Timekeeper

by Tara Sim

  A curse from a feminine voice broke the sanctified quiet of the church. Danny and Brandon lunged forward and each caught an arm, and the thief twisted and struggled. The sharp toe of a boot drove into his shin and Danny roared in pain.

  The thief gouged Brandon’s wrist and he quickly let go. “Damn!” She scurried backward, trapped.

  When Danny’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw the thief’s face. Specifically, the diamond-shaped tattoo by her right eye.

  “Daphne?”

  Her blonde hair was in disarray, her eyes wide and gleaming. The blue kerchief she normally wore at her neck hung unevenly and the nails of her right hand were bloodied from clawing at Brandon. Some of her bandages had come loose.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded, too surprised to realize he’d used her Christian name.

  She swallowed. “Stopping you.”

  “You—what?” He rubbed his forehead, wincing when he touched the cut there. “What are you talking about? Where’s the cog?”

  “I’ve hidden it,” she said shortly.

  “It’s there, you dolt.” Brandon pointed behind her.

  And there it was, leaning innocently against the wall. She stepped back and spread her arms when Danny moved forward.

  “You can’t have it.”

  “Of course we can, it’s the town’s property! What are you playing at, Daphne?

  “I know what you’re doing to the towers, and I won’t allow it.”

  “What are you talking about? Did Matthias put you up to this?”

  She didn’t move from her position. “You didn’t give me a choice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She breathed loudly in the small space. “After the Lead fired us, I found Matthias. I told him about Dover and that you might be involved, and how I was afraid for Enfield because of your obsession with this place. He told me he was afraid for you—that you’d been distant and strange.

  “He said you were going to take the central cog from Enfield to use it for the new Maldon tower they’re planning to rebuild. I couldn’t let that happen. He told me to remove the cog, to keep it safe while he asked the Lead for help.”

  “Did he think you’d get caught?” asked Brandon.

  “He said I could just walk through the barrier with the cog, but I tried, and it didn’t work. So I ran in here.”

  “I was right, then,” Danny said, mostly to himself. “Only spirits have the ability to leave, and the mechanics who touch them.” He refocused on the girl before him. “Didn’t you stop to think, Daphne? The town’s Stopped because of you. You’ve created another Maldon.”

  “Like you wouldn’t have!”

  Danny yelled in frustration. “Do you really think that I’m the one hurting the towers? That I killed Lucas and gave myself this scar? It’s Matthias, Daphne! Matthias needs a new tower to use for the Maldon spirit he’s bloody in love with!”

  She blinked at him, not understanding. Danny told her everything he had unearthed about Matthias in the last forty-eight hours. Time warped a little, making him repeat certain bits over and over, but finally it was all out.

  “That’s … He wouldn’t.” Daphne’s eyebrows furrowed. “Matthias would never do something like that. He …” Her voice lilted into a question. “He wouldn’t?”

  Brandon shook his head. “Let me guess: he also said he’d pay you for your trouble.”

  “You don’t understand. My mother’s in the asylum.” Her voice caught, and Danny thought back to the day she’d saved him from the mob. St. Agnes’s Home for Women. “I need money for her treatment, to get someone to take care of her. Yes, part of this was for the money, but I had to do something after you got me fired!”

  More words with teeth, biting straight through him. He had caused all of this. Trying to alter destiny had led him to this moment anyway, drawing him closer the more he resisted.

  “I’m sorry, Daphne,” he whispered. “I … God, I’m just like him. I’m so sorry.”

  Brandon tugged on Danny’s sleeve and jerked his chin to where Colton sat. The spirit had lifted his hand to reach for Danny.

  “Come here, Daphne,” Danny said.

  She picked up the cog, holding it to her chest. “I won’t go with you. Not until Matthias comes.”

  “Just come here, will you? I won’t force you. I want to show you something.”

  Slowly, Daphne stepped forward. Brandon blocked the exit to the stairs as Danny knelt beside Colton. He took the spirit’s hand and pressed it to his lips.

  “Do you feel it, Colton?”

  The spirit nodded, his eyes searching for Daphne.

