Rupert gives the room a careful once-over, then moves toward one of the glass bookcases at the back of the library. To my surprise, the always-polite butler pushes his hands against the bookcase rather roughly, as if trying to move it!
“What are you doing?” I ask, bewildered. “You’ll break—”
I stop mid-sentence, my mouth hanging open as the bookcase mechanically swerves to the side, revealing a vast empty space that resembles a tunnel. I step closer and see that it is a tunnel built of gray stone and brick, and just high enough to stand upright in.
“What is this?” I exclaim.
Just as quickly as he opened the passageway Rupert closes it, nervously glancing at the front door of the library as he pushes the bookcase back in place. “It’s a secret passage that leads to the back lawn of the house. For a space consisting of mere stone and brick, with no heat or decoration, it is a surprisingly comfortable place to get away for a bit.” Rupert smiles, and then his expression turns serious. “No one else knows about it, especially not the family, so I must ask that you keep this a secret. I’m sharing it with you because I feel you might need it one day. Miss Rebecca is rather vile to all the staff here, and while she is enamored with you now … you don’t know if one day she might become cruel to you too.”
I lower my eyes. “It’s not what you think. I—I’m not—I mean, I might not—” I stammer, before Rupert interrupts me.
“You don’t need to explain,” he says kindly. “You’re eighteen years old and you want a better life. I understand.”
For a moment, I’m ready to blurt out the truth. After all, Rupert just shared a secret with me. But then I imagine his reaction, the way he would likely panic and think I’ve gone insane. After all, without Rebecca’s cooperation, I have no proof.
Suddenly, a question occurs to me. “Rupert, if the family doesn’t know about this passageway … how do you?”
“It was the architect’s secret. He loved putting his own private stamp on the homes he built, adding things to the house plans to show that it was his creation, despite whoever might own it. I was charged with supervising the building of this place while the Windsors were all staying at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. That’s why, aside from the construction crew and now you, I’m the only one who knows about the architect’s secret addition. The crew never saw or spoke to the Windsors; I’m the only one who could have told them. When the architect asked if I planned to tell, I knew instantly that I wouldn’t.” He looks at me guiltily. “I suppose that makes me an inferior butler, but I needed this. You see … I have a lady too, and here is the only place where we can be together.” He drops his eyes, and I bite back a smile. I always had a feeling there was something between him and Rebecca’s pretty French maid!
“I understand.” I place my hand on Rupert’s shoulder, about to say more, when a vision fills my mind, so powerful that it brings a searing headache along with it.
I’m standing in the middle of the secret passageway, waiting for someone. My palms are sweaty, my stomach jittery, and yet I am happier than I have ever been before. I look down, carefully examining my clothes. I hope that I look all right in this strange outfit of blue trousers and a cotton shirt bearing the block-lettered words “New York Giants 1991.” I chuckle at the thought that over a hundred years in the future, the fashion is to look plainer than the poor of my day.
Suddenly I hear the scraping sound of the bookcase being pushed to the side. My heart lifts, and I try in vain to control the smile spreading across my face. She is here.
“Irving? What’s happening? Are you all right?”
I snap back into focus as Rupert shakes my shoulders frantically.
“I’m fine,” I gasp. “I just had a—an awful cramp in my leg. It’s gone now.” I look toward the secret passageway in awe. My heartbeat picks up speed as I realize that it’s going to happen. I really am going into the future, and not just to 1919 like Rebecca—I’m going to travel more than a hundred years!
“Thank you for sharing this,” I tell Rupert. “I have a feeling that I will need a secret passageway. Thank you.”
As we leave the library, my mind races with one question: Who is the girl in my vision—the girl I will be waiting for in 1991?
February 2, 1888
I awake at six a.m. on the morning of February the second a far different person than I will be by the end of it. My eyes open upon my familiar, small, and stark dormitory room at Cornell University. I dress quickly, and then hurry to the washroom to shave before my first class. When I return a few minutes later, I see a woman sitting at my desk, watching the door, waiting for me.
I stare at her, stunned. Girls are strictly forbidden in the boys’ dormitories—how had she made it past the warden? And this is no girl, but a woman, who looks foreign and ethereal, with waist-length silver hair and penetrating green eyes. She smiles at me.
“Irving Henry. I’ve wondered for a while when I might get to meet you.”
I glance nervously from her to the door, and after a moment’s hesitation, I close it behind me. I have to know who this woman is—but I can’t risk any of my schoolmates seeing her.
“Who are you?” I demand. “What do you mean by this, breaking into my room?”
“Oh, I didn’t break in,” she says calmly. “Your door was open.”
“How do you know my name? And, I repeat—who are you?” I stand with my back against the door, close enough to make a quick getaway if the woman turns out to be, as I suspect, certifiably mad.
“My name is Millicent August. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.” She gives me a perceptive look as she holds out her hand.
My jaw drops. “Millicent August? The founder of the Time Society?”
“That’s the one.”
“What do you want with me? Is this about Rebecca?” I ask, perplexed.
“I’m here about both of you,” Millicent says softly. “You see, there are some things that don’t add up about Rebecca’s circumstances. For instance, did she tell you how she is able to travel into the future? Did she tell you that time travel is an inherited gift?”
