Timepiece (Hourglass 2)

“Yes.”

Lily’s face was screwed up in concentration, her features smoothing out as she put puzzle pieces in the right places. I didn’t want her to fit in the piece about how she ended up in this exact time and place.

“Ivy Springs isn’t a magnet for freaks,” I said abruptly, trying to derail her train of thought. I fished a stick out of a pile of leaves and peeled off the bark, throwing it on the ground.

“This many ‘special abilities’ in one tiny town makes it a magnet,” she said, disagreeing.

“How do you know there aren’t fifty freaks living in Nashville? Or five hundred in Atlanta?” I peeled off another piece of bark. “Maybe they’re keeping it a secret, too.”

“There are at least five hundred freaks in Atlanta, but that doesn’t mean any of them have a special ability.” She jerked the stick out of my hands and snapped it in half.

“Okay.” I raised my eyebrows.

“You’re trying to change the subject.” She chucked a piece of the stick toward the woods. “I don’t know why, but if you want to succeed, you’ll have to try harder.”

“One point to Lily.”

“If you don’t find Jack, and time is rewound, how do you know things wouldn’t play out the exact way they did the first time?” she asked. Too perceptive. “How do you know people wouldn’t make the same choices, live the same lives?”

“I think the people who want Jack will take him out of the picture. From what point do they take him? After he killed my dad but before he changed Emerson’s time line?”

She threw the other half, harder this time. “That sucks.”

“That sucks,” I agreed.

“If I do help …” She stopped, catching her breath, and stared over my shoulder. I turned around.

A man sat on a horse twenty feet in front of us.

“That’s … not … right,” Lily choked out from behind me.

One end of a long rope circled the man’s neck in a makeshift noose, and the other end draped over the highest branch of a black walnut tree. None of it had been there two minutes ago. His hands were tied behind his back, his feet tucked into stirrups. A shotgun came into view behind the horse he sat on, aimed at the sky.

o;I’m working it out. It’ll be fine,” Lily said. “I’m helping. But I have to do it on my terms.”

“Your terms? There’s no room for terms, sweetheart.”

“Listen, jack hole, I wasn’t aware until recently that Ivy Springs is some kind of …” Lily waved her hands around, searching for the right word. “I don’t know … freak magnet.”

“Freak is my word, not hers,” Em contributed, her gaze bouncing back and forth between us.

“Whose word is jack hole?” I asked.

Lily kept going. “You might be comfortable with whatever your abnormality is, but mine’s not something I usually talk about, and it’s definitely not something I’d choose to discuss with you.”

“Did Em tell you the consequences if we don’t find Jack?”

“No.” Bewilderment.

“The people who want Jack claim to have a way to rewind time,” I informed her. “If we don’t find him and turn him over, they’ll rewind it. My dad will be dead, and Em will be a vegetable in a mental hospital.”

Frustration and anger, moving quickly into fear.

Lily shook her head as if she didn’t believe she’d heard me properly. “A vegetable in a mental hospital?”

“Okay, enough.” Emerson pushed her way between Lily and me. “I don’t want guilt to be Lily’s motivation for breaking a promise to her grandmother.”

“Breaking a promise or jeopardizing lives,” I said. “Which is more important?”