This was a stupid idea. But then stupid ideas were Nick Gautier’s specialty. In fact, when God had been giving them out, Nick had gone back not only for seconds, but thirds and fourths. Probably fifths, too.
Just ask anyone.
They’d all agree.
Especially his mother and friends. And none more so than his girlfriend, who was currently staring at him as if he’d lost his last three remaining brain cells.
He probably had.
Not that they’d ever worked particularly well whenever Kody was around. What with her tight jeans that hugged a very nice posterior, and those soft shirts she fancied that drained every last bit of blood from his teenaged Cajun mind and left it quite unable to function at full capacity. So even if he’d been a NASA rocket scientist, he’d have been rendered a blubbering idiot around her anyway.
He took comfort with that knowledge. Little bit though it was.
“Oh, Nick! You can’t be serious.” Nekoda Kennedy crossed her arms over her ample chest and blinked those gorgeous green eyes at him as if to say—Son, you’re a flaming moron.
Yeah, of course he was. And dang it anyway. How could she be so attractive while calling his meager intelligence into question?
Yet there was no getting around it.
He loved her. Every inch of that tanned, delectable caramel skin that tempted him a lot more than he ever wanted to admit. Every bit of those cupid’s bow lips he could spend the rest of his life kissing. Provided his mama didn’t catch him, that was. No boy needed a lecture that stern.
Not to mention all her soft, curly brown hair he always wanted to bury his face in …
No doubt about it. He would always be a fool where his Kody was concerned.
And he was willing to die to keep her safe. Whatever it took. Running into burning buildings. Dodging traffic and irate Madre phone calls. Even facing ticked off demons, and the Apocalypse, with nothing more than his meager wits as weapons.
“I’ve got to do this, cher. It’s a moral imperative.”
“It’s a grand stupidity!”
He touched her chin and grinned roguishly. “Nah! It’s a matter of honor.”
Rolling her eyes, she let out a long-suffering sigh that probably had to do with the fact that she’d been hanging with him all afternoon without a break— he couldn’t blame her there as a lot of people made that exasperated sound around him whenever they spent this much time in his presence. Especially his maternal unit and his ancient Greek boss, Kyrian Hunter.
And no one more so than the Dark-Hunter Acheron, and Nick’s demon bodyguard, Caleb. They both swore he could test the patience of Job and Ghandi.
Kody growled at him. “Fine. Go on and do it, you stubborn Cajun beast. Not like anyone can ever talk you out of anything so stupid once you’ve set your mind to it, anyway. But when you get a bellyache, I don’t want to hear it. So don’t come crying to me for Pepto Bismol later. I don’t care how cute and sexy you are. I will not allow you to wear me down for any sympathy this time. Not over something you know better than to do. You can just suffer in silence. Alone.” She stepped aside, clearing the way for him. “If you really think you can out-eat a Charonte demon … go for it.”
Nick tsked as he stepped around her to slide into the empty folding chair, and inclined his head to Simi who was already waiting with a dozen plates of beignets for each of them. “Oh, I’m ready. You ready, Ms. Simi?”
Decked out in her black leather corset and purple ruffled skirt, the Goth demon grinned. “I’s born ready, half-demon boy! The Simi done gots her barbecue sauce dugged out and is rearing to go. Less do this!”
Nick adjusted a plate and a glass of milk. “A’ight! And dang be he who first cries halt! Enough! I plan to eat till I snap the button off my jeans and make it a deadly weapon!” He popped his knuckles in preparation.
Off to the side of their table, Kody continued to growl at both of them. It was quite the impressive noise.
“What’s going on?” Caleb asked as he came up to stand behind Kody on the sidewalk that looked out toward Jackson Square from the Café Du Monde where Nick sat with Simi, who’d already jumped the gun and started chowing down.
Kody gestured at them. “They’re actually having an eat-off. Can you believe this?”
Caleb laughed. “He’s an idiot if he thinks for one yoctosecond he can compete against a Charonte.”
“Don’t I know?”
“And yet you’re dating him? Good job, woman. Way to raise those expectations. Yesterday, or in your case, years in the future, you were a demigod warrior, saving mankind from the demonic hoard out to annihilate them. From that to baby Malachai sitter. You didn’t just fall off your high-and-mighty pedestal, Highness, you hit the ground and splintered to pieces, like Humpty Dumpty.”
“Yeah … thanks.”
Caleb held his hands up. “Hey, I don’t judge. I fell just as far. Besides, I found a woman willing to actually marry my cantankerous demonic hide. After that, I will question no one’s intelligence for the man in their life. Ever. My Lil really got the short end of it all.”
