Page 87 of A Seer and Present Danger

Even in the dark.

Even when I knew it was a bad idea.

She had done that. Aggie had forced this future, this Now.

Well, I was going to force the past.

All I had to do was find a past with Vandre in it. A past where he had been warned. Where he knew Aggie was luring him in.

A past where he brought a gun instead of a knife.

Except I couldn’t see that. There wasn’t a single past where Vandre had a gun on him. Not a single past where Aggie didn’t get the jump on him and he didn’t pass out in the kitchen.

Aggie laughed. “As if Vandre would ever touch a gun,” she mocked, somehow seeing what I was trying to do. “He’s too goodie good to get his hands dirty. But you know what Piper? I’m not.”

She pointed the gun at my head. “Tell me where you hid Pandora’s box or I will shoot you dead and find it on my own.”

I strained to focus on a past I could use, any past.

Aggie was leaning on her chosen future like she’d stuck her foot on my neck and was ready to stomp.

There! A past! It might work, it might not.

But it was the only chance I had. My last chance to fix this.

“All right,” Aggie said. “We’ll do it the hard way. Good-bye, Piper. I never liked you.”

Aggie squeezed the trigger.

CHAPTER 19

I had never been shot before. I didn’t know what to expect.

I didn’t expect time to still.

Or for the darkness around me to thicken as if a thousand nights had fallen beneath a million more.

There was no ticking forward. There was no ticking backward.

Time simply held. Hovering.

I was standing (was I?) paused in the threshold between Now, Then, Before. I was anchored (barely, slipping, slipping) in this moment as the only moment, the only space that existed.

I needed to hold here on this slippery slope between the tick and the tock. To reach (stretch, lean), not very far, not very long, just the distance of my fingers (fingertips, fingernails) into the past.

Time, the god (gods?) of Time noticed.

Uh-oh.

I felt him (her? them?) swivel molten gazes, heartless power searching for what had caused this pause (interruption, outrage).

I could feel them (her? him?) lock onto me, lock onto my position in the flow of time, like I was a rock wedged in the gear of a monumental machine.

I could feel them coming my way, (a tsunami, a mountain, a roar) to unstick me, to remove me like a bug from their cosmic windshield.

But I didn’t have time to worry about the god (gods? monsters?) of Time.

I had my eye on one single Past.