Timepiece

Chapter 20

“My ass is gonna be so flat by the time we get out of this car, I’m going to have to blow it up with a bicycle pump.” Lily leaned forward to rub her lower back.

I bit my tongue to keep from telling her that nothing would make her ass less than perfect. It was too early to get coldcocked, especially by a hot girl.

Instead, I fished for my hat on Em’s floorboard, retrieved it, and pulled it down over my eyes. My sunglasses weren’t doing enough to fight the remnants of last night’s poor choices.

Dru had a college friend who worked at the Peabody Hotel, and she’d comped a suite for us. Em made us leave at the crack of dawn so we could go straight to the school. It was still early when we parked outside the administration building. Bennett University sat on the eastern outskirts of Memphis, and the boundary surrounded almost a hundred acres of forest and academia.

“It’s like I’m in the English countryside,” Lily said as we drove through the open iron gates that led onto the property. The campus was more fairy-tale village than college. Gothic arches, dark patches of forest, cobblestone sidewalks. Everything was green, gold, and shades of red.

I slid out of my seat and walked around to open Lily’s door. She managed to tear her eyes away from the scenery. “What is this? Chivalry?”

“No. You have the Hot Tamales.” I held out my hand. “I need a hit.”

She shoved the box into my stomach and the connection made a loud crushing noise. “Hot Tamales. Atomic Fireballs. Sizzling Cinnamon Jelly Bellys. Red Hots. I’m surprised you have any taste buds left. Or teeth.”

“Do I make the obvious hot-stuff joke here, or refrain?”

“Refrain.”

She grabbed a square, padded canvas bag from the glove box and slid out of the car. After unzipping the bag, she took out her camera, unscrewed the lens cap, and started snapping.

“Shouldn’t we be thinking about what we need to do next?” I asked Em, watching Lily walk away.

“No. Let her go,” Em said from beside me. Michael was still in the car. Checking in with Dad, I was sure. “She’ll get the buzz out of her system in a minute or two.”

“Is she always like this?”

“Yep. She gets kind of possessed. Or obsessed.”

Even though she was in earshot of the conversation, Lily never wavered, focusing her attention on a single yellow leaf hanging on to the end of a tree branch. She lay flat on her back in the grass to take a shot from below, and then climbed halfway up the trunk to take one from above.

“She’ll catch a glimpse of something she wants to shoot and she’s gone. If not physically, like hanging off the edge of a building or scaling the side of a mountain for a perfect shot, then mentally. She frames shots and fiddles with depth of field and apertures and generally does her thing until she realizes a world exists outside her pictures.”

“Is she good?”

“Unbelievable.” Em smiled like a proud parent. “You’ve seen the photographs in Murphy’s Law.”

“Those are hers?” I asked, remembering how amazing they were. “Those photos are masterpieces.”

“Yes, they are.”

Finally, Lily walked toward us, shaking bits of leaves and grass from her hair, grinning from ear to ear. Her joy was contagious. I was smiling, too.

“I could spend days here. All those curves and lines and shadows. How did I not know about this place before now?” She shoved her camera into her bag, pulled out a tangerine, and made an apologetic face at Em. “I’m sorry. You know how I get excited.”

“And that’s why we love you,” Em said.

“You okay?” Michael stepped out of the car, shut the door, and approached Em. He massaged her shoulders and neck. “I wish you’d let me drive part of the way.”

“Driving helped me focus on something besides what we’re about to do.” She relaxed under his touch.

“Can we go over the plan?” Lily tossed the tangerine peel, which she’d pulled off in a perfect, complete spiral, into the woods. The calm she’d managed to maintain in the car was fading. “I assume we’re still looking for information about Jack first, rather than Jack.”

“Do you still know where he is?” Em asked, tension entering her voice again. “Or where the pocket watch is?”

Lily popped a section of tangerine into her mouth and nodded. She’d held the atlas open the whole way in the car, her hands constantly returning to the page. “By the river. I think I’ll know exactly where, once we get closer.”

“Lily and I will go check in with the admissions office, and then try to find Jack’s paperwork.” Michael held up the key card Dune had made for him. It was supposed to guarantee entrance to the file storage room. “Kaleb, I think you and Em should go to the physics department to see if you can get any information about Jack and his time here and, if the opportunity presents itself, maybe get some information on Teague and Chronos.”

“Why are Kaleb and I going together instead of you and me?” Em leaned back on his chest and looked up at him.

That didn’t burn.

