Infinityglass (Hourglass 3)

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.”

“I kept that information from him,” Teague argued back.

The rip grew wider, going around us instead of flowing over us. I put my hand on the small of Hallie’s back. I needed to get her out.

“I tried to protect you, Hallie.” Teague’s voice trembled.

“Really?” Hallie laughed without mirth. “Don’t pretend like you have feelings for me. You’ve never cared for me the way a mother should care for her own child, because you didn’t give birth to me; you bred me.”

“I created you.”

The smell of manure blended with the sounds of livestock, all of it too close.

“Hal, we’ve gotta go. It’s growing too fast to—”

The rip world moved like lightning, swallowing Hallie, and then Teague.

I did the only thing I could.

I followed.

Chapter 20

Hallie

Suddenly, I was staring up at a bright blue sky rather than the gray one that had been there ten seconds ago.

A crowd of rips gathered, staring at me, just like ones we’d encountered in the alley in the French Quarter.

Two seconds later, my mother appeared.

I took off running, keeping to the Saint Charles side of the park, dodging in and out of crowds. It might be impossible to outrun a rip, but I was sure as hell going to try.

“Hallie, stop!”

I paused to look over my shoulder. My mother. The woman could move in heels, I’d give her that. “Enjoying the early nineteenth century? Because there’s a good chance it’s about to enjoy me.”

I took off again, but I’d chosen the wrong direction. The first rip caught me just outside the international exhibition.

The boy was Chinese. He sat beside a merchant, presumably his father, as they took items out of wooden shipping crates and cataloged them. He’d been crying.

“But I don’t understand why anyone would treat a human this way.”