Elegy was coming closer.
I backed further into the bush. Maybe I could hide inside the branches. Maybe she wouldn’t see—
Elegy grasped me by the arm and yanked me out. “See? Here she is.”
Brody flinched. “Elegy, if you knew what you were doing, you’d never want this.”
I tried to wrench my way out of Elegy’s grasp, but she was too strong. She dragged me with her back over to Meurtia.
Meurtia was shaking her head. “Elegy, when they find out you’ve done this, you’ll never get out of the praxidikai.”
“Even if I make it right?” said Elegy. “Even if I undo what I’ve done?”
“It’s not Elegy’s fault,” spoke up Brody.
Elegy and Meurtia both looked at him.
“It’s my fault,” he said. “She’s not Elegy’s ex’s sister or anything. We told her that after she lost her memory so she’d think it was her fault and keep her mouth shut. Clearly it didn’t work. Catherine’s my girlfriend. I saved her life. I stowed her away on Elegy’s praxidikai and kept her hidden. It’s got nothing to do with Elegy. Now please fix her.”
“I didn’t save her?” Elegy asked.
“No,” said Brody. “And you never slept with volurs.”
“I never scrambled Shakespeare’s brain?”
“No,” said Brody, looking confused.
“What?” said Meurtia.
“What about my praxidikai?” said Elegy. “Why was it a bar? Why was I dressed the way I was?”
“We were heading to the 1980s,” said Brody. “You never let it look that way otherwise. Everything I told you was a lie. But you need your memories back.”
Elegy heaved a deep sigh. “Well, okay. Meurtia, go ahead.”
Meurtia was glaring at Brody in disgust. “How could you have deceived her so badly?”
“I was trying to save Catherine,” said Brody.
That didn’t make any sense, of course, but Meurtia didn’t appear to be trying to puzzle out Brody’s story. I wasn’t sure I liked Brody taking the fall for this, but as soon as Elegy was back to herself, she’d fix everything. She always did.
Meurtia took Elegy’s hand. The two of them suddenly lit up bright as a gleaming star. Their bodies glowed blindingly, and there was a humming noise that emanated from the two of them. Then Meurtia released Elegy, whose body tumbled to the ground lifelessly.
“She’ll be unconscious for a little while,” said Meurtia, “but when she wakes up, she should be fine.”
“Unconscious?” said Brody, looking green.
“How long?” I said. How was Elegy supposed to help us if she wasn’t even awake?
Meurtia’s lips curled into a nasty smile. “You two, on the other hand, should be out of her hair before she even wakes up. I’m taking you to the Fates, who will decide how to punish you. You’ve violated the order of the universe, and you’ve used us to make it happen. It won’t stand.”
“Punish?” I said in a tiny voice. “What kind of punishment are we talking about here?”
Meurtia shrugged. “Well, I imagine it will culminate in death, but I’m sure it will be very painful beforehand. You can’t be allowed to get away with manipulating the very fabric of the universe.”
Brody swallowed. His face was ash. “Why can’t you leave Cathy out of it? It was my fault. I did it.”
“No, Brody,” I said. “It’s not your fault.” Why was he determined to take the blame for this?
“She’s supposed to be dead,” said Meurtia. “She can’t be ‘left out of it.’” She seized both us by the arm, and she was very strong. We couldn’t help but stumble along next to her as she yanked us toward the gate of the garden.
Brody caught my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. The look he gave me made my heart skip a beat.
“Wait,” I said. “This can’t happen, because you’re supposed to meet me in my future. I have to have a future for that to happen. We can’t die, Brody.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” he said.
“Shut up, both of you,” said Meurtia.
“Of course it does,” I said. “How many times has Elegy told us that time is set and can’t be changed?”
“I don’t think it’s like that inside the praxidikai,” said Brody.
Meurtia stopped short in front of the gate, seeming to realize she had her hands full with both of us, and she couldn’t open it. She glared at both of us. “I’m going to let go so that I can open the portals between the praxidikai,” she said. “If either of you run off or do anything to annoy me, I guarantee you I will make sure you regret it. Understand?”
