“In theory, but in practice this has never come to pass. History is written, and you will be its architects.”
“So you’re saying we don’t have a choice? Whatever happens is destined,” I said.
“Whateverhappened. Not what happens now or later. Some choices you will make because you have already made them, because you are who you are and act in accordance with your nature. But the future is still flexible, not yet written. You have likely seen glimpses in dreams. Things which were so likely to happen that they might as well have been set in stone. But they arenot. Those stones can still be moved. Or shattered.”
So the past was like a pot that had already seen the kiln, but the future? That was still a lump of clay waiting for the wheel.
“Where do we go next?” Kessian asked. “Orwhenshould we go?”
An idea had already begun to form in my head as Kessian turned the watch over and over in his hand. An amalgamation of the one from our reality, and it brought up a question.
“Can we take things with us from these memories? As Keeper, Kessian can affect the environment, but can he steal pieces of it?”
The Keepers only inclined their head and gestured to Edwin Ashborne’s house, the door of which swung ajar, as if to say, “Why don’t you try?”
“What do you want to steal?” Kessian asked.
“Proof of what happened nine years ago. I think I know where we can find it. Or where we already have.”
Kessian followed me into the house, up the stairs to grandfather’s study. “Where?”
“Foxbury Manor.”
Kessian’s eyes lit up. “The stolen contract. You think that was us from the future?”
“What else explains its disappearance? Besides, if Warwick owns the flute, he could still have been involved. Marlowe might not have been working alone.”
It was also a memory I didn’t dread revisiting. I got the sense I would have to relive the worst horrors of my life to better understand this poison the Keepers spoke of, but I didn’t relish the thought.
Particularly not Laurelie’s death.
“All right. How do we get there?”
“These clocks of Grandad’s, particularly the labeled ones, have to have some significance, don’t they? Maybe we can use them to control the who and when of which memories we visit.”
Mine kept ticking. The other two didn’t, their hands frozen in time, perhaps a reflection of their time of death. If we wound the clock back twenty-four hours, would we see the events of their last day alive? It seemed an inefficient method. How many times would we have to wind the clock to show my memories from nine years ago?
“How did Edwin know how to use them if he never entered the Bloodstream before?” Kessian asked while rifling through papers on his desk.
“I think he used them to visit memories in his dreams. Like the ones we shared, though they were random. Controlled by the whims of the strid or your wild magic maybe?”
“Hm. Here.” Kessian held out a beaten-up notebook with a broken spine that fell open to a particular page. “Could this be the formula?” He read aloud. “Spin the hour hand to each number for the year, pausing for three seconds between each. Then turn the hour hand to the number corresponding with the month, minute hand to the day, second hand for the hour, which you tap twice for p.m.”
I followed his instructions, counting back to the day we’d visited Foxbury Manor. When I got to the hour—two in the afternoon—the by-now-familiar sensation of the world diluting around us washed out the study and replaced it with a conservatory.
Sitting on the settee before us, Warwick was serving me tea. As I reached for the sugar, he said, “That’s the salt. I prefer salty tea. Strange, I know,” and pushed across the second cup, removing the lid.
He’d put truth serum in it, I remembered.
What I hadn’t recalled was Kessian striding forward and slapping the sugar off the table. It shattered on the floor, the lid rolling off behind a plant pot, and my memory sharpened around the moment.
“He spiked it,” Kessian said. “Rotten bastard …”
I restrained him from knocking anything else over. “He’ll just have Lionel replace it anyway.”
“This is the one time I can punch him without any consequences.”
I looped both arms around his waist and started pulling him from the conservatory. “The consequences would be failing to find that contract because we got sucked into a timeline paradox. Nobody got punched in that room. If the contract proves his involvement, he’ll get a steeper punishment than a punch to the face.”
