Timesurfers Page 9

  “You stand by and let people die?” A sprinkling of doubt floated through Cate’s head. How could letting people die be acceptable for any reason?

  “It’s much worse than that. We make sure people die.” There was no hint of apology on Naitanui’s face. “We monitor the past, and when we see a deviation, I send a team back in time to rectify it. We ensure history unravels as intended, without magical manipulation.”

  “Think.” Austin tapped his temple. “Today, you woke to a world with an altered history.”

  The changes she saw this morning raced through her mind.

  “She’s not the smartest book on the shelf.” Rose groaned. “You travelled through time with Austin to our present. Our present is your future. Your present is our past. We travelled back to 2014 to disarm a bomb Jonah set to kill a future prodigy with a prolific talent in nuclear weapons. You got in the way and Jonah aborted the mission.” Rose strolled over and leaned close enough for Cate to feel her warm breath against her cheek. “Mortez has never aborted a mission before. What’s so special about you to make that happen, hey?”

  Cate shifted in her chair. “I don’t know anyone called Mortez. There were lots of people at the bus stop. It could have nothing to do with me.”

  Rose shook her head. “Oh buy a vowel! You were the only one moving at the bus stop, you can raise the dead, and Mortez has sent Jonah back to take an interest you. Jonah aborting his mission is all because of you.”

  “Jonah is Zach’s cousin. Maybe you should talk to Zach? He’s certainly benefiting from this new, altered history.” Cate felt zero guilt dropping Zach right in it.

  “I don’t know how Zach fits into this.” Austin paced as he spoke. “The cheerleader lay dead on the ground, and hey presto, up she jumped—freaking alive. Cate healed her foot and her friend’s leg. She wasn’t affected by the time stop and she’s immune to Rafe and my powers. It’s her.”

  Cate resisted the strong urge to put her fingers in her ears and chant “la, la, la” loudly.

  “About the cheerleader,” Naitanui raised his voice over the ruckus.

  Austin turned to Rafe. “Why did you drop the cheerleader? You can hold up a ten tonne truck for hours, and to say your reflexes are quick is an understatement. How the f—”

  “Language!” Rose interrupted.

  “I dropped her because someone told me to. I didn’t want to. I just...had to.” Rafe slammed the table and kicked his chair over.

  Cate shuffled her chair and busied herself smoothing the pleats on her green school skirt. Cold fear trickled down her shoulder blades. She was pretty sure she had made Rafe drop Brittany.

  “I don’t remember Rafe making any attempt to catch Brittany.” Rose tapped her teeth. “Are you saying someone compelled you to drop her?”

  Rafe shrugged. “My brain told me I had to throw her in the air and walk away—so I did.”

  Naitanui steepled his fingers under his chin and contemplated her. “I believe Cate inadvertently compelled Rafe to drop Brittany.”

  All eyes turned Cate’s way. She drew a circle in the dirt with her toe, squirming under everyone’s gaze. Her eyes fixed on the red flecks of dirt swirling through the air and settling on her shoe. She had wanted Rafe to drop Brittany. It was just a stupid thought. She didn’t mean for it to actually happen.

  Rafe glared at Cate. “But it’s impossible to compel other Timesurfers.”

  “Mortez has gone to enormous trouble to hide and protect Cate. It’s no surprise she’s a little different,” Naitanui said.

  She detested the idea of being different. Only mothers thought different was a good thing to be. Serial killers were always referred to as being different when they were children. “Mortez didn’t hide me. Two covert international agencies collaborated to do that.”

  Naitanui waved his hand. “I’m aware of the witness protection. It has no impact on my records. Mortez hid you using powerful magic.”

  Cate plonked her face on the table and rested her hands on her head. More magic. Please let this end.

  “Oh, come on! Buy a vowel. It has to be her. That’s why I brought her here.” The flashing lights highlighted Austin’s scars as he paced. They were an exact match to the crimson checks on his shirt.

  “You have all these magical powers. How damned hard can it be for you to identify me?”

