Skyline Page 19

  She shuddered and stepped back. “He’s safer out of this time. I have to believe that. You’ve never seen how awful it can be, Felix. You’ve never gone through time, done something good, and come home to a changed, horrible world. You’ve never seen the way that time can take away everything you love. Change everyone into shadows you don’t recognize.”

  His eyes went wide. “Like me.”

  Charlotte sputtered to reply, hands up, apologetic, reaching back for him now. But her phone rang. She answered it, relieved to hear Monroe. “Char, what’s going on? Where are you? Did Paris, is Charlie—”

  “Gone,” Charlotte croaked. “With Paris. Safe.” She watched Felix, hating herself. Why couldn’t she ever say the right thing to him?

  “We’re coming there.”

  “No. No,” Charlotte stressed. “Go to Pier Fifty-four. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Her gaze flicked to Felix, and his eyebrow rose. There was only one way to reverse the harm that she’d done to her husband. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  With his jaw set, Felix nodded. While Charlotte scooped up Charlie’s drawings and arranged them on the living room table—he would be home soon—Felix put on his shoes, grabbed a jacket, and zipped it up.

  He was ready, but he didn’t say a word. Outside, he led the way down to the Mid River and hailed a gondola. He let Charlotte speak their destination. The sun shining bright from the end of the river, she had to squint to look ahead. Felix kept his gaze on the surrounding buildings, away from her.

  “Felix, look,” Charlotte said when they were finally off the gondola. Where the Mid River met the Hudson, there was now a wide wooden boardwalk with a hole cut into it. The exact footprint of the pier that had reached into the Hudson before the Blast.

  Felix lifted a hand before Charlotte could try again. “I understand, Charlotte. Or at least, I want to understand. And this …” He gestured to the gondola that was already on its way elsewhere with new passengers. “You’re giving me an opportunity. Thank you.”

  Charlotte lifted a hand, but Felix didn’t take it. His jaw remained set, his eyes steely.

  So she looked for Monroe instead. Not standing at the plaque commemorating this arm at the Blast. Not atop the tall bridge reaching over the water.

  Her heart hammered. Out of worry. Out of annoyance. Out of exhaustion. Where was he?

  She fixed her gaze away from the monument for the missing Pier Fifty-four, and looked to the two cafés on either corner. Not sitting at the café commemorating the Lusitania; he probably didn’t want to restart that fight with Bill. But outside the other …

  Monroe sat beside Bill, peacefully sipping coffee outside the Titanic Café. Not even watching for her.

  “You guys ready?” she asked the moment she was within earshot.

  “Char, hey,” Monroe said. He leaped from his chair and swept her into a hug. “I’m so sorry. We tried to follow, but we couldn’t find him in any time and—”

  “It doesn’t matter, ’Roe.” He hadn’t been there, but if he had? Nothing would have changed. “Paris gave us the next date. C’mon.” She looked to Bill, to the table, and saw the astrolabe in the middle, out of reach. Three coffee cups rested on the glass table. One next to Bill—who remained sitting with an apology in his eyes—one where Monroe had sat, and another in front of a third chair. “You can’t possibly think I want coffee.” She spread her hands, trying not to get angry. “Coffee, after my son’s just been taken to God knows where?”

  “Charlotte, please.” Bill stood and tugged a white wooden chair with a blue pad out, ready for her to sit. “You need to be calm. To focus on the task ahead.”

  “I know what’s ahead, Bill.”

  “Please, Charlotte,” Monroe echoed.

  His use of her full name was odd, but she shook her head.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t just sit, pretend like everything’s okay, when they have Charlie. Paris said he’d give him back, and I have to believe him, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend any more time than we have to.”

  “We’re not saying stop,” Bill said. Below his mustache, his mouth was turned in a thoughtful frown. His eyes flicked upward. “When I told you the truth about my plan for the past, you agreed that I should learn how to deal with bombs. Not the tech, but everything else, right? Well.” He ran a hand over his scalp. “This was what I learned. Don’t rush in unless there’s no choice. Get rid of your anxieties. Get centered. Focused.”

