No Time Like the Present

by Ellison Blackburn

  When most of the makeup is gone, I wipe the creases around my nose and mouth and along my hairline while considering the contents of my armoire as though there’s anything to consider. Five minutes later, donned in one of Vale’s old dress shirts, long underwear bottoms, and thin wool socks, urging the end of my ministrations, my stomach growls like a disgruntled cat. Although I long to rinse my pomade-caked hair, it can wait. I want to make sure there is time enough to recount my extraordinary meeting with Edwina Carr. Then there is also the matter of Marlowe’s birthday, and separately, Archer’s remark to consider.

  Regardless of what Archer thinks is long enough, I’m not sure I can stand that close to Henry Ennis—like literally stand, as in face-to-face—without falling at his feet. Just the prospect of meeting him makes my eternity alone feel longer still. It doesn’t matter that he’s not Vale; what matters is he won’t let me forget. What will I do if his eyes are the color of the deep sea? I wonder. I think it might break me a little more. And then I’ll have to put on another face, won’t I?

  After dinner, I lead the way into the withdrawing room, which really shouldn’t be shortened since no one in this house is all that artistic. To my utter amazement, our reclusive brother is already sitting quietly in the gold armchair, looking disheveled. His mind is somewhere else, of course.

  “Quinn!”

  “River,” he opposes with uncharacteristic brusqueness.

  “Allen relayed my message, I’m guessing. You’re not upset, are you?”

  Without so much as a glance at Allen, he says simply, “No, he didn’t, and no, I’m not. What gave you that impression?”

  “The way you said my name. You seem determined to give me a piece of your mind.”

  “Yes. I suppose that is precisely my intention.” He then gets to his feet, extending his hand out as though to shake mine. Instead, he offers me a rolled-up piece of ivory-colored silk cloth, which when unfurled appears to be a modified scarf. It’s much shorter and unlike a usual necktie with arrowed ends, this one, whatever it is, is padded and strangely corseted mid-way through with silken laces.

  Formal wear? I plaster the thing across my waist and slant a glance at my brother. “Hmm.” Quinn is nothing if not logical; he would not be wasting his time designing scraps of gentlemanly frippery for me to wear. Besides, if this really is a cummerbund, the ends would flop weirdly at the sides once tied; the ribbons aren’t long enough to wrap all the way around my waist. “Hmm,” I murmur again as I study the mysterious fabric more closely. This time I notice a stiff band of something waffled and corrugated running through the middle section. “Is that metal I’m feeling just here? But then … Okay, there’s no way I’m going to figure this one out on my own, Quinn. At least not tonight.”

  “Allen, if you would.”

  Coming up behind me, Allen takes the cloth from my hands, spins me around by the shoulders, and ties the fabric loosely around my neck. “It is a cravat!” I say, trying to undo his work. “Hands off me, Bryce. I’m sure it fits. It’s too warm in here for this right now. Though, there’s obviously something special about it; just tell me what it is or what it does.”

  “Stand still. You’ll want to give it a test run. Trust me,” he says, swiveling me around. “Or trust Quinn. So … you’ll wear this under a neckpiece, possibly between two. It might not be very comfortable directly against your throat in spite of the extra batting and silk.” He tightens it too snuggly around my neck and then cinches the laces even tighter, forcing me backward almost into his chest. The move also elicits a single painfully hoarse cough to erupt from my mouth.

  Even in my thoughts I’m choking. Chri-Christ. How had I wronged him? “You—” I sputter. “Re-really, Allen, duh-does it?—” I manage before pivoting on my heels to face our very own in-house inventor. My hands fly to the miraculous whatsit around my neck, all my fingers splayed out as if I’m holding up my new head. This feels like the good-old-days when getting an enhancement was a normal occurrence.