  “The magic Mortez used to cloak you from my instruments is ancient and powerful. It’s unravelling little by little, but there are many layers to it.” Naitanui ambled over to stare at one of the cubes. “Until I confirm exactly who you are, my Timesurfers will stay with you.”

  What could she have done or become that was so damned important to everyone? She needed to stay close to the Timesurfers to find out.

  “Austin, take her back.”

  “But...” Cate and Austin chorused.

  “That’s an order,” Naitanui said quietly.

  Cate shrunk back into her chair. This guy you clearly didn’t mess with.

  “Fine.” Austin took a brutal hold on Cate’s arm. “Again, this will be uncomfortable.”

  Chapter 9

  Jonah

  Cate closed her eyes as the world spun. Fireworks pierced her eyelids like a thousand hot needles as she hovered in a dark void. She tensed, knowing what to expect this time. Smack! Cold, hard metal smashed into the base of her spine. As she hurtled through the darkness the burning started. Boiling blood had nothing on this new pain. She wanted to claw her skin open and release the fire from of her body. If she fainted she would escape the excruciating pain. Her brain remained defiantly clear and focused on not letting her lose consciousness. The pain was bigger and she was more aware this time. Someone kill me now! PLEASE!

  She landed spread eagled on the ground. The damp grass sent shivers down her spine, but soothed her burning cheek. She spat out the grass and dirt that somehow ended up in her mouth.

  “It gets worse before it gets better.” Austin helped her up. “Watch your thoughts. Think before you, well...think.”

  She tugged her arm a few times, trying to escape the death grip Austin had on her. “If you’re rifling through my brain with your little Time-Jedi tricks, stop it.” At this rate she wouldn’t have a brain to rifle through, it was taking such a beating.

  “I can’t read your mind, happy?”

  She was light years away from happy. “How do you travel through time like that?”

  “It’s a combination of magic and science. Your body dematerialises–”

  “No! You look like you’ve stepped from one room to another.” She smoothed her hair and removed a few stands of grass. “I look like I’ve be pulled through a tornado.”

  He chuckled as he plucked random plant matter from her hair. His broad shoulders blocked the sun, which outlined him with its silver glow. As his hand ran over her hair, tingles shimmered over her scalp.

  She swatted his hand away. “I can do it.”

  “I’ve been surfing for longer than you’ve been alive.” He dropped his hand. “It takes practice.”

  “What, so now you’re a century old, immortal, magical time traveller who’s frozen forever at sixteen?”

  “Whoa! Big leap there. I’m nineteen, but I’ve been Timesurfing since before I could walk. My mum, who is an immortal, hid out in a different time each week until I was five. She had a relationship that went bad.”

  “Your mother’s an immortal?”

  “Keep up. I’m off. Eve’s headed this way from cheer practice. ETA, two minutes.”

  “But we’ve been gone for ages.”

  “Perks of time travel. Spend as long as you want in my present—only lose a few minutes in your present. That’s my past.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got that. When you were talking to Naitanui before, who did you think I was?”

  “The magic won’t let me say.” Austin’s impish grin frustrated her. He pushed all her buttons so effortlessly with his infectious boyish charm and the promise of an uncomplicated good time.


  “You know I’m going to tell Eve everything?”

  Austin shrugged. “It’s you risking the frontal lobotomy. Naitanui!” He flickered and disappeared.

  “Hey you!” Eve half skipped and half ran across the grass.

  “How was cheerleading?” Cate asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Funny, you.” Eve prodded Cate with her toe.

  “I want to know. Did you have fun?”

  “Now you’re just being weird.” Eve grimaced. “There is nothing I am more likely to not be doing than cheerleading.”

  “But you’re still head girl?”

  “They can’t revoke my head girl badge for a continued commitment to not being a cheerleader.”

  Eve was oblivious to ever being at cheerleading practice. Rafe had altered everyone’s memories. “Do I look different to you?” Cate asked.

  “Different how?”

  “In any way?”

  Eve tugged a packet of chocolate biscuits from her canvas backpack. “No. You’re acting very strangely.”

