Paul and Kevin led Eric along the river path to a nearby parking lot where Paul’s pickup truck waited. From there, they wasted no time returning to the Aberration Station, where Karen and Diane were waiting for them beside the PT Cruiser.
Diane was tall and slender, with long, auburn hair. She was the kind of person who was almost always cheerful, but today she was chewing on her nails and looking worried.
Karen was watching a squirrel as if frolicked in the grass.
As soon as Eric stepped out of the truck, Diane said, “Isabelle called and told us everything.”
Keven took out his phone with the pictures he’d taken and handed it to Karen. “Isabelle’s great, but I don’t think words can possibly do it justice.”
“That’s awesome,” giggled Karen. “Hector’s hero from the future. Totally dignified.”
“It’s hilarious,” said Diane, taking the phone from her hand. “His expression is priceless in this one. It’s just too bad that guy didn’t strip him down to his undies, too. That could’ve been your Christmas card this year.”
“Oh that would have been better,” she laughed.
“Yes, it’s hilarious,” growled Eric. “Can we stay on task, please?”
Diane handed the phone back to Kevin. “Touchy…”
“What did you do to your hand?” asked Karen.
Eric lifted his hand and looked at it. He’d forgotten about that. “Just a scratch,” he assured her.
“Looks like more than a scratch,” observed Diane.
It had bled more than he expected it to, but it still wasn’t that bad.
Karen opened her purse and began digging for a cleaning pad and a bandage. She was always prepared. You’d think he was the clumsiest person alive, judging by the amount of first aid supplies she always kept on hand. And it wasn’t because of these weird adventures. She’d always been extra-prepared for emergencies, for as long as he’d known her.
He thought maybe it had something to do with her habit of hiding her emotions. It was hard for her to say she was scared that something would happen to him, but easy to buy stockpiles of Band-Aids.
“Anything from Holly?” asked Eric.
“Hm?” said Karen, as she stared into her purse.
“Holly?” he said again.
“Oh. She called a little bit ago.” She frowned at her purse. “What was I doing again?”
Diane shot Eric a worried glance and took the purse from her. “Let me help you.”
She let go of the purse without protest. “’Kay.”
“Holly said she tried to call you,” said Diane. “But she didn’t get an answer. We told her you were underground.”
It made sense. He probably didn’t have reception when he was in those tunnels. Isabelle had been able to contact him, but that was different. She could almost always connect with him, regardless of whether he had a signal. No one could quite explain how or why.
“Did she say if she saw anything when she cast her spell?”
“Just that it was complicated. She wanted to talk to you directly.”
It was always complicated. Part of it was that Holly was so young. She was a talented witch, but in many ways she was still a novice. And she was doing it all by herself. She didn’t have her sisters to help channel energy. But looking into the future was always tricky, even for the most advanced of witches. It was constantly in motion and so easy to veer off course.
And it was the nature of the thing to be vague and ambiguous. The future, itself, was but a riddle.
Except this time was even more complicated. The future and the past were connected somehow.
Diane found the first aid supplies in Karen’s purse and began cleaning Eric’s hand. It was weird having someone other than Karen patch him up. But Karen seemed to be distracted by the leaves fluttering in the trees overhead. She was squinting up at them, looking oblivious to everyone around her.
“Is…she all right?” asked Kevin.
“She’s been like that since we got here,” recalled Eric. “I’m not sure what it is. It’s like a medicine fog, except she’s not taking any medicine.”
“Isabelle said she was acting a little off,” said Diane. “But this is kind of weird.”
They all watched her for a moment, but she didn’t notice any of them.
Diane finished applying the bandage and then put the remaining first aid supplies back in Karen’s purse. Then she took Karen by the hand and said, “I think I’ll take her back to my place and keep an eye on her.”
Karen turned and faced her now. Suddenly, she seemed alert again. “No. We should go to the library and see if we can find any news articles from 1962.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Eric. “It’d be helpful to find out if anything bad happened that year.” And it should keep the two of them safe from whatever was going on with Steampunk Monk and the stranger from the tunnels.
