15

FRACTURED PAST

Adelaide stared up at the colored dome overhead. She was back in the library, lying on a table in the same spot Kolt had found her the day he’d taken her to Holyrood. Keeping Elise company, she watched as the girl re-shelved a series of leather volumes.

Elise turned to her. “This can’t be interesting to you. You’re just avoiding having to meet Charlie for an afternoon of event planning for the gala. Aren’t you?”

Though her eyes were on the painted ceiling, her mind was still on the night before, and she shrugged at Elise’s query.

Of all the ways the first encounter with her uncle could have gone, Adelaide wouldn’t have predicted it would include tea, chess, and an honest answer. Gideon had been true to his word, admitting far more than she had expected him to, including the fact that the Red Rose Society was running out of Queen’s Blood to power the time machine. He hadn’t left them because he wanted to but because he had to. No one could know what he was doing, and contact with anyone could have put his mission at risk. She knew his answer in no way made up for his absence, but at least she had finally gotten one.

She held her hand above her, watching light dance off the red rose on the ring she had received at initiation. Last night, Gideon had also told her that Queen’s Blood was the same stone used for member rings. Since their conversation, Adelaide couldn’t seem to get the gemstone out of her head. Other than the obvious, she couldn’t figure out what about the stone had bugged her enough to burrow into her skin like a tick.

Adelaide tilted her hand, revealing the thick scarring on her palm. As she gazed at the still-healing skin, an image of the earring, glistening red in her hand, flashed across her mind. She shot upright on the table. The earring. It had been set in the very same stone.

“Ready to drop these off in archives?” Elise asked, snapping Adelaide out of her reverie and handing her a stack of books.

Adelaide tried not to recoil as she took them and felt grateful the press of her skin against the books didn’t spark a trace. “Yeah, lead the way.”

She followed Elise back down to the main floor of the library to a door on the far-side wall. Elise slipped a metal skeleton key into the lock and shouldered open the door, revealing a dimly lit room. “Room” was too loose a term for the space, which resembled something closer to a warehouse. Books and artifacts of all kinds lay scattered about on a mix of metal and wooden shelves, but there was a sense of organization to the chaos that told her everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. Every object had a tag attached to it. The black ink of feminine script denoted what it was and the corresponding year it belonged to. Adelaide wasn’t entirely sure what all being a Keeper entailed, but if the threat of sparking a trace wasn’t looming over her head, she would have loved to learn.

“Where do these go?” Adelaide asked, feeling the beginnings of a headache prick at her temples. She wanted to get them put away and get out of the room, hoping to avoid having a trace in front of Elise. She trusted the girl a lot more than she did many others within the Red Rose Society, but still, the fewer people who knew her secret, the better.

Elise scanned the stack, checking the spines. She closed her eyes, tongue clenched between her teeth in concentration. Her eyes remained shut as she gestured around the room, using her eidetic memory to recall each volume’s correct location. “The top two go in Beethoven’s piano bench, the red one in the pocket of Amelia Earhart’s flying jacket and the last one in the armoire from the Titanic.” She opened her eyes, a wry smile on her face. “That one’s in the back, by the way, right past the missing half of the Sphinx’s nose.”

“Got it,” Adelaide called over her shoulder as she headed deeper into the shelves.

She returned all the books to their proper locations and was headed back to where she had left Elise when the pain in her head intensified, hot and sharp like an iron prod. Adelaide gasped and doubled over, gripping the shelf beside her so tightly the metal bit into her palm. She closed her eyes against the pain and let it lead her like a magnet through the archives. After several minutes, Adelaide felt herself slow to a stop. She opened her eyes to find she was crouched in front of a black vintage suitcase. As she eased it open, she half-expected the case to be the thing that was calling to her, but instead, her eyes and fingertips met with a leather-bound ledger.

As her fingers grazed its surface, the book fell open and images started to take form. Adelaide watched as a woman, her face indistinguishable, dipped a fountain pen into an inkwell and proceeded to dance the pen across the worn page in looping swirls. A symbol like the inverted blade of a guillotine glistened in gold ink on her wrist and Adelaide recognized it as the marking of a Keeper. The same one Juniper had. After a final stroke, the woman set the pen down. Adelaide could now see the words, glistening in the candlelight as they dried: Sienna Baird.

