by W. J. May
“Nothing!” Rae called back. “We’re right behind you.”
Normally nobody could fool Gabriel, but at the moment he wasn’t exactly himself. As he took off again after Molly, the boys rounded upon Rae.
“You have to do something,” Julian ordered under his breath.
“Me?” Rae hissed through clenched teeth. “What am I supposed to do?”
“You’ll think of something, babe,” Devon echoed, looking pale. “You always do.”
“Like what?” She glared up at them, hands on her hips. “It’s a freaking bridge, guys! You want me to pull it back down? In broad daylight? Or maybe I could just conjure up another one.”
There was a pause.
“...could you do that?”
“No, Devon! Come on!”
“Well, we have to do something,” Julian said nervously, glancing back at his volatile brother-in-law. “I don’t want to be in the same car as him if it turns out we’re late.”
The three of them stifled a shudder before the men started throwing out ideas at the same time, each one of them more ludicrous than the last.
“We could knock him out before he sees the bridge. Say we were attacked by those same rebels we fought in Uganda last month. By the time he woke up—”
“This is Gabriel we’re talking about. Do you want to try knocking him out?”
“Okay. What if we ran away to Uganda?”
“No. We need to fake some kind of emergency. Something bad, but not too bad. I could call the sitter. Have her swing by and start a fire—”
“Are you serious? You’re actually considering setting fire to one of our homes just so Gabriel will understand why we missed the ballet?”
“Did you see the look on his face?”
“...good point.”
Rae listened to the guys go back and forth, getting more and more manic with each pass, as her gaze drifted aimlessly to the road ahead of her. All the extraordinary things this group of people had done, and here they were, thwarted by the most basic enemy of all—traffic.
They weren’t going to solve this problem with any scheme or plot. None of their powers were going to get them across the river to the theater.
What they needed was more... time.
The response was almost instantaneous. She’d remember it for as long as she lived.
A strange tickling sensation shot from her toes to her forehead, followed almost immediately by the slightest of chills. As if she’d opened up a window, or gotten misted by a fountain.
For a split second the picture around her dimmed, before brightening right back up again.
Only... it was slightly different than before.
Molly was still hurrying over the cobblestones, brushing away a stray piece of ash as it landed on her shoulder. “It’s just up there,” she promised, eyes locked with laser focus as her heels clattered over the street, “right by the...the Starbucks.”
For the first time, she paused. Straightening up as though something wasn’t quite right.
“Guys, did the Starbucks shut down?”
Devon was about to answer when a set of giant teeth clamped down upon his shoulder. He stifled a gasp, then jumped with a start as the head of a giant horse appeared from somewhere just behind him. The thing maintained direct eye contact as it chewed happily on his sleeve.
What the—?
Rae’s mouth dropped open as she tore her eyes away from the horse and looked at the street behind it. Then at the river. Then at the city, gleaming with hints of gold in the setting sun.
A city she’d only seen in picture books and movies. A city torn straight out of the past.
This can’t be happening. This isn’t possible.
A covered wagon clattered down the street past them, smelling of old vegetables and leaking bits of hay. It had come from a cluster of blossoming trees that had sprung up out of nowhere, right by the side of the road. Right where the missing coffee shop was supposed to be.
The gang leapt back as it plowed through the center of them, then lifted their heads at the same time, staring after it with wide eyes. Never blinking. Hardly breathing.
It was quiet for a second before Rae cleared her throat.
She ignored the dappled stallion trying to eat her husband’s tuxedo jacket and forced a tight smile. Trying to keep her voice light as the world around them spun quickly out of control.
“Molls... I don’t think we’re going to find that Starbucks.”
Chapter 2
Please let this not be me. Please say I didn’t do this.
It was a testament to how strange her life had become that Rae Kerrigan was far more concerned with her own culpability than she was with the fact that she and all her friends had been somehow transported to the streets of seventeenth-century London.
At least that’s where she thought they were.
Sophomore year history class might have been a little vague, but Rae did remember enough to know they were well before the turn of the century. Either that, or they had blinked and ended up in the world’s best re-enactment. At this point, neither would have surprised her.
The place around them looked like something out of a movie.
Worn cobblestone streets lined with wooden houses, their windows cast open in the hot summer sun. Dresses and doublets, in shades of cream and tan, strung out on twisted clotheslines to dry. Merchant storefronts popping up beneath a hundred canvas awnings, selling everything you could imagine. From herbs, to candles, to something that looked suspiciously like a live goat.
Not me, she chanted again in her head. Please say I didn’t do this.
The others were looking around in a trance, frozen perfectly still and acting as though they’d recently beamed down from the sky. As if at any moment, they’d wake up. Blink their eyes and find themselves back in a world where the streets were paved and things made sense.
They could have stood there forever. But after nothing more than a cursory glance at the bustling apothecary and rickety stables, Gabriel turned towards Rae with a shrewd stare.
“This was you, wasn’t it? You did this.”
How is it that we travel back in time, and the first thing the guy thinks to do is blame me?
Rae shifted guiltily, kicking at a stray pebble as she avoided his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous; I couldn’t have done this.”