Nick swallowed his beignet whole before he glared at his demon bodyguard, who was also supposed to be his best friend. At least that was what Caleb claimed and how the theory went. Though on days like this, he definitely wondered.
At well over six feet, Caleb Malphas had hair as dark as Simi’s and skin the same color of caramel as Kody’s.
Yet the one thing that irritated Nick about his running-mate—aside from Caleb’s rather caustic and biting barbs he never kept to himself and that were usually directed at Nick—were those Hollywood good looks that always left Nick feeling extremely inadequate. ’Course that was just a front. While Caleb might appear tall, dark, handsome and composed, his natural state of being was as an orange-fleshed, fanged demon.
Yeah, he was a total freak when he didn’t have his human disguise up.
“Don’t you have something better to do like raze a village? Haunt a house? Torment the damned? And I don’t mean me. This is New Orleans, you know? There’s a lot more condemned folks here than just my little Cajun hide. Look around. I’m sure you can find a lot more worthy target for your venom. Surely?”
“Yeah, but it’s so much more fun to scare a little boy who’s afraid of clowns.” Caleb flashed an evil grin at him.
Nick shifted indignantly as he knew exactly what Caleb was referring to and he didn’t appreciate it in the least. “Hey now, that thing ain’t no clown I’m afraid of … it’s a Mardi Gras jester. Get your terms straight, old man. Your senility’s showing again. Besides, it’s evil and talks under the light of your magic. And you know it. So don’t you be hassling me over a well-founded fear about Mr. Creepy and his little head on a stick. That thing’s nasty and whoever put it in the middle of a tourist district where they got little kids walking by it all the time ought to be tied naked to a Mardi Gras float on a cold rainy day and left there to be mocked. Just saying. It’s all kinds of wrong.”
And it wasn’t like Nick was the only person alive with coulrophobia. That fear was quite common and normal. Maybe not for a Malachai demon who could tear a clown apart, but still …
Nick hadn’t known he was the Malachai until many years after he’d developed his coulro-jester-phobia … on a stick. By then, his fear had become second nature.
Caleb made a rude dismissive noise before he passed a snide stare to Kody. “You know he’s still having nightmares about that night?”
At least Kody defended him. “I’m still having nightmares about that night. I don’t fault him on that account. It was pretty gruesome.”
Yeah, and his father, the baddest Malachai ever born, had died in that battle.
And all of them had been wounded. The night they’d faced the talking jester with the tiny head, and the demon krewe had been that terrifying.
“Thank you, sug!” Nick kissed the air in her direction before he picked up another beignet and shoved it in his mouth whole.
“But I can’t watch this.” She turned her back and shuddered. “I’m getting diabetes just being here.”
“And losing respect for your boy by the heartbeat,” Caleb added.
To Nick’s immediate cry of, “Hey!” Kody still ignored them both.
And neither of that kept Caleb from his merciless quest to have fun at Nick’s expense. “You’re a ghost,” Caleb reminded her. “You can’t get diabetes.”
“So you say. I’m willing to debate it.” She shivered again even though she couldn’t see their contest any longer. “I can’t watch this insanity. Simi? You got my boy covered?”
Simi doused another plate of beignets with barbecue sauce. “‘Course I do, Akri-Kody. The Simi won’t let no demons or nothing else et your demon-boy or hurt him on my watch. Promise. Cross my heart, with barbecue sauce on top.”
“Thank you, Ms. Simi. I’ll see you two later.”
Nick licked at the sugar on his fingertips as he watched Kody head off in the direction of her house. He cut a meaningful stare toward Caleb. “Speaking of … aren’t you afraid your house guests are going to set fire to something? Like the whole, entire planet? Now that all three of the evil Celts are together and alone without adult or any kind of responsible supervision … ”
Caleb went pale. “Yeah, clowns don’t scare me. An unsupervised war god, hellhound and banshee … this could have nuclear-level meltdown repercussions. Only thing worse would have been to leave Bubba with them. See ya later.”
Wiping his hands down the leg of his jeans, Nick tried not to be too obvious. But he couldn’t help the intense way he stared after them both, making sure they were completely out of sight before he returned to Simi. He brushed his dark brown hair back from his eyes. “Okay, I think we’re safe now.”
Simi looked up with a slight pout which was made twice as adorable given that her mouth was covered in powdered sugar and barbecue sauce. He didn’t know why, but that combined with her black and red cybergoth pigtails made her look more like a kid his age than a demon who was thousands of years old. And while her speech was unorthodox to most ears, it came from the fact that English wasn’t her native or primary tongue.