  Wow, just wow. Long gone are the days when I needed to gargle every night with honeyed saltwater to ease my overwrought vocal chords but this … “Holy shit, Quinn. Are you for real?” I say slowly, marveling at how my own raspy voice has suddenly become a thing of deep-timbred masculine beauty despite my words. I walk over and wrap my arms around my ingenious brother’s rigid midsection. He pats my left shoulder and the top of my head lightly as though his arms have suddenly mutated into extraneous appendages that have no logical use in the current situation. Sentimentality does not compute well with Quinn.

  “I told you,” Allen says with a smirk in his voice. “Oh, Archer, I’ve restocked the drinks cabinet with the usual and also picked up a new brandy that the shopkeeper told me was a customer favorite. Let me know if you like it.”

  “Thanks. Will do.”

  “And I spoke with the foreman of the renovation crew; he’s confirmed that they’re done in there and removed all the equipment. I’ll see to it everything’s in place for tomorrow.”

  “Great. Have a good night.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Casting a glance at the retreating figure, I murmur a “goodnight” as well. I’m still in awe of Quinn. Since I was a girl of five or so, I’d been aware of the uncommon turn of my brother’s mind. Of course, I didn’t quite grasp the nuances of his unique talents until I started at Clarion myself at the age of eighteen. After seventeen years, his inventiveness still astounds me, even here in this less-than-conducive place. But it matters little where we are or what dimension we are in, Quinn’s brain is the same.

  It was because of him the Division was divided into sectors by the type of cases handled. And every piece of technology implanted in every agent was owed to his ingenuity. Agents requiring physical augmentations to do their job better were so equipped; their bodies improved, made stronger, faster, more agile. Those involved in passive investigations were sensorially enhanced. Apparency, the criminal Intent Vaccine (IV), was born in the bioengineering laboratories at Clarion under Quinn.

  His uncanny ability to imagine the impossible and bring it to life was the reason he was made the head of bio-intelligence, despite his sorry interpersonal skills. Even as the second son of Willow and Marlowe St. Clair, that level of control over that department, in particular, was not easily given. But the Clarion Division was thereafter marked to stand out and would soon become the single most renowned agency for the investigation of high-tech crimes.

  I would later find that knowing the bio-intelligence lab’s secrets would prove too tempting for a traitor, a fact I cling to for sanity’s sake. It wasn’t enough to be a part of Clarion, the department’s practically boundless creativity, or our family. Vale had to possess a chunk of each for himself. I tell myself all the time: Greed and love cannot coexist. It’s that black and white.

  “How does it work?” I ask in my new voice.

  “I saw an advertisement in—”

  “What! They sell this?” I interrupt. Each utterance has me marveling again at the husky sound emanating from my mouth without the slightest effort or affectation.

  “No. I saw an advertisement in the newspaper for a contraption referred to as a mouth-blown, free-reed musical instrument. It is called a harmonica. The device requires that one blow forcibly into chambers, reed chambers, which are loosely attached on one end so the reeds can vibrate. The sound waves of the air blown into the channels are disseminated across—”

  “Do we really need a music lesson?” Archer asks, getting to his feet.

  Quinn nods curtly. “This,” he says, pointing at my throat, “works on similar principles, amplifying and tonally elongating the sound waves. Those generated … yes, yes,” he says, swatting the air when Archer pivots to glare at him from the corner of the room.

  “River, a drink?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Essentially, the cuff modulates and then amplifies the vibrations of your larynx when you speak,” Quinn says succinctly this time.

 
“Thank you,” I say, adding, “You are the sweetest, I swear,” a phrase that sounds oddly foreign now. How strange that this thing might actually be a learning tool. “Eh-hem, that is, you are a wonder, sir, and I do so appreciate your unending efforts on my behalf.” I stroke the wings of an imaginary butterfly above my upper lip and allow myself to fall back onto the sofa.

  Archer shakes his head before taking a slow sip of the amber liquid in his glass. And more pleased with himself and my reaction than my dandy impersonation, Quinn’s lip quirks a smidgen upward. Retaking his chair, he says, “Just as you do what it is you do, River, I do what I do. No need to thank me for what brings me satisfaction.”

