“Thanks. I’d rather be eaten by a lion than listen to another lecture. Maybe we should have let them catch us, because living like this? We’re dead already.”
“Nah, Em. I’ve never felt more alive.” Demetri glances quickly at the people we pass. “We live a life others dream of.”
“Says the liar…”
“Trust is a two-way street.” He sighs. “If we can’t trust you to play by the rules, why would we trust you with—” He stops short and bites his lip.
“With what?” I ask. He shakes his head. “Tell me the truth.” My heart sinks. I knew my family was keeping secrets, but it still hurts to know the people who love me best don’t trust me. “You know I’ve had a mental block since the accident and the trauma of Grace’s death. It’s not fair to hide things, to keep me in the dark.”
“Change the station. 1922,” he says.
I turn the dial back from 1943. Crunchy static fills the car, setting my teeth on edge until the crooning voice of Josephine Baker trickles outof the speakers. I let my fingers rest on the console; it always makes me proud that one of my great-grandfathers used his gift, the only bright spot of this terrible curse, to build these everlasting vehicles, easing our ability to move through time.
Demetri stays silent, and I let it go. Nothing could pry information from Demetri that he doesn’t want to give. I hate and love his stubborn streak. It’s the one thing we have in common. But Iwillget to the bottom of this, somehow.
I lean back in my seat as time unravels beyond the window. Old buildings become newer, sagging porches lift. Near the highway on-ramp, gloomy candlelight dances behind the black wooden slats boarding the window of a ragged hotel with charred bricks.
“Slow down,” I say. “This is the best part!”
“What? The way the music takes us through time?”
“No, silly. Seeing it change. When you drive too fast, it blurs too much.”
Demetri slows the car. I stare at the hotel window. The boards that cover it vanish, and smooth glass replaces them as time rewinds, like a movie played in reverse.
The row houses ignite with flames, fire lapping at their walls. “This place burned?”
Smoke leaches into the dark sky above the hotel. A brown face pushes through the haze inside the building. It’s a teenage girl, with eyes that are wild and frenzied. She’s shrieking as she bangs on the window. The right side of her flesh is covered in burns, but the left side is beautiful.
“Oh my God!” I grip the door handle, instinctively trying to jump out and help her.
“She’s been dead for years,” Demetri says, the reminder hitting me in the chest.
The red embers around her turn to a tangerine gold. The bright colors of the world fade to a sepia-toned hue and shift into black-and-white.
Demetri inches the car forward. “The car door won’t open until we reach our destination. You know that. Get it together.”
I press my palm to my chest. The Bentley is sealed tight as a tomb.
“Lots of people died in those flames,” he says.
“But they had hopes, dreams—”
“Hadis the key word,” Demetri says. “Living this life is hard. Seeing what we see, moving the way we do. But we can’t stop anything or meddle. No matter what. You know the rules.”
“But why can’t we? Like really?” The waves of the fire grow lower as we continue our journey backward in time, but her terror echoes. “What’s the point of having power if you’re scared to use it? People need us.”
“I told you a million times. Mom’s told you. We can’t intervene, not like you did tonight. We might accidentally erase the moments that led to important events, births, deaths,” Demetri says. “We don’t get to change history or risk causing a ripple effect in the future that we’ll regret.” He grips the wheel. “Hell,” my brother adds, “one wrong move in the past could prolong slavery or one of the world wars, killing millions. That’s why our rules are important. An angry white mob—kind of like the one you caused—could’ve burned Harlem to the ground, like Greenwood, Black Wall Street.”
The fire shrinks. The moon glows, the sun rises and sets, and the moon blinks by again with bobbles of sun in between as Demetri accelerates and the days flip by.
Rain pours and dries up; sparrows extend their shiny wings and soar backward in the sky above us. Rainbows flash above and flicker away.
Demetri’s the history buff in our family. He spends his free time reading up on each location we travel to, his way of trying to make sure we’re safe no matter where or when we go. We can’t go too far back without trouble, and we always have to be prepared.
We roll farther back in time. The hotel is whole now, restored. Sparkling glass shimmers in its windows, and a fresh-painted sign readsSPECTOR INN. The hotel’s once-saggy, charred roof lifts, pointing to heaven, and its ragged columns become a flawless ivory. The hotel’s formerly abandoned balconies are alive with booming music. Luxurious drapes adorn the windows.
“Think of the people we pass as ghosts,” Demetri says. “Shadows from a past most don’t see.”
