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  The smart-ass presented it to me like it was some kind of bouquet. “I didn’t know if you wanted to have a burial.”

  I took a long look at six years’ worth of hair, and then threw it in the trash.

  Nate leaned back against the wall, studying the change. “This is pretty serious.”

  “It was time for a change.” Time to grow up.

  “Why?” He pushed off the wall with one foot and started pacing. “We’ve known each other for how many years? Five, at least? The Dune I know is laidback, dependable. He makes logical, balanced decisions, applies all the facts, weighs the pros and cons. This feels impulsive, and you aren’t impulsive.”

  “I’ve been thinking about cutting them off for a while.” That wasn’t a lie. I’d even been letting them grow out, which was the only reason I wasn’t totally bald.

  “The hair isn’t the only issue. Something’s up. Is this about getting a girlfriend or some stupid crap like that?”

  “No,” I protested, even though my luck with the ladies had been off. The way the Hourglass employees were pairing up reminded me of Noah’s ark. I didn’t want to cruise into the sunset with Nate.

  “You started going to the gym a couple of months ago. You just bought new clothes.” He pointed to the bags on the counter.

  “Some of my Samoan cousins lean toward the Rock. Others, not as much. I know which way I want to go.” The gym had been about fear of turning fat. “But you’re right. Buying the clothes was intentional.”

  “Because?”

  “I’m going on a job.”

  Nate’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of job requires a dude makeover?”

  “It’s not a makeover. It’s an upgrade. I can’t be a kid forever.” I didn’t want to be. “Professionals don’t wear T-shirts that say, ‘Bazinga.’ ”

  The front door burst open. The gust of cold air had me covering my head with my hands. When I saw Emerson, I covered my nipples instead.

  Because I was a dork.

  “Whoa, Nelly!” Emerson stopped so fast Michael almost ran over her. She dropped the grocery bags she held on the kitchen table and stared at me with a frightening kind of glee on her face. “Dune. You’re scary. And hot. Scary hot. Who knew?”

  Michael took a step back and fanned himself. “I have the vapors.”

  “I like it.” Em approached me the way a cat might approach a still-wriggling puffer fish, from multiple angles and with a cautious eye. “But where’s your shirt?”

  “He got some new ones. Because he’s a grown-up.” Nate’s annoying singsongy tone set my teeth on edge.

  “Um. Dune?” Em bit her lower lip. “I know what nipples look like.”

  I sighed, lowered my hands, and decided I really needed to get out more.

  Nate threw me one of the button-ups I’d found on sale at the mall, along with a vest I’d snagged at the thrift shop. I caught them right before they hit me in the face.

  The door opened again, allowing another blast of cold air. Ava. She stopped and stared at my head. “Where are your dreads?”

  I pointed to the trash can.

  “I think I like it.” She walked past me with raised eyebrows and tucked herself into a corner, taking on her usual observer role.

  “Okay. Try the bowler on first,” Em urged, picking up a hat and shoving it at me. “This is going to be yummy.”

  “We need to see the shirts, too,” Michael said, smiling. That was only another example of why he and Emerson fit together the way they did. Even with all the trouble we’d seen lately, he’d never smiled like that before her.

  “It must be nice to be so secure in your relationship,” I said to him, smoothing out the now-crumpled bowler hat.

  “She loves me,” he answered simply.

  “I love him.” Em smiled.

  “Listen,” I said, spinning the hat on my finger. “If you people think I’m going to play dress-up—”

  “I want a montage.” Em reached in one of the grocery bags and pulled out a bag of clementines. She took a couple out and threw one to Ava, then tossed the rest of the package to Michael, who caught it neatly before stowing it in the crisper drawer of the fridge.

  “Montage?” I asked.

  “Yeah, like those cheesy eighties movies, where the girl—or guy—tries on all kinds of new clothes and twirls around in front of a full-length mirror and a crowd of friends. To make sure everything works and that her butt doesn’t look too big.”

  “Or his butt, right?” I asked. Em was the perfect ray of sarcastic sunshine.

