Page 36 of The Book of Lost Hours

W HEN A MELIA WENT DOWNSTAIRS to the kitchen the next morning, two men were seated at the table drinking coffee.

“There she is,” one of them said, smiling at her. “Morning!”

Moira stepped into view, her expression oddly tense. “Amelia. You’re awake.”

“What’s going on?” Amelia asked tentatively.

“Amelia, this is Jack Dillinger, my boss. And one of my colleagues. Fred Vance. They’re here to help us with something.”

Moira’s voice was casual and calm, but Amelia could see in her eyes that something was off. She looked at the two men. Jack Dillinger looked just how she’d expected the head of the CIA to look; broad, blunt, and authoritative. Fred, by comparison, was stocky and bullish.

Jack waved her into the room. “Don’t be shy, sweetheart, come have some breakfast. You’ve got a big day ahead of you.”

Amelia’s eyes flitted back to Moira. “What’s he talking about?”

Moira put a plate of eggs into her hands. “They are here to help us catch Anton Stepanov.”

“Catch him?”

“That’s right!” Jack exclaimed. “We heard you saw him with the book we need, so we figured it was high time to bring the bastard to heel.”

“So you’re going in after him?”

Jack chuckled at her. “Oh, we’re not. You are.”

“Me?” Amelia turned to Moira, but she wouldn’t look at her.

“Sit down,” Moira said, squeezing her shoulder. “We’ll explain while you eat.”

Amelia did as she was told, sitting on the end of the table closest to Jack. She didn’t eat, feeling sick.

“All right, here’s the plan,” Jack said between sips of coffee.

“We talked it over and what we’re going to do is send you into the time space with Fred here.

He’ll wait near the door to catch the Russian and drag him out when he gets close enough, but it’s going to be up to you to lure him that way. ”

They were using her as bait. She looked at Moira. “Can’t you go in with me instead?”

Jack answered before she could. “Hunting down a Russian criminal is a man’s work. Besides, Moira doesn’t go in the time space, do you, Donnelly?”

Moira ignored him. “We agreed that Fred is the better option. In case something goes wrong.”

They continued talking but Amelia could barely hear them over the ringing in her ears. After she’d choked down a few bites of egg, Moira gestured for Amelia to follow her upstairs, grabbing her purse from the table in the foyer. Jack and Fred had begun pushing furniture around in the living room.

“What are they doing?” Amelia asked when they entered her bedroom.

“Oh, you know. Checking angles. Measuring the distance between doorways. Whatever else it is that men do before committing acts of violence.”

Moira set her bag down on the desk and began examining the room, the purple quilt, the tiny painted stars on the ceiling that Uncle Ernest had made when Amelia first moved in.

The woman was pretending that this was fine.

That everything was normal. It was infuriating.

Amelia watched her as she took the book she had been reading from her nightstand. Aurora Leigh.

“Did you read this?” Moira asked, holding it up.

Amelia nodded. Moira looked surprised as she flipped through the pages of the book.

“I really liked it,” Amelia said, forcing the words out with great effort.

Moira smiled. “I had hoped you might. It helped me through some dark times when I was younger,” she said, her voice softer than normal. Warm even.

“Oh?”

“I had a very lonely childhood,” Moira continued. “And then there came a stretch of time when poetry was the only way I had of coping. Of touching something real.”

“Something real?” Amelia asked with a frown.

Moira took a moment to answer. “We fill our homes with furniture and our minds with facts, but poetry is how we fill our souls. It’s the poor man’s medicine… the deepest expression of mankind. If you can read poetry, then you have already felt the shadows of humanity’s most potent emotions.”

“Is that from a poem?”

Moira lifted her eyes to the ceiling as if she couldn’t quite remember and shook her head. “No. I don’t believe so.”

“Sounds like one,” Amelia said. She hesitated before adding, “Maybe you should be a poet. You know, if the whole scary CIA agent thing doesn’t work out.”

Moira let out a small laugh. She put the book down and pulled out the desk chair, gesturing for Amelia to sit.

“Don’t you have a mirror in here?” Moira asked as she picked up the hairbrush from the dresser and brought it over. “No wonder your hair’s always such a mess.”

Amelia tried to turn around to glare at her, but the tug of the brush against her scalp held her in place. “It’s not a mess. There’s just too much of it.”

