Even so, I moved back on instinct.
“Because Time doesn’t cast out liars.”
The words were barely there, slow, and there was a good chance I’d misunderstood them.
“Wait!” I called, but the Cheshire was gone, teeth and all. He was gone just as quickly as he’d come.
I closed my eyes, squeezed them, breathed in deeply, called for order to my messy thoughts, and?—
“Who’re you talking to there?”
The scream got stuck between my clenched teeth when I jumped and spun around to find Seth sitting down underneath another mechanical tree, eating a box of crackers.
“You…you…”
“I scared you, yes. But you were focused on whoever you’re talking to. I made plenty of noise, you just didn’t hear me.”
Could very well be. I was so caught up on that annoying, grinning cat that I—wait.
I looked at Seth, at the way he lay against the metal bark, then popped another cracker in his mouth, chewed with his mouth open so I heard every bite as if it were in my head, too.
“How long have you been there?” And how much had he seen?
“A minute or two.” Seth shrugged.
Shivers rushed down my back. “And? Did you see…”A talking cat?
I couldn’t say the words, only turned to look at the tree where the Cheshire had been, but he was long gone.
“I saw you talking to yourself,” Seth said. “I do that sometimes, too. It helps.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks. “I didn’t—” But I clamped my mouth shut again.
It was better that he thought I was talking to myself, than to a talking cat. Because the fact that he hadn’t see the Cheshire most likely meant he wasn’t even real.
“Was he your boyfriend?”
“What?”
Seth nodded his head at my hand, at the sheet from my sketchbook I was still holding, unfolded so that he saw exactly whose face was drawn there.
“Oh. No, no—nothing like that,” I said instinctively. Not that I knew how I’d felt about Silas, but he had most definitely not been my boyfriend. I knewthatfor a fact. Undoubtedly, somehow.
Seth bit another cracker, and I felt each time his teeth came down as if they were on my own. “So how do you do it?”
“Do what?” I felt awkward. Uncomfortable. He looked so relaxed sitting there, eating, that I thought I should walk away and leave him be.
“Know the answers. You figured out all three solutions so far,” Seth said, and blood rushed to my cheeks all over again.
“I…I don’t know.” Ididknow, in fact. The first tip was from the very cat that apparently others couldn’t even see. The second was the tea party—just simple math. And the third… “It wasyou,actually. In the Thirteenth Hour trial. It was something you said about it activating as soon as everything was in place that gave me the idea.” That, and the thought of Silas.
Time’s Temper, I was really losing my mind here. I was really losing parts of me, just like the possibly-imaginary Cheshire Cat said.
Just like Master Talik said.
“I do say the right thing more often than not,” said Seth with a nod, and popped the last of his cracker into his mouth. “I heard you’re going to the kitchen. You don’t mind the company, do you? I need more crackers.” He jumped to his feet and showed me the empty wrapper before he crushed it in his fist.
“I…” Once more I looked back at the metal tree like a fool—empty.“You know where the kitchen is?”
