Chapter 20

It was as if Earth itself shifted on its axis.

“That’s not possible. My sister’s dead.” He took ownership of her. My sister. He would prove his reality was not askew.

But even as he denied it, something inside his chest leapt to life. It was as if a long-dead piece of his charred insides sparked a flame.

“She’s alive, Finn. She’s always alive. They take her from us every time. That’s why she was never found in the quarry.” The sadness in her eyes was familiar even if this new story wasn’t.

“But where is she? Who has her? Why didn’t you go get her?” And then, the familiar anger. The feeling that he was only a pawn. “Why didn’t you tell me? Do you have any idea what it’s been like—what my whole life has been like—”

“I’m sorry.” She rubbed tears away, and Finn noticed that the skin of her hands was calloused and cracked. “You have to understand that whenever I could tell you something, I have. I’ve been working to keep you both alive. Try and understand.”

Both alive. Him and Faith.

Finn tried to imagine living hundreds of lifetimes inside only one. That’s what Mom had been doing, and he never once had a clue. She was a computer playing the same game of chess over and over, only a computer had the benefit of not feeling any pain or being related to a sacrificed pawn. While Finn was growing up, she had always been there for him, always had time for him. In fact, she had all the time in the world. It must be exhausting. She did look tired and drawn, the light flickering over hollows in her cheeks that hadn’t been there only a few weeks ago. How long had she been here?

Finn woke up his scientific brain. He began to assemble the known facts. “They took Faith because they knew . . . they knew what she’d be able to do.”

“Yes. The latest daughter in the family line. The most powerful yet, with skills we could only guess at till she grew up. Someone they could use to bring about the utopia they envision. They think they’re capable of making such decisions.” She looked off into the distance and shook her head ever so slightly. “They send someone—sometimes it’s Billie, sometimes it’s one of the Others. In your timeline, they took her from us that day at the quarry.”

Finn’s mind was spinning. Many timelines existed in his world. It was true, and Gran and Mom could actually see them for themselves! “Why didn’t you and Gran go back and change it? You can, can’t you?”

“It happens over and over, Finn. If it’s not the quarry, it’s the lake, or the green, or the school. If it’s not Doc himself, it’s one or more of his allies. There is no stopping it. I’ve lived it over and over.”

Finn had only lived it once and it was a crushing memory. He couldn’t imagine how Mom dealt with so many memories.

“Someone always takes Faith and raises her—and tells her many lies. She is always turned against us, Finn.”

Finn shuddered and shifted on the snow. It was melting through the horse blanket she had given him and his jeans were now wet. The cold didn’t bother him as much as it should. There was a fiery ember inside of him now that kept repeating She’s alive.

“You need to know something else about your sister. Faith ends up doing terrible things. She grows into someone who can do great harm, without remorse.”

“You’re saying not only is Faith alive, she’s also evil?”

“Evil is a finite word. Hearts can change, please remember that. It’s a great emotional burden to do what we do. Faith developed her abilities at such a young age; it’s too much knowledge for anyone, much less a child. Then the Others take her and influence her. I need more time with her, to help her understand her power.”

Finn’s brain flashed back to all the conversations that had abruptly stopped when he entered a room, the look in his parents’ eyes when Faith’s name was mentioned. For years Finn had been processing the information incorrectly, and it all had to be recalculated. The looks of disappointment weren’t directed at him. They had been for Faith and what she had become.

He found himself hating everyone who was involved in her disappearance. Whoever took her had broken his family. Broken him.

The memories of that day came unbidden. First, the happy, calm ones. The look of his own chubby fingers playing in the shallows. The bright sun shining on the ripples of the water, glittering at him and making him wish they made a high tinkling noise.

There were disconnected snapshots of memory he could grab on to and hold in front of himself. The joy he’d felt in making his sister laugh. She had a loud little-girl belly laugh that was infectious. There was no way a little girl who laughed like that could grow up to be evil.

The good snapshots then quickly dissolved away into pain. The part where it all came crashing down. The frantic screaming of Faith’s name by many grown-ups, him sitting alone on a rock crying and not knowing why. The word lost and all the dread it carried. Lost was the worst thing you could be at three years old.

And the worst memory: his father shaking his shoulders violently. “Did she go in the water? Did you see? Did you see anyone else?”

“My sister is alive and is an evil time traveler.” Finn half-whispered this to himself in the hopes that it would become a logical statement upon utterance. It didn’t. It sounded even more ridiculous out loud.

“I’m afraid it’s worse than that, Finn,” Mom said. “You have to go back there for me.”

“Go where?”

She corrected him: “When.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I need you to go back to the day Faith was taken and bring her here, to me. You need to take her before they do.”