Timeless Page 6

  She wavered on her feet for a moment, a look of surprise in her eyes as she stared at the feather boa in her hands, then toppled to the floor.

  “I’m so sorry for the trouble,” Gary called over his shoulder as he helped Dogen out the door. “He will be back to pay his tab.”

  11

  IT TOOK CASS two days to travel from the Alps to New York City. The trucker—who was extremely polite as Atlantis thawed and Cass sat next to him with her sword in her lap—let them off in Paris.

  From there, Cass used an Underside shortcut to Columbus, Ohio. As Cass had discovered during her last visit to New York, the trouble was that the city existed in an Underside “dead zone” with a radius of hundreds of miles. Columbus was about as close as she could get. From there, Cass tucked Atlantis back into her bag and scrounged what little money she had to buy a Greyhound bus ticket to New York. The upside was that Cass could spend most of the next twelve hours sleeping in her seat.

  Her dreams, though, flickered between past and future, loved ones and monsters, desperation and hope. When she arrived, her body felt rested, but her heart felt exhausted. She helpfully ignored those tangled emotions and set off across the city.

  By the time she’d walked across the city and through Central Park to Harlem, it was lunch time and Cass was starving. If she’d been given the choice of finding Thomas or the taco truck that had been parked here last time, she would have been tempted to choose the truck.

  Thomas’s apartment was just past the far north end of the park. Cass picked a bench at the edge of the park that gave her an angled view of the old apartment building. From here, she would be able to see everyone coming and going and she could watch for any activity in his apartment window.

  Sitting on the bench in the afternoon sun, she tried hard to ignore any lingering doubts she had about asking for Thomas’s help again. She tried hard, too, not to cede any room in her head to that persistent image of Thomas laid out on the stone slab, his eyes like solid black marbles.

  Once she’d settled in, Atlantis poked his head out of her bag and took a look around. The sidewalk was full of pigeons. Atlantis smiled when he saw it. Cass opened the bag the rest of the way. He jumped out and darted into the bushes.

  At least one of them was going to have lunch today.

  Cass watched the apartment for the rest of the afternoon without any sign of Thomas. The window in his third floor apartment was open, but she never saw any movement. Atlantis came and went. Occasionally, time would flicker and Cass would spot Thomas entering the building at some point in the past. Or, sometimes, she would spot the taco truck parked across the street from his building and the smell of sizzling meat would waft across the street, causing her stomach to rumble loudly enough to be heard by passersby. But in both cases the temporal stutter didn’t last and Cass shortly found herself back in the present without Thomas or tacos.

  By the time the sun began to dip toward the horizon, Cass was sick of waiting.

  Atlantis wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but that was his M.O. She’d named him Atlantis because he was more often lost than found. He would catch up if and when he wanted.

  Cass grabbed her bag, crossed the street, and entered Thomas’s building. She took the stairs up three flights to his apartment and walked to the end of the hall. This time, his apartment door wasn’t already open, but when she tried the knob, the door was unlocked.

  Cass couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or not.

  But the bare apartment on the other side of the door was definitely not a good sign. On her first visit the small studio apartment had certainly been spartan. But this time even the handful of personal belongings was missing. The shelf was conspicuously free of library books. The floor was bare of Thomas’s sleeping pad and blanket. The stove had no tea kettle.

  Cass swallowed hard, trying to get the lump out of her throat.

  Had she broken out of Richard’s chalet and come all this way to find that the one person she thought might still be able to help her was nowhere to be found?

  If Thomas wasn’t here, she had no idea where to look for him.

  Cass could feel the white noise that lingered at the edge of her field of vision gathering strength, crowding her mind like the onset of a migraine. She felt dizzy and sat down on a folding chair at the room’s small table.

  A small white envelope lay in the center.

  Cass rubbed her eyes, trying to clear them. She picked up the envelope and pulled out a half-sheet of paper. The paper simply said: “Don’t worry. I’ll save you.”

  Cass scrunched up her nose and read the note again. What did it mean? Was it intended for her? Had Thomas written it?

  She stood up and went to the open window. A cool evening breeze lightly tousled her hair. A bank of clouds passed in front of the setting sun. The wind picked up and behind her the apartment door swung creakily closed, latching with an understated click, as if shut with a cautious touch rather than by a gust of air.

  Cass, though, had bigger problems than the door. In concert with the creaking of the door’s hinges, she felt time begin to fray.

  The shadows in the corner behind the door thickened into a solid form about her height and build. The inky figure cocked its head at her, curious. Then the thing held out its own hand and examined it with frank curiosity. The fingers on the hand grew longer. Nails extended from the ends of the fingers and hardened into claws. The shadow’s posture changed and became more aggressive, as if it only now understood what it was and what it was supposed to do.

  Cass didn’t like the look of it. She reached for her sword and tossed the sheath aside.

  The shadow sprang at her.

  Cass attacked.

  Her sword, though, passed cleanly through its torso without leaving a mark.

  The shadow’s claws, on the other hand, drew blood as Cass retreated toward the window. The thing grew in size, blocking the exit and pressing Cass against the window frame.