Charonte was.
Unlike the Malachai who could speak all languages with ease, she sometimes had trouble navigating between the two languages—especially with subject-verb agreement, something that often caused her to ramble as she tried to make sense of words that baffled her with their similarities.
To her, many of them were superfluous and unnecessary, as in humans should be able to follow her meaning simply by the context. And if they couldn’t … Well, to quote Simi, poo on you.
Not that Nick minded her random jumps in logic or sequence. While he might understand and speak all languages, he was most fluent in Gibberish most days anyway.
And, he should get special bonus points for speaking in rapidly fluent Stupidity. At least according to his mom, and most of his teachers. If there was a wrong thing to say at a wrong time, he had a Ph.D. in it.
Dr. Nick Dumb-butt. That was him.
“What?” Simi battered her eyelashes. “You meant we gotta go now?”
“They might come back if we don’t.”
“Well, poo to that!” Simi sighed heavily in her obvious disappointment. “And here the Simi was all happy with her eats. You a mean demon-boy to drag the Simi away mid feastery!”
“That’s what they tell me.” And it was what he was trying his best to avoid. That and ending the world as they knew it. He’d really like to die centuries from now without causing the world to go with him on his way through the Pearly Gates.
Nick winced as that cold reality slapped him hard for the ten millionth time. He missed the days when he’d looked forward to a normal future of routine college, wife, kids, nine-to-five job, and growing fat, old and complacent with the world around him. When he’d been ignorant of his true destiny and future role in the larger universe.
It sucked to know that you would one day be the end of all living things.
At least that was what Kody and Caleb had led him to believe, but now …
They didn’t know anymore. It was why he needed Simi to take him to Olympus so that he could meet his half-brother, the sleep god, and ask Madoc about time-travel and consequences. Nick needed answers and he didn’t want anyone to interfere with the real stupidity he was planning. Which was exactly what Caleb and Kody would do if they were here.
They’d stop him from being even more suicidal than he already was. Warn him to stay away from Madoc and tell him why the last thing he needed was to cross those lines.
But as Kody had noted, he didn’t listen whenever he had his head set on something.
Simi tucked her barbecue sauce into her coffin-shaped purse, then wiped her mouth. “Okies. Whenever you’s ready.”
“I was born ready for being an idiot.” Nick braced himself for their trip through the dimension portals that he hated so much.
Simi blinked her eyes and jerked her head like a bird.
He felt that cold familiar, weird fluttering in his stomach that he got any time he had to cross into other planes or dimensions. Faster than he was prepared for, kaleidoscope colors twisted and blended and then quickly sorted themselves out. It was the strangest head trip. Like throwing hot crayons into a blender and leaving the lid off—something Nick didn’t advise anyone doing unless they really wanted their mother to disown them or ground them for the rest of their natural born lives.
It took him a second to get his bearings. Especially since this wasn’t where he was expecting to end up.
Yeah, not by a longshot. Confused, he glanced around the green and dark orange room that was way out of context. Had they taken a wrong turn at the bright light on the left? Or was this something else?
He’d assumed all of Olympus would be similar to Artemis’s Greek temple, where he’d met the goddess before. Big columns. Lots of white and gold. Delicate marble things everywhere that made him extremely nervous as he was forever banging into stuff and knocking it over. ’Cause he never knew where his limbs ended these days.
That it would have some frescos. Gaudy paint. Weird fauna and robed attendants who were way too happy, given the unpredictable natures of the beings they served. That it would at least have something remotely Greek to it.
Yet this place contained nothing close to that. This was much more organic and dark and red. Contemporary. More akin to a kurazukuri home. So much so, he half expected a Pokemon or Team Rocket to come flying out at any moment and run him over. Or some unexpected Yakuza attack.
Yeah … it definitely had a Japanese feel to it. Right down to the bright, hand-painted rice wallpaper and austere, futon furnishings. There was even an ornate orange and green kimono hung on the wall to his left, and an antique yoroi hitsu beside it.
Scowling in confusion, he turned toward the Charonte demon. “Um … Sim? Where exactly are we? Did you mean to bring me here?”
’Cause this was definitely not Kansas and he was feeling about as lost as Toto wandering off the Yellow Brick Road. He just hoped they weren’t about to encounter some weird, ticked off wicked witch, or a herd of screeching flying monkeys dressed like funky blue bellhops.