Fortunately, the others were too preoccupied to join in.
No sooner had the horse wandered away than a rogue goose touched down in its place, landing with a deafening screech and an explosion of feathers. It cocked its head, looking around the shell-shocked circle with a pair of beady eyes, before zeroing straight in on Devon.
Then it let loose another Jurassic cry.
The sound snapped the gang back to life, unlocking their palsied limbs and freeing their voices as they took their first faltering breaths in the strange new world.
“What the heck is happening right now?” Luke stared around with childlike wonder, gawking at a nearby blacksmith hammering away at a sword. A shower of sparks followed every rhythmic blow, dancing like little stars in his eyes. “What is this place? How did we get here?”
“You should ask Rae,” Angel replied without missing a beat. “It’s her fault. Probably.”
Like her brother, she had been raised to be a bit more objective than the others. She was also unnervingly blunt. And inconveniently perceptive.
Rae shot her a murderous look, but at the moment their band of neurotic friends seemed far less concerned with the time travel than they were with the bird.
“This is my nightmare,” Devon muttered, breathing hard through the nose.
The goose opened its mouth and hissed at him, flapping its wings violently back and forth.
“What is it with you?” Julian murmured, leaning away as the thing screeched yet again. “First the horse, now this? You’re like some kind of magnet.”
“My absolute nightmare.”
“Do they have teeth?” Molly asked nervo
usly. “I think I read somewhere they have teeth.”
“They don’t have teeth,” Julian said confidently, but when the thing reared up on its legs it looked like he wasn’t too sure. Instead, he stepped back and pushed Devon forward. “Do something.”
“Don’t!” Devon dug in his heels, then flushed with embarrassment. “I’m...I’m allergic.”
There was a beat of silence.
“...to geese?”
Another beat.
“Yes.”
For a split second, Julian and Molly forgot the bird long enough to share in a rather cruel bout of disbelieving laughter. Thrilled to have found an unlikely kryptonite for their fearless friend.
“Got tested for that, did you?” Julian asked lightly, trying to restrain a smile. “A standard for every child of Britain.”
“You’re allergic to geese,” Molly quoted wickedly. “Really.”
“They freak me out, okay?” Devon abandoned all pretense and ducked behind his petite friend, shielding his legs behind the billowing folds of her gown. “Just... get rid of it.”
“I’m not touching it!” Molly exclaimed.
“Jules, get rid of it.”
Meanwhile, Luke had wandered a few steps away to an open-air shop. A stack of newspapers was lying on a cotton cloth and he picked one up, freezing dead still when he saw the date.
“1682?” he gasped under his breath. “How in the world did we end up in—”
“Hey, kid!” A loud voice interrupted his thoughts. “You going to pay for that?”
He looked up to see an enormous, red-faced man standing in front of him. The ill-tempered owner of the shop. He was holding Luke’s wrist in one hand, and a butcher’s cleaver in the other.
Luke paled and flashed a disarming smile, slowly putting the paper down.
“Sorry, I...” The knife flashed in the setting sun, and he took a careful step away. “...sorry, sir.”
Molly threw a piece of gum at the goose then hid behind Julian, while Gabriel ran his hands up over his face, closing his eyes with a long-suffering sigh. “Rae Kerrigan, I’m going to kill you where you stand.”
“Come on. You don’t mean that,” she answered anxiously, bouncing from foot to foot. It was the second time he’d threatened to kill her that day, the beginning of an ominous pattern. “I’m only standing here because you saved my life in the first place.”
“And now I’m going to end it. There’s a beautiful symmetry to that.”
“—just give it some food,” Molly’s voice cut in, tight with fear as the goose turned its roving eyes in her direction. “Birds like seeds.”
As one, she and Julian turned expectantly to Devon, who promptly threw up his hands.
“Right. Because I always travel around with a handful of seeds for just such an occasion.”
“Guys?” Luke interjected tentatively, taking a step away from the imposing shopkeeper. By now, several more had joined him and were staring at the bickering friends. “A little help here?”
“You vindictive little monster.” Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest, eyes flashing with a savage glare. “This is because I broke your damn mug!”
“Really?” Rae shot back. “You think I sent us all the way to the 1600s to get back at you for a freakin’ mug?!” The others stopped what they were doing long enough to shoot her a collective look, and she threw up her hands with frustration. “Well, I didn’t.”
There was a guilty pause.
“...although this might, maybe, could possibly, be my fault.”
A chorus of voices shouted back.
“RAE!”
“Guys,” Luke interrupted, frightening away the bird as he stumbled back into the safety of the group, “we might need to get out of here.”
“Where, Luke?” Rae demanded, finally overcome by the insanity of it all. “Where are we going to go in 1682? We don’t have our houses!” She glared at the shopkeeper, who actually took a step back. “Or a car. Or anything! Where are we going to go?”
THE GANG SAT IN THE back of the bar. An untouched bottle of whiskey on the table.
All around them, the rest of the tavern had dissolved into the kind of old-world chaos they had come to expect from watching adventure movies and reading classic novels of days gone by.
