Infinityglass (12 page)

“What is?” I flipped open the top of the honey to pour some on my toast and waited for her to continue.

“Industry. He locates artifacts, artwork, jewelry, etc., and we go get them. Most often, they’re related to time, but not always.”

I snapped my fingers. “That’s how he knew what horology was.”

“Dad belongs to at least three different horological societies. Anonymously, of course. Where do you thinks he gets his tips on what to steal?”

“The things he sends you to steal. How does that work?”

“First, I gather intel on the jobs. I learn work schedules, security systems, weakest links, things like that. I do it all by changing my appearance.”

“You case joints. Like a burglar.” A stray drop of honey landed on the edge of my plate. I slicked my finger over it and licked it off. “And now I’m imagining you in spandex, scaling the side of a building.”

Hallie didn’t respond. I thought I’d offended her, somehow, but when I looked up, she was staring at my hand. “Hallie?”

“What?” she asked, startled. “Sorry. What did you just say?”

“Um … nothing.” I put down my toast and wiped my finger on a napkin. “The jobs. Chronos. I thought your dad didn’t like for you to leave the house.”

“That’s where the time gene comes in. I have … there’s a guy who can teleport. We do jobs together, or we used to. Dad trusted him to make sure I stayed in line. Turns out, trusting him was a stupid choice for both of us.”

I tamped down the desire to tell her about Poe. “How?”

“He sided with my mother. She and my dad are still married, even though it’s a really weird arrangement. I’ve seen pictures
from their wedding and from when I was a baby. I remember how things used to be. They were either really good actors or they were happy at one point. Sometimes, I think I was nothing more than a phase to her.”

“You and your mom aren’t close?” I asked.

“Not even in the same galaxy.”

Sadness or anger drew down the corners of her mouth. Then I realized it was grief.

“She called me a couple of weeks ago, dropping a bunch of hints, and that’s one reason why your revelation at Lafitte’s didn’t surprise me. I’d heard of the Infinityglass before. I used to get bedtime stories, too.”

Another thing we had in common.

“At first, I thought she was just looking for something that Chronos had retrieved. But she used one of the few soft spots I have for her against me, reminding me of the stories, and told me I was the Infinityglass. I wanted to call her a liar, but … things have changed for me. Recently. Another reason you didn’t surprise me.”

“You have symptoms beyond the ripple sightings?” I asked. “Besides the possession?”

She nodded but didn’t elaborate. “Any answers I get from her now will have to be bargained for, and it’s not worth it.”

“She knows what you are, and she won’t help you? How could a mother do that?”

“Because she wants something from me.” Hallie picked up her
toast. “She always does. I don’t know what it is this time, and I don’t really want to find out. It won’t be good. It won’t be loving, or in my best interest. Nothing she does ever is.”

“Then don’t get answers from her. Get them from me.” It was the boldest I’d been about the Infinityglass since the night at Lafitte’s.

She exhaled. “I’m ready when you are.”

“Then let’s take it upstairs.”

I put my plate in the sink and exited the kitchen, leaving her with a curious expression and a mouth full of toast.

I set up my laptop, an external drive, and notebook on Hallie’s vanity.

It was the first time I’d actually been in her room. A confection of pastels, it was huge and relentlessly neat, with toe shoes hanging from pegs on the wall. I didn’t understand why she needed so many different pairs. There were also wigs and tutus.

She had every game system known to man, including a couple of throwbacks, like an Atari console and a Sega Genesis. A tall wooden shelf held hundreds of movies in various forms, Blu-rays, DVDs, even some VHS tapes. I tapped one and raised an eyebrow.

“Not everything has been released in the most modern formats. If you think that’s a lot, my digital collection would blow your mind.”

“I collect music the way you collect movies.” I opened the minimized window on my laptop screen and showed her.

“Seven
thousand
songs?”

“My physical collection would blow
your
mind. It’s a sickness. But I like to read, too.”

“So do I. Real books. When I was younger, my dad used to take me to the bookstore on Saturdays. Garden District Book Shop at first, but then Octavia Books.” Melancholy sneaked into her voice. “I could spend hours in that place; it was so open and full of light. They even had a pet dog that lived in the store. Those were the good old days.”

Now when she wanted to leave her house, she had to climb down the side of it.

“Maybe you could take me there sometime.”

“Maybe.” She shook off the sadness and leaned over my shoulder, her hair swinging forward, so close it brushed against my cheek. “All right, wise one. Enlighten me.”

I had two thoughts. One, if I turned my head a fraction of an inch, my lips would line up directly with hers, and two, she knew it.

I scooted the stool closer to the vanity to get myself out of the reach of her lips before clearing my throat.

“Here we go.”

Hallie

Dune was easy to tease. The good kind of easy, though. He felt safe and right. I saw how a pattern could form, the push and the pull between us. Not where my brain should be.

“Let’s start with the basics,” he said, scrolling through a list of documents. “Tell me what you know.”

“Right now I’d prefer that you tell me stuff, not that I tell you stuff.”

“We both have information.” He turned around, too big and too ridiculous, perched on the tiny stool that matched my vanity. “I thought we were going to engage in an
exchange
.”

“So you’re going to just blindly open up and give me anything I ask for?”

“I don’t have time to have trust issues, Hallie, and neither do you.”

“There’s always time for trust issues.”

“If we’re going to help each other, we have to put everything on the table.” He rubbed his hands on the knees of his jeans and stood. “I’ve met Poe. Last fall, he came to the Hourglass, to give us an ultimatum from your mom.”

“You know Poe?” The admission made me dizzy. “What kind of ultimatum?”

“She wanted us to find someone.” His frown told me there was more to the story and that he was weighing whether or
not to tell it. “She turned Poe into her sock puppet to get it done, and she claimed it was all for Chronos. She used him.”