  When she saw him, she gasped. The glow returned slightly to Colton’s body.

  “This is the spirit of the Enfield clock tower,” Danny explained. “And he’ll disappear if you don’t give that cog back to him.”

  Daphne stared at Colton. Colton stared back. There was a strange light in Daphne’s eyes, a mesmerized sort of shock.

  “You’re the clock,” she breathed. It wasn’t a question. “The spirit, I mean. I’ve seen someone like you before. In Dover, there was a little girl …” She glanced at Danny. “When the clockwork exploded, she started flickering. She almost disappeared entirely.”

  They both knew without having to say it: Colton was fading, becoming more and more transparent. If he disappeared, Enfield would be trapped forever.

  And Colton …

  “I’m sorry about your mum,” Danny said. “I’ll help in any way I can, since I know this is my fault. But keeping the cog won’t do any good. You can see that for yourself.”

  Daphne looked down at the cog. Danny crouched before her, ready to wrestle it from her hands if he needed to, but eventually she gave a shuddering sigh and nodded. Her hair swung forward to hide her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, holding the cog out to Colton. The spirit lifted pale, blurred hands to take it. “I’m so sorry. I—”

  A commotion on the stairs made Danny turn. Brandon slid down the wall, groaning, as a hulking shape lunged toward Daphne.

  “Matthias!” she screamed, jumping back. “Wait! You can’t do this.”

  He came to a jarring halt. “Give me the cog.”

  “You can’t put the Maldon spirit in the Enfield tower,” Daphne said. “It won’t work.”

  Danny and Matthias looked at her. Daphne’s face was grave, her voice even. But Danny knew that she was bluffing. They didn’t understand the complexities of the clock spirits, didn’t have the right data to come to this sort of conclusion.

  But she was Matthias’s old apprentice, and the top of her class. She was appealing to his sense. Or what was left of it.

  “Think about it,” she went on breathlessly. “Nothing like this has ever been done in the history of the clock towers. There’s no guarantee that installing the Maldon spirit’s central cog will create the same area of time. It would all have been for nothing if it doesn’t work. Both spirits will die.”

  Matthias paused to think, and Danny shifted slightly, ready to attack at the slightest motion. Colton held onto his elbow, keeping him back. He met Danny’s eyes and shook his head.

  “You don’t know that,” Matthias said.

  “But do you really want to risk it?” Daphne asked.

  There was a pregnant silence in the small tower room, time everywhere and nowhere at once, making the moment stretch. Danny’s muscles coiled with tension.

  When Matthias finally moved, Danny jumped to his feet and grabbed a handful of the man’s shirt. Matthias grabbed the cog from Daphne’s hands, knocking her to the ground. He turned and shoved Danny into Colton. Heavy feet thudded down the tower stairs.

  Danny scrambled up and turned to the others. “Brandon! Take Colton and Daphne to the clock tower and stay there, no matter what.”

  “What, you’re going after him?” Brandon demanded with a hand pressed dramatically to his injured head. “Are you mad?”

  “I have to. Daphne, I swear, any funny
business—”

  “No,” she insisted, crouching protectively over Colton. “Not from me.”

  “All right. Get him to the tower and—”

  “Danny!”

  He knelt beside Colton, who reached for him. Danny took the spirit’s hand in his own and something scraped against his palm: the little cog. Danny leaned over and kissed him hard, refusing to believe it would be the last time.

  “Go,” Colton whispered against his lips.

  Danny thundered down the stairs. When he burst from the church he saw a few townspeople on the green, still searching. But down the street he spotted someone running full speed toward the barrier.

  Danny gave chase. A runner he might not be, but suddenly the buildings blurred and the shape of the man grew closer—time was warping him forward. Matthias turned to look for the source of pounding feet just as Danny barreled into him, sending them crashing to the ground.

  The central cog flew out of Matthias’s arms. Danny struggled to go after it, but the man pulled him back down.

  “No you don’t, Danny,” Matthias panted above him. “I’ve waited too long for this chance.”

  “You’re a murderer!” Danny yelled past his dust-clogged throat. “You’ll be killing Colton and my father. You’ve already killed Lucas!”

