The car’s interior speaks to its expense, all leather and smooth stitching and carbon fiber. The entire thing lights up like a Christmas tree when Aiden flips it on, a cool blue glow emanating from the ridiculous amount of setting switches and digitized meters. Not that there’s time to appreciate any of these fancy things. Right now I’m mostly concerned with the seatbelt.

Aiden hits the gas immediately, sending up a spray of gravel. There’s just enough time to see Cameron and his group retreat towards their car, yelling curses we can’t hear over the roar of the engine. The Corvette’s tires rip up the muddy ground and explode puddles as we race out onto the dark, field-lined street.

“Aiden, they’re following us!” I twist in the seat to watch as Cameron’s car zips out onto the unpaved road behind us.

“I am wildly aware!”

“Woohoo, lezzz goooo,” Ralph hollers, from where he’s awkwardly wedged into the space behind our seats. “Keane, switch places with me.”

“No!”

“Ralph, where are we?” Aiden is gripping the steering wheel like he’s holding on for dear life. “Which way do I go?”

“Uh…” Ralph squints hazily through the window. “Looks like we’re in a field.”

“Oh my fucking god!” I fight the urge to turn and smack him in the face. “Dude, tell us what you stole from them so we can give it back!”

“Told you already, I didn’t steal anything.”

“Seriously?” I watch the car behind us take a wild jump on a muddy pothole without slowing down. “Because they seem pretty fucking motivated!”

“What do they want from you?” Aiden takes his eyes off the road just long enough to glare at Ralph in the rearview. “Just tell us what they want!”

“You’re looking at it, boys.” Ralph runs an affectionate hand over the leather seats.

“What?” I gasp.

“Ralph, holy shit!” Aiden’s voice is filled with growing panic. “Am I driving a stolen car right now?”

“How many times do I have to tell y’all that it’s not stolen? I won it in a fuckin’ bet, now the guy is trying to say I conned him or whatever. He’s a sore loser with a lot of cash.” Ralph casts a lazy glance through the rear windshield. “Those guys are hired hands. Cupcakes. I could take ‘em.”

I meet Aiden’s eyes in the mirror. We both know for a fact that this isn't true.

“Why are they catching up to us?” I watch them in the side view mirror, my heart hammering. “I thought this is a sports car, aren’t they meant to go super fast?”

“Yeah, kick it up a notch, Aiden,” Ralph yawns, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the console. “Give the speedometer something to think about.”

“Corvettes aren’t designed for mud roads!” Aiden spares another glare at Ralph. “And they’re also not supposed to carry three people!” He takes a sharp turn, cutting us onto a different street. The back of the car spins out, throwing us all to the side. Ralph briefly disappears into the back; I seize the side of the door and hold on, but somehow we don’t lose traction. The turn is behind us in a second, and then we’re barrelling along down another anonymous mud road. We've lost Cameron, but probably not for long.

“Where the hell even are we?" Aiden asks. "Why were you drinking here of all places?”

“I got a text.” Ralph hauls himself upright, rubbing the side of his forehead. “Some girl whose number I lost, she said she was down to fool around. Bar was her idea.” He frowns. “She didn’t show.”

“Idiot!” I reach back to smack Ralph’s shoulder four or five times in rapid succession. “There - was - no - girl - you - dumb - fucking-!”

“Ow! Get off me, what-?”

“You moron, Ralph!” Aiden scowls at him in the rearview. “You didn’t think it was a little suspicious that you didn’t remember her, or have her number saved, or that she wanted to meet you at a dive bar in the middle of nowhere?”

“I can get a fucking date, okay?”

“You had a date with Cameron, you - you monkey!” I point my finger in his face. “I am not dying for you, do you hear me? And what is this drink you spilled on me? It smells like pre-vomited Jäger.”

“Calm down, I’ve got another shirt back here somewhere.” Ralph starts fumbling around in the darkness. “Shit. I don’t feel good.” He tosses a bundle of fabric at me. I quickly pull off my shirt and exchange it for his, which is at least dry. He slumps back in the seat, his eyes drifting closed.

“Don’t pass out!” Aiden reaches back to lay another smack on his shoulder. “Don’t you pass out!”

“Mmm, I’m not.” Ralph’s head tips forward.

“Shit!” Aiden slams a hand into the steering wheel. “I don’t fucking know where to take us! Jamie, does your phone have service here?”

I pull it out of my pocket and groan.

“No, no, it died!” I drop it into my lap and press my hands to my eyes. “Normally I would charge it, but my dad said not to plug anything in at the Ghost Office-”

“How do we get out of here?” There’s a thread of panic in Aiden’s voice that sends a chill down my back. I unstrap and kneel in my seat, grab Ralph by the shoulders.

