by Melissa Faye
Guardian of the Present: Book 4
THE HUNTER
By Melissa Faye
© 2018 Melissa Faye
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
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About the Author
Appendix A: June’s Rules for Time Travel
Chapter 1
I STOMPED INTO THE suite with mud-covered boots.
It wasn’t my fault exactly. I had been chasing a traveler through Times Square. It was more packed than usual since it was almost Thanksgiving. I was too small to see over the tourists’ heads, so I jumped off the curb to keep my eyes on the woman from the future. I ran along the curb for a hundred feet before she ducked into a store. I pushed through the crowd and followed her inside. We had a quick stand-off in the back of the store, then I sent her back to her own time.
But I hadn’t realized how muddy the street was.
Honey didn’t notice me come in. At some point while I stood there, her eyes glanced over, and she caught sight of the mud flecks on the floor. She sighed heavily and rolled her eyes.
I was working up the courage to ask her something, but I didn’t want to hear to the response. It wasn’t that important, I figured. Maybe I didn’t need to say anything. If I did, I would never hear the end of it.
“Stop staring at me, June,” Honey teased from her desk. “Take off your boots. And if you want to say something else, say it.”
“I was wondering...”
Honey dropped her pencil onto her notebook and turned.
“Spit it out, June,” she sighed. “You’re being annoying.”
Honey and I shared a room in a suite of four girls at City University of Technology in New York City. It was November of freshman year, and she could already read me easily. Even when she was trying to focus on her art history textbook.
“Could I borrow that dress I wore last month? I’m going out with Harrison tonight and it’s a pretty nice restaurant.”
Honey’s eyes grew wide.
“Our June? On a date at a fancy restaurant? You’re moving past random make-out sessions in the common room to a real date out in the world? My June?” Before I could evade her advances, she leapt up and hugged me tightly. “Oh! I’m so proud of you.”
“Are you done?”
“Spoil sport. Yes. You can borrow the floral wrap dress.” She pointed to the right side of her closet. “Don’t get anything on it unless you do the Lady and the Tramp thing where you each take a side of the single strand of spaghetti and meet in the middle. Then you can get tomato sauce on it.”
I rolled my eyes, but I knew my face was red. I rifled through Honey’s closet until I found the dress.
Dresses and flowers were far out of my norm, but so was having a boyfriend. I was already used to having Harrison around all the time because he helped me with my work guarding the Present. But now there was more hand-holding, more kissing, and more “oh you have an eyelash – make a wish!” going on. If I wasn’t so smitten, I might throw up. But I liked it. A lot.
“I don’t know how you do it.” Honey swung around in her chair, her thick dirty blonde curls swishing around her shoulder.
“Do what?” I held the dress in front of me to remind myself how long it was. “Can I wear this with boots?”
“No! Not this time! I’ll find you something.” Honey immediately hopped towards the bottom of her closet.
“I mean, I don’t know how you have time for classes, homework, papers, friends, your other stuff, and now a boyfriend.”
She held up a pair of pink heels, and I shook my head back and forth quickly.
“What’s my ‘other stuff?’”
“All of that.” Honey waved a hand towards my side of the room.
By day, I was a college student with a boyfriend and a full course load. By night - and sometimes also by day - I guarded the Present. I found time travelers visiting our Present time and sent them back home. At best, they risked messing with people’s timelines or stole some money without most people noticing. At worst, they sought power and created destruction. And sometimes got people killed.
I thought the secret work I did was hidden well enough. All of us were more interested in our own things than in poking around people’s mysterious trunks. But again, Honey read me easily. My desk was often covered in screwdrivers, a handheld drill, pliers, and enough wire and circuitry to create a laptop computer from scratch. There was a trunk under my bed with my personal inventions, like the Shusher. The Shusher was a plate a person wore like a backpack that silenced any noises they made.
I never showed Honey that trunk, but I suspected she knew what was in it. Lots of people at school loved Honey because she was sweet and fun. Lots of guys liked her before she was pretty and had a flirtatious laugh. I knew she was much more than a bunch of attributes from the “pro” column of a dating website. Honey was smart. Nothing got past her, given enough time. And the clock was ticking on my secret extracurricular activity.
“I’ll clean it, I swear!”
Honey smirked and handed me pale pink ballet flats.
“No heel. Barely pink. You can manage,” she said before I could protest. “And you know I’m not talking about how messy you are.
Honey turned back to her notebook while I changed. The dress was drapey and surprisingly comfortable. The shoes were a little big, but I would manage. I’d miss my boots, though.
“What are you talking about, then, Honey?” I asked innocently. I preened in front of the mirror. I had tried to do my hair using Honey’s curling iron, but the curls were already coming out. One of our other suitemates, Marlene, who roomed on the other side of our suite with our other suitemate Lacey, used hair spray to try to force my hair to stay in place, but it was time to face facts. I would never manage a beachy wave.