“I can cut it for you if you’d like. Shorter hair is in fashion these days.”

“If you touch my hair, I’ll shove you out a window.”

Moira chuckled at her and set down the brush. Her fingers slid up into Amelia’s hair. She began pulling the red strands into a neat French braid going straight down her back. Amelia froze under the unfamiliar touch.

“I want you to be careful in there today, all right?” Moira said quietly. “If things start to go wrong, I want you to come back out right away. Regardless of what Fred might say. You trust your own judgment first. Understood?”

Amelia nodded.

Moira paused and gripped her chin in her palm. “I mean it, Amelia. I want to hear you say it out loud.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Satisfied, Moira let go and commenced braiding her hair again.

Cool fingers brushed against the back of Amelia’s neck, making her shiver.

Jack called out for them. Moira finished braiding and faced her so they were at eye level.

She looked as though she wanted to say something else.

Instead, she leaned forward and kissed Amelia on the forehead.

“Time to go,” Moira said.

Amelia stood up and followed her out of the room. Downstairs, Jack and Fred had moved all the living room furniture to the foyer, blocking off access to other rooms.

“That should about do it,” Jack said, slightly breathless. “We’ve closed off all the doorways he could possibly go through if he manages to get loose.” He turned to Amelia, surveying her carefully. “Should we give her a gun, do you think?”

Moira shook her head. “No. She’s never learned how to use one.”

She had removed her own silver revolver and was checking the chamber as she spoke. Where she had been keeping it, Amelia had no idea. Her white blouse and wool trousers left little room. But she had learned to stop questioning Moira.

“What if he’s not there?” Amelia asked. “How long should I stay and wait for him?”

“You can stay as long as it takes,” Jack reassured her. “We’ll wait.”

Amelia swallowed, palms sweating. “Are you sure I don’t need a gun?”

Moira smiled faintly and nudged Amelia in the direction of her uncle’s office. The only door they’d left unblocked. Amelia stepped toward it, feeling Fred following at her heels. She spun the crown of the watch.

“Good luck!” Jack’s chipper voice said behind her. “Bring us that Russian.”

Amelia took a breath and then opened the door. Silence enveloped them as they stepped into the time space, and Fred prodded her forward. He shut the door behind them and scanned up and down the row of shelves.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he said. His voice was deep and grating. “When you find him, get him to chase you and then open a door. I’ll make sure he goes through it.”

“And what if he catches me before you get there?”

“Best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

That wasn’t very reassuring. Amelia walked forward down the dark shelves.

She hadn’t had time to give much thought to how she might go about finding Anton Stepanov amid the labyrinth.

Wandering aimlessly would do her no good.

She decided that her best bet was to wait for him in the center of the rows, the place he had shown her where the painted ceiling was most visible.

Using the swirling memories overhead to guide her, she weaved her way toward the center, keeping track of each and every turn.

Right, then left. Then left again. She encountered nothing, alive or dead.

No flecks of stardust, no watery shadows.

The time space seemed chillingly empty, like it knew what sinister intentions awaited the day.

She wondered if this was what Anton had experienced before he loaded his gun and fired it at Uncle Ernest. The silence and stillness as if the time space was standing in audience.

An hour passed with no sign of him. Then a second.

She saw a figure moving at the top of hour three and turned abruptly.

But it was just the liquid specter of one of the dead slipping between the shelves.

Tired of waiting, Amelia took a few steps farther in the direction of the chasm.

This was pointless. Timekeepers didn’t just hang out in the time space all day, and he’d been there only the night before.

What if it was days before he came back?

She walked down the center of the rows, peering down each one. Another hour. Two. Three.

Six hours passed before she caught a glimpse of another person down one row of shelves.

She ducked around the corner. A timekeeper stood with his back to her, watching the phantom memory of one of the dead fade away before him.

His head tilted up to watch the stars travel inward.

Dark hair. A lanky frame. It was him. This was her chance.

She stepped out from behind the shelf. Anton turned in her direction, their gazes locked in cold combat, each one waiting for the other to react first. For a moment, he almost turned around.

Amelia could see the hesitance in his stance, the desire to walk away from whatever this was.

But he didn’t. He took a step toward her, slow and careful.

Another step, then a few more. Amelia waited until he was following at a normal pace before turning around.