Inked

to help those kids.”
    “No,” Zee whispered, with utter certainty. “Would have been different. Colder, harder. No good mother. No heart. Seen it happen. Again, again.” He rested a claw upon my hand. “You got heart. Heart from your mother, because your grandmother got heart. Because you shook up her heart. Shook her hard. Made her regret. Regret is sweet if it burns you right.”
    “So you’re saying…. all this was to make me go back. To help my grandmother become a better person.” I stared at him. “But she didn’t even remember me. Later, the first time I met her. We were strangers.”
    Zee made a slashing motion across his brow. “Waited until lessons took, then cut you out. Better that way. No good remembering future. No good.”
    I wanted to argue with that, but stopped myself. If I had met my grandchild while hardly out of my teens, it would have messed me up. It would have been all I thought of. No good remembering the future. Because it stole from the present.
    I wrapped my arm around his hard shoulders, and rested my chin on top of his head. I could hear Grant’s cane clicking in the other room, coming closer.
    “But we failed,” I said softly, staring at the glittering city lights. “Those kids died.”
    Zee held up his clawed hand, splitting his long fingers like a Vulcan from Star Trek . “Live long and prosper.”
    I stifled a sharp cough of stunned, incredulous laughter. But mostly, I just wanted to weep. Grant peered into the room. “You okay?”
    “No,” I said. “There’s been a lot of death.”
    “Lot more you’re not telling me. If I checked your right hand, what would I see?”
    I did not want to look. “More of your future cyborg woman.”
    “And the rest?”
    “I couldn’t save the people I was supposed to.”
    Grant leaned against the doorway, studying me. “You’re talking about those kids whom Winifred knew, and who were…targeted. Samuel, Lizbet.”
    “Ernie,” I whispered, aching.
    Grant frowned. “You feel so much grief when you say his name. I can see it.”
    “He’s dead,” I blurted out, wondering why he should look so confused—and then remembered that Grant did not know. I had not told him yet, about going back in time. Seeing those…names…as children. Saving Ernie, at least for a moment. In this time, Ernie had been dead for days now, in my arms.
    Unless he was not dead.
    “Grant,” I said slowly. “How did we get here? How were we warned to find Winifred?”
    His frown deepened. “There was a letter, Maxine.”

    THE following week in Seattle, I picked Ernie Bernstein up from the airport. It was a rare day, sunny and warm, and I was the only person wearing jeans and a turtleneck. I did not feel the heat.
    I saw him coming out of customs: a portly man, shorter than me, his hair silver and tufted. But his eyes were the same. I remembered those eyes.
    He stopped when he saw me. Stood stock-still, staring. Drinking me in. I walked up to him, and smiled. Not bothering to hide the fine burn of tears in my eyes.
    “I listened,” he said hoarsely. “Even when Winifred called me out of the blue and said I needed to find you, and go in person. Even when she mailed me that scrap of skin and said the Black Cat was back. I waited, and did as you asked.”
    Time was a funny thing. I had assumed nothing could change, but it had. I could not explain the paradox that created. Only that moments counted. That it was possible— it was possible, against all odds—to make a difference.
    “You did good,” I said.
    “I trusted magic,” Ernie replied, with a tremulous smile. “But now I’m an old man, and you’re still the same. I can only hope…I can only hope that Jean is doing just as well.”
    I hesitated. He saw the answer in my eyes, and bowed his head.
    “Oh,” he whispered, a little boy all over again, pained and grieving. “I never thanked you. Either of you. I regretted that, always. So I watched for you both. All these years, everywhere I went. I watched for your faces.”
    “I was hoping you would find me,” I said.
    He leaned in, and kissed me shyly on the cheek. “It was only a matter of time.”

etched in silver
    AN OTHERWORLD NOVELLA
    YASMINE GALENORN

Without obsession, life is nothing.
    —JOHN WATERS
    If we can live without passion, maybe we’d know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we’d be truly dead.
    —JOSS WHEDON ( B t VS )

1
    THE room was a shade