Hourglass (Hourglass 1)

I took the seat he offered, clasped my hands together, and put them on the table. Cat said, “Michael just told me what you can do.”

Her words sounded accusatory, and after the way she’d grabbed the binder, I couldn’t help going on the defensive. “I’d apologize, but I’m not happy about it either.”

“No.” She reached out to touch my hand, her eyes wide, full of amazement. “Forgive me. I’m … overwhelmed. This changes so many things. Opens up so many avenues—I can barely believe it.”

Too frustrated to listen to her talk in circles, I asked, “What kind of avenues, specifically?”

“You’re half of a unique pair. I’ve never met anyone besides Liam and his wife who can do what you and Michael can. That changes things for me, for my gift.” She removed her hand from mine and placed it on top of the notebook. I caught a glimpse of sadness in her eyes as she sat down. “Did you have a chance to read the information explaining how it is that you and Michael travel?”

“I tried, but I didn’t understand most of it.”

“I’ll try to make it simpler for you. One of the many theories about time travel is the wormhole theory. Wormholes connect two points in space, like a bridge.” Cat opened the notebook reverently and flipped to a diagram that might as well have been written in invisible ink. She traced her finger across a line of equations. I wondered if I should be taking notes. “See?”

I felt my eyes grow as big as saucers, and she stopped, closing the binder. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get too technical. Here are the basics. The bridges can connect you to a different time, but they must be made stable and held open for travel to happen. This is accomplished by using negative matter, also known as exotic matter. Simple enough?”

Sure.

“What does all of this have to do with your ability?” I asked.

Cat was silent for a moment. “I create exotic matter.”

“Like in a lab or something?”

“Like this.” She closed her eyes, and then cupped her hands as if holding a handful of water. An inch above her palms, a swirling purple sphere appeared. It wasn’t solid, more like a gas, pulsing and spinning, giving off a slight mist. Everything else in the room went dark. I could focus only on the energy in Cat’s hands. I leaned forward, closer and closer, drawn to it in a way I couldn’t explain.

I kind of put a damper on the display when I leaned so far forward that I fell off my chair.

Cat gasped and put her hands together. The spinning ball disappeared, and the room was full of light again.

Michael leaned over to help me up. I was too shocked to be embarrassed or to respond to his touch. “Em kind of needs a warning before you spring things like that on her.”

Now I understood the superhero discussion at breakfast. The inhabitants of the house were discussing their fictional peers.

No problem.

“How”—I paused for a second—“did you do that?”

“Body chemistry?” Cat acted like it was no big deal. “It’s hard to explain. Science has always intrigued me, especially the study of negative and positive matter, wormholes, black holes …”

She’d just produced matter. Matter. With her hand. I could barely believe it, but I didn’t see any way the spinning purple sphere could have been a trick.

“Creating true exotic—or negative—matter is generally considered impossible. It’s a very volatile substance.” Cat sounded as if she were repeating a lecture she’d given hundreds of times. “Liam taught me what we could do by combining our unique talents. In the simplest terms, I opened bridges, and he traveled through them.”

“I believe you, about all the science stuff.” I waved the thought away with my hand. While I was interested to learn how she and Liam Ballard put all the pieces together, right now I was more intrigued by her personal journey. “How did you figure out you could do it—create matter?”

“I grew up on an island. As a child, I used to sneak out of my bed at night to lie in a hammock that hung between two palm trees on our property.” Cat’s dark eyes took on a dreamy quality, and I was there with her, hearing the surf rolling in and out, feeling the warm breezes soothe me as I rocked. “I would stare at the stars above me and wonder what it would be like to float among them.

“One night I dreamed I could hold a galaxy in my hand. I watched it form, felt it orbit, as if I created it myself. Breathed life into it. When I woke up, what you just saw was spinning in my hand as if it was meant to be there.”

“How old were you?” I asked.

“Eleven. I knew what I could do was special and needed to be tested. I learned as much as I could in high school, graduated at sixteen, and went straight to college on scholarship as a physics major. I volunteered to be a teaching assistant so I would have access to a lab.” She paused, her lips parted in a slight smile. “That’s where I first met Liam.”

“How did he know what the two of you could do together? The time-travel thing?”

“He had some … outside resources.” The slight smile disappeared, and her voice turned businesslike. “You and Michael haven’t talked about the logistics of traveling at all?”

“No.” Because up until the purple ball formed in Cat’s hand, I’d half hoped he’d made the whole thing up, so I hadn’t asked. Now I hoped he was telling the truth, because if he wasn’t, my hallucinations had taken a whole new turn. For the worse.