Nomad (29 page)

"I thought I would find you here," he said. "The day of your departure."

"My parents are alive."

"You're fortunate." Eliad smiled, his eyes softening. He looked exactly as she'd last seen him--same threadbare jeans and shirt, his ragged blond hair the exact same length.

"How did you sneak up on me?" she asked.

"I'm good. I told you--or maybe I didn't--I was an intelligence agent for the Atlantic Federation. Gathering intel from the past and the future. Once, I broke orders, made a side trip to save my father's life." Eliad looked up and away at the moon rising over Lake Washington. "That event recoursed my life so far that I never even joined the intelligence service. That version of me became a marine biologist. Whale communication." He shook his head. "That's what cut me off from my own past."

"And now you're..."

"A nomad, like you. Rootless."

Raven looked at the warm tableau inside, her family eating dinner. The new version of her apparently went to college in Seattle and lived at home, as though reluctant to leave her parents behind. She understood that feeling.

"Her name's Rhea," she told Eliad. "She never went by a ridiculous street name that she picked when she was nine years old. She didn't grow up fighting a war. She'll never travel through time. She'll never know what I did to provide this life for her."

"She is how the universe heals itself from the threat of paradox. It simply...replaces us." Eliad shrugged. "Nature's way."

"But where did she come from?"

"Where do any of us come from?"

Raven sighed. "Where do I go?"

"Anywhere you like. The past, the future...I can show you the best. And the worst, if you're into that."

"No, thanks."

She watched her family for another minute.

"Was it worth it?" Raven asked.

"Saving my father's life? That was worth it to me."

"Me, too." Raven turned away. "So why did I send you back to intervene in my mission, Eliad?"

"Oh. About that. You didn't send me."

"What?"

"The first time, you killed that future dictator guy right away, but it didn't work. I mean to say, you succeeded in killing him, but a similar or worse future emerged. You went back and killed his younger brothers. That didn't solve it....You kept moving back and forth through time, killing future dictators and their top officials. Killing children for their future evil. It was a bloodbath."

"I did?"

"You were never happy with the results, either." He took her pistol hand and holstered her weapon inside her jacket. His eyes studied hers closely, as if he wanted to look inside her soul. "You became someone you wouldn't recognize. Eaten by guilt for the things you'd done. Hateful, spiteful, loathing yourself. I wanted to help you. As I got to know you, I learned how to change you."

"You traveled back to change me?" She stepped back from him, not sure what to think.

"To help you. You're free of that now. You finished your mission, and you won't have to carry out the bloodbath--"

"Why did you want to help me?" Raven interrupted.

"I..." He smiled and looked away. "You don't know the kind of relationship we had. You won't remember it now."

"When? We had a relationship when?"

"Your future, after you become a nomad. My past, now, or the version of my past that I remember."

"Are things always this confusing?" Raven asked.

"I assure you, it gets worse."

Raven led him out of her yard and down the sidewalk of her wooded street, where old trees hid all the houses from view. Only mailboxes and an occasional gate indicated that the woods were inhabited.

"These trees are so much taller than I remember," she said. "The neighborhood looks good. I visited once, in 2061, but most of it had burned down."

"Except that didn't happen, because you saved the world."

"I did. Thanks for noticing."

"Almost nobody will." He took her arm as if by old habit, and Raven remembered how he'd stolen a kiss before vanishing. It had been a sweet kiss, she thought, looking back on it. Certainly a memorable one.

"You feel lonely, but you should know we do have a kind of community," Eliad said. "Not a tightly knit one, perhaps, but it's there."

"Who?"

"The nomads. Time travelers from up and down the course of history, each of us cut off, free to wander but never free to go home. You're kind of a celebrity among us, you know. Sometimes, you're the first time traveler in history."

"Sometimes?"

"You know how history can change."

"I really do." She stopped walking, realizing she had no idea what to do next. "Where do we go now?" she asked.

"If you're into neuro-enhanced theme parks, you want to try the twenty-seventh century," he said. "Anything later than that, the sensory induction will literally blow your mind."

"I was thinking lunch."

"Murray's Deli, Seventh and Broad. Manhattan, twenty-third century. The best Reuben sandwich of all time."

"Let's hurry."

Under the shadow of an elm, they set their timepieces to drop them in Central Park at the same date and time.

"I'll see you there," Eliad said, then he faded and vanished. His timepiece was more subtle than hers, with no flashes of gold light or miniature thunderclaps. He simply faded away.

Raven lingered a moment longer, looking up the gentle slope of the street. Her father had taught her to ride a bicycle here. Once, she'd had a nasty crash that left a deep scrape on her knee, and her father had carried her inside. Her mother had brought her to the big marble tub in her parents' bathroom, washed the wound and bandaged it. They had watched cartoons and eaten ice cream.

Raven felt her eyes sting. She'd lost everything by saving everyone, but she felt that her own life was a small price to pay for such a mission.

Now the mission was complete, and she was free, but she was entirely alone.

Not entirely
, she thought. She took a last look at the place where she'd grown up, the place where she no longer belonged, and then she jumped into the future.

From the author

I hope you enjoyed reading
Nomad
. I invite you to connect with me online for updates, giveaways, and new books by subscribing to my new release newsletter. When you subscribe, you'll immediately get a free ebook of short stories:
http://eepurl.com/mizJH
Thanks so much!

The first chapter of my book
Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper
, about a paranormal detective in Savannah, Georgia, who specializes in removing restless spirits from haunted houses, begins immediately after this section. It's the first in a new series, so I hope you'll take a look at it. Ghosts are guaranteed!