“Ralph! Wake up, goddamnit!”

“Ralph!” Aiden’s shout is even louder than mine. “How do we get home?”

“Home?” I twist to face him. “Should we go home? Won’t that lead them right to us, give them our addresses? Shouldn’t we go, like - somewhere else?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never been a goddamn high-speed chase before!” Aiden’s wide blue gaze meets mine in the mirror. “Jamie…”

“Keep going, we’ll - we’ll think of something!” I fall back into my seat, trying not to sound as frantic as I feel. “We just need to get back on a paved road. With the Corvette, right, we’ll have the upper hand. We can get away, find a street we know- what - why are you slowing down?”

Following Aiden’s gaze through the windshield, I see what he sees. The road ahead of us dips downward and is completely flooded. 

He stares at it like it’s a death sentence.

“The storm…" We roll to a stop. His hands fall from the wheel. "There is no way we’re getting across that in a car this low.”

“Okay, hang on, there must be a way we can get out of here!” I cast my eyes around for inspiration and come up empty. Fields on either side of us. Behind us, our pursuers, sure to catch up soon. Ralph has gone silent, slumped over in the backseat. Aiden stares straight ahead. “Aiden, what are you doing?”

“Mentally preparing myself for a seven-to-one roadside fistfight.”

“No - can’t you-” I glance again at the back seat, but Ralph may as well be in a coma. “Do some magic or something?”

Aiden turns to look at me, his expression pained.

“We don’t have enough control to-” He stops.

“What?”

“Your shirt.”

“It’s Ralph’s shirt.”

“I know. Did you look at it?”

I stretch out the fabric so I can see. I hadn’t bothered to look at it, because I’m not concerned about what fashion statement I’m making at this particular moment. I can’t fathom why Aiden would be, but he flips on the overhead light, and I realize.

It’s a grey, heathered shirt, with a red and white Budweiser logo across the chest.

“This…” I stare at it, struggling. “This is what I was wearing when we saw me at City Hall.”

“The car we were driving.” Aiden looks down at the wheel. “The shirt you were wearing.” He pulls the conduit out of his hoodie pocket. “Do you still have the note we wrote ourselves?”

I extract it from the pocket of my jeans and show him. We know already that we failed to get the letter with an explanation to our past selves, but it seemed ridiculous to not at least try. Aiden tosses his head back and laughs.

“Holy shit. Jamie, I think this is when it happens. We’re about to go back!”

“What?” I manage, just as Cameron’s car whips around the turn. It tears down the miry road towards us, spattering mud in every direction. “Aiden!” I turn to find him pressing buttons on his watch.

“Five minutes,” he says. “That’s all we’re going to have.”

“Seriously? We’re going right now? But Ralph is in the car!”

“Dead to the world.” Aiden closes one hand around the conduit. “What do you want to do? Try this with me, or deal with them?”

Whoever is driving Cameron’s car has realized that we’re stopped. They’ve slowed down, creeping up on us like a shiny metal predator. Aiden meets my eyes. Extends his hand.

“What if it doesn’t work?” I whisper.

“We already know that it will.”

Cameron’s car is going to stop at any minute. I want to think about this and slow down, but there isn’t any time.

