Chapter 13

Aunt Ev brought them past the back offices, through an old wooden door with a pointed top. They stood in silence while Aunt Ev consulted her retro megawatch once more. She counted to twelve under her breath and then opened the heavy wooden door to the large main room. Finn rushed to follow her and was shocked to find the building brightly lit and full of noise.

The main room was packed with people arguing and trying to talk over each other. Finn, Gabi, and Aunt Ev were now in plain view—only no one was looking at them. Aunt Ev strode in like she was invisible. Not knowing what else to do, Finn and Gabi followed as closely as they could. After taking a few strides, Aunt Ev crouched behind a row of battered maroon folding chairs. Finn and Gabi did the same.

Finn heard a familiar woman’s voice rise louder than the rest: “We shouldn’t be doing this without Will. It can wait till he’s back!” This was followed by the quick staccato of angry heel clicks coming right toward them. Finn was sure they were about to be discovered. He shot Aunt Ev a look of panic. She gave him and Gabi a placid smile.

The clicking heels belonged to Aunt Billie. She came right up to their row. The laces of her gray boots were only a foot away from Finn’s own toes. He hadn’t seen her in almost a year, since Gran’s big Thanksgiving dinner. She and Aunt Ev had argued and it hadn’t ended well, even with Gran doing her best to calm them down. He was shocked at how much frailer Aunt Billie looked. He looked away quickly so she wouldn’t feel his eyes on her. All she had to do was glance down and she would see them hiding there.

Only she didn’t. Her eyes remained focused on the front of the room.

“You’re all fools!” she snapped. “You have no idea what you’re messing with!” As the crowd continued to argue, she spun on the noisy heels and stormed out of the building. Finn turned to Aunt Evelyn to silently communicate his astonishment, but she was already crawling across the room on all fours. He and Gabi had to rush to catch up.

She stopped at the stairs to the choir loft, stood up nonchalantly, and brushed the dust off her coat and skirt. Finn’s neck was practically on a swivel. He kept checking to see if anyone in the room was looking their way. Gabi’s hand gripped his forearm. She was just as nervous, but the attendees were still in a heated argument. Aunt Evelyn checked her watch again and waved them up the small wooden stairs. Finn let Gabi go first, then began climbing as quietly as he could. Aunt Ev followed him closely.

Another voice he knew echoed through the church. “I am standing by this motion. I think we should bring Finn into this!”

Finn stopped short in the middle of the staircase at the sound of his name. It was Aunt Ev’s voice coming from across the room. It seemed impossible, with Aunt Ev also standing right below him on the stairs, but there she was in the middle of the crowd. She was arguing with the others—about him. Only now the other version of her was also prodding him with a gloved fist to keep him climbing up the narrow staircase.

As he looked out over the pews he realized that the Aunt Ev in the meeting looked strange. She had a shimmer around her, like the haze that comes off a hot road in the heat of summer. The air around her was wavy. No one else appeared to notice. Finn wanted to ask Gabi if she saw it too, but that question would have to wait. Aunt Ev was pushing him from behind.

It was a great vantage point. There had to be at least thirty people below them. He knew every one of them, too. Mrs. Henreatty, the front desk clerk at the Inn, was in a heated side discussion with the mail carrier, Mr. Booth. Mr. Wells, the town manager, shook his head disapprovingly and Mrs. Allen, the head of the Dorset Historical Society, chimed in sternly with, “This has historically been up to the immediate family!”

“Well, the boy has no immediate family to speak for him now, does he? I say it’s time we intervene.” It was the shimmery Aunt Ev who responded so adamantly.

The Aunt Ev behind him on the stairs gave him a shove that nearly brought him to his knees. It also brought him to his senses, enough to duck low and keep moving. Gabi was already crouched and watching at the end of the loft. He settled in close to her. They still had to be quiet, but at least up here they were well hidden.

Aunt Ev silently closed the floor hatch over the staircase. Finn looked around for the nearest way out. Aside from the stairs, the loft had two doors on either side. He hoped they were both exits and not closets. He’d never been up to the choir loft before. The only time he even went to church was when Gran dragged him. His parents’ idea of worship was a quiet hike or a picnic.

Mr. Wells spoke above the fray: “How do we know Beth hasn’t taken care of this already?”

Several voices chimed in.

“We don’t.”

“You’re right!”

“Wouldn’t Finn show up here at the meeting if she had?” Mrs. Henreatty asked.

Mr. Wells said, “I say we wait till Doc returns with James. They’ll decide.” He folded his arms and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing one ankle over the other as if this punctuated all arguments.