Here are some of my other links:

www.jlbryanbooks.com

@jlbryanbooks on
Twitter

J.L. Bryan's Books on
Facebook

Subscribe to new release newsletter:
http://eepurl.com/mizJH

Ellie Jordan's job is to catch and remove unwanted ghosts. Part detective, part paranormal exterminator, Ellie operates out of Savannah, Georgia, one of the oldest and most haunted cities in North America.
When a family contacts her to deal with a disturbing presence in the old mansion they've recently purchased, Ellie first believes it to be a typical, by-the-book specter, a residual haunting by a restless spirit. Instead, she finds herself confronting an evil older and more powerful than she'd ever expected, rooted in the house's long and sordid history of luxury, sin, and murder. The dangerous entity seems particularly interested in her clients' ten-year-old daughter.
Soon her own life is in danger, and Ellie must find a way to exorcise the darkness of the house before it can kill her, her clients, or their frightened young child.

Chapter One

"Why do ghosts wear clothes?" Stacey asked as we drove toward the possibly-haunted house.

Stacey was twenty-two, four years younger than me and much prettier, her blond hair cropped short and simple, carelessly styled, but her makeup was immaculate. She looked like what she was: a tomboy despite being raised by a former beauty-queen socialite in Montgomery, Alabama. She was a very recent graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design film school, but she'd been eager to join Eckhart Investigations and hunt ghosts rather than pursue a more sane and profitable career.

I had to wonder how Alabama-socialite mom felt about that.

"Well?" Stacey asked, raising an eyebrow. She rode shotgun as I drove our unmarked blue cargo van through the streets of Savannah. It was June, and rich sunlight fell through the thick, gnarled branches of ancient live oaks dripping with Spanish moss and crepe myrtles heavy with red blossoms. The stately old trees shaded columned mansions and gardens filled with summer blooms.

"I don't know, Stacey," I said, trying not to sigh. "You tell me why ghosts wear clothes."

"I'm asking you!"

"I thought you were setting up a joke," I said.

"Nope, totally serious."

"I don't get the question," I told Stacey. "Why wouldn't they?"

"Well...think about it," Stacey said. "The living wear them to keep warm or whatever. If you're a ghost, you don't have a body."

"Does
that
keep you warm?" I smirked at her low-cut tank top, which wasn't quite appropriate for work. I've been scratched and bruised by enough angry spirits that I wear turtlenecks, leather, and denim even in hot weather. I've tried to warn Stacey about this, but she hasn't listened so far.

"Uh, no..." Stacey looked down at her shirt as if puzzled.

"So why do you wear it?"

"Because I don't want to be naked?"

"Question answered," I said. "Next?"

"Why do ghosts wrap themselves in bedsheets?" Stacey asked.

"They don't do that. Why would you even think--?"

"So they can rest in peace." Stacey beamed, then her smile faltered a little. "
That's
a joke."

"No, jokes make you laugh."

"That one killed at my second-grade Halloween party."

"Only because your audience was high on sugar," I said.

"Here's another one: why do ghosts come out at night?"

"Because their electromagnetic fields are sensitive to dense concentrations of photons."

"Joke-ruiner," Stacey said.

We drove north and west, away from the city center. The Treadwell house was in an odd area of town, upriver, near empty brick warehouses and a few old factory shells dating back more than a hundred years. The nearest residential neighborhood was a row of decrepit bungalows on narrow, weedy lots, some of them clearly abandoned or foreclosed. They'd probably been inhabited by factory and dock workers at some point.

One old factory did show some signs of remodeling and gentrification, with a clothing boutique and one of those restaurants where you can buy a cruelty-free mushroom sandwich on sprouted-grain bread for just fifteen bucks. Maybe the area was on its way back.

I dropped the sun visor and opened the mirror to double-check myself before meeting the new clients. I always kept it pretty simple--minimal make-up, long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. I can't do much more than that with my crazy coarse hair, anyway. Back in high school, I'd let it grow too shaggy and thick, and it combined with my old armor-thick glasses to create a real Mad Scientist Girl look.

Unlike Stacey, I hadn't been trained in a thousand subtle varieties of cosmetics and hair products. After my parents died when I was fifteen, I didn't really care about normal adolescent stuff like parties, dances, or dating, anyway. I'd stay up late at night studying everything from William James and Spiritualism to Tarot cards and Aleister Crowley.

Even then, I was training myself to be a ghost trapper.

"I don't see any houses down this way..." Stacey said. We passed a low brick warehouse choked with vines, its windows boarded over and spraypainted with graffiti.

"Maybe there." I pointed to an overgrown lot with a screen of massive old trees and a wilderness of overgrown shrubs. A narrow, cracked brick drive led from the street into the darkness behind the trees.

We had to slow down and squint to read the old letters rusting off the ivy-choked brick mailbox. It was the right address.

I turned and eased the van up the cracked driveway, nosing aside low-lying limbs.

"Doesn't look like anybody's lived here in a long time," Stacey whispered. "Do you think it'll be a real ghost this time? I'm tired of duds."

"Careful what you wish for," I told her. More than half our calls come from people who are just plain ghost-happy. They think their place is haunted, and they haven't bothered to eliminate other options. Sometimes that eerie, moaning cold spot is just a clunky air conditioner; sometimes those strange footsteps in the attic are just squirrels. Our first job is to check for any non-paranormal causes for the alleged haunting.