“Oh my God, Dr. Ramirez!” Horrified and filled with disbelief so intense it was verging on denial, I watched a past version of myself stumble toward my graduate advisor’s lifeless body. This couldn’t be happening. There was no way. Except it was happening. Right before my eyes, some false version of the past was playing out in an echo that couldn’t exist. Unless . . .
I froze the impossible echo and turned to face Dominic. Our hands were linked, enabling us to maintain our connection in the echo—a necessity now that the At was far from stable. “It could be a false echo,” I told him. “Someone could’ve created the whole thing.”
Dominic pressed his lips together, thinning them further, and scanned the paused scene surrounding us. “Possibly, but it does not have the feel of a false echo,” he said. And he would know. We both had the somewhat rare ability to manipulate the At—create cloaks to hide something in an echo or fabricate whole, new echoes entirely—but Dominic had a lot more experience with the skill, more than four centuries’ worth of experience.
“Well . . .” I pursed my lips and moved them from side to side as I thought. A drizzle of rain trailed within arm’s distance in front of me, and I reached out to tap the delicate strand of frozen-in-time water, what looked like the most delicate icicle in existence. “If someone created a false echo in this time and place, for whatever reason, it’s much more likely that they altered the echo because of my presence, not because of Dr. Ramirez’s, don’t you think?”
Dominic nodded slowly. “Considering you’re not only Nejerette but the Meswett, yes, I’d say that’s a fair assumption.”
“Good, that’s good,” I said, some of the threads of worry that had wrapped around my heart loosening. This was about me, not Dr. Ramirez. For whatever reason, that made me feel better. And yet, those strands of worry were still there, intermixed with doubt and dread. I offered Dominic a wan smile. “Still, wouldn’t hurt to check how far this thing reaches”
Dominic frowned, just a little, but before he could say anything, I jumped forward an hour. The echo darkened as the day grew later. It was no longer raining, but the street and sidewalks were still wet, the red, blue, and white police and ambulance lights reflecting on their shimmering surfaces.
Because according to this echo, the accident had still happened. My heart clenched.
Abandoning this location, I switched my focus to Dr. Ramirez himself. Like my grandfather, Alexander, I was a tracker—if I focused on any specific person or object, I could track said person or object through the entire span of time the person or object had existed. Finding when Dr. Ramirez popped back into existence seemed to me the simplest way to figure out how far-reaching this mangled portion of the At truly was.
Except Dr. Ramirez supposedly didn’t exist during the rest of the day of the accident, or the day after. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and squeezed Dominic’s hand. On our own, we were each extremely powerful Nejerets, thanks to Set’s almost pristine bloodline, but when our bas worked together, when we pooled our Nejeret power, our collective control over the At was pretty damn flawless. And with the At’s current instability, that was something I needed right about now.
I pushed forward in time, keeping my focus on Dr. Ramirez. He continued to not exist the days following the accident, and the week after. He didn’t exist a month out, or two months . . . or three.
“This can’t be happening,” I said, panic making my voice thready. “Nobody would go to the trouble to erase him like this—it would take forever to do this.”
“It’s been done before,” Dominic said, his thickening accent telling me that he was battling his own growing concern.
“Yeah, but that was Hitler. Apep wanted the chaos he would bring to the world . . . but Dr. Ramirez is just a professor of archaeology. What could he possibly do in the future that would make someone—anyone—want to hide his actions by erasing his existence from the day of the ‘accident’ on?”
“It is impossible to see that which has been hidden,” Dominic said. “I do not mean to trouble you further, Lex, but is it possible that something has since happened to your Dr. Ramirez, and that only a small period of time was altered in the At?”
I shook my head adamantly. “He’s not really dead, Dom. I mean, we just exchanged emails a few days ago.” I fought my rising panic. “He’s the whole reason this day trip turned into a group excursion rather than just Neffe coming out here to do her research alone.” I was fully aware that Dominic knew all of this, but some part of me was convinced that if my words could banish the doubt in his midnight eyes, everything would be alright.
Dominic hesitated to speak, but his lips eventually parted, and the words that left his mouth elicited a whole new maelstrom of panic. “Anyone can send an email, Lex . . . they just need access to the account.”