“Nooooooo.”
There it was again. A sound of pain and anguish. Otto recalled a similar cry from the mailman, Mr. Reynolds, when Dr. Medina’s hospital lost track of its one and only vampire bat and it bit him on the neck.
Otto worked the loose end of his rope into a lasso while Sheed carried the slack. They moved in a crouch, hunched low under the window frames of the businesses they passed. Dampino’s Dry Cleaning. Knit ’n Needles Yarn Store. The Lopsided Furniture Company (Lopsided is the name of one of Fry’s Founding Families; the furniture is level).
“Nooooooo.”
The boys stopped. From this close, it was clear that the anguished voice—or voices—came from around the corner, beyond the newest, and possibly oddest, business in Fry. The Rorrim Mirror Emporium.
Still low and quiet, the boys crept past the mirror emporium’s display window, catching glimpses of their own reflections dozens of times over in mirrors of various sizes, shapes, and mounts. Past the display window, at the corner, they paused. Otto stayed low, while Sheed stood. They peeked around the corner at the sights. One of which was ordinarily strange, while the other was extraordinarily strange.
Next to the mirror emporium was what Grandma called “green space.” It was an area that had bushes, and baby trees, and benches, and a neat water fountain. Grandma said it was meant to keep downtown Fry pretty, so people didn’t have to look at just buildings and businesses all the time.
It wasn’t a large space. Big enough for people to have a seat while eating their lunch, or toss pennies in the fountain for a wish. Also, it was big enough for Missus Nedraw, the owner of the Rorrim Mirror Emporium, to take her favorite mirrors for a walk.
That was the ordinarily—meaning common for Logan County/Fry—strange thing, by the way.
In the year since Missus Nedraw had opened the emporium, she’d made a daily habit of loading a bunch of mirrors into a red wagon and trucking them along the cobblestone paths of the green space. Everyone noticed it. Whispered about it. The Logan County Gazette even wrote a story about Missus Nedraw’s weird habit. When asked about the routine, Missus Nedraw was quoted as saying, “It keeps everything calm and collected.”
Not much of an explanation, but enough for the people of Fry and the rest of Logan County.
The boys were not surprised to see Missus Nedraw with her wagon full of mirrors. They weren’t surprised that she was frozen mid-step, one black-and-white-striped stocking and a black clog shoe stretched ahead, not quite touching the ground. They were surprised by her unfrozen company.
Two people. Two shiny people.
Not like when you run and sweat a lot, or when you’re oily from not washing your face good and Grandma tells you to go back upstairs and do it right. These two glowed.
Their clothes were varying shades of yellow and gold. One wore a suit with pants that looked like fresh butter, the coat like canary feathers, and a tightly knotted neckerchief the color of lemon peels. While the other wore a mustard skirt, her blouse was like a fresh egg’s yolk, and a big floppy hat the shade of sunflowers complemented her gold hoop earrings. Their skin was coppery, the shade and sheen of new pennies.
They were the extraordinarily strange things.
They faced each other like two suns at the center of a solar system consisting entirely of hovering hand mirrors. The one in the skirt lifted a new hand mirror from Missus Nedraw’s wagon, inhaled, braced herself, and peered into the glass.
“Nooooooo.” She flung the mirror aside, where it stuck in the air like a piece of fruit suspended in Jell-O.
The one in the pants also had a fresh mirror. He raised it to eye level, gasped. “Nooooo.” He flung it away.
They reached toward the wagon for new mirrors.
Otto, not bothering to consult Sheed, stepped from his hiding place, holding both hands up. “Wait!”
The shiny people faced him, sprouting twin smiles. The one in the skirt said, “You can see us?”
“Yes!”
The one in the pants said, “Do we look fabulous?”
“Er, I guess.”
They rushed forward, brushing aside floating mirrors that reset themselves in the air once the pair were clear of them.
“Be careful,” said Missus Nedraw in the same ventriloquist style as the other frozen Fry residents. Though no one seemed to be paying her any attention.
Sheed, for his part, left his hiding place and punched Otto in the shoulder.
“Ow. What was that for?” Otto asked.
