Free Time Crossed: A Time Thief Novella (A Penguin Special from Signet) by MacAlister Katie

drawing.”
    The first of the fireworks went off, dragging my attention from the offered bit of paper to the sky, then down to my watch. We were quickly running out of time. The longer it took me to get the old lady back to her home, the harder it would be for me to explain how I’d found her.
    “Later. I’ve got to get moving right now. Stay here, and don’t get into trouble,” I said, grabbing my purse in preparation for heading off to the car park. “I’ll meet you in about ten minutes at the entrance.”
    Mom Two straightened up to her full height (about an inch taller than me), and said with injured dignity, “We are not children, Gwenhwyfar. You do not need to speak to us as if we are. Mags, I believe that in view of the evening’s events, we deserve to treat ourselves with an ice cream. You stay here with Mrs. Vanilla, and I’ll fetch us all a cone.”
    I bit back the urge to tell them that I’d treat them like adults when they stopped indulging in the most hare-brained (and illegal) plans that threatened to get them banished to the Akasha, or worse, but as I turned around and took a step, I bumped into a large body that had his back to me.
    “Woops. Sorry,” I started to apologize to the man, but stopped when he turned to face me. “Oh, it’s . . . uh . . .”
    “You!” he said, a smile spreading over his face, going so far as to touch his eyes. Which, as I remembered, were a remarkably clear shade of topaz blue. “Gwen Byron, right? What a surprise meeting you here. A pleasant surprise.”
    I stared at him for a few seconds. He was the man I’d met two days before, the one who had wrestled to the ground—and later arrested—the lawyer who had threatened my mother, and incidentally tried to throw me over the edge of a cliff to certain death. My mind, annoyingly, went blank at the partial use of my name, but luckily, before I corrected him, I remembered that in my attempt to hide my relationship with my mom, I had given him only my first and middle names.
    “Uh . . .” I felt utterly and completely stupid standing there staring at him. I didn’t know his name, but the one thing I knew for certain now filled me with a spike of pure, adrenaline-fueled fear: He was with the Watch, and my mother was not ten feet behind me, chatting pleasantly to her kidnap victim.
    Without thinking of the wisdom of my act, I grabbed his arm and walked past him, forcing him to turn so that his back was to Mom. “Hi!” I tried to think of something to say that wasn’t a shriek of fear, but my brain didn’t appear to be up to the task of witty banter in the face of danger. “I . . . I don’t think I ever got your name.”
    “Gregory Faa.” He made a bow, an old fashioned move that was simply elegant on him. But that was no surprise; everything about him was elegant, from dark blond hair that swept back off his forehead to a mobile, sensitive mouth and firm chin, right down to a sapphire blue raw silk shirt and what had to be Italian shoes. He had said something at our only meeting about being born in Romania, which went a long way to explain the polished manners. “I had no idea you were still in the area. But then, I had no idea why you ran away from me so quickly the other day.”
    I gave him what I hoped was a placid smile, but which I fear turned out to be more of a grimace, and endeavored not to look over his shoulder at the bench where my mother and Mrs. Vanilla sat. Watch members were notoriously sharp and intelligent, and I was certain that he would notice if I kept looking over his shoulder at the bench.
    “I was . . . um . . .”
    I focused instead on his chin, but that just filled my mind with wholly inappropriate thoughts about biting it, so instead I stared at his left earlobe. An earlobe would be safe to look at. “I was . . . er . . .”
    He wore a sapphire stud earring. It glittered darkly in the torchlight, contrasting pleasantly with the hair that curled around the