Page 20 of A Flicker in Time (Mine Through Time #2)

Chapter 19

“ I t can’t be. It can’t be.” James raved around Sylvia’s small room, pulling at, overturning, and dismantling things, as if he expected Sylvia to be hiding beneath a pile of clothes. Will followed more cautiously while Emily waited at the open doorway, working the nail of her pinky to death.

“Are you sure she hadn’t gone walking? Riding?” James asked.

“She knows she should not do that alone.” Will’s voice was slightly muffled as he kneeled to look under the bed.

“I don’t think so,” Emily said to James.

“When did you last see her?”

Emily swallowed. “Yesterday afternoon.”

“Yesterday? You hadn’t checked on her for the entire—”

“Yelling will not help.” Will crossed between Emily and James on his way to the table and an empty tin pitcher. His voice was much calmer than James’, but his hands still trembled, and he rested them on the table.

“I’m sorry,” Emily said .

James didn’t respond, but at least he’d reined in his rapid breathing. “Perhaps she had gone out. She could’ve had an accident.” He clenched his fists. “We’ll find her, we’ll—I’ll notify everyone, we’ll go out to search for her—”

“Something else than water was in this pitcher.” Will wrinkled his nose as he smelled. “Pungent.”

James joined him. “Smells like the drink Nelly once gave her child to help him sleep. It’s got that pear-like odor.”

“I’ve seen no pears here,” Emily said. Will shook his head.

“It worked as a sedative,” James added.

Who’d want to sedate Sylvia? No, that left too many people. Who’d want to sedate Sylvia and take her away?

The eyes of all three met. “Ross,” they said in unison.

“Shit.” James banged on the table with his clenched fist, overturning the pitcher.

Will looked at Emily. “The device.”

“The pendant,” she shot back, and they rushed out. Will branched over to his room while Emily ran down the street to the saloon. In five minutes, they’d reconvened on the street. James came running from behind the boardinghouse.

“Eggy is gone,” Will said.

Emily acknowledged with a grim nod. “So is the pendant. And I had it hidden—only you knew—”

“I know. I’d hidden Eggy, too.”

“Joe says he hasn’t seen Sylvia since yesterday. Molly hadn’t served her anything in that pitcher.” James ran a hand through his hair. “If he came, he did so at night. Which means we’re already half a day behind.” He paced around. “ Could be a day, even.” His eyes stopped on Emily. “How didn’t you notice her gone?”

“Well, I—”

“She’s my sister, and you let her get taken!”

Emily gulped, too shocked and surprised to continue her weak defense. James had never been this angry before. She’d seen him annoyed—when Sylvia had interfered with MacPherson—but this was completely different. He was angry at her, and it hurt. Not only because he was right but because she’d made him upset.

“I’m going after them,” James said to no one in particular and stormed off.

Emily stood on the street, frozen in shock. Will turned to her—calm on the outside but with eyes filled with disappointment.

“I know you two don’t get along,” he said, “but I never thought you’d do something like this.”

“I couldn’t spend every single second—” Emily tried, her voice weak and trembling.

“A whole day,” Will cut her off, leaving no room for objection. Then he, too, walked away.

It took about a minute for Emily to get out of her head and push herself back in motion. But what was she supposed to do? How could she fix this?

Travel back. But she couldn’t do that herself—traveling now would only take her to present-day Boston. She ran after Will and found him in Sylvia’s room, where he was re-examining the available evidence.

“You have to travel back,” she said. “You can warn me … do something, anything. ”

Will looked at her sharply, but after a few seconds, gave a brief nod. He sat on the bed and brought out his watch, but only brushed the case with his fingers.

Emily approached tentatively. “You can do it,” she said. “You know you can.”

He closed his eyes, breathed in, and then, with still shaky fingers, set his watch to three days back, before he’d left for Georgetown.

Emily steadied his sitting position as he slipped into unconsciousness. He returned in a few seconds.

“And?” she asked.

“I couldn’t warn you. I tried, and it threw me back.”

His strange behavior at the saloon just before he left. Now it made sense. “You told me to take care of Sylvia.”

“But I couldn’t tell you why.” His somber eyes met hers. If he couldn’t warn me, if that change couldn’t be made, this means it’s bad. Will knew that, too.

He tore his hands out of hers. “I’ll try again.” He set the watch before Emily could react. Once again, he was back in seconds, shaking his head.

“It won’t work,” she said. “If you could’ve done something, you’d have succeeded by now.”

“Once more.”

“But if you couldn’t—”

“I have to try!”

Emily flinched away.

Will squeezed the watch as if redirecting his energy into it. “It’s my fault. I brought her here, I insisted on taking the device, I … I promised I wouldn’t leave her alone, and I did.”

No, it wasn’t him. It was all Emily. At the time she’d been fuming, Sylvia might have been screaming, yelling for help, bound unconscious, or worse. “Will …”

“One more.”

If before, Emily had been worried about Will’s block when it came to time travel, now, she worried about his sudden persistence. Especially since, judging by the beads of sweat on his forehead, the block—or at least the fear—was still hiding underneath. But there would be no dissuading him, so she only nodded in agreement.

This time, when he came back, Will shot up from the bed and ran out of the room. Stunned, Emily needed a few seconds before she followed.

“What’s going on?” she yelled after him. Will skipped down the stairs two at a time and burst through the back door of the boardinghouse. When she caught up, he was prying apart a plank inside the outhouse.

James came running around the corner; he didn’t acknowledge Emily, but he stopped to look at Will.

