What’s worse?I demanded of him.Kallie’s right. Ava’s in critical condition. The guards are locked up. I’m not letting this happen.
People are dead!Oberi shouted.Ava could die if you press this!
She could die if we let this happen, I argued.She needs medical attention, and she’s not getting it as long as Mad Dog’s in charge.
“Well?” Kallie demanded. “Are we going, or not?”
“We’re going,” I said through gritted teeth. It took everything I had to leave Ava-Marie behind, but if we did things right this time, Ava would be safely in our dorm room when we returned back to our own time.
I pulled Sprigs out of my pocket and set him on Ava’s chest. “I’ll be back for you soon, pidge,” I said, before placing a kiss on her forehead.
“Three forty-nine,” Kallie announced. She snapped her fingers, and the room seemed to flip.
The shouts died in a mere instant. Oberi barked, and the sound echoed off the hallway. Lively chatter came from the open doors of the cafeteria. Relief flooded my body.
“Where are we now?” I asked. My voice shook as I asked the question.
“I took us back to this morning, around breakfast,” Kallie announced. “Thaddeus said Esther had been tailing him all day, and it’s safe to assume Mad Dog was with her the whole time. We’ve got to deal with him first. That way, he can’t go after Thaddeus, and he can’t start the riots…”
Kallie’s voice trailed off. “Oh, Charlie. You’ve still got blood on your hands.”
I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. “So the riots still happened.”
“In the timeline we just left, yes,” Kallie said. “But we can change it. Quick, clean up, then we’ll find Mad Dog.”
I hurried to the bathroom and washed the blood off my hands, then met up with Kallie in the hall.
“What if we run into Ava or Marcus?” I wondered.
“We won’t,” she said. “At this point in the day, you and Ava are in your dorms sleeping, and Marcus and I should be searching the forest right now.”
“How much time do we have?” I asked.
“At least an hour. Marcus and I came back inside around ten, then we split up. I went back to my dorm to grab my grimoire to look for clues. As long as we avoid the fae cell block and don’t run into the past version of me, we should be fine. Let’s go look for Mad Dog.”
It sounded like a great plan… until I realized we didn’t know where the fuck to find him. Kallie led me through a maze of hallways, but I didn’t think she knew where she was going. She wasn’t very helpful at navigating, either. I turned a corner and bumped into someone. She cursed at me, before strolling off. It sounded like a siren based on the way she hissed at me.
“Be careful,” Kallie insisted. “Everything we do has consequences.”
“I’m trying,” I shot back.
Allow me. Oberi cut between us and nudged his nose into my hand. I placed my hand on his head to help guide me through the hall. Kallie walked in a calculated manner, as if trying to avoid setting off even the smallest change.
“This is taking too long,” I complained. “The longer we stay, the more we risk changing.”
Finally, someone’s making sense, Oberi huffed.
I heard the sounds of the cafeteria up ahead. We’d just been here when we arrived in this timeline. It was like she was leading us around in circles.
I slowed my steps. “Where are we going, Kallie? We’ve been past here at least three times.”
“No, we haven’t,” she snapped. “We went down the east hall, then turned around so we could search the west corridors. We’ve only been past here once.”
I couldn’t keep our location straight. It felt like I’d been walking by the cafeteria all day. It was like the timelines were bleeding into themselves, and I couldn’t quite remember the sequence of events. I barely knew what time of day it was.
“We’re not leaving until we find Mad Dog and stop him,” Kallie said. “I’ve got an illusion in mind that will trap him for a few hours—”
“Kallie!” Marcus’ voice came from down the hall.