Finn’s mouth twisted. Doc was only pretending to find Dad. He wondered if anyone here actually knew that.

The shimmery Aunt Ev opened her mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it. She paced back and forth, then looked up at the choir loft. Finn swore she smiled at him.

“That’s when I got the idea to bring you here,” the Aunt Ev next to him whispered. “I’m simply ravishing when I’m full of a good plan, aren’t I?” She poked her head up and gave a small wave to herself down below. The whole thing made Finn feel rather queasy.

Shimmery Aunt Ev turned back to the group. “I think we should plan it, then. We haven’t practiced an initiation in ages. We should go over the syllabus.”

Finn leaned forward. This was why Aunt Ev brought him here. He was going to get all his family’s secrets at once.

“What’s the point, Evelyn? He can’t Travel, he’s a boy!” Mr. Wells was now sitting up, with his fancy boots pulled in under his chair.

“Well, it couldn’t hurt!” Several people began muttering to each other.

“Doc said we should wait until he’s eighteen. That was the plan, or have you forgotten?” It was Mr. Wells again.

“But that was before everything happened!” said Mrs. Wells. “He’ll have to be told now. He could become a valuable asset, just like James.”

“Joan . . .” He silenced his wife with only her first name. She folded her hands in her lap and lowered her head. Finn grimaced. If Mom or Gran were here, they would’ve been furious to see Mrs. Wells being treated like that.

“It’s all so sad,” sighed Ms. Alister, the woman who had cut his hair since he was a baby. “We thought we’d be doing this with Faith right around now.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Finn saw Gabi’s head turn his way, but he refused to meet her gaze. He pushed his fist into his stomach and pressed hard, willing the tightness to go away.

The group below was silent and thoughtful for a few seconds. Finn knew that somber pause all too well.

Shimmery Aunt Ev resumed, “I think Beth and Liz would want us to do this.” There was a brief silence and Finn noted a lot of heads bobbing up and down. Even Mr. Wells was silenced by the mention of Finn’s mother and grandmother.

No one else in the room noticed that Aunt Ev was radiating a weird energy. Finn couldn’t tell whether it was invisible to them or if they were just used to it.

“We will need to welcome him soon, and we may as well practice.” The shimmery Aunt Ev was once again all business.

Mr. Abernathy, Dorset’s only lawyer, chimed in. “I think this is all a waste of time, but if you want to go over the syllabus, I suppose we can put it up to a vote. I move to refer the motion to committee—”

“Oh for goodness sake,” said shimmery Aunt Ev, “let’s not start with that Rules of Order hogwash! Those in favor, raise your hands.”

“Ev, you could at least move to suspend rules!” Mr. Abernathy was obviously upset with this lack of ceremony.

“Move yourself, Tom! You may be the town’s only legal light, but sometimes you’re a bit dim.” She kicked the leg of his chair and Mr. Abernathy flinched, then instantly looked abashed for doing so. Finn began to wonder who was in charge. That’s when he remembered what Aunt Ev had said in the woods.

It was Gran. Gran had been the leader of ISTA. Only she could keep this unruly bunch in order.

“Raise your hand and say ‘aye’ if you think we should go over primary syllabus to prepare for Finn’s initiation.”

Finn counted hands carefully. The ayes had it by at least seven up-stretched arms. He was trying to memorize who was on his side when a loud noise came from the left side of the church.

The sound of a door opening and then slamming.

“I’ve decided to stay after all!” Aunt Billie announced. She strode proudly up to the shimmery Aunt Ev, her gray hair tied back in her ever-present tight bun, her stick thin arms crossed over each other in smug victory. Next to plump, pink-cheeked Aunt Ev, she looked like a pale ghost. Now she had that fuzzy halo around her too, waves of energy that no one else seemed to notice.

The Aunt Ev next to Finn grabbed his wrist in panic. “She’s not supposed to come back!”

Aunt Billie gave the shimmery Aunt Ev a sidelong glance, then sauntered over to the choir loft, obviously enjoying the fact that all eyes in the room were on her. She looked up and her face was full of smug victory.

She knew they were up there.

“We have to go. Now.” Aunt Ev pushed Finn toward Gabi, toward the small side door at the top. He grabbed Gabi’s arm as they passed her, and she stumbled after him. There was no time to make a quiet exit. Their shoes made a racket across the wooden floor of the loft.

