Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(74)

“He told me about his late wife and how she had died. The poor man had been lonely for so long. All I wanted to do was make him smile. I tried so hard, until one day I saw it. That smile lit up the whole world. I made him feel something he said he hadn’t felt in years.”

Her eyes were inwardly drawn to that golden, faraway moment. Though Danny didn’t want to, he thought of Colton. Had his sadness been the reason Colton had shown himself? Had Colton, like Evaline, only wanted to make him smile? Danny dug his fingers harder into the settee’s cushions.

Evaline’s expression slowly hardened. “Matthias said that mechanics were not allowed to be with our kind. He and I, we didn’t care. We were happy. But we were also reckless. Another mechanic saw us, and reported us.

“I didn’t see Matthias for a while. Then that other mechanic came and told me what had happened to him. That he was exiled. I was … devastated.” He watched as her memory turned from that golden moment to this gray one, and Danny could imagine the same terror of abandonment in Colton, the drastic urge to break and rip himself apart instead of facing that gaping loneliness again.

“I took apart my clockwork and walked to London to find him.” A small smile, perhaps unbidden, curved her mouth upward. As if she was proud of herself. “Matthias had a bit of a shock, but he’s been happy to have me here. I miss Maldon every day. But I would miss him far more.” She looked Danny in the eye, daring him to say otherwise.

Danny sat there, stunned, the word TRAITOR bold and stark before him like a newspaper headline.

He jumped to his feet and knocked over his empty teacup, spilling the dregs. Evaline tensed as he kneeled before her and took her cold hands in his. Time didn’t shiver the way it did with Colton, but it jumped, like the static shock of touching a fingertip to metal.

“Youcan’tstayhere,” he said.

“What?”

“You. Can’t. Stay. Here. You have to go back to Maldon.”

She tried to pull her hands away, but he held on tighter. “What do you mean?”

The words wanted to tumble from his mouth. It took all his strength to get them out in the right order. “Do you know what a Stopped town is?”

She shook her head.

Fighting another wave of panic, Danny explained what her disappearance had done to the town she’d left behind. “Because you left, the town is Stopped. Time is frozen and can’t move forward. My father—and all those people—are trapped inside Maldon.”

Evaline had gone as gray as the clouds outside. She gripped Danny’s hands so tightly he worried his fingers would break.

“That can’t be right,” she whispered. “Matthias would have told me. Why didn’t Matthias tell me?”

Yes, why hadn’t Matthias told her? He had been questioned extensively, had said he knew nothing about Maldon Stopping. And yet for three years, he had hidden the spirit of Evaline Tower in his own home.

“How could you not know the town Stopped when you left?” Danny asked. “Didn’t you feel it happening?”

“I thought they would install another central cog, and another spirit could live in the tower. That’s what Matthias told me.”

“We tried that, in a way,” Danny said, thinking of the new Maldon tower. “It didn’t work. There was no spirit in the tower.” Who would ever think a tower would need a figure believed to only exist in fairy tales?

She opened her mouth, then closed it, thinking something over. “Being outside of my tower has weakened me,” she said eventually. “So, for the last three years, Matthias has been trying to find a new one for me. He’s been exiled from Maldon; there’s no chance of going back there. But if he installs me in another tower, then we could be together without hiding. The search hasn’t been going well, though.”

Danny frowned, trying to make sense of the idea. It didn’t seem possible. There were no abandoned clock towers, only broken ones, and those were locked within Stopped towns. If Matthias wanted to install her somewhere else …

A cold realization yawned open within him.

No.

And yet, Danny could see the effect of those three years before him. Evaline was vulnerable without her tower, and likely getting weaker every day. Her grayish skin, her slow voice, the weariness in her eyes—all rungs in the ladder that could lead to Matthias’s desperation.

Don’t look at it now. I can’t.

This time he let her pull her hands away. Danny leaned against the armchair as Evaline covered her face with her hands. She could have been a statue for Lucas’s grave. Danny was just wondering how long they would stay like this when Evaline stood and slowly left the room, as if sleepwalking. It all felt like a dream, like a twisting nightmare that wouldn’t let them wake up.

Danny paced the room, his breath deafening in his ears. Matthias had held the key to freeing his father all this time. This entire time.

Three.

Whole.

Years.

How could he? How could he?

Danny snatched a teacup from the table and hurled it against the wall, where it shattered into a dozen pieces. The second one joined it, splashing tea against the sun-bleached wallpaper. Danny choked on his fury, throwing books off the shelves, barely looking at the things he broke before they joined the mess.

He slumped against the wall and covered his mouth with a shaking hand. When Evaline returned, she paused, taking in the damage. She was carrying a cog. Her central cog.