  She could say no. Lean over and snatch her astrolabe off the table and demand they go. But if she did that, then Bill would think she didn’t trust him. She’d harmed Felix today with her words, lost Charlie without any choice. She wouldn’t push Monroe and Bill away with her actions. “One drink,” she said, fixing and folding her hair to one side.

  “Felix?” Bill asked, eyebrows up. “You want something?”

  “I’ll get it,” Felix said, and entered the opulent interior of the Titanic Café on his own, sending back a worried glance to Charlotte.

  “I don’t really get how coffee is meant to calm my nerves,” Charlotte said, taking a drink. But it wasn’t coffee. Instead, warm milk bubbles popped against her tongue, mixed with the earthy taste of Earl Grey and a little sugar. “Oh, God.” She licked foam from the edge of her lips.

  “I never said it was coffee,” Monroe said. “I’m sorry if—” Bill touched his arm, and Monroe clammed up. They were letting her relax. Trusting that she’d focus on her own.

  She couldn’t forget Charlie. He’d always be there, that brilliant boy equipped with a crayon or a wrench. But if she rushed in, she’d fail, just as they had with Ana in the future. A little extra time, a little extra focus could’ve ended all of this.

  The tea buzzed through her arms, warming and calming and focusing her.

  Felix joined them, sipping from a smaller cup, remaining silent. Why hadn’t she told him that he’d changed? She should’ve known the truth would slip out and hurt him. In time, perhaps, she could mend this new hurt.

  Bill looked calm, relieved that their plan was working. Charlotte could feel the lines on her forehead smooth.

  Monroe?

  Monroe wasn’t watching her like Bill. Wasn’t focused on himself like Felix. Instead, his gaze lingered on the buildings on this arm of the Mid River. The café across the street, modeled in the grays and blacks of the wartime Lusitania. The boardwalk memorializing where Pier Fifty-four had once been. And the businesses that had been built or flourished since the Blast.

  “Dammit, ’Roe,” Charlotte whispered, but she couldn’t find any anger inside her. Just sadness. So focused on Charlie, on Felix, on her own family, she’d forgotten what the others would lose. She would get Charlie back. She’d get Leanor back.

  But history would change, and Monroe would never know how. What good was a history teacher living in a new timeline?

  “I’m a shithead, right?” Monroe said, his gaze lingering on distant skyscrapers.

  “No,” Charlotte told him. “We’ll never see this again.” No one would ever know about this alternate time.

  “History will be the same,” Bill said, his hand resting on Monroe’s back.

  “But if they’re never lost, who will care about a bunch of boring buildings?”

  That silenced whatever retort Charlotte had. Even she didn’t care much while he was in school. It was only after the Blast that his tales came to life. Monroe found his voice in the crosshairs of the Blast.

  “You will,” Felix said, his voice gruff and strong. “The Blast changed you. Changed us. And we’ll never lose that. All you have to do, Monroe, is do what you do best. Keep making history come to life.”

  Despite everything that had happened today, Charlotte found the corners of her mouth tugging upward. She reached to the center of the table and lofted the astrolabe in her hand. “Lucky for you, we have the perfect way of doing that.”

  • • • • • • • • • • • •

  Once Charlotte fin
ished her tea, she spun them back through time to the date Paris had prescribed. The cafés, the boardwalk, and the Mid River vanished, replaced by a long concrete slab leading into the Hudson, guarded by a metal archway. Paint peeled onto the archway, stating that the pier belonged to White Star/Cunard. And then, before their eyes, a pink granite building appeared around the structure.

  “God,” Monroe said when time slowed. “It never looks this good in pictures.”

  Above the metal arch, the pink granite came to a peak, which was topped off by a shining bronze ball. On either side of the sloped roof, stone gargoyles peered down at everyone entering. Down the way, the pink granite wall connected each pier, enormous entrances marking piers fifty-four and down. The air smelled crisp and salty.

  “It is beautiful,” Charlotte agreed.

  Monroe nodded, but he didn’t stare too long. “Did Paris write anything else?” He was giving up this view, giving up the chance to see and revel in history—for her. For Charlie.