Better yet, he hoped no one dropped a house on top of him. ’Cause that was the last thing he needed right about now. And it would definitely ruin his already screwed up day.
Although, Simi did have on black and white striped leggings …
Maybe she had more to fear here than he did.
Simi adjusted the strap on her coffin-shaped purse. “Well, the Simi knows what you said you wanted to go and visits with them nasty Greek god people who are all so irritating, but then I gots to thinking what you really wanted to ask about and so I thoughts—”
“Simi? What are you doing here?” The deep, thunderous voice radiated through the room with so much preternatural energy that it almost tripped Nick’s Malachai blood against his will. Indeed, it took everything he had to stop his wings from unfurling and exposing him in front of the stranger. Something that would be about as embarrassing as his teachers calling him to the board during inconvenient moments at school when he’d been ogling Kody instead of his chem or lit book.
The fact that his Malachai blood detected that ancient, invincible power and wanted to react to it, set the last of Nick’s nerves on edge.
Which meant this guy was old.
More than that, he’d have to be some kind of strong warrior demon for Nick’s body to have reacted like this.
The stranger could probably kick his butt without effort.
Forget a house falling on him—that might actually be a far more humane death, than this dude setting claws or fangs to him.
And there was no doubt that this beast could take him in a fight and make it seriously hurt. Standing eye-to-eye with him—which was no, pardon the pun, small feat, he was like a super ripped ninja with the kind of toned muscles that Kyrian, Caleb and Acheron sported. Complete with his long black hair tied back in a sleek, neat pony-tail.
And by the stern expression on that face nothing got past those sharp, intelligent almond-shaped eyes that seemed to see through him. Like the Dark-Hunter Acheron, this stranger appeared young, yet the air between them sizzled with enough arcane power that it said this man had been around a whole lot longer.
Centuries upon centuries.
Upon centuries.
He might even be older than Acheron. Maybe even closer to Caleb’s or Dagon’s prehistoric age.
And that was disconcerting. Especially as the Malachai powers inside Nick saw him not in the black t-shirt and jeans he currently wore, but in keikō armor wielding a naginata in the midst of battle against a group of dramonk demons.
His skill in that fight was unnerving, but not nearly as much as the next image that quickly flashed through his mind.
This was one of a crap-your-pants-sideways level of terror. No longer dressed in armor, he wore the guise of a zeitjäger. The creepy, creepy ravenesque demons who were in charge of monitoring time and anyone who would abuse it.
More than that, Nick saw him pulling off the bloodied plague doctor mask they all wore to expose his eyes with an all black sclera.
Yeah, that’s just what I needed today …
To have another run-in with those beasts. The one he’d had awhile back had been enough for his life. Nick really didn’t want another.
Ever.
Simi, however, appeared immune as always to the scary thing in front of them. In fact, she ran over and hugged him!
’Cause yeah, that was a normal thing for someone to do …
In nightmares only.
“Akri-Tashi! I gots someone for you to meet!”
Nick cringed at the thought. Honestly? He’d rather meet his mom three hours after curfew, reeking of alcohol and wearing her best shoes.
On a Sunday night.
After missing Mass.
A slow smile spread across the man’s face as he returned Simi’s exuberant hug. Neither friendly nor sinister, that smile managed to hover somewhere between those two things. “Nick, good to see you, little buddy. Wasn’t expecting the Malachai to come waltzing into my house today.”
Oh yeah, that wasn’t the least bit unnerving.
Nick let out a sarcastic laugh. “Dude, do I know you?”
His smile turned a bit warmer, which was even scarier somehow. “Takeshi. We’ve met in your future. Many times.”
O-kay … Nick was even more uncomfortable. “That supposed to make sense to me?”
Simi laughed. “You wanted to travel through time … Takeshi do it lots and lots. Sometimes he lives backwards even. Though he not supposed to,” she whispered. “So we not tell people about that … shhh.”
Ah, that explained it.
Sort of.
Yeah … no. Nick was completely lost and confused.
Cocking his head, Takeshi scowled. “So what have you screwed up now, kid?”
Nick pressed his hands to his temples as his head began to ache from trying to keep up and understand what was going on. “Okay, I’m really on the losing end here. ’Cause I’m not sure what you’re asking. Or even where I am, or what’s going on.”
Screwing up for him was like an Olympic sport. He did it so much and so spectacularly that he didn’t even think about it.
Sometimes, like now, he wasn’t even aware that he’d done it. At least not until Kody or his mom stopped talking to him for a day or two, and “stink-eyed” him every time he got near them. And left him every bit as confounded as Takeshi did on what Nick could have done to piss off everybody.