“Because if I go with you, we can both ask questions, and that’s it. Kaleb’s perception is invaluable in a situation like this.”

“Aww, thanks for noticing,” I said.

“As long as Lily’s cool with it.” Em shrugged.

Lily nodded. “Fine.”

“Okay.” Michael sounded relieved. “The head of the physics department is named Gerald Turner. He’s on campus today, and he has office hours right now.”

All the curves and lines and shadows Lily was so excited about became even more evident as we crossed the campus to the science building.

Gothic architecture, pointed archways, and cool gray stone made me feel like I was in another place and time instead of five minutes away from downtown Memphis. “Hey,” I said, pointing up. “There’s a bell tower. Where’s Quasimodo?”

“Look,” Em said, also pointing up. “It’s a flying buttress!”

“A what?” I cocked my head to the side.

“Never mind.”

We entered the building and approached the science department. I took Em’s arm. “Walk behind me.”

“Kaleb Ballard. That hurts me in my feminism.”

“It has nothing to do with feminism, and everything to do with the fact that a girl is sitting behind the counter,” I whispered, reaching for the doorknob.

“How do you know you’re her type?” Em asked doubtfully.

“I’m every girl’s type.” I ignored Em’s snicker, since I’d totally set myself up for it, and opened the door.

We made it past the gatekeeper in record time. Em’s snicker turned into an eye roll.

The bluesy sound of Muddy Waters poured into the hallway as we approached, along with the faint scent of pipe tobacco. We paused outside the cracked door, jumping when we heard a gruff voice.

“I can hear you lurking. Don’t just stand out there. Come on in. Office hours are posted; you’re well within the time frame.” The voice was deep, that of a lifelong smoker, or possibly James Earl Jones’s younger brother. “Twenty years in this department, and students still think my office hours are some kind of cosmic joke.”

Twenty years in this department meant he’d been here when my dad and Teague were here, and when they left. It also meant he’d been one of those who’d chosen to stay behind.

“Well?” he barked out.

I looked back at Em for visual confirmation and then pushed the door open. I was immediately assaulted by shiny black leather, Art Deco prints, and a giant moose head on the far left wall. A tiny placard hung underneath it, with one word, Freddy. A fedora hung on the topmost point of each antler. One of the hats had a cheetah print hatband.

A man with a head full of white hair, and a black goatee sprinkled with silver, sat behind a desk. His skin, the same color as cocoa powder, sported deep wrinkles in his smile lines. His gaze lingered on Em when she stepped into the doorway beside me. “Can I help you?”

I felt out his emotions. Curiosity. Mild impatience tempered with tolerance.

“Are you Dr. Turner?” Em asked, not crossing the threshold. Waiting to be invited in, like a vampire.

“That depends. Are you two ghost chasers?” He considered us over his bifocals as he pulled a bag of pipe tobacco out of his top desk drawer.

“No, sir,” I answered, frowning at Em. “We aren’t ghost chasers.”

“Good. Reality television has created way too many amateurs, if you ask me. None of them ever finds a damn thing. It’s because they’re looking in all the wrong places.”

“I’m Emerson, by the way.” She pointed to herself and then to me, as if the professor might have a hard time coming to the conclusion himself. “This is Kaleb.”

This time, he looked at me a little bit too long.

“I’m Dr. Turner. Head of the physics department. Nice to meet you both.”

In an un-vampire-like fashion, I stepped into the room without being asked. “We were wondering if we could talk to you.”

“Certainly. As long as you were telling me the truth about the ghost chasing.” He spun his chair around to turn down an ancient-looking record player. The scratchy sound of the blues faded away and he faced us again, waving his hand at Em. “Come in.”

He wore a bow tie, and a pink carnation hung haphazardly from a buttonhole in his vest. When he pulled his pipe from an inside pocket, the flower fell on his desk. He picked it up and twirled it between his fingers.

“Had a visit from the grands this morning. Youngest girl brought me a gift.” He smiled, tucked it into a leather pencil holder on the corner of his desk, and gestured with his pipe. “May I?”

“Sure.” Em nodded. “I like the smell of pipe tobacco. My granddad smoked one.”

“Good, then.” He scooped tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, the movement habitual. He was going through the motions, but it felt like a thinly veiled distraction. “Have a seat.”

Em chose a leather wingback, studded around the edges with brass tacks. The only other chair in the office looked like it might crumble into a heap if I touched it, so I leaned my shoulder against the bookshelves built into the wall, taking note of the many family pictures as well as the titles on the shelves. Quantum Physics for Dummies, Holographic Man, The Tao of Physics, and a decent collection of what looked like first-edition Twain.

