Skyline Read online

  “What?” Bill asked. He snatched the page from Monroe’s hand. He leaned into the image too, squinting. “That’s not her.” He looked up from the page, his eyes staring straight into Charlotte’s. “That’s not Leanor, Charlotte. That’s Ana.”

  Monroe snatched the image from him. Charlotte had to go into the bar and lean over Monroe’s shoulder just to see.

  “Just look,” Bill said, his finger on the image. “Same jacket as her. Same tight pants. Even the hair’s similar, just longer.”

  “But that’s …” Charlotte gaped at the image, unable to finish. It was Leanor, there was no question. But the jacket, the hair, the pants all pointed to Ana. How hadn’t she seen this? “Oh, my God.”

  Charlotte was speechless. Her mentor wasn’t just someone who created time travel. She wasn’t just the woman who’d been killed by Paris, but a woman who’d killed thousands of New Yorkers—trapping them in some horrible distant future. And for what? Why?

  She was also the woman working against herself. Which, of course, was why Leanor didn’t join them to stop Ana. She wasn’t scared of Ana. She would just crumple to the ground, pain spiraling through her brain. This was how Ana knew to give them another clue to following Leanor’s instructions. “This is why they were so similar,” Charlotte said, her mind whirling. “Why they both wanted to stop Ana’s bombs. Why they both gave us just enough information to act. Not because Ana was another assistant.”

  She thought she’d had the full picture when she visited Leanor yesterday—three years ago. But she hadn’t known a thing.

  All this time, Leanor had planned this. The astrolabe was meant to send Charlotte, Monroe, and Bill to meet Ana. Not just at the World Trade Center, or at the Blast, but before she’d ever committed the awful act. “You’ll fix everything,” she’d said, and now Charlotte understood. If she could prevent Ana from ever bombing the city, then Leanor would never have to regret it. She’d never mess with time. She’d never destroy New York City. “This is why he killed her,” Charlotte whispered. “Paris said she deserved it, didn’t he?”

  “But then why is she here?” Bill asked, pointing back to the image that had caused it all. “If he was after her, why would she be watching me? Shouldn’t she be on the run?”

  If Charlotte was right that Leanor had gone to her death, then this was before that. It was before anything was set in motion. How could she know that Bill was even searching? Maybe she was checking on him, as Leanor had always checked on Charlotte. But she wouldn’t have met Bill. Wouldn’t know to check on him. Which meant that maybe she was concerned about him. Worried he was a minion of Paris’s on the lookout for her.

  “We can ask,” Monroe said, his eyes alight. “Before she ever gets old.”

  Charlotte fought her instinct to say no. Her idea had failed. Bill’s idea had failed. And now they’d found a way to get back into contact with Leanor. A way that she almost seemed to be asking for. Maybe this time she wouldn’t run.

  “Think, Charlotte,” Monroe said. “Maybe we can even go to Ana’s—Leanor’s—past and stop her before she plants the bombs. This will work. We know exactly when she was, which means we know it’ll be safe.” Because not only wouldn’t she leap to her death, she couldn’t, to be alive as the old woman who’d fled Charlotte yesterday.

  If it was that easy to stop herself, then why did she need to die? If they stopped Ana, could Leanor ever exist? Could she start a company and hire Charlotte? Could she send plans to Charlotte, be her benefactor? Or would they return to a completely different world? “And then?” she asked. “We stop her, and then what? Convince her to jump back in time and start a company, hire me, and then disappear so I make the device myself? If we stop her, then we stop ourselves. It’s a paradox.”

  “That’s what all this is,” Monroe pointed out. “We’re going to stop her eventually.”

  “God, paradoxes.” Bill ran a hand over his smooth head. “That’s why I keep saying ‘timeline.’ Because a world where we can stop the Blast, clearing it for Ana to start the Blast, but then we go back in time to stop it … It doesn’t make sense. At a certain point, a few years ago? I just accepted it. We can stop Ana, paradox or not.”

  Charlotte opened her mouth to reply, but closed it. She didn’t know whether Monroe and Bill were right. What was worse? The idea that they were caught in some loop and could never stop Ana? Or the idea that they’d stop Ana and return to an unrecognizable timeline? “Okay,” she said. “Paradox or not, we have to try. But we collect information only, okay?”

