by Mia Downing
Chasing Time
Bonded Souls Book One
Mia Downing
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
COPYRIGHT 2021© Mia Downing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: [email protected]
www.miadowning.com
Cover Art by Diana Carlile
http://designingdiana.blogspot.com/
Published in the United States of America
Contents
Dedication
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
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10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
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24.
25.
Thank You!
What's Next?
Additional Thanks...
About Mia...
More Books!
For Lynda.
Thank you for responding to my “read my shitty chapter” emails with cheers and demands for more. This book wouldn’t have been written without your support.
Chapter one
Skye
Why the hell did he bother me so much? The stranger had been standing across the street in front of the bakery for about twenty minutes, drinking something hot from a take-out cup. His coat collar was pulled up to ward off the chill of the autumn morning, the dark, woolen fabric partially obscuring his face and making it hard to tell where the fabric began and his dark hair ended. The longer length of the coat also hid the cut of his pants, though I could tell they weren’t jeans. They were probably nice, like something someone would wear to work or a funeral.
I couldn’t concentrate on the invoice on the counter without my gaze drifting out the big bow window of the bookstore to find him again. I tapped my pencil and stared like a nosy teen when I was a grown-ass woman with my chin in my hand as he sipped.
“Paging Skye Worthington.”
I jumped at the sound of my name and turned. My co-worker and best friend, Grace Marin, stood at the end of the front desk with a box under her arm. She snapped a bubble and sucked the gum back between her glossy, blood-red lips. “I called your name three times. What the hell are you staring at?”
I brushed the hair from my eyes, hiding the blush of embarrassment heating my cheeks. “Some guy, loitering outside the bakery.”
“Tourist?”
I shook my head. “It’s the off-season, and he’s outside the bakery instead of the ice cream parlor.”
“Different strokes and all.” Grace set the box down on the counter. “Is he cute?”
“Does it matter? Guys who stand on a corner like that are digging for dirt on someone or want to sell something— probably illegal somethings.”
“You’re so jaded.” She joined me in peering at the stranger. “Oh, yeah.” She snapped her gum with delighted emphasis. “He’s eye candy.”
“How can you tell? His coat hides everything.” I glanced again, still unable to gauge if he was attractive or not by Grace’s standards. I shrugged. “You know him?”
“You don’t?” Her black brows shot up, becoming lost in the thick fringe of her blood-red bangs.
“No.”
“Well, you should. That’s Marek Young.”
Now my brows shot up, and I stared again as if my efforts would reveal something new. Marek Young was the bookstore’s biggest client. He was an author and researched historical finds and artifacts, so his love for maps and books doubled as a work investment.
“Are you sure?” I frowned. “From the emails I get, Mr. Young should be sixty with a receding hairline.”
“You and your snap judgments. He’s like, thirty.” Grace’s gum popped again. “I can’t believe you haven’t met him. You buy his books for him. He’s in here all the time.”
“Not when I work, I guess.” I shrugged. “Does he do that often? Hang out in front of the bakery?”
“No. I’ve seen him a few times at the diner, though.”
“When does he come in here?”
“Monday mornings and Saturday mornings. He comes in, gets whatever he ordered, and leaves. He doesn’t even browse much, but he’s fun to talk with.”
“Well, that explains why I haven’t met him.” My day off was Monday, and I didn’t work until Saturday afternoon.
Grace snapped her gum again and leaned her elbows on the counter. “He’s hot, though. Deep-blue eyes, and he has this rakish, pirate look about him. I can’t wait for that hair to grow so he can put it up in a man bun.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t think pirates had man buns.”
“Hey, the library has that painting of Lofty Blue, and he’s got something damn close going on under his hat.”
Lofty Blue was the pirate fabled to have lived out his days in our little coastal town of Freedomeville, Maine. Known to his family and friends as Lofton Burke, he had been given the ridiculous nickname for his love of the color. The village embraced him like a mascot, and our bookstore used it to draw in curious folks.
Grace nudged me aside and called up the customer order screen on the computer. “Funny. Mr. Young doesn’t have an order waiting.”
“So he’s just loitering.”
“I guess. Maybe you should go over and get us coffee and those donuts Mr. Dexter likes. Say hi to Mr. Young on your way. Introduce yourself as his buyer.”
I shot her a look of disgust and bumped my hip against hers to get her to move. “I have to finish this invoice.”
The unease I’d felt at first seeing him grew to something bigger, the dislike even more palpable, something I could almost taste on my tongue. Unfortunately, that unease mixed with an odd heat of desire that tingled along my skin.
I glared out the window at his lean, dark form. “Leave already.”
“Okay, okay. I know when I’m not wanted,” Grace said.
“No, I meant him.”
Grace flipped me off as she retreated to the back of the store.
