“W-Willow?” Lilah whispered, her voice catching in ragged breaths. Her hand was shaking so badly, she was having trouble keeping the girl’s face illuminated.
“What do you want?” Willow croaked out. Tears streaked across her dirty face. “Are you with him? What did you do with my mother?”
“‘Him?’” Lilah repeated. “I don’t – oh, God.”
All at once, a sick realization gripped Lilah by the throat. Her seizures didn’t cause her to travel through time, as she’d already explained to Jace. And she couldn’t conjure anything to her side that wasn’t already there, in some form or another. Her effect on time was limited to the things in her vicinity that already existed: a pinecone resting beside her might show its future form – a pine tree, or its past – a cluster of seeds. But she couldn’t will a pine tree into existence if the organic matter didn’t exist in that spot to begin with. That was the reason she was able to talk to Marie two weeks ago; she had been sitting next to her ashes when she appeared. If Willow was standing before her right now, that could only mean one thing.
Willow was dead, and Lilah had stumbled upon her bones.
· · ·
“Lilah!” Jace shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Lilah!” His voice was hoarse from calling out her name, but he wasn’t going to give up until he heard an answer.
“Li, can you hear us?” Stanley yelled, feeling the panic rising in his chest. “Lilah!” Where was she? He turned to Jace. “You said you thought she was looking for her biological mother. Why would you think that? What exactly did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything,” he replied, blowing warm air into his hands. The gray sky above had darkened almost completely to night. “But according to those articles, her mother’s van was found just over there, so it’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”
Stanley’s eyes widened as he followed Jace’s finger to the side of the road, barely visible through the veil of trees that separated them from the four-lane highway below. There were no streetlights this far out of town, but a full moon was rising above the serrated line of trees, casting white light across the thin blanket of snow that framed the highway on either side.
“Jesus,” he muttered. Lilah could be anywhere in the forest by now, looking for God knows what. And God knows what might find her. He didn’t dare let himself think about the fresh report of a grizzly bear den not too far from there.
With Jace in tow, the two of them made their way deeper into the forest, making sweeping arcs with their flashlights to make sure they didn’t miss anything. After a few minutes, Stanley let out a curse as he knelt to inspect something behind a bush.
“What’s wro—” Jace’s words cut off as he recognized Lilah’s muddy, tie-dyed backpack hanging from her father’s hand.
“It was resting beside this stump,” Stanley muttered, raking a hand through his hair. He was grimacing as though he was taking part in an internal argument – and losing. “Kid, I don’t think we can do this alone anymore. She could be lost, or hurt, or—” He swallowed. “I–I think we’re gonna have to call for help.”
“Do you see that?” Jace asked, squinting his eyes. He was shining his flashlight into the copse of trees just ahead.
“See what?”
“That… ripple. Between those trees. It looks like… I don’t know. Like a mirage or something.” He took off his glasses to blow on the lenses. “Am I crazy?”
A feeling of dread settled in Stanley’s stomach as his eyes followed Jace’s flashlight. “No, I see it too. Come on. Stay behind me no matter what, you hear me?”
Jace barely managed a nod as he followed. As they got closer to the trees, the ripple began to look less and less like a ripple, and more like a disco ball – not a spinning, glittering thing, but a curved, mirrored surface with millions of tiny facets reflecting the surrounding forest. From just a few paces away, the facets smoothed away to reveal a transparent, shimmering sphere, rising up from the ground with a surface that looked like rippling water. Standing in the middle of the dome, no more than twenty feet away, was Lilah. Her outline was dark and blurry, but there was no doubt that the blue jacket and red hair belonged to her. Her back towards them, she appeared to be talking to someone. But Stanley couldn’t make out the details, not from that distance, and not with the temporal distortion muddying his view.
“Lilah?” Stanley called. “Can you hear me?”
She didn’t move.
“Lilah!”
“I don’t think she can hear us,” Jace whispered, taking a step forward. “She’s… she’s in a different time.”
“Stay behind me,” Stanley growled, holding one hand behind his back as if to block him. “I’ve never seen her make a distortion this big before – and it might get bigger.” He took a shaky step forward as he stretched his other hand out in front of him.
“Chief Quinn,” Jace started. “Is that really a good idea?”
Ignoring Jace’s admittedly-prudent remark, Stanley reached through the shimmering veil with trembling fingers, then gasped as a cold tingle enveloped his entire forearm. He immediately yanked it back, examining the skin on the back of his hand. It seemed okay, albeit a little tender. All of his digits were still there, at least.
“I’m going in,” he whispered, taking another step forward. “You have to stay here, far away from the edge of the vortex in case she moves.”
“I’m coming too,” Jace said, his toes at Stanley’s heels.
The older man whipped around. “If she’s doing what I think she’s doing, she’s gone sixteen years backward. What good is an infant gonna do in there, huh?”
Jace hung his head. “I… don’t know.”
“I thought so. Now just wait here and—”
A rustle of branches cut him off, followed by a loud snort. Stanley whipped around to see a flurry of movement in the darkness. Something was making its way through the bushes – something big.
“Get behind me,” Stanley hissed, putting an arm in front of Jace.
“Would you stop treating me like a kid?” he hissed back, taking a step forward. “If that’s a grizzly bear, you’re just as helpless as I—”
“It’s not a grizzly, they’re all hibernating right now.”
“Then what—”
Jace sucked in a ragged breath as two eyes emerged from the trees – two eyes that were very high off the ground. Two eyes that had two very large, shovel-shaped antlers that branched out nearly three feet in either direction. Two spouts of steam rose from two big, flared nostrils as the massive creature let out another agitated snort.
Stanley and Jace clutched one another in terror as a six-and-a-half-foot bull moose stepped out from between the trees, bowing its colossal rack of antlers as though preparing to attack. Inching backwards, the two men found themselves backed up against the very edge of the time distortion as the bull continued to move closer. With a loud snort, it stomped its feet on the ground, ears back, hackles raised high into the air.
“It might be bluffing,” Stanley muttered under his breath. “They’re known to do that.”