  Matthias paused, his grip loosening. “Danny … I didn’t …”

  “Matthias, no!”

  Evaline’s voice. Of course, she had to be here for Matthias to have crossed the barrier. Danny twisted his head around to find her standing a short distance away, pale as a ghost.

  Matthias let him go and grabbed the cog. Evaline kept her gaze on Matthias, who pretended not to notice her horror.

  Danny lurched to his feet. A drop of sweat rolled down his forehead and dripped off his eyebrow. Time warped, and the drop rolled back up his face.

  “I’m sorry, Danny,” Evaline said. “I tried to stop him. He won’t listen.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve sacrificed for us,” Matthias said. “I’m through living with so little hope. If I have to get my hands dirty, so be it.” His chest was heaving as he faced Danny. “Even if it means going through you.”

  Danny reached up and touched the scar on his chin.

  “You did this,” he whispered. “All of it. And you let Daphne believe it was me. She trusted you.”

  Matthias couldn’t look at him, his face rigid with emotion he desperately clawed back. “I …” He almost looked at Evaline, but couldn’t bring himself to do that either. “I didn’t know what else to do. Eva was fading. She needed a tower. I knew Tom was going to Shere, and I thought …”

  A cold, brittle laugh escaped him. “I thought, if my plan worked, Tom would be the one getting in trouble. Not me. But the bomb didn’t go off at the right time.” Matthias glanced at Danny’s scar. “God, you have no idea how much I—”

  “Spare me,” Danny growled.

  The man nodded sadly. “I thought by giving you those clues about Tom and George, you’d find a way to help me convince the Lead they were the ones responsible. I saw the pipes in Tom’s office and thought to use them as bombs. I didn’t—” He swallowed. “I didn’t mean to kill that boy. And I never meant to hurt you, Danny.

  “But when Daphne came to me, convinced you were guilty, it was like a gift. I couldn’t pass up the chance. You weren’t supposed to be here when she took the cog.”

  “Matthias, why? What did I ever do to you?”

  A muscle in Matthias’s jaw ticked. “Not you, Danny. Your father.”

  “What does he have to do with this?”

  “Everything.” Matthias finally looked at Evaline. “Your father is the one who saw me with Eva. He reported me. He had me separated from her. From Maldon.”

  For a moment Danny could only focus on breathing in, breathing out. Was Matthias telling the truth, or talking him around to his side? Every word out of his mouth for the last three years had been a lie. Fabrications spun around a hidden truth.

  “I couldn’t let them build a new tower,” Matthias went on. “If Maldon was freed, then your father would know Evaline had left on her own, and that she would be searching for me. They would arrest me and take her back to Maldon. The new tower had to be destroyed.

  “All I need is another tower, another town. Once I install her cog, this will all be finished.”

  “What’s the point, Matthias?” Evaline’s voice shook. “Even if I’m in the tower, how do you know I’ll be compatible?”

  Matthias’s gaze switched between Danny and Evaline, uncertain. Remembering Daphne’s bluff. Danny saw the strain of desperation, a man used to fighting and hanging on by his fingernails. The threads he had to choose from were dwindling. Danny could almost see them detaching from his body.

  “I’ll do what has to be done,” Matthias said at last.

  Ice replaced the marrow in Danny’s bones. The man he had known all his life was suddenly a stranger. It was like watching an egg fall, knowing what would happen when it hit the ground, yet being unable to move fast enough to stop its messy end.

  Danny considered everything he wanted to say to Matthias, each angry, bitter word that gathered behind his tongue. He remembered how Matthias had comforted him with his fond smiles. How much he’d respected and admired him, and how badly it hurt to see him twisted by so much pain. How his father would not have wanted Matthias to grieve, but to do what he could to help his family. To do the right thing.

  But all Danny could manage was, “I won’t let you do this.”

  Matthias’s face hardened. Still, Danny caught the flicker of regret in his eyes. “So be it.”

