Timebound(76)

As I had expected, they were both in the library. Katherine rose from a chair by the windows when I entered. She had one of the diaries in her hand, and I strongly suspected that it had, until last night, borne a cover reading Book of Prophecy. “Happy birthday, Kate! Connor has a—oh my goodness, Kate! Whatever did you do to your leg?”

I gave her my cover story and explained that it really wasn’t that bad—and, to be honest, the big bandage did make it look worse than it really was.

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “You should be more careful, dear. I was lucky—I had all unsightly hair zapped away long before I was your age—but I do remember Deborah slicing her shin something awful when she was a bit younger than you.

“Anyway,” Katherine continued, leading me toward the computers, “Connor has a wonderful birthday present for you—well, it’s for all of us, actually.”

I pretended to be surprised as Connor unveiled the Book of Prophecy, now downloaded into the hard drive for easy searching and installed on two of the CHRONOS diaries, just in case we wanted to do a bit of armchair reading. After glancing through the first few pages, however, I seriously doubted that I would be using the book to fill my light-reading needs.

The Book was barely organized—just odd bits of political and social “prophecy” juxtaposed with investment tips, aphorisms, and platitudes. And then, every ten pages or so, you’d get a nice long sales pitch about how those who followed the Cyrist Way would be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams. The Book of Cyrus might have been repetitive and plagiarized from every religious text out there, but at least there was some sense of poetry and it was reasonably coherent.

The Book of Prophecy, on the other hand, reminded me more of the infomercials that come on TV around 2 A.M.—when they know you’re so loopy that almost anything will seem to make sense. It was hard to see why Connor had thought it would be important.

Reading it was diverting, however, in the same way that clicking links online, in a train-of-thought fashion, is diverting—those times when you end up so far from your original topic it’s hard to remember what you were looking for in the first place. Still, I kept glancing at the clock every ten minutes or so, trying to think where the other version of myself was right that minute, and what Trey was doing.

At twelve-forty, I couldn’t take it any longer. I left the library and headed back to my room. The disposable cell phone that Connor had bought a few weeks back was sitting on the desk next to my laptop.

I knew that Trey had turned off his phone during the service—or maybe he’d put it on vibrate? I just hoped that he had remembered to turn it back on after we went to the gym with the Acolytes. I sent him a short text, which seemed vague enough not to alarm him too much—“Run when I say run. Don’t look back. I made it home OK”—and then stuck the phone in the pocket of my shorts.

Even if what Connor and Katherine had said about the problems caused by trying to reconcile conflicting versions of reality was true, I was already in the office with Eve or headed in that direction. I’d see Trey for only a couple of minutes before I made the jump, and surely that couldn’t screw things up too much?

When I returned to the library, Katherine had gone downstairs, probably to scavenge about for some lunch. I sat down again in my chair by the window but couldn’t bring myself to continue reading.

“I didn’t know people literally chewed their knuckles,” Connor said. “I thought it was just a figure of speech. Is the book really so suspenseful?”

I glanced down at my hands and saw that he was right. I’d lapsed into an old habit—my first two knuckles on my left hand were bright red.

“Obviously not,” I responded. “You know why I’m nervous.”

He gave me a little smile. “He’ll make it out, Kate.”

“I think so, too—now,” I said defiantly. “I decided to buy a little insurance.”

“What do you mean, insurance?” he asked.

“I sent him a text. About two minutes ago. Telling him to run, and that I made it back okay. It can’t change much, I barely even see him between now and then, but I just hope he turned his phone back on after the service was over.”

Connor chuckled softly, shaking his head. “It won’t matter whether he turned his phone on or not.”

“And why is that?”

“I left him a message before I went to bed, about four this morning. I told him to stay near the door of the gym and run when you said to run, and I promised him that you were safe here at the house. And I said not to let you know that I had texted him, under any circumstances.”