With a real laugh, Takeshi shook his head. “I know you, boy. While I don’t live my life in a straight line, you do. And we shouldn’t be meeting like this. At least not now. So for you to be here means you’ve screwed something up. What have you done?”
“You see what I was talking about, babe?”
Nick choked at the last voice he’d expected to hear. But it at least answered the most probing question that had been eluding him for weeks now—where one of his generals and protectors had vanished off to. “Nashira? What are you doing here?”
For that matter, how had she gotten to this dimension?
Why was he even surprised at this point?
His yōkai grimoire being literally manifested in front of them. With long white-blond hair that belied her own Japanese heritage, Nashira had vivid purple eyes that were set in a beautiful, elvish face— complete with pointed ears that peeked out from her snow-white hair. Graceful and lithe, she moved like the wind and usually spoke in riddles that gave Nick more questions than answers.
And a resounding migraine he was sure was a brain tumor the size of a bowling ball.
At least that had been true in the past. Today, however, she answered like a “normal” human and not some pestilence demon sent to make him crazy.
“I came to see my husband.”
When she touched Takeshi on the shoulder and his harsh gaze softened, Nick’s jaw fell south without any effort on his part. “Pardon?”
Takeshi took her hand into his and kissed her knuckles. Then he pressed her hand to his cheek and held it there as if it were some sacred object. “It’s true. And I’m told that I owe her presence here to you. For that alone, Malachai, I’m willing to give you a great deal of slack and latitude.”
Nick turned his gaping stare toward Simi. “Did you know about this?”
“That Akri-Tashi married? Well, yeah. Don’t everybody?”
Given that Nick didn’t know Takeshi at all, no. But he knew better than to refute Simi as the demon didn’t like that. So, instead, he turned back to them and tried not to gape.
Nashira smiled. “I was an oracle long before I met Takeshi.”
Okay, he’d go with that. But it still left him with one burning question.
“So you really were a zeitjäger?”
The fact that Nick knew about that part of his past didn’t appear to surprise Takeshi. “An exceptionally long time ago I wore that garb and played that role. Yes.”
That wasn’t exactly how Nick had been told those time-sentinel things worked. Rather his understanding had been you were born as one of them and had to do it forever. Like being a Malachai. There was no choice.
No escape.
Which begged one majorly important question. “So how did you get out?”
“Made a pact with Zev Kotori.”
Takeshi said that as if Nick should know exactly who and what he was talking about, but again he had no clue. Maybe he should have been playing closer attention to all those Grim lessons, after all, and not ignoring the ancient being who hated him. There had been a reason why his father had sent Grim to tutor him—other than as another form of creative abuse. “Who?”
“The god of Time who was in charge of us back in the day.”
Ah … but it still told Nick nothing as he’d never heard the name before. It wasn’t exactly something they referenced in his manga or fighting games. And God forbid they ever covered something useful in school. “From the bitterness in that tone, I take it that he screwed you over somehow.”
“No. His sister, Tiva did. She’s the Untime to his Time. And unlike her brother, she can’t stand to see anyone happy.”
“As a chaos goddess, she’s the one who cursed me into a book.” Nashira’s eyes glistened from unshed tears. “It was her way of keeping me away from my husband. For no reason other than she was a jealous harpy.”
Man, that sucked. Nick couldn’t imagine anything worse than to be banned from Kody.
Well, maybe being locked in Caleb’s laundry room with three week old dirty football jockstraps.
In August.
Yeah, his eyes watered just thinking about it. However, he’d veered off topic again.
Not that it mattered as Takeshi was quick to bring them back to it. “You, as a Malachai, never released Nashira before this. In any known timeline or universe. Yet now she’s here.” He sighed. “I knew when she showed up out of the blue that you’d changed something about the past, probably major, but didn’t really want to investigate. I was too grateful to have her back, whatever the cause. Now that you’re here, I have no choice, but to face the fact that you’ve veered off the highway. So back to what I said … what have you done, boy?”
Nick shrugged with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “Stopped a couple of apocalypses. Fought a butt-load of demons. And managed to stay alive, much to my daily and eternal surprise.”
Takeshi laughed.
And when he did so, Nick scowled as his powers kicked in with some unexpected disclosures. “Itzal Tsuneo.” The name was out before Nick could control his involuntary verbal diarrhea.
It had a most chilling effect on his host. Takeshi manifested a dagger and had it to his throat so fast that Nick had barely blinked. “I will not be enslaved to you, Malachai!” He growled those words between clenched teeth.
