“In 1757. August.” Marcus’s voice was flat and coolly factual. “The day after Ft. William Henry fell to the French.”
“Where?” I asked, even though I was pressing my luck to be so inquisitive.
“Hadley. A small town in western Massachusetts, along the banks of the Connecticut River.” Marcus picked at the knee of his jeans, worrying at a loose thread. “I was born and raised there.”
Philip climbed into Marcus’s lap and presented him with another block.
“Would you tell me about it?” I asked. “I don’t know much about your past, and it might help to pass the time while you wait for news from Phoebe.”
More importantly, remembering his own life might help Marcus. From the bewildering tangle of time that surrounded him, I knew that Marcus was struggling.
And I was not the only one who could see the snarled threads. Before I could stop him, Philip grabbed at a red strand trailing from Marcus’s forearm with one pudgy hand, and a white strand with the other. His bowed lips moved as if he were uttering a silent incantation.
My children are not weavers. I had told myself this again and again, in moments of anxiety, in the depths of night while they slept quietly in their cradles, and in times of utter desperation when the hurly-burly of our daily routines was so overwhelming I could barely draw breath.
If that were true, though, how had Philip seen the angry threads surrounding Marcus? And how had he managed to capture them so easily?
“What the hell?” Marcus’s expression froze as the hands of the old clock, a gilded monstrosity that made a deafening ticktock, stopped moving.
Philip drew his fists toward his tummy, dragging time along with them. Blue and amber threads screeched in protest as the fabric of the world stretched.
“Bye-bye, owie,” Philip said, kissing his own hands and the threads they contained. “Bye-bye.”
My children are half witch and half vampire, I reminded myself. My children are not weavers. That meant they weren’t capable of— The air around me trembled and tightened as time continued to resist the spell that Philip had woven in an attempt to soothe Marcus’s distress.
“Philip Michael Addison Sorley Bishop-Clairmont. Put time down. Immediately.” My voice was sharp and my son dropped the strands. After one more heart-stopping second of inactivity, the clock’s hands resumed their movement. Philip’s lip trembled.
“We do not play with time. Not ever. Do you understand me?” I drew him out of Marcus’s lap and stared into his eyes, where ancient knowledge mixed with childish innocence.
Philip, startled by my tone, burst into tears. Though he was nowhere near it, the tower he had been constructing crashed to the ground.
“What just happened?” Marcus looked a bit dazed.
Rebecca, who could not bear it when her brother cried, crawled over the fallen blocks to offer him comfort. She held out her right thumb. The left was firmly lodged in her own mouth. She removed it before speaking.
“Shiny, Pip.” A violet strand of magical energy streamed from Becca’s thumb. I’d seen vestigial traces of magic hanging off the children before, but I’d assumed that they served no particular function in their lives.
My children are not weavers.
“Shit.” The word popped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
“Wow. That was weird. I could see you, but I couldn’t hear you. And I couldn’t seem to speak,” Marcus said, still processing his recent experience. “Everything started to fade. Then you took Philip out of my lap and it all went back to normal. Did I timewalk?”
“Not quite,” I said.
“Shit,” Becca repeated solemnly, patting her brother on the forehead. “Shiny.”
I examined Philip’s forehead. Was that a speck of chatoiement, a weaver’s signature gleam, between his eyes?
“Oh, God. Wait until your father finds out.”
“Finds out what?” Matthew was in the doorway, bright-eyed and relaxed from repairing the copper gutters over the kitchen door. He smiled at Becca, who was blowing him kisses. “Hello, my darling.”
“I think Philip just worked—or wove—his first spell,” I explained. “He tried to smooth out Marcus’s memories so they wouldn’t bother him.”
“My memories?” Marcus frowned. “And what do you mean Philip wove a spell? He can’t even talk in complete sentences.”
“Owie,” Philip explained to Matthew with a tiny, shuddering sob. “All better.”