Nomad Page 22

  "I thought she'd be good for you."

  "I miss her." His dim green eyes looked out to the gathering darkness on the horizon. "It was a good life. Good enough. I kept the kids away from the family business, politics and Providence. I knew I'd have to crash that ship one day."

  "The first time around, you never had any children," she told him.

  "Then you're right, my life turned out better this way. I'm afraid I won't have much inheritance to leave them. The vultures are picking my bones. I have to sell this place." He looked back at the cheerful villa. "We all used to vacation here, every August, the whole family back together. This is my last trip, closing the sale of the house. I won't be returning to this island."

  "It's nice here."

  "Too many memories."

  They sat quietly, watching the water retreat from the sand.

  "I brought you something." Raven handed him the two data cubes from her backpack. "These are the only records of that other world, the one where you were the monster. If you ever doubt you made the wrong decision, just have a look at these."

  "Thanks. I'll try to avoid doing that." He had a thin smile as he dropped them onto the table. "I remember the first time you showed me one of these. I was shocked by the technology. Holograms!" He chuckled.

  "And you screamed when the hologram soldiers attacked you."

  "That wasn't fair. You were sneaky."

  "I thought it was funny." Raven drank down her rum.

  "Why did you wait so long to visit me?" he asked. His smile faded to a sad, wistful look.

  "I had to see how your life turned out. You did the right thing, so I didn't want to interfere with history again."

  "So why come see me now?"

  "This was the day I left," Raven said. "Today, I broke into a secret research facility with a team of revolutionaries, and I traveled back through time. Now I've returned home."

  "You told me you were just a history student from the future."

  "I lied."

  "I figured that out long ago, thank you," Logan said. "So you've won the revolution, all by yourself. I am your defeated dictator."

  "Yes," Raven said. "I completed the mission."

  "Then where do you go next? There is no revolution, so nobody remembers you went back." Logan rubbed his temples. "But if there is no revolution, you won't be traveling back in time to stop me...but if you don't travel back and change history, then everything will go back the way it was..."

  "The universe has a way of handling it," Raven said. "Don't give yourself a headache."

  "Thinking was never my strongest point," Logan said. "There are those who like to think and those who like to talk. They're not often the same people."

  Thousands of stars emerged in the newly fallen darkness over the water.

  "Congress never launched an investigation," Logan said. "Too many of them were in the pockets of the megacorps. The Vasquez administration never moved on it publicly, either, but I've heard she used it as a cudgel behind the scenes. She forced them to accept her reforms."

  "Your efforts weren't wasted, then," Raven said.

  "I gave her the sword she needed to go to war against the powerful interests. She cut back their special privileges and monopolies. I have to admit, the economy did recover slightly during her eight years, though not as much as she promised during her campaign."

  "Under your administration, American cities were reduced to war-torn slums."

  "It's a good thing my administration never happened, then."

  "It is." Raven looked out at the ocean with him. "What about the Vendée Globe? Did you ever compete?"

  "Ha. I'm afraid my life didn't leave much time for sailing."

  "That's too bad."

  When a few minutes had passed, Raven stood.

  "I always imagined we'd have more to say to each other," he said.

  "I suppose it's for the best we didn't end up married," she said, and he laughed, but it sounded forced.

  She stepped off the patio onto the beach. The warm wind blew the hair back from her face.

  When she looked back, the old man's head was nodding onto his chest as he drifted off into a boozy sleep.

  Chapter Thirty

  Raven returned to New Haven on a warm spring day in 2064, tracking a new target.

  Kari had grown up in Tacoma, Washington. In the old version of history, her father had been a police officer who'd vanished after helping the resistance with intelligence and weapons. In the new version, Kari's family was still alive, her father was a police chief, and Kari herself was a sophomore at Yale.

  The Gothic buildings were the same as they'd been in 2013--only the altered landscaping hinted that decades had passed. Raven stalked Kari from a distance as she cut across the lawn of Old Campus, absorbed in a fast-paced conversation with two girlfriends.