“How can I help you, children?” Direct but kind.

“We had some questions.” Em bounced slightly in her seat. It was either exceptionally springy or her nerves were getting the best of her.

“About the physics program?”

“No,” Em said, drawing the word out, looking at me for backup.

“No,” I said, wishing we’d discussed a plan. “We were talking about the… um…”

“About the parapsychology department,” he said, like he’d said it a million times before. “You discovered it on the Internet.”

“Um, yeah,” Em said, smiling in a slightly unbalanced way. “That’s it.”

I could feel his hesitation. Still, somehow, he miraculously asked, “What do you want to know?”

“We were just interested in… the basics about the department.” Em looked up at me for confirmation.

“The basics.” I nodded. We sucked at subterfuge.

“We’re doing… a school project?” Em said. It came out sounding like a question.

Dr. Turner pressed down on the contents of the pipe bowl with his thumb and looked at Em from the corner of his eye. “First of all, it was never truly a department, not an acknowledged one, anyway. It fell under engineering and physics. Started as a graduate project on random event generators and machines. Spun off into all kinds of fantastical research.”

“What kind of fantastical research?” I asked.

“Life beyond our airspace, remote viewing.” He took out another pinch of tobacco, placed it in the pipe with practiced ease, and then closed the bag. “Archeocoustics, dowsing.”

“I’ve never even heard the word archeocoustics.” Em perched eagerly on the edge of her chair, her toes barely touching the floor.

“Tricky theory, that. Idea is that objects record sound. Memories of conversation.” He shrugged. “And a perfect example of one of the things that drove the traditionalists here crazy.”

“And the university made the grad students stop?”

“They did.” His fingers tightened on the pipe bowl. “The department was shut down.”

“But the research continued.” Em wasn’t reading his body language, or she didn’t care. “Right?”

“There were certain things everyone was curious about.” He spoke carefully, as if everything he’d said up until this point had been canned, and now we were approaching unknown territory.

“Like what?” Em pushed.

His spike of irritation made me wonder if we’d gone too far.

Keeping my eyes on Dr. Turner, I moved to stand beside Em, my arm on the back of her chair. He stared at me for a moment, as if he were weighing something. Then he seemed to make a decision.

“Most specifically, they were curious about the manipulation of the space time continuum.”

Em gasped, then tried to cover it with a cough.

Dr. Turner didn’t take his eyes away from me. “Not solely in the realm of physics, but in the realm of something… beyond.”

“I thought universities were supposed to encourage free thinking.” I didn’t break the stare. He was either testing us or playing us. Either way, I didn’t intend to lose.

“Testing a hypothesis and getting a concrete result is challenging even when the research can be proven.” He removed a small metal object from his inside jacket pocket. It was flat on the bottom, and a sharp curve of metal arched over a tiny gargoyle- like a handle. He held it carefully as he used it to push the tobacco down. “The abstract idea of a person with preternatural abilities doesn’t fit into pure science. But too many believed the abstract was a possibility.”

“You did,” Em said.

“I believe in the abstract and the concrete.”

I decided to stop wasting time and show my hand. “Then why didn’t you follow Teague when she left for Chronos?”

The smell of sulfur filled the air when he lit a wooden match, touched it to the tobacco, and took a few puffs. “I wondered when that was coming.”

“We’re interested in the truth,” I said.

“Are you?” He dropped the match into an ashtray shaped like a turtle. Obviously crafted by little hands, it seemed out of place on his monstrous desk.

“That’s all we want. We thought… we hoped we could get it from you. Will you tell us?” I asked. “The truth about Chronos?”

“That’s a little tricky,” he said, puffing once more, “because the truth is mixed in with the legend.”

I frowned. Waited.

“Chronos’s biggest desire is to be part of something that’s as ancient as time itself.” He stared at the pipe until the fire went out. “And I find it hard to believe that Liam Ballard’s son is questioning me about that something, when his father knows far more about it than I do.”

My jaw dropped. “How did you know who-”

“You have your father’s build. You even have his way of listening, taking things in without giving anything away.” He struck another match and relit the tobacco. “And then, of course, your mother’s famous blue eyes.”

The last observation sideswiped me. Em must have sensed it, because she took control of the conversation again.

“You said Chronos wanted to be part of something as ‘ancient as time itself.’ What does that mean?”

