I gave her my cover story and explained that it really wasn’t that bad—and, to be honest, the big bandage did make it look worse than it really was.
She gave me a sympathetic smile. “You should be more careful, dear. I was lucky—I had all unsightly hair zapped away long before I was your age—but I do remember Deborah slicing her shin something awful when she was a bit younger than you.
“Anyway,” Katherine continued, leading me toward the computers, “Connor has a wonderful birthday present for you—well, it’s for all of us, actually.”
I pretended to be surprised as Connor unveiled the Book of Prophecy, now downloaded into the hard drive for easy searching and installed on two of the CHRONOS diaries, just in case we wanted to do a bit of armchair reading. After glancing through the first few pages, however, I seriously doubted that I would be using the book to fill my light-reading needs.
The Book was barely organized—just odd bits of political and social “prophecy” juxtaposed with investment tips, aphorisms, and platitudes. And then, every ten pages or so, you’d get a nice long sales pitch about how those who followed the Cyrist Way would be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams. The Book of Cyrus might have been repetitive and plagiarized from every religious text out there, but at least there was some sense of poetry and it was reasonably coherent.
The Book of Prophecy, on the other hand, reminded me more of the infomercials that come on TV around 2 A.M.—when they know you’re so loopy that almost anything will seem to make sense. It was hard to see why Connor had thought it would be important.
Reading it was diverting, however, in the same way that clicking links online, in a train-of-thought fashion, is diverting—those times when you end up so far from your original topic it’s hard to remember what you were looking for in the first place. Still, I kept glancing at the clock every ten minutes or so, trying to think where the other version of myself was right that minute, and what Trey was doing.
At twelve-forty, I couldn’t take it any longer. I left the library and headed back to my room. The disposable cell phone that Connor had bought a few weeks back was sitting on the desk next to my laptop.
I knew that Trey had turned off his phone during the service—or maybe he’d put it on vibrate? I just hoped that he had remembered to turn it back on after we went to the gym with the Acolytes. I sent him a short text, which seemed vague enough not to alarm him too much—“Run when I say run. Don’t look back. I made it home OK”—and then stuck the phone in the pocket of my shorts.
Even if what Connor and Katherine had said about the problems caused by trying to reconcile conflicting versions of reality was true, I was already in the office with Eve or headed in that direction. I’d see Trey for only a couple of minutes before I made the jump, and surely that couldn’t screw things up too much?
When I returned to the library, Katherine had gone downstairs, probably to scavenge about for some lunch. I sat down again in my chair by the window but couldn’t bring myself to continue reading.
“I didn’t know people literally chewed their knuckles,” Connor said. “I thought it was just a figure of speech. Is the book really so suspenseful?”
I glanced down at my hands and saw that he was right. I’d lapsed into an old habit—my first two knuckles on my left hand were bright red.
“Obviously not,” I responded. “You know why I’m nervous.”
He gave me a little smile. “He’ll make it out, Kate.”
“I think so, too—now,” I said defiantly. “I decided to buy a little insurance.”
“What do you mean, insurance?” he asked.
“I sent him a text. About two minutes ago. Telling him to run, and that I made it back okay. It can’t change much, I barely even see him between now and then, but I just hope he turned his phone back on after the service was over.”
Connor chuckled softly, shaking his head. “It won’t matter whether he turned his phone on or not.”
“And why is that?”
“I left him a message before I went to bed, about four this morning. I told him to stay near the door of the gym and run when you said to run, and I promised him that you were safe here at the house. And I said not to let you know that I had texted him, under any circumstances.”
“So that’s why he was there, at the door! I was scared I’d have to hunt him down. But you said we shouldn’t…”
“I said you shouldn’t,” he corrected. “But the more I thought about it, there wasn’t all that much risk if I called him.”
“You couldn’t have told me? I’ve been chewing my damned knuckles off!”
He shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? Pass you a note? Katherine has been in here all morning. And speaking of…”
As he trailed off, I could hear Katherine’s footsteps on the stairs. I picked up the diary and pretended to focus, while Katherine and Connor argued about the significance of some bit of “prophecy.”
When the phone in my pocket rang about twenty minutes later, I jumped up so quickly that my copy of the book fell to the floor. Katherine muttered something about how I should be careful with sophisticated CHRONOS equipment, but I was already out the door.
As soon as I reached the bedroom, I answered the phone. I knew it had to be Trey, since the only other possibility was a wrong number, but I was still tremendously relieved to see his name pop up on the screen. And then it occurred to me—it might be Eve or some Cyrist security guard calling to say that they were holding Trey or that—
“Trey?” My voice was shaking. “Is it you? Are you okay? Where are you?”
