulled the three of you out of time in the first place.” He sighed heavily. “This was all so unnecessary.”

“How can you say that?” Andrea asked wildly. Her voice was thick with emotion. “My grandfather—”

“Was a remarkable man,” JB said. “History has never given him the respect he deserved. But neither did time.” He sighed again. “His best efforts were doomed to fail. His connection to you—except as a fairy tale, a pleasant story your mother told you—all of that was supposed to end when you were a baby. You truly were never supposed to see him again.”

“That’s so wrong!” Andrea complained, and this time she made no effort to hide the tears brimming in her eyes.

“You of all people know that things go wrong all the time,” JB said gently. “And I know it’s no comfort, but
as a time traveler, I’ve seen so many ways that wrong things can turn out to be right after all, that bad can lead to good, that no one can get the good without the bad coming first. . . .”

“You’re right,” Andrea said, snipping off the ends of her words. “It’s no comfort.”

JB shrugged helplessly.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What
was
supposed to happen to Andrea and Brendan and Antonio?” Katherine asked. “What were they supposed to do when they came back in time?”