Danny groaned. “This is getting old. No wonder you guys fucked up the bank robbery.”
“That wasn’t Kallie’s fault,” I growled.
“Look, I’m just saying, you’re presented with a problem, and it’s clear what the solution is,” Danny said. “If you guys want to unlock your full potential with time travel, you’ve got to figure out this fated mate situation. Kallie, you either need to break your bond with this guy, or be with him and have it over with, because if you don’t fuckhim, the Warden is gonna fuckus.And it won’t be no tender loving, but a dick up the asshole straight to Shitsville.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Kallie sneered.
“Is it?” Danny asked simply. “Do you love him or not? A simple yes or no is all it takes.”
“Kallie doesn’t need this,” I snapped.
“Someone needs to say it!” Danny insisted. “The world isrelyingon her. Kallie can’t save the supernatural community if Marcus is dragging her along. From what I’ve heard, this has been going on for years, and it can’t go on any longer. Kallie needs to make a decision on what she wants to do, because we’re all tired of waiting here.”
“Which she’ll do on herown time,” I stated firmly, before turning back to Kallie. “We might still be able to use your powers. You’ve been going back in time, and none of us are getting sick, so it must not affect us like it used to.”
“Charlie’s right,” Ava mused. “My symptoms haven’t flared at all since we’ve been in Ilamanthe, so your powers must not be affecting me the same.”
My main hesitation on using Kallie’s time powers was that it could put Ava back in the hospital. The last time we tried to change things, Ava’s symptoms had flared really badly. I’d never get that night out of my head— how she’d been in so much pain she’d begged me to smother her, and I’d actually reached for the pillow. I wouldn’t put Ava through that ever again, not even for the vampire key. But if Kallie had been practicing her powers and it didn’t affect us, then perhaps that was a problem that only existed back at the Institute, some side effect of time-traveling around inferichite.
“It’s safe now, as far as physical symptoms go,” Kallie promised. “My powers are getting stronger, and I can prevent us from getting sick because it’s easier for me to do this. Before, you were getting sick because it’s difficult magic that I was struggling to pull off, and that was triggering your body because people aren’t supposed to be able to move through time and space. The way my powers work, I’m not screwing with the timeline; I’m manipulating yourplaceon it. Your bodies were resisting because you aren’t supposed to be there, but now I’m powerful enough to put you wherever I want on the timeline without it having an effect on you.”
“If your time travel is unrestricted, we can pull off the bank heist again— theright waythis time,” I said. “We’ll go in before anyone else gets the keys, so we can steal it before they do.”
“We have to be careful,” Kallie insisted. “If we take the key before your team can confirm it’s still in the vault, we’ll havechanged the timeline. Then we’ll never go to the bank in the first place, and we won’t have the idea to go back in time to take it. It could create a paradox, which could be catastrophic. We could get stuck in a time loop, or cease to exist at all.”
“When you and I went back in time at the Institute, we merged into the same timeline. We remembered both,” I pointed out.
“I told you my time powers don’t work the same way as they did at the Institute, and I don’t know the full extent of what that entails yet,” Kallie reminded me. “I promised before that I’m only going to observe. Changing things is dangerous, as you well know.”
Kallie is right, Oberi advised.Misuse of her power could be worse than catastrophic. She could end up unraveling the fabric of the entire universe.
“There has to be a way we can use her powers to our advantage,” Ava mused. “Can we steal the key without changing anything?”
“We could replace it with a fake,” Danny suggested.
“And how exactly would that work?” Kallie asked skeptically.
“If you want to interfere as little as possible, you’d have to intercept the key before it was placed into the vault,” Danny said. “Go back to the 1920s and get your former vampire friend to put a fake in the vault, so when your enemies come to steal it, they’ve got the fake one, and you’ve taken the real one through time travel.”
“That might actually work,” Ava said.
“And what if we accidentally change something?” Kallie pressed. “It could prevent us from being born. We don’t know what kind of effect something like that could have.”
“If no one knows anything has changed, then the events would play out exactly the same, wouldn’t they?” Danny asked.
“This might be the only chance we have,” I said thoughtfully. “If we can intercept Chancey— I mean Frank Coffrey, the guy he was in his past life— on his way to the bank, he’ll put the fake key in the vault and be none the wiser. It’s an easy pickpocketing job. Then we just portal the key back here. Nothing has to change except the future.”
Kallie remained quiet as she pondered the suggestion. “Itcouldwork, but are we certain we’re willing to risk it?”
“I don’t know if we have a choice,” Ava said. “It’s either risk changing things, or let someone get away with stealing the vampire key. We have no leads, but we do have your magic. You have this power for us to use it, or the gods wouldn’t have given it to you.”
“Oberi, is this something we can pull off?” I asked.
Oberi huffed.It’s possible, but you’d have to be extremely careful not to change a single thing. Frank can’t know you swapped the keys.
“Oberi’s on board,” I announced.
Kallie sighed heavily. “I wouldn’t be doing this if we had any other choice.”