I returned to the invoice, my fingers ticking off the inventory we’d received as I searched for the elusive number I needed. Something dark fluttered in my peripheral vision, and my head shot up. Mr. Young stepped off the curb and crossed the street, the wind blowing his long, dark coat around his thighs. I still couldn’t see his face as he’d ducked it behind his collar.
He reached our side of the street, nimbly skirting a parked car to step up to the sidewalk. Would he go right or left? Or come in? My shaking hands grew damp from anxiety, and I wiped my palms on my black pants.
But he stopped in front of the store, and for the first time, his handsome, pale face was no longer obscured by hair or coat.
My breath whooshed out in a gasp of surprise as he peered in the window. That wasn’t unusual. People stopped to look at our storefront display often. But his dark gaze latched onto mine, holding it. Grace had said his eyes were blue, but they were shaded by the awning, so I couldn’t tell. The planes of his face were angular in a rugged way that said he’d seen better days, his jaw sharp and chiseled, his cheekbones high. His eyes widened, dark eyebrows raising in surprise. His lips parted on a breath, a
nd I must have imagined that his bottom lip trembled.
His palm rested on the glass pane just inside the arched name of the bookstore, his long fingers spread wide. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and my skin crawled with other-worldly heebie-jeebies. I knew him. I’d seen him in this pose, looking at me in that way before, as if he were just as surprised to see me, too.
My heartbeat picked up in my chest, hammering as I mentally fumbled for reason. Maybe I had seen him in the store or on the street. Maybe I’d seen him on campus at the university.
I closed my eyes, needing to anchor myself. I gave one ragged breath, then another calmer one. This was my overactive imagination at work, creating feelings and stories that I had no right creating. I didn’t know this man from Adam, and if I did, one of the very reasonable explanations I’d thought up would fit. He was a loyal customer. He liked history. There was no need to be afraid.
I nodded and opened my eyes again, ready to turn away from him with an air of dismissal.
But he was gone.
Marek
What kind of pervert stands around on a street corner, hoping to be noticed? Me, I guess.
And it hadn’t worked.
I trudged down Main Street with dejection in every step. Skye hadn’t remembered me, not even when I’d looked through the bookstore window. I’d had such hope that my hands had trembled on the glass, recreating that special memory of ours. She should have remembered the day I had proposed to her, recalled her surprise and joy at seeing the little box with the sparkling ring she’d coveted.
Instead, this Skye had looked at me with shock and distaste, as if I’d invaded her space like a stalker on a sick mission. Her sky-blue eyes had narrowed, her plump lips frowning. She’d cut her hair so it was shoulder-length, and it was no longer jet black with curls. As the sunlight had slid down the coppery, straight tendrils, my heart had wrenched a little. This woman loved all the right things—books, Goth, history, the color black. But was she my Skye? Or had my mistakes screwed that up, too?
My life depended on her remembering me, remembering us, knowing she was a time traveler, and that we didn’t belong here.
A shit-box car with a ton of rust and a souped-up motor revved as it turned off the main road, stirring up the autumn leaves. I hated this era we were stuck in. We preferred laying over between time travelling jumps in the 1950s when the cars rolled down the street with flare and style, and people knew how to dress. I preferred the Victorian era’s vest over a dress shirt and tailored pants. Even my leather pants from our real time worked with a lot of different looks in this time.
I had discovered things I did like from this time— alternative music, and the convenience of prepared food. And of course, I appreciated the ease in which I could order the materials I needed from the bookstore using email without having direct contact with Skye. I clung to those emails like a shipwrecked man, hating that she now searched for books that could give us the answers, loving that her voice was tucked in each missive.
I missed her voice.
I couldn’t have direct contact with her until she was ready, until her energy was strong enough to bond with mine. That was a quirk in time travel. It took two of us to accomplish the impossible. She was my energy source, my powerhouse. I was the captain, so to speak, guiding us through time to our destination. I could travel without her, and I had traveled to the point that I now treaded in a dangerous area. I needed her energy to replenish what I had wasted while trying to save her.
If she didn’t know me… How the hell would I tell her? Hey, you’re a time traveler, and we’re stuck here, and I don’t know what that means. But if you don’t bond with me, I die. That summed it up in a nutshell.
If I told her all that, I’d be committed to a mental hospital.
But if she remembered… Well, that would make it easier. She’d understand the backstory. But that wouldn’t mean she’d forgive me and bond with me again. Oh, no. If she remembered what happened before we came to this time, she’d probably cut off my testicles with a shiv made from a rusty spoon.
I had promised never to leave her behind. And to save her—us—I had left her here, in this time, alone.
That was probably why she couldn’t remember. I’d betrayed her on so many levels, maybe to the point that she had blocked all that out.
I’d make up for it…if she’d let me.