  Bill nodded, and Monroe followed his nod after a moment’s hesitation. Her brother gulped. “Why don’t you just bring him?”

  So he’d remembered the real problem. “Last time we fell down a stairwell. I’m not going to risk Charlie’s life like that.”

  “That was Ana,” Monroe said. “This’ll be Leanor.”

  “We’re going, Monroe. Isn’t that enough? I’m still nervous about the future. I won’t endanger Charlie any more than he already is.” She could imagine him at home, a TV dinner on his lap as he and Felix watched the Simpsons, him cackling the whole time, even though he didn’t understand the jokes. She raised a hand to silence Monroe’s rebuttal. “I have to believe that he’ll be okay. We don’t know how time works, not really. Timelines or paradoxes, we don’t know how anything works. So we go, we get information, and we return. That’s all, okay? If we stop the Blast, then maybe Felix and I would never meet at that memorial. Never date. Never …” Their ending had been rewritten, but she wouldn’t let their beginning change. Not until she knew for certain how to keep Charlie safe from time’s ebb and flow.

  Monroe stood from his chair, slipped the image into his jeans pocket. “Okay. I trust you.”

  Hopefully they wouldn’t return to an even worse timeline.

  • • • • • • • • • • • •

  On the night of the Blast, police lights sparkled along this arm of the Mid River. Policemen combed the shoreline for any sign of the bombs that had caused the destruction. Charlotte didn’t have much time before the police would sweep past Suni’s bar, so she checked the exact time of the constellations burned from Ana’s device as fast as she could. Without knowing precisely where Ana had sat, Charlotte got to the specific date easily enough. Ever since meeting Ana in the Octagon, she’d dreamed of following dots through time again.

  “December 12, 2210,” she said, returning to Bill and Monroe, who were standing beside Suni’s, closed like every business that day. They placed their hands on her shoulders before she could ask, but Charlotte didn’t release her grip on the astrolabe.

  The policemen drew nearer; they’d surely question their presence when everyone else in the city was home mourning. “We’re sure about this?” she asked, staring out at the dark river. If this was the only way to save Leanor, she shouldn’t question it. Especially since it’d mean getting out of the way of the police.

  “Sure,” Monroe said, squeezing her shoulder.

  Bill was slower to reply. “It’s a risk,” he said. “But where else do we have? We could check the dots from the World Trade Center, but if Ana—Leanor—is going to the future then …” She looked back to see his wrinkled forehead. “If it’s safe for her, it should be safe for us.”

  “Okay,” Charlotte said. “Here we go.” Before the police got any closer, Charlotte sped them through time.

  Boats crisscrossed in front of them, slow at first, then gaining speed into an ever-present blur. A bridge was built spontaneously, and buildings grew along the edges like a re-creation of the collapsed London Bridge. To their sides, buildings were torn down and replaced with giant skyscrapers. The pavement was swept away and replaced with cobblestone in one breath. Trees sprouted everywhere, in front and on top of every building within sight. Soon the skyline looked fuzzy with green leaves blowing in the wind. The sun rose and fell, the skyline changing every moment.

  Time slowed, evening fell, but the surrounding street was bright, illuminated by
the neon glow of hundreds of signs installed along the Mid River. Suni’s bar had become “Sonny’s!” now marked in enormous pink cursive. The bridge to the opposite shore was dimmer, warm light pouring from open stores onto a meandering crowd.

  Only the moon looked familiar, blinking down on this strange new vista.

  The air was chill, biting at the skin Charlotte hadn’t thought to cover. Before she could suggest heading indoors, Ana appeared before them. Exactly where she had stood two hundred years ago. When they still didn’t know anything about her. She tucked her mesh astrolabe into a bag of her own and turned, smiling. “There you are,” she said. “All of you.”

  Charlotte squinted, trying to see Leanor inside this woman. The blue eyes were there, but harsher than what Charlotte had once described as “infinitely wise.” The hair was shorter than Leanor’s had been, but Charlotte could see now that once it grew, it would be just as curly. Without the lines on her face, without the stark white hair, without the conservative red cardigan, it was hard to see this woman as the person Charlotte had been trying to save for the past few days.

  Days.