His eyes turned an unholy red.
Nick held his hands up in surrender. “Wasn’t trying to. Seriously.” He needed to be more careful in the future. Of all beings, he knew the difference between common names and those used to summon, bind and control demons.
Itzal Tsuneo was the one that could be used to summon and control Takeshi. Worse? It could be used to enslave him the same way Nick’s father had once enslaved Caleb and Grim.
“I would never do that to anyone. Dude, really. Not into using people or demons.”
Nashira placed her hand over Takeshi’s and pulled the blade from Nick’s throat. “He’s telling the truth, Neo. Ambrose is not his father or any of the others. It’s why he freed me when he didn’t have to.” She leaned forward to whisper loudly in his ear. “Kill him, husband, and you know what horror will grow to power in his stead.”
“You are ever my wisdom, Shira.” He dissolved the dagger, yet continued to glare at Nick.
Nick glanced over to Simi. She didn’t appear to be the least bit concerned by Takeshi’s violent outburst. So much for her protecting him.
Or she knew Takeshi really meant that he wasn’t going to kill him.
Hoping for that, he let out a nervous breath. “Okay then. At least now we know your parents didn’t really name you Bob.”
Which was the English equivalent to Takeshi, not so much in meaning as just in the routineness of it.
Takeshi finally laughed. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”
“Nah, thankfully, right? And what can I say? I’m addicted to manga.” Nick winked at him. “And since you’re not gutting me, I’m here to understand what was broken and how. Most of all, I want to repair it.”
No sooner did he finish speaking than the room around them lit up with transparent and elaborate charts and lists that hovered in mid air. It was a spectacular display like something in a science fiction movie, only much better done. And a lot brighter and more intricate.
“What is this?” Nick breathed in awe of it.
“The time line of your life.”
Nick’s jaw dropped yet again. It was like looking out onto a foreign galaxy. Or the inside of a computer. Some spots were brighter than others. Some were white. Some blue. Some red and others orange. All were punctuated by writing he couldn’t read— which was never supposed to happen to him. As the Malachai, he should understand all languages and writing. “What do the different colors signify?”
“The orange ones are your pith points.” Those were the virtually unchangeable events. Things that were for the most part set in stone, and that could only be moved with the most catastrophic consequences and Herculean efforts. “Blue are the ones that will forever change your core personality.” Takeshi cut him a sarcastic grimace. “Believe me, you don’t want to tamper with those … Red are the ones that define your character.” Takeshi grinned. “Some of those, you might want to consider changing.”
“Thanks.”
He didn’t comment on Nick’s interjection. “White is your original path. Yellow are breaks where you’ve veered from what your timeline once was.”
Crap. There was a lot of yellow and yet while it veered away a bit, it always looped right back to its original course. Like a snapped rubber band. Kind of weird, really. ’Cause from what Nick could see, he hadn’t really changed anything. It was what Ambrose had said. For everything he tried, it went right back to where it’d started.
Nothing ever really changed.
The lines stayed basically where they’d been. Time didn’t want to be changed. It fought back with a vengeance.
Nick stepped closer to the lights. “How can you see all this?”
Simi tsked at him. “He a zeitjäger, silly demon-boy! They can always see time maps. It why the Simi brung’d you here! They’s much better for this than them Greek godlings.”
It was impressive. He’d give her that. Scary, but impressive.
Nick held his hand up to touch the timeline. His hand passed painlessly through the twinkling lights the same way it would go through some laser light show. The moment he made contact, though, bright green sparks lit up from his hand, across his chart.
Takeshi sucked his breath in sharply.
“What? What’d I screw up now?” That was the typical answer whenever things went haywire around him.
His features pale, Takeshi shook his head. “All that green …”
“Yeah? What about it?”
Nashira turned as white as her hair. “Is that what I think it is?”
Takeshi swallowed hard. “Yes.” He met Nick’s gaze and the feral fear that was deep in his eyes made Nick step back from him. “The green is where someone’s trying to throw your life out of alignment.”
That didn’t sound good at all. In fact, it was making his ulcer bleed—not that he had an ulcer, but at this rate, one might be developing.
And having babies.
Nick swallowed hard. “I thought that was the yellow.”
“No, the yellow is where you’ve changed it with the decisions you’ve made. And as you can see, it didn’t really alter anything. That green is someone else. Someone who shouldn’t have the ability to change anything in your life. And, kid, they’re shifting your future even as we speak.”