Meredith McCardle - The Eighth Guardian

“You have thick hair,” she spits, as if it’s something I can control. She shoves the dryer into my hands. “Here, you dry while I start on makeup. Try not to move too much.”

I hold the blow dryer above my head and wave it around while Yellow attacks me with black eyeliner. She throws powder at me, swishes blush on my cheeks, smears ruby-red lipstick on my lips, then grabs the blow dryer from me.

She switches it off. “You’re too slow.” She takes the curling iron and touches it lightly with her fingers to make sure it’s hot. Then she grabs big sections of my still-damp hair and winds them around the rod. My hair sizzles as it touches the heat. She pins it up around my face as she goes.

Finally Yellow sets down the curling iron, rips the plug out of the wall, and walks over to the bed. I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror.

Holy crap!

Yellow made me into a white-faced, time-traveling hooker. I don’t wear much makeup as it is, so this is complete overkill. The eyeliner is so thick I look like a raccoon, and my cheeks are bright pink. And my face. My face is white, like I’m about to perform Kabuki.

I blink. “Yeah,” I say, “I’m pretty sure they didn’t wear makeup like this . . . wherever I’m going.”

Yellow drops the corset to her side and shoots me a look of pure contempt. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

“Excuse me?”

“That dress is Italian silk, and it’s very clearly colonial style. Therefore you’re dressing as a well-heeled, upper-class colonial woman, in which case you absolutely would be mimicking the fashion and beauty styles of late-eighteenth-century Europe, which, yes, means I did your makeup perfectly.”

“I . . .” I don’t know what to say. How did Yellow know all that?

“Stand up!” she commands. She’s holding the corset.

“Not wearing it,” I say.

“Fine.” She tosses it onto the bed. “You can explain that to Alpha and Zeta then. You want to fail? You want them to toss you out before you even begin?”

I bristle as the thought of solitary confinement crosses my mind. An image forms of me pacing an eight-by-ten cell for the rest of my life, and I shudder.

“Okay,” I mumble. I slip out of my shirt and let Yellow pull the corset over my head. It settles in around my waist, and I brace myself, knowing full well that this is going to suck.

“Inhale,” Yellow commands, and when I do, she grabs the ribbons and pulls with such ferocity that I gasp. Before I can recover, she yanks again, and I think my ribs break. I take short, panting breaths, but that only makes my lungs hurt.

“Can’t. Breathe.”

“You get used to it,” Yellow says. She grabs the brocade dress and slips it over my head. I wish I hadn’t eaten so much for breakfast. This corset is squeezing it all back up my digestive tract.

“Where do you keep jewelry?” Yellow asks.

I point to the jewelry box on the dresser while I gasp in short breaths, trying to figure out how to breathe. The jewelry box is the same one I’ve had since I was four. It was a Christmas gift from a grandmother I’d never met. It plays music and has a little ballerina that spins around. Yellow rolls her eyes as she rifles through it.

“You don’t have any pearls?” she asks.

“Sorry, I must have left them at the last Junior League meeting.” I put my hands on my hips and take a slow, easy breath.

Yellow ignores me and takes out my charm bracelet. She holds it up and flicks the little birdcage with her finger.

“That was a gift,” I say, in case she was thinking of tossing it aside. My mind goes back to Abe, to the first Hanukkah I spent with his family—the first Hanukkah I celebrated ever—and the plain, small, black box tied with a silver ribbon and a note welcoming me to the family from Abe’s grandfather. I wasn’t much of a jewelry person, but I wore that bracelet every day. Still do. Well, except for this morning because I was too rushed.

Yellow drops it back into the box and shuts the lid. “You have nothing period appropriate. Where’s your Annum watch?”

I point to the bathroom, where the necklace is resting on the edge of the pedestal sink.

“Yeah,” Yellow says. “You might want to be a little more careful with a piece of government property that cost like twenty million dollars. Try explaining that to Alpha. Oops, sorry, I dropped a wormhole down my bathroom sink.”

My ears perk up. “Wormhole? That’s how the necklaces work?”

“Of course it is.” Yellow hands me the necklace, and I drop it over my head. “You have, like, thirty seconds. You’d better run.”

I can barely walk, but somehow I manage to make it down the stairs without falling on my face. I feel ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.

Zeta is waiting for me in the lounge, near the table with all the flowers. “Are you ready for your first mission?”

“I thought last night was my first mission.”

Zeta doesn’t smile. “That was your admission test. This is your first real mission. Your first Chronometric Augmentation.”

“And I’m ready,” I tell him, even though I don’t think this is true. Shouldn’t I be brushing up on my history or learning the mechanics of time travel? I mean, even a quick briefing would be nice. But I don’t want Zeta to think I’m weak, so I say nothing.

I crane my head toward the dining room, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tyler, but the room is now empty.

Yellow skips down the stairs and waves to Zeta, who smiles and nods at her. His face is relaxed, as if he genuinely seems to like her. That’s bizarre. I can’t imagine how anyone could possibly like Yellow.

She opens a pair of heavy, dark wood French doors across the hall from the dining room and slips inside. But not before I scan every inch of that room I can from where I’m standing. Tall bookshelves line the walls from floor to ceiling, and I even catch sight of one of those ladders on wheels. There are a number of desks in the middle of the room. A library. They have their own library. Of course they do.

Zeta clears his throat. “You ready to go?”

And then I get nervous. A bunch of little butterflies start flittering around in my stomach, which is weird because nerves are one thing I normally can control. But something about going back in time—projecting—Chronometric Augmentation, whatever—scares the crap out of me.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“1770,” Zeta says matter-of-factly. “We’re going to change the Boston Massacre.”

“Excuse me?” I say. I blink as I try to remember my last American history class. The Boston Massacre was one of the driving forces behind the Declaration of Independence. If we change the massacre, wouldn’t that mean the colonies would never declare independence? Would we still be colonies? Am I going to look out the window and see the Union Jack flying over the Massachusetts State House? Holy shit, will there even be a state house?

“Annum Guard has three rules,” Zeta says as he trudges down the stairs. “Three very important rules. Break even one of them and you’re out, so you’d do best to remember them.”

I’m still thinking about the state house.

“Is it really a good idea to mess with the Boston Massacre?” I ask.

“Rule number one. We do not project in front of anyone who is not an Annum Guard member, meaning we do not project in front of the public. Ever. Rule number two—are you listening?”

I clomp down the stairs and nod.

“Rule number two. No second chances. You only get one mission to change the past. If you bungle it, it stays bungled. If you manage to get yourself killed, you stay dead. Got it?”

I’m stunned into silence. There’s a chance of dying on these missions? I mean, I know I was trained for high-pressure situations at Peel, but I guess I never thought too hard about the risks I’d actually face one day. And why can’t we go back to fix mistakes? That makes no sense.