“What if it’s…someone?” Mimi’s whisper was barely audible.
“Don’t be silly. A person would be long dead by now trapped behind a wall.” Levana.
“Time’s Temper, guys, isthatwhat we’re going to find? Acorpse?!” Anika.
“Could be a tomb.”
“Ew-don’t say that?—”
“Could be treasure. Could be someone’s secret stash of Sparetime, for all we know.”
“You think people hide Sparetime behind walls and seal them?!”
“What would?—”
“Guys.”
I spoke before I realized I’d decided to. But they kept whispering, talking one over the other like always, and it was impossible to focus. Impossible. “Just shut up for a second,” I said, then flinched. “Please.”
They did.
“Anything?” Cook whispered.
“Not yet.” I felt the buzzing, but that’s about it. I didn’t have the slightest clue on how to reach for it, how to make it submit.
But the more I focused now that it was quiet in the room, the more I…feltit. Felt the hand on my chronobank that was pressed between the wall and the Timekeeper’s hand. I felt the seconds in it, the minutes, too. In a way I never had before, almost like I was trying to connect to them.
Like my body was operating on an old instinct. Like it had done that very thing before, and now that it felt the magic, it wanted to reach for it.
Curiouser and curiouser.My own body was a stranger to me, just as much as this Timekeeper.
Which was maybe why I felt like Iknewhim, too.
“Reach for it,” I thought I whispered, though I could have just thought the words in my own head. “The seal is right there. Reach for it.”
But I must have spoken out loud because Russ said, “You made it. It’s your magic. Go ahead, reach for it.”
I risked a glance to the side to find the Timekeeper had his eyes closed still, had pressed his forehead to the wall. Sweat beads lined his dirty face, and he clenched his jaw so tightly we heard his teeth grinding.
I didn’t really expect anything to shift, until…
Cook gasped from the other side. “It’s moving,” he said, and my heart fell all the way to my heels. Every gear in my body came to a halt, too, and I focused my entire being on the wall again. On the magic.
My breath caught. I thought I gasped, too.
Holy Hour, it wasreallymoving.
I wasn’t entirely sure how to explain it, but the hum changed. Shifted. Thatknotthat I’d felt at first began to loosen slowly, thread by thread, like something frozen thawing.
Calren’s fingers twitched against the stone. I could tell because I was still holding his hand against the wall, only now I also felt his magic stir beneath his skin. It was…odd. Faint andconfused,but responding. It was responding to the Sparetime in my chronobank.
Take it, take it, take all of it,I chanted in my head, held onto his hand with all my strength,willedthe Timekeeper toknowwhat to do and willed the seal on the wall to recognize him. It wasn’t much, but Father always said that it waswillthat moved the biggest mountains. Sheer will could do more than magic—that’s what he always told me and Jinx.
Then the wallbreathed.
It sounded silly, but it felt like the wallexhaled,and it movedback an inch or two, giving me the sensation that I was about to fall on my face.
“What—” I started, but before I could open my eyes, I saw the light.