  “Just that she’d be hidden. ‘Obviously.’” Outside the pier, several black cars with long hoods and swooping chrome details waited. Women in opulent dresses paused as men in suits emptied the cars and handed the luggage to a boatswain. A young captain with a well-trimmed beard stood beside the entrance, checking a sheet of paper as a couple with two children waited. A woman outside snapped her fan open and fluttered it before her face, waiting as her husband paid for the taxi ride over. Nowhere here was hidden from sight.

  “By the water,” Bill said. “Remember? We saw her go outside; maybe she’s there, just in a different time.”

  “Maybe,” Charlotte allowed. It definitely wouldn’t be here. “I can get us past the captain.” Once she felt the hands of Monroe, Bill, and the hesitant touch of Felix, she spun time forward to 2010, before the Blast had ever occurred.

  Monroe, Bill, and Charlotte quickly crossed the distance to the concrete slab and stepped through the metal arch—the only remaining sign of the pink granite building. Felix followed, eyes bugged out. “I can’t believe you three are used to this.”

  “I’ve had years,” Bill said with a shrug.

  “It’s just history,” Monroe said with a smile.

  For Charlotte, it was even easier. “I have to be.”

  She leaped them back to that morning, this time inside the pier. Behind her, the same couple and their children waved to the young captain and walked toward a cruise ship docked on the southern end of the pier.

  Without a word, Bill walked away, toward the same door that Ana had exited through in the … past? Charlotte couldn’t quite remember whether now was before or after the Lusitania’s launch. Bill pushed through the door on the northern edge—opposite the boat.

  Charlotte followed him, squinting into the sunlight.

  “What’s the plan?” Felix asked, close behind, a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder.

  She didn’t know; Paris hadn’t given them a specific time to match the date. “Hour by hour, I guess.” She twisted the astrolabe to an hour from now, figuring they’d see a ghostly shadow as time progressed. But instead, when time finished speeding past, there Ana was, walking toward the wall separating the Hudson from the street. Across a wide channel was another pier, but the doors were closed. The only people who could see Ana would be on a boat drifting by.

  Charlotte squashed herself against the pier’s wall, behind a foot-wide pylon that might hide them from Ana’s view. If she saw them before placing the bomb, then this date would be useless.

  It was all Charlotte had gotten in return for Charlie; she wouldn’t waste it.

  As Charlotte peered from around the pylon, Ana unslung a bag from her shoulder and took out the bomb. It wasn’t a cube of metal this time, but a sphere of clear plastic. Once more, Ana checked the guts of the device and activated the timer with her thin screwdriver. The display lit up, and she sealed the plastic orb with thick silver tape. Satisfied, Ana picked up the sphere, paused to double-check the time left on the counter, and dropped it into the Hudson.

  It sank, the blinking red lights fading in the muddy water. When the lights were no longer visible, Ana activated her mesh astrolabe and vanished.

  The trio stepped out from behind the pylon, staring at the brownish Hudson River. The bomb was gone, submerged, swept in the current of the Hudson. Behind Charlotte, Monroe muttered, “Anyone want to go for a swim?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  NEW YORK REGAINED

  MAY 6, 1932

  Without a word, Charlotte handed the astrolabe to Monroe—he was the closest—and peeled off her white blouse. Her black slacks tugged at her ankles as she tried to take them off.

  But Monroe was shouting, “Char! Char!”

  She turned, confused.

  “I was kidding. We have to be smarter. Calmer. Right?” He stared at her, tapping his foot until she agreed.

  “Okay?” she said. “Then what do we do?” What was he suggesting? The bomb was below, ticking away.

  He winked. “Just wait.” He vanished, then reappeared a few feet away, grinning. “There.” He pointed to where Ana had sunk the orb. Improbably, the plastic orb rose up like a pocket of air. On either side were tan hands, the cropped nails gleaming in the dirty water.

  “Monroe?” They were his hands. In front of her, even as he stood behind. He’d gone back in time, not to change his past, but to change their future. The orb drifted closer and Bill plucked it out, tearing off the tape. “You—”

  “Bought some scuba gear. And since I never saw this part, no memory problems to worry about.” His hands disappeared in the water as he shrugged beside her. “What?”