  Danny imagined himself as Perseus then, standing poised with racing heart and rapid breath, facing down an evil that needed slaying. Yet it was not a snake-wreathed Gorgon before him, but a man who had become like a second father, all too human and imperfect. And instead of god-given sword and shield, Danny had only a small cog hidden in his sweaty palm.

  Matthias moved suddenly, and Evaline cried out in warning. Danny ducked instinctually as the man made a grab for him. He wrapped his arms around Matthias’s legs to try and bring him down, but the man might as well have been a tree trunk. Matthias picked him up by the scruff of his collar and flung him to one side.

  Danny had once seen a little terrier dog biting a man’s ankles at a dinner party. The man would shake it off and smile awkwardly at the owner, who apologized over and over with increasing embarrassment. But no matter how that little, ratty dog persisted, it was always shaken off with muffled curses and looks of disdain.

  Now Danny understood that little terrier and its frustration. He grabbed and clawed and jumped, but Matthias kept him down easily. Danny’s arms began to tremble with fatigue, but still he tried to snatch the central cog. His left hand was too slippery, his right one wrapped around the tiny cog Colton had given him.

  Finally, Matthias grew impatient and smacked him soundly on the head. Danny dropped and the world went spinning.

  “Matthias!” Evaline cried. “No more!”

  “He’s come between us,” Matthias panted. “He has to be stopped.”

  “No. I won’t let you go any further.”

  Danny struggled to turn his head and open his eyes. His lungs were in shock, and pulling in air was difficult. But when he saw Evaline, he managed a choked gasp.

  She knelt on the ground before her own cog. Unknown to Danny and Matthias, she had been carrying a chisel and a hammer in her satchel. Where she had found them, Danny had no idea; maybe in Matthias’s toolbox. She gripped a tool in each hand, poised purposefully above the central cog that kept her and Maldon alive.

  She glared defiantly at Matthias, who stood rooted to the spot.

  “Don’t,” he said, his tone low and frantic. “Eva, you’re being irrational.”

  “I’m being irrational? Look at you—you’re destroying yourself! Look at all those you’re making suffer because of your own desires. I fell in love with a man who was selfless and pa
ssionate, who told me about London and the life we could live there. But it’s nothing like you said, Matthias. And you’re not that man anymore. I don’t know who you are, but you’re not the person I met in Maldon.”

  They stared at each other, Evaline ready to end her own life if that’s what it took to stop him. Danny struggled to his elbows.

  “Evaline,” he whispered. “Please, don’t do this. You’ll kill my father. You’ll kill Maldon.”

  Her eyes met his, lost. Danny could see in them the urge to give up hope, but he shook his head, silently telling her that not all the threads had been cut yet. Matthias looked from Danny to Evaline and his body relaxed.

  “No, you wouldn’t sacrifice your town,” Matthias agreed.

  “I’ll leave,” she threatened. “Even if I’m somehow compatible with this tower, I’ll just remove my central cog again and leave.”

  “And Stop Enfield like you Stopped Maldon?”

  That made her pause. She again looked at Danny, but he had no solution to offer.

  “I’m sorry, Danny.” Matthias’s eyes shone with fervor. “I know you won’t forgive me. I don’t deserve forgiveness. But please, don’t get in my way.”

  Matthias left Danny in the dirt, moving toward Evaline. She shrank back, but Matthias only knelt and gently took her central cog from her. Evaline dropped her hammer and chisel to reach for the cog, but Matthias stepped out of the way.

  “Trust me, Eva.”

  Danny tried to grab the man’s ankle as it moved past him, but his body wouldn’t cooperate, curled into a pained comma.

  He saw Colton in his mind. Saw the curve of his smile and the glint of his amber eyes, a spark of life so bright that Danny had never seen its like in a human being. He felt him in the tower now, fading, dying, that spark about to be extinguished for good.

  Danny pushed himself to his knees, shaking. He took a deep breath and asked his head to kindly stop spinning. He had a town to save.

  Something bit into his palm and he hissed. He unfurled his right hand to see that the tiny cog had punctured his palm. A bright bead of blood welled up and rolled into the sweaty creases. It touched the cog, spread between skin and metal.