“Any idea where I can find Malik? If he has the journal and the ability to kill Balthazar, youmusttell me where to find him,” I said, pressing my knuckles into the worn wood of the table.
John James stroked his jaw. “My sources tell me he’s in the Catskills of New York.”
“The Catskills? That’s an awfully long way from here,” I said, despondency nibbling at the edges of my hope. “That will take us weeks.”
My shoulders drooped, weighed down by the thought of such arduous travel.
“If you ride on horseback, the journey won’t be so long,” John James said, optimism brightening his face.
Easy for you to say,I thought but said nothing.
“What are your sources, if you don’t mind my asking?” Marcellious drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “How do we know we can trust them? Even if we got to the Catskills in aweek, which seems unlikely, it would be a total waste of time if we only traveled on a hunch.”
“Oh, I’m part of a secret network. You see, my family has been studying time travel since the beginning of time.” John James wiped his hand through the air, disturbing the flight path of two flies that buzzed in lazy circles over our heads. “My father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on all carried the burden of this particular study through the generations. My father is JeremiahJackson James.”
I let out a gasp. “My father’s name was Jack James!”
John James nodded. “I know. I was the one who sent Alina to find your father.”
I reeled back. “That’s impossible.”
“I’m afraid not. I knew the lineage works in both future and past directions.” John James pressed his fingertip against a few hardtack crumbs lingering on the table. “When your mother sought me out, telling me she couldn’t find the sun and moon knives, I told her to travel to the future. She had to find one of my family afterbears. The individual she needed to seek out would be as obsessed with time travel as I am.”
I dug my fingernails into the worn wood next to the empty plate. “Are you telling me my mother met my father on purpose? He was the one she sought, and it wasn’t true love?”
“Yes.” John James’ bobbed his chin up and down. “Your mother traveled back and forth between this time and your time. We’d confer over possible matches until she told me of a student completing his dissertation in time travel at McMont College in a province in Canada. She described him to me, and I said, ‘That’s the one! He’s one of my afterbears.’”
He slumped slightly, giving his spine a soft C-curve. “The last time I saw your mom, she seemed nervous and sad. But you, Olivia, gave her strength and hope. Oh, how her eyes lit up when she spoke of you.”
He clasped his hands beneath his chin.
“I find that hard to believe,” I said, my diaphragm tightening at the thought of my mom zipping back and forth between centuries.
John James reached across the table and patted my hand.
I cringed, wanting to yank my hand out from beneath his patronizing touch yet bound to niceties by the strangeness of his resemblance to my father.
“Don’t hate your mother,” John James said, withdrawing his hand. “You and she are quite similar.”
“There’snothingsimilar about my whoring mother and me,” I shot back, teeth bared.
John James blinked. “I beg to differ. You and Alina have parallel lives. You may have lost your husband and child, but your mother had it equally as bad, if not worse. You owe it to yourself to learn her story. I hope you will get answers to your questions.”
Before I could ask him more, he rose and bustled around the small space, searching for something.
My betraying heart grew hopeful. Was he looking for some kind of keepsake Mom had given him? Something of hers that might soften my hatred of her?
I perched at the edge of my chair, eager to see what he sought.
Finally, he picked up a piece of parchment and waved it. “A-ha! I knew I had this somewhere. Your mother gave it to me.”
My leg pumped up and down with excitement. “What is it?”
“It’s a map!” He lay the parchment on the table with a flourish and stabbed a finger at a spot. “And there’s the Catskills! Now you can find your way.”
The air left my lungs like a deflating balloon. Even still, I clung to the splinter of hope thatmaybe, just maybe, Mom had loved me and left me something to prove it. But it was only a map.
Still, a map leading to the Catskills was better than no map. We didn’t exactly have GPS. And finding Malik to determine if he would help us kill Balthazar was tantamount.
