Kiss Across Blades

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  There was a wealth of assumptions in that simple statement. The biggest one was that Liberty knew of time travel. She understood the specifics enough to grasp that a linear jump back into time imparted the gift of the local language upon the jumper. The second assumption was that Liberty thought it appropriate that she learn languages no matter the method of the learning.

  The child didn’t seem to resent that her mother got to absorb new languages the “easy” way. Although if she listened to Veris long enough, she would soon see that linear jumps—any jumps, really—were so fraught with other dangers that learning a language by jumping back in time was anything but easy.

  It took Remi a second or two to absorb the astonishing depth of Liberty’s observation. “Your accent is a bit strange,” Remi admitted. “I thought you would have a Spanish accent. Only it’s more…I’m not sure.”

  Liberty cocked her head. “Arabic.” She took another huge bite of the peach slice. Remi could smell the tart ripeness of the fruit underneath the scent of sugar in the sauce.

  He remembered the taste of peaches. There had been a peach tree in the garden, in Sauveterre. It had been the very first peach tree in the district, the cutting brought all the way from England. The fruit had been parceled out by his father as a unique gift which cultivated favor among the privileged.

  Peaches had been a late summer treat for him, as a child.

  Remi blinked, banishing the unprompted memory. He brought himself back to the conversation at hand. “Your accent isn’t Arabic,” he assured Liberty. “I’ve heard many Arabic accents.”

  “Ancient Arabic—the language of my people. The Fatimids. You wouldn’t have heard that one before, Uncle.” Liberty licked her fingers, smearing the sauce on her chin.

  The sticky chin, the skinned knees and dirty fingers…these were the aspects of a child, while the conversation was far too adult to be comfortable.

  “Your…people?” Remi repeated cautiously.

  Liberty shrugged. “You know.” She picked up an apple slice and dumped it in the spreading pool of sauce, then turned it over to thoroughly coat it.

  “I do understand,” Remi said, choosing to respond to the more sophisticated side of Liberty. “I wasn’t aware that you knew.”

  Liberty giggled. “It’s a secret, of course,” she chided him. “You’re family. I can talk about it with you. Abbi Alex says so.”

  Remi considered that. Clearly, Alex, Rafe and Sydney were not hiding Liberty’s strange heritage from her. It was a large risk to take with an eight—perhaps nine—year old child. Although Liberty seemed far older than that.

  “You don’t share the secret with your friends in school?” Remi probed.

  Liberty wrinkled her nose. “I don’t go to school. Mama, Papa and Abbi teach me.”

  Home schooling. Of course. Remi nodded. It made sense. Even if Alex had arranged a watertight modern identity for Liberty, her peculiar domestic arrangements would likely raise the curiosity and interest of authority figures.

  Jason was a few years away from formal education. Yet the question of how to educate him would eventually have to be tackled, too.

  “You must have friends, though,” Remi persisted. “Your neighbors…are there children in those families?”

  Liberty held up the apple slice, letting the excess sauce drip from it. “Those kids are stoopid,” she declared, switching back to English for the epithet, which had no equivalent in French. “All kids are. I like talking to grown-ups. Especially you grown-ups.”

  “Everyone here?” Remi clarified.

  “Yeah.” She bit into the apple slice and slurped.

  Perhaps that was why she sounded far older than she was. “Sometimes it’s good to be with other kids, though,” Remi told her.

  “That’s was Papa Rafe says.” She grinned, chewing. “He says I’m growing up too fast. Not when he thinks I can hear him, though.”

  Remi grinned, too. “He might be right. You don’t sound seven.”

  “That’s because I’m eight,” Liberty said, with wounded dignity.

  There was the little girl, Remi told himself. He realized he was smiling with delight.

  Liberty licked her fingers. “And I turn nine next month,” she added.

  The blow came without warning. Remi felt as though he had taken a punch to the chest. His breastbone creaked. His breath wheezed. He gripped the arm of the chair, making the cane squeak.