“No.” I look at Millicent with wonder. “She said she was chosen for the power—that there is a Time Travel Gene and she was born with it.”
Millicent chuckles quietly. “Of course. That is what she wants you to believe.”
Now Millicent has my complete attention.
“What are you saying?”
“It’s true that there is a Time Travel Gene, and it runs in families. But it’s not quite so simple. People don’t suddenly wake up one day and are able to visit the past or the future out of nowhere,” she said in an admonishing tone, as if I were the one who suggested such a thing. “There is a device. A key.”
“Rebecca didn’t say anything about a key,” I say, confused.
“No, she withheld that from you, and I believe I know why. Let me explain to you how time travel, and our society, works.” She gestures for me to have a seat.
“The Time Society is a clandestine organization of time travelers. We call ourselves Timekeepers. Over the past century we have learned that the power to travel through time runs in a family’s blood. This is what we mean by the Time Travel Gene,” Millicent divulges. “But we are all marked by a physical key, called the Key of the Nile. This key is always given by the Timekeeper to one of their kin before they die. Thus, time travel is not something you are simply born with, as Rebecca said, but rather an inherited gift.
“Now, every single member of the Time Society is related by birth to another Timekeeper, which explains how we receive our keys. So you can imagine my surprise when our Detectors informed me of a new time traveler in our midst, Rebecca Windsor. You see, no one from her family has ever been in the Society. But there was someone else who lived in her house, who was a registered Timekeeper. Someone whose kin I was expecting.” Millicent pauses. “The Timekeeper’s name was Byron Henry.”
For a moment I think my heart must have stopped beating. When I
finally find my voice, it is barely a whisper.
“You’re mistaken—that’s impossible! My father was the most blessedly normal man you could imagine. There’s no way he could have been—he would have told me—” I break off, my mind racing at a dizzying speed as I suddenly remember the portion of my father’s will that no one had understood. “Equally if not more important than the funds for Irving’s university education, is the key that I leave for him …”
“I know how close you and your father were,” Millicent says kindly. “But you were too young to be told. One of the strongest guidelines we abide by in the Time Society is keeping our powers secret until we’re nearing the end of our lives. Then we may tell the person who is to inherit the key. Of course, most of us cannot predict when we will die, which is why the last will and testament is crucial to our Society.”
I wipe my brow, perspiring from all this astonishing news, as Millicent continues.
“I hadn’t heard from Byron in a long while, but I never assumed he’d died. Some of our members can go for years without being in contact with us. But my suspicions were aroused when I heard about Rebecca and confirmed when I went to see her and found that the Windsor butler was no longer Byron Henry.” She leans forward. “I am convinced that Rebecca stole the key from your father when he died.”
I feel myself recoil. “But—but she is my friend. She wants us to be married! I wouldn’t put it past her to do something horrible, but not toward me. She knows how much I loved my father. She couldn’t have stolen from him.”
“I’m afraid it all adds up,” Millicent says. “Especially since she wouldn’t tell me who gave her the key. She feigned ignorance, but I know she stole it. I could see it written across her face.”
My hands ball into fists as I feel an unfamiliar rage burn through me. “So you’re saying that all this time she was boasting to me about time travel, telling me that I could only experience it through her, if I married her—was all a lie? The power was really meant to be mine all along?”
“Yes,” Millicent says intently. “We always knew you would be the next Timekeeper in the Henry family. After Byron died, the only time traveler living in the Windsor Mansion should have been you.”
I can’t sit still anymore as the anger inside me escalates. I jump up furiously. “I have to get the key back. I have to get it away from Rebecca!”
“That’s right,” Millicent agrees. “I have invited her to the opening of the Time Society headquarters today. She will walk straight into our path, wearing your key.” Millicent holds out her arm. “Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“We aren’t traveling very far, only to this afternoon, so the journey will be brief.” Millicent unties her shawl, revealing a glittering gold chain tied around her neck, from which a large skeleton key dangles. A diamond punctuates the center of the key’s surface.
“Hold on to the key,” Millicent instructs me, and I nervously reach out my hand to touch it.
“The Aura Hotel. Five p.m. on February the second, 1888,” Millicent commands. Suddenly, an invisible hand yanks me by my collar, pulling me into the air with breathtaking force. I feel my body rise higher and higher, then begin to spin at the speed of light, until before I know it, I am on the ground again, doubled over and gasping for breath.
“Here you are. You did very well.”
I look up and see Millicent holding out a glass of water. I gulp it down, and then, catching my breath, I glance around at my surroundings. We are in a formal drawing room, complete with gilded ceilings and Louis XVI furnishings. Millicent approaches a large bronze clock framing the wall, and presses her hand against it. The clock chimes loudly, the sound seeming to reverberate throughout the space.
“They’ll be bringing Rebecca in any moment now,” Millicent says nonchalantly. “You’d best wait in the next room—we don’t want her to see you too soon and make an escape. You’ll be able to hear us through the wall and will know when to come in.”