  “Right.” She smiled. “So we’ll be right here waiting for you to montage. I’ll try to find some good music. Maybe Pat Benatar or Prince or the Go-Go’s. I think you have the beat, Dune.”

  Ava tossed me a plaid ivy cap. “Try that one, too, or I might steal it.”

  I caught it easily. “One thing. I’ll try on one thing with one hat, just to make sure—”

  “That your butt doesn’t look big. We know.” Em made a shooing motion. “Try to enter at the beginning of the chorus. Bonus if you put a flower between your teeth.”

  Michael followed me back to my room with Nate on his heels. “What’s with the wardrobe change?”

  “Nothing.” I undid the top three buttons on the white shirt, removed the tags, and pulled it over my head. The sensation of the cloth against my now bare neck gave me the willies.

  “How dense do you think I am?” Michael asked. “It’s more than clothes. You cut off your hair.”

  Nate dropped into my desk chair. “We’re calling him Bald Chewbacca now.”

  “I am not bald.” I threw the crumpled tags at his head. “It’s at least half an inch long.”

  “I’m not changing your nickname.” Nate jerked his head in Michael’s direction, and then leaned back on two chair legs. “Either you tell him about the job or I will. But I’m guessing he already knows.”

  “Maybe.” Michael watched as I took a pin-striped vest out of my closet. “But I have no problem waiting right here until you give me your take on it, Dune.”

  “You want my opinion on things?” I slipped my arms into the vest. “I’ve got time to kill. Maybe you’d like to hear my theories on the existence of the chupacabra instead?”

  Neither one of them moved.

  “What about my thoughts on the dangers of Warcraft possibly overtaking Star Wars as the franchise gold mine?”

  “Lies!” Nate yelled.

  I grinned. I knew how to get him distracted.

  “Tell us about the job, Dune.” Michael leaned back against my wall and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Fine.” I blew out a sigh. “Liam called me into his office last week. The Infinityglass is a person.”

  “What?” Nate sucked wind and almost fell out of his chair. “You knew this for a week and you didn’t tell me?”

  “I wanted to, trust me. But Liam wanted it kept quiet.”

  Michael didn’t react at all, which confirmed he’d already been privy to the information. Not surprising. Liam had been grooming him to take over the Hourglass for a while, so he usually knew more than the rest of us.

  I looked Michael in the eye. “I still don’t understand why Liam wanted me for the job instead of you.”

  “You know more about the Infinityglass than anyone, even Liam,” Michael pointed out. “You’re perfect for this.”

  “Maybe, but I tend to fly under the radar. This is a little high profile for me.”

  “Hello? The Infinityglass is a person? How?” Nate waved his arms over his head. “Can we talk about that part?”

  I gave him the short version of Liam’s long explanation. “The Infinityglass has to be activated—”

  “Like the Wonder Twins?” Nate mimicked bumping two rings together, making a kapow sound when he pulled his fists away from each other.

  His levity disappeared when I stared at him.

  “Sorry. Please proceed.”

  “We don’t know what causes the activation, but something
kicks the gene into gear,” I explained.

  Michael spoke up, more confirmation that Liam had completely filled him in. “While we all activated in puberty, it takes more than that to get the Infinityglass going, and the connection doesn’t always happen. That’s why the ‘sightings’ are so limited.”

  “But we have Lily,” I said, “and she nailed down a location. The girl lives in New Orleans, and she happens to be Teague’s daughter.”

  “Teague’s daughter? The Infinityglass is human, and she’s Teague’s daughter. Poor kid, to have that for a parent.” Nate dropped the chair back to all four legs with a thud. “I need a few years to take this in.”

  “You can’t have years. Liam and I are going to Louisiana in five days.”

  “You’re going to help her. I can get on board with that.” Nate nodded thoughtfully. “But if Teague’s her mom, how are you going to get to her?”

  “Teague isn’t involved in her life. She lives with her dad, and he has a badass reputation. Sort of a … mobster.”

  “A mobster who’s the true head of Chronos,” Michael added.

