“Yes,” he sat, brushed his coat, and got on his feet, pulling me into a rough hug. “I thought I’d never see you again, little sister. What took you so long? No, never mind. We need to go.” He released me, then took a step, his hand held out for me.
“I won’t leave him.”
Quinten looked down at the mess that was Abraham.
“We can’t take him.”
“He’ll be tortured.”
Quinten frowned, then pressed his fingers against his lips the way he did when he was thinking through possibilities.
“They’ll know he’s gone any second now,” I said.
“Carry him. Can you?”
“Yes.” I picked him up again, and this time he groaned. Since time wasn’t paused, my contact caused him pain.
I knew galvanized couldn’t die. I was just hoping he might go unconscious and spare himself some suffering.
We started running.
“Money?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Weapons?”
“Knife. You?”
“No.”
“Boston Sue is working for House Silver,” I said as we jogged down an alley to a street and another alley. “She’s looking after Grandma.”
“That’s delightful,” he said. “Why did you claim House Gray? Why did you even leave the farm?”
“To find you. To save you. They had already found me anyway. And Neds were spies too.”
“Neds?”
That’s right, they hadn’t met. “Farmhand I hired when you went missing so long. What were you doing? Why were you gone so long?”
“I was looking for a way to change the world. To save Mom and Dad.”
I stopped, not because I was out of breath—I’d lugged crocboar that were heavier than Abraham—but because Quinten was making no sense.
“Mom and Dad are dead.”
“I know,” he said. “But there is an event. A loop in time that according to my calculations will hit in four days. Well,” he added, “less than that now.”
“The date in your message?”
“You got that?”
“Yes.”
“Wings of Mercury. It’s a . . . break in time triggered three hundred years ago by our grandfather several generations removed. Dr. Alveré Case. His experiment created a . . . think of it as he shattered a moment in time. One piece of time broke away and is now boomeranging back to that break point. Those who survived the ground-zero blast of time breaking became the galvanized. Immortal.”
“Wings of Mercury.”
