01 – House Hunters

“Happy birthday, dear Carter. Happy Birthday to you.”

Carter leaned back, drawing in a breath. People were supposed to make wishes when they blew out their birthday candles. The wishes never came true. Or, if they did, it wasn’t because they were wished for. Carter knew why people wanted things, but he had never understood why people wished for things.

It was tradition. Another concept that he got but at the same time didn’t really understand. Carter liked routine. He liked when things were the same day after day, year after year. Other people in his class all looked forward to the weekends, holidays, and summer breaks. Carter didn’t. He would rather just carry on. Then again, if he stretched his view of time outward a little, the repeated weekends became a routine of their own, as did the summer breaks. They were a regular, planned event that occurred at specific intervals.

Perhaps what he really disliked was the randomness of events that could occur on weekends and holidays. One weekend, the Walker family went out to a theme park just outside Chicago. Another, they went camping in a little rented tent. Sometimes, Carter knew what a weekend held in advance. That let him prepare and plan. Most of the time, where or even if there were any family activities was a surprise that jumped out at him at the last minute.

A weekend was a tradition—a routine. What they did on a weekend was not. That was the problem.

“Carter?”

Carter opened his eyes. Erika stared at him, concerned. She wasn’t the only one around. Leah-who-wasn’t-but-kind-of-was-Leah sat across the table with an uncertain but encouraging smile. Erika’s friend, Dan-or-Danny-or-Daniel, sat beside Erika, one eyebrow high on his forehead as he looked between Erika and Carter. Bethany was slouched back in her chair, trying to look uninterested despite the way her eyes betrayed her desire to eat the cake in front of them. Standing behind them, a portly woman with a kindly smile loomed over the table. Daniel and Bethany’s mother.

The table itself was a large, heavy wooden table that was older than anyone else at the table. Erika was 564756868 seconds old. Daniel was a bit less. Leah-who-wasn’t…

The table wasn’t older than anyone else at the table.

“Everything alright?” Leah-who-wasn’t said, now leaning forward to rest a gentle hand on his forearm.

Carter, who wasn’t sure if he had been breathing in the last seventy-two seconds, let out his breath in a rush. The candles atop the chocolate cake winked out, leaving nothing of the flame but thin trails of smoke that stretched high into the room before vanishing into the rest of the air.

“Did you think of a good wish?” Piper King, Daniel and Bethany’s mother, asked.

No. Carter nodded his head anyway.

“Great,” Bethany said, clapping her hands together. “Cake time?”

“Beth, please. Have some patience. This isn’t your birthday.”

“No, no. She’s right,” Erika said, taking over. “If we leave it to Cart to cut the cake, we’ll be here until the end of time.”

Carter let out a small sigh of relief as Erika took over, cutting the cake and serving it up on little plates for everyone. He leaned back, allowing her into his space, while he simply watched quietly.

The day had barely begun, and already he felt like it had gone on too long. Most days felt like that. He could fix that, but he wasn’t supposed to. Especially not now. Eyes flicking to Leah-who-wasn’t, he frowned slightly before the ticking of the clock on the side of the King’s refrigerator drew his attention. Every second that passed by on the clock wasn’t equal to reality’s internal timekeeping. Every month that passed, the clock would be about eleven seconds further off.

He could fix that, too.

But he wasn’t supposed to.

Especially not now.

They were supposed to be lying low.

Carter lightly rubbed his thumb over the pocket watch in his pocket, feeling its hard edges and the subtle movements of the tiny components within. Erika and Leah-who-wasn’t sat him down and told him everything. Or mostly everything. He knew there were people out there, looking for people like them. The Fixer had been hiding the Walker family for years, but something about transitioning to Leah’s body left some gaps that, combined with Erika snooping about—and Carter occasionally doing things—had exposed them to outside elements.

His eyes drifted over to Leah again. If he did something now, if he righted the time on the clock, The Fixer would fix it.

“Huh,” Bethany grunted between forkfuls of cake. She had her phone out, arm resting on the table. “Lara was at St. Anthony’s Hospital last night because of her mother—”

“Oh no,” Piper said, bringing her hand to her mouth.

“No, no! She’s fine. They’re all fine. It’s just that they evacuated the hospital in the middle of the night. Everyone, even some guy in the middle of surgery, she says.”

“Oh… Did something happen?”

“They told her it was a gas leak, but she said she overheard a nurse talking about how the walls started leaking something gooey. All bright and red and very blood-sounding,” Beth said, her eyes alight with excitement. “Think it’s something dad would be interested in hearing?”