  “So you’re going to New Orleans to meet a gangster and his … legendary daughter, and this requires short hair and a beefcake, hipster vibe?” Nate didn’t sound convinced.

  “It requires that I look responsible. This guy has to take me seriously, and his daughter needs all the help she can get. And I’m not a hipster.”

  “Hipstercrite, maybe. Hold on a second.” Nate held up a hand. “Why was Teague looking for the Infinityglass if the Infinityglass is her daughter? Surely she knows?”

  “Teague wasn’t looking for the Infinityglass. She was looking for Jack, who was looking for the Infinityglass,” Michael explained. “Teague was either trying to keep Jack away from the truth, or there was something else she wanted on the Skroll.”

  “It sounds like Teague is protecting her daughter.” Nate leaned back on two chair legs again. “Why are you going to New Orleans? Why not just make a phone call?”

  “Because every source tells us that Teague isn’t to be trusted, including her husband. Liam talked to him. He wants us to come to NOLA as much as we want to go. I might be staying.” I ran my hand over my head. “Hence the hairdo.”

  A sudden blast of music made us all jump, and the bass thumped hard enough to bounce a couple of pencils off my desk.

  Grateful for the interruption, I asked, “Is that …?”

  “New Kids on the Block,” Nate said, already dancing in his chair.

  I looked at Michael. “Em’s going to make me spin around, isn’t she?”

  “Oh no, my man.” Michael clapped me on the shoulder. “She’s going to make you twirl.”

  Five days later, Liam and I were in his truck, heading for the Nashville airport.

  The blasting heat inside the cab made the skin on my face tighten. An early winter had settled into middle Tennessee with a passion. Seventy-five degrees on Halloween, twenty-nine the next day, and it hadn’t warmed up much since.

  “Not to mess with your creaky old-man bones,” I said, “but I’m already a sweat puddle.”

  Liam smiled and turned the heat down. “You don’t need to worry.”

  “I’m not worried, just hot.” I might have believed it myself if my voice hadn’t cracked in the middle of the sentence. “Are you sure about this?”

  “I am.”

  As he merged onto I-65 north, I fidgeted with the seat belt, pulling it above and below my shoulder to find a comfortable position. Finally, I just sat on my hands to keep them still. I was too broad in the shoulders to get truly comfortable, anyway.

  Liam checked his rearview mirror. “I know switching the Infinityglass paradigm from object to human has been difficult.”

  “What hasn’t been difficult this year?”

  The dead had come back to life. Time had been rewritten.

  The space time continuum had been damaged. Anyone with the basic time gene could see ripples; imprints of people from the past, which had turned into entire scenes, streets full of people, even buildings. These rips were getting worse. Their latest evolution had trapped Michael and Em inside one, and they’d barely escaped.

  Liam’s answering smile was more of a grimace. “Too true. There is one thing we haven’t discussed, and it should’ve had priority. Is it going to be difficult for you to be near so much water?”

  I stared out the window and thought about the question. Frost covered fields like powdered sugar as we passed everything from mansions to tiny farmhouses. Livestock stood in huddles to keep warm, their breaths rising into the air. Half-frozen ponds waited for spring.

  Harmless, still water.

  Besides the Harpeth, I hadn’t been near a river in months, and now I was heading for New Orleans and its neighbors, the Mississippi, Lake Pontchartrain, and the Gulf of Mexico.

  “I think it’s going to be okay.” I hoped it was. “But don’t expect me to spend a lot of time by the water.”

  Liam stared straight ahead, his eyebrows puckered in concentration. “I won’t leave you in a circumstance you aren’t comfortable with. That’s a promise.”

  “I know that.” I adjusted the seat belt again, and tried to change the subject. “What I’m not comfortable with is you leaving Ivy Springs. Grace needs you.”

  Liam’s wife had just come out of a nine-month-long coma.

  “Hallie Girard needs us, too. I’ll only be away for a day. Two, max.”

  All I knew about Hallie was that she was seventeen, and for some reason, really isolated. I’d done more than one Internet search on her. She didn’t have any social media profiles. I wondered if being the Infinityglass had affected her life in some horrible way.