I nodded.
But Brody seemed distracted. “Oh,” he whispered. “This is what I did. This is why you said I saved you. This is why they came for me.”
“Do you understand?” Meurtia repeated, glowering at him.
Brody lifted his chin defiantly. “I won’t let you hurt her. Never.”
Meurtia let go of me and put both of her hands on Brody’s shoulders. She squeezed and looked directly into his eyes. Her own eyes began to glow white hot, like Elegy’s had earlier.
Brody kept eye contact with her. He fumbled with the gate with one hand. “Get out of the way, Cathy,” he said in a low voice.
“You will do as I say,” said Meurtia.
Brody’s hand pulled the gate open.
Meurtia suddenly looked panicky. She let go of Brody. “My praxidikai. It’s not open!”
I backed away, taking Brody’s advice.
Brody grabbed hold of Meurtia’s hair, pulling out her fancy topknot.
“What are you doing?” Her hands went to Brody’s hands on her. She pried at them, shrieking. “Let go!”
Brody launched himself backwards out of the gate, pulling Meurtia along with him.
There was a blood-curdling scream, following by an explosion of bright white light. I turned away, closing my eyes against it. The force of it rippled into the garden, knocking me down on the ground. The sound seemed to echo in my ears.
I lay stunned, pain jolting through the places where I’d hit the ground. I opened my eyes.
Brody was kneeling over me. “You okay?”
“What did you do?” I said.
He gathered me into his arms, pulling me tight against his chest, smoothing one hand over my hair. He was shaking. “I took her out into the world, outside of the praxidikai. It killed her. Fates like Elegy and Meurtia have to stay in the praxidikai. If they don’t...”
“Oh my God,” I murmured.
“I couldn’t let her hurt you,” he said. He loosened his grip on me, gazed down into my eyes.
I looked up into his. They were so green. I thought I might get lost in them.
And then we were kissing, and it was nothing like the little peck he’d given me before. It was fierce and urgent. One of his hands was tangled up in my hair, the other held my body tight against his chest. His mouth was on mine, nudging sweet thrills through me. I clung to him, caught up in the feel of him, how strong and male he was, how exciting and new it was to taste his lips.
“So I lose my memory one time, and you two are already making out.”
We broke away from each other.
Elegy stood over us. She was grinning. She snapped her fingers, and the garden around us faded back into the familiar bar. “God, what am I wearing?” She wrinkled up her nose. Her garments changed too, so that she was in a loose fitting t-shirt and leggings. “Who wants a drink?”
“Uh, Elegy?” said Brody. “I kind of killed Meurtia.”
Elegy’s eyes got big.
* * *
We were sitting at the bar. Even Elegy was on a bar stool. She had a bottle of tequila, and she was liberally pouring shots into our glasses every time she noticed they were empty. Elegy downed another shot and shivered. “Well, I’m absorbing her praxidikai into mine, so no one should be able to find it. Since she exploded and didn’t leave a body, it will be just like she disappeared.”
“I’m sorry I did it,” said Brody. “I liked Meurtia. She wasn’t as fun as you, of course. Kind of a stickler for rules and everything. But I didn’t want her to die.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry,” said Elegy. “I let the two of you down. Without my memories, I’m a completely different person.”
“Yeah, you are,” I said.
“I almost got you killed, Cathy,” said Elegy, looking down into her empty shot glass. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Really? Because usually I got the impression that I annoyed Elegy to the extreme.
Elegy poured us more tequila. I didn’t want any more, so I set the shot down. “So, nothing will happen to Brody because of what he did? He’s not like a Fate murderer or something?”
“I honestly don’t know,” said Elegy.
Brody hung his head. “I never wanted—”
“You had to do it,” said Elegy. “You didn’t have a choice. She was going to kill you both.”
We were all quiet for a few minutes.