As they made their way through the small walkway they were greeted by another Aunt Billie, leaning up against the far wall, arms folded in nonchalant triumph. This Aunt Billie was not shimmering. When she stepped forward, Finn saw her movements stutter-step like Aunt Ev’s in the yard.

That’s it! Finn thought. If you were in the same time and place as your Initial, you stutter-stepped, just like Aunt Ev had said. But there was more to it: while you were doubling there, your Initial also shimmered. He wanted to ask Aunt Ev if he had it right. If that was the case, why didn’t everyone in the meeting realize that Aunt Ev was doubling?

“I figured you out, Evelyn.” This Aunt Billie was wearing a matching hat and scarf, and a giant purple puffy coat. It made her legs look all the more skeletal. She was dressed for January, not September, and cold was still radiating off her. Her face was pale as snow, not even a red-tipped nose or flush in the cheek. The lines etched in her face seemed twice as deep as the last time he had seen her up close. “This was your dumbest idea yet. You’re a misinformed meddler! He’s a boy! He is not capable of helping.”

Finn registered the words and waited for the feeling of emptiness, preparing himself to push it away. Only this time, he felt something else. She was wrong. Deep down inside him there was a truth that was coming to the surface. There had to be something he could do or Mom wouldn’t have left him instructions.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway behind them. Finn could hear the other Aunt Billie leading them. “I know I heard something! I told you we need to consider better security.” Her voice held a theatrical quality. She sounded like a bad actress in a school play—someone who knows exactly how the scene is going to end, but pretends not to.

Aunt Ev’s fists were curled up inside her gloves. “Let us by, Billie,” she said to Aunt Billie’s Initial. “There’s no need for everyone else to know I brought them here.”

“Not until he answers some questions.” She pointed a bony finger at Finn as she spoke. Finn couldn’t help noticing how much thinner she had become. She seemed to be disappearing with age. He wondered if one day she’d wake up with no skin altogether: a walking, talking skeleton.

“He doesn’t know anything,” insisted Aunt Ev. “I brought him here because I felt sorry—”

“If you felt sorry for him, you’d leave him out of this! Let Will handle it his way. He knows what he’s doing.”

“You and Will seem awfully chummy lately. For someone who can’t Future Travel, you sure seem to think you know what is going to happen. I wonder why.”

Finn resisted the urge to speak. He wasn’t trusting anyone, including himself. The voices below the choir loft were getting louder, and they sounded angry. While it was true he had known these people all his life, his friends and neighbors felt like complete strangers to him now. They were no longer individuals, they were a collective.

ISTA.

One thing he’d learned from Dad: All through history there were stories of good people, decent people, joining together to become a giant unstoppable force. People who would eventually regret what they had done in the name of whatever they called themselves. What were his neighbors capable of doing under that name? Finn recalled Aunt Ev’s warning to Gabi about being discovered: “If they see you, well, you don’t want to know.”

At the very least, they would send him to Albany, like Doc wanted. He couldn’t let that happen. No one was going to stop him from getting to the top of Dorset Peak.

Billie was practically shaking with anger. “You don’t know anything, Evelyn!” She spat the words out like poison.

“Why don’t you enlighten me, Billie? What are you and Doc up to? You must be pleased Beth is out of the way now—maybe you can finally land him for yourself?”

“You’re just like Beth! You can’t see the importance of who we are. What we’re meant to do!”

“Importance? You? Every day you find yourself slipping back and forth in time because you can’t control what little power you have. What grand illusions are you harboring for yourself?”

Finn heard the others approaching behind, fumbling for keys to the locked panel in the floor, and more feet thrumming up the stairs behind the other door. They were trapped!

Well, he wasn’t going to end up in Albany without a fight. He thrust both of his hands out in the air, palms out, and yelled, “Stop it! STOP ARGUING!”

Aunt Billie jumped backward in horror, her mouth open as if ready to scream. She slid down against the wall and cowered, shielding her face with her hands. Finn, Gabi, and Aunt Ev froze in confusion. Finn slowly lowered his arms and looked back at Aunt Ev questioningly, but she seemed as surprised at Billie’s reaction as he was. Finn hadn’t raised his hands in anger—he wasn’t even making a fist—yet Aunt Billie was petrified. He felt awful. Scaring his great-aunts into thinking he was capable of violence was not part of his plan.

“I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

The panel in the floor behind them began to open, and Finn knew he couldn’t wait around to explain himself. They were out of time. He grabbed Gabi’s hand and ran past the cowering Aunt Billie, down the stairs, toward the four illuminated letters at the bottom: EXIT.