“Come and find out,” I said.
“Tempter!” said Jacob, smiling. “And yet it must be said, the family is not entirely happy with me, just now. I am out of sorts with my own times … so perhaps some time apart might enable the family to look on me more happily, through the kinder eyes of absence… So! Anything for the family, young Edwin!”
I reached out my hand, through the gateway, across the years, and Jacob took it. It was actually a shock, to be able to feel his flesh-and-blood hand in mine. I brought him through Merlin’s Glass, out of his time and into mine, and the gateway immediately snapped shut. Jacob let go my hand and looked around him, clearly shocked at the state of the chapel, gone (for him) in a moment from the tidy sanctuary he knew to the grubby, abandoned derelict of now. He started to say something…and the ghost of Jacob appeared out of nowhere, a fiercely glowing presence with wild eyes, hovering above us. He pointed a shaking, shrivelled hand at me, his voice howling inside my head like a damned soul.
What have you done? What have you done!
He vanished. Jacob grabbed me firmly by the arm. “What in sweet Jesu’s name was that?”
“I don’t think I’m going to tell you,” I said after a moment. “I think…I’m going to have to work up to that.”
I pried his fingers off my arm, and then used the Merlin Glass to open a gateway between the chapel and the old library. I called for Rafe, and he came trotting up immediately.
“This is Jacob Drood,” I said briskly. “Yes, that Jacob. I brought him forward, out of the past, to help us. I need you to look after him, bring him up to speed, tell him anything he needs to know, and no, I’m not going to answer any questions at this time. Just… do it, all right?”
“You just love making trouble for yourself, don’t you?” said Rafe. “Why don’t you just shoot an albatross and get it over with? Come with me…Jacob, and I’ll do my best to explain the unholy mess you’ve just been dropped into.”
“Ah, brave new world, that has such secrets in it,” Jacob said dryly. “It would appear the family of this time is not so different from the family I know, after all.”
I pushed him through the gateway and shut down the Glass before either of them could ask any awkward questions. I’d asked the Glass for the most suitable candidate, and it chose Jacob. So he had to be the right man for the job. He just had to be. I sighed heavily, looked round the empty chapel, and raised my voice in the dusty silence.
“All right, Jacob, you can come out now.”
And just like that, there he was, sitting slouched in his reclining chair, a skinny spectral presence in a grubby T-shirt and baggy shorts. His flyaway hair floated around his bony head as though he were underwater, and his eyes were dark and brooding. He glowered at me, but his heart wasn’t in it. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked old and tired and defeated.
“Why did you do it, Edwin? What did you think you were doing? Why didn’t you tell me you were planning to snatch my living self out of the past?”
“The Merlin Glass said you were what the family needed to fight this war,” I said. “But…you must have known I was going to do it. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t remember!” The ghost of old Jacob looked sadly at his empty television set, and brief images flickered across the dusty screen of the living Jacob in his own time, doing all the simple everyday things the living do … all of it just a jumble of memories, gone in a moment.
“So much of my past is lost to me,” Jacob said softly. “My life is so long ago, now. After I died I spent centuries here, just sitting and waiting…waiting for the important thing I had to do … waiting for so long I finally forgot what it was I was waiting for. I knew you were important, from the first day I set eyes on you, as a child. I remembered, eventually, that I had to help you seize control of the family away from the Matriarch, but I still didn’t know why. There’s more to me being here, Eddie, than just the destruction of the Heart. There’s something I have to do, something important… but I don’t know what!” He looked up and fixed me with a steely glare. “But I do remember one thing now, Eddie. You brought me here, to this time, to die. You made me, or will make me, what I am.”
“How?” I said. My throat was dry, my voice just a whisper.
“I don’t know. Let’s just hope it’s a good death. For the family.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t let that happen.”
“You can’t prevent it. In fact, you mustn’t.”
“I could send you back. The living you. Just open the gateway and…”
“But you won’t. Because you need me.”
“Jacob…” I said.
He nodded gruffly. “I know, boy. I know.”
“You were my first real friend,” I said. “And apart from Uncle James, the only real family I ever had. You and James were the only ones I ever cared for. And now you tell me I’m going to be responsible for your death too? No. No, I can’t let that happen. Not again. I killed one father; I can’t kill another!”
“Time isn’t fixed,” Jacob said kindly. “But… if I don’t die, like I’m supposed to, I won’t be here to be your… friend, when you need it. Won’t be here to help you take down the Heart. The family always comes first, Eddie. I’m glad I got to meet you, boy. You were worth waiting for. You… are the son I never had. Now dry your eyes, and do what you have to. There is a purpose in this, a destiny we have to fulfill. I remember that much.”
“Why have you been hiding from me?” I said when I could trust my voice again.
“Because I had the feeling something bad was about to happen. And because … I need time alone, undisturbed, to make myself remember just what it is I’m supposed to do. Before it’s too late. Don’t come looking for me, Eddie. And don’t tell the living me about… me. Just in case you think of a way out.”
He grinned, winked a glowing eye, and then vanished from his chair, leaving me alone in the chapel.
Considering how my first attempt at meddling with time had gone, I wasn’t sure I wanted to try again. But need and duty and Jacob’s encouragement drove me on. I still needed help, perhaps now more than ever, and the only place left to look was among the future descendants of my family. And besides, I always was stubborn. So I fired up Merlin’s Glass again, and instructed it to show me the future.
“Show me how the Hall will look, a hundred years from now,” I said. That seemed safe enough.
The doorway opened, showing me a view of the Hall, standing tall and proud in its extensive grounds. The old house looked a hell of a lot bigger. Whole new wings had been added, and a tall stone tower on each corner. Airships of an unfamiliar design buzzed like sleek black wasps around the landing field at the back, and there were children, hundreds of children, running free and happy across the sloping lawns. And then the image changed abruptly, showing me another Hall. It was a ruin, broken stone and crumbling brick, and all the windows dark. The grounds were a rioting jungle of strange and alien plants, lapping right up against the sides of the Hall like a solid green tide. Creepers hung out of windows, trees burst out through broken walls. And no sign of the family anywhere.
The image changed again. This time the Hall I knew was gone, replaced by a magnificent high-tech structure, all gleaming steel and silver and huge flashing windows. Swirling energies coalesced around tall shimmering towers, and strange machines hopped across the neatly manicured lawns. And the whole place was surrounded by flying angels, full of a terrible beauty, singing songs of war, shining brighter than the sun …
The images before me kept changing, flashing by faster and faster. All of them potential, possible futures. All equally real, equally likely or unlikely. I commanded the Glass to stop, thought for a while, and then told it to show me an image of the Hall, in a future where the family failed to stop the Invaders.