Elegy picked up my shot and downed it. On unsteady legs, she got off the bar stool and shuffled back behind the bar. She picked up our shot glasses and set them in the sink to be washed. She turned on the faucet. “I meant what I said before, you know.” She looked over at us. “No sex in the bar.”
6: Midnight Rambler
I rolled one of the balls on the pool table towards a pocket. “Elegy, I’m confused.” It stopped just short of going in.
“I really hate the conversations we have that begin this way,” said Elegy Flynn, the goddess of Fate I traveled through time with. She was lying on the couch in the time-traveling bar we lived in. “Let’s play pool instead. I could explain until I’m blue in the face, and you still wouldn’t get it. You never do.”
I rolled another ball into the first one. “That’s only because you suck at explaining things. I’m not stupid.”
“Most people use the cue sticks to hit the balls,” said Elegy.
I left the pool table and sat down next to her on the couch. “It’s about Tesla.”
“Seriously, Catherine, let it go,” said Elegy.
I wasn’t about to let it go. In between saving the world from time paradoxes, this bar could get pretty dull, and I had nothing to do but think. “You changed time, Elegy. You made it so that Tesla stayed alive when he was supposed to die.”
“Yes, I did,” said Elegy. “But it didn’t really make that much difference anyway.”
“It must have made some difference. And that’s why I’m confused. Because when those different things happened, they should have caused a time paradox.”
Elegy looked at me as if I were particularly stupid. “No. It happened in the bar, out of time. So there was no paradox.”
I sighed. “I don’t mean the initial change. I mean afterwards, when he was back in his life. All the little things that changed. Why didn’t they cause a paradox?”
“The little things?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like the next morning when Tesla woke up, he would have gone and bought coffee or talked to someone that he couldn’t have talked to if he was dead. And that would have been different. Not the way things were supposed to be. So why wasn’t there a paradox then?”
Elegy got up off the couch. She headed over to the bar. “I’m going to have a drink. Do you want one?”
I followed her. “Are you going to answer my question or not?”
She settled behind the bar. “Rum runner?”
“It’s a perfectly good question. It makes sense. Why can’t you just—?”
“Going once, going twice,” said Elegy, holding a glass in front of my face.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll have a drink.”
Elegy filled up my glass with ice. “A paradox only happens right after something changes. If one change causes multiple changes, then there’s still only one paradox. And if the change occurs out of the time stream, then there’s no paradox at all.”
I gaped at her. “Why can’t you give explanations that clear all the time?”
Elegy looked up from pouring liquor into my glass. “I do.”
“No you don’t. Usually, what you say doesn’t make sense, so I keep asking questions until you get pissed at me and tell me I’ll never be able to understand.”
“Usually, it is a lot for your puny, human mind to take in.” She set my rum runner in front of me.
I took a drink and glared at her over the glass. “Right. Because lest I ever forget, you’re a goddess, and I’m not.”
“You’re catching on.” Elegy grinned at me.
Sometimes, I wanted to strangle Elegy. I really did.
Elegy poured herself some wine. “Speaking of paradoxes, one just happened.”
“Ooh,” I said. “Does that mean we get to pick up a volur?”
“You know it does,” said Elegy.
“Can it be Brody?” Brody was my boyfriend, even though we were on different timelines and we were experiencing our relationship out of order.
“I think not,” said Elegy, who was apparently still jealous of Brody picking me and not her. “How about Gabe?”
Before I could answer, the door to the bar opened, and Gabriel Cyrus came inside. “Boy, am I glad to see you guys. The other Fates are completely strange.”
Elegy winked at him. “Good to see you too, Gabe. Want a drink?”
I rolled my eyes. Apparently, I was going to have to watch Elegy flirt with Gabe. Yuck.
“I’d love a beer,” said Gabe, settling down on a bar stool. “I’ve been stuck in a dry town in the 1930s for two weeks now.”
“Coming right up,” said Elegy. She grabbed a pint glass and began to fill it from the beer tap.
