“Times are changing.” Darren stepped between my legs, grabbed my wrists, and pinned them back. “Don’t you see the future coming?”

I fought against his grip, but he already had leverage and I didn’t have enough muscle. I could kick him in the balls… For a sweet moment, I let myself watch that vision play out—Darren’s eyes pinch as he crumples, yowling like a tomcat and he writhes on the carpet for a few delicious moments before he rises with murder and worse boiling behind his eyes. I choked the image off before I saw what happened next. As much as I wanted some small moment of victory, that possibility yanked the breath out of my lungs.

Instead, I turned my head away and blocked him out, reaching for a few thousand timeghosts to cover over the present. So thick in the layers, I could hear Darren saying something, but the words echoed like they were passing through a crazy long tunnel.

I didn’t want to see whatever had him so smug, but I had to suck it up this time.

What future is he talking about?

Without Tair, I couldn’t flip straight to the page I wanted. I had to shuffle through the choices the hard way. I flipped and flipped the layers of time and it was like pulling the cord on my hot-air balloon of a headache. Wincing, I gutted it out. I needed to see what new awful was on the way.

Doctor Nagi clasps Darren’s shoulder. “You’ve done well. I’ll see that you’re rewarded.” Darren’s answering grin is toxic. “There’s only one thing I want.”

I winced harder. Okay. I needed to see anything but that.

Darren walks down a corridor; Darren flips through a binder filled with medical data; Darren stands in front of a group of Seligo-looking men and women in lab coats, presenting something I can’t see on a display wall; he grabs Tair by the lapels, but Tair pushes him back and—

Tair.

Beautiful, ghostly Tair fluttered to the front of my queue, almost solid. Tair strides down the hall, carrying a weirdly purple watermelon and grinning to himself.

Just this once, it wasn’t me who was ending up on a stretcher.

For the first time in years, I gave Darren a genuine smile. “You’re in so much trouble.”

“What’s that supp—”

The door opened. Tair took in the scene in a flash—Darren pressing me down on the couch, pinning my wrists above my arms. It had to look as bad as it felt.

He snapped into motion. Tair hurled his melon, and it connected with Darren’s face, making the most satisfying crunch I’d ever heard.

Grabbing at his smashed nose, Darren fell off me.