I’d tried, over and over, to bring her back to life. Somehow, I’d done it. Somehow everything I remembered—Emma’s death, Taryn’s death, all of it—was nothing but a dream. “I guess … I guess I keep thinking of what could have happened.”
“It could have been bad, yeah. But everything’s okay,” she said, squeezing my shoulder. “Now come on. I have something to show you.”
It was weird to see how comfortable she was in my house. She went right to the staircase, climbed the stairs, and entered my bedroom, where she threw her bag on my bed. “How did you know about it?” she asked.
“Know about what?”
She reached into her bag and pulled out the book. It looked, like everything, different and yet the same. The cover was a deeper brown, the edges not as battered, the pages a cleaner white. The lock was missing. It looked as if someone had ripped the lock off, trying to get inside to read the pages. It seemed more ordinary than before, more like any other book. “This is it, right? The book you were talking about?”
I nodded. “Where did you find it?”
“My parents have a bunch of my grandmother’s things in a bedroom upstairs. They’ve been putting off going through it because it’s a lot of junk. I found it in a box, with a bunch of other books. It looks like a witchcraft book, but a lot of the pages are mostly blank, like something was written there before but erased.” She stared at the book, a disgusted look on her face. “So how did you know about it?”
I sat down next to her. “You’ll think I’m crazy if I tell you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I already think that.”
I studied her. How could I tell her? I couldn’t expect anyone to believe a story that warped. But this was Taryn. The Taryn that, once upon a time, I knew I’d be with forever. Things were different, sure … but in some ways, like the way she looked at me, very much the same. “Okay,” I said.
So I told her. I told her about the book, and what it used to be able to do. What it had done to me. She listened, her face stone. She didn’t make any comments, didn’t react to anything, even the most unbelievable things. She didn’t even gasp when I told her that only three days ago, I’d held her as she died. When I finished, there were tears in her eyes.
“Oh,” she said. She looked like she was trying to think of something to say, but nothing was coming out.
“Crazy, right?”
She shook her head. “Well, yeah. But it’s not that I don’t believe you. I can’t not believe you. It’s obvious you believe every word of it.”
“The thing is, I’m the only one who still remembers the old version of the past. And I don’t remember what happened in this version of the past. Not a thing.” I exhaled slowly.
“Why?”
“Got me.”
“And so much has changed. How can it be that we were together then, and we’re together now?”
“Well, that I can answer.”
She raised her eyebrows. “And?”
I shrugged. “Because some things just have to happen. Like, the sun has to rise and set. Time has to go by. We have to get older. And I guess we are one of those things. It’s destiny. Unchangeable.”
She smiled. “Corny. But I like it.”
She swallowed and then opened the book. She frowned at the first page. After a few minutes, I realized why. If she hadn’t had to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps, she wouldn’t have needed to learn the language of the text.
“It’s in Hungarian,” I said. “You can’t read that, can you?”
She grimaced. “A little. When I was a kid Grandpa and I were pen pals.” She flipped the pages. “You said your grandmother was supposed to get Flight of Song that night? What was her name?”
“Evangeline Cross.”
She stopped at one of the pages. “Here it is. And the signature looks like Marilyn. Marilyn Haas. Who is that?”
“No clue. Okay. So she didn’t get it. What did she get, then? Anything?” I asked, standing over her as she flipped the pages. “There. There’s her name. What’s that one?”
Taryn read it. “Um. I can’t … It has something to do with time.” She was quiet for a moment. “The taker of this Touch … may return to one moment in time and change anything she wants.” She looked up at me. “That’s it. She—”
I stood up. “Architect of Time.