Page 95 of Inception

His lip twitched as though it wanted to sprout a smile. “What are you working on?” he asked, ticking his chin.

I lifted up the novel so he could read the cover.

I was supposed to be working on myLord of The Fliesessay for English, but I couldn’t seem to get my brain to shift into homework-mode. Somehow, it just didn’t seem as important as all the other things going on in my life as of late.

“It doesn’t look like you’re getting a lot done.”

“Looks can be deceiving. You of all people should know that.” In fact, everyone in this town seemed to be perfectly versed in the comings and goings of deception.

“I guess I had that coming.”

I turned my attention back to my essay. “What do you want anyway? I know you didn’t come over here to talk to me about my homework.” I looked back up at him in time to catch his dimples ignite—no smile.

“The work schedule for next week.” He placed a sheet of paper on the table and slid it over to me. “I put you on the day shift for spring break. Is that alright with you?”

“It’s fine, thanks,” I said, slipping the schedule into my messenger bag. At least I’d have my evenings off. Gabriel was kind of a stickler when it came to my designated training hours.

“I also took you off the schedule this Friday,” he added, glancing down at my open binder. “It’s Spring Formal.”

“Yeah, I know.”As if I could forget. “It’s pretty much all Taylor can talk about these days,” I said, less than excited.

“I guess you don’t like dances?”

“Not by Taylor’s standards. She already has everything planned out right down to the color of eye shadow she’s wearing. I feel like there’s something wrong with me because I couldn’t care less if I went wearing a potato sack.”

Trace leaned back in the seat and laughed. A real guttural laugh that upon hearing it, made me realize how much I enjoyed the sound of it. “I bet you’d still look beautiful,” he offered, carefully appraising me now.

I felt my cheeks warm as his words registered. Unsure of how to react to them, I began busily flipping through my novel in an effort to appear unaffected.

My to-do-list floated out from within the pages.

“I shouldn’t have said that.” His voice was low, regretful. He caught the list and skated it back over to me. “I’ll see you later,” he mumbled, rising from his seat.

“Hold on a sec,” I said, grabbing his wrist as he tried to pass by me. “I need to talk to you about something.”

I figured this was as good a time as any to start my excavation. I waited for him to settle back in his seat before continuing. “I was hoping you could explain some things to me, you know, about Keepers.” I folded the piece of paper in half and stuffed it into my back pocket.

“What do you want to know?”

I wanted to know everything, like what their powers were used for and how they factored into vanquishing demons. But most of all, I needed to know under what circumstances a Keeper might travel to the past in order to save someone’s life, and if this could be done for other people—other people like my dad.

But I had to be discreet about it.

“I don’t understand why Time Keepers are used to hunt demons,” I began, careful with my words. “Is it just because of yourportingability, or is there another reason?”

“There’s lots of reasons.” His dimples flashed briefly.

“Like what? The other day, Ben said you could move between time and space, but I don’t see how traveling to the past fits in with any of this.”

“It doesn’t. Not really,” he shrugged. “They don’t like us messing with that anyway. We mostly justportorrealm jump.”

“Realm jump?”

“Yeah, to get to the other worlds—as part of theCovenant.”

I think I was getting more confused as this conversation went on, which wassonot the purpose of this inquisition.

“They told you about the Covenant, right? The peace treaty.”

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