Hourglass

Maybe I was way out of line.

I held the key ring by the master key, swinging it back and forth in front of my eyes. Yes or no, yes or no. I was saved from any further contemplation of breaking and entering when the phone rang. Dru sounded more harried than I’d ever heard her.

“Em, thank goodness you’re there. I didn’t have Michael’s cell, and the guys are coming from the storage place to pick up the master for the building so they can deliver his sofa. But I don’t have my keys because I couldn’t find them this morning and he’s not answering at his loft and I think I left them—”

“Calm down,” I said, laughing. “I have your keys.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” She took a deep breath. Good choice. “Can you let the movers in?”

My smile spread wide enough to rival the Grinch’s. “Absolutely.”

The delivery guys did their job quickly. To justify the excuse to linger, I set off to look for any plants affected by drought.

Even though he’d lived in it for only a few days, the apartment smelled like Michael. Clean, like laundry fresh from a clothesline with a hint of something else, maybe pheromones. I caught a whiff of his citrusy cologne and almost forgot what I was doing. I gave myself a mental smack.

Focus. Here to spy.

Dru furnished Michael’s place with items from her stock storage, and the design was simple. It suited his personality. The only concession was a complicated-looking computer. I bumped the corner of the table it sat on with my hip, jostling the mouse. When the computer blinked to life, the screen showed that it was password protected.

Every loft had built-in bookshelves. Most of Michael’s were filled with modern decorative accessories, courtesy of Dru. Two held personal items. On the first was a book of poetry by Byron, along with novels by Kurt Vonnegut, Orson Scott Card, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I realized I’d never asked him about his major. Probably wasn’t time travel. I didn’t think our local college was quite that progressive.

The second shelf held photographs. One obviously of his family when he was younger—his dad wasn’t in the picture. Another showed an adolescent Michael laughing with an older man at a lake, fishing paraphernalia scattered around. I peered closer. No resemblance.

A stack of photos lay facedown on the shelf. I flipped through them. Graduation shots, a group on a ski trip, someone’s eighteenth birthday party, and then, last in the pile, a girl wearing a princess costume with dark auburn hair and a wide smile. At first I thought it was Michael’s sister, but something about the girl in the picture was different, maybe the perfect shape of her oval face or her porcelain skin. Jealousy rolled in my stomach. She looked mysterious and exotic and … tall.

In the kitchen, I opened a couple of cabinets and the fridge. Nothing much, unless you counted energy drinks and frozen dinners. A box of Fruity Pebbles sat on his counter. Men.

A moment of hesitation stopped me at his bedroom door. People were less likely to be careful with what they left lying around in their bedrooms. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I was afraid of what I would find. I took a deep breath and clasped my hands behind my back.

If the scent of Michael when I opened the front door hadn’t already prepared me, when I walked into his bedroom I might have just shoved my face in his pillow and stayed. His bed was made and, as I thought, situated directly on the other side of the wall from mine. No wonder I couldn’t sleep.

More books took up space on his bedside table, in addition to a docking station that held his iPod. I leaned over to check out his taste in music and noticed a pad of paper with some scribbling on it.

Bingo.

I eyed it upside down for a second then unclasped my hands to pick up the pad and look at it more closely. When I did, a few business cards fell to the ground. I scooped them up, slightly panicked because I didn’t know if they had fallen from between the pages of the notebook or the tabletop. I gave them a quick glance. They all said the same thing:

On the back was an address just outside Ivy Springs proper. I shoved one in my pocket, stacking the rest in a neat pile. I tried to decipher the words on the pad, but they were in some kind of shorthand or code. Michael seemed to be a master at hiding things.

“What are you looking for?”

I let out a squeak and jumped, almost dropping the notebook. Jack stood beside me with a half smile on his lips.

“You scared me!” I was embarrassed to be busted, even by Jack, who didn’t have anyone to tell. I looked down at my hands and saw my fingers still clutching the notepad. I flung it back on the bedside table, mortified when I had to pick it back up and flip it over so it would look as it did before I touched it. “How did you get in here?”

Jack pursed his lips, hesitating before answering. “I can move between rooms.”

I considered what that meant, and my skin became gooseflesh. “Like from my bedroom to my bathroom?”

“No, no,” he answered, shaking his head before reassuring me. Still keeping his distance, he took a step closer. “As tempting as it might be, I would never do that. I respect you too much.”

I couldn’t look away from him. His pupils weren’t exactly black, just a shade lighter, and his irises were less blue today and more gray. “So you’ve been in Michael’s room before?”

“I have,” he concurred.

Uh-oh.

“Have you ever talked to him?” My forehead broke out in a sweat. Jack might have someone to tell about my snooping. What if he’d appeared to Michael, too?

“No,” Jack said, his eyes growing wide. “Only you.”

“Good.” I hadn’t realized rips could pick when to reveal themselves. I’d have to ask Michael about that later. “Seen anything interesting?” I prodded.

“Such as?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged it off. “Who he talks to, what he does?”

“He seems to type on that a lot.” Jack pointed to the computer with one hand, leaving the other behind his back. He then pointed toward the portable phone on the desk. “And he speaks to someone on that quite frequently.”

“Have you heard him say any names?”

“I’ve heard him mention you a few times.” Jack said the words carefully, watching me, as if he was weighing my reaction.

“My name?” I asked. “In what context?”

“Just that you were nice … no”—he stopped, considering—“you were coming along nicely … and that all was going according to plan.”

I turned to stalk blindly out of the bedroom, angry with myself for being hurt by his words.

“Where are you going?” He followed close behind me.

“None of your business.” I stopped. I had no reason to be so rude to him. I turned back around to apologize, catching him off guard. He sidestepped to avoid the bedside table.

I froze.

“What’s wrong?” Jack asked.

I took a hesitant step toward him. “Why do you avoid solid objects? I’ve noticed it before, but it didn’t sink in.”

“I don’t avoid anything,” he answered, stepping fluidly away from me.

“But you do. Except for the other night, you were sitting on my bed—I felt your weight pushing down my mattress. How did you do that? And why are you always holding your hands together that way, like you’re afraid to touch anything?”