“So,” said Gabe, “please tell me this isn’t another job in a time period with no alcohol.”
“Actually, this is an easy one,” said Elegy. “Standard vendetta job.” She set a beer in front of Gabe. “Guy in the twenty-third century’s gone back four years and killed someone. We actually see this kind of thing quite a bit. Someone decides it would be better if they’d never met someone, so they kill them in the past.”
I wrinkled up my nose. “That’s horrible.”
“Well it’s easy enough to stop.” She turned to Gabe. “You’re going to want to find Alissa Merrs and get her someplace safe. Guy can’t find her, he can’t kill her. Easy as pie.”
“Got it.” Gabe drained his beer glass. “Where can I find Alissa?”
“I’m going to drop you off right as she gets out of a cab. All you need to do is keep her talking. Do not let her go into the nearby alley. That’s where the killer’s waiting.”
Gabe nodded. “Sounds simple enough. I’ll do my best.”
Elegy smiled at him. “Oh, I know you will.” Her voice was throaty and seductive. Eew.
Gabe caught Elegy’s eye and blushed. Oh, gross. Now I was going to have to listen to Elegy having sex later. I thought she moaned loudly just to piss me off.
Gabe left the bar, grinning from ear to ear.
As the door shut after him, I took a long swig of my drink. “If you’re going to fuck him later, can you please keep it down?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Elegy.” “Gabe and I are still in the courtship phase. I want to take things slow.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You? Slow? Since when?”
“Since always. You’re never seen me in the courtship phase before.” Elegy sipped her wine primly.
“Courtship? I thought you had orgasms, not relationships.”
Elegy sniffed. “You don’t understand anything, Catherine.”
Clearly I didn’t. That was fine with me. I turned my attention back to my rum runner.
But when I saw it, I dropped the glass in shock. It had turned a strange shade of green. And instead of falling to the ground and shattering into a million pieces, the glass went floating into the air. It turned upside down, but the liquid didn’t fall out. “Elegy?” I whispered, staring at it.
“What?”
I pointed.
The jukebox came on, and it started playing “Helter Skelter” by the Beatles. Around us, bar stools started floating into the air.
“Shit,” said Elegy. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“Elegy,” I screamed. “What is going on?”
“Shit!” Elegy scrambled out from behind the bar and ran to the front door. She hurled it open. “Gabe, get back in here!”
I peered up at the various floating things in the bar. “Elegy,” I said in a tiny voice. “This looks like a paradox...”
“No shit. Really?”
She was being sarcastic? The bar was falling apart, and she was being sarcastic.
Elegy yanked Gabe back inside and slammed the door after him. Gabe’s eyes were wild and terrified.
“What happened? Everything went nuts out there.” Gabe surveyed the interior of the bar. “And in here too, apparently.”
“He killed a different girl,” said Elegy. “I’ve got to move the bar before the paradox spreads.” She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists. Then her eyes popped open. “It’s not working. We’re stuck.”
“Why does it matter if he killed a different girl?” I was clutching the bar, but it was starting to float too.
“I don’t have time to explain things to you right now.” Elegy glanced around at the chaos in the bar her face full of fear. “We can’t get stuck in the paradox. We’ll never get out.”
Gabe staggered forward. “But I stopped the paradox. I kept her out of the alley. That’s what you asked me to do.”
“Shit,” said Elegy. “We’ve got to call in the big guns. Catherine, get inside the beer cooler.”
“Get inside the what?”
But Elegy was propelling me behind the bar. She opened the door to the refrigerator that contained the beer. “Everything in this bar is an illusion except the alcohol. I’m calling in Fate Central. To save the bar, they’ll have to scan everything in it. That means you. If they find you, they’ll kill you. If you’re in here with the beer, they won’t be able to tell the difference.”
Well, that sort of made sense. Sort of. “But it’s cold in there.”
“Catherine, do you want to be cold or do you want to be dead?”
Adventures of Elegy Flynn Page 13
