Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(77)

Colton had suddenly convulsed, and shock overtook his face. His eyes grew pale and distant. He reached for Danny, but as soon as his fingers touched his shirt he jolted again and fell to the ground with a scream.

“Colton!” Danny fell to his knees beside him. Colton writhed against the ground, clutching at his chest. His eyes rolled toward the back of his skull.

Danny froze when he felt it. Not the pleasant shiver he experienced at Colton’s touch, but a terrible shudder that jarred him to his marrow. Not a skip in time, but a total plunge into nothingness.

He looked up as a gray mantle spread across the sky, forming an unnatural veil that hid Enfield from the rest of the world. A concealing web of time.

I was in an accident.

Brandon came hurtling down the lane.

I got out.

Townspeople ran from their houses, staring up at the sky or looking toward the clock tower.

I’m safe now.

The lie drowned under the thundering of his heart as Danny struggled to lift Colton from the ground. He fumbled with the tower door and fell through the entrance when time looped, and he fell over and over until he was finally able to stumble inside. Brandon ran in after him, his eyes so large they were more white than brown.

“What happened?” Brandon demanded. “Who the hell is that?”

Danny held Colton protectively to his chest. But the truth couldn’t be hidden now. With a creeping sense of dread, Danny explained the truth about the limp boy in his arms.

He didn’t think Brandon’s eyes could get any bigger. “You—this thing—he’s been here the whole time?”

Colton feebly stirred, trying to say Danny’s name. He pointed at the stairs, or at least attempted to. Danny bounded up, Brandon following close behind.

“How long’ve you been keeping this from me? How come I’ve never seen him?”

Danny stopped in front of the clockwork. He took a few leaden steps toward the mechanism and sank to his knees, laying Colton gently on the floor sank to his knees, laying Colton gently on the floor. The spirit opened his eyes long enough to see what Danny saw: the stopped gears and cogs, and the empty space where the central cog normally turned.

Colton groaned and closed his eyes.

Danny didn’t bother to check his timepiece. There was no point.

The town had officially Stopped.





If time were still a moving thing, Danny would have said that with each second the crowd outside got bigger as Colton grew paler.

The clock had come to a complete standstill, and the town sat like a frozen gray bubble in the English countryside. Just like the moment when Shere had Stopped. Just like Maldon.

Danny could hear the frenzied townspeople beyond the door. He had brought Colton downstairs and lingered inside the tower with Brandon, trying to figure out what to do. With the buzz of the terrified people and Colton’s strange shivering, it proved difficult.

“We can’t just ignore them,” Brandon hissed. “They have to know.”

“They don’t have to see him,” Danny said, gesturing at Colton, who sat slumped on the stairs. He could barely keep his head up. “What’ll they think? Most of them probably don’t even believe he exists!”

“What do you plan on doing with him, then? Keep him here?”

That would not do at all. Colton couldn’t be left on his own right now. Danny chewed his lower lip, frustrated that while the finer points of clock repair came so easily to him, he was woefully uncreative in a crisis.

Someone had to have stolen the central cog. Was the culprit still in Enfield, unable to run from the scene of his own crime? Or had he already left? Evaline had been able to escape a Stopped town, crossing the time barrier to the outside world. Was it because she was a spirit, or because she had been holding her cog? Yet the people in other Stopped towns, no doubt with access to their tower’s central cog, had never been able to escape.

Danny clutched his head and groaned. He didn’t know.

Time warbled and they found themselves by the clockwork again, then everything tilted and they were back downstairs.

When he recovered, Brandon glanced at the door. “Maybe one of this lot stole it and now he’s blending into the crowd. You know, to avoid suspicion? It’s what I would do, if I’d done it.”

“And did you do it?”

Brandon lifted his arms. “Search me all you like, but I don’t have it.”

Danny had seen Brandon run from the direction of the pub, not the tower. Danny looked at Colton, whose eyelids flinched in pain. He rubbed at his chest as if his heart was bothering him. In a sense, it was.

“All right,” Danny said, “I think I know what to do. Brandon, do you trust me?”

The apprentice hesitated. “I suppose.”

“You have to carry Colton to the outskirts of town. Right to the edge of the barrier. Wait there for me while I try to explain what’s going on.”

Brandon nodded. He bent to pick up Colton, but the spirit tried to push himself away.

“Colton, let him carry you. I promise I’ll be right behind you.”

Their eyes met, Colton’s once-bright amber irises now dull. The spirit slumped, allowing Brandon to scoop him up, one arm under his legs, the other supporting his shoulders. Danny opened the side door and watched as Brandon slipped behind the hedge.

He gathered his courage and walked in the opposite direction, toward the raised voices. When the townspeople saw him, they immediately swarmed, as frantic as rats on a sinking ship.