The Eighth Guardian (28 page)

I rest my back against the brick exterior for just a second to collect my thoughts. Yellow lets out another scream from inside the house. I’m wasting time. I take off around the corner to the back of the house. There’s a window and a door. I try the door first, but it’s locked. Dammit. This is colonial America. Aren’t people supposed to be trusting?

Window it is. I try lifting the glass, but it doesn’t budge. And then I let out a disgusted grunt. God, I’m stupid. It’s 1782. Windows don’t slide open in 1782. I’m going to have to break it. But first I press my face to the glass and look in. I hear Yellow scream again as I stare into a small kitchen. There’s a fireplace that doubles as a stove, and several pewter spoons and brass pots hang on the wall. And that’s about it. Tiny. There’s also the narrowest staircase I’ve ever seen in the corner, leading up to the second floor.

I need to find something to wrap around my elbow to muffle the sound when I break the window. I look around, but there’s nothing. A few other houses line this cobblestone street, but no one’s left out a spare sheet of fabric so I can break into their neighbor’s house. Shocking. I wish I’d had the foresight to grab Yellow’s cashmere sweater, but I guess my old-lady house dress will have to do. I lift it over my head and immediately wrap it around my elbow.

Come on, Yellow, scream again.
I’m standing here in a bra and nasty, old underwear. I’m sure they lock you up for stuff like this in colonial times.

“Ah-ah-aah-aah-AAH!”

I don’t hesitate. I slam my elbow into the glass, and it shatters. I do it again, clearing away an area where I can climb through without worrying about impaling myself on broken shards of glass. The last thing I need is to injure myself even worse.

I jump back and throw the dress over my head. One of the arms gets snagged on my elbow, and I yank so hard I’m surprised I don’t rip it. I stare at the window, then through it at the closed door leading into the front room. And then I hoist myself up and in through the window.

There’s glass all over the floor, so I can’t jump down. Instead I stay crouched in the window frame, my arms outstretched and plastered to the wall to keep my balance. I have to jump. I’m waiting for Yellow to scream again, hoping it’ll muffle whatever noise I’ll make. How long does it take to stitch up an arm?

But Yellow stays silent.
I’m wasting time!
I take a deep breath and go for it. I push off the balls of my feet and sail over the glass. I land on the balls of my feet, too, and sink my knees into a squat when I land; soft but not completely silent. There was a thump. I hold my breath and stare at the door. Was I too loud?

“Ah-ah-aah-aah-AAH!”

I jump. Straight up in the air. My heart hammers in my chest, and I reach up a hand and shove it against my breast, as if trying to keep it from escaping. I whip around and scan the small kitchen. I don’t see the necklace, and there aren’t a lot of hiding spots for Dr. Hatch to stash it. It’s not as if this is a fully stocked modern kitchen with twenty feet of cabinets. It’s barely bigger than a closet. The doctor must have taken the necklace upstairs.

The house is quiet as I put one toe on the corner of the first step. It doesn’t make a sound. So I lift off and put the toes of my other foot on the corner of the next step. Silence. I do this again, then again, going as slowly as I can. I only have a few steps to go when—

CREAK!

I shut my eyes. There’s always a creaky stair. Why is there always a creaky stair? I turn my head and stare down into the kitchen. That was
loud
. There’s no way the doctor didn’t hear that. He’s going to burst through that door any second now, and he’s going to catch me.

“Sarah!” the doctor’s voice calls out from the other room. “You get back in bed this instant!”

Sarah? Who the hell is Sarah? I whip my head back around and nearly fall. There’s a child standing at the top of the steps, staring at me. She can’t be more than four, and she’s as thin as a rail. A damp cloth nightgown clings to her skeletal frame, and stringy brown hair is plastered to her bright-red cheeks. A rash covers nearly every inch of skin that’s not hidden by the nightgown.

“Who are you?” she asks, her voice soft and weak. She’s sick, clearly. Sick with some kind of fever. I try to remember history. Scarlet fever? Yellow fever? Some other colored fever?

“Sarah!” the doctor’s voice booms.

“Answer your father,” I whisper to her. “I’m here to help you.” A pang of guilt surges through my heart as I lie to her.

“Yes, sir,” Sarah calls down the steps. Her voice is so weak, I’m not sure if Dr. Hatch even heard her. Then she turns and plods down the hallway. I follow after her.