Hard-working men, callused and covered in soot, were lined up at the counter, downing shots between bursts of raucous laughter and spanking the barmaid as they called out for more. A trio of merchants in long woolen cloaks was gambling at one of the center tables, cursing loudly every time they cast the die. Heavy flagons of beer spilled freely upon the brushed-dirt floor, barrels of mead were piled in the corner, and thick tapers burned low above the doorframe.
At any moment, Rae half-expected the Three Musketeers to burst through the door on a mission to save the king.
There were very few women. In fact, the only girls she saw other than the barmaid were seated at her own table. But every so often the door would open and she’d glimpse a woman heading up the stairs to the second story. At first, she didn’t understand the connection, but then she realized what made the women seem all the same. They were all caked in makeup, strapped into a tightly bound dress, and leading various men up the stairs by the tips of their outstretched hands.
Oh... right.
Even as she watched it happen, a swarthy-looking man sitting at the bar caught her eye and cocked his head suggestively towards the stairs. She shuddered and moved closer to Devon.
“So, what are we going to do?” Luke was asking. “I’m not sure what the PC’s policy is on time travel, but I’m pretty sure the Knights’ is something like don’t ever do it.”
“No imagination, those guys.” Angel uncorked the whiskey and handed it off to her brother with a smirk. “I’m glad we decided to work for the other side.”
Molly’s eyes narrowed. “We just got sucked hundreds of years into the past. Could you shelve your crazy and just be serious for one minute—”
“I’m not the one you need to talk to,” Angel interrupted, holding up her hands. “Try asking your little friend over there. She’s the one who got us into this mess.”
The entire table turned to look at Rae. She resisted the urge to hide beneath it.
“So how about it, sweetheart?” Devon tried to mask the panic and keep his voice casual, always and forever on her side. “Did you pick up a new tatù and forget to tell me about it?”
“No.” Rae denied it instantly, then crumbled the longer they all stared. “...yes?”
There was a series of reactions, from scarcely-concealed smiles to world-weary sighs. On the other side of the booth, Gabriel began rapping his fingers dangerously on the side of the table.
“Look, I didn’t mean to do it.” She looked at each one apologetically in turn. “I didn’t even know I could until today. I was just thinking that we needed more time to get to the theater, and the next thing I knew—BAM! We’re in the 1600s.”
She was going to add that, in doing so, she had, in fact, given them a lot more time to get to the theater, but at this point she didn’t think it would be helpful. Already, Gabriel’s fingers had stopped moving at the mention of his girlfriend’s career-defining dance.
“Okay, so it was an honest mistake,” Devon said quickly, shooting discreet glances at those he suspected would give him the most opposition. “Could have happened to any one of us.”
Really? Any one of us could have sent the rest stumbling back through time?
Julian pursed his lips as Molly hid her smile behind her hair. The others were less ready to forgive, but Luke had the sense of mind to move them graciously back on point.
“So, we’re here now—it’s done. What are we going to do?”
“Easy,” Devon replied swiftly, always ready with a plan. “We’re going to wait in here until most people go in for the night, then we’ll go back to where we were standing in the square and Rae will send us back to our own time. Simple as that.”
Regardless o
f the absurdity of what he’d just said, Rae had expected this to go over without a hitch. It was certainly the most logical plan. She was therefore very surprised that not everyone seemed ready to jump on board. Luke was staring around the tavern with wistful eyes.
“Tonight?” he asked, trying not to sound as crestfallen as he was. “You want to head back already? I mean... look at where we are. This is incredible. You don’t want to poke around a bit—”
“Absolutely not!”
This time, it was Julian who jumped in. Like the others, he was usually content to sit back and let Rae or Devon take point. But in this case, no one was particularly surprised. After all, playing with the fringes of the space-time continuum happened to be his area of expertise.
“You have no idea how the ripple effect of one small decision can change things for years to come,” he said adamantly. “There’s no telling how much we might have altered already just by coming here. No. We need to get out as soon as possible. Say nothing. Do nothing. Keep all interactions to a bare minimum. With any luck, we’ll be back to our own time before midnight.”
“Midnight. Great.” Gabriel lifted the bottle of whiskey to his lips and downed the top third, completely ignoring his glass. “We should get back just in time to miss the entire ballet. But don’t worry, time travel’s a brilliant excuse. I’m sure Natasha’s going to love it.”
“We might not miss it,” Molly inserted hopefully. “There’s a chance that we might come back to exactly when and where we left.”
“Trapped in traffic on the wrong side of the bridge?”
Julian leaned over comfortingly. “If it’s any consolation, there was no way we were ever going to make it there on time.”
Gabriel’s fingers twitched, and Rae gritted her teeth with a scowl.
“Not helping, Jules.”
“Why do you care so much about this particular ballet anyway?” Angel turned to her brother with the first spark of curiosity since she’d fallen through space and time. “She’s had a hundred of them, she’ll have a hundred more.”
“Pardon me for being supportive,” he snapped.
“This isn’t supportive,” she rallied back, unfazed by his irritable tone, “this is manic. What’s so important that you have to talk to her before—”