Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(98)



“I’ll draw as much bloody attention as I please!” Leila took a final drag from her shortened cigarette and dropped it to the grass, stamping it out with a high-heeled boot. Twin plumes of smoke steamed from her nostrils. “They’re taking forever.”

They stood milling within the crowd that had come to witness the freeing of Maldon. It was rather a difficult thing to witness, as so many had come, and Maldon’s time zone extended quite a ways from the actual town. The authorities hadn’t even brought Evaline to the site yet.

Danny looked at all the eager faces, some smiling like this was a treat, others as solemn and anxious as his mother. Many here also had family trapped in Maldon, had waited three years for this day to arrive. Danny’s heart did an excited little turn of its own, but he would not breathe properly until Evaline walked through the barrier.

They weren’t close to the ruins of the other tower. Danny still knew it was there, a landmark of their failure and of Matthias’s betrayal.

He glanced again at his mother, wringing her hands like the mayor of Enfield had. He took one of them in his own and she looked up, startled.

“Don’t worry, Mum. It’ll be all right.”

She smiled faintly and focused again on the barrier. Danny watched it with her, though there was nothing much to see. His eyes bored into the gray sheet that stretched across Maldon, hoping to sense his father beyond the dome.

“Oh!”

A train of autos headed for the crowd. The people cheered, and Evaline, in the front seat of the lead auto, looked around in surprise at the noise.

The guards helped the clock spirit out and escorted her toward the time barrier. Everyone backed away quickly. The ring of guards around Evaline glared at anyone who even looked her way. Evaline walked past the crowd, her head held high, but Danny could see it was not pride; she was facing her own humility.

Leila’s hand nearly crushed his.

Evaline paused at the barrier, then scanned the crowd for Danny. When she spotted him she gave a small nod, grief still lingering in her eyes. It would fade, he hoped, in time. But what was time to one who breathed never-ending seconds, minutes, hours?

Evaline walked through the barrier. The grayness wavered and the people murmured, expecting it to fall, but it didn’t. Danny knew they still had a long wait ahead.

“Come on, Christopher,” Leila whispered. “You can do it.”

Many sat, or spread out blankets as if to watch a fireworks show. Danny paced and bit his thumbnail for at least half an hour. Leila stood in the same spot as if transfixed.

Just as he was worrying that it might take hours or even days, suddenly the barrier wavered again. Then, in an instant, it fell. The field was finally exposed.

And beyond it, Maldon.

“He did it!” Leila screamed. “He did it, Danny!”

The crowd’s cheers were deafening. Several people ran toward the town, even as the police tried to maintain order. Leila was one of them, Danny not far behind.

People slowly trickled out of Maldon, unsure of the sudden freedom they had been granted. Many ran back into town at the sight of the oncoming army of friends and relatives, but others hurried forward to be hugged and kissed and to exclaim over how much time had truly passed.

Danny guarded his mother from elbows and hands as she weaved through the crowd. She reached an empty clearing and looked around.

“I don’t see him,” she panted. “Do you?”

“No,” Danny said, “but he’s probably still in the clock tower. Let’s just wait.”

The crowd thinned. People were either entering the town or whisking away loved ones to continue their reunion in the field. Leila worried her lip so much that Danny feared it would start bleeding.

He was about to suggest going inside when an arm fell heavily across his shoulders.

“Hello, and who might this tall lad be?”

“Dad!”

“Christopher!”

They both turned and winded him with their embrace. Christopher Hart laughed and held them as tightly as he could manage.

“What’re the tears for? It’s only been a day.”

“A day!” Leila repeated in a near-shriek. “You buffoon, it’s been three bloody years!”

“Zounds. No wonder you look older.”

When Danny stepped back, he had to wipe his eyes on his sleeve. Leila cried freely and tried to halfheartedly smack her husband. With her free hand she pulled him down for a rough kiss.

Danny quickly became fascinated with the grass at his feet.

Done for the moment with their reunion, Christopher pecked his wife on the forehead. She wrapped her arms around his waist.

Danny’s father looked him over with a sharp, wide smile. His green eyes, like Danny’s own, shone with joyful tears.

“The spirit told me what you did, Danny. Look at you!” He put a proud hand on his son’s shoulder and shook it. “Saving towns left and right. Where did you learn to do that?”

“From you,” Danny said.



With Christmas around the corner, and her husband safely home, Leila decided to give Danny his present a few days early. He woke one morning to find a new auto sitting at the curb.

“Mum!” he yelled as he ran around in his robe, hair sticking up in all directions. A girl riding by on a brass-plated bicycle giggled at him. “Mum, this is for me?”

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