Time Jacker, Aaron Crash [most important books of all time txt] 📗

pretty sure that she would go back to working at the same bank, become friends with Annie, and live into her eighties. But what if Jack could truly manipulate the Kairos of other people? He just might be able to do some good there. Being only third level, though, he had a lot to learn about how the Septua Influunt worked. The Septua Influunt—all of creation, every reality, every timestream.

Jack stood on the rooftop of the bar, holding a beer and watching Evelyn laughing with Moms and Aunt Sue. Those visions had perplexed him. They also gave him hope.

Standing there, his thoughts turned to Annie. When it came to the bank teller, Bailey never, ever wanted to talk about her or their rescue mission into hell. The demon could be so volatile and secretive at times, which made sense for a demon. Jack hadn’t forgotten how quickly Bailey had zapped Annie’s memory, or how Bailey had wanted to be done with the girl. Bailey had been hurt, though she’d never admit it.

Gabby said when she thought of Annie, she was happy. Annie would live a normal, human life, which to Jack seemed like it was both boring and stupendous all at the same time.

Pinetree saw Jack by himself, so the bartender went and pulled him off to the side. It was time to talk business. The pair stood at the railing near a firepit popping and crackling sparks up into the night. The parking lot was full, as was the main room below, but Pinetree’s people were doing a great job taking care of everyone.

“So, Jack, are you dying to know how it all went?” Pinetree wore his vintage Batman gear, which was costume enough since Pinetree literally had Batman everything. Including a very expensive black-and-yellow leather jacket.

Jack himself hadn’t really been worried about money for the first time ever, or that’s how it felt. Having a superpower helped him feel better. He’d paid his rent, paid for food, and eventually got Bailey to slow down with the credit cards. Gabby was also cooking more, which saved them a ton of money.

After their adventures with Annie, the Clockwatcher, and Kerrata, they’d been taking it easy. Jack had spent a lot of time playing guitar, and they’d started doing something else fun. Jack would stop time and they’d practice shooting in the bank’s parking lot. Unlike in hell, when he fired a bullet and it froze, target practice in the Tempus Influunt allowed his bullets to fly as far as he wanted. Again, it was about his intentions. So he put a hundred-yard limit on his regular old bullets. After shooting, he’d go and pluck them out of the air, matching shell casings with the rounds.

During target practice, they’d also found some Fugs feeding on people, but they were easy to kill, and Jack got all the Kairos.

Pinetree saw that Jack wasn’t dying to know about the deal. And that surprised his old friend. Then Pinetree got it. “Oh, I see how it is. You can stop time, so you’ve been getting the ol’ five-finger discount.”

Jack gave his friend a long look. “No, that’s not what I’m doing. You know me better than that.”

Pinetree appraised him for a long time. “Right. Jack Masterson’s moral compass. I forgot. But you’re still going to rob from the rich and give to the poor, right? I mean, families like the Malcolms and the Tarringtons have enough money. I’m calling it now.”

“Maybe.” Jack shrugged. In the grand scheme of things, rich people weren’t as evil as the other shit he’d seen. “Come on, PT, tell me the news.”

Pinetree grinned. “Heinrich came through. He wasn’t kidding. He bought the belt and the bracelets for seventy-five thousand dollars. But when I showed him the horn? He doubled that. I didn’t have much to do with that deal, so I don’t want a cent for that transaction.”

“But it was in your bar. You’re going to take your five percent of that. I insist.”

Pinetree shook his head. “That’s just it. I don’t need the money, man. Not when I got five percent of the goblet sale. We found a buyer who wanted them as a set, not melted down, not stripped into jewels. The full set for a million five. Yep. That’s right, one million and five hundred thousand dollars. Five percent of that is seventy-five thousand dollars. Better yet? All under the table. The buyer didn’t want anyone to know. They sent a courier over with a fucking box of cash. You probably should get a job because the government might be interested in how you’re making a living.”

The amount of money hadn’t really sunk in yet. He was a millionaire, a million dollars in cash, which he couldn’t really put in the bank, but that was a shitload of money. Jack found he couldn’t talk for a second. “Maybe I could open an LLC.”

Pinetree switched gears for a minute. “Jack, I’m wondering something. If you can stop time, does that mean you can’t die of old age? Can you mess with the aging process?”

The idea had occurred to Jack. He quoted Bailey. “Dammit, Pinetree, I’m a Time Knight, not a gerontologist. I don’t know.” But he had the idea that if he could convert the Septua energies into their different forms, he might just be able to keep his Corpus healthy, which meant he wouldn’t age or die. And what if he could do that for other people? He certainly had given Evelyn minutes of her life back.

The Clockwatcher had called Jack a godling, and that seemed to be the case.

“Okay, back to business.” Pinetree continued to dole out the good news. “The buyer is interested in any other artifacts we might find. They did offer to start paying us in bitcoin, which might not be a bad way to go in the future. We do want to stay under the radar, and with that cryptocurrency going apeshit, we could make a crap-ton of money. I’ve been