  Instead of stepping toward them—explaining how she knew they’d come, explaining what they should do next, explaining why she didn’t seem to be worried about Paris at all—Ana walked toward the bridge that hadn’t existed two hundred years ago. She paused, glanced backward. “Well? Aren’t you coming?”

  This was what Charlotte wanted, wasn’t it? To stop the Blast, to keep Charlie from danger, to get her mentor back?

  Well, if that’s what she wanted, this was how it would have to be. She wouldn’t get the Leanor she thought she’d known—the kind yet enigmatic elderly woman. She’d get the true Leanor.

  Someone who kept secrets.

  Someone who demanded that Charlotte follow without telling her everything.

  Someone who, truth told, Charlotte didn’t even know.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE FUTURE

  DECEMBER 12, 2210

  Ana—despite knowing who she’d become, it didn’t feel right to refer to her as “Leanor” yet—led the way up the bridge that had appeared over the past two hundred years. As she passed the shops lining the way, warmth lit her face, her platinum hair turning golden. Revelers passed by, arms cluttered with bright red and green packages.

  While Charlotte felt Monroe and Bill lag behind to stare, she couldn’t. She caught up with Ana, who asked without looking, “It is you, isn’t it? You’re the woman who stopped my bomb?”

  “How—?” Charlotte shook herself. That was the wrong question. “Of course I am.”

  Ana stopped. Bill and Monroe caught up as she stared Charlotte down, eyes noting her clothing, her face, her shoes. “Not of course,” Ana said at last. “Only seconds ago, this one thought I was going to fight him. Took a bit of convincing.”

  “It’s us,” Charlotte said. “But the rest of your bombs are too well hidden. We haven’t been able to find you. Your past self, I mean.”

  “Just wanted to make sure,” Ana said. She twisted on her heel, pausing slightly as she caught Bill in her sight. “You’ve made a few improvements. That’ll help.” She finished her twist and led them over the highest spot on the bridge and down into the area Charlotte had known as the Triangle. “When I saw you at the World Trade Center, I was so worried. Now I know you’re not with them. You can help. When I saw you again, twice, beside the Blast, I thought, ‘This is my chance.’ We can fix this all here. Now.”

  “Exactly,” Charlotte said, breathless. She cast a glance to Monroe before saying, “That’s why we came. To get information from you. To learn how we can stop the Blast once and for all.”

  “Yes,” Ana said. “Precisely.” She didn’t stop walking to explain, to provide that information. She turned at the bridge’s end and led them along the shoreline, south toward some unknown destination.

  “Then where are we going?” Charlotte asked. Leanor usually gave a hint of her plan.

  “Wait.” Monroe came up beside Charlotte, a hand on Ana’s sleeve. “How did you know we’d stopped you? How could you tell? Did you remember? How can you remember when we never remember changes to our own past?”

  Ana glanced his way. “I can tell by looking that you’re time travelers now. Not just spinning wheels. And as for memory …” She shrugged. “Think of it like this: you changed my past, and here’s the automatic effect. I remember seeing you at Pier Fifty-four. But if you met me three years from now, maybe I wouldn’t remember this.”

  Monroe stopped. “Why?”

  “Because timelines are a tricky business. But whatever you make happen, still happens. Barring the headache, I could always go back in time and rewatch my past to find changes. Anything that happens outside of time happens, unless it gets specifically changed by another time traveler.”

  Explanations about memory, about time, those weren’t important. “Why are we in such a rush?” Charlotte asked instead. “What’s going on?”

  “Is that …” Bill said from behind, his voice a bare whisper. “It’s not glass, but it’s a wall …” When Charlotte looked, he was reaching a hand out to a shimmering storefront. He was right. The brick wall was somehow see-through, towering displays of soap visible inside. “And the cars? Is the Triangle still car free? Or are cars nonexistent?”

  Charlotte shook herself. Gripped Ana’s shoulder. “Where are we going?”

  Ana ducked her shoulder down, bent it around until Charlotte’s hand fell. Almost the exact move she’d used inside the Octagon. “Where do you think?” She peered at Charlotte, but kept walking. “This is what you want, isn’t it? You want me stopped; so do I. Where do you think I’m taking you?”

  Charlotte inhaled. “The next bomb is here?” If they were going to see Ana’s past self, to stop the next bomb, she had to go. Had to get Charlie and Felix; make sure that black-haired boy and his drawings were always a part of her life.