  The soft conversations under the pergola shifted. Voices grew muffled. He couldn’t hear individual words anymore, not even Neven’s, when normally he could pick Neven’s voice out from among a dozen talking at once.

  Remi looked up, seeking out Neven with his gaze. London wasn’t here, or he would have looked for her, too.

  Neven was still speaking with Brody, off in their corner. He hadn’t noticed that Remi was…what?

  It’s just a little girl, and it’s just a coincidence, Remi told himself. The pressure around his chest denied it, though.

  “You okay, Uncle Remi?” Liberty asked. “You’ve gone all still.”

  Remi cleared his throat. He rubbed the back of his neck. Even his incisors were trying to descend. He concentrated on dispersing the flare of hunting instincts, the need to stalk an unseen enemy. “It is nothing,” he assured her. “A memory,” he added.

  Liberty considered him, then selected another peach slice. “Papa says you do that because you’ve seen something you think is dangerous. Even if you don’t know it yet.”

  Remi stirred and shook off the tension. “Normally, he would be right. Not this time, though. You reminded me of someone.”

  Liberty looked puzzled, her huge almond eyes narrowing.

  “I had a daughter once,” Remi said. It actually hurt to speak the words. “Her birthday was in January, too.” His heart stirred and beat swiftly.

  “She isn’t here anymore?” Liberty asked, her voice soft.

  Remi shook his head. “That was a long time ago.” And she died when she was eight, he added only to himself. He would not tell Liberty that because, for all her sophistication, Liberty was still a little girl. Instead, he said, “Her name was Aimée.”

  Liberty’s eyes grew even larger. She put her plate on the other arm and got to her knees on the cushion. She faced him and put her slender arms around his neck. “That sucks, Uncle Remi.”

  “It does,” Remi breathed. The weight of her small body against him made his chest ache even more.

  From the corner of his eye, Remi could see that Neven had looked away from his intense conversation with Brody and now watched Remi, his jaw tight.

  Remi averted his face. If Neven saw it, he would be compelled to come over to them, to find out what had upset Remi.

  That was when Remi saw that London was here, after all. She stood at the edge of the pergola, her gaze upon Remi and Liberty, pain in her eyes.

  Chapter Two

  When Sydney patted the empty half of the loveseat beside her, while still talking to Taylor, London hid her momentary upset and settled upon the cushion. There was no harm in Remi talking to Liberty, even if her heart jumped at the sight. She listened to the two women, trying to shrug off the touch of angst.

  They were talking about silverfish in their linen closets. The banal domestic topic made London blink.

  “You seem confused, London,” Taylor said. “You don’t get silverfish in Brittany?”

  “I do,” London said, with a grimace. “It just seems as though…well, you two have crossed history multiple times. The things you must have seen! Yet you sit here and talk about insects.”

  “It’s a nice change of pace,” Sydney confessed. “It reminds me of human concerns.”

  “It keeps Sydney humble, is what she really means,” Taylor said, smiling.

  Sydney raised her brow. “And you, too.”

  “I have no need to be humbled,” Taylor said archly. “I live with the two biggest egos on the planet.”

  “I heard that,” Veris growled.

&nb
sp; Taylor blew him a kiss.

  Alexander, who had been talking to Veris, laughed. “We should move inside and let those with metabolisms eat dinner.”

  “Second dinner, for Liberty.” Sydney nodded her head to draw Alexander’s attention to where Remi was wiping the girl’s hands and the ends of his hair with a wet cloth, removing sauce from both.

  Even the sight of that little domestic task made London’s belly cramp.

  “Rafe is feeding Jason,” London said, lifting her voice. “That just leaves me, and I’m good for now.”

  Alexander shrugged and settled back in his chair. “Where were we, then?” he asked Veris.

  “Actually, I have a question,” Remi said, also raising his voice to include everyone beneath the pergola. He folded the damp cloth and rested it on the arm of the chair. “It’s a technical question. Is it alright to ask it in present company?” His gaze didn’t shift to Liberty, who sat with her long legs up against her chest in the corner of the armchair beside Remi’s.

