The Timekeepers can tell me what happened to my dad, Michele realized. They can help me find him! But then she felt a wave of despair come over her, remembering that her key was gone. She’d lost the only ticket to reaching her father, misplaced his most precious possession.
What about the fact that I went back in time tonight at the dance? she wondered, jumping to her feet in the tunnel and pacing hopefully. But as she thought about it, Michele realized there had to be another explanation—like the shared-vision theory Caissie brought up. If she really could travel without the key, then she would have been transported to 1888 while reading her father’s journal, just as the key had sent her to Clara Windsor’s time of 1910 while reading her great-great-aunt’s diary months ago, and then to Lily Windsor’s time of 1925 when she discovered her great-grandmother’s lyrics from the era. No … the power to time travel was within the key. And she had lost it.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” she whispered into the silence. Her stomach churned at the thought of Rebecca taking her revenge and stealing the key yet again. Although Philip said the creature hadn’t touched Michele in the choir room, she knew it was no coincidence that someone stole her key right when Rebecca appeared. The thief must have been working for her.
Yet a huge piece of the puzzle was missing. If Rebecca had been cast out of the Society, with no key to bring back her power—then how did she ultimately end up a traveler? By what means could she have tormented Walter and Dorothy from beyond the grave and stalked Michele and Philip? How could she look like a teenager, how was she able to do anything when she should be powerless and dead in the ground?
Michele reached for the Handbook of the Time Society, wondering if this manual of magic held some answers. She closed her eyes, realizing this book had been right there at the Aura Hotel, in the center of the confrontation among Irving, Millicent, and Rebecca. So much had come and gone in the one hundred and twenty years since. It was incredible to look at this book and know that it had survived everything and was now here in her hands. She flipped it open and began skimming the words, too eager and impatient to read it properly, though she knew she would need to soon.
Her eyes lit on certain phrases as she thumbed through. “Age Shifting” was the title of one of the chapters, and her jaw dropped as she read the first sentence. “Age Shifting is the art of traveling through time in the body of your younger or older self.” She read the sentence over again, wondering if it really meant that people in their forties or fifties could travel through time in their twenty-year-old bodies—and vice versa.
The following chapter was titled “The Visibility Paradigm,” and revealed that “in order to appear as a solid, visible human being and effect change in another time, you must spend seven straight days in the alternate time period before your body leaves its true present and joins you in the past or the future. Until then you are invisible, appearing only to those who possess the Gift of Sight. However, in our Society, remaining in another time past the seven days is forbidden. See the Four Cardinal Laws.”
Her adrenaline spiking, Michele quickly looked through the book until she found a definition of the Gift of Sight: “The ability of ordinary human beings to see spirits and time travelers. This is generally an inherited gift. The Gift of Sight flourishes among the young with a broad imagination, and can occasionally falter and fade as one grows older.”
Michele gasped. Now she had the answer to the question she’d been wondering about for weeks: why she had appeared invisible in the past, unseen by everyone except the Windsor girls and Philip. The Gift of Sight clearly ran in the Windsor family, and Dorothy and Philip possessed it as well.
The heading of the last page caught Michele’s eye: THE FOUR CARDINAL LAWS OF TIME TRAVEL.
Timekeepers are not to interfere in Life or Death. Terrible consequences have followed when this warning has gone ignored. Your signature on the membership papers indicates your understanding of the Four Cardinal Laws below. You agree that failure to comply with these Laws will result in your immediate removal from the Time Society and forfeiture of your Key.
1. You shall never commit murder.
2. You shall never attempt to bring deceased persons back from the dead. This includes traveling to the past to stop a death from occurring.
3. You shall never conceive a child when in the past or future, NOR conceive with someone from another Time. This results in time-crossed children who cannot fully belong to any true Present, and who will go on being split between their father’s and mother’s Times.
4. To avoid these catastrophic outcomes, and to keep from tampering with the Natural Timeline, you shall never stay in any Time besides your true Present for longer than seven straight days. You shall not reach full Visibility in any time other than your own.
Michele felt her heart jump into her throat as she read the third and fourth laws—both broken by her father. The words seemed to swim together on the page, blurring before her eyes, and a cold wave of fear gripped her insides. I wasn’t supposed to be born, she thought, panicking. What did Millicent August mean when she wrote that time-crossed children “go on being split between their father’s and mother’s Times?” What was the catastrophic outcome that lay ahead for her?
Suddenly Michele felt claustrophobic. She had to get out of the tunnel—she needed air. After hastily stuffing her father’s journals and the Handbook of the Time Society back into their box, she stumbled out of the passageway.
Michele slipped away through the Windsor Mansion front doors and into the night, breathing in shallow gasps as she looked around at a world that no longer made any sense. She pushed past the gates and broke into a run, forcing aside thoughts of her grandparents and their likely panic upon discovering her missing at this late hour. Any shred of security that she’d felt in her life had now been turned upside down, and she needed to run, to drown out the unwanted knowledge clouding her mind.