  Kari wore her Yale shirt with pride. This version of Kari was pudgy, bubbly, even giggly as she chatted with her friends--nothing like the girl Raven remembered. She was, however, alive and at peace.

  Kari paused and looked back directly at Raven, as though she had felt the other girl watching her. Her friends slowed and turned to see why she'd stopped. Kari stared at Raven as if struggling to remember something.

  Raven slipped on her sunglasses and walked away, leaving Kari to her new and improved life. It warmed her heart to see her friend happy and healthy. Raven didn't want to spoil that by interfering.

  Her next stop was her parents' house in Bellevue, Washington, early in the evening as the sun was setting. Three electric cars sat in the driveway, and she could identify their owners by security stickers on the windshields. One sticker was for the parking deck at the news studio downtown--her father. Another granted parking at the hospital--her mother. The third car had a University of Washington sticker.

  In the early darkness, she crept around the outside of the house, keeping to the shadows in the woods alongside the property.

  She tiptoed into the back yard, a grassy lawn with a crushed-pebble path down to the water, lined with green shrubs clipped into spheres.

  Through one of the big picture windows, she saw her mother and father at the dinner table, and she nearly collapsed at the sight of them. They were fifteen years older than she'd ever seen them, going gray, but incredibly, wonderfully alive. She wanted to run inside and hug them, and she felt herself starting to cry.

  Raven took a step toward the back door, but then she arrived.

  She looked just like Raven, except her black hair was dyed with red stripes. She dressed in a manner completely unfamiliar to Raven--her shirt looked like handkerchiefs of different colors and materials, loosely held together with large wooden buttons. Her jeans were canary yellow and embellished with swirls of glittering costume jewelry, held up by bright blue suspenders. Raven couldn't imagine ever picking out such clothes for herself. This version of 2064 had developed some bizarre fashions.

  The other version of her sat down at the table, half-listening to her mother as she served herself salmon and grilled vegetables from the platters on the table. Raven watched them eat, finally understanding what Eliad had said to her.

  "It's beyond strange, is it not?" a voice whispered in her ear. "The first time you see yourself this way?"

  Raven jumped and drew the plasma pistol from beneath her jacket. Eliad smirked as she jabbed the barrel against his chest.

  "I was just putting forth an observation." His dark gray eyes had a mischievous glint, and she recalled that she owed this boy a slapping. Now she owed him two.

  "Where did you come from?" Raven lowered her weapon but didn't put it away.

  "I thought I would find you here," he said. "The day of your departure."

  "My parents are alive."

  "You're fortunate." Eliad smiled, his eyes softening. He looked exactly as she'd last seen him--same threadbare jeans and shirt, his ragged blond hair the exact same length.

  "How did you sneak up on me?" she asked.

  "I'm good. I told
you--or maybe I didn't--I was an intelligence agent for the Atlantic Federation. Gathering intel from the past and the future. Once, I broke orders, made a side trip to save my father's life." Eliad looked up and away at the moon rising over Lake Washington. "That event recoursed my life so far that I never even joined the intelligence service. That version of me became a marine biologist. Whale communication." He shook his head. "That's what cut me off from my own past."

  "And now you're..."

  "A nomad, like you. Rootless."

  Raven looked at the warm tableau inside, her family eating dinner. The new version of her apparently went to college in Seattle and lived at home, as though reluctant to leave her parents behind. She understood that feeling.

  "Her name's Rhea," she told Eliad. "She never went by a ridiculous street name that she picked when she was nine years old. She didn't grow up fighting a war. She'll never travel through time. She'll never know what I did to provide this life for her."

  "She is how the universe heals itself from the threat of paradox. It simply...replaces us." Eliad shrugged. "Nature's way."

  "But where did she come from?"

  "Where do any of us come from?"

  Raven sighed. "Where do I go?"

  "Anywhere you like. The past, the future...I can show you the best. And the worst, if you're into that."

