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“Still! Maybe forever!”
Zach pulled up outside with Quentin in the passenger seat. He was still wearing his kilt and a sporran, looking like he lived in the Scottish Highlands. Quentin slammed his door open and climbed out with a groan. “I’ve got a truck full of future-weapons hidden in the parking lot of the storage units on 8th street. We’ll have fun figuring out what to do with them.”
“I’m just so happy you’re home!”
“Aye, but tis nae our home, tis a rental again, ye keep gettin’ intae trouble lassie.” We both laughed and hugged for a really long time. That rocking back and forth, thank-god-we’re-alive kind of hugging.
He added, “I’ll be gettin’ all the girls with m’new Scottish accent. Though in Scotland I was gettin’ all the girls with my New World accent.”
“Did ye now?”
“When did you get back?”
“Just now.”
“And Magnus isn’t with you?”
“Nope, but hey, maybe any moment?”
“Let’s go upstairs, get me out of my Scottish garb and we can discuss what comes next.”
“Good because you smell like an eighteenth century pigsty.”
He joked, “They had, as you know, stupid ideas about baths, plus the soap smelled worse than the body odor. And I’ll have you know I just traveled three hundred years.”
“Oh yeah, I just traveled 350 years, I totally win.”
We all convened in the living room. Quentin said, “First, I have to ask, how worried are we that someone is coming?”
“Worried-worried. We need to hide the vessels we have and all the weapons.”
“I need some weapons, I’m not a very capable guard right now.”
“I have weapons in the trunk of the Mustang.”
Zach said, “Is Emma safe here, Ben?”
“I think so, but, Quentin, will you step up security, like a lot, just to be sure?”
“Definitely.”
Zach asked, “Okay tell us, where’s Magnus?”
“We were captured, in the eighteenth century—”
Quentin asked, “With Tyler right?”
Zach said, “Whoa, how did Tyler — what?”
I said quickly. “Tyler, come to find out, came from the future to help us. So he showed up when Magnus and I were jumping to the past. He helped us rescue Quentin and then when we got Quentin out of there he traveled with us, me and Magnus, to the future. Then we were captured there and Tyler rescued me but he couldn’t get to Magnus.” Zach passed me a glass of ice water. I took a big drink and added, “He got me to the land in Gainesville and then left to go back to the future. He’s gone now.”
Zach said, “Tyler? My brother’s friend?”
“Yeah, he was at your wedding, remember?”
“Yeah, and my bachelor party. I just can’t believe he’d be from the future. He didn’t seem weird at all. Just kind of a know-it-all.”
Hayley said, “I always thought he reminded me of Magnus, I mean, smaller, not as handsome, the same kind of facial expressions, like they could be distant cousins or something.”