“Ad,” Elise called.

Adelaide startled, dropping the ledger. Disconnected from her touch, the images faded before she could discern anything else. She moved to retrieve it, but stopped short as her gaze fell on the open page, the same one she’d watched the woman write on. It held a list of names. Her eyes scanned it for the girl’s, but in the location it should have been, the page was empty. The only markings there were the faded ink lines of an S and a B in a row together. Elise called for her again. Adelaide quickly covered her fingers with her sleeve and picked up the ledger, slipping it in the waistband of her jeans, between the thin fabric of her t-shirt and the knitting of her cardigan. “I’m coming,”

Adelaide and Elise were halfway out of the library when Juniper’s voice called out behind them. Adelaide bristled, slipping an arm behind her as she turned to face the woman. She could feel the ledger, hot against the small of her back, through her shirt. Had Juniper seen her take it?

“Hey, sugar, didn’t know you were here,” Juniper said with warmth in her violet eyes. “Helping Elise restock?”

“Yeah,” Adelaide said, rubbing the back of her neck with her other hand. “Figured she could use the company.”

Juniper smiled. “That was nice of you.” She turned to Elise. “Elise, dear, would you mind holding down my office for the next hour? I’m afraid I have to duck out for a bit.”

“Not at all,” Elise said.

Juniper handed over her keys to Elise and hurried out of the library.

Adelaide let out a breath, a little shakier than she had intended, and let her hand drop to her side.

A loud crack, like the Earth splitting in two, suddenly shook the library. Adelaide staggered on her feet, nearly sent to the ground by the intense movement. Time seemed to slow as her fingers curled around the polished wood of a support column and her eyes focused on the ceiling. She watched as a gash, like the jagged edge of a lightning bolt, fissured across the dome overhead. A series of smaller cracks webbed from it across the surface of the frescoes, sending a piece of painted plaster the size of a manhole cover to the floor. Adelaide threw herself to the ground and covered her head as the piece shattered on impact. Dust and debris hit her skin and stuck to the sweat coating her arms.

“Ad, what’s wrong?” Elise said, a panic in her voice.

Hands shook her, and she opened her eyes to find Elise standing over her with concern etched on her face. Adelaide panted and flicked her eyes from the ground to her arms and up to the dome, completely intact. “I’m okay, I must have passed out or something.” Or something, she thought as she let Elise pull her to her feet.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Elise didn’t seem convinced.

“I’m fine,” Adelaide said, though she felt far from it.

Elise eyed her, a beat passing before she spoke again. “No, you’re not.” She grabbed Adelaide’s wrist and pulled her into the stacks. “You’ve been acting weird since we got back from France. What is it?”

Adelaide thought about lying, but she knew she couldn’t hide the truth from Elise forever. They were roommates, and at this point, maybe even friends. As a Keeper in training, she might even be able to help. At some point, Adelaide knew she had to start trusting someone. Once the words pushed past her lips, they flowed freely until she had told Elise nearly all of it; about the night of the fire, the gaps in her memory, the suspicions she had and the traces she’d seen. Elise remained quiet, her usually readable face a mask.

Adelaide finished, waiting for Elise’s response. She expected her to say something, but instead, Elise punched her in the arm.

“Ow.” Adelaide rubbed the spot Elise had hit. “What was that for?”

“That,” Elise said, folding her arms across her chest, “is for waiting so long to tell me. I’ll check the archives and see if I can find anything. If there’s a mention of anything close to your traces, I’ll find it.”

“Thank you,” Adelaide said, feeling slightly lighter now that she had finally shared her secret. “Can I ask you a question?”

Elise nodded. “Shoot,”

“The frescoes,” Adelaide flicked her eyes to the dome, now in the distance. “Do you know what’s painted on them?”

“Juniper said they’re inflection points of the past, central moments on the timeline that, if altered, would wreck time as we know it. I’m still learning, but that’s part of what Juniper does as a Keeper. She discovers, records and tracks the inflection points. And when a Timewalker comes back, she makes sure those points haven’t changed.”

Adelaide recalled the fissure on the dome’s surface and the shatter of plaster on the ground. Juniper’s words from the other day flitted across her mind, all those things we didn’t believe possible, might just be. Because of you.