There was a brief pause, but it was his voice that answered. “Yes, I’m okay. I’m a few blocks from the Beltway.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled in a long breath. “I was so scared, Trey. I heard you running toward me and I didn’t know if you turned around in time—or if Eve had called security. Did you get my text?”
“No, but I see I’ve got one waiting. I called as soon as I could. I got Connor’s message this morning, but he said not to tell you. I’m not sure I would have agreed if I’d known what you were walking into. Are you okay? That dog was huge, and he looked like he was going straight for your throat.”
“He was. He only got me the once, in the leg—not very deep because I kicked him pretty hard. I’m just glad you kept running.”
He gave a wry laugh. “I don’t think it would have mattered even if I’d waited. He hit the floor pretty hard and he was, uh—let’s just say I don’t think either of them had much experience with their prey vanishing into midair. I didn’t hear them start barking again until I was almost to the parking garage—and they were behind the door, so…”
“Are you sure you’re not being followed or anything?”
There was a pause, and I suspected he was checking the rearview mirrors. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, I’m not hanging up until you get here.”
There was a long silence on the other end and my mind immediately kicked back into panic mode. Was someone else in the car with him? Was he still in danger?
“Trey? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Really, Kate, I’m fine. I’ll stay on the phone if it makes you feel better—but don’t tell Katherine, okay? I promised I’d make a stop on the way over and pick up your birthday cake, and I think she was counting on it being a surprise.”
The birthday party was fun, despite the occasional lump in my throat when I remembered that this was the only birthday that my mom or dad had missed. We had pizza—I couldn’t tell Katherine that Trey and I had eaten it just a few hours before—and Katherine opened a bottle of wine for a toast. She hesitated before pouring for Trey, although he assured her that his family had a very European view of wine consumption. Then she shrugged. “Given the fact that I’m not technically alive in this timeline, I doubt the authorities are going to be concerned about my corrupting a minor.”
The cake was sinfully decadent, dripping with chocolate, exactly the way a birthday cake should be. Trey gave me several T-shirts with funny sayings and a gold chain made of delicate little interlocked hearts. Katherine and Connor’s present was a small video camera, which we used to record the rest of the party, including some silly footage of Daphne trying to pull the little cardboard birthday crown off my head.
I still felt horribly guilty that I’d put Trey in danger. It was hard to shake the panicked feeling I’d had before he arrived. I think he was feeling the same—we both kept finding little reasons to touch and reassure ourselves that we were both really there.
Once we’d eaten and finished our celebration, Connor showed Trey the Book of Prophecy. At least Trey didn’t have to fake his surprised reaction—he hadn’t realized that I’d actually managed to get something substantive out of our adventure.
After a few minutes, we left Katherine and Connor to their analysis and headed up to my room. Trey pulled me close as soon as the door clicked shut behind us. After a very long kiss, he held me out at arm’s length. “You scared the hell out of me, Kate. What happened in there? I mean, I knew something was going to happen, because of Connor’s message, but…”
“She knew who I was. The only reason we got out of there at all is because Eve likes to impress her daddy. She wanted to surprise him by catching me all by herself.”
“Her daddy?” Trey asked.
“Conwell,” I said. He sat down on the couch and I snuggled up next to him. “It didn’t hit me until we were in the office together—same eyes, same nose. She said that temple security detected the CHRONOS key when we arrived and sent a message up to Conwell’s office. She was there when it came in. She didn’t want to disturb Conwell before the service, and security had their hands a bit full with the executive meeting, so…”
I filled in the pieces of the puzzle he had missed—my escape from Eve, the Dobermans in the center garden. He lifted the edge of the bandage on my leg and winced a bit. “I guess it could have been a lot worse,” he said.
“Yeah. We were lucky. I’m just so, so sorry for taking you into that,” I said. “It was stupid and reckless and…”
He shook his head. “I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. You didn’t know what we were getting into. I went in knowing that there was some sort of danger, because I was going to have to run—but I took Connor’s word that you were okay. I didn’t know you were going to get hurt. I should have told you…”
“You did the right thing, Trey. And maybe it will be worth it. Maybe there’s something in that stupid book that will help us.”
We spent the next few hours talking about other things, or nothing at all, just happy to be together and safe. It was clear that neither of us was especially eager to say good night, but I knew he had a trig final bright and early the next morning, so I pushed him out the door, reluctantly, a little after nine.