Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(22)

The spirit disappeared. Just vanished. Danny gasped and fell on his backside.

Colton winked back into existence a few feet away. “No one comes here,” he said, eyes blazing. “No one cares about this place. The cleaners come and faff about, and leave me dirtier than before. I haven’t had a real mechanic set foot here in a year.”

Danny ran a hand over the front of his waistcoat, speechless. Eventually he murmured, “You shouldn’t do that to yourself. It harms you, and the town.”

Colton lowered his gaze. “The numeral was rusting, and the minute hand was slowing. I had to do something.”

They stayed like that, motionless, for a full minute. Then Danny stood up carefully, worried that the spirit would disappear again at any moment. Something had changed between them, and it made his frantic mind slow down. He should have been angry; he should have told Colton what a mess he’d made.

But he couldn’t. Because he understood.

Coming nearer, Danny raised his hand.

“Can I … Would it be all right to touch you?”

Colton didn’t move at first. Then he took a step forward and held out a thin, bronze-colored hand. Danny cupped it with his bigger, paler hand, his fingers first skimming the inside of Colton’s palm before their hands clasped.

Danny held back another gasp. A peculiar ripple traveled up his spine, and the hairs on his body stood on end. It was much like touching the time fibers, brushing a finger across them to feel the yawning of time open and swallow him whole. He was scattered across the cosmos and deep within the earth, within himself and outside of himself. A miniscule star in the infinite sky. A tiny speck of life in the flow of time.

He came back to himself a few seconds—hours?—later, breathless. Their hands were still clasped, a seam of gold and silver. How could something with such a gentle touch melt an iron numeral or bend a minute hand? The spirit was much stronger than he appeared. A dangerous thrill shot through Danny’s body.

He tried to imagine being stuck in this tower for years without end. To have no other option than to pretend he was falling apart to get attention.

Danny tugged the spirit forward. “Come with me.”

They walked down a level to the clockwork. Danny heard the swinging of the pendulum below, the heavy weight like a beating heart under their feet. Danny tried to feel for Colton’s pulse, but the hand within his own was still.

The pendulum was not the heart of the clock. The lungs, perhaps, every swing a breath propelling life forward. But the heart was something else.

The lines made by his fingers were still on the central cog, creating channels in the dust. Danny touched it.

“These gears need cleaning. You can’t trust a maintenance crew to do that. Why don’t I come back and do it myself?”

Colton narrowed his eyes. “You would do that?”

“I won’t be paid for it, but I’d like to. I can tell it’s been a while, and if the dust keeps gathering, it’ll muck everything up.”

“Won’t you get in trouble?”

A mechanic was never supposed to accept a job if it didn’t come from the Lead himself. But in this instance, what could Danny say? He couldn’t tell the Lead the real reason why the clock was falling to pieces. He’d look mad.

“No, I won’t get in trouble.”

Colton’s face brightened, shining like the clock face above them. He followed the trail Danny’s eyes had made across the clockwork a moment earlier. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“What’s that?”

“I’m off by about four minutes.”

Danny blinked, then smiled. Colton sounded like a boy who had just admitted to trampling his mother’s prized flowers.

“Don’t worry, I’ll fix that, too.”



He knelt in front of the clockwork, eyeing it with appreciation, the complex structure forged from cleverness and creativity. And necessity. His tools were laid out beside him, from the soft-bristled brush to the screwdriver he’d need for cleaning and disassembly. Although Danny couldn’t stop the flutter of anxiety from being so close to the mechanism, he had to admire it for what it was.

After the incident with his father, Danny had retreated from society. He didn’t want to mince words and force smiles while the stone that sat within him wedged itself deeper, cutting and bleeding him dry. Because of his distance, he had developed a reputation for being odd. People gave him sidelong looks and whispered as soon as they thought he was out of earshot.

Out in the world, Danny didn’t feel himself. There was nothing for him there.

Here, he felt needed. Valued. The tower was a sanctuary, all gold lines and hard curves, glint and glass, standing old and steady under the thrum of time.

Colton stood at his shoulder. As he looked on, Danny found the small components of the clockwork, the cogs that could be removed without interfering too much with the clock’s running. Even if time paused, the townspeople probably wouldn’t notice if Danny replaced the parts quickly enough.

When he’d driven into Enfield that morning, he’d worried what the townspeople might say, since there was no noticeable problem with the tower. But there was a wedding taking place at St. Andrew’s church today, distracting many of them. He wondered what would happen if time warped over the assembly, giving a new meaning to the term “forever hold your peace.”