Piper immediately pressed her lips together. “If they evacuated a whole hospital, I’m sure he already knows,” she said in a terse tone.

“Been a lot of gas leaks lately,” Erika said, leaning back in her seat, vaguely pointing her fork in Bethany’s direction.

Carter had been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he hadn’t even noticed that he now had a plate piled up with chocolate cake with its coconut-pecan frosting. It would have to do as a distraction from all the wrong clocks in the King household.

As he ate, Leah-who-wasn’t slid over a small box, topped with a bow. “One of the few things that survived the fire,” she said with a smile.

Carter raised an eyebrow. Almost nothing survived the fire. Even if not exposed directly to the flames, the heat, the smoke, or the water ruined everything to some degree. As it was, there were a few soot marks on the greenish box, and one corner looked a little crispier than the rest, but it was overall in okay condition. Setting down his fork for the moment, he lifted the lid off the box and felt a smile spread across his face.

Cogwork and gears ticked at a steady rate. Wheels turned, and a regulator bounced back and forth with precise oscillation. There was no face to the clock, just narrow hands that ticked along. Behind the hands, a few numbers for the date accompanied a moon phase display.

“Thank you,” Carter whispered, lightly brushing his fingers over its brass casing. There was something odd about the pocket watch as well, something that went beyond the obvious. Much like the clocks in his room back before the fire, this watch had been altered by Leah-who-wasn’t. It would keep ticking forever, its spring never needing winding, all while keeping perfect time.

The thought made him perk up. The more precise the clock, the more time he could steal—or the easier stealing it went.

Except, they weren’t supposed to do anything normal people couldn’t do. Not anymore. Not now. He looked up to Leah, feeling confused, until he noticed everyone watching him. He shrank back into his seat as an uncomfortable apprehension filled him.

“I’m glad you like it,” Leah-who-wasn’t said. “Now, Erika and I will be heading out to look over a few rental properties. Do you want to come too?”

Carter hesitated. Things in the Walker household had been… tense lately, to say the least. It wasn’t something Carter really understood. Leah was still there even if she wasn’t really, except she was. Whatever the case, Leah and Leah-who-wasn’t explained what happened to them, and Erika accepted that explanation.

But Erika was, for the lack of a better word, pissed off at Leah. It was at the point where they existed in the same space, but Erika wouldn’t even look at her. Carter wasn’t sure if they had done something to Erika or if Erika just didn’t know how to handle the situation—Carter didn’t know how to handle it either—but what he was sure about was how uncomfortable it was to be around them.

Now they were doing something together?

Erika didn’t look happy; she still wasn’t looking at Leah. The need for a new place to live must have overridden some of her apprehension.

“Yes,” Carter said after his analysis. The Kings weren’t bad people, but he didn’t like to stay with them. They had been watching him a lot over the last week, letting Leah stay as well when they weren’t at a hotel. Ever since Leah got back.

Erika stayed at some hotel.

He didn’t need a babysitter. Then again, he didn’t want to stay at a hotel forever either. It was unfamiliar and somewhat creepy. More creepy than the way Erika and Leah were acting.

For something simple like house hunting to bring them together, it was a start.

Carter hurriedly finished off his cake, ready to leave as soon as possible… only for Leah-who-wasn’t to sit around chatting with Piper King for almost a whole hour. That left him with Erika, Bethany, and Daniel.

“So, about the hospital thing,” Bethany said, leaning forward while the adults talked. “Lara said she didn’t see the bloody walls herself, but she did see some infestation. Like loads of flies. Big huge ones too.” For effect, she held her hands well apart, wide enough to hold a basketball.

Daniel gave Bethany a flat look, clearly unimpressed with the supposed size of those flies. “I’m sure the news—or social media—would be showing videos if these things were real.”

“Maybe not this large, but—”

“Is this the same Lara that tried to tell us her neighbor’s cat was possessed because every time she took a picture, its eyes glowed?”

Erika let out a snort.

“So?” Bethany huffed. “Just because she’s an idiot doesn’t mean the hospital didn’t get evacuated. Something happened. We should go check it out.”

“Dad would kill us.”

“The Hunters and I have visited a few of the other ‘gas leak’ places,” Erika said, dropping her volume to a whisper so quiet that Carter had to lean in just to hear. “We didn’t find anything strange at any of them.”

