Time Jacker by Aaron Crash (nonfiction book recommendations .TXT) 📕

forgetting I’m selfish and evil as fuck.” Bailey was fighting back tears with every word. Annie’s rejection had hurt her far more than she’d ever let on.

Gabby held the unconscious Annie while Jack retrieved the Eternity Cannon. The angel helped Jack get the unconscious girl in his car. He kept time turned off since he didn’t want his neighbors to see him lugging a comatose girl around.

He restarted time as he drove Annie home to the house she shared with her father and a roommate. He’d gotten the address when he’d first investigated her disappearance. Then it was a simple matter of stopping time again when he was a couple of blocks from her home.

He carried her over his shoulder, down the street, and into a little ranch built in the late 1960s. He set Annie in an easy chair in the living room, and then closed the door behind him. She would wake up, and life would just be life for her. It was better this way.

And yet, once he was outside, he turned to see her through the front window. His heart felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. He’d loved her. She’d been right. The sex they’d just had hurt him because it was the end of things, not the beginning.

Then he thought of Gabby’s goodness, and Bailey’s fire, and the good he could do for people. He had a new idea for a business.

When he was back in his car, he brushed his thumb over the toy soldier and time flowed on.

Jack drove off, but he did stop at Evelyn Mundi’s house. He had a little gift to give her. Actually, he had 18,921,600 gifts for Hugo’s mom.

Chapter Thirty-Six

HALLOWEEN WAS NEVER so wonderful as it was with Bailey in full demon gear and garb, on the rooftop patio of Pinetree’s Bar and Grill. Bailey wasn’t afraid to show her gleaming scarlet eye, which cast her face in a spectral light.

Gabby was there, with wings out, and her halo glowing. Everyone was super impressed with their costumes, though no one could figure out how Gabby’s halo worked. She said it was LPDs, even when Jack had told her to say it was LEDs. No one corrected her because she was too pretty and nice.

It was two weeks later, and Pinetree was doing well enough that he’d opened the roof, turned on the kerosene umbrella heaters, and even added a gas-powered firepit, which looked like a collection of human skulls. Bailey had laughed at the burning skulls and claimed that it felt like home.

Other firepits just burned pine, but all the heat kept them warm despite the chilly mountain air. Besides, the fire was fun and made the rooftop smell good.

Pinetree had thrown a costume party at the bar to celebrate everyone’s favorite spooky holiday of the year. Jack had invited his mom and his aunt, and they’d driven up with Evelyn Mundi and Hugo. It was a night of celebration. Not only could Bailey and Gabby walk around without hiding their true appearances, but Pinetree had closed the deal on both the Enochian gold and the dozen goblets. He wanted to announce the total sales in person. He said it was life-changing money. Not only had the Austrian, Heinrich Hofer, bought the angelic items, but he’d also brokered the deal for the sales of the twelve golden goblets. And he’d done it for free. Gabby insisted that proved all of humanity was virtuous. Bailey was never going to buy that...not even with other people’s money.

Hugo was on his meds, drinking Cokes and looking fairly normal. That was good, and wouldn’t you know it, Evelyn had become friends with both Jack’s mom and his aunt. They were of a similar generation, though Evelyn looked like she was only in her forties. The three old women got each other’s references. Evelyn had come to the party dressed like someone from the movie Grease, a 1950s beauty school dropout with a poodle skirt. Hugo was a greaser with oil in his hair and the leather jacket, jeans, and engineer boots.

Moms and Aunt Sue weren’t about to dress up as anything, but they were good sports to be there. It was good for them to get out.

A few of the regulars had come outside, to smoke, to enjoy the fire, and to hang out. One guy had brought his shy niece, a bigger girl, who was dressed like Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Both Gabby and Bailey were doing their best to set Hugo up with a date, but he wasn’t so sure.

Evelyn wasn’t pushing her son too hard to be nice to the shy niece. However, you could tell she wanted her son to date more.

Giving Evelyn back her minutes had been simple, though the moment of transference had been odd. He’d had a vision of another life, the life she’d have lived if Kerrata hadn’t kidnapped her and siphoned off her Kairos. He saw her working at the bank, working with Annie, at the same branch of the Rocky Mountain Bank. That was the reality at the moment. However, Jack saw Evelyn’s future. After a few years, she’d change jobs, meet a nice woman, and settle down with her. With his mother’s steady hand, Hugo found a job repairing old toys, as well as working with buyers to sell toy collections. In that life, Evelyn had died in her eighties, a happy old woman, with grandchildren and a loving partner.

Bailey hadn’t been wrong—Evelyn Mundi was a total lesbian with a very healthy sexual appetite.

Then Jack had been given another timeline, where the woman died that summer. Yes, he was seeing into the possible futures of these other timelines. She’d die of a sudden and unexpected heart attack. Jack had a hazy impression of how her Kairos interacted with her Nefesh, but then all the Septua energies worked together to create the human soul.

He’d left her house with the heart attack future gone. He was