“You know what I’m talking about. You’re not designing jewelry over there. But you’ll tell me more when you want to, I suppose.” Honey didn’t even look up from her notebook. She tapped her pencil around while flipping through pages of her textbook.
I smoothed out the front of Honey’s dress and pulled on my locket. It was the only piece of jewelry I owned – it was my mother’s, who had died when I was eight. Except she didn’t really die. She was abducted alongside my father by a man named Jasper, who held them captive in the future. I pushed that to the back of my head. Another mystery for those extra synapses to solve. I found out the truth in August. Months later, and I didn’t have a single lead.
Honey spun around in her chair to face me.
“That looks good.” She threw a mascara in my direction. “I’d say you should wear that color more often, but you’d have a fit.”
I lifted a finger to my mouth to bite my nails, but Honey pushed my hand away.
“You know, if you’re going to date Harrison for real, you need to go all in.”
“What does ‘all in’ mean?”
“This can’t be like you missing our dinner dates for mysterious late night activities. Harrison’s a high quality guy. If you flake on him,
he won’t like it. So if you’re going to date him, date him. Don’t mess around.”
I looked at myself in the mirror again. A dress. Flats. Mascara. They felt so out of place. Harrison wouldn’t care if I wore jeans and a black sweater to dinner, but I wanted to look special. I wanted to try being someone more than a secret vigilante. And to do that, I’d have to go all in.
Chapter 2
HARRISON PICKED OUT an Italian restaurant close to our friend Leslie Leslie’s pawn shop. In fact, I was sure I saw her yelling at the owner only a few months ago. I made Harrison hurry through the door for fear of Leslie Leslie seeing us. She would not approve.
I skipped the spaghetti. There would be no “Lady and the Tramp” moment that night.
We passed the menus back to the waiter after we ordered and Harrison pulled my hand into his. He had a way of looking at me that made me melt. Like he was staring into the very center part of me, the part that didn’t fight travelers or invent futuristic technology or make snarky comments. Deeper than that. Someplace very vulnerable. He saw it, and he liked it. And every time, I melted into a sappy puddle on the floor.
“Did I tell you I finished upgrading the Some Gun?” I asked. My Some Gun was the weapon I used most by far to fight travelers. It had multiple functions, including a stun gun. I recently learned that doubling the power guaranteed a knock-out, and added a doubled Stun function to the gun.
“Oh yeah? What about the other things you were working on...They’re like shooting stars?”
“Yes! I didn’t show you? I have to test them out.” I winked at Harrison. Having a boyfriend also meant having a test subject for my inventions, even if he didn’t see it that way.
“Only if I get to name them. What do they do at this point?”
“I haven’t tested them yet, but the idea is that you throw them at someone, and the person stops in their tracks. It’s like they’re weighed to the ground. It doesn’t hurt them, which is good, and they don’t raise as much attention as the Light Cages.” The Some Gun also had a Cage of Light function that created an actual cage made of lights around a traveler or any other object. It was so far impenetrable.
“Gravity boots.” Harrison snapped his fingers in the air. “Let’s call them Gravity Boots. They weigh the person down like extra gravity.”
“Sure, I can call them that. But don’t forget I get to test them on you.”
Harrison smirked, then his face became more solemn.
“Have you thought more about your parents? Ridge was telling me -”
“Ridge shouldn’t be talking to you about that.”
Harrison and my mentor, Ridge, had gotten closer over the past few months. I started working with Ridge when I took on my first traveler at the age of eight. He helped me work on my inventions and stay safe as I biked around the city. Now, with Harrison around, he said he had one more pair of eyes watching me. And apparently, someone to talk to about me.
“No, nothing like that.” Harrison grinned. This was a sore subject, and we both knew he liked pushing my buttons.
“Your parents are alive, and they’re in the future. And we have two time travel devices now.”
“Yes. I can use one of them once. And I have no idea how the other works. I could end up in the middle of the Black Plague. Or land myself thousands of years in the future where humans have evolved to eight feet tall and take me in as a pet. Oh! I could land in outer space. Or I could inside a solid object.”
Harrison spoke over me.
“They’re alive, and you know where they are. Or, when they are. Maybe neither of those. Don’t you at least feel like the devices are progress?”
None of it was progress. Knowing my parents were alive wasn’t even progress. What good was information that I couldn’t analyze? What good were devices that I couldn’t use?
“Next topic.”
“I can help you now, June. I’m catching up with all of this. Have you talked to Leslie Leslie about it yet?”
“Next topic, Harrison!”
“Fine, fine.”
I had my own questions to ask.
“What about your parents?”
Harrison never mentioned his family. We rarely talked about him beyond the scope of friends, classes, and the guardian work he helped me manage.
“I never told you about my parents?” Harrison squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. “You sure?”
“Never.”
