Return Once More

“All these years, everything about Oz has seemed so straightforward and boring. It’s weird even thinking about him putting us all in danger this way.”

“I know. And I don’t care what Truman says, there’s more to what’s going on than a simple application. You didn’t see his face. Oz is terrified—for me, for him, maybe for everyone, I don’t know. But when he saw Jonah’s cuff he said something in French.”

“What?”

“L’avenir est dans le passé,” I repeated in passable French. I was one of the few who struggled more with Romance languages than German-rooted dialects. It was a

“The future lies in the past?”

“That’s what he said, and when I asked him what the hell he meant, he seemed crushed that I didn’t know. It sounds like some sort of Historian motto, except it isn’t. Right?”

She shook her head, blond waves falling around her shoulders. “No. And I can’t imagine it would be. If anything, the future sprouts from the society they’ve built in the System. Our evacuation from Earth Before is a natural break in the pattern, we move forward from there. The past informs our decisions, how we’re set up and governed, but I don’t see how it could be our future.”

“I know.” I paused, gauging her reaction and whether it had been smart to share, but I needed someone here who understood the Historians and what we stood for. I needed Analeigh, the brains of our friendship. Without her I was lost, not only as to what to do next, but how to get out of this quagmire created by my own rule-flaunting ways.

I was starting to think that my favorite mantra, that you’re only in trouble if you get caught, might not hold water when it came to rearranging the past.

We were silent for a long time, the gears in my mind working so hard I could almost hear them. Analeigh chewed her lip almost raw but said nothing.

“I think that phrase is some kind of secret saying, and when Oz saw I had a cuff he wondered if I was part of whatever it is, too.”

“Part of what, Kaia?”

“That’s what we have to find out.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Shouldn’t we say something to Sarah?” Analeigh asked while the two of us brushed our teeth before bed.

I watched her in the mirror, her wavy hair piled atop her head, pale legs sticking out from under her shorts, glasses spattered with toothpaste. We’d both changed into our standard-issue pajamas—striped linen shorts and long-sleeved tops. Hers were light blue, mine were pale purple. The familiarity of the routine had lulled me so that the question startled me.

“Sarah?” I asked, trying to focus.

She looked at me as though I’d gone as mad as Alice’s hatter. “You know, our roommate? The girl betrothed to the new crazy version of Oz who accosted you, tossed you into a decontamination chamber, and proceeded to threaten you?”

I snorted so hard at her goofy, movie-dialogue phrasing that toothpaste shot up my nose. It burned so badly my eyes watered. “What would we tell her? That her boyfriend is ru

A mischievous twinkle lit her eyes. “It’s better than telling her Elder Truman thinks you have a thing for Oz.”

“Shut up. We’re definitely not telling her that. Or speaking of it ever again.” I banged my toothbrush on the edge of the sink and rinsed out my mouth with disinfectant, then rubbed enamel strengthener and whitening goo across every tooth’s surface. When I raised my head to check the mirror one last time, my dark eyes met Analeigh’s light ones, and the comfortable mirth wriggled from the room.

Weight hung between us, too heavy for two girls who had never been prepared to question their Elders. Never imagined a mystery beyond a really tough reflection, or that our friends—Sarah and Oz—might be in real trouble.

This situation shook our foundations, our beliefs, our ability to trust pretty much blindly that the fate of humanity rested safe in the hands of our Elders. If Zeke, or Truman, or even Oz was involved in something secret that threatened the System, then Analeigh and I—and probably Jonah—could be the only ones who knew.

“What do we do?” Analeigh whispered. She sounded more like the little girl who had raced me around my mother’s greenhouse until we both collapsed, covered in real dirt, than the confident friend she’d grown into these past years.

“First we have to figure out what’s going on. Then we can figure out what to do.”

The suite’s front door banged open, followed by the sound of a bag hitting the floor and weight flopping onto a couch.

“Hey, guys,” Sarah said, her voice thin and tired.

“Has she been in Reflection all night?” I whispered.

Analeigh nodded, her eyes worried. “She’s behind. She’s so good at the rest of it, but she can’t see the co

“Oz should be helping her, not the other way around.” Defensive anger rose again with the memory of how he spoke to me, and now how he was treating my friend, who he was supposed to love more than anyone. “We’re not telling Sarah anything. Not until we have proof.”

Analeigh bit her lip. “What if we don’t want to know, Kaia? What if we can’t do anything about it, or it’s worse than we thought? We can’t leave the Academy.”

We couldn’t “un-know” anything. We couldn’t go back. Like Caesarion reminded me earlier tonight, my job was to look forward, to put the people of Genesis first.

“It doesn’t matter whether we want to, Analeigh. It’s our obligation as Historians. They give us the privilege of travel and in return, we protect the future from the mistakes of the past. Maybe it means we protect the past from Oz, too. Or his father.” Guilt tore at my throat, trying to push the remainder of my confession out to Analeigh, that I had already broken that trust a million times in the past two weeks.

That as big the risk now that Oz knew about my cuff and where I was going, I knew I would do it again. I needed the comfort of Caesarion’s presence. I wanted to hear the story of Osiris and Isis, to try to believe the way my True did that we would meet again, in the blink of a god’s eye.

Sarah’s head appeared in between ours in the mirror, the whites of her tired eyes split by red veins, her smile thin. “What are you two whispering about?”

“Nothing. Kaia has a new crush,” Analeigh blurted.

For shit’s sake. Analeigh’s panicked gaze met mine. That girl could not lie. If she had a secret, she babbled, and things like this tumbled out of her unbidden.

Sarah turned to me, hands on her hips. “Spill it, Kaia.”

“It’s … um. Well … I.” My mind stumbled, thick with the plotting, the secrets trying to drown me, the exhaustion from the piles of stress that had accumulated over the past couple of hours. Days. Finally I blurted the first name that came to mind that wasn’t Oz. “Evan.”

“Evan Pritchard?!” Sarah nearly shrieked.

I slapped a hand over her mouth a little harder than necessary, panic boiling in my veins. “Shhhh. These walls are like paper and you know it.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, rubbing her cheeks. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “But Even Pritchard? You and every other girl on Sanchi.”

“Or every girl that’s ever seen him,” Analeigh added drily.

I shot her a look. She’d started this whole thing with her guilt-fueled blabbermouth. Analeigh shouldn’t be allowed to speak at all when she was keeping a secret.

Evan Pritchard was in his last year as an apprentice. He stood at least six foot five with a muscled chest as wide as Analeigh and I put together and a chiseled face topped by shaggy blond hair. Bright green eyes completed the pretty picture, which resembled a traditional California surfer boy.

If Evan had any idea I was alive at all, it had to be a vague one. And probably because of my brother. I’d admitted having a schoolgirl crush on two different boys today, and having everyone and their mother think I was prone to such things started to irk me. Both were lies, but they also felt like the tiniest of betrayals to the boy I did love, who waited more than three thousand years in the past to see me once more before he died.