Shadow Boxer: NA Fantasy/Time Travel (Tesla Time Travelers Book 2) (7 page)

“Tiana and the girls are at the house. They don’t know anything yet. Take them to Tia Marie’s.”

I can hardly breathe. Please don’t let me have screwed up their entire childhoods. I stand and she gives me the keys.
 

“I’ll stay here, in case—” Her voice cracks and my eyes well again. She pulls her purse onto her lap and digs inside for her knitting. I clutch her hand in both of mine and lift it to my cheek then drag her against my chest in a wet and hasty hug. She kisses my temple, and I pull away before I curl up in her lap and sob.

The doors slide open, and a panic-stricken couple comes in. Blood covers his left hand and she’s helping him stand. I use the diversion to escape.

During the entire drive home, I’m bombarded by scenes from the accident. If I could undo the day’s events, I would.

I sit up straight like Penya just yanked the top of my head. With a sudden rush of clarity, my body stops shaking. Why can’t I? I altered the history surrounding Aurelia. There’s no reason I can’t do the same for the events surrounding Papi.
 

I can make it all right again.

I draw my first real breath and grip the steering wheel with a sure confidence. The web of events is a mired tangle and I need to decide where to start, or if there’s a right order to undo everything. I don’t know if I need to arc back and save Rom by myself, never even bringing Papi into the situation, or if there’s a different way to save Aurelia all together. I don’t want to end up trading Rom’s life for Papi’s. My shoulders burn. There are so many possible repercussions if I screw this up.

There has to be a better way, a better spot on the timeline to arc… Somewhere to save everyone. I need answers.

C
HAPTER
6

W
ITHOUT
A
WAY
to contact Penya, I’m forced to rely on my ancestors for historical accounts of fixing an effed-up arc. I am surprised she hasn’t shown up though. She has to know that I altered history. I hate that I’m subject to the slices she can give me. What’s the point of a mentor if she’s never around when I need her? I don’t care how important this stuff is that Ilif’s working on, saving Aurelia was the alteration.

I barrel up the driveway and slam Mami’s car into park. “Tiana,” I yell as I come through the back door.

She pokes her head around the kitchen wall.

“Call Tia Marie.” I push through Papi’s office door. “Tell her to come get you.”

“What’s going on?”

My throat constricts. “Papi got hurt. Mami will tell you later.” I press my hands into the desk and look up. “Please, Tiana.”

She bites her lip and nods.

I slide an aging cardboard box off the top shelf and set it on Papi’s desk. The leather tome is there, along with the smaller booklets. I have no idea if anything is going to be in these. So far, they’ve failed me at most every turn.

The leather one yields nothing. Just ancestral tales of earlier arcs. There are a few failed ones, but none that specify redoing one.

Something has to be in the booklets.

The first is about how an alteration starts, nothing helpful. The second and third are even less helpful—more about fine-tuning lightning and health benefits.

In the fourth one, I find an interesting list of why the lightning is different colors, but not one that will undo an alteration. I toss it into the box. Bracing my hands on the edge of his desk, I hang my head.

Tiana bounds into the room. “She’s on her way.”

I roll my shoulders and focus.

“Grab clothes for the weekend for you and the girls. Make a second bag for Mami. Have Tia take it to her.”

Tiana pauses. “What’s going on?”

I blink back tears.

Nothing, if I figure out the redo.

My throat closes, and all I can do is shake my head.

She races to my side. “It’s okay, Evy. Whatever it is, we’ll get through it together.”

I hold her against me and force the tears not to fall.

“I know,” I say through my choked throat. “I’m fixing it.”

She squeezes me and tips her head back. “I can help.”

I smile through the tears and tuck her head beneath my chin, willing the trembling to stop. She’s always looked up to me, tried to impress me. Such misplaced hero worship.

Because I’ve always fallen short.

So I bluff. “I got this.”

C
HAPTER
7

W
ITHIN
THE
HOUR
, Tia Marie comes for the girls and I shoo them out the front door with a convincing lie. Their bubbling laughter stabs me through the chest, and I wave through the tears until the car eases out of the driveway. Tia Marie didn’t ask questions, but she’s been around long enough to know the stench of fear. Her hand lingered on my shoulder and she promised to handle everything. I avoided Tiana’s scrutiny, but she thinks I’m right behind them.
 