  She wanted to hug him, to jump for joy. But there was still a bomb to deal with. He’d saved precious seconds by not allowing her to dive and crawl the bottom of the Hudson River for the spherical bomb.

  Charlotte tugged up her pants, rebuttoned her shirt, and crouched beside Bill as he took off the top of the orb and threw it into the river. “Over two-point-six billion seconds,” he said to the blinking timer. “Though I’m guessing more like thirty. Ready?”

  Sitting opposite Bill, she said, “Ready,” and pulled some wire clippers from her pocket. As before, a tangled mass of wires rested inside. One small metal sphere was visible, connected to dozens of colored cables instead of only two. Ana hadn’t raised the difficulty much; she’d relied on the river to prevent the bomb being found.

  Thank God for Monroe’s quick thinking.

  Charlotte fit the cutters under a pink ribbon of wires—Bill saying, “You’re sure that’s …”—and snipped it before he could finish. She cut a few other cables leading into one of the spheres, and pulled it out. She threw the orb Bill’s way, confident he’d be able to tear out the wires inside. Now she had to find the second one.

  As she pushed through the bomb’s guts, all she felt were wires. No other metal orb. Not even a computer board. “God, she changed the design.” More than Charlotte anticipated.

  “Let me help,” Bill said, holding out his hand. Had he learned enough? He’d learned to be calm, to sit at a bomb without worrying that it would blow up in his face, but what had he learned in the past about technology?

  She’d have to trust him. “Okay.” Charlotte handed over the wire cutters. “With the first orb gone, we have a little more time.” She hoped.

  Cutters in hand, Bill lifted out one wire and traced it back to its source. Then again, isolating each colored wire. He was slow, methodical, clipping spare cables to get them a better picture of what was inside. When he had a question, he’d ask without pride, and Charlotte would hazard a guess. Since Ana was Leanor, Charlotte was more familiar with the bomb’s technology than she’d known.

  At last Bill found the second orb, hidden under a bundle of purple wires, and cut it out. Now this bomb—and them along with it—wouldn’t be transported to whenever Ana had sent the Council and all of New York City.

  While Bill cleaned up the wiring, Charlotte unscrewed a metal plate that covered t
he lower half of the orb. She dropped it with a clatter at seeing what was underneath. “God.” Every inch was covered in the same purple goop that Charlotte hadn’t tried to defuse before. And inside the goop, at the center, was a computer board, blinking with light, faster and faster.

  “The astrolabe!” Bill said, a hand out to Monroe. To take the bomb through time, Charlotte saw. To safely detonate the thing.

  Charlotte’s twin took a step backward. “Bill, that’s—”

  “’Roe! Now!” Charlotte held her hand out, too. If Monroe kept waiting, the bomb would blow up in Bill’s hands—exactly what he must’ve thought he was avoiding. But her brother kept backing away.

  “That’s suicide! What is wrong with you two?” He looked behind him to Felix, who had tugged open the door leading back into the pier.

  “Paris has Charlie, ’Roe!”

  “Charlie needs his mother, Char!”

  “Monroe,” Bill demanded, stepping in front of Charlotte. “Let me.”

  “Not happening.”

  “All those people,” Bill said.

  “Already saved!” Monroe replied. “Who knows how the bomb would react to being taken through time! Ana—Leanor—could’ve rigged it. Right, Char?”

  There wasn’t time to argue. If Paris wanted the entire bomb dismantled, she’d do it. But before she could convince Monroe, he slammed through the doorway into Pier Fifty-four. “Fire!” he yelled from within. “There’s a fire!”

  “Goddammit, ’Roe,” Charlotte said. She couldn’t leave this bomb here, and they definitely couldn’t take it with them. Charlotte made a decision and kicked the bomb underwater; it sank faster than before. Maybe the water would short-circuit it, but the purple goop was likely too viscous to let water through. “Let’s go.” She grabbed Felix’s hand and tugged him after Monroe.

  Bill followed, Charlotte’s bag around his shoulder, filled with the detritus of Ana’s bomb.

  Inside, dozens of sailors stared at Monroe. The bearded captain joined some well-dressed people at the railing of the boat.

  “There’s a fire!” Monroe yelled again. “Get the boat moving!”