Michele ran so fast that the Manhattan landmarks and scenes seemed to move and transform beside her. As she raced past the glittering Plaza Hotel, the limousine parked in front of the hotel’s entrance shook until it was no longer a limo, but a formal horse-drawn carriage. Michele blinked rapidly as she continued down Fifth Avenue, nearly falling over when she saw that all the modern-day buildings and shops had disappeared. Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel, Abercrombie & Fitch, the Gap—they were all gone. Instead, those commercial blocks were now lined with extravagant houses similar to the Windsor Mansion.
It’s just my imagination, Michele told herself. I can’t be in the past.
Picking up speed, she crossed from Fifth to Sixth Avenue, the streets still in a time warp, with no trace of modern cars or buildings. Michele spotted a ghostly, lone newspaper boy hawking the day’s paper, and she peered closer at the boldfaced date: November 29, 1904.
Impossible. I don’t have the key.
She hurried down Seventh, not slowing until she spotted the hulking brownstone structure of the Osborne Apartments. As she came to a halt, everything around her returned to normal. Yellow cabs resumed their places, contemporary high-rises re-formed in the sky, and the marquees overhead hyped the newest Broadway hits.
Michele took a deep breath, looking at the Osborne with surprise. She hadn’t realized she’d been running to him—and yet now that she was there, she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. She took a hesitant step closer and glanced up at his window. The curtains were drawn.
A wave of exhaustion swept over her, and before turning around for home, Michele looked back up at Philip’s window once more. She gasped as a hand appeared, pulling back the curtains. A face pressed against the window and Michele’s jaw dropped as grown Philip from the 1930s looked out into the night, his expression dreamy.
“Ohmygod.” She was officially hallucinating. She blinked, and when she looked back the curtains were drawn once again. If only he’d really been there. With one last, longing glance, Michele backed away from the Osborne and turned toward home.
; DAY FIVE
Michele took a nervous sip of water as she glanced out the window of Celsius, the glass-enclosed restaurant overlooking Bryant Park and the ice-skating rink. The New York Public Library’s mammoth Beaux-Arts structure stood just behind the rink, and part of her wanted to run out of the restaurant before her guest arrived and hide out among the books. But then a woman in her late thirties stepped inside, her green eyes warm and welcoming, and Michele felt herself relax.
“You must be Marion’s girl.” The woman greeted her with a smile. “I’d know those eyes anywhere. I’m Elizabeth Jade.”
“Hi.” Michele stood to shake her hand, but Elizabeth wrapped her into a hug instead.
“It’s so lovely to meet you. I’m just … so terribly sorry about your mother.” Elizabeth’s eyes filled with sadness, and in that moment Michele sensed the friendship her mom and Elizabeth had once shared.
“My grandfather told me you called the day she died,” Michele said. “What made you reach out after all those years?”
“I thought about her often. It wasn’t just that day,” Elizabeth explained, sitting across from Michele at the table. “We just changed so much in our teens. I went off to boarding school and developed this psychic ability that at first turned me into a loner. I was frightened and overwhelmed, and it was so much easier to be alone than to try to act like a normal teenager with my friends. By the time I was settled and confident with my new life, Marion had moved to L.A. It seemed like the window of our friendship had closed, but I missed her. I missed those days.”
Elizabeth reached into her purse and pulled out a photograph, sliding it across the table for Michele to see: a picture of twelve-year-old Marion and Elizabeth, dressed in matching fluorescent jumpsuits with side ponytails. As she looked at the photo Michele found herself giggling and, at the same time, fighting back tears.
“Children of the eighties,” Elizabeth remarked with a slight smile. “We had so much fun together.” Her smile faded. “The day your mother died, I woke up with a horrible knot in my stomach. Her name was on my mind, and though I knew she was most likely still in L.A., I called your grandparents because they were my only link to her. All I wanted was to hear your grandfather say that everything was fine, that Marion was happy and safe in L.A. Which he did … but then, we all read the story in the paper.”
Michele nodded, looking away. She couldn’t stand to hear any more about the worst day of her life, and Elizabeth sensed this, quickly changing the subject.
“I want to hear all about you. Your grandmother tells me some pretty … incredible things. If I were anyone else I might not believe her, but then, I’m the last person who’s allowed to doubt someone’s supernatural experiences.” Elizabeth grinned wryly.
Michele took a deep breath, for a moment doubting how much to tell Elizabeth. But as she looked from the sweet photograph to the kind woman across the table, Michele found herself blurting out the whole story—from her romance with Philip in the past to the appearance of the new, modern-day Philip; her discoveries about her father and her identity as a time-crossed accident of birth; and of course the threat of Rebecca. By the time Michele finally finished, the wide-eyed expression on Elizabeth’s face had her wondering if she had been too quick to open up to her mother’s friend. What if this was too much madness for even a psychic medium to accept?
But then Elizabeth smiled broadly, reaching over the table to squeeze her hand.
“Of course Marion Windsor would have a daughter as incredible as you,” she marveled. “Don’t for a moment think of yourself as a mistake. Your parents fell in love for a reason, and I believe it was because you were meant to be born. There is no such thing as accidents in life. Great things will come of your abilities—I can feel it.”
Michele felt tears of relief well in her eyes, and this time she didn’t fight them.