  Cass’s weak eye sputtered and fizzled. Her sword clattered to the ground.

  Just as she realized that she was boxed in with no place to run, the shadow cocked its arm, ready to strike at her throat.

  12

  CASS WAS PRESSED back against the frame of the open window, the sill digging into her back, her head in the open air. In the abstract, a three-story drop didn’t seem all that far, but with a glance over her shoulder Cass could clearly see it was far enough to break her.

  Despite the absurdity of defending herself against a shadow, Cass raised her hands in resistance. She closed her eyes and braced for the blow.

  But instead of dying, she heard the door creak open again.

  Both she and the shadow turned to look.

  It was Thomas.

  He entered the room with a brown paper bag in hand, unfazed by the death match playing out in front of him. He took the situation in at a glance, set his paper bag down on the table, and casually snatched up Cass’s sword. He even took a moment to calmly admire the blade’s weight and balance in his hand.

  The shadow reared back in terror and seemed to forget all about Cass.

  Thomas closed his eyes and, as if he were moving under water, slowly passed the sword through the monster’s neck, just nicking Cass’s collarbone on the far side. The shadow congealed around the deliberate blade until its head, like a bubble pinched in two, was neatly severed and its body dissolved back into the air.

  Cass was at a loss—both at her last-minute, slow-motion rescue, and at Thomas’s nonchalant manner of executing it. She touched the thin line of blood he had drawn on her collarbone.

  “Sorry about that,” Thomas said in response.

  “Considering my other options,” Cass acknowledged, “you’re forgiven.”

  Thomas offered her a hand and helped her out of the window. He pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to her.

  The late afternoon sun had reappeared. Thomas looked unchanged from the last time Cass had seen him: his salt an
d pepper hair and beard were trimmed short and, despite the cool day, he was wore only a slim white t-shirt with his jeans. The shirt contrasted sharply with his deeply tanned, Mediterranean skin.

  Cass dabbed at her bloody scratch with his handkerchief, then pressed it against the deeper mark left on her arm by the shadow. Her arms and torso were already laced with scars, both thin white lines and rough red welts.

  She was acquiring an enviable collection. But who, now, was ever going to see it? The thought that Zach might never again spend an afternoon kissing her scars, one by one, bubbled to the surface of her mind and she quickly pushed it back down again. At least for now, those kinds of thoughts needed to stay buried deep in the basement of her consciousness.

  She could only deal with one thing at a time.

  “How did you know I was here?” Cass asked. “How did you know when to come?”

  “Good question,” Thomas answered. “I did, of course, leave you a note. It said not to worry and that I would save you.”

  “Right,” Cass said flatly. “You left me a note. Why was I so worried?”

  “Though,” Thomas admitted, “it’s true that I had originally intended that note to mean that I would, in general, help save you. You’re actually very lucky that I happened to return just now.”

  This was a little more than Cass could bear. She sat down hard in a kitchen chair.

  “Right,” she said again.

  Cass fingered the note that he’d left, admiring his old world penmanship. Then her attention was drawn to the paper bag on the table and she couldn’t help but think of the tacos he’d brought her last time.

  Thomas watched her eyes go the bag.

  “You look hungry,” he said. “The bag contains two gifts, both for you. Only one of them is edible.”

  He pulled the bag closer to him and unrolled the crinkled top. First, he pulled out an old stethoscope.

  “I hope that’s not the edible one,” Cass said, her stomach rumbling in agreement.

  Thomas reached back into the bag and pulled out two orders of freshly made sushi.

  “And I hope you like spicy tuna roll.”

  She did. And it was the best damn spicy tuna she’d ever had. Her sinuses dilated in response to the wasabi and her head felt clear and empty.

  There was no talking while they were eating but when they finished Thomas pulled up a chair and hooked the stethoscope into his ears. He pressed the flat, cold metal of the scope against the bare skin above Cass’s breast and listened.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Cass stayed still and fought the urge to shiver.

  Then she felt a bolt of electricity shoot through her nerves, out to the edges of her fingers and toes, before it crackled in the socket of her weak eye. She felt time flicker and, for a split second, she saw this same room at some point in the past. The building was newly finished and a young married couple had just moved in. They were in bed. Clothes were scattered across the floor. They moaned in unison.

  But as quickly as the scene had cut into view, it was gone and Cass was back in the kitchen with the flat metal of Thomas’s stethoscope burning coldly against her skin.

  She looked up at Thomas, hoping for some kind of explanation.

  Thomas carefully placed the stethoscope back on the table and met her eyes.

  “It’s just what I feared,” he said. “You’re timesick.”

  13

  “COME WITH ME,” Thomas said, taking Cass by the hand.

  He led her to a small closet in the corner of the room. He opened the door, stepped inside, and invited Cass to follow. The closet was hardly big enough for one of them, let alone both. Cass hesitated at the threshold. Thomas still had a hold of her hand, but his touch was light. He wasn’t going to pull her in there with him. She would have to decide for herself.

  Cass sighed.

  Stepping into a tiny closet for a minute with a half-vampire wasn’t even going to crack the top ten list of weird things she’d done this week. There was no reason to start balking now. She’d come for his help and he was offering it.