I nod, the anticipation of what lies ahead filling my body with renewed energy. I step into the adjacent room, Millicent’s study, and glance at the books lining the shelves. I’m startled to see Millicent’s own name on the spine of many of the titles, from The Art of Age Shifting to The Gift of Sight.
I soon hear footsteps and then Rebecca’s excited voice as she greets Millicent. The sound sends a wave of nausea flooding through me.
“Hello, Rebecca,” I hear Millicent say coldly. “Hiram and Ida, thank you for your help. You may go now.” A moment later, after the drawing room door has opened and closed, I hear Millicent’s voice again. “There’s someone here to see you, Rebecca.”
My cue. I turn the door handle that leads from Millicent’s office into her drawing room and stare accusingly upon my former friend.
“You!” she gasps.
As Rebecca stands frozen in shock, Millicent reaches over and rips something off her neck. Rebecca cries out, but it’s too late. Millicent presses the key into my hands, and I gaze at it in awe.
The golden key looks like an ancient talisman. It is carved in the same ankh shape as Millicent’s, only instead of a diamond at the center, my key has a sundial etched on its surface.
“My father drew this for me,” I tell Millicent, unable to take my eyes off the key in my hand. “He made me a drawing of this very key when I was a boy. I always thought it was just another one of his funny little sketches. But he was giving me a clue.” I look up, glaring at Rebecca with hatred. “Perhaps he knew you would steal it, that one day I would be called upon to recognize it.”
“I didn’t—I didn’t steal,” Rebecca stammers, looking flustered for the very first time in all the years I’ve known her. “He left it in my house.”
Her words make me tremble with fury.
“When did you take it from him?” I demand, stalking toward her. “He would have said or done something if he knew it was missing. So when did you take it? As soon as they buried him in the ground?” My voice rises and I find myself shouting at her, wishing my words could inflict the pain of physical blows.
Rebecca doesn’t deny it, and I have to hold on to the back of a chair to keep from striking her. “So it’s true, then. While you knew I was crying for my dead father, you were stealing from him. Stealing what was most precious.”
“I wanted to feel closer to you, Irving!” Rebecca wailed. “You must know I’ve always fancied you. I knew how much you loved your father, and I wanted something to remember him by.”
“That’s a lie, and you know it!” I roar. “If that were true, you would have told me about the key, shared it with me, instead of boasting about your sudden time-traveling powers and bribing me into marrying you so that I could experience what was rightfully mine all along—what you had stolen from me!”
“Bribe you into marrying me?” Rebecca echoes, as if she didn’t hear the rest of what I’d said. “Is that how you took it?”
“Of course. I have no more romantic feeling for you than I do for a teaspoon,” I spit. “I never desired you, never! But I was your friend, a true friend. Far more than you ever were to me.”
Rebecca’s face turns a deadly white. She blinks quickly, and I’m astonished to see actual tears in her eyes. Rebecca never cries. But I turn away from her, knowing they are just the crocodile tears of an actress trying to extract what she wants.
A buzz sounds in the room, and a moment later two guards appear in the doorway.
“Thank you for your prompt arrival, gentlemen. Please search Miss Windsor’s purse and pockets, and then escort her back to New York,” Millicent instructs them. “Take her home by train. She is a thief and a fraud.”
Rebecca’s face turns monstrous with anger. “You have no right to do this! I am Rebecca Windsor! My father could—”
“Your name means nothing here,” Millicent firmly interrupts her.
One of the guards pulls a leather-bound book out of Rebecca’s handbag and hands it to Millicent. She smiles as she gives it to
me. “I believe this belongs to you.”
It is The Handbook of the Time Society. By now Rebecca is kicking and punching her fists at the guards as they hoist her out.
“You’ll regret this!” Rebecca screams at me. “You’ll regret making an enemy of me. I swear I’ll destroy you!”
“Go on and try,” I seethe. “There is nothing more you can do to me.”
The guards drag Rebecca away and her cries grow fainter, until they are all but gone. I sink into a chair, suddenly exhausted.
“Thank you,” I tell Millicent. “Thank you for rescuing my father’s legacy. I wish I had known sooner who he really was. Now … I just hope to do him proud.”
Millicent places a hand on my shoulder. “I believe you will. You are one of us. You are a Timekeeper.”
While most time travelers are thrilled to discover their power, soon cherishing it above everything else, a small few shrink from the gift. To be different from the majority is often thought to be “wrong,” and some misguided Timekeepers look upon their ability as proof that they are an aberration. This couldn’t be further from the truth. We Timekeepers are gifted and chosen. You reading this are gifted and chosen. Always remember.
—THE HANDBOOK OF THE TIME SOCIETY
9
Michele gaped at the journal in her hands, unable to believe the words written on its pages. Just as Irving’s life had forever changed on the day he met Millicent August and learned the truth, so too had his story now altered Michele’s world. She could barely comprehend all the facts, from Rebecca’s ugly deeds to the knowledge that she and her father were a part of something so much larger than she’d ever guessed. There was a whole world of time travelers out there, others who’d experienced what she had! Her heart raced as she imagined taking a trip to the Aura Hotel and meeting the other Timekeepers. And to think that all along, the Time Society headquarters had been so close to her former home in Los Angeles.
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