“Thank you,” she murmured, wiping her eyes. “I don’t know if I can believe all that yet, after what I’ve read in the Handbook of the Time Society so far—but you’ve given me some hope.”
“I’d like to put you under hypnosis at my meditation studio tomorrow, if you’re comfortable with that. I believe your subconscious is very powerful—strong enough to show us answers as to how you’re supposed to defeat Rebecca,” Elizabeth said.
Michele hesitated. “Hypnosis sounds so … intense. What’s it really like? What will happen?”
“It’s nothing to be nervous about,” Elizabeth assured her. “I’ll simply guide you through deep breathing and meditation to help temporarily shut off your conscious mind and awaken your subconscious, to show us what you need to know. The hypnosis will last about thirty minutes or less, and then everything will return to normal. I promise you’ll be safe.”
“Okay,” Michele agreed. “I’m in.”
“Good. Now, as far as the tale of the two Philips. Did your mom ever tell you about the book she read in eighth grade, The Reincarnated Soul?”
“It doesn’t ring a bell. Sounds like a pretty serious book for an eighth grader to read.” Michele smiled fondly as she looked down at the picture of her mom as a precocious twelve-year-old.
“It was. I’m the one who recommended it to her,” Elizabeth admitted. “The book was the firsthand account of Dr. Daniel Ross, a respected psychiatrist from Johns Hopkins, who worked with children who could recall their former lives. He worked with a toddler whose first words were in Gaelic instead of English, a teenager who remembered his entire life as a fighter pilot in World War II, and many other similar cases. Dr. Ross believed that we are all reborn after we die, and while we might have a new body and a new existence, our spirit stays the same. This explains the common phenomenon of déjà vu, as well as the feeling that we’ve known someone for a long time when we’ve only met them recently.” Elizabeth paused. “I believe—in fact, I feel quite certain—that the current Philip Walker is a reincarnation of the same Philip Walker you had a relationship with in 1910.”
Michele nearly choked on her drink.
“Wait, what? Are you serious? I’m just managing to wrap my head around time travel and being the daughter of two times, and now you want to add in reincarnation?”
“I can understand it sounding crazy to you. But there are many people out there who make a strong case for the existence of reincarnation. It would explain so much about you and the new Philip, including why your presence brings up feelings and fragments of memories for him, rather than him clearly remembering who you are and your relationship,” Elizabeth explained. “Because it’s rare for people to recall their past lives in detail, without undergoing past-life regression.”
Michele let out a slow exhale, taking in all of this incredible information.
“He promised he would find a way back to me,” she confided. “Is this what he meant?”
“A century ago, people knew even less about reincarnation than they do now. However, Philip’s intention to return to you must have stayed with his spirit beyond his death, causing him to be reborn at a time when you two could be together. The theory of reincarnation is that souls with unfinished business return not just to earth, but to the same people they knew in previous lives. Philip obviously had unfinished business with you, and he chose to live again. He chose you.”
Michele tried to speak, but couldn’t. Elizabeth patted her hand understandingly.
“I know. It’s a lot to take in, even for someone who’s experienced as much as you have. When it comes to the paranormal, there’s rarely a way to collect scientific proof, so at the end of the day you have to trust and believe what feels right.”
“This does feel right,” Michele spoke up. “It’s unbelievable, but … it feels like the answer I was looking for.”
Returning home, her mind filled with Elizabeth’s words, Michele headed straight for the secret passageway. If Philip really did come back for her, then she had even more motivation to fight—and to stay in the present. She opened Irving’s diary to the page where she’d left off, ready to lea
rn all that she could.
10
THE DIARY OF IRVING HENRY
February 2, 1888
Millicent August smiles as she hands me a thin stack of papers, each stamped with the Time Society symbol of a coronet circling a clock. “Once you’ve signed these contracts you will be formally inducted into the Time Society.”
I scrawl my signature and feel a flash of unexpected sorrow. Nothing will ever be the same again. The innocence of youth disappeared the moment I discovered the truth, and my former life vanished along with it. I’ll never again be Irving Henry, the happy-go-lucky university student who considers the downstairs rooms of the Windsor mansions my home, who has a family in Rupert and the rest of the Windsors’ staff. For the first time, I am truly on my own. I know it’s for the best, and of course I realize that this newfound gift is the great adventure I always wanted—but still, I find myself wishing I could cling to boyhood just a little longer before facing the unknown world alone.
“I imagine you won’t be returning to the Windsor Mansion,” Millicent says, as if reading my thoughts.
“No,” I answer firmly. “I’ll never live there again.”
“And what about university? Will you return to Cornell?”
“I’m not certain what I’ll do,” I admit. “All I know is that my old life doesn’t fit anymore.”
Millicent nods understandingly. “Yes. I can see that. Well, all Timekeepers are welcome to stay at the Aura for as long as they need. Would you like to reserve a guestroom? You can begin your first mission right away—your initiation. While in the coming months you will be assigned different years to visit and protect, your first mission is simply to learn the ins and outs of time travel, in the date of your choice.”
My heartbeat quickens as I remember my vision from the secret passageway.
“Yes, I would like to start straight away. And I already have a date and place in mind.” I take a deep breath. “1991 New York.”