The meadow ground was mushy beneath their feet and slippery as they climbed the slope. Toren’s steady hand around hers kept her from sliding several times and Charity wondered for the tenth time if maybe she should have stayed behind so he could go so much faster.
He bent over the slope once again, feeling something she couldn’t see even with her flashlight trained on it. An indention in the ground that looked like all the other clumps of dirt covering the hill. “You’re right. He did come this way.”
“Won’t the rain wash the tracks away?” It didn’t even look like a track to her.
“Some, but I can still find him. Come on. This way.” He dragged her up the hill, but suddenly stopped. His head jerked toward the side, staring into the dark storm.
Charity trained the beam of her flashlight that direction. Slanting rain fell across the light like streaks of diamonds.
Toren’s arm was rigid where his wrist met along hers. “Do ye feel that?” he shouted over the rain slapping their slickers.
She shook her head inside her hood. Fear coiled a knot in her belly. “What is it?”
“Sorcery.”
The knot pulled tighter. Her wet fingers curled snugger within his.
“Someone’s opened a rift. I can feel it. Close.” He pulled her with him.
She scrambled to keep up. “Do you think—could it be Alexander? Would he know how?”
Toren glanced back, horror stamping his features in that brief look. “I—I pray not. If he has somehow stumbled upon that ability…without guidance…” He left whatever fears he had over that unspoken, which was far more unnerving.
Charity dug her boots in the muddy soil, trying to go faster.
They crested the hill and stopped at the sight before them.
A swirling luminous gray rift in time disappeared, leaving two figures pushing off the muddy ground where they’d fallen, naked as the day they were born.
“Shaw. Bekah.”
Toren rushed to them, pulling his rain slicker off.
“Oh my—what are you doing here?” As soon as she reached them, Charity pulled Alexander’s rain coat around Bekah’s shoulders.
Shaw pushed his arms through Toren’s slicker. “Where’s Alexander? He’s in danger.”
The howling of the wind dulled as every one of Charity’s senses narrowed down to Shaw’s words. Her legs felt like rubber.
“It escaped into a time rift but Col threw himself after it.”
“You’re certain it’s here? At this time?” Toren’s lips were so tight, Charity couldn’t believe he could still speak. She knew she couldn’t with how tight her throat was closing up.
Shaw nodded grimly. “Edeen searched his memories and gave them to me. What she could. They are incoherent, frightened, forming as events change, but the Sift is here. Close. I’m just not sure exactly where. All I glimpsed was Alexander climbing through this area. Then a cliff. I saw Col and the Sift. Then the ground—“
Shaw pressed his knuckles to his head as though he could force what he viewed in his mind to the surface. “The ground collapsed around him and swallowed them whole. All there is now is darkness and pain. And Col…”
Shaw’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Col is…Alexander’s memories are…Toren, I think Col might be dead.”
Charity’s heart clenched.
“Do you know where he is?” Bekah spoke up for the first time since arriving. She looked pale, but jumping through time does that to you.
Charity shook her head, shivering from more than the cold rain. “We were looking for him.” She couldn’t think. A Sift was after her son. Beautiful vibrant Col might be gone. And her son in the future had been attacked. It was too much. She had to get to him, get to her son. Wait. “You said the ground collapsed.”
“Aye.” Gray eyes turned to her.
Her fear rammed up tenfold. “He’s on the southern cliffs.” She started running. “The sinkholes.”