  “Perfect fine,” Alex said. “Ask away.”

  Remi scratched at the back of his neck. He kept his hair a little longer than was fashionable, these days, but not long enough to tie back or even up in a knot, which pleased London. She wasn’t sure what she thought about man buns, yet. Although Neven had explained that resisting fashion was a way of marking themselves as not of this era. No matter what they felt about beards and top knots and piercings, sometimes they had to adopt those standards.

  “I was wondering about the…well, the mechanics involved in bringing Liberty forward,” Remi said. “I understand it was a compound jump.”

  Neven stiffened. He said nothing, made no sound at all. Only, London sensed the tension in him. She knew exactly what he was feeling, because the same uneasiness bloomed in her.

  She stared at Remi, wishing there was a way she could demand he take the question back. To say anything at all, though, would expose her fear to everyone sitting in the loose circle around the trio of drum tables.

  “It wasn’t compound in the sense that I crossed to an alternative time,” Sydney said. “Although it was across the timescape, so it was compound in that regard. I always get Neven’s definitions mixed up, though. What’s the name of a jump taken across the timescape, but not across worlds, Neven?”

  Neven didn’t answer. He stared at Remi, who seemed oblivious to his regard.

  “Neven?” Veris said softly, as everyone stared at Neven.

  London didn’t move. Her heart thudded in her ears and her eyes ached.

  Taylor pulled her gaze away from Neven, to peer at London quizzically. Her amused expression faded. “London?”

  It was too late to hide anything. Her tears spilled. London wiped them quickly.

  Remi didn’t look at either of them. He kept his gaze upon Sydney. His jaw was tight.

  Veris cleared his throat. “This isn’t about Liberty at all, is it?”

  Neven stirred. He looked down at his hands. He didn’t speak.

  Veris swiveled his gaze to London.

  London swiped at her cheeks again. Now she recognized the thing she had not been able to pin down, earlier. The nagging worry which would not surface. Had Remi been building up to this all day?

  Possibly.

  “London?” Veris said, his tone just as soft as before.

  She realized she would have to reveal the details to everyone. It was already out there. Veris and the others would dig until they had it all. London said, “Not long after Jason was born, Remi spoke about going back to when he was human. To bring his children forward to this time.”

  Everyone looked at Remi.

  He shook his head. “It was a theoretical question about Liberty. I was curious. Compound or linear or whatever. That is all.” Yet his jaw was iron hard. Anger glinted in his eyes. He was on the defensive.

  “We have listened to you long enough, Veris,” London said. “We know the dangers of a straight jump. And I didn’t think I could manage a compound jump. I’m still not sure I could. The more stories we heard about time jumps gone wrong, the more we realized we couldn’t take the risk. Remi died that night—the timing would have to be flawless, and…and…” her voice grew strained as her throat tightened up. Oh, the dangers they would risk, if they tried!

  Remi looked away, his jaw working.

  Neven shaded his eyes with a hand, hiding them.

  “I thought we had put it behind us,” London whispered.

  No one spoke for the longest time.

  Vampires, when they were still, were very still. Trees showed more movement. And everyone held still now, their gaze upon Remi, or upon London.

  Veris stirred and rubbed his jaw. “It is dangerous. Not because of the difficulties of the jump, which merely depend upon a well-traced route through the timescape—”

  “Only you would call it simple,” Sydney shot back. “You don’t have to navigate it.”

  Veris inclined his head in acknowledgement. “It doesn’t remove the dangers of paradox, of screwing up the timeline—”

  “Why are we even speaking about this at all?” Brody demanded. “It’s flat out a bad idea. Let’s move on.”

  “We should talk about it because three of my friends are in pain,” Veris replied, his voice flat. “Look at them, Brody.”

  Brody ran his hands through his hair, his gaze flitting from Neven to Remi, to London. She didn’t bother wiping her cheeks. Everyone but her and Liberty were vampires in this tight little group. They would all hear her heart beating hard. Her harsh breath. They could probably smell the salt in her tears. She had got used to the idea that there was no such thing as true privacy with vampires. They were able to detect far too much about a human’s physiology and deduce from there.

