When All is Null and Void

Chapter Four

Rhea didn't reply until she'd set the teapot back on the table. She looked at him kindly enough, but Caleb felt as if he'd somehow found himself in a trap. "You must not have gotten any of my letters. I'll have to be better about that. You're here to discuss the tests."

"But you forced me to be here, and I don't want to take your tests." Caleb crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair with force to nearly send it careening.

"John and Jacob were your escorts. Surely they said as much?"

She was feigning ignorance, Caleb was sure of it. His eyebrows screwed up as he ran a hand through his hair. "How did I get here?"

Rhea sighed, as if she'd somehow been caught. "Timewalkers," she said simply. "These rings--" she pointed at her left hand "--allow us, that is, anyone in my employ, to travel through time and space."

Caleb snorted. "And I can..." He'd been about to make a smart comment, but it died on his lips. Rhea James was not smiling. She'd disappeared from her chair. As if she'd turned into smoke.

A hand on his shoulder forced a high, clipped cry from his throat. The woman who'd been sitting across from him now towered over him.

"I assure you," she said diplomatically, "that whatever it is you can do is not even half as impressive as this." She smiled then, although it was harder and seemed slightly forced. Rhea sat once more, and leaned forward. "These tests are a means of discovering whether or not you might join my team."

"What does a Timewalker do?" Caleb asked. He'd never heard of such a thing. Surely the government had to know about this, right?

"Have you ever wondered what makes the Museum so successful?" Rhea countered. She lifted the tea to her lips and sipped gently, silently.

"Everyone says the artifacts are so real looking, even though they're replicas." Caleb had heard this so often, but he'd never quite figured out how it made the Museum all that interesting. Replicas and displays and giant placards with information had always seemed boring to Caleb. The other displays, though—the ones that had nothing to do with history and all to do with awe-inspiring beauty and technology, those were the draws.

"They're not."

"They're not what?" Caleb asked.

"The artifacts within the Museum are so real looking, because they're not replicas. They're real, whisked away from history and to our displays." She sipped her tea again.

Caleb raised his eyebrows. "Really."

"I wouldn't lie to you," she said. "I've been looking for someone very specific. I need someone to join the Timewalkers to help me solve...something."

Caleb's interest was piqued. "Why are you telling me about this?"

Rhea shrugged. "I find that honesty is the best policy. And that my memory modifications are exceedingly effective." She examined her nails without looking at Caleb.

A chill snaked down his spine. "So that's why people don't remember what happens during the test."

Rhea nodded. "If you do the test, and you don't pass, there's no harm done. If you do, however, then it is all the better for you. If you're the one I'm looking for, your foster guardian will be compensated generously."

"I don't—" he'd been about to refuse again, but then the tiniest bit of longing struck his heart. Caleb wished it was the money for Angelica that enticed him, that it was this that started to convince him. It was the tiniest seed of greed which craved to have a ring of his own, to be able to move around like the wind that did it. He stuffed that part of him down, biting his lip.