Page 63 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
She shrugged. “It had to be. I didn’t have a choice.”
“The trows?” he asked hesitantly.
She nodded. “We were a family. Hunting one meant they hunted us all. We all paid the price.”
CHAPTER 42
Bristol’s day had started out reasonably well, but by midmorning, dread beaded on her brow. Esmee was finishing up her last lesson—a lesson about time. With each new word, the walls closed in and Bristol’s back grew damp.
“The mortal and fae worlds move at different speeds,” Esmee told them. “I like to use the analogy of dropping two downy feathers from a cliff at the same moment. They’ll drift to the ground at varying rates of speed depending on air currents and by the chance of how they tumble. But one will always land later and farther from the other. If you drop them again, they will fall in an entirely different pattern. It’s impossible to predict their paths. Time falls in the same way, but there are two times a year when mortal and fae timelines are in sync—Samhain and Beltane—which you might know in the mortal world as All Hallows’ Eve and May Day. A single day is a single day in both worlds.”
Bristol edged forward in her seat.
“Beyond that, time is erratic,” Esmee continued. “A century or a minute can distance one world from the other. While fae can always return to the time of their own world, only a timemark allows mortals to move safely back to theirs. When the—”
“Awhat?” Bristol called out.
“A timemark,” Esmee repeated. “The ancient relics fashioned by the mages of Gorias. Time still moves at different rates, but the relic marks your place in time when you leave, so a week passing here will only be a week passing there if you return. That’s why you all received one, just in case you have more mortal blood in you than you think.”
“I didn’t get one,” Bristol said in a panic. “I didn’t get a timemark!”
“Of course you did. A small gold piece with a hole in the middle. It looks a bit like a coin.”
Terror clutched Bristol’s throat.
A coin?
She gasped.
Don’t lose it. It’s your ticket back to this world.
She jumped up without explanation and ran all the way from Ceridwen Hall to her room, throwing her door open. Her chest burned from her wild dash. She ran to her backpack and dumped it on the floor, frantically scattering crumbs and wrappers, searching for a glimmer of gold. “It’s not here!” Her hands desperately ruffled through tampons, toothpaste, and packets of oatmeal, and then when she sent a granola wrapper flying, she spotted the tiny round piece of gold. She grabbed it, clutching it to her belly. A hoarse sob tore loose from her throat.
Damn you, Tyghan! Why didn’t you tell me?
But he had.
It was only a brief mention, and she’d been so overwhelmed by everything else at the time, she hadn’t realized the importance of it. The fox emerged from its hole and nibbled the crumbs she had scattered, then scurried back to his den. With her heart still hammering, she searched for a safe place to hide the timemark where no careless hand or hungry fox could make off with it.
Without it, she could lose her old life—and her sisters—forever.
She knew all the best places to hide things in a motel room—in the zippered cushion of a chair, inside the rod of a shower curtain, under the cover of an ironing board. Her room contained none of those things. She flung open her wardrobe and searched for a place there, then spotted her old sneakers at the bottom. She pulled up the insole of one, and slid the coin beneath it, then safely tucked both sneakers back on the top shelf, hidden from view.
“Everything all right?”
Bristol whirled.
Hollis stood in her doorway, the other recruits just behind her. They ambled farther into her room.
“You gave us a bit of a scare,” Julia said.
Sashka beamed. “But, boy, can that lady run.”
Bristol swallowed. “Sorry. It’s just that I wasn’t sure if I still had the timemark—and I think I might have a little mortal blood in me.”
“That could put a scare in anyone, couldn’t it?” Avery said.
Hollis shrugged. “None of us know for sure what skeletons are in our family tree. It’s one of those things families tend to bury. We all have a few bones in our closets, and one or two could be mortal.”
