Part 6 (1/2)
”Let me explain again. That object”-and here he points to the clock in the painting- ”is not what you told me you want to find.”
”What do you even mean?” I ask, trying not to sound sulky. Gabriel walks over to the ma.s.sive staircase and folds his long frame onto the second step. There's a rip in his jeans and his right knee pokes through briefly as he arranges his legs in a sprawl. I follow, sit beside him. After a minute,he sways his knee into mine and says gently, ”It's not calling to me the way that it normally does. It doesn't feel real. Maybe it never really existed.”
”But it might have,” I say softly.
”Right?” Gabriel shrugs.
”Possibly.”
”Okay, okay,” I say, more to myself than to him, as the glimmerings of an idea are taking shape in my head.
”The clock in the painting and the clock on this piece of paper are one and the same. I'm sure of it. But you can't find this clock” I fan him with the edge of the paper.
”It's not-”
”Shhh!” I knock the back of my hand against his arm.
”I'm processing” Another term I learned from Agatha.
”That's an old painting there,” I say slowly.
”I checked the date. 1899. And he said the clock was lost in 1887. So maybe you can't find it now because it doesn't exist anymore. But it does in that painting” I try to keep my voice level.
”Gabriel, don't you think that's it? That it existed once but it doesn't currently?”
Gabriel inclines his head slightly toward me.
”Who said the clock was lost in 1887?” I open my mouth, close it again.
”Tam, tell me what's going on,” he says. When I don't answer, he hooks his fingers under my chin and turns my face up to his.
”Please,” he adds simply.
”Okay, okay,” I say at last and lean back a little because his fingers are too warm on my skin.
”This guy came intothe bookshop over the summer, this professor at NYU- the night you came home, actually. Anyway, he had heard of the bookstore-you know, the finder's agency part-and he asked if I could help him find something, a family heirloom that was lost more than a hundred years ago. And I agreed to do it” I pause, giving him a hopeful look. Gabriel waits me out.
”Um ... I didn't tell him that I don't have ... any Talent. Oh, but I did tell him that I was Rowena” But it comes out more like ohbutldidtellhimthatlwasRowena.
”What?”
”Yeah, okay, it was stupid, I know. But he thought I was Rowena and then I just sort of...”
”Went along with it?”
”Exactly.”
”But you told him later, right?” I'm not sure if he means the no Talent part or the not being Rowena part, but I decide to tackle both.
”No,” I whisper, staring at my toes in their neon green sandals.
”I should have, but then maybe he wouldn't want me on the case anymore.
He'd just go back and ask for Ro. And I ... wanted to prove to my family that ...
oh, forget it, it's stupid.”
”Why would you pretend to be Rowena?” Gabriel asks.
”You're way prettier.
”Now it's my turn to stare at him.
”What?” But he's moved on.
”So that answers why I couldn't find this,” he says and raps the paper with his thumb.
”It doesn't exist anymore. Even if it is the same clock as the one in that painting, it's still not what your professor wants. At least not currently.”
”Explain to me how it works.”
”How what-you mean how I find things?” And now for some reason he looks worried.
”I want to know,” I say simply. And for once I really do. Gabriel doesn't answer right away. But at last he says, ”Okay. It's like, when someone wants to find something, I can hear the object.”
”You don't see it?” He gives a quick shake of his head.
”No. And hear is the closest word I can think of, but it's more like feeling an echo. I feel this echo of whatever the thing or person or place that's lost is, and then I... follow it.”
”Even through time?” I whisper. Gabriel's face goes completely blank.
”Why would you ask that?”
”I don't know. No reason, really. I just thought it was . .”
I break off, staring at him, and even though his face hasn't changed at all, not even by one twitch, somehow I know.
”You can, can't you?” A siren wails past the front windows, blaring its warning into the dark. ”I've never told anyone that I could do that. I didn't know at first. It took me a couple of years before I figured out that yes, I could follow something through time. But...”
”But what?”
”We're not supposed to,” he says simply. And all of a sudden I feel the gulf in that we.
”Why not?”
”This has never been explained to you?” I look at him.
”Apparently, they do this at the Initiation Rites,” he adds. When a person turns twelve in my family, he or she has been Talented for four years. Four years is the general time that it takes for a person's power to fully strengthen. So on Samhain, the entire family gathers and celebrates the new Initiates. The year I turned twelve, two of my cousins did, too, so of course a big celebration rite was planned. The night of Samhain, I locked myself in my room. For once my mother didn't pop into view to confront me and Rowena didn't try to convince me with sugar-syrup words and my grandmother didn't order me downstairs. Alone in the suddenly silent house, I watched everyone troop out to the woods before opening my science textbook and trying to study for the quiz we were having that week on ecosystems. Later, I tried not to strain my eyes for the telltale ladders of smoke that would signal the bonfire had started. Instead, I colored the photos of arid deserts in my textbook a vileshade of green, not caring that I was defacing a school textbook, and tried to block the sounds of chanting from my ears, even as my lips moved reflexively in the four prayers. In my mind's eye, I can still see the stain of color spreading from the tip of my marker across the porous page. I'd have to say that ranks as my second worst birthday, only just behind the year I turned eight.
”I never went through those,” I point out, even though he knows this.