Upstairs is a hallway with two doors on the right and another staircase at the end. And that’s it. Sarah walks into the first room. Her bedroom. It’s tiny, only slightly larger than the kitchen. There’s a little Sarah-size bed, and next to it is a wobbly, wooden table barely bigger than a stool. The table is filled with herbs and potions and all sorts of metal instruments that look even worse than the ones Dr. Hatch is now using on Yellow.

Sarah climbs into the bed, and I peer into one of the clay pots on the table. I pick it up, give it a whiff, and gag. It’s awful. It smells like rotting eggs.

“Who are you?” Sarah asks me again.

“I’m a nurse,” I lie as I set down the pot.

“What’s a nurse?” Death is on the tip of her tongue. The back is speckled with tiny white bumps resembling a strawberry.

“I’m here to help,” I repeat, and it’s in that moment that I realize it’s true. I have to help Sarah. This child is dying. But first I have to find Yellow’s necklace.

The necklace isn’t on the bedside table, and the only other piece of furniture is a small, closed armoire. If I had to guess, I’m going to say the doctor stashed it in his own room.

“I’ll be right back,” I whisper to Sarah. “Lie down and be a good girl.”

She has no reason to obey me, but she does. She closes her eyes, and I realize that even holding them open was a chore for her. My heart does a flip. I wonder how long she’s been sick. I wonder how much longer she has. But then I shake my head. Necklace first.

“Ah-ah-aah-aah-AAH!”

I want to clamp my hands over my ears so I don’t have to hear Yellow. But I can’t. I creep back into the hallway and tiptoe to the second room. The door is shut, so I turn the knob slowly and carefully. What if someone else is in the room? What if the doctor has a wife?

When the door is cracked, I peek in. There’s a slightly bigger bed, and it’s made and empty. A small wooden cradle sits beside it. Also empty. I breathe a sigh of relief and swing it open a little wider. A dresser lines the wall with the door, and the necklace sits right there on the corner. I pick it up and slip it into the pocket of my dress. Well, that was easy. Although, really, how hard is it to find something in a sparsely furnished house that’s like five hundred square feet max?

I shut the door to the doctor’s bedroom and tiptoe back to Sarah’s room. She hears me enter and opens her eyes. They’re a mixture of sadness and fear and resignation. Sarah knows she’s dying, and my heart shatters. I need to help her, but I don’t know what I can do here in 1782.

“Am I going to die?” Sarah asks. She coughs, and her entire body shakes.

I don’t say anything.

“My mama died,” she whispers. “And so did Ben. My papa won’t say it, but I think I’m going to die.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m done,” the doctor’s voice says from the floor below.

Oh, not good.

“I’m going to get you medicine,” I whisper to Sarah as I glance into the bowl of herbs next to her bed. “Real medicine. It’s going to make you better.”

I hear the door to the kitchen open downstairs.

“What is this?” the doctor’s voice yells as he spots the broken window. “Sarah!” His feet land on the first step, and I fly out of the room, down the hallway, and into the other stairwell. I thump down the stairs.

“Who’s in here?” The doctor’s voice is now coming from the second floor.

Yellow is still sitting in the same chair, slumped back. Her face is white, and her breath reeks of whiskey. There’s a bucket on the floor that’s half full of vomit. I try not to gag as I pull Yellow’s necklace out of my pocket and spin the year dial two full turns. I toss it to Yellow, and she catches it.

“I set it,” I bark. “Go! Grab the files!”

I’m spinning my own dial as Yellow slips the necklace over her head and tucks the files into her waistband. She tries to stand but staggers backward and falls to the floor.

“The necklace!” the doctor roars from the second floor. “She stole it!”

His footsteps thunder down the stairs. I throw myself over Yellow, grab her pendant, and shut its lid a second before I shut mine.

Yellow and I are ripped through time. I hear Yellow scream. We land, and she stumbles back onto the street. She looks around, and familiarity crosses her face.

“When are we?”

“1894.” I drop my head, grab Yellow’s hand, and pull her into an alley as a policeman rounds the corner, swinging a nightclub.

Yellow looks up at a redbrick building that casts a shadow over us, then leans her back into it and sinks onto the ground. “This is my time.”

“Excuse me?”

“My time,” she says. “My time period. We’re all assigned different eras that we specialize in. I’m the late-nineteenth century. I feel at home here.”

“Except that we’re not staying.” I hold down my hand to help Yellow to her feet, but she doesn’t take it. “Every hour we stay here is like, what?”

