Hidden Consequences
Nike pushes me toward the other side of the table as she grabs for a face shield, tosses her hoodie back from her face, and slips the curved protective plastic over her head.
“Turn around!” she yells at me. A nervous laugh escapes her lips. “Temps are changing fast, and those vials could explode, so stand back. I’m going to make sure these can never be used for cloning. Hopefully, Aoife won’t even know we were here.”
Hopefully?
She grabs a decapper and hastily begins popping the caps from the vials.
I stand at what I consider a safe distance, shifting on my blistered feet, but I don’t turn around to hide my face. Gripping my long strand of Daeganean pearls in my fist until they dig into the back of my neck, I feel compelled to watch, maybe because this moment has never happened to me before and I don’t know what comes next. In theory, we could use our pearls to escape, but that might make matters worse, according to the journal Terre left with Emry. In the future I remember, I never knew anyone to use them for defense. In the past I’ve lived, I saw them used as portals only sparingly when I was very young, and I remember the awful side effects. I don’t have memories of the present to rely upon—just intuition—but I feel like Terre’s journal was warning me not to use them yet for portaling.
Even from here, I can feel Terre’s energy from the tiny pieces of dead flesh in the vials. I’m no longer sure what the plan is, if ever I was. We can destroy the specimens discreetly and escape as if no one ever knew we were here. I’ve covered us with a burst of energy that’s wiped out the outdoor security system so they can’t receive or transmit a signal. I’ve kept a bubble of protective energy around us since we stepped foot onto the property so that neither Aoife nor any of her cronies can detect our energy here. As long as we clean up after ourselves, no one need ever know we were here.
Holding my palms up to the waves of energy off Terre’s remains, I offer a small prayer. Terre deserved better. For all his work on behalf of the priesthood, it’s a shame that he’s been abandoned: no celebration of his life by the Daeganeans, no ceremonies other than an ill-attended funeral far from his beloved Ireland, no scholarships or libraries named after him. Nothing above ground persists of him but these pieces of skin taken from his body after his murder. Such a shame for such a great man to come to this end.
“When you get back to Dublin, tell Raven to put Terre’s portrait in the Darbyshire Library,” I say, but Nike doesn’t seem to hear me.
I wish I’d known Terre as well in this lifetime as I remember his next incarnation in a future that’s no longer on course. Even more painful, if anyone could have helped me—and been willing to help me—reverse my altered destiny, it would have been Terre. Even if Aoife was his daughter in this lifetime. If he’s left more journals for me at Drusilla’s library, I intend to find out when I get back to Florida.
As I wipe away a tear with the knuckle of my index finger, I spot a small red light in the corner of the room, above our heads.
“Um, Nike?” I don’t move, nothing but my eyes.
She follows my gaze to the video camera silently recording our every move.
Pacing the length of the lab with her hands on her hips, Nike curses under her breath. She glances around the large room and hesitates at the two doors: one is a crash door leading outside and the other is marked as a supply closet. Nike glares back at the video camera.
“Well?” I ask. Desperation saturates my voice. “Look, Nike, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life, even if it ends tomorrow, on Aoife’s bad side. I’m powerful enough to take care of myself, but I don’t want to waste all my energy hiding from her. Is that camera transmitting locally? How is it monitored in off-hours?”
Before she can answer, I squint down the corridor that led us to this room. Another camera perches at the far end, just over the entrance. And another midway.
“Looks like we missed a few.” I grind out the words through clenched jaws. I’d expected Nike to be more careful. Not all of us can be Aoife’s sister. I may have certain gifts that make me the priesthood’s primary recruiter, but are they enough to keep me in Aoife’s good graces? Especially since my gift has been compromised?
Nike gasps. “I’m sorry! Those cameras are new. My father must have upgraded his security.”
Or, I think, maybe he’s figured out that she’s been using her share of his DNA to snoop around his supposedly secure research facilities and plans to put a stop to it.
Nike flings open the janitorial closet and begins pulling out jugs of chemicals and twisting the lids off as she lugs them toward the box of vials and leaves them on the floor. The potent smell of bleach fills the room.
“I’ve got it under control, okay?”
Her words tell me she does, but the slight tremble in her voice betrays her. I’m not sure how much bleach she needs to destroy the samples, but at this rate, the entire room will be swimming in it.
“Do you? Do you have it under control?” She’d seemed more put-together in Raven’s presence, but hey, we’re both exhausted.
“Yes! Shit, Zephyr. This is a risk for me, too, you know? If this goes south, Aoife’s not going to hurt either of us directly unless it’s a last resort. The best we could hope for is if she considers us useless and just ignores us. But if she sees either of us as a threat? She hurts the people you love most until there’s no one left to hurt but you. And then she lets you live with it, so you hurt for the rest of your life.”
I feel guilty for my harsh tone, especially since Nike didn’t have to put herself at risk to help me, but I never knew Nike when she was reckless. All I’ve ever known of her was how careful they say she was in the days before she lost her mind.
“Look, Zephyr, I know my security systems, and I know my father. There’s no way he’s going to have what happens in his lab transmitted elsewhere. He’s too much of a control freak. Like Aoife. He probably has these cameras on a loop or maybe uploaded to a cloud backup, and if there’s any sign of problems during the night, the morning shift will check it out then. When we’re done in here, we’ll stop by the security room and destroy any evidence we were here, okay? We’re good. We’re going to be good.”
“You’re sure?” I ask, because I’m not so sure.
