Page 126 of The Girl Out of Time
“The one that infected her, causing her husband to chase her so he could get her blood, leading to Will taking her to Paris to get the thing sucked out of her?” Emily walked over to the sofa. “Yeah, hard to forget.”
“I think this is the same one.” He spread a few hand-written notes on the coffee table. Emily admired him for being able to read that awful cursive font so quickly and accurately. Perks of actually being born in those times, she guessed. “The British branch of the Watchers were looking for it in the eighteenth century. It got lost in a shipwreck, and they didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. In 1794, someone tried to get a pendant like this evaluated and sold in Weymouth, but they were never able to track them down.”
“Ha. Sounds like the British Watchers, yeah.”
James raised an eyebrow.
“I’m just saying, the Americans would’ve found the culprit.”
“And how didyourbranch fall apart, again? By going to war with each other?”
“Okay, first, it wasn’t that simple, and—” She punched his shoulder as he started laughing. “Back to the pendant. What’s up with it?”
“I don’t know. It disappeared. But they thought it might be the cause of this strange effect. Temporal ripples, they called it. One of their members accidentally stumbled upon one in 1788, and it sent him to 1815.”
“Itwhatnow?” Emily grabbed the paper, trying to make sense of the squiggles.Seriously, worse than a doctor’s handwriting.“That’s not how time travel works!”
“You asked me to find unusual ways of time travel,” James said. “This might be it, although I’m not sure how it could help us. These ripples—small portals from one specific time and place to another—only appeared around Dorset, or at least, one side was always in Dorset.”
“And people walked through them? How come we’ve never heard of that?”
“They couldn’t. Not regular people. The Watchers tested one, and it only opened to those with almonite in their blood. Once it was open, other people could pass through—”
“I don’t want to know how they tested that.”
“But the portal wouldn’t activate without the nearby presence of a time traveler. As in, them being right there.”
“Even with that, over the decades—centuries—there’d be more people using them. Wouldn’t the Watchers themselves want to?”
“Theripples only lasted for a few weeks. They never figured out what created them. Just … random portals.”
“In Dorset, of all places.” Emily furrowed her eyebrows. Interesting—the exact place where Will and the family had been vacationing. Maybe it was a secret magnet for time travelers.
“That’s what I found so far.” James leaned back on the sofa. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”
Emily nestled into the crook of his neck, the reality of their situation hitting her again after the brief moment of excitement. “You’re plenty helpful. It’s not your fault that we can’t do anything.” She couldn’t help herself; she took out her phone and refreshed the website she had permanently opened on it.
Fourteen hundred, ninety-six. Fifteen hundred and three. Fifteen hundred and seventeen. Three different numbers—three different estimations of the number of deaths on theTitanic; but ever since she’d started checking, almost a month ago now, none of those numbers ever changed.
She knew it was useless. They wouldn’t change; it wasn’t how time travel worked. Any changes made in the past were already reflected in the present. Whether Will’s whole family made it off the ship or not and whether her advice to him had something to do with it or not, that had already been taken into account.
She just didn’t know if any of them were included in those numbers.
“Flicker,” James said gently, taking the phone out of her hands.
“I know. I know it won’t change anything. But I can’t stop …”
“I understand.”
She hugged him tighter. For her, it was the constant checking of the victim count. For James, it was getting lost in research. He’d never been into the minutiae of time travel, but now he was gulping down those notes as ifthey were an oasis in a desert. Like Emily, he likely knew it wouldn’t help. They couldn’t travel back and warn Will or even check on his well-being after the event, and they probably wouldn’t find a solution in Watchers’ notes. If it had been so easy, wouldn’t the Watchers have constantly traveled back and adjusted historical events?
“I hate waiting here and being useless,” she murmured.
Behind them, a high-pitched whistle went off, and Emily flinched away from James. “Pasta water!” They both stood, but she said, “I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” and ran to the kitchen. Of course, the instant she went away, it boiled. She grabbed the prepared pasta but stopped as she was about to throw it into the pot.
The bubbles on the water’s surface were frozen, same as the swirls of steam above them.What the heck?Emily tentatively reached a finger toward the water, jerking it back when it burned her. The water was clearly boiling. It just wasn’t … moving.
“Uh, James?” She looked at him. He’d stopped in a weird position, about to sit back on the sofa, one hand clutching the backrest. He was staring at her, but he wasn’t moving, either.