She nodded. “And I want to see if we can find any trace of Hector Conant. Maybe take a look into Gardenhour’s history, too.”
Diane looked her over. “Sweetie, I’m not sure there’s enough Ritalin in the world to keep you focused enough to do research today.”
“We’ve got to find Hector,” she insisted.
Diane sighed. “I guess I’ll be doing some research, then.”
Eric’s cell phone rang. It was Holly. He needed to take this call. If anyone might have an answer for him, it was her. But his battery was nearly depleted. Quickly, before the stupid voicemail could answer, he opened the PT Cruiser’s door, plugged the phone into the travel charger and accepted the call. “Hey Holly!”
“Finally!” she sighed.
“Sorry. No reception in the catacombs. What’s going on?”
“I need you to meet me in the parking lot of the Top-Down Bar as soon as you can.”
Eric had to take a second to register that. “Wait… Top-Down?”
“You know the place, right? West side of town?”
“Yeah. I know it.” But he’d never been there before. It wasn’t the classiest place around.
“Hurry. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Okay. I’m on my way.” But she was already gone.
“What’s going on?” asked Diane.
Eric dropped the phone into the cup holder and sat down behind the wheel. “I’ve got to go. Holly needs me to meet her. Sounds important.”
She stared back at him, concerned. “Is it extra bad when a witch says it’s important?”
“Probably,” he replied. He took all of Hector’s letters out of the glove compartment and handed them to Diane. “Take these. This is everything we know so far about what was going on in 1962.”
“You be careful,” said Karen. “Tell Isabelle to stay in touch.”
“She will. And she’ll contact you if we find any more letters.”
“We’ll come with you,” said Paul as he opened the passenger-side door and climbed in. Kevin followed his lead and slid into the back seat.
“We’ll call you if we find anything,” said Diane as she led Karen to her car.
A moment later, they were going their separate ways. Eric didn’t want to leave Karen. He was still worried about her. He’d never seen her like this before. What happened to her? How did it happen? He hoped they’d be safe at the library.
But if Holly said it was important, she meant it. He had no idea what could be so urgent that she couldn’t simply tell him what was going on over the phone. What had she seen in the water this time?
How bad were things about to get?
“My phone’s about dead,” he said as he turned west onto Main Street. “Any chance I could borrow one of yours until mine’s charged?”
“You don’t have an external battery charger?” asked Kevin.
“A what?”
He leaned forward between the seats and gestured at the cup holder. “Let me see it.”
Eric handed it back to him. Kevin was great on the football field, but he was no dumb jock. He was surprisingly handy with technology. This same thing happened last summer, too. He’d borrowed Karen’s phone because he lost his. When its battery went dead, Kevin saved him from having to borrow Paul’s by opening it up and swapping the dead battery for his nearly full one. He didn’t think much about it at the time, but he’d since learned that iPhone batteries weren’t made to be easily replaced. You could do it. You could find instructions online if you did a simple search. But it was far more complicated than simply removing the battery cover and swapping it out.
Karen wasn’t happy when she found out, either. Apparently, tampering with the battery voided the warranty. But Kevin had only ever shrugged and insisted that it would be fine.
Now Kevin pulled a small, black cylinder from the pocket of his jeans and plugged Eric’s phone into it. He stared at the screen for a moment to make sure it was working and then handed both devices to him. “There you go.”
“That’s it?” He took them both and looked at the screen of his phone. It said it was charging.
“That’s it. Just leave it plugged into that until it’s charged. And you can use it while it’s charging, too. You should get you one of those next time you’re at the store. They’re cheap.”
“No kidding?”
A new text message from Isabelle popped up: HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW ABOUT THOSE? EVEN I KNOW ABOUT THOSE. KAREN WAS TRYING TO GET YOU TO BUY ONE LAST MONTH
“I don’t remember her ever mentioning anything like this,” replied Eric.
THAT’S BECAUSE YOU IGNORE HER EVERY TIME SHE TALKS ABOUT ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOUR PHONE. YOU’RE SO STUBBORN
He scowled at the phone.