  “I’m glad. And I appreciate it.” Allen’s right. It isn’t very comfortable. Loosening the new collar, I pull it over my head and set in on the console table behind the sofa. “I have news,” I say, folding one leg under me. “But first, Archer, before I forget, and if you remember to mention it to him before I do, have Allen look into the trees on the side of the house. The holly. The one directly under that octagonal attic window, in particular.” I point at the crown molding above the door.

  Unless it has something to do with the actual mechanics or other workings of the house, I don’t bother Quinn with general household upkeep. He can hardly take care of himself. For all the attention he pays, there might as well be laundry fairies, gnomes to see to the yard and gardens, and sprites to make the beds and tidy up all the nooks and crannies of the house. I would have added a culinary magician to the mix, but our Mrs. Cook is a bio-intelligent being, an android. And Quinn is the one who sees to her regular maintenance, so he knows very well that she shuts down in the hall closet every evening.

  “And what is he supposed to be looking into exactly?” Archer asks, who was not all that concerned with the running of a household himself before. That had been Royce Butler’s role back when life was normal, though, in this house, it has never been quite that either.

  “There is something stuck in the tree. It might be the railing that went missing off the Juliette balcony in Dad’s old suite?”

  “Ah,” Quinn sighs. Both Archer and I look to him to elaborate, but our cerebral brother simply glances up at the spot I pointed to a minute ago.

  My earlier remark wasn’t far off the mark. He finds it difficult to separate himself from his work for even an hour. He is either in the attic or the basement attempting to decipher how we came to be here. And when he’s not investigating Perpetua, he is fiddling away in the lofts or bowels of this building like a mad scientist. Since he uncovered the revelatory architect’s renderings of the house, the photograph of Francis Maitland Pinckney Sinclair and Lady Aurelia Constance Herring-Bolt before she became a mother and his wife, and the newspaper clippings about the family’s disappearance, Quinn has made no new discoveries. But this hasn’t and won’t deter him from his goal.

  Bracing the armrests, he’s about to hoist himself up when I waylay his departure. “Stay, Quinn. This won’t take long, I promise.”

  He looks again in the vague direction of the garret and then stares down at his hands. Where before he opted for stark white gloves, a month ago, he acquired a case of pigskin ones that more naturally matched his skin tone. This minor change had an immediate and marked effect on us all. The gloves no longer draw our attention to his disfigured hands. And consequently, we are no longer blatantly reminded of the horrors of the night we lost so much.

  “I met a woman today …” I say, trying to decide how best to proceed.

  At my protracted pause, Quinn says, “That’s good. A woman to marry I presume you mean. To replace Selene?”

  Archer takes a slow sip of brandy from a crystal tumbler. The minute twitch of his upper lips tells me that he’s still a bit peeved that Selene left, even though he did absolutely nothing to try to dissuade her.

  “Oh, no. It’s nothing to do with that. But yes, good news, I think. It was a strange meeting, though. Uh, let’s see. … Her name is Edwina Carr, and she’s a fortuneteller or seer. I’m not sure which. Or maybe they’re the same thing; I don’t know.” I then recap our conversation after Eddy revealed that she knew I wasn’t Reid.

  “And the last question she asked me was, ‘Would you return if given a chance?’” Archer sets his glass on the side table and leans forward, steepling his fingers under his chin. “I thought she was referring to New York City since that’s what we’ve been saying. Nothing too extraordinary about that—”

  “But that’s not what she meant.” The placid contours of his face belie his piercing glare.

  “Right. I mean yes, that’s not what she meant. She then clarified, ‘To your time.’”

  Archer passes a hand over his mouth and chin. “And how did you respond?” His voice is level, but I don’t miss the condescension in his tone.

  “I don’t know if it’s necessarily a bad thing that another person knows, Archer,” Quinn offers on my behalf, looking at me about as tenderly as he’s able to express that emotion.

  “It’s not a single other person, though, Quinn. Mrs. Carr—”

  “Miss.”

