Page 49 of The Book of Lost Hours

“No, not stupid,” Anton said. “You were lucky to learn of such things when you were so young.”

There was a glint in his eyes but it wasn’t mockery. It was jealousy.

“Tell it to me again?” he asked, his tone softer. Shy even. As though asking to hear a poem was a sign of weakness.

Amelia repeated the poem through to the end and saw the shadows under Anton’s eyes deepen. There was a long, weighty silence in which Anton stared over the flaxen hillside, watching his family disappear over the crest.

“Is pretty,” he remarked a second time. “You have a nice voice.”

“Thanks,” Amelia mumbled.

There was another long pause. “So…” Anton said, leaning back on his hands. “What happens now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well. You are stuck. You do not have a watch.”

“But you do.”

“Sure, but unless you want to get shot at by the Russian government instead of the American one, I would not recommend using mine.”

“You mean… you’ve been stuck in here?”

“Yes. For about a month now. I am a target of the KGB so I couldn’t leave even though I still have my watch. That’s why your uncle was helping me. I thought you knew that.”

“I guess I just didn’t realize you were trapped.”

“Well. Now you do. Turns out we are both criminals, eh?” he said, bumping her shoulder with his own.

Amelia smiled at him and looked away quickly. “Any chance you remember where you left that book?” she asked. She hadn’t seen it on him since that day. “The blue one with the flower on it?”

He gave her a vaguely suspicious look. “You mean Lisavet Levy’s book? What do you want with it?”

“Moira said I should look for it. She said it would help explain.”

“And you don’t think it could be a trap?”

Amelia bit her lip. “I don’t think she’s trying to trick me. She shot her own boss to save my life.”

“Sure,” Anton conceded. “But she did try to have me killed.”

Amelia winced. “That was sort of my fault. She thought you had attacked me, and I didn’t correct her and so…” She trailed off, giving him an apologetic look.

Anton narrowed his eyes at her, scrutinizing her closely. “You are a lot of trouble, you know that, koshka ?”

“What does that mean?” Amelia asked.

“What does what mean?”

“ Koshka. You’ve said it twice now.”

A mischievous look appeared on Anton’s face. “Kitty cat. Because of the scratching.”

Amelia rolled her eyes at him. “So will you show me where it is?”

Anton took his sweet time responding, tilting his head back and forth as he contemplated. “Okay. I will show you.”

He hopped to his feet and offered her his hand, along with another vexatious smile. “So what do you say? Are we done being enemies now? We can be friends?”

Amelia wanted to say something snarky, but for once, couldn’t think of a single retort. Instead, she accepted his offer of friendship along with his hand and let him lead her out of the memory, back into the time space.

A NTON HAD hidden the book up high.

“I move it every day,” he said as he boosted himself up on the lower shelves to reach it. “So that way no one will find it.”

“Why don’t you just carry it with you?” Amelia asked. “That way you’d know if someone was trying to take it.”

Anton took small steps along the shelf as he responded. “It is safer this way. Me, I am easy to find. But a book in a place full of millions of books? Not so much.” As if to make a point, he climbed down from the shelf and moved to another spot a little farther down to keep looking.

“So, how did you end up with the book anyway?” Amelia asked. “James told me that it was missing.”

“It was missing. A lot of timekeepers were looking for it. Including me. But we were all looking in the wrong place.” Anton jumped off the shelf with a thump, holding the moleskin-wrapped book in one hand. “It turns out that it had already been found.”

“By who?”

“My father,” Anton said with a proud grin. “He’d had it for years. Kept it hidden beneath the floorboards of his living quarters. They put me in his room when I was recruited, but I didn’t find it until about a month ago, completely by accident.”

He delicately removed the fabric covering from the book and held it out to her. Amelia took it, tracing one hand over the worn blue cover. She listened closely for the whispers she’d heard before, hearing the subtle sound coming from within the pages, begging to be opened. Still, she hesitated.

“Have you seen what’s in it?” she asked.

Anton shook his head. “Once I figured out what it was, I took it to Ernest. He decided to look at the memories, but I had to go back. Next time I saw him he was… different. He told me that it was time to act on our plan to steal the watches from our departments. He told me to hide the book somewhere and then we split up.” Anton broke off, staring wistfully down at the book.

“When I finished my part, I waited for him to come back but… he never did. I assumed he had been caught. I didn’t know he was dead until… ”

“Until I showed up,” Amelia said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Where are the watches now?” she asked, not wanting to dwell on it.

Anton’s face lit with mischief. “In the chasm.”

“The chasm?”

“It is a good hiding place, no?”

Amelia laughed at him. “I suppose. So all this time and you still haven’t looked to see what’s in the book?”

Anton shrugged. “I guess I didn’t want to see.”

Amelia couldn’t blame him. Now she wasn’t even sure if she wanted to look. She swallowed and ran her thumb down the spine of the book again. “Would you look with me?” she asked.

Anton raised an eyebrow.

“I want to see the memories, but I don’t know how to time walk,” Amelia explained hastily. “And besides, I… I don’t want to go alone.”

Anton studied her apprehensively, as if she was asking him to do something very painful. Maybe he feared seeing his father in these pages, the same way she feared seeing Uncle Ernest. She held her breath, waiting for him to respond. At last he nodded and reached for her hand.

Anton placed his palm on the book and the next thing Amelia knew, the dark and shadows of the time space faded out around her, transforming into someplace else.

A bedroom, filled with the warm glow from the fireplace, a single bed in one corner where a little girl with golden hair sat waiting.

Out the window, the streets had long since gone dark and chill with November winds.

From the doorway, a man with a voice that crackled like flames in a hearth spoke.

Time for bed, Lisavet. You’ve had enough stories for tonight…