  Cass stepped into the closet.

  Atlantis, appearing from nowhere, darted in after them, squeezing between their feet.

  Thomas folded Cass close and shut the door behind her. The closet was dark. Cass could feel Thomas’s warm breath on her neck. His stiff beard brushed against her cheek. Cass realized that, despite being locked in a box full of shadows, she wasn’t afraid right now. With Thomas here, she wasn’t worried.

  She took this as a good sign.

  Thomas pulled an old skeleton key from his pocket and slid it into the closet lock. He rotated the key a full three hundred and sixty degrees, then opened the closet door again.

  The door opened onto a room the same size and dimensions as Thomas’s apartment. Everything else, though, was different. Instead of a bare room with peeling paint, the entire room was now lined with wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed with books and relics. A pair of warm lamps glowed invitingly. The floor was covered with a rich, Oriental rug. A plush leather reading chair occupied a place of honor near the lamps. A desk was covered with neat stacks of paper.

  Cass’s heart leapt into her throat. Just the smell of the books broke her heart—she missed them so much! When was the last time she’d just sat in a chair and read a book? When had she last spent an afternoon in a library up to her elbows in research, manuscripts, and primary documents?

  Thomas took her hand again, inviting her out of the closet. His trick with the key and closet reminded Cass of the hidden library where she and Maya, on their first adventure together, had found the lost Pauline manuscript.

  Cass stepped out and Thomas carefully closed the door behind her.

  Cass circled the room, trailing her fingers along the spines of the books. Some of the books were hundreds of years old. Some were in Greek, many were in Latin. She was familiar with some of the books, recognized the titles of others, and had never heard of many more. The latter fact impressed her. The room was a scholar’s paradise. Cass came to an abrupt stop, though, midway down the first wall of books when her fingers came to rest on the black spine of a well-worn, hardcover copy of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. She turned to ask Thomas about that, her mouth forming an “O,” but decided instead that she’d rather not know. What happened between Thomas and Stephenie in this hidden space was just between the two of them. Who was she to judge?

  “It’s a first edition,” Thomas said, as if that explained anything. “But that’s not what we’re looking for today.”

  Thomas was searching through a stack of books on the other side of the room. He pulled one or two off the shelves, took a closer look, and then put them back. They weren’t, evidently, what he was looking for either.

  “Your condition,” Thomas continued, “is very rare. In the first place, only seers can get timesick. And in the second place, they can only acquire the sickness under very specific circumstances. Unless I’m mistaken, there’s only one prior reported instance and it dates from the fourteenth century.”

  Cass tried to keep her expression neutral, hoping to avoid betraying the degree to which her mouth had just dried up and her palms had gone sweaty.

  She couldn’t stop herself, though, from the asking the scary but inevitable follow-up question.

  “Interesting,” she said casually, fingering the leather cover of an old folio. “What happened to that seer?”

  Atlantis had curled up in the reading chair and looked like he was already settled in for the day until, at Cass’s question, he cracked one eye open and trained it on Thomas.

  Thomas finally found one of the books he was looking for. He stacked it on the desk.

  “Well, as you are keenly aware, seers usually come in pairs as twins. The one’s attunement to emotional truths is balanced out by the other’s grounding in unclouded reason. Normally, seers are not forced—as you have been—to carry the burden alone.”

  Cass’s mind turned back to her twin
brother. She’d seen in a vision what her life would have looked like if she hadn’t lost him. It was painful to think about how his stillbirth had set in motion the calamities that had torn her family apart, forced her mother to lock away Cass’s unbalanced emotions, and, ultimately, led her mother down the road to becoming the Heretic.

  Thomas cracked another book, frowned, and put it back on the shelves.

  “Okay,” Cass said, “but you didn’t answer my question. What happened to them?”

  “Only one of them fell timesick. But they weren’t clear about the nature of the problem until it was too late. She fell into a coma, cut off permanently from the present moment. And her twin, without her, went mad. In response, Kumiko decided that executing them both was the only merciful—and safe—thing to do.”

  Cass had to admit that this sounded like Kumiko. It was a perfect storm of compassion, violence, and conservatism all wrapped up in one severe decision.

  While Cass wasn’t happy to hear about the outcome, she did, suddenly, feel much better about her decision to break out of the chalet and not leave her health care decisions in Kumiko’s hands.

  Cass came to a place on the shelves that displayed a relic. In a glass box, she found two brown, shriveled balls the size of jawbreakers. The box was labeled “Pope Urban VI.” Cass recalled what a notoriously wicked pope he was and made a firm decision not to ask Thomas what, exactly, was in this box.

  “The good news is that they did figure out what caused the timesickness.” He paused dramatically. “Have you ever been in the ‘basement’ of the Underside?”

  Cass’s mind immediately turned to her fight with Miranda inside the creepy well at the center of the Shield monastery courtyard. Miranda had severed the monastery’s connection to the Underside and Cass had been caught in the middle of it. Zach, too, had described the well as a kind of access point to the infrastructure or ‘plumbing’ of the Underside.