Infinityglass (Hourglass 3)

Teague didn’t answer. She wasn’t even looking at us. She was staring at a rip.

It spread across the park like an extended movie screen, the edges undulating in the breeze.

Except the air around us was still.

It expanded into a rip world bustling with industry. Buildings under construction. Workmen busy at their tasks. Shiny metal signs hung everywhere, displaying the words WORLD COTTON CENTENNIAL, 1884.

“It’s the world’s fair,” Teague murmured.

“It’s a rip world. Your first one?” Hallie asked. Her mom didn’t acknowledge the question. “They get better. See the people in the present disappearing? It’s because the past takes over.”

Teague watched as the rip expanded again, and another building came into view. Electric lights hung everywhere, the name Edison prominent on all the accompanying equipment.

My chest felt like a semi had parked on it. Hallie and I’d talked about the next rip she’d encounter, and what the last one had done to her. What would this one do?

Hallie stood, her back to the rip. “You know how I feel about Jackson Square after what happened. I won’t go there on a good day. There’s no way in hell I’d go past the place where Benny bled to death now.”

Teague’s head jerked up and she focused on Hallie’s face. “Why?”

“The rips come from the past, and they possess me. I troll around in their memories, and they live inside my skin. That’s what being the Infinityglass means. Thank you so very much.”

The rip world grew wider, taking over another section of land. A building made of glass appeared in the distance.

Hallie’s focus shifted to something behind us, her eyes following it in a circle. Horses on a track. “You can blame yourself for this, Mother.”

“I didn’t start it,” Teague said. “Jack Landers is the one who broke the rules.”

“You perpetuated it. You threw in with him,” Hallie argued. “You let him look for the Infinityglass, and the whole time you knew it was me.”

o;I count as a success, then?” I asked.

“You’re as close as I could get.”

“Did you ever love me?” I asked. God, it hurt, because I knew the answer. “Or was I just a means to an end?”

“People define love in their own ways,” Mother said. “Some people say love is about duty. Or loyalty. You owe me your very life. The way our relationship has progressed is completely your choice.”

“No, you made all my choices for me.” Either through manipulation or emotional blackmail.

“Have you considered I have motives?”

The pull of the power she had over me was the only thing keeping me in my seat. I decided then and there, no matter how many hours or minutes I had left on earth, that she wasn’t going to dictate one more second.

“Your motives are the least of it. I don’t know one true thing about you, and I don’t want to.”

Dune

“You’re wrong about that,” Teague said to Hallie. “I think there’s plenty you want to know about me. About you.”

Seconds ago, sadness had hung off Hallie’s frame like an empty husk. Now it disappeared and was replaced by determination.

“No, there isn’t.” Hallie squeezed my hand. “I’m done talking. As of right now.”

She leaned back in her seat and imitated zipping her lips and throwing away the key. It was fiendishly immature, and just the right choice to piss Teague off.

Teague stood and turned her back on Hallie.

I had tried to check out emotionally and play the part of the cool observer, but right now I wanted to get ugly. Anger would’ve satisfied me on a primal level, but I chose a more balanced playing field. My weapon would be intelligence rather than emotion. I spoke up. “Tell me your motives.”