Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(57)

The light in the room faded into the blue and gray bruise of dusk by the time he could stand. He thought he might retch again, but his stomach was hard and hollow.

Lucas was dead. The new Maldon tower—all of their hard work—destroyed. Bombs planted, but by whom?

He touched the scar on his chin. The shape and promise of a nightmare.



The funeral was held two days later in Highgate Cemetery, a sprawling place overcrowded with trees and ferns. It looked more like a forest than a graveyard.

He hadn’t wanted to come, but he wanted to get away from his mother. The fragile hope she insisted on carrying had shattered when he told her about the tower. He had heard her sobbing long into the night, and in the morning, he couldn’t convince her to leave her bed. He’d made her tea, but it had gone untouched.

“Mum, you have to eat something,” he had told her in the dim light of her bedroom.

But she had just stared at him as if he were the ghost of a bad dream, as if this were somehow also his fault.

He had to escape that look, had to stop the sharp stone of guilt from reforming in his stomach.

So here he was, in his best suit and standing with his eyes lowered. He tried not to pay attention to the people around him, but someone came and stood on his right.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Matthias said.

A flare of anger licked up Danny’s ribs at the sight of Matthias, but it was weak and dissipated quickly. Danny watched mourners congregate around the recently dug grave. Lucas’s parents stood at the front, their faces pale and expressionless as though carved from stone, like the weeping angels throughout the cemetery.

“Didn’t think I’d come, either,” Danny said, looking away. A mechanical raven was perched on a tombstone nearby. Come nighttime, it would be alert for grave robbers.

Danny swallowed painfully. “Matthias … who would do this? If it was the protesters, how did they do this? They—They killed someone.”

Matthias’s breath caught, and when Danny turned, the man’s eyes were brimming with tears. Danny had never seen Matthias cry, and it made him avert his eyes again.

“I don’t know.” Matthias swallowed hard. “The Lead might try to build another tower.”

“After this? Unlikely. Besides, you heard what they said. The tower didn’t work.”

“The towers are a lost art,” Matthias agreed. “I wonder …”

He trailed off, and Danny glanced at him. But the man now had his eyes fixed on the coffin being carried by pallbearers to the grave, and they said nothing more.

The dark wooden coffin was lowered. Lucas’s mother sobbed loudly as she watched what was left of her son disappear under the earth. Each sound tore a new hole in Danny’s chest. He wondered if the clocks in their house were all stopped at Lucas’s time of death, the time the tower had fallen, the exact moment a dream had ended.

Lucas was in an accident. He didn’t get out. He’s dead now.

“Be careful, Danny,” Matthias whispered as the priest uttered words of blessing and tossed the first handful of dirt into the grave. “Until these people are caught, no clock tower is safe.”

People.

“Matthias,” he said slowly, softly, “what sorts of bombs were found at the tower?”

Danny wasn’t sure where the question came from, but Matthias’s knowing expression told him he’d been waiting for it.

“Pipe bombs.”



Those two words possessed him.

Danny stood in the hospital entrance, blocking foot traffic. Those who passed shot him dirty looks and jostled him to get by.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

But he needed answers.

It had been months since he’d been to the hospital, and he remembered the smell immediately: chemicals and urine. It made his nose itch and his stomach hurt.

His stay here had almost been worse than the explosion itself. The way his mother and Matthias treated him like a china doll, the sympathy in everyone’s eyes, the way the doctor approached his side as if he were unstable.

Then again, Danny’s nightmares had tended to wake the entire ward. And he’d tried to escape. Twice.

“May I help you?” a nurse asked at the front desk. Thankfully, he didn’t recognize her.

“Yes. I was looking for my, er, uncle. Tom Hawthorne?”

She checked the files and directed Danny to a room on the second story. He walked up the stairs, his heart pounding. The floors creaked under his boots, and he felt as if just by looking at him people would know what he was up to. But he went largely ignored, the staff far too busy with their own concerns.

When he reached the right room, he braced himself before entering. It was worse than he thought. Legs and arms were splinted, George’s head bandaged and bloody, Tom’s face bruised. At the sight of Danny, they tensed.

“What are you doing here?” Tom growled. Even his voice sounded bruised.

Danny tried to swallow past his dry tongue. “I know what’s going on.”

The two men exchanged a look.

“About the clock towers,” Danny clarified.

“Then would you do us a favor and tell us?” George said.

“You two are in on it. Together.”

Tom managed to croak out a laugh. “Lad, the hospital fumes must have gotten to you.”