“The temporal pressure—it’s building too fast,” Will shouted. “Hang on! We need to go now!”
Zani held tight to Will. He ran toward the incomplete portal swirling in front of the window. As they crashed through, the Pair Tag, now glowing hot enough to cause her clothing to smoke, sent out a shower of sparks. The notebook that she was still clutching burst into flames.
As they fell with the burning book between them, Will’s form changed to something larger, more distant, and utterly unrecognizable. Struggle as she might, Zani couldn’t hold on any longer.
She still heard guards shouting. And then a violent surge of energy rippled all around her.
“Will!” Zani reached for him as reality blurred all around her. For an instant, she felt the brush of his fingers grasping at hers, and then she was caught in a temporal riptide, Nostradamus’s prophecy echoing in her mind.
across time divided…
Time isn’t linear; it’s a spiral dance. Those who call me a crackpot have never felt the ley lines shimmer during an eclipse. They’ve never witnessed how the past, present, and future breathe as one in our most precious moments. When a beloved is lost to the spirals of time, remember this: No one truly vanishes.
The universe remembers every step, every touch, every path once traveled. Like dancers momentarily spinning away from one another only to snap back together with the next measure, those who are lost in time leave trails that can be followed.
To find your way to one who has slipped away, you must listen not with your ears, but with your essence. For time may separate, but our connections transcend those boundaries.
BURNSIDE PORTER,THE WAY OF THE LEY
Chapter19
There Will Be Signs
He’d been so close to deploying the Gearheart Locket. His only hesitation had been whether it was possible for both of them to fit inside. That and the question of where the locket would land once deployed. It provided temporary shelter in a pocket universe and spelled to return home to the Mudpuddle. But that might not be the case if deployed in a temporal zone.
These thoughts had been going through Will’s head as he crashed through the stained glass window.
He knew the port was going wrong even before Zani shouted to him.
Perhaps it was the actual bloodstone’s nearness. Presumably it was somewhere in Cosimo’s lab. Or it might have been their need for such a speedy departure. He’d had to open the port too quickly. Their leap was premature. He couldn’t feel the ley lines properly. They felt faint and insubstantial, as if they were floating above instead of anchored below him.Untethered.He recalled the word scrawled by Zani on the back of the Thai food menu.
There was something wrong with the void as well. It wasn’t empty. He was neither in nor out of it. He saw glimpses of traffic lights and taverns there. A never-ending parade of ghostly people thronged and threaded through the surrounding space. They left silvery snail trails of absolute truth in their wake. He saw the same man at different points in his timeline. As a child, as a young man, as a soldier, and as an ancient elder.
Will floated in awe for what could only have been a split second before he realized they were falling and Zani’s hand was slipping from his. She was being pulled away by a force much greater, much stronger than him, and there was nothing he could do about it but scream into the abyss.
Will had never lost a passenger. Not once. Never. And Zani was not just any passenger. What a fool he’d been to let her talk him into this voyage. How would he find her again? How would she get home? And how would he even get back without her as a catalyst?
Just as she was torn from him, Will plunged into a much more familiar version of the void. The same space he moved through with lumbering care on a near daily basis. He should have been relieved to be back here, where the ley lines were fixed and time was predictable. But the gut punch of Zani’s absence made him stagger and stumble. It tempted him to lie down and sink into the quicksand of oblivion.
But what if she’d merely arrived before him? There was a slight chance of that, wasn’t there? Will clung to this hope as he pushed on, crashing forward, back into the Metaphysics room of the Mudpuddle.
“Oh, my! Back so soon?” Granny Luna was dutifully dusting the shelves. Will had the feeling she’d been waiting for them. “I would have thought you’d want to spend more than one hour in France!”
Will wasn’t wearing a watch, but he could hear the clock on the mantel chiming the hour. Eleven o’clock. They had left at precisely ten a.m.
“And where’s Zani? Left her there to do a spot of shopping, did you?” Granny shook the feather duster for emphasis. Will felt the dragging emptiness of his stomach, but it was nothing compared to the hollow pit of dread carving a hole in his soul. Zani had not arrived before him, and the portal behind him was already starting to close.
“She’s not here?” Will asked.
“Heavens, no.” Granny wrinkled her brow and shook her head. “Did you lose track of her over there, then? Shame on you! I’m sure she’ll be ringing here any moment in a right strop about that!”
“No…” Will sank to his knees. “No, no, no, no…”
“What is it? What happened?” Maida poked her head in the door. She took one look at Will and went pale herself. “Wretched spells! You just time traveled again, didn’t you?”
Will sat in silence for the first forty-five minutes after porting back into the Mudpuddle. He sat in the turret reading nook, watching a spelled cup of “comfort tea” stirring itself. One by one, his friends tried to approach him with offers of food, drinks, and sympathy. They all clearly wanted to know what had happened, but he didn’t feel like talking about it yet. It was too awful.
“Just leave me be a minute, all of you!” Will snapped. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He was weak and tired and justempty. Never had he felt so empty.