  "No, thanks."

  She watched her family for another minute.

  "Was it worth it?" Raven asked.

  "Saving my father's life? That was worth it to me."

  "Me, too." Raven turned away. "So why did I send you back to intervene in my mission, Eliad?"

  "Oh. About that. You didn't send me."

  "What?"

  "The first time, you killed that future dictator guy right away, but it didn't work. I mean to say, you succeeded in killing him, but a similar or worse future emerged. You went back and killed his younger brothers. That didn't solve it....You kept moving back and forth through time, killing future dictators and their top officials. Killing children for their future evil. It was a bloodbath."

  "I did?"

  "You were never happy with the results, either." He took her pistol hand and holstered her weapon inside her jacket. His eyes studied hers closely, as if he wanted to look inside her soul. "You became someone you wouldn't recognize. Eaten by guilt for the things you'd done. Hateful, spiteful, loathing yourself. I wanted to help you. As I got to know you, I learned how to change you."

  "You traveled back to change me?" She stepped back from him, not sure what to think.

  "To help you. You're free of that now. You finished your mission, and you won't have to carry out the bloodbath--"

  "Why did you want to help me?" Raven interrupted.

  "I..." He smiled and looked away. "You don't know the kind of relationship we had. You won't remember it now."

  "When? We had a relationship when?"

  "Your future, after you become a nomad. My past, now, or the version of my past that I remember."

  "Are things always this confusing?" Raven asked.

  "I assure you, it gets worse."

  Raven led him out of her yard and down the sidewalk of her wooded street, where old trees hid all the houses from view. Only mailboxes and an occasional gate indicated that the woods were inhabited.

  "These trees are so much taller than I remember," she said. "The neighborhood looks good. I visited once, in 2061, but most of it had burned down."

  "Except that didn't happen, because you saved the world."

  "I did. Thanks for noticing."

  "Almost nobody will." He took her arm as if by old habit, and Raven remembered how he'd stolen a kiss before vanishing. It had been a sweet kiss, she thought, looking back on it. Certainly a memorable one.

  "You feel lonely, but you should know we do have a kind of community," Eliad said. "Not a tightly knit one, perhaps, but it's there."

  "Who?"

  "The nomads. Time travelers from up and down the course of history, each of us cut off, free to wander but never free to go home. You're kind of a celebrity among us, you know. Sometimes, you're the first time traveler in history."

  "Sometimes?"

  "You know how history can change."

  "I really do." She stopped walking, realizing she had no idea what to do next. "Where do we go now?" she asked.

  "If you're into neuro-enhanced theme parks, you want to try the twenty-seventh century," he said. "Anything later than that, the sensory induction will literally blow your mind."

  "I was thinking lunch."

  "Murray's Deli, Seventh and Broad. Manhattan, twenty-third century. The best Reuben sandwich of all time."

  "Let's hurry."

  Under the shadow of an elm, they set their timepieces to drop them in Central Park at the same date and time.

  "I'll see you there," Eliad said, then he faded and vanished. His timepiece was more subtle than hers, with no flashes of gold light or miniature thunderclaps. He simply faded away.

  Raven lingered a moment longer, looking up the gentle slope of the street. Her father had taught her to ride a bicycle here. Once, she'd had a nasty crash that left a deep scrape on her knee, and her father had carried her inside. Her mother had brought her to the big marble tub in her parents' bathroom, washed the wound and bandaged it. They had watched cartoons and eaten ice cream.

  Raven felt her eyes sting. She'd lost everything by saving everyone, but she felt that her own life was a small price to pay for such a mission.

  Now the mission was complete, and she was free, but she was entirely alone.

  Not entirely, she thought. She took a last look at the place where she'd grown up, the place where she no longer belonged, and then she jumped into the future.

  From the author

  I hope you enjoyed reading Nomad. I invite you to connect with me online for updates, giveaways, and new books by subscribing to my new release newsletter. When you subscribe, you'll immediately get a free ebook of short stories: http://eepurl.com/mizJH Thanks so much!

