The River of No Return

his arm to the base of his skull. “Time,” she said. “It is like a river. It always flows in one direction.” She placed her finger at the intersection of Nick’s heart line and his fate line. “Or does it?”
    “I’m losing respect for you, Alice. Next you’ll be pulling out a crystal ball.” It felt like her finger was resting at the crossroads of him.
    “This hand has done many things.”
    “Do you see my past deeds written in the creases?”
    “No.” She tapped her finger twice at the center of his palm. “I know very little about palmistry. But I do know about you.” She leaned back, releasing his hand. “I know because as the Alderwoman of the Guild I have more information at my fingertips than you can possibly imagine. I also know because I am a good reader of men and women. You wear your past in your body and your face. We all do.”
    “When you say I’ve done many things with my hands, do you mean killing?”
    “You have killed, haven’t you? In Spain.”
    “Yes.”
    “But you’ve done many other things as well.”
    Nick lifted his glass. “Drinking,” he said.
    Alice nodded. “And loving women.”
    Nick took a sip. He wasn’t going to respond to that one.
    “Writing letters and sealing them with that ring.”
    Nick glanced at his ring. Its crest gleamed in the morning sun. “What are we talking about, Alice? Why am I here? Am I to become one of your hit men?”
    “You think the Guild has hit men?”
    “Of course it does.” He thought of Meg and Leo. “Don’t treat me like a child.”
    Alice let her breath out slowly, looking over Nick’s shoulder at something. Her dark eyes seemed curiously blank for a moment. Then they snapped back to his. “Look outside, Nick,” she said.
    He raised his eyes and gasped. The sky had changed. The sun was well risen now, and there were a few clouds where before there had been none. As much as an hour might have passed. He scanned the room. On the table under the tulips there was a fallen petal that had not been there before. He leapt to his feet. “What did you do to me?” He looked down at his beer, picked it up, sniffed it. It had the flat, unappetizing smell of a drink left sitting too long. “Damn it! I was enjoying that.”
    Alice leaned back in her chair and favored Nick with a smile. “I stop time and you worry about your beer.”
    “You stopped time? What do you mean? What the bloody hell do you mean by that?”
    “Sit down, Nick.”
    He sank back down into his chair. He felt like throwing up. But he clenched his jaw and stared at the Alderwoman, waiting for an explanation.
    She reached over and pushed his flat beer away, down the table. “I stopped time,” she said, and her voice was crisp and businesslike. “Though only in this room, and only for you. For almost an hour. I did various things during that time. Wrote a few e-mails. Made a phone call. Then I started time up again and you started up, too. It is much like pressing pause and then play on an iPod.”
    “But . . . I thought—” Nick stopped. He could tell before he even finished his sentence that much of what he had believed a few moments ago—an hour ago, apparently—was about to be revealed as infantile nonsense.
    “You thought what the Guild wanted you to think,” Alice said. “You thought that you’d jumped in time ten years ago and that was the end of that. But now, Nick, the Guild has cleared you for Level One security. We need you, and we need you to know a little more.”
    He swallowed. “Why me?”
    Alice waved her hand as if shooing away a mosquito. “Don’t worry about that. We need you for reasons that have to do with your past. But to be of use, you will have to learn more about the Guild, about yourself and of what you are capable. Some of what you learn might disturb you, or make you angry.”
    “I can handle it,” Nick said gruffly. “For God’s sake, I’ve jumped two bloody centuries and remade my life from the bottom up.”
    The Alderwoman touched a drop of water that was running down her glass and drew a wet, undulating line on the tabletop. “Indeed you have. Admirably.” She looked up. “Do you remember the first rule of the Guild? And the second?”
    “There is no return.”
    “That is, indeed, the first and also the second rule of the Guild. But rules . . .” She paused. “I believe they say that rules are made to be broken.” She smiled at him, waiting for him to understand.
    Nick stared back, not