  “We know it’s not worth the risk,” Neven said, his voice low. “Only, to deny Remi this…it hurts.”

  “It would destroy the timeline,” London whispered.

  “Would it, though?” Sydney asked, her tone thoughtful.

  Veris rolled his eyes. “And here we go…”

  Sydney threw out her hand. “They died, Veris. It’s not as though Remi would be plucking them out of the life they would have lived. They didn’t get a life.”

  “There were no bodies,” Remi said. “Not that anyone found. Not that I could find, and I searched. For hours and hours. Days.” He swallowed. “Their headstones were placed over empty graves.” He dropped his gaze to his knees.

  London wept at the agony in Remi’s voice. “I would take you back there in a heartbeat, if I only knew I could,” she whispered. “If I knew a way to do it without destroying our own future at the same time.”

  “Would you destroy it, though?” Sydney asked. “If the future changes, we wouldn’t be aware of it. We’d simply move off along the new path, ignorant of what might have been.”

  “We would change our now,” Veris said, his tone harsh. “This moment, the only one anyone gets. This is what would change. So we jump Remi back to that burning house—”

  “Veris!” Taylor said sharply, her gaze shifting to Liberty, who sat with her eyes wide, shifting her gaze from Veris to Sydney.

  Veris subsided. “Sorry,” he muttered and scrubbed at his hair. “My point still stands, though. We jump Remi back, he steals the kids away at the last moment. Only, we come back to here and find that…shit, I don’t know. It’s two hundred years—a lot could be affected by something even that small. Taylor was never born, we never learned about time jumping, which means no Alex, Sydney and Rafe, either. It could be a complete disaster and it’s what you would jump back to. Forget the future you don’t know about. This is now, and it would be your fault you fucked it up.”

  London flinched.

  Sydney picked up her hand and soothed the back of it. “Only, no one back then would see Remi take them. Nothing would change,” she pointed out.

  Veris shook his head. “Something has changed. The children aren’t in the…the ruins,” he amended. “Time doesn’t car
e if Remi is seen by another human or not. Time itself is affected. Quantum mechanics says he’s introduced a change, which will create other changes.”

  “Small ones.”

  “Which can grow into huge ones even in two hundred years,” Veris shot back. “Why are we even arguing about this? We all understand the physics. The butterfly effect is real.”

  “Someone who might have heard them crying out won’t hear that sound and won’t be changed by it, for example,” Brody added.

  Sydney shook her head. “The risk of change is much smaller than it might normally be. There were no bodies found. No one saw them die. If Remi isn’t seen—”

  “It doesn’t matter if he’s seen,” Veris flared.

  “Not all changes are bad,” Sydney said complacently. She didn’t seem to be even a little bit taken aback by Veris’ vehemence. “Sometimes they’re needed.”

  “Tell that to Taylor with a straight face,” Veris growled. “Or have you forgotten kneeling in her blood while she died with her…” His gaze shifted to Liberty once more. “While she died,” he finished, his voice grating.

  “And perhaps that was supposed to happen,” Sydney said calmly. “This, right here,” she added, tapping her foot on the flagstones. “This is the only timeline which counts, Veris. You’ve said it over and over. Humans live subjective lives. Time is completely objective. We can’t live our lives according to some other timeline. We can only take care of this one. Solipsism says so.”

  Veris scowled. London might have found it amusing, watching Veris have his own arguments turned back on him, had her gut not been so churned up right then.

  Sydney lifted London’s hand, then put it back in London’s lap. “They are here, therefore, this is their world and timeline to preserve. Sometimes preserving the timeline includes steering it toward a better alternative.”

  London shrank back. Were they really considering this?

  Remi, though, was leaning forward, his expression eager, his eyes filled with fiery hope.

  London’s eyes pricked all over again. “You’re teasing Remi,” she said, raising her voice. “How could you?”

  The silence that came told her she had surprised everyone.