Dr. Turner took a long draw on his pipe.

“Please tell us?” Em leaned forward, placing her hands on the edge of his desk.

“Again, these are answers you should be getting from Liam.” Dr. Turner exhaled, filling the air with the aromatic scent of vanilla.

“You say that like it’s simple.” I laughed derisively. “He doesn’t tell me anything. I don’t even know what questions to ask.”

“Then I most certainly have to respect Liam’s choices, as he’s your father.” He almost sounded regretful. “But I can say that when Teague left Bennett University, the… scope… of her interests narrowed.”

“What did she focus on?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you any more about Teague.” He turned a very direct gaze on me. “Except… no man-or woman-is an island.”

“Okay.” Em looked from Dr. Turner to me and back again. Frowning, she took her hands off Dr. Turner’s desk and leaned back into her chair. “If you won’t tell us about Teague, can you tell us about Jack Landers?”

“Doesn’t he work with Liam at Cameron? Or did that change last year after the… accident?” He was feigning innocence. I’d have known by his wide-eyed expression even if I hadn’t been able to feel it.

“It changed.” Our cover to explain Dad’s “death” was that he’d survived the explosion, but with a head injury that caused amnesia. We didn’t have a solid cover for Jack. “So have you seen him? Jack?”

“Is he no longer employed at Cameron?” Dr. Turner ignored my question as well and took another deep puff on his pipe.

Stalemate. “Maybe you should ask my father.”

“Touché.” He raised one eyebrow. “Of course, if I did ask your father, I’d have to let him know you’d been to visit. Asked lots of questions.”

“Fine.” The old man played a serious game of hardball. He knew my questions had crossed a line. “No. Jack is no longer employed at Cameron. Or by my father.”

“I see.” He lowered his pipe to the turtle ashtray. “No. I haven’t seen him lately.”

All we’d managed to establish is that neither of us knew where Jack was, but Dr. Turner was feeling satisfied. I was left feeling I’d given something away and not gotten anything in return.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t offer you more information.” Dr. Turner stood and picked up a briefcase from beside his desk.

“Wait!” Emerson jumped to her feet. “That’s it? That’s all?”

“I don’t have anything else to tell you, and I have a lecture to give. But…” He stared at me for a long moment. “Are you doing any sightseeing while you’re here?”

“Sightseeing?” I asked.

“I suggest it. You go to London, you visit Buckingham Palace. You go to Egypt, you visit the pyramids.” He looked at us pointedly.

“We’ll take that under consideration,” Em said.

“I hope you do.”

We left, and I followed Emerson around the corner out of earshot of the office.

“Do you think he really has a lecture?” she whispered.

“I think we got a little too specific with our questions.” We walked down the stairs and toward the parking lot.

“Why was he saying those things about sightseeing and staring at us like that?”

“I don’t know, but it was weird.”

“He knew about Teague. I wish we’d asked him about Poe,” she said. The wind blew her hair in her face, and she reached up to twist it around her hand. “I wonder if his name would’ve gotten a reaction.”

“I’m kind of glad we didn’t. We gave a lot more than we got.”

“I keep expecting to see Jack.” She let go of her hair and wrapped her arms around herself. “I wonder if there’s safety in numbers, or if he can steal memories from two people at the same time.”

“I’ll keep you safe, Shorty.” I put my arm over Em’s shoulders and pulled her to my side for a quick squeeze. “We’ll find him.”

“Damn, I hope so.” She growled under her breath. “I just realized I haven’t had coffee in two hours.”

“Oh no. We’d better do something about that real quick. I’d hate for you to get irritable.”

Her response was an elbow to the stomach.

Michael and Lily came into view. They were both sitting on the bumper of the SUV, and they looked miserable.

“Oh no,” Em said.

Fear. Dread. Defeat.

“Hurry.” I walked faster. Since my legs were so much longer, Em ran to keep up.

“What’s going on?” Em asked. Lily stood up, and I could tell she’d been crying.

“We got into the records. No details about Jack,” Michael said, sounding defeated. “Everything was gone.”

“That’s not so bad,” Em said, giving Lily a quick hug. “It’s what we expected, right? We have the high school stuff to work from, and Lily can look for the pocket watch.”

“Lack of details isn’t the only problem.” When Lily’s voice hitched, I realized just how close she was to crying again. She brushed away the forming tears.

Michael explained. “When we got back, we tried to find the pocket watch on the map. We’ve been trying for twenty minutes.”

Lily dropped her hands. “It’s gone.”