“For giving away our position without warning me.”
“They aren’t dangerous.”
“You don’t know that!”
“But we aren’t dangerous,” said the shiny man in the neckerchief.
“We’re stylists.” The woman in the skirt thrust forward a flimsy cardboard rectangle. The boys hesitated, looked at each other, then Otto took the object before Sheed could argue. It was a business card, and it said:
GOLDEN HOUR, A.M.
“Your Best Look Now”
That’s all it said.
Otto flipped the card over. There was no phone number, email address, or website. The one in the neckerchief also offered a card. Sheed took that one. Read it. Compared it to the one in Otto’s hand.
“It’s the same,” Sheed said.
“Not at all,” said the man, “I’m P.M.”
The woman said, “I’m A.M.”
Otto reviewed both cards and saw the difference, as slight as it was. “Golden Hour, A.M., and Golden Hour, P.M.”
Together, the Golden Hours said, “We make anybody look good!”
Otto said, “That’s really confusing.”
“Yeah,” Sheed agreed.
The Golden Hours stroked their chins. The woman said, “Perhaps you have a point. Does it help if I tell you I’m the one in the skirt?”
She fluffed the garment’s yellow lacy frills.
“Not really,” said Sheed. “What’s a Golden Hour anyway?”
“Everyone knows us,” the man said, a bit agitated. “We’re responsible for that special time of the day—”
“Just around sunrise and sunset—” the woman interjected.
“When the light is perfect for taking your most gorgeous photos.”
Otto said, “Does A.M. stand for Ante Meridiem? And P.M. for Post Meridiem? Like a clock?”
“Absolutely not!” scoffed the woman, “One means ‘Amazingly Magnificent,’ and the other ‘Positively Marvelous’”
“Wellll,” the man said, stretching the word. “That’s only after we rebranded.”
“We agreed we’d stick with the new naming convention in front of clients.”
“I know we did. But since things have gone so haywire, we may need to think beyond our public image until all is sorted out.”
“If we’re not consistent with our brand, how can we expect the interdimensional community to—”
Sheed interrupted their bickering. “So Otto was right. Like a clock?”
Reluctantly, they nodded.
Sheed bit the inside of his cheek, really thinking it over. He motioned to himself, then Otto, “I’m Rasheed, and he’s Octavius. But people call us Sheed and Otto because it’s just easier. What if we gave you two easier names? Is it okay if we call you A.M. and P.M.?”
He waited so they could think it over. Grandma said it was respectful to call people what they wanted to be called, and nothing else.
The Golden Hours turned away, whispered back and forth, came to a decision. “Those names are perfectly fine with us.”
“Sweet,” Otto said. “A.M., P.M., can you tell us what’s going on around here?”
P.M. fiddled with his neckerchief. “We don’t really know.”
Sheed waved toward the path of the destruction on the street behind them. “Do you know what the big, fuzzy duck monster was?”
A.M.’s skirt swished from a fearful shudder. “Oh, that was a Time Suck.” As if that was all the explanation required.
“What the heck’s a Time Suck?”
“Extremely dangerous creatures,” said P.M., his complexion dimming. “If they catch you, they just want to play and wrestle and sometimes step on you then drag your flattened body around like a rag doll so you can’t get anything done. Very inconvenient. Oh”—his eyes widened, aimed at Otto—“is that a camera?”
Otto had forgotten about the camera dangling from his neck. Had grown comfortable with the weight of the device that had messed up the town. That bothered him, but not as much as these quirky strangers noticing it. He took a step back.
A.M. stepped closer. “Let’s take some pictures. We can make you look amazing.”
“No!” Sheed said, using his angry outdoor voice. “We’re not taking pictures. Tell us why you’re not frozen like everyone else in town.”
Frozen Missus Nedraw said, “That’s a very good question.”
A.M. and P.M. huffed, as if the question were silly.
A.M. said, “Weren’t we clear? We are Clock Watchers.”
“Agents of time,” said P.M.
“And as of some point today, something put us out of a job.”
Embarrassed heat prickled Otto’s cheeks and forehead. Sheed stared down at the camera.
Something?
More like someone.