“Twelve hours in the present, more or less.”

“So if we stay two hours, we lose an entire day. We can’t do that.”

“Well, I don’t want to project again.” Yellow sighs. “Look at this. Look at what he did to me.” She holds out her arm, and I recoil. Her stitches are crude, thick black strings snaking up half her forearm. “I can’t project again. Physically. I need to recover, at least for a night. I don’t care if I lose a day or a week or even a month. If I project again, I might die.”

I rest my head in my hands. My life is literally racing past me. When I left the present yesterday, it was November. I’m not sure exactly how much time has passed, but it has to be weeks later, maybe even a month or so. And I’ve only passed a few hours.

I could leave Yellow here. I never wanted her tagging along in the first place.

I look down at her, sitting in the street with her legs straight out in front of her. Her patterned tights are ripped, her once crisp dress shirt is ruined, and her skirt is dotted with blood. Because of me. Yellow chose to leave Annum Guard and help
me
. I can’t abandon her. It would be like leaving an injured man behind on the battlefield. There are some things you just don’t do.

I hold up my index finger. “One night. We’ll develop a game plan and figure out how we’re going to bring down Alpha. So tell me, Miss Nineteenth Century, is there a hotel we could check into or something?”

“The Parker House,” Yellow says. “It’s the best hotel in Boston. I’ve eaten in the restaurant a bunch of times, but I’ve never stayed there. I’ve always wanted to.”

I scrunch my nose. “And how exactly are we going to pay for that?” It dawns on me that when I ran away, I didn’t count on having to pay for things. Ever. I have exactly zero dollars on me. I haven’t eaten in a day. As the thought crosses my mind, I realize that I’m hungry. Starving. And thirsty. It’s as if I was blocking out all the discomfort because I was so high on adrenaline, but now that I can finally breathe, I’ve come crashing back to Earth.

I place my hand on my stomach. “We need to eat. Do you have any money on you?”

She pushes up, pulls a twenty out of her pocket, and looks at it. “This would more than cover a room and dinner, except that we might run into a problem right here.” She holds it in front of my face and taps on the lower-right corner, where the words
2008 SERIES
are printed.

I sigh. “So we have no money.”

“And you’re in a muumuu, and I’m in a corduroy miniskirt.”

“You sure you can’t project again?”

“Positive.”

I nod my head. “Okay.” I look down at the charm bracelet dangling from my wrist. My Hanukkah gift from Abe’s family. I hate to part with it, but sometimes you have to make hard choices. “We can sell this.” I shake my wrist.

Yellow shakes her head. “No, you’re not selling that. It was a gift from your boyfriend, right?”

“How did you know that?”

“You told me it was a gift when you first started at Annum Guard. I just guessed it was from a boyfriend.”

I can’t believe Yellow remembers something I told her in passing about my bracelet.

“We’ll sell these,” she says. “Or one of them, at least.” She unscrews one of her diamond stud earrings and holds it up, then she drops it into my hand. “You have to do it, though. Those suckers were five thousand dollars apiece, and I think I might pass out when they give me, like, a hundred and fifty for it.”

Yellow leads me down Washington Street and stops in front of a door.
SHREVE, CRUMP & LOW
is written on a sign out front.

“Tuck your hair up and pretend you’re a man,” Yellow tells me before I go inside. “They’ll give you a better price.”

“I’m in a flowered muumuu. They’re going to think I’m an asylum patient.”

“Oh. True. Well, then, just do your best.”

The man standing inside the jewelry store gives me a very blatant once-over, but all appearances are overlooked when I pull out that diamond stud. He tries to lowball me, but I talk him up to $175. I honestly have no idea if that’s a fair price or if I’m getting ripped off, but, oh well.

Next, Yellow and I duck into a small clothing shop down the street and buy dresses and shoes that are good quality but at least ten years out of fashion. At least that’s what Yellow says. But we can afford them; that’s the important part. Then it’s on to the Parker House.

The lobby of the hotel takes my breath away, even in 1894. Massive Corinthian columns line the room, stretching all the way from the marble floors to the coffered ceilings. Dozens of dome chandeliers dangle above our heads. We go to the desk, money in hand, ready with our cover stories. Yellow and I are the daughters of a foreign dignitary here in town on business. Our father sent us to check into the best hotel in Boston. But the man behind the counter doesn’t even blink. He gives us a metal key to room 303 and that’s that.