  “What’s her dad going to think when you offer up a tech geek to him?”

  “Luckily, he and I have a history, even if it’s only because we met through Teague. Her betrayal didn’t surprise him. She abandoned her family long ago. It’s heartbreaking, honestly, especially for the daughter.” Liam switched lanes. “As far as the Infinityglass, he knew about it, but believed the same thing we did. That it was an object.”

  “How did he take it when you told him it was his daughter?” I asked.

  “Hard. But he believed me.”

  I wondered what being an all-powerful, mythical “thing” could do to a girl. I wondered if she had symptoms.

  Liam exited for the airport, heading for short-term parking. After he picked a spot and killed the engine, I got out and removed our suitcases from the back of the truck.

  “If it doesn’t work, if you have any qualms, you come back home with me,” Liam said. “Deal?”

  I looked up at the Nashville International Airport and answered the only way I could.

  “Deal.”

  Dune, Mid-November, New Orleans

  There were already Christmas decorations up in the airport.

  We left baggage claim and waited on the sidewalk for a taxi. Tourists were everywhere. Groups of tipsy college kids who’d gotten an early start on Bourbon Street, married couples ready for a getaway weekend, and us.

  I tried to take in as much of the city as I could on the cab ride, but nerves and the smell of the water kept my gut twisted. Ivy Springs had its share of history spread out over a lot of mileage, but the Garden District’s history was dense and compact.

  Dormers and gables, porches and columns, all layered with intricate detail. Everything was white or pastel, except for the bark of the massive oaks and the leaves on their branches. The tree roots grew so large that the sidewalk broke into pieces above them.

  Among all that beauty, the Girard house was best described as nouveau riche penitentiary.

  A big guy with a holstered firearm buzzed us through the gate and inside the front door. The air smelled like money. After a few seconds, we were led to Paul Girard’s “library.”

  It was grandiose, an obnoxious kind of new South. Everything was shiny, or new and dulled down to look old. I was used to Liam’s home office, w
hich was nice enough, but dusty and full of books and his personal collection of hourglasses. Liam’s office looked like he worked in it. Paul Girard’s library looked like he posed in it.

  “Come in.” Girard stood. He was your basic slick-haired, shifty-eyed, moneyed gangster, with excellent taste in suits.

  After introductions, Girard asked about our flight and general well-being, but the chitchat didn’t last long. Liam sat down, and so did I, balancing on the edge of a masculine couch.

  “You’re the guy who’s supposed to help my daughter?” Girard sounded doubtful.

  “Yes, sir.” I nodded.

  He looked me over, summed me up. “Try to relax.”

  I slid back on the seat. It was the best I could manage.

  Girard continued the stare-down. “Try to relax more.”

  I put one arm on the back of the couch and smiled. Felt my lips wobble. Wanted to go home really, really, desperately.

  Liam took pity on my inner introvert. “Dune has been with the Hourglass for several years. I’ve told you about his work history, so you know he’s reliable. He also happens to have more knowledge about the Infinityglass than anyone, even myself.”

  “Knowledge. Great.” Girard tilted his head to the side, regarding me. “Does he talk?”

  “He … yes.” I’d never seen Liam falter before.

  “I do.” I moved back to the edge of the couch. “Talk, I mean.”

  When Girard shifted, I saw the gun holster under his jacket. Everyone in this house was armed. “The Infinityglass. What do you know?”

  This was my chance. “Horologists name it as one of the biggest finds in the field, at least the ones who cop to its being real.”

  “I’m certain my daughter is real.”

  I made a sound somewhere between a gulp and a laugh. “Well, horologists believe it’s an object, not a human. I should explain what horo—”

  “I know what horology is. Liam started out doing all your talking for you. Do horologists do all your thinking for you? What makes you believe it’s a human?”

  I looked at Liam, and he handed over the briefcase I’d felt too self-conscious to carry. I flipped the latches and pushed it toward Girard. “That’s my personal external drive. It holds every shred of evidence ever collected on the Infinityglass, a couple of hundred years’ worth, and includes new information that was recently discovered on a Skroll.”