risky. You can be a spy. Okay?”
“A spy? Gee, how exciting. If I know you, it means I get to sit in a room the whole time with a pair of binoculars.” His silence told me he hadn’t considered such a thing, but liked the idea. I walked over and slid my arms around his waist. “I could seduce Marcus. Get him to tell me secrets.” Now this was an idea William didn’t like. His stern look told me not only no, but hell no. “Okay, but I can pretend to be interested in the cult and find out all their secrets.”
After a few more scrubs, he rinsed the plates and glasses clean. He dried them off with a towel and turned to hold me. “I hate to admit it, but your plan is probably the right way to go.”
I stretched up to peck him on the lips. “So, when do we go?”
“Tonight’s too soon. I just went, and I’m still tired, to tell you the truth. We could go tomorrow.” A quick, frustrated breath escaped his nostrils. “That sounds so soon. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe next week. Yes, it gives me time to plan this whole thing out.”
I shook my head. “Tomorrow, and no later. I’m not getting any less pregnant. The sooner, the better.”
William smiled. “Pregnant. In my day, we called it ‘with child,’ and women had to wear enormous dresses to hide their bellies. I guess it was so the world didn’t catch wind of the activities which had taken place to result in, well, you know.”
“Yes, I do.” I smiled back. I stretched up to kiss him again, but this time he was ready. My little peck was greeted with a full on kiss. It turned my knees into jelly.
Snow drifted outside; it fluttered silently against the kitchen windows, melting into streams running down. Inside, two people were making a little bonfire, sparks and all.
Chapter 7
With the university closed for Winter Break, the town of Penn Peak took on a deathly air—no traffic, no hustle; some of the shops even began to shut down. William and I made our way in silence through the university’s empty parking lot toward the library’s back entrance. Tiny snowflakes gathered onto both our shoe tips while he dug out the staff key he’d been given by Mr. Haskell with the utmost of trust. Unfortunately, we were about to breach his trust, but we had our reasons. With shaking fingers, he slid the key into the lock, and with a twist of the handle, the door gave way. The library was dark and morose, no students waiting to be checked out.
“We’re officially breaking the law,” William said into the darkness, reaching for my hand.
“Do you have to say it like that? We’re not doing anything wrong. Just using equipment.”
“In an illegal manner,” William added. He frowned down at me, and I shrugged.
“We’ll be in another decade when they figure it out.”
He’d tried to talk me out of going ten times already, but I refused to budge. No way was he facing the Seekers without me. After checking the front entrance for the twentieth time, I turned to watch William at the TRS-80, deep in concentration. “You used to hate that thing,” I said, pulling up a stool next to him.
“I still do.”
I sat down. We both stared at a blank screen with one blinking cursor. “You’re not doing anything.”
“Yes, I am. I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
Eyes still glued, William moved his head toward me to speak. “Something’s occurred to me about this thing.”
“And?”
William’s gaze finally broke away, and a pair of excited eyes met mine. “I’ve figured out time is a lot like this computer.” Geez, his face really beamed when he was onto something. “We enter data, it stores data. Data can be changed, edited, erased, all with a stroke of a key. Right?”
I nodded, then shrugged. “Right.”
“And so, time is the same way. It has a memory of its own. We do things, and it’s like entering data into this computer. Someone like me has the power to go back and retrieve the data and rearrange it, erase it, etc. Though, sometimes a
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