  “I’ve had the weirdest day ever. If I don’t tell someone, I think my brain’s going to implode.”

  “There’s a nasty visual.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Hit me with it.” Eve plonked cross-legged on the ground and looked up expectantly. “Can you hurry? I’m getting a damp butt.”

  As much as she wanted to blurt everything from the bomb at the bus stop to bringing Brittany back from the dead, she needed Eve to believe her more. After contemplating how much to censor the events of the past few days, she went exclusively with the altered time line today and her trip to the future with Austin. The rest she could weave in when, or if, Eve was onboard.

  Eve never broke eye contact as Cate explained her day from renovated house and overnight popularity to her fiery trip with Austin.

  “Well?” Cate pushed.

  Eve chewed her lip and held up her hand. “I need a minute or so more.”

  As each minute ticked by, Cate’s anxiety ratcheted higher.

  “I always expected time travellers to arrive in a burst of lightning. Naked and crouched in the terminator pose, like Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Eve said finally.

  The story sounded far-fetched even to Cate, and she’d lived through it. “So you don’t believe me?”

  “I want to believe you.”

  “But?”

  “You’re my friend. If you’re sick, I want to help you.”

  “I’m not sick.”

  Eve pinched the bridge of her nose. “I have always thought I was destined for bigger things. And I pride myself on being extremely open minded. If you are making this up, you’re beyond help and I’ll lose you to a psychiatric ward forever. Better to keep you around as long as I can. I’ll keep notes. That way my million dollar book deal can pay your future medical bills, which, let’s face it, might be substantial.”

  While Eve couldn’t hide her anxiousness, she had taken this better than Cate could ever have imagined.

  “So a quick recap.” Eve ticked off each item on her fingers as she said it. “You have confirmed Austin, Rose, and Rafe are Time...what were they again?”

  “Timesurfers,” Cate said. “Jonah too. But he’s from a different group.”

  “So there are different Timesurfer gangs to be in. You travelled to the future with Austin, and it’s been suggested you are a Timesurfer—”

  “Quite a special one,” Cate broke in.

  Eve rolled her eyes. “And that is supported by the fact only you see the alternate time lines each morning which are revealed when history resets at midnight.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell.” The healing thing she kept to herself. “And Naitanui’s Timesurfers protect history from magical manipulation.”

  “And why is everyone so interested in you? What makes you special?”

  “No idea. My true identity and historical path are apparently being cloaked by powerful ancient magic.”

  “Of course they are.” Eve laughed. “I can’t believe we had no friends yesterday. You, maybe, but I’m a delightful person. Who would I want to play me in the book to movie adaptation? This is all kinds of exciting. It could be awesome.”

  ***

  Cate elbowed the blue front door open. “I’m home,” she yelled, spraying droplets of chocolate everywhere. Hearing voices from the kitchen, she motioned Eve to follow.

  Eve’s eyes swept over the newly decorated lounge room. “It looks the same to me.”

  “Only I can see the changes—it should look the same to you. You’re not a Timesurfer.”

  “So weird!” Eve muttered. “My brain has always been far superior to yours. Maybe I’m too clever to be a Timesurfer.”

  Cate ignored her.

  “Hi, honey. Hey, Eve.” Her mother stood at the sink, dressed in black training clothes. She pulled a knife from her leg strap and twirled it through her fingers. She diced the carrots on the chopping block with ninja speed and returned the knife into her leg holder, all the while smiling and maintaining eye contact with them. Her mother not losing a finger while she cooked was a modern day miracle.

  “Evie!” the three teenage boys scattered around the new kitchen bench chorused. Balthazar’s buzz cut, Melchior’s shaggy blonde hair, and Gaspar’s scarlet curls were familiar sights around the house. They were students from Winthrop, her mum’s school for kids with anger management issues and criminal records, or “detention centre” for short. When her mother said jump, these three asked how high.

  “Are you staying for dinner, Eve?”

  “Thanks, but no, Mrs. Zetrom.”

