Inked

“Lizbet. Curfew will begin soon. You both should not be here.”
    I straightened. I knew those names.
    Samuel pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and held it out to my grandmother. She took it from him, and then caught his wrist as he pulled away. He began to protest—she muttered a sharp word that sounded distinctly German—and the boy stilled. She dragged him near, holding up his arm to stare at his inner wrist.
    I was too far away to see what she was looking at, but I recognized her anger. “This is recent.”
    The boy remained silent. Lizbet whispered, “It happened this afternoon. She said he was getting old enough to be a real man. Her man.”
    My grandmother made a small disgusted sound, and released Samuel. “You have to stop going to her.”
    “Nein,” he muttered sullenly, rubbing his wrist. “We need her connections. Our families need her.”
    “I can get you money, things to trade—”
    “You cannot keep our families safe, Fraulein ,” interrupted Lizbet softly, and grabbed Samuel’s hand, tugging him away. “Her reach is too long.”
    My grandmother shook her head, swearing softly, and took several quick steps after them. She grabbed the girl’s hand and pushed something into it. I had a feeling it was the same object the Nazi had given her. Money, maybe. Something valuable, if the stunned look on Lizbet’s face was any indication. She swallowed hard, clutched the object to her chest, and gave my grandmother a fierce, grateful nod.
    The children ran. The woman watched them, clutching her skirts. And then, slowly, tilted her head to study me.
    She looked so young. Maybe eighteen was too old. It was hard to tell, but one thing was certain: the boys had abandoned her mother early, and left a teenager to fend for herself. No doubt my great-grandmother had been murdered in front of her daughter, just as my mother had been murdered in front of me. That was how it worked. Once you lost the protection of the boys, death always came knocking.
    My grandmother finally walked toward me. Red eyes glinted from her hair. My own Dek and Mal also uncoiled from around my neck. Her pace faltered when she saw them.
    And then she took a deep breath, and kept coming until she was so close I could smell the fried sausages on her body, and the beer, and the cigarette smoke.
    I smelled like somebody’s piss. Not that I cared, right then. My grandmother had died four years before my birth. Every time I met her it felt wrong and heartbreaking, and unspeakably profound.
    “What are you?” she finally whispered. I had no ready answer, even though I had spent the past hour trying to imagine what I would say.
    I was still holding my cup of tea. Zee pushed up against my leg, and the shadows rippled around us. Raw and Aaz appeared, but they were not alone. Another Raw, another Aaz, gathered close behind them. And Zee. Her Zee.
    The boys stared at their counterparts, gazes solemn, knowing. As though this had happened before. As though they knew it would happen again.
    Dread sparked. Time had become fluid in my hands. Perhaps there was a very good reason that Zee kept secrets from me. Because he did know things that I should not—because there was no safe warning for what had brought me here. Not without possibly changing some distant outcome that he knew would come to pass.
    Terrified me. Gnawed at my gut. Surely the future was not set in stone. There had to be more than fate. More than the bleak certainty that what I did now was leading to some inevitable destiny that I could not change.
    “I’m from the future,” I said, figuring my grandmother could handle the truth; not having anything better to tell her. “Far, distant future.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “Bullshit.”
    Well, at least that was familiar. “You think the boys would just be standing here if I was lying?”
    Her lips tightened with displeasure—also familiar, and startling. I had seen that expression on my mother’s face. Made me wonder if it was something else I shared with them. Little bits and pieces of us, bleeding true in our veins from across decades and centuries.
    Blood never lies , Zee had said.
    But there was something else that bothered me. We’d had this conversation before. In my past, in her future. I had met my grandmother the first time I ever time-traveled. She had been in her thirties, and my mother had already been born. Fourteen years old.
    But that had been the first time for my grandmother, too. She had never met me