“See?” Daniel said. “Probably nothing. Just false alarms. It’s mass hysteria. People heard about the gas leak at the Museum and now every weird little tingle in their toes must be because of another gas leak, so they report it, get a place evacuated, and all of a sudden there are two gas leaks, making the next person with a tingle in his fingers fear that he’s experiencing another leak.”

“Or,” Bethany said with a sneer, “someone is cleaning it all up before your BTGG can go snoop.”

Daniel took in an exasperated breath, opening his mouth to refute Bethany, before pausing with a confused look on his face. “BTGG?”

Bethany rolled her eyes with a soft, “Ugh,” under her breath. “The point is, you can’t use the absence of evidence as evidence for the absence.”

Daniel crossed his arms with a heavy scowl. “If we’re playing that game, you can’t use rumors as evidence for anything either. Especially not rumors from Lara. It’s like me saying Bigfoot exists and you can’t say he doesn’t just because you haven’t seen him.”

“Bigfoot does exist,” Bethany said, slapping her palm on the table, making the plates and forks hop and clatter.

“I think we’re getting off topic,” Erika said with a small sigh.

“Isn’t Bethany right?” Carter asked quietly.

All three of the others looked at him, making him shirk down into his seat. Bethany started grinning. “See? He believes Bigfoot is real—”

“Not that,” Carter said with a frown. “The cleaning before anyone can get there.” He looked at Erika, staring her in the eyes. “You need to get there sooner,” Carter said, putting extra emphasis on the word, hoping that his sister would pick up on it.

She did. He could see it in her eyes. There was a slight shift there, like she understood.

Then she reached out, running her fingers back and forth through his hair, messing it up. He yelped and pulled back, trying to smooth out his hair, all while she chuckled.

“You leave that to us. All you have to do is enjoy your birthday and help us pick out a rental place.”

“Erika… that’s not—”

“Welp,” Leah-who-wasn’t said as she clapped her hands on her thighs and stood, finally departing from her conversation with Piper. “You kids ready to go? Our first appointment is in fifteen minutes, so we got to get a moving.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t been yapping for an hour,” Erika said under her breath before she turned to Piper. “Thank you for letting us celebrate Carter’s birthday in your home.”

“Thank you,” Carter said, much quieter.

“So polite,” Piper said with a small glance at both Daniel and Bethany that probably meant something, but Carter wasn’t sure what. She turned back to Erika and Carter quickly enough. “You two are always welcome.”

Despite having only fifteen minutes, it still took two hundred sixty-seven seconds before Erika and Leah-who-wasn’t were ready to leave. By the time they got to the car, Carter was staring at his new pocket watch, fully expecting them to ask him to help out.

“Can’t believe we have to stay at a rental place,” Erika grumbled as she slammed the car door shut.

“I’m not sure what you want from me,” Leah said, backing out of the Kings’ driveway. “We can’t stay at a hotel forever, and we’ve imposed on the King household enough.”

“Doesn’t The Fixer own a bunch of property? Or at least have enough money to buy out some high-end place?” Erika asked. Leah didn’t respond, nor did Leah-who-wasn’t. Erika ended up rolling her eyes. “If I had lived for hundreds of years and had less money to my name than a teenage babysitter, I’d probably have thrown myself off a skyscraper by now.”

“Erika,” Leah said in that tone of voice.

“Just saying. Vampires in movies are always super wealthy. Own castles and shit.”

“First of all, movies,” Leah said. “Secondly, money was never that important to The Fixer. His goals weren’t to amass generational wealth.”

“Yeah. I can tell. Never sent you any child support after knocking you up twice—”

“Erika. Please. We have talked about this…”

“Whatever,” Erika said, putting earbuds into her ears.

An awkward silence followed, one that wasn’t completely silent with the sound of some heavy metal leaking from Erika’s earbuds. There had been a lot of those lately. Ever since Leah-who-wasn’t returned.

Carter was looking forward to having a private room for himself again, even if it was only temporary. He loved Erika and Leah when she was Leah… and The Fixer even, now that he knew more of the situation he and Leah were in… but he didn’t want them around all the time. He liked to spend plenty of time alone with his clocks.

He would have to start collecting clocks again, too.

Carter frowned, looking down at his pocket watch. It ticked on, moving at a precise rate of one second per second.

Nobody asked him to help.

Nobody brought him along on their outings.

His fingers tightened around the pocket watch, folding its cover shut with a soft click.

Someday.