  “Don’t be absurd.” Ana waved the idea away. “That would be far too risky, hoping that the city would rebuild, or that the bomb would fall. No, no, no. Far simpler to put them in the past. Anyway, it gave me a chance to explore New York’s history.”

  Charlotte allowed herself to exhale. To listen as Bill said, “But I tried that.” His arm was still out to feel the passing buildings, but his focus was on Ana. “I looked all through history, every important moment. I talked to dozens, hundreds of people to amass my list. And found nothing. Where were you?”

  Ana shrugged. “That’s not important. Where I was before and after I set each bomb?” She waved a hand, as if the idea were a pungent smell. “Here.” She turned from the shoreline and wound her way into a darker alley.

  Just like when Charlotte had visited Leanor’s apartment, the bright lights from the waterfront faded, only the neon light pollution in the sky showing that they were still in the future. The buildings around weren’t composed of the same shimmering brick. There were no bright pinks, greens, blues illuminating everything. No crowds. The alleyway was empty. Dirt clogged the cobblestone street. The single streetlight placed over a handleless door flickered between off and somewhat lit. No matter how much time passed, how many people lived here now, or what inventions were commonplace, the grit of New York couldn’t be washed away.

  “C’mon,” Ana said, her voice now dropped to a low whisper. “Up here.” From a normal brick wall, she pulled out metal piping that Charlotte hadn’t seen before. A way of decluttering the alley, perhaps. “Hurry.” She scaled the ladder, and Charlotte followed.

  What other choice did she have?

  Bill and Monroe joined them at the top, cramming onto a small balcony twenty feet above the cobblestone alleyway.

  “Now will—”

  Ana shushed Charlotte.

  Whispering now, Charlotte asked, “Why are we here?”

  Ana nodded, crouching down. “I have a little time to explain. Not much.”

  “What d’you mean, a little time?” Monroe asked, one ea
r leaned toward Ana. “Can’t we just … ?” He spun an invisible astrolabe in his hands, then released. “Right?”

  “They’ll be here soon.”

  “They?” Charlotte asked.

  “Paris,” Bill said. “Who else?”

  Staring into the shadows below, Ana pressed herself against the brick wall, still crouching. “The Council,” she whispered. “Alek, Cora, and—yes—Paris.”

  As Charlotte watched, three figures appeared in the alleyway below. She recognized the short, squat shape of Paris instantly. Beside him was a taller man with pale skin that reflected the light above. And on his opposite side, a woman with bloodred hair.

  Charlotte snaked a hand out, clutched whatever she grabbed of Ana’s clothes. “Why are we here?” she asked once more, her voice now hoarse, fearful. They couldn’t change too much. Shouldn’t mess with the very people who would take Charlie.

  In a quick whisper, Ana said, “I thought I was free. I’d escaped their prison, jumped through time. No matter how far I ran, they followed. Soon I’ll appear right between them. They won’t let me be. They won’t allow me to breathe, to rest, to live. The only way I’ll get away from them is when I destroy my time device. By then it’ll be too late.”

  Charlotte tried to listen. Tried to imagine three people chasing Ana all her life. Three people who wanted to stop her. Wasn’t that what she, Bill, and Monroe had become? What made this “Council” below any different? But while these facts were interesting, they didn’t seem to answer her question. Why had Ana brought them here instead of offering information?

  “Prison?” Monroe asked.

  “We didn’t come for this,” Charlotte hissed. “We came because we can’t find you.”

  Ana squinted at her. “I know. That’s why I brought you here.” She shook her head. “All this time you’ve been chasing me, trying to stop the Blast. But this is how. If you fight the Council, distract them, then I’ll get away clean. If they leave me be, then I’ll have no reason to stop them. I won’t set off the Blast. Right now? I’ve had enough. In our time …” Ana glanced to the waiting Council below, then focused on Monroe. “I discovered time travel. I gave it to my people. My time. To free them from the Council’s tyranny. But the moment it was released, suddenly, it had always been the Council’s device. I was in jail, my device stolen and now selling to each person for their last ounce of money. Once everyone had a device of their own, once they went sightseeing on their first trip, the Council set off an EMP through time. They stranded them. Anyone they hadn’t jailed was left in time.”