Not surprising. My mother consistently proved she felt she was entitled to say or do whatever she wanted to get her way. “Who did she want you to find?”

“A man named Jack Landers. She stole a digital storage device called a Skroll, and she needed him to open it.”

“What was on it?”

“Information about the Infinityglass,” he said. “But the Hourglass stole it from her, and I broke the encryption and downloaded the information on it. When we turned Landers over to your mom, she took the Skroll, but it’s missing some info.”

I tapped the hard drive that sat on my vanity beside Dune’s laptop. “It’s all here?”

“That and more. Everything I’ve gathered over the years, and even some things my dad found before he died.”

“My whole life encapsulated in one external drive.”

“Not your whole life. Nothing could contain you.” The fierceness in his voice surprised both of us.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said cautiously. “If I want to know what’s on that drive, I guess it’s my turn in the sharing circle?”

“It’s a very small circle.”

Small, but suddenly not as cozy as I’d like.

His fingers tapped on his track pad. “Will you talk to me about your … symptoms?”

I searched his eyes. Trusted what I saw. “I started seeing rips, but apparently everyone else with the time gene does, too.” He nodded confirmation. “My energy levels are insane. I don’t need to sleep or eat. I do, out of habit, but it isn’t necessary. All my senses feel sharper. And I heal really fast. Insanely fast. I can also hold any form I change into a lot longer. Things like my vocal cords and hair color have always been either impossible or complicated. Not anymore. No effort at all.”

“Show me.”

I thought for a second, and then morphed into Zoe Saldana à la
Star Trek
.

“James T. Kirk who? Spock who? Bring me a sexy Samoan.” I slipped back into my normal skin. “Are you okay? You kind of look like you swallowed your tongue.”

“Fine. I’m fine.” He rubbed one hand over his face, picked up a pencil, and started scribbling in his spiral notebook.

“The possession, or whatever, isn’t connected to my transmutation ability. It’s new, part of the Infinityglass thing.” I tried to sound casual as I asked the next question. “Do you have a theory on how the Infinityglass part of me kicked into gear?”

He tapped the eraser end of his pencil on the vanity. “It could be … hormonal.”

“Excuse me?”

“That wasn’t meant as any kind of insult; it’s just a known trigger for some people. Usually, it’s puberty.” Dune gave me the
once-over, and then started scribbling in his notebook again.

“Yeah. I passed that a long time ago.”

“Obviously.” He wouldn’t look at me. “Or the genetic stressor could be an object or a million other things.”

I could tell from his expression and the speed of his pencil on the paper that he was thinking a hundred miles an hour. I was also pretty sure I knew what the trigger was, but I couldn’t go there yet. I had to talk to Poe.

“What happened with the rip is another side effect, like your senses or sleeping or energy level. I can’t stop thinking about all the variances. For us, back in Ivy Springs, the rips progressed. At first, only travelers could see them, and they could be interacted with. Then they became scenes, and the travelers existed outside them. Then anyone with an active time gene could see rips, whole scenes. Rip worlds. Time started blending: rips with humans but no interaction between the two.”

“But I interacted with rip people. Stepped into someone else’s life. Has anyone else done that?”

“I don’t think so. Here’s a list of everything everyone has seen.” He leaned back so I could see his computer screen, and then pointed to a desktop folder titled “IG.” “I’m going to send you this file. It contains all the basics about the Infinityglass, from when I thought it was an object. If you want to look over it, we can talk about it, see if any of it applies to you.”

“You mean, slick as glass, gritty, curvy, immalleable?”

“If those are the ones that work.” He shut his laptop and
slipped it into the case. “Have you decided whether or not I’m a nice guy?”

“My only other option for answers is my mother, and I’d trust Darth Maul before I’d trust her.”

“You’re killing me with the nerd references. But you know that, don’t you?”

My phone buzzed with a text from my dad.

The job is on.

I grinned. “The verdict is in, and I think you’re a nice guy. You’re also my best bet for information about the Infinityglass.”

“So we can continue our search tomorrow?” he asked.

My grin got even bigger. “Actually, I have other plans for tomorrow.”

Chapter 10
Hallie

I
went to the side entrance of the house to wait for Dune.

Because I was excited to see him.

I used to meet Benny at the same entrance when I was a kid. I didn’t want to throw a Benny-shaped shadow over Dune, and I didn’t think I was. Benny had been my friend. Dune was … different.

I wanted to punch myself in my own face. The last thing I needed to indulge in was a crush, especially one that had exploded on me like a shaken champagne bottle.

“Hey, kiddo.” Carl, who’d been head of security for as long as I could remember, stood and brushed biscuit crumbs from his shirt. “Is something wrong?”

“Take a load off,” I said, briefly placing my hand on his shoulder. “I’m waiting for someone.”

“New kid?” He sat, but kept his posture straight and his feet
flat on the floor. Ready to jump in front of me at any second, should the need arise.

“We’re going on a job.”

Carl knew exactly what that meant.

“First one for this guy?” When I nodded, he picked up his Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate and took a slow sip. “And you think he’ll be good in the field?”

“We’ll find out. All Dune has to do is take a little trip with me.”

“To where?”

Dune stepped through the door. Raindrops caught in his black hair, and some settled on the shoulders of his navy windbreaker. He looked mysterious, coming in from the outside mist, kind of like a mystical warrior.

Wow. That cheese stunk like Roquefort.

“The Bourbon Orleans,” I said brightly. “One of the oldest hotels in New Orleans. It’s also one of the most haunted.”

He slid his arms out of his jacket and hung it up on a hook by the door before dropping his bag. “Do you believe in that stuff?”