I DO NOT SOUND JUST LIKE HER!
“I didn’t say anything!”
I’M IN YOUR HEAD! YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY IT OUT LOUD!
He dropped both the phone and the charger into the cup holder, making sure to turn the phone’s screen away from him.
It actually sounded angry when it vibrated at him, alerting him to a new message.
“Are you sure you should be making her mad?” asked Kevin. “How do you know she can’t, like, fry some of your brain synapses or something?”
“She can’t do that.”
The phone rattled in the cup holder again.
Paul grinned. “Maybe not, but she can call every phone in your house every time Karen starts getting romantic with you.”
“Ouch,” said Kevin. “Fear the Izzy.”
It actually sounded a little smug when it vibrated this time.
Eric glanced down at it. She could never be that evil.
Could she?
Kevin started to say something more, but at that moment Eric looked up and saw a man walking down the sidewalk in a familiar, ugly coat. “Whoa! Hey! That’s the guy! That’s Steampunk Monk! Right there!”
“That’s the guy with the psycho drugs?” asked Kevin.
“Trust me, you don’t want any.” Eric slowed down and watched the peculiar little man as he passed. He didn’t seem to notice them. He was wearing his looking-glass-shard spectacles and examining that odd little device again. He was only a few blocks from where he and Karen first saw him that morning, but on the opposite side of the street, heading the other way. It seemed that, after that first sighting, he made his way across the river and over to the Aberration Station. Maybe that strange device led him there. Or maybe that was simply where he’d always intended to go. And here he was again, going back the way he came.
“What are you looking for?” he wondered.
Then the steampunk monk was behind them and Eric turned on his blinker to circle the block.
He cursed. He didn’t know what to do. Holly said to meet her as soon as possible, and yet he didn’t want to let this guy out of his sight again.
“Drop us off,” said Paul. “We’ll tail the guy, see where he’s going.”
He glanced over at him, uncertain. “This guy’s dangerous. He knows stuff.”
“He’s seen you. He may have seen Karen, too. But he wouldn’t recognize us. We’ll just look like all the other pedestrians.”
That was a valid point, he supposed. But he still didn’t like it.
“Hell,” said Kevin. “Even if he sees us looking at him, we can’t possibly be the only ones. I mean, did you see what he was wearing? It’s June! How is he not dead?”
“You’d think a guy up to no good would want to keep a lower profile,” agreed Paul.
“You can’t underestimate him,” warned Eric. “He still might be an agent. And they’re all dangerous.”
“We won’t,” Promised Paul. “Take us back a block or two and drop us off on the opposite side of the street as him. We’ll keep pace like we’re just minding our own business. Maybe we’ll find out where he’s going next. At the very least, we might find out what he’s driving.”
That would probably be useful. If they saw the guy’s vehicle parked somewhere, they’d have a heads-up that he was nearby.
“And you can keep your date with Holly. For all you know, the important thing she has to tell you is don’t follow the freak in the ugly coat.”
“Good point.” Listening to whatever dire warnings a trustworthy witch might have for him did seem like the highest priority in any situation.
He circled around and found a spot two and a half blocks back. Paul and Kevin jumped out and closed the doors behind them.
“We’ll call you if we have anything to report,” promised Paul.
“Remember,” warned Eric. “Do not try anything with this guy. If you even think he’s onto you, get the hell out.”
“Do not engage,” said Kevin, lifting his hand in a mocking salute. “Abort if compromised. Got it.”
“We’re taking it seriously,” promised Paul.
“Good. We’ll meet up after I’ve talked to Holly. I’ll call you.”
“Right,” said Paul. “Now get out of here before you blow our cover.”
“Careful,” Eric stressed.
“Go!”
Eric pulled away. Now that it was done, he wasn’t nearly as sure about this plan. He looked down at his phone again, remembered that he couldn’t see the screen and turned it around again. “Is this a really bad idea? It’s a really bad idea, isn’t it?”
OH I’M CERTAIN OF IT