Page 77 of The Girl Out of Time
“Wow, that’s tight timing,” she said.
“I didn’t come back of my volition. I was thrown,” James said. “Got to see the house for a second, and then …” He waved his hand as if shooing someone away. “That’s never happened to me before. Did I do it wrong?”
She knitted her eyebrows. “Maybe the watch is acting up. Try mine.” She retrieved it; James repeated the procedure, even tried several days in that range, with no change in outcome.
“Shit.” Emily took the watch back and sat on the sofa.
“What’s going on?” James asked.
“Significant event,” she murmured. “When you’re trying to change something very important”—she gulped—“like someone’s death, you’ll get thrown out of your travel. You can’t affect the event by time traveling to it afterward. You can only make changes in the now.”
“But I only tried to get back to find out what had happened. Not change anything.”
She shrugged, nausea swirling in her stomach. “It has to be important. Well, of course it is. It’s the freakingTitanic. Maybe it won’t let you talk to Will’s parents because Brayden is also a time traveler, and if he finds out his son is in danger—” She shook her head. “It becomes a tangled mess. He could try to get a rescue started, and who knows what butterfly effect thatwould unleash. It could be dangerous for everyone involved. Trust me, I’ve tried to do it before.”
James sat next to her, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand. How didn’t you know?”
“They changed their plans last minute,” Emily peeped. “Last time I talked to Will, he said they were coming back on some other ship. And I had the wrong year. I never even suspected.”
“What about him? He’s been here enough times—has he never heard of theTitanic?”
She shrugged. “You know how much care he takes to avoid spoilers for his immediate future. So I don’t tell him anything, either. You should’ve seen his face that time when I accidentally slipped about the World Wars.”
James sighed, resting his elbows on his thighs, gaze lowered. “Do we have any other way of finding out what happens to them? You’re still here. That has to mean something.”
Yes—that one of the kids lived, the one that was her direct ancestor. But she didn’t know which one it was, and even knowing wouldn’t make the situation any easier to accept. The rest of them were still on the ship. Either, any,allof them were in great danger.
“The family tree?” James tried.
“It said Will died much later. But parts of it are wrong. It had Will’s parentage wrong, and Emmeline’s birth year, too. So who’s to say …” She swayed back into James’s embrace. “Just because I’m still here, just because I know one of them will live, I can’t leave the others to their fate.”
“I know.” He caressed her hair. “We have time. We’ll figure it out. Do it the old-fashioned way, without time travel tricks.”
“Or find a waytotrick time travel.” She nodded to herself, slowly at first, then more determined, and straightened up and wiped her eyes. “We’ll splitthe work. I’ll get all the notes I have on the Watchers.” Over the years, she’d gathered a ton of info—from Will and Brayden and the connections they used to have, to Ralkin’s research, which Will had recovered after Ralkin’s death.
“You’d studied those notes dozens of times,” James said.
“But I’ve been looking for something that could fix my condition, not tips and tricks on how to get around blocked time travel.” Regardless, James had a point. She was too familiar with the notes and might skip something important. “Will you read them over? Look for anything that might help. Maybe someone found a roundabout way to influence events in the past, or discovered a new possibility, but they never explored it—”
“Flicker, I’ve got it.” He held her by the shoulders and gave her a quick peck on the lips. “If there’s a rabbit hole to go down, I will.”
She nodded, only managing a pale smile. “I’ll study everything I can find about theTitanic. We have three weeks to find solutions before Will calls me back.” She put her hands on her hips, a bit of confidence re-surging. “Let’s get to work.”
Chapter 19
Five hours.
They had five hours left.
After he’d ended the call, Will stared at the cabin’s wall, waiting for his brain to work through the shock.
Think.Think.
Reason finally fought its way to the surface, but it offered him no solace—only a cruel, cold realization. He couldn’t go back; he couldn’t fix anything. All he had was the here and now, and certain doom coming at midnight. If there was a chance to cheat his way out of this situation, Emily would’ve been the first person to mention it.
He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. For Emily, it was easy—not from an emotional perspective, but from a simple matter of time separation. Not only did she have as long as she wanted to study and prepare; for her, the ship had gone down over a century ago. A clear, established event, like her own birth.
But for Will, the ship was still here, fearlessly trudging through the night.Theywere all still here. And no matter what Emily’s history books or movies said, he had to try. He had to do something. Even if he only had five hours.