  “Miss Carr has already spoken about us to someone else, her nephew if not others. Goddamn. Just think of everything we’ve done to secure our story here—everything you, in particular, have sacrificed, River. It’s bad enough she knows you’re a woman. It could fall apart, just like that.” He snaps his fingers. “You shouldn’t have told her as much as you did, to begin with. I’m surprised you did, all things considered.”

  His ignorance burns my chest. He has Kate. The world accepts him as he is. Nothing is stopping him from being himself, and nothing can. Yes, I know better than anyone, brother dear. But, I remind myself, none of that is Archer’s doing. “I know,” I manage, tamping down the misplaced anger threatening to spit through my teeth. “But since Selene left, well, it just came pouring out.”

  “What’s done is done.” Now there’s a familiar phrase I’ve never liked very much. After a moment, he adds, “So, what did you say?”

  “Nothing. Our conversation was cut short. I’d like to add that she admitted it wouldn’t serve anyone, including herself, to gossip. Everyone who doesn’t know her, and even most of those who do, thinks she’s more than a little off her rocker.”

  My brothers are silent for a long stretch. Finally, Archer says, “Should you run into her again, River, keep in mind the danger and give her nothing more to hold against us.” His words are careful, implying a chance encounter—as if to negate the possibility of a planned one. And his tone is neither commanding nor imploring. I recognize it as a practiced front wholly devoid of feeling. I know my brother’s usual style all too well. He thinks his stern directives won’t work with me, and he’s right, of course; they don’t. But neither will whatever tact he’s trying on now. So, I nod and avert my gaze.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FIRST HOUR of the day is bustling with the usual activity of a world going about its business, which I shut out to focus on my own work, the cadaver on my table. At first glance, it looks as though another boiler accident has claimed a life. The corpse of the huge man is splotched with red boils and white lesions about the face and neck as well as on his forearms and hands. Only, the grotesque skew of his head would seem to indicate he died from the fall rather than the explosion itself. I’m just reviewing Sergeant Dent’s notes when the whoosh of the door signals the selfsame officer’s entrance.

  “Hi-oh, Doc,” he says at the same moment I say, “Someone fixed my doors, I see.” Belatedly, I add, “And morning, sergeant.”

  “Nah. It’s but the right-side door as you come in that’s acting up,” he says, thumbing at the offender. He lumbers down the three steps and walks over to the enameled surgical table in the center of the room. “The other one works fine. You just have to ease open the left first ’til it releases then come on through. Surprised you didn’t notice that it ain’t a problem when you go out.”

  “Ah,” I mutter, my back to him while I sc
rub my hands. “I might have if I’d taken the time to investigate the problem myself. Anyway, thanks for the tip.”

  “The chief’s put the requisition in. Should be repaired within the week Abe says.” Theo shakes his head at the dead man. “Poor fella.” His eyes do a quick once-over of the lab. “Tanner’s talking to the chief. He’ll be here in a minute.”

  “Okay. … But what for exactly?” This so-far brief exchange with Theo makes up the first words I’ve spoken to a person other than Archer today. The sergeant doesn’t seem in the least fazed by my new voice, whereas I’m still in awe. Every time I hear myself speak, I feel slightly giddy. I like men’s voices, and now I have one.

  “Oh, uh, he’s big,” Theo partially explains with a nod toward the corpse. “Saw him brought in.”

  “You didn’t do the bringing then? This is your handwriting, isn’t it?” I ask, nudging my chin at the form on the counter.

  “It is. McCoy’s hand is awful. I rewrote it.” Seeing me submerge my hands in a steel basin of soupy liquid, he asks, “What’s that you’re doing there then?” He rounds the table to get a closer look, leaning over my shoulder. “Smells a bit like peppermint and something else I recognize, though I can’t think now what.”

  “You’re smelling camphor and paraffin and possibly the rubber plant extract.” I turn, and he steps back as I hold my hands up while the layers congeal. “It’s a protective barrier against bacteria. They’re surgical gloves you might say.”