31. The Atrium.

She could feel Abe and Charlie staring at her as she held the watch, but she couldn't meet their gaze. How was she supposed to tell them she simply didn't have a clue?

She could wind it. She should wind it. Something inside her liked the idea of winding it. Winding it would look important. 

So she wound it.

It clicked as she turned it. She wasn't sure what she was hoping for, but it clicked, and still she twisted--slowly, so as not to damage it--slowly-- 

The vines flickered like static on the walls. It startled her so deeply she nearly dropped the device, but when she released the dial it was all gone. The space was small again, pale, and stuffy.

She finally looked up at Charlie. He hadn't seen a thing. Neither had Abe. They looked more perplexed than ever. "Was this room ever used," she asked, "as an atrium?"

30. A Coulise, After All.

Abe burst through the door and fixed his eyes on Ava, who looked much more pale than when he'd left her. "I don't know what you two are yelling about," he said in a surprisingly authoritative tone, "but you'd better shut up if Ava is ever to recover." 

Charlie opened his mouth to speak, but Ava cut him off. "Your father used us," she spat, her color fading even more as her voice rose. 

The old man had the opposite problem--his face grew increasingly red every second. "We both want to fix the watch, girl," he roared, "So why don't you tell me--is it fixed?" He thrust the golden pocket watch into her palm and stepped back, arms crossed. 

It was the first time she'd ever held it, and it caught her breath for a moment. "Well?" he demanded angrily.

Ava stared at it, cool in her hand, ticking steadily away. Her voice froze in her throat. What exactly could she say? She was a Coulise, after all. She was supposed to be able to use the damn thing.

29. The Songbird.

Abe was grateful for the crisp winter air. He sat wearily on the stoop outside and let the chill wash over him in deep, frosty breaths. 

They had done it. 

Ava had fixed the Unchangeable, and Abe had fixed Ava. The Coulise timepiece should work as it had before. She could take it. She would probably go home.

But Abe couldn't shake the feeling that his father hadn't been totally honest with them. This all seemed too easy after years with that old man's obsession.

A slew of bright, musical chirps interrupted Abe's thoughts. Two lemon-yellow songbirds crooned playfully from the branches of a nearly-dead pear tree, and Abe dropped his worries to smile at them. He always loved the songbirds here.

But a ferocious shout from inside the house startled them into flight, and Abe was shaken from his reverie. He rushed inside--Ava must have finally woken up. And the furious argument she seemed to be having with Charlie did nothing to assuage the doctor's suspicions.

28. The Wolf.

Ava awoke to a musty smell and a dim light overhead. She was lying on a small bed, with a hard mattress, propped up with several thin pillows. Across from her, Charlie sat in an armchair watching her, a permanent scowl set on his brow.

She tried to sit up, but the room swung wildly around her the moment she exerted herself. "I did it," she said weakly as she settled back against the pillows. "I fixed the Unchangeable." 

Charlie chuckled to himself--a brash, unpleasant cough of a laugh. "I know you did," he said. "Would you be here right now if you hadn't?" 

Ava tried to stifle the fury rising in her throat. "You knew I could have been trapped?" She tried not to picture where the plane would be now if she hadn't been on it. She reminded herself it was supposed to happen. It had always happened. It had to happen -- for Allie.

He grinned. "Technically, you had an eternity to figure it out," he said. He leaned forward with a wolffish look in his eye. "Tell me," he said hungrily, "what did you see?"

27. The Surgeon.

"That's what you're here for!" Charlie yelled. "Make it happen! Or did you not notice that this is an actual Coulise?!" Abe was feverishly working on a pale and unconscious Ava who, if she hadn't been a Coulise, would certainly have been dead by now. 

Abe colored at his father's jab. The man was intolerable. "Will you shut it?" he snapped back. "This is a surgery that should be performed at a hospital, not in the back room of some crazy old man's lair!" 

Charlie looked surprised--and perhaps proud--to hear his son speak to him that way for once. He'd never seen Abe at work. 

But his stunned silence didn't last long. "What did I send you to medical school for, anyhow," he said, returning to his characteristic growl, "if you can't save the last damned Coulise?!"

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