As the front door shuts, Penya’s holographic image fills a space beside the coffee table.

“Well done,” she says with a touch of disbelief before I can decide if I want to yell at her or collapse in her arms.

“No.” I turn from the door and sag onto the couch. “Not well done. It was a disaster. You have to tell me where you are. I can’t do this alone. I thought I could, but I was wrong. I always think I can do everything. Last time I had you, Constantine,
and
Ilif. This time I nearly killed everyone.”

“That’s not what Constantine said.”

“Well he wasn’t there.” I huff. “Did you hear what I said? I almost killed us all.” I fling my arm sideways. “Papi’s in ICU and I have to undo today. I screwed this up far worse than any of the arcs in Spain.”

“Calm down.”

My hands tremble.

“You saved Aurelia and reshaped Constantine’s life.”

I want to revel in that success, but the reason for the empty house screams obscenities at my recklessness. My emotions swing back and forth so wildly I’m nearly seasick from the whipsaw.

“Did you see them?”

“Moments ago. I left him and Aurelia safe in Rome.”

She made it. My breath comes quick. Elation rushes in, battling with the anxiety and fear roiling in my gut. I fight to recover and calm down. At least I managed to get one sliver of the entire disaster right.

“By the time I was able to project my image to Rome again, you had already gone. You always come back here, so I met with Constantine. Now that Aurelia is alive, I had to be sure everything is correct for your later arc when you assist Constantine with Viriato.”

All time that I won’t get now. “Will he be different?”

“Yes. Losing Aurelia shaped him. Now different things will shape him.”

“I wish I could… ” I stop. The time for wishing is over. I already had my time with him. Now my time is with this family, here.

“He asked about the journal. I was surprised you left it for him.”

I wince. How long is she going to torture me with this? I need to undo today, not bask in it. “No point in keeping it.”

“Perhaps.”

I splay my fingers to release the cramping tension. “Please don’t play with me. I need to figure out how to uncreate today now that you’re here. Explain.”

“Aurelia’s alteration is different. Because her offspring are involved, you will forever be tied to her timeline—and theirs. As you are alerted for issues in her future, there may be interactions with Constantine.”

Tears well in my eyes, but I swallow and blink until they’re gone. “Let’s call that one solved for now. Thank you for telling me. Now, help me. Help me figure out how to undo today. To start again when you were with me at the river—before the flood. I have to change the catastrophe surrounding Papi, like we did with Aurelia. Tell me how to fix it.”

Her image flickers, and I lunge forward. She can’t disappear before I get my answer.

“Tell me what happened with your father.”

I close my eyes and fill my lungs with air. I begin at the last time Penya was with me. I recant every detail from arcing into the chariot with Aurelia, saving the toddler, the final push to save Rom, and the events that lead to Papi’s injury, finishing with arcing Aurelia home to Constantine and Papi to the ER.

Penya listens without interruption and gnaws on her lip. “Ilif failed him.” She holds up a hand to keep me quiet. “The lightning should have forced him to arc home. Even with a direct strike, it should not have injured him to such an extent. Are you sure it was as bad as you say?”

I draw my brows together in a frown. Pain streaks behind my eyes. “He’s in ICU.”

She presses her lips together. “A precaution, I am sure.”

“You think?” I guess I just assumed since they never took us out of the ER, but Mami said he’d be fine… I’m so confused. I need to go see him.

“I have to go.”

“Why are you always leaving when I need answers? Tell me how to go back and save him. That’s all I need.”

“It is not that simple,
niña
. When you altered Aurelia’s history, it was words already written on a page. Easy to pinpoint, easy to alter. What you did with your father is different.”

A chill spreads through my torso. “How?”

She glances sideways, as if wary of someone coming on her side. Satisfied, she turns back, but there’s an urgency to her movements. “It would be easier to grab music from the air and change the song.”