Finally, Will gave a half-triumphant, half-relieved yelp, and turned to them. He held the box housing Eggy, with the pendant on top of it. “I hid them. I couldn’t do anything regarding Sylvia, but I could hide those two. He didn’t get them.”

So that’s what the last trip was all about. That was why he stormed out of the saloon during their conversation.

“You’re saying Ross wanted those?” James asked. “Then why didn’t he bother searching for them and instead took Sylvia?”

Emily and Will shared a look. Will couldn’t prevent Sylvia from getting kidnapped—but he easily prevented Ross from taking Eggy and the pendant. And generally, the more prominent an event was, the harder it was to amend with time travel .

This was bad. Possibly, catastrophic.

“Anyway,” James said, “my horse is ready. If Ross has business in Boston, he’ll be going back there. I’m going after him.”

“Night is falling,” Will said. “Riding at this hour would be dangerous.”

“More dangerous than Sylvia being with her criminal of a husband?” James made a move to leave, but Will caught him by the sleeve.

“Ross could have a whole day on us. Acting recklessly, trying to chase him through the night, will not help. We need to think of a better plan.”

“There is no better plan!”

“If we blindingly run after him—”

Emily stood there, half zoned-out, as Will and James argued. What a senseless argument—not because the topic wasn’t worth it, but because they were both right. They should act immediately, but at the same time, they were already too late.

And it was all because of her. She’d never messed up this badly before. Never put someone’s life in danger. If it were anyone else, like Will, or her family back home, Emily knew she’d have parked herself in front of that room and not let a single ant inside. But it was Sylvia … and she’d been angry at her.

“… will be on the train by now,” Will was saying.

“Trains have delays. There’s always a chance—” James objected.

Depending on the train schedules, Ross would be in Boston hours, perhaps days before them. Even in this era, it was a big city—easy to disappear in. And they couldn’t catch up …

Realization shot through her like lightning. “I can go there,” she said, but not loud enough to register with the two arguing men. “I can be in Boston before Ross,” she tried, louder .

Finally, they stopped. James looked at her in utter confusion; Will, with silent understanding. “Ross might be on a train already, but he can’t perform miracles. I can be in Boston in five minutes from now. That train’s got nothing on me.”

James slowly shook his head. “That’s impossible. Even an express train, if you could find one, won’t make up for an entire day of headway.”

“I wouldn’t go by train.” She stepped over to him. “I … I can transport in a different way. You know my magic tricks? This is kinda like it. Only I won’t flicker just a few feet away—I’ll flicker all the way to Boston.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“Emily speaks the truth.” Will shifted his eyes to her. “But you can’t go. It’s too dangerous for you to face him alone.”

“I have to. I have to fix my mistake. And besides …” She shrugged. “It’s the one thing I’m good at.”

“This is no time for jokes,” James said.

“I can do it!” She stomped her foot in frustration. “I’ll explain everything later. Or Will can explain it to you on the way. But please, let me do it.”

Will gave her a reluctant nod.

“You two go to Denver and catch the next train. We’ll meet again in Boston. I’ll be there, either with Sylvia or with information about her.”

James shook his head.

“You’ll believe me later. I have to go now. Every minute I stay here is a minute less I have in Boston.” She walked over to Will. “You’ll sort him out?”

“I’ll try. Let’s find you a place to leave.”

They went to Will’s room. As she readied her watch, Will pulled out the almonite bag and prepared the rest. “The last barrel, besides the one in your watch. The almonite clothes. A bit of money for Boston. I think that’s all you need—I’ll bring over the rest of your stuff.”

“I’ll go to the train station and wait for Ross in ambush,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do from there, but at the very least, I’ll know where he’s taken Sylvia. Then we can meet, and you can help me.”

“Emily…” Will brought out his watch, displaying it on his outstretched palm. A light plume of smoke rose from it, the last hurrah of what Emily knew to be the end of that fauxmonite barrel. “I’ll have no time to make another.”

“Okay, then …” She rubbed her forehead. “I’ll do it on my own, if I need time travel. At least once I’m in Boston, I’ll be able to use it properly.”

Will held her hands. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Her entire insides trembled, contracted, and squeezed from the nerves. All alone. In Boston. Everything depending on her. But she had to do it.

She nodded.

“Be careful,” Will said. “Wounds you get here don’t transfer to your time, but if you get injured more severely, if you…”

Emily gulped. “If I die?”

“You won’t return to your time. Your body will stay there, vegetating, but you … you’ll be gone.”

She nodded against the lump in her throat. “I’d better not die then.” She tried to smile, but she could see from Will’s serious face her attempt wasn’t too successful. “Don’t worry, Gramps. I’ve got this.”

Will nodded, though more for his own reassurance. “Once you have her, I don’t want you to stay in Boston. It won’t be safe. Go to Hartford. To my parents.”

Emily gaped .

“James and I will head there. If anything goes wrong, give them a ring instead.”

“A ring?”

“Call them. On the phone.”

“You have—you have phones?”

“You’ll have to call Central and give the number.” Will pulled a small notebook from his breast pocket, scribbled down a few words, and added the note to the almonite bag.

“Are you saying I have to call Fabienne on the phone?” That was not a sentence Emily had ever thought she’d say.

“Only if you need to.”

“Okay. Let’s get going. No time to lose.” She squeezed the almonite bag to her body with her forearm as she prepared to set the watch.

“Emily …”

She looked up. Will opened his mouth but didn’t say anything else; he only crushed her into a hug. She squeezed back and blinked away a stray tear.

“You’ll make this work, won’t you?” he said.

She let the hug go. “You know me. I always save my family.” And before Will could ask her what she meant, she clicked the watch, and he faded into the dark.