The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(201)

Hannah looked to Amanda and noticed a quarter-size spot of tempis on the back of her hand. At long last, the solis was wearing off. Her heart leapt with anxious hope. Don’t let him see it. Keep his eyes on you.

“A second Cataclysm,” Hannah replied. “Peter mentioned it in a letter.”

Evan snapped his fingers. “Aha! Yes! Except . . . no. That doesn’t add up. The Gothams don’t give a crap about anyone outside the clan. If they thought their Habitrail hamlet was going tempo-nuclear, they’d simply pack up and move. So then what’s the real issue? Why are they freaking out?”

Hannah kept her tense stare on Evan. Look at me. Look at me, you worm.

“What? You’re saying Peter lied to us?”

“Through his big Irish chompers. Excuse me a moment.”

He aimed the cone-shaped jolter at Amanda and pulled the trigger. Hannah screamed as her sister convulsed in fresh pain. The tempis vanished from her hand.

“You’ll have to try better than that, girls. This isn’t my first day teaching.”

Hannah cried through the bars. “Stop it! Stop! Turn it off!”

“You know if you just paid more attention, you wouldn’t be here in remedial class. The answer’s been out there. You’re just not connecting the dots.”

“Then just tell us! Tell us! Stop hurting her and tell us!”

“You tell me, Hannah.”

“I don’t know!”

“Get it right and I’ll stop hurting your sister.”

“I don’t know!”

“Think harder! This is the lightning round! Take a Hail Mary, shot-in-the-dark, wild-guess stab at the answer! What horrible event do you think is coming?”

“IT’S THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD!”

“YES!”

He turned off the jolter. The three of them breathed in heavy gasps. Evan took on a new and somber sincerity that Hannah found utterly frightening.

“This world ends,” he announced with a heavy breath. “In four years and seven months, it all goes to hell in exactly the way ours did. The sky comes down. The air turns cold. The buildings go crinkle and the people go crunch. This time no one gets a bracelet. No one gets out alive except the Pelletiers and me. They go forward to their own adjacent future. I go back. Back to the beginning. Back to Nico Mundis and his crappy little store. This is now my”—he brandished the numerical tattoo on the back of his right hand—“fifty-fifth trip through the same time period. I’ve danced this dance over and over again. Sure, I mix things up, just for shits and giggles, but it always ends the same.”

The Givens fell to abject silence, staring ahead in bleak dismay. Evan crossed his arms and studied Amanda. A hard smile returned to his face.

“I know what you’re thinking. ‘Oh that Evan. Such a meanie. He’ll say anything to upset us.’ Well, an hour from now, Peter will confirm everything I just told you. And while you’re all sobbing into your teacups, he’ll falsely assure you that all is not lost. See, just like Rebel, Peter’s got a plan to save the world. You’ll believe it, of course, because you want to. You have to. But the spoiler twist? It doesn’t work. I’ve seen the non-result for myself, again and again and again. You try to stop what’s coming every single time. You fail, every single . . .”

He stopped in the wake of Hannah’s low chuckle. It began as a mirthful rumble, then rose in volume until her giggles overtook the office.

Evan cocked his head at her quizzically. This was new. “You don’t believe me.”

“Oh, I believe what you’re saying, Evan. It makes perfect sense in its own sick way. What I don’t believe is you. You went through all this trouble, you risked life and limb just to give us the bad news before Peter did. You had to see the looks on our faces.”

He slit his eyes as she rolled with pitch-black laughter. Hannah wasn’t sure if it was a Method act or a sign that her mind had finally snapped for good, but it seemed only right to rob this sick little demon of the one thing he came for.

She wiped her eyes. “God, Amanda. You missed it earlier, when he told me why he hated me so much. You won’t believe this.”

“I didn’t tell you anything.”

“You told me everything.” She laughed. “You drew all the dots. I just had to connect them. You see, Amanda, he used to be one of us. In times undone, days gone bye-bye, Evan lived with us in Terra Vista. Then one day I made the awful mistake of being nice to him. I rubbed his arm. Maybe gave him a hug. Though he creeped me out with his constant eyef*cks, he’d lost his world just like the rest of us. I felt sorry for him.”

Evan scoffed with forced amusement. “Nice try, but that’s not even—”

“And yet instead of realizing that I’m touchy-feely with everyone, Sad Sack over here convinced himself that something hot and heavy was brewing between us. In his twisted little mind, I was one tender moment away from becoming his devoted love cushion.”

“Your ego’s truly—”

“Shush, now. I’m talking to my sister. Anyway, one night he’s walking the grounds, looking for me as usual. Maybe he went by the pool house, or the garden shed, someplace without a camera. And then he heard it. The sounds of my screwing, my melodious oohing. He looked through the door and learned that while he was picking out china patterns, I was spreading my legs for Jury Curado.”