I take a deep breath, send up a silent prayer, and grab Aiden’s hand.

~~~~

The second my fingers close around Aiden’s, everything goes blank. Searingly bright white nothingness burns my eyes; I close them, instinctively throwing a hand over my face. Water rises up around me. I’m drowning, soaked, free-floating like I’ve been dropped in the middle of a lake. The seat of the Corvette is gone from beneath me, Aiden’s hand gone from mine.

I hang there, suspended. Gravity forgets about me, but only for a quick moment.

I have a distinct sense of falling downward out of the water. Something painfully hard rushes up to meet me, and I land on my hands and knees. Sensations attack from every angle: water surrounding me, the ground beneath me, sudden daylight blinding me, shocked screams attacking my ears.

I push myself upright, blinking and choking. The spots clouding my vision begin to clear, revealing the situation I'm in: up to my knees in water, just at the edge of the City Hall lawn. People all around me are rushing to dry ground. I hear the crash of City Hall's front doors being flung open. Spectators pour onto the steps, gawping at the scene before them.

I abruptly remember what we're here for. Everything we need to do. It all rushes back into my head like the release after a brain freeze.

The note I was holding is no longer in my hands. I root around frantically in the water, but I have the sinking feeling that I won’t find it. It’s probably already washed down a storm drain. 

Where is Aiden? I experienced today once already, so I know that the Corvette is in the parking lot. Is he still in the car?

I have to get out of here. I fight to get on my feet, the water tripping up my movements. It all feels strangely familiar, and I realize.

This is it. This is when it happens. 

I look up, directly into the eyes of previous me. He’s standing halfway across the lawn, up to his knees in the water, staring.

“Oh, shit!” I finally get my feet underneath me and fall back towards the street, where the water is shallow enough to let me run. I speed around the wall and out onto the sidewalk.

Apparently time travel scatters everything. The Corvette landed in the parking lot; halfway between the Corvette and City Hall is Aiden, staggering upright; halfway between Aiden and the Corvette is Ralph, still firmly passed out and face-down on the ground. Aiden sees me sprinting and rushes to Ralph, scooping him off of the ground like a ragdoll. He flings him over one shoulder.

We both race for the car, but Aiden has a head start. He beats me there easily, shoves Ralph through the door, and climbs in after him. By the time I reach the entrance to the parking lot, he’s got the engine running.

I know without having to turn around that the versions of us from the past are now running after me, having completely missed Aiden’s escape. The thought gives me an extra boost of speed that propels me the rest of the way to the car. I seize the handle and climb in, out of breath and red-faced. Aiden backs up the Corvette with a roar of its powerful engine, and we fly out of the lot. I catch the briefest glance of our old selves before we tear down the street and turn the corner.

Just like that, we're coasting down a familiar street in downtown Ketterbridge.

“You brought the flood with us!” I gasp.

“Accidents happen, I was just trying to bring the car!”

Clearly there was some difficulty getting Ralph into the cargo area. Absurdly enough, one of his legs is hanging over the console, his foot in my lap. I shove it back, pretty much about to break into hysterical laughter, but there’s no time for that. Speaking of which-

“How much time do we have?” I ask, slicking water and sweat out of my eyes. I seize Aiden’s wrist and tilt it so that I can see his watch. “Shit, that was two minutes already!”

“And we’re probably already headed back to my office.” Aiden chews his lip. “We know we got the watch, how did we get it with this little time to spare? If we circle back around now, we’ll have to get inside, take it, and get out of there unseen-”

“Oh my god, I’ve got it.” I could leap for joy as it all clicks in my mind. “Pull over!”

“What?”

“We don’t need to go back to City Hall, just pull over!”

Someone honks aggressively as Aiden swerves the car to the curb. We jolt to a stop, and Ralph tumbles forward from the cargo area. His face smacks into the console, and he jerks upright, gasping.

“Whuzz goin’ on?” he mumbles, eyes half-closed.

“Aiden, we summoned the pocket watch before, from the river." He’s breathing hard, glancing from me to the timer on his wrist and back again. “We can do it again, right now. Everything is easier once we’ve done it before!”

“Holy sh- yes. Yes!” Aiden practically glows. We grab each other's hands. The connection between us opens readily, throwing goosebumps up my arm. Aiden closes his eyes and leans his head back against the seat. I settle back too, making room within myself for the energy pouring in. Between adrenaline and shock and the feeling of the open connection, I’m basically trembling from head to foot. But Aiden is calm, taking deep breaths, his magic pressing outward. I feel it reach out - feel it curve around something cold and metallic.

At the last minute, I realize that rolling down the windows would probably help. I scramble to press the button one-handed.

“What are you doing?” Aiden breathes, feeling my movement.

“Opening the window so that the watch doesn’t break the glass.”

“Oh! Smart.”

A violent cracking sound from the front of the car makes both of us jump. Our hands disengage, the connection broken.

There’s a brand new split in the windshield, a long, thin fracture down the middle. Wedged into the broken glass is something tiny and golden. 

I reach for the chain almost automatically, fold my fingers around it. Pull it the rest of the way into the car. It tumbles into my palm.

The pocket watch.

“Jamie!” Aiden taps his watch. “We have, um, about one minute before time is up, and then we’re going to be back in a field with a bunch of guys trying to kill us!”

“Where are we?” Ralph slurs, rubbing his eyes. “Are we home? Someone take my shoes off.”

“I can’t control it,” Aiden says, ignoring him. “We’re going to end up at the exact time we left from, I think.”

“Okay, well, if you can’t control the time, can you control the location?” I ask, shoving the watch into my pocket. I don’t want to lose it like I did the note. “Can you choose where we go, instead of when?”

“I don’t know!” Aiden’s eyes are rounded, fixed on the timer counting down steadily on his watch. “I can try?”

I grab his hand again.

“I’ll help. Just think of someplace you feel safe!”

The final seconds on the watch tick down. 

Three, two, one.