Epilogue
Elizabeth drew a chalk outline around Thomas. He was sound asleep, sprawled across the floor of the Egyptian Building as if he'd been thrown there. He was still jetlagged from his sudden (to him) trip into the future. The rest of them were jetlagged from their trip to the Fair Country, which had shifted them about twelve hours.
"Too bad we can't go to Tokyo," Alice had yawned when she carried Joe back home after he'd been released from the hospital. Even now, two days later, he was still groggy from the venom on the elfin arrows, though Elizabeth suspected a fair proportion of that was put on with the goal of garnering yet more attention, which he'd gotten except for tonight when they'd abandoned him. They were all mostly recovered from the bumps and bruises acquired over that night, except for the gash on Elizabeth's wrist, which refused to close and from which blood still slowly welled.
Miss Price had encouraged them to continue messing with her crystal. By day (the early and late parts when no one was around), her nephew was quartering the first floor of the Egyptian Building with a metal detector. By night, Miss Price had them sneaking in by way of the unsecured tunnel from the construction site and climbing around on the roof with the crystal, a compass, and Joe's million candlepower portable lamp. "Uncle Simon did bury something there, but it's not metal," she told them.
Tonight was Alice's turn up on the roof. She had Kevin and Dirk with her. When Elizabeth looked up at the glass roof, she could see the lamp waving around. The faint sounds of an argument drifted down through the hole made by Alastair Price. She returned her attention to her chalk as she carefully outlined Thomas's hand, which twitched and grabbed her by the wrist. "Ow."
"What are you doing?" He sat up and let go. He was looking decidedly blurry, she thought. When she looked closely and the light was bad, she could almost see that extra layer of Thomas in there.
"Nothing, just trying to stay awake." She rocked back on her heels.
He looked around at the chalk outline. "I suppose this means something?"
"Mm. Yeah. It's kind of … morbid humor. They put chalk outlines around murdered bodies. Only now they use sticky tape, I think. I'll rub it out before we leave, but even if I didn't, they would assume someone was playing a joke."
"Would they?" He looked at the chalk for a little longer, then lay back down. "Why does everything have to be so foreign? I can't wait to get back home. But then I have to come back here again … "
"You do?"
"Yes. I—one of the things that he's been telling me." Thomas sat up and pointed at his temple. "That ghost, to convince me that I can't go back, is that Sophie died."
"Well, it was a really long time ago … "
"Not at a ripe old age. In only a few years from now—from then, I mean to say. After I disappeared, she waited for me for a while, but eventually they gave me up for dead. She married someone else and died a year later being delivered of their child."
"Oh." Elizabeth dropped the chalk.
"It seems … I've gathered that sort of thing is very rare now. I must bring her back here, to save her."
The ghost Thomas smacked his ghost palm against the corporeal Thomas's forehead and said, You can't, you moron, it's already happened.
"Be quiet. I can so."
"Oh God." Elizabeth flopped back onto the floor, her head resting on an incidental inlaid scarab, and listened to Thomas argue with himself. At least he's winning, she thought idly, closing her eyes. She started to drift off. A whoop from above and a sudden light against her eyelids woke her.
She opened her eyes. Thomas leaned over her, the chalk in his hand.