Page 12 of No Charm Done

“Ah.” The ancient witch set down her teacup. “The Melrose whelp. The one who meddles with forces beyond her comprehension and calls it ‘travel.’” Her gaze drifted to the dismantled timepiece on her table, and her expression darkened. “I am in no mood for social calls, child. This accursed chronometer has ceased functioning without cause or warning, and I find myself sorely vexed.”

Luna could identify the timepiece immediately. The brass housing, the arrangement of gears, the crystalline components bending light in impossible ways told her what it was.

“That’s a Rajasthani probability clock,” she said without thinking. “Fifteenth century, if I’m not mistaken? Instead of tracking linear time, they measure potential timelines. When they stop working, it usually means they’ve detected a significant temporal paradox.”

Louise went very, very still. Around the shop, pocket watches ticked more quietly, as if holding their breath.

“And how, precisely, does a mewling meatsack such as yourself possess knowledge of probability chronometry?”

“Um. I spent three months with a clockmaker in Jaipur? He specialized in paradox-sensitive devices.” Luna paused, realizing Louise was staring at her with . . . not quite respect, but not her usual contempt, either.

“Tell me what you observe,” Louise demanded.

Luna cautiously approached the workbench. She studied the timepiece, noting the crystalline matrices that had gone dark, the probability wheels that had locked in position.

“See how the resonance crystals are clouded over? That shows temporal feedback. The probability displays are stuck because there’s too much paradox energy for the mechanism to process. It’s like . . .” She searched for an analogy Louise would appreciate. “Like trying to calculate every chess move while someone keeps changing the rules mid-game.”

Louise’s expression grew thoughtful, then troubled. “And the source of this temporal chaos . . .?”

“Hard to say just by looking.” Luna met Louise’s gaze, although it made her a little nauseous to do so. “But usually it’s unauthorized time travel. Specifically travel too far into the future. That’s usually frowned upon because it creates so many cascading paradoxes.”

Louise’s face moved through several expressions in rapid succession: surprise, calculation, and finally, grudging acknowledgment. She sighed. “This may be my doing. I recently found myself in something of a contretemps with a time witch in the thirty-second century. But she started it.”

“Uh-huh. Well, the good news is that probability clocks can be recalibrated. But it requires realigning the temporal matrices to account for the specific paradox patterns.”

“Your analysis is adequate, if only barely.”

From Louise, this amounted to a dozen roses and a standing ovation, so Luna seized her chance. “Since I’m here anyway, I need to know how to get into and out of the Void.”

Around the shop, timepieces suddenly ticked more nervously.

“You seek passage to the abyss between realities? The realm where lost souls drift for eternity among the nightmares of sleeping gods?” Her voice carried a note of genuine disbelief. “For what conceivable purpose would you court such obliteration?”

“There’s someone trapped there. A magician named Elias who helped my mother and the other prisoners when they were trapped in the Void this past Christmas. He’s been there for decades, apparently. Helping people while being completely alone. I owe—I mean, we owe him a rescue.”

Louise stared in disbelief, as if a goat had just announced its intention to juggle flaming chainsaws while riding a unicycle across Niagara Falls. “You propose to risk annihilation in the Void . . . for a man?”

“Ew, yuck. When you put it that way, it sounds bad.”

“A man who obviously chose his miserable fate, due to whatever crimes sent him to the Void in the first place?”

“Yeah but on the other hand, he did save my mother.”

“Thus demonstrating that he possesses the same deficiency of judgment that poisons your own bloodline.” She gestured dismissively. “This debt you imagine is meaningless. That he aided Kelly Melrose merely proves his own idiocy.”

“But—”

“Remove yourself from my presence.”

“How about a deal,” Luna said quickly. “You like deals, don’t you? If I can actually fix your probability clock—not just diagnose it, but solve the temporal paradox that’s jamming it—then you help me.”

Louise laughed. She wasn’t good at it. “Child, the workings of this device are beyond mortal comprehension.”

“I disagree. I can fix it by filtering out the paradox noise and recalibrating the probability matrices.”

The shop fell silent. Even the most argumentative cuckoo clock stopped mid-chirp.

After what felt like years, Louise finally said, “Very well. Succeed, and I shall provide the information you seek. Fail, and you spend the next week experiencing the Black Death. Firsthand.”