Chapter 69
Decrepit Me had vanished back into her wood-lined
cage, and good riddance. Also, gray was too severe a color for our
complexion.
Even better, the Marc
Thing had scuttled off like a rat. Better riddance.
Wait. Better
riddance? Great riddance? Awesome riddance?
“Damn,” Laura
muttered, a rare swear. “Elderly You said jump, and he leaped,
didn’t he?”
“Just tell me I
wasn’t the one who did that to him.”
“What, you’d feel
better if it had been Tina or Sinclair?”
“No, but I’d like to
ask them anyway.”
Laura stopped walking
again. What with all the stopping and starting and the mini-tour
and the Marc-Thing, we’d only managed to get about eleven feet.
Good thing we weren’t planning on taking over the
place.
“There’s no point in
looking for Sinclair,” Laura said, hands on her hips.
“Okay, that’s weird,
because about two hundred seconds ago, you came up with this really
great plan, remember? You said—”
“Of course I
remember, Betsy, it was three minutes ago.”
“Are you sure?
Because it seems kind of like you don’t.”
“We won’t find
Sinclair. He either isn’t here, or he won’t see you.”
“But—”
“She knows, Betsy!
She knows what you’re thinking, and she knows what I said. And
she’ll have planned for that. Remember: she knew we were coming.
There are no surprises for Ancient You.”
“Maybe that’s her big
problem,” I said. “I don’t deny she gives me the creeps, but I feel
a little sorry for her.” A very little.
“I don’t,” Laura said
bluntly. “She scares the hell out of me. All your powers as queen
in you is bad enough. All your power in her .
. . guided by intellect. By the logic of an accountant! It’s
wrong, Betsy, and it’s frightening.”
“Well, calm down, I
don’t plan on turning into her in the next half hour. Let’s use
this chance! We’ll find out what we can, and then we’ll be able
to—
Laura was already
shaking her head. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.
That’s why we don’t stay here long. We realize that. And we
leave.”
“To be fair, we
haven’t stayed in any time period long.”
“Right, but
she’ll know we won’t need to stay.
Remember: she’s already come to this dance. She knows all the
steps.”
“And that’s how we’re
gonna get her.” Get? Was I plotting my
own downfall? I hated time travel! If
nothing else, I never knew what tense to use. And why, exactly, was
I trying to change things? Ancient Me was a chilly workaholic, but
that didn’t make her evil beyond compare. Right? “Because Decrepit
Me has forgotten what it’s like to just pull plans straight out of
her butt without thinking.”
“That might work,”
Laura admitted. “She’s used to plotting. And she’s had the
advantage of knowing what would happen. Maybe instead of trying to
stop whatever-it-was, she planned for it”
“So maybe we try to
get info out of her so we don’t just
lie back and let it happen. Maybe she figured whatever-it-was
couldn’t be stopped. So she made sure the vampires would be taken
care of. If it’s July now, think what it’s like here in the winter!
Vampires can’t freeze to death, so who better to take over when
global warming bitch-slapped the planet?”
“Makes sense. So what
do we—”
I held up a hand.
“Uh-uh. I can’t tell you. That way, in the future, you can’t tell
shriveled, withered Other Me. Go try to—”
“Don’t you tell me.”
“Right. So after we
don’t tell each other what we’ll do, we’ll meet—or not—sometime
afterward. Probably.”
“Well, good luck, I
think.”
“And to you,
probably.”
We embraced, then
dashed off in different directions.