  Her mum gave Eve a stern look. “Eve, what do I always say? Please call me Emme.”

  “Sorry, Emme. Mum’s demanded my presence tonight.” Eve rolled her eyes. “Family bonding time.”

  “I applaud your mother.” Her mum grabbed a serrated knife from her arm strap, pointing the curved tip toward Eve. “I insist we sit down to dinner as a family as often as possible. There’s no better way to keep in touch with a teenager’s life. It’s so moment to moment.”

  “Sure it is.” Cate opened the shiny new refrigerator door. “Anything to eat?”

  “All that sugar so late in the day.” Her mum tut-tutted at the empty packet of biscuits in Eve’s hand. “Do not think of touching the trifle.”

  “There’s no trifle in there.” Cate shouldered the refrigerator door shut and chomped into a chicken drumstick.

  Her mum groaned. “Your brother is having a sleepover; everyone took something for dinner. Xavier should have taken that chicken you’re inhaling. He’s taken the trifle instead.”

  “But that was my birthday trifle.” Xavier was dead when Cate got hold of him.

  “I’ll make another trifle,” her mum said. “Have you ever missed out?”

  “Well...no,” Cate grumbled.

  “I rest my case,” her mum stated. “I trust you had a fight free day today. No more of Zach’s blood was spilled, and you didn’t break any bones in other people’s bodies?”

  Eve snickered and Cate glared at her.

  “What?” Eve said. “That’s funny. It never gets old, even after all these years.”

  Well, Cate thought, technically I did have a fight free day. I also brought a cheerleader back to life, went on a trip to the future, and discovered I’m a magical Timesurfer. “Do you have to ask me that every day after school?”

  “Apparently, I do. I checked on Zach last night, as I promised his parents I would while they are away. Why would you punch him again?”

  “He asked for it.” Damn her mother and her good neighbourly deeds. “That was last night, not today, and I wasn’t fighting per se. It was one punch. I didn’t even break any bones. A nose is made of cartilage.”

  The “do not split hairs with me” glare from her mother made Cate cringe. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “Guy’s a loser! I say well done, you,” Balthazar called from the table, where he was using a paring knife to peel a gree
n apple. He never tired of trying to remove the skin in an unbroken piece.

  Her mum sent him a fierce look. “You don’t have a track record of making the best choices, Balthazar. Have you boys finished with your vegetables?”

  “These snow peas are top and tailed.” At twenty, Balthazar was the oldest of the three and a real man mountain. His eyes were the brightest sea green, and his brown hair was never more than a half an inch long.

  Gaspar crunched an enormous bite from an apple Balthazar had finished peeling. “Broccoli chopped,” he spluttered through his mouthful.

  Melchior waved a green, leafy vegetable. “I’ve chopped the end off whatever this is.”

  “Must have been a challenge, Mel,” Eve winked. “Any energy left for training?”

  “I’ve got energy for anything you want, baby!” Melchior leered at Eve. His shaggy blonde hair, intense green eyes, and chiselled jaw made him a favourite with the girls. His eighteenth birthday party last year proved that.

  Gaspar, the youngest of the three at sixteen, piped up. “There’s no way she’d choose you when she could have me.” He was gangly after growing a foot last summer. His scarlet curls bounced as he nodded vigorously. “Come on, Eve—tell Mel I’m right.” His brown eyes stood out against his pale skin, which freckled instead of tanning.

  “Neither of you are my type.” Eve grinned affectionately. “I see you too much; I know you too well. You’re like my brothers.”

  “Stop hitting on my friend.” Cate slammed the refrigerator door as she retrieved another piece of chicken. “It’s creepy. Mum, make them stop.”

  “Everyone, outside and warm up,” her mum barked.

  Cate deliberated how to tell her mum about Jonah. “Zach’s cousin is coming over. He’s apparently some Grand Master in the making.”

  “Dude have a name?” Balthazar asked.

  “Jonah.” Eve and Cate chorused.

  A knife clattered into the sink as her mum yelped.

  “Are you cut?” Cate asked.