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Which means I need to act now. I need to tell them I’m awake. I know what the result might be, and it doesn’t matter. I want to live.
That night, when we reach the cafeteria, I see my aunt exchanging words with the cook. My chest is tight. Interrupting an argument isn’t the ideal way to announce myself, but I’m not sure another time is coming.
“Iris?” I ask. I keep my voice inquisitive, not fearful. The way I might if I ran into her somewhere else—a family reunion, perhaps, or a wedding. “I’m your niece. Vanessa’s daughter.”
Iris’s mouth falls open. “What did you just say?” she asks. It reminds me of the tone my mother used when I’d said something she didn’t like.
A guard grabs me by the hair and I feel it all the way to my jaw.
It was a mistake, but what choice did I have? I want to live. This is the only way to do it.
“I’m Vanessa’s daughter. Your niece.”
Her eyes narrow. “My sister doesn’t have children. And she certainly wouldn’t have had any time travelers.”
“I came here from 1987,” I reply. “And she has—had—three children. My sister and I slept in the same room you and my mother did, the one that looks out on the graveyard. My mother refused to tell us anything about you.”
She marches out from behind the counter and grabs me by my collar. “Related to me, and yet you are awake. We’re not of the first family, so tell me how that’s possible?”
“The guards broke my jaw. I haven’t been able to eat much.” The gruel and stew give my voice a hazy, drugged quality. I sound like someone who’s only begun to wake up.
She regards me with suspicion, reminding me so much of my mother that I want to shrink from her. “Come with me,” she says, pulling me through the cafeteria. “I’m going to enjoy every minute of this.”
We go down the hall to what must be her room. I’d pictured her living like a queen, given her role here, but this isn’t even as nice as the bedroom she left behind in Pennsylvania.
“Sit,” she says, pushing me toward a chair while she stares at my face. “You took quite a risk in speaking to me. What’s to stop me from killing you and taking your spark?”
I freeze. I have only the vaguest understanding of the rules of my kind. I’ve heard about this spark she refers to—the thing that keeps us going, and without which we die. I know only three people in a single family can have it—the rule of threes. I know that we can, in theory, take it from each other. But it never occurred to me until this moment that it was worth killing someone for.
“I’m terrible at time traveling,” I tell her. “I doubt my spark would be worth taking.”
She laughs. “That shows how little you know. If my body was ravaged by cancer right now and I was moments from certain death, I could stab you in the heart and be made new in seconds.”
She appears to be considering it, and she has no reason to spare me, really. All I have going for me is that we have an enemy in common. “My mother hates me, so she didn’t give me a lot of details about anything.”
The smug smile leaves her face. “Why would your mother hate you?”
“Because I’m the reason my sister is dead. Mostly, I think, because she hates time travelers. I guess the gene skipped her.”
She pauses, and then her head tilts. There’s something satisfied in her expression. I suspect she likes hearing that my mother suffered. “Your mother can time travel,” she says. “Did you not realize that?”
I stare at her. It isn’t possible. My mother can’t time travel. And if she could, there’d be no reason for her to hate me the way she does. Unless, perhaps, she thought what made me evil wasn’t that I could time travel, but that I was a Coron.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Of course I’m sure,” she snaps. “I grew up with the woman. What I really don’t understand is how you exist at all. When I left, she was dating Peter Stewart.”
I consider telling her I may be related to Coron but think better of it. Letting them know Katrin was pregnant when she left might lead them to search harder for her.
I nod. “Yes, he’s my father.”
She laughs. “Peter Stewart is not your father,” she replies. “He was a dumb local boy without a drop of magical blood. There’s no way his DNA produced a time traveler.” She taps her lip. “A mystery to solve, which I rather enjoy. I wonder, though, why you’re telling me all this? Surely you realize I have nothing to gain by allowing you to live?”
“I’m a hard worker and a good cook. I can help out wherever you need me.”
She nods, undoubtedly thinking that she still wants to kill me, but perhaps also thinking it can wait until she’s bled me dry working here first. “And your mother would hate it, desperately hate it, if she knew we were working together, wouldn’t she?”
My eyes dart to hers. “Yes.”