“I - I don’t have a father. I don’t know who he is or where he is. I grew up with my mom.”
“I’m sorry...Would you ever want me to -”
“No, I’m not interested in you tracking down the father who abandoned us.”
Harrison dropped my hand on the table and pointed straight at me. His tone shifted.
“I know that face, Wires. You want to do it. I swear. Don’t do it. Don’t look me up. I’ll figure it out if I ever want to, but you aren’t going to be the one who does it.”
I leaned away from him in my chair. I’d never seen Harrison act like that before.
“I’m so sorry, Harrison. I promise. I won’t try to...any of that.” I waved my hands back and forth in front of myself. “Would you tell me about your mother?”
Harrison blushed.
“Sure. Why not? There isn’t a lot to say. She was never very involved. I mostly hung out at my friends’ houses growing up. And when I turned fourteen, she sent me to private school here in the city. I haven’t seen her since.”
“You haven’t seen your mother in five years?”
“We talk sometimes. Once or twice a year. She sends checks to help with college. I don’t really want to talk to her more than that...We were never close.”
There was a long silence. A waiter came to pour water into our glasses and I nodded my thanks politely. I hadn’t seen my parents in nine years, but I would do anything to see them again. If only I knew how. Harrison’s parents would be much easier to find, but he wanted nothing to do with them.
Harrison steered the conversation gently back towards Ridge, who was an endless source of amusement. I supposed it was only fair that he and Harrison talked about me. I loved talking about Ridge. He was part mentor, part friend, part sidekick, and part curmudgeonly neighbor.
I told Harrison about the first time I tested the Stun function on my Some Gun on a real person: myself.
“So I was almost knocked out, and tiny, and he found me in his yard. I was ten years old and tiny. He plucked me off the ground and berated me for at least a half hour. But all that time he was tucking me into his couch, turning on a show I liked, getting me some juice.”
“It sounds like he can be a nice guy. Maybe I’ll see that side of him one of these days!” Harrison grinned. “He told me you are terrible with microwaves. What does that mean?”
“I break them all the time. Microwaves are great for product testing, and using his gets the best reaction. It’s Ridge’s own fault. He makes such a fuss every time I do it, it’s like he’s begging me to do it again.”
Harrison chuckled.
“I’d like to see that sometime.”
“I’m sure you will.”
After we ate, we paid for dinner and crept back out into the night. It was too far and too cold to walk back to school, but we could at least walk an extra subway stop before getting on a train. I swung my bag of leftovers while we walked.
I tried to rush us past Leslie Leslie’s shop, but Harrison stood in my way.
“She’s right across the street. You have to say hello.” Harrison tugged me toward Leslie Leslie’s pawn shop. “She won’t say anything about the dress.”
I tried to dig my feet into the ground, but the flats had no traction. Leslie Leslie would definitely say something about the dress. I’d known her for years. She was a traveler herself, but Ridge and I never saw a reason to send her home. She’d been in New York City since well before I was born, and the chronogram streaks travelers had from traveling through time were faded on her. Besides, she knew everything a
bout traveler technology and had a whole back room devoted to her collection.
“Leslie Leslie!” The door jingled when we walked into the shop, but Harrison still knew to call the owner’s name. Leslie Leslie didn’t like customers. It wasn’t entirely clear how she made any money.
“Harrison?”
Leslie Leslie appeared from the back, hobbling on her decorative cane. I breathed in quickly. I forgot my promise to her. A few weeks ago, I met Leslie Leslie in the past. She helped me get home, and I promised to invent something for her to help her feet hurt less. I made a prototype of a pair of Easy Shoes, as I was calling them, then forgot about the project altogether.
“Oh, and Junie - look!” Her eyes opened wide and her mouth formed an O. She waved her hands up in the air in excitement.
“A dress?” She leaned forward over the counter to look at my feet. “No boots?”
Harrison laughed, but he stopped when I elbowed him in the side.
“We were eating nearby and wanted to say hello.”
“Harrison, you can come here any time. June, do you want your Backtracker back?”
The Backtracker was our second time travel gadget. We got it off a traveler who was using it to jump around in time to optimize his political campaign. It was a small circular device made out of some kind of metal with one lever on the side. I didn’t know how it worked, and was leery for any of us to touch it. Who knows what one jostle of that little lever could do. I left it with Leslie Leslie for safekeeping. I figured she would have lost it already.
“No, not yet,” I grinned. “But thank you. And I’m working on your shoes. I promise!”
“Yes, yes, Junie, of course.” Leslie Leslie pouted. To be fair, I only knew about the shoes for a few weeks. She knew about them for nine years.
“You’ll get them soon! Really! It’s on my To Do list.”
Harrison nudged me in the side, and I shrugged. I had a very long To Do list. Maybe I’d find time for the shoes over Thanksgiving break.
“What is that in your hand, June?” Leslie Leslie shrieked. “Is that...”