Nike sighs heavily. “Illyria’s life depends on it. Aoife knows how much Lyrie means to me.” She pauses to frown over her shoulder at me. “In case you haven’t noticed, right now I’m scared shitless!”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. I have distinct memories from a timeline that may or may not happen now. In that timeline, a few years from now, Illyria does die, and Nike goes mad with grief. As the leader of the priesthood, I’m able to resurrect them both after The Shift, but not until decades later. I never knew in that timeline if Aoife had anything to do with Illyria’s death. Now…it seems likely.
If Aoife wants to punish me, then how would she do it? She knows as well as I do that in the future we both remember, I took control of the priesthood from her. If I die tomorrow, that won’t happen. Would she prevent my succession that way? By eradicating my existence? Taking the future version of the priesthood from me? None of that would hurt like losing Shelby or seeing him suffer. Or anything that might hurt Virgil.
“Forgive me,” I murmur, just loud enough that I’m positive Nike can hear me this time. I’ve never thought about it before but, for as much as I hate Aoife’s summons, I probably have it a lot better than her stepsister, and I already know how much Illyria means to Nike. “What can I do to help?”
Another of the vials pops.
“Just…just turn your back so I don’t have to worry about your safety.”
As I turn around, I glance over my shoulder. Nike busily pours bleach over the last evidence of Terre’s life. I can sense a fizzling of his energy.
I place my fingertips on the cool steel of the table in front of me and try to ground myself.
“What the—?”
A stack of printed pages, maybe a full ream’s worth. They look like printouts of black and white photos of some ancient book. Most of the pages are upside down in a stack, but the last pages, maybe five or six, are right side up in a separate stack that’s been fanned across the table, probably accidentally. I can’t read the ancient language, though it might have been a form of English several centuries ago.
And Latin.
And Greek.
And Hebrew.
“Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit!”
“What’s wrong?” Nike jerks her head up in a panic and rushes toward me.
“Nike, I know what this is! It’s not the original book, but it’s a photocopy of The Key of Hell and Death, and this is the ritual to bring souls that have passed on back, but into a new body. Oh, my God! This is how Aoife was going to do it.”
Nike grabs another jug of liquid and pours it over Terre’s specimens. “You’re sure?”
“Very. In the future I remember, Terre was trying to get the original Key and maybe some other books to Drusilla’s library for safekeeping. It was some outsider who wanted the book for its dollar value, not its power, who stole it from Terre and killed him for it. I can’t remember his name now—I wasn’t part of the investigation like Raven was. Drusilla managed to get the book back—I don’t remember how—but some idiot who worked for her uploaded it to the library’s website and a couple of downloads got away from them before Drusilla could correct it. The timelines may have changed, but I would guess that this printout came from one of those downloads.”
“Should we take the printout with us?” Nike coughs. Her eyes water. She snags the bottom of her face shield and pulls it over her head as she dabs her eyes with the hem of her hoodie.
I can’t help but laugh at her question. “Hell, yeah! Don’t you want to read the most dangerous book in the world?”
I turn back to the printout and gather it with both hands, revealing what’s underneath the larger stack: another book! An aged leather book that matches the first volume in the astrology duet.
The book with the power to reshape time itself.
I let out a squeal as I scoop up both the book and the printout.
“It’s here! I can undo it. I can untangle time.”
A thousand thoughts race through my head. I can save the priesthood from Aoife’s rule. I can deliver a better future for humanity after The Shift. And Nike and Illyria—it’ll be awhile, but I can bring them back. And Raven’s parents and Tessa. And I can prevent my death tomorrow and live to be a very old woman with Shelby by my side.
“Nike, I can reverse the timelines. I can—”
Something’s wrong. My words come out in a sudden wheeze. I can’t catch my breath. My throat burns. My nostrils sting. My chest aches.
Nike doubles over, coughing. Trying to haul in oxygen but failing.
My head spins. I stumble backward, knocking over the chemical jugs on the floor and smashing into a different table. Clear liquid splashes across the floor, filling the air with different fumes. Caustic, but still different.
Acetone?
I fall against the other table. It crashes as I tumble over it, equipment and test tubes flying everywhere. The hotplate and microscopes hit the floor behind me, sparking as they crash. The hotplate’s electric cord, half-severed, dances just above the other chemicals on the floor.
Only then do I notice the label on the second jug Nike emptied onto the specimens. Ammonia. Ammonia mixed with bleach. Choking fumes fill the air.
Chlorine gas!
Minutes—less—to escape or pass out in a toxic cloud. If that’s not deadly enough, sparks fly upward from the equipment on the floor. The cameras just became the least of our worries.
Nike, no longer able to talk, pulls me to my feet.
Suddenly, a wave of faintness hits me. I stagger, my grip on the book slipping. It hits the floor, along with a fluttering of the pages of a bootleg copy of The Key of Hell and Death that land in the chemicals and darken with dampness.
I grab for the astrology book that means the difference between life and death, future and past, and miss as Nike shoves me out the crash door.
The door slams open against the outer wall as we fall into the cold grass on our all-fours, coughing, choking, throats scalded as we finally suck in oxygen. The emergency exit closes slowly behind us and clicks as I scramble to my feet to rush back inside.
“No!” I miss as I reach for the closing door.
Nike grabs me from behind and swings me to the ground. She falls next to me.
Just before we hear the boom inside.
Seconds later, flames lick at the roof of the room where we’d stood in a cloud of chemicals and crashing equipment.
“We need to leave now,” Nike says, hauling me up. “Can you run in those boots?”
“But—”
“No time for ‘buts.’ We need to leave before this fire attracts attention we can’t undo.”
I can’t move. All I can do is stare in disbelief.
We huddle in the cold as flames envelop the lab—and the book that can change the lines of time.
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