The words physically strike me and I falter. “No. I–I don’t… That’s not right. I’m a rider. I can arc back to the minutes before he got hit, or even an hour before and change it all.”

She draws her hands to her chest, and her eyes droop with their permanent sadness. “I do not know the why of it. I only know that when a rider affects history, the alteration becomes permanent. The events leading to the change cannot be changed, they become frozen on the timeline.”

My knees buckle and I crash to the carpet, hands limp in my lap. I was so sure I could fix this. But I’m an eternal screwup… this is just one more place where I’ve failed. Once again I couldn’t just do my job—get Aurelia, come home—I had to explode it into a giant fiasco that nearly killed Rom, and may have killed Papi. I still don’t understand why I can’t go back and undo it. She’s not even giving me a chance to try. Always pushing forward to the next alteration. Never letting me catch my breath from the last. Is this the life I’m condemned to now—this time-traveling life of continuous movement?

Even now, she’s barely compassionate to my plight, firm in her conviction that he’s not really severely injured. The moment I get my feet under me, she hits me with a jab.

“But that is not why I came. Ilif wants to see you.”

Shadowy images of our fight in the forest come, unbidden. His threats, his fearful escape before I could retaliate. My pinballing emotions slam together like a thousand metal shards beneath a magnet. Where chaos reigned, there is a singular focus now. “Good. I hope he’s ready to stand and fight this time.”

“You cannot. There is information I have not found yet—”

My spine stiffens. She better not even think of getting between us. “Information about what? I don’t have any information for him. You said no more secrets—”

“I know. I am sorry. I will tell you more as I can. He cannot know I can come see you, just listen to what he has to say. I must end this transmission. I really do believe he is close to finding a new energy source—something life changing.”

I glare at her. No way is she asking me to set aside my hatred for him so she can find some answer to an unknown question. “He kidnapped you. He wanted Aurelia, but I managed to fight him off… ” Anger tangles my tongue and I force a deep breath into my lungs. It seeps out between my clenched teeth. “Why is he coming?”

“He needs you.”

“Oh, that’s rich.”

“No matter what your emotional regression where he is concerned, you must set it aside for the duration. You have to play along, Evy. I need to know what he is plotting and you can buy me time.”

My laugh is strained. “He knows I was with you in Spain. There’s no way he’ll ever believe that I’d work with him.”

“Oh, he already does. He told me all about it last night. He thinks you weak, that you have no one.”

I cringe and my eyes sting at what I’ve done to my family today. “Not far off.”

“You have me.”

It’s a lame olive branch at best. “No, I have an image of you.”

Penya holds up her hands. “The best I can do.”

“Easy to fix if you’d tell me where you are.”

“You have your father.”

“Who’s currently clinging to life, and who can’t arc without ending up in NYC.”

“Focus.”

No emotion, that’s what she’s trying to sell me. Riders don’t get the luxury. “Yeah, right. You really think Ilif will come ask
me
for help?”

“No, he will phrase it differently… And, Evy?”

I raise my eyebrows.

“This is more important than killing Viriato.” Her head snaps sideways. “I have to go. He leaves this side. Expect him in minutes.”

The sun bursts through the window, making the entire room glow. If Ilif is coming, I should be ready, instead of cowering on the floor. I wish she’d have given me the task of killing another legend instead of playing nice with Ilif. Would’ve been more likely.

I stand and draw a breath. I’m still incredibly sucky at stowing my emotions, but I need to try. As I exhale, I settle my body into the warrior poses Constantine taught me when we needed to quiet my mind. I sweep my arms across my body and soften my knees. On the next inhale, I bend my elbow and scoop the air beneath my belly and push it away from me. I point my toe and drag the edge of my boot in a large semi-circle, swinging my leg from the hip and pivoting on my other foot.

With each concentrated movement, the chaos of the last few hours slips away and my mind calms enough that I might be able to carry on a conversation with the enemy. I take myself through almost three more rotations before I feel Ilif’s familiar ripple of energy.

I exhale and straighten.

He stands a dozen feet away, still dressed in a preposterously overdone suit. Vaudeville douchebaggery drips from every thread of a crisp brown outfit. He edges half a step away.