But I didn’t see that happening. I was fucked. If she remembered, she’d kill me. If she didn’t, I’d probably die anyway.
Skye
The unease that had shrouded my day followed me home that night as the walls of my second-floor apartment closed in around me. Unable to concentrate on the book I needed to finish for this class for my master’s degree, I went to bed early.
As I slept, I dreamed my most favorite dream, one I had painted but could never quite capture on canvas. I usually floated in a sea of dark blue, and streaks of emerald-green lights appeared before me, leading me to another destination in a swirl of brilliant energy. The adventure stole my breath, reminding me of a roller coaster ride in the pitch black, the path illuminated by lights along the tracks ahead. Other paths crisscrossed through the darkness, and I knew they weren’t mine because of the color. Red, white, yellow—those paths led to some other adventure, some other place.
Only in this particular dream, I flew along the lights in an erratic, twisting pattern that lacked lights in some areas only to corkscrew, so the colors mixed with the blinding blackness as I slammed around another corner. I spiraled down, down, down, screaming in a soundless void. The green lights flashed above. Below me, a bottomless pit waited. I held on tighter. A large hand, damp with sweat, clutched mine. I’d never felt a hand before in my dreams. But as that hand let go of mine, terror ripped through me.
I plummeted alone, my screams lost in the inky blackness as the lights dimmed—
I woke in a jolt, sitting up in bed, my breaths shallow and jagged as I clutched my chest. That dream had been so real, like a forgotten experience I had buried deep inside me. All my dreams had felt that way. I hated these adventures my brain created at night, and they wouldn’t cease unless I purged them. I’d learned that the hard way.
I didn’t want to relive that dream, so I rose, grabbed the key, and wandered down the dark hall to the spare room. Unlocking the door, I turned on the light and slipped in.
Here lay the fruits of those nocturnal experiences, all captured in charcoal, pencil, watercolors, or acrylics on the appropriate paper or canvas. No one knew about these drawings, these paintings. Not Grace. Not my social worker, Brenda, who had remained in touch after I went off on my own. Not the therapists who had reached out and tried to save me from my hidden monsters.
But one later therapist had suggested that drawing my dreams might purge them. When I was a child and couldn’t speak English, the social worker had taught me to draw out what I had wanted or needed; it had worked then. So why not use the same technique now?
These were my secrets, because who would believe me if I told them that these experiences made me feel like I had led a whole different life I didn’t remember living? I’d end up in the loony bin. So instead, I purged the memories, one by one, onto canvas and captured them, hoping one day they would all make sense.
Still shaking, I squirted acrylic paints onto a palette and chose a canvas. I quickly sketched the outline of that larger, damp hand and mine as I remembered it. The terror surfaced again. My hand trembled, and I took a calming breath to steady it.
Why? This was usually a peaceful dream, one filled with excitement and happiness as I traveled through those colors, marveling at the various paths that didn’t belong to me. Somehow, I guessed the lights were remedies of my inner energy, and the green ones were a part of mine.
But who owned the hand that had slipped from mine? What color lights did they own? And why did that hand let me go to plummet to…what? Because I was alive and well.
Or was I?
Skye
Mr. Young’s loitering and magical disappearance bothered me well into the next day at work. It didn’t help that I’d gotten little sleep given I’d painted until dawn. I had no reason to blame him for ruining a perfectly good dream sequence, but I did.
I spent my break looking at dream interpretation sites, which didn’t help. Falling from a roller coaster meant I was afraid of losing control in risky situations. That was probably true, and maybe that was the elusive Mr. Young’s fault. He’d already garnered a lot more attention than I gave most people, and someone like me would fear losing the control I’d worked so hard to gain.
I shrugged that off as I unpacked a box of books that had just arrived. The only concrete thing I could blame Mr. Young for was for making me waste time as my attention drifted out the bow window to the vacant sidewalk across the street.
At lunch time, I set down my sandwich as I clicked open another tab on the computer.
Grace rounded the counter and took the stool beside me. “Any luck with the genealogy site my aunt recommended?”
“Nope.”
I’d been searching for my relatives since one of my foster mothers introduced me to genealogy. Her family tree went back to Abraham Lincoln. Mine started and stopped with me, abandoned at age two, but I was optimistic that I’d find someone.
I had odd memories of being in a group of people. It made no sense, but they had felt like family, or rather what I thought family must feel like. I’d been told I spoke another language besides English when I was surrendered into foster care. For some reason, this group had been unable to care for me anymore. I no longer remembered the language, but I hoped something would spark a forgotten experience that might help me find them again.
Grace scrolled her email on her phone, clicking her tongue in that high-pitched, obnoxious way that young people did when they liked something. “I just got an email offer for one of those DNA company kits. You ever consider one of those?”