  The first chapter of my book Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper, about a paranormal detective in Savannah, Georgia, who specializes in removing restless spirits from haunted houses, begins immediately after this section. It's the first in a new series, so I hope you'll take a look at it. Ghosts are guaranteed!

  Here are some of my other links:

  www.jlbryanbooks.com

  @jlbryanbooks on Twitter

  J.L. Bryan's Books on Facebook

  Subscribe to new release newsletter: http://eepurl.com/mizJH

  Ellie Jordan's job is to catch and remove unwanted ghosts. Part detective, part paranormal exterminator, Ellie operates out of Savannah, Georgia, one of the oldest and most haunted cities in North America.

  When a family contacts her to deal with a disturbing presence in the old mansion they've recently purchased, Ellie first believes it to be a typical, by-the-book specter, a residual haunting by a restless spirit. Instead, she finds herself confronting an evil older and more powerful than she'd ever expected, rooted in the house's long and sordid history of luxury, sin, and murder. The dangerous entity seems particularly interested in her clients' ten-year-old daughter.

  Soon her own life is in danger, and Ellie must find a way to exorcise the darkness of the house before it can kill her, her clients, or their frightened young child.

  Chapter One

  "Why do ghosts wear clothes?" Stacey asked as we drove toward the possibly-haunted house.

  Stacey was twenty-two, four years younger than me and much prettier, her blond hair cropped short and simple, carelessly styled, but her makeup was immaculate. She looked like what she was: a tomboy despite being raised by a former beauty-queen socialite in Montgomery, Alabama. She was a very recent graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design film school, but she'd been eager to join Eckhart Investigations and hunt ghosts rather than pursue a more sane and profitable career.

  I had to wonder how Alabama-socialite mom felt about that.


  "Well?" Stacey asked, raising an eyebrow. She rode shotgun as I drove our unmarked blue cargo van through the streets of Savannah. It was June, and rich sunlight fell through the thick, gnarled branches of ancient live oaks dripping with Spanish moss and crepe myrtles heavy with red blossoms. The stately old trees shaded columned mansions and gardens filled with summer blooms.

  "I don't know, Stacey," I said, trying not to sigh. "You tell me why ghosts wear clothes."

  "I'm asking you!"

  "I thought you were setting up a joke," I said.

  "Nope, totally serious."

  "I don't get the question," I told Stacey. "Why wouldn't they?"

  "Well...think about it," Stacey said. "The living wear them to keep warm or whatever. If you're a ghost, you don't have a body."

  "Does that keep you warm?" I smirked at her low-cut tank top, which wasn't quite appropriate for work. I've been scratched and bruised by enough angry spirits that I wear turtlenecks, leather, and denim even in hot weather. I've tried to warn Stacey about this, but she hasn't listened so far.

  "Uh, no..." Stacey looked down at her shirt as if puzzled.

  "So why do you wear it?"

  "Because I don't want to be naked?"

  "Question answered," I said. "Next?"

  "Why do ghosts wrap themselves in bedsheets?" Stacey asked.

  "They don't do that. Why would you even think--?"

  "So they can rest in peace." Stacey beamed, then her smile faltered a little. "That's a joke."

  "No, jokes make you laugh."

  "That one killed at my second-grade Halloween party."

  "Only because your audience was high on sugar," I said.

  "Here's another one: why do ghosts come out at night?"

  "Because their electromagnetic fields are sensitive to dense concentrations of photons."

  "Joke-ruiner," Stacey said.

  We drove north and west, away from the city center. The Treadwell house was in an odd area of town, upriver, near empty brick warehouses and a few old factory shells dating back more than a hundred years. The nearest residential neighborhood was a row of decrepit bungalows on narrow, weedy lots, some of them clearly abandoned or foreclosed. They'd probably been inhabited by factory and dock workers at some point.