The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

  Then another thought came. Mr. Grey had friends, fellow time travelers. The Professor had mentioned a woman named September Wilde, and there were others as well. But then, none of those people had any cause to harm Uncle Andrew. The explanation that made the most sense was that one of the people he had cheated had come for him. But then how would they disguise a killing? Perhaps, he had truly died of natural causes.

  “What did you say to him outside?” Hazel said. “You have to tell me.”

  “I told him that extradition from the state of New York to Louisiana was difficult. I suggested he leave town.”

  It still wasn’t right. Someone had killed her uncle. Or perhaps, her parents, or even God himself had answered her prayer.

  But Mr. Grey was standing on the front step now, and he wouldn’t be there much longer. She could think about it later.

  “The Professor says that there is still going to be a war,” she said. “The papers are printing inflammatory articles and Breckinridge is saying that he’s opposing slavery when he takes office in a few weeks. I don’t know what will happen.”

  “No one does.”

  “You should have stayed with us instead of leaving that night. The Professor and I spent two days going around and closing the time rips. He got what he calls ‘extraordinary data’ from the tripod sensors when the rip over the river closed. And then he figured out how to close the rips. At least, we think so.”

  “I knew he would.”

  “You’re leaving for good then?” she asked.

  “I’ll come back and visit you, but not for a while yet,” Mr. Grey said.

  “When?”

  “I’ll see you on January 8th, 1864.”

  “That’s on my birthday. But it’s not for years. That’s so long.”

  “Your birthday? Is that right?” he said. “Then this will have to be for all the birthdays between now and then.” He opened the paper sack and brought out a long box wrapped in white paper with a light blue ribbon. Hazel stared at it until he said, “Well, take it.”

  Hazel took the box and stood looking at it.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” he asked.

  “Not at the front door. You should come in,” she said and they walked to the front parlor. She unwrapped the box, pulled out the tissue paper and stood, staring at the violin case lying inside. It was shiny black, new and beautiful. She remained there, looking at it until she made herself lift out the case and set it on the table. The latches flipped back smoothly with a small, perfect click. The case was lined in royal blue velvet and the violin itself was a fine, chestnut red color. She lifted it out and set it in her lap, then unwrapped a soft cloth at the bottom of the case and found a brand new cake of fragrant rosin. She took up the violin and set it under her chin. The beautiful scent of new wood and fresh varnish surrounded her. She picked up the bow. It was beautiful, and she turned it this way and that, but did not touch it to the strings.

  “Don’t cry, Hazel, it’s only a violin.”

  She shook her head, though she wasn’t denying what he had said. It was just too much for him to give her. She had tried not to think of her dashed hopes of going to a Northern conservatory or of playing in any sort of professional capacity. She had a home with the Professor and Mrs. Washington and she could go to school. To ask for more would be selfish, though she had considered asking the Professor for a violin at Christmastime. To receive this from someone who barely knew her was more kindness than she could bear.

  “I’ll treasure it always,” she said.

  “I know you will.”

  Chapter 38

  “You should be over a hundred years old, and you look half that,” said Felicia.

  “Half? Really? You flatter me.”

  “But you’re Hazel Dubois, right? Not her daughter?”

  “I’m Hazel.”

  Hazel turned her 1959 Buick Electra onto St. Charles Avenue and stopped at a light. The Electra was a huge car complete with fins, pointed conical taillights and a thin, spindly steering wheel. It was painted in a metallic lavender shade with white upholstery. Hazel clearly loved the thing. Felicia thought it was a fascinating relic. It being June, Hazel had the top down and had wrapped her hair in a patchwork scarf. Felicia’s hair blew loose.

  “I live in the Professor’s old house,” said Hazel. “At least for now. There’s something waiting there for you.”

  They drove on and Hazel made a U-turn and pulled the car to a stop along the curb in front of Seamus’s old house. Felicia stood on the sidewalk and studied the house. The intervening century had changed the building and the yard. The shutters were no longer green, but were painted a crisp white and matched rest of the house. The structure of the house was the same, but the trim was different and the railing on the upper gallery had been replaced with one with less elaborate iron scrollwork.

  Two huge live oaks shaded the yard and a wooden swing hung from one. Felicia wondered what children had played on it. Or did Hazel go for a swing now and then on a balmy summer night? Yellow jacobinia and heavenly bamboo had taken the place of the star magnolias and oakleaf hydrangea bushes on the edges of the yard.

  Hazel closed the car and the two of them walked up the path. It was no longer brick, but was now concrete. They passed under a wooden arbor hung with lush clumps of purple wisteria. The front door had been replaced by one with less glass and the mail slot and door knocker were made of a lighter metal. Hazel let them inside.

  “I’m glad you saw the place in its glory days,” said Hazel, tracing her hand along the banister. “We try to keep it up, but it’s not always easy.” The house not only looked older, it had the smell of age. It wasn’t just dust or stale air, it was the scent of ancient plaster, aging wood and a century of furniture polish.

  “Who else lives with you? Is the Professor here?”

  “No.”

  “And are you going to explain to me how you’re here?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “You sound like Mr. Grey.”

  Hazel laughed as if she had heard as much said to her before. She led Felicia up the stairs and down the hall, toward the laboratory. Felicia almost didn’t want to go. If Seamus wasn’t there, then the room would be changed. Without his creative chaos, it would be dead. She didn’t want to see.

  “He left something for you,” said Hazel, stopping in the hallway. “It’s a good thing. You’ll want to see it.”

  Hazel opened the laboratory door and the room was indeed changed. The dusty space was filled with the relics and castoffs of a century. A set of paintings, all stacked one upon the other, sat atop a trunk. Nearby stood a plaster bust, staring into space. Boxes were stacked haphazardly and a ladder that was missing a rung lay along the baseboard. And there was Seamus’s old desk. But instead of being covered in papers, it was lost under a stack of yellowing newspapers, a rusting cast iron stock pot, an old jewelry box and drip-covered paint cans and drop cloths.

  At the center of the room rose an object. From the look of the dust on the floor around it, Hazel had dragged it out recently. It was waist-high, rounded on top and covered in a sheet. Felicia pulled it off without asking. This was what Seamus had left her.

  The thing seemed larger once it was out from under its sheet, as if it was somehow alive and waking up. It was a machine. The top of it was domed and covered in shining brass, held together with tiny rivets. There were a few knobs on the cover, and it looked like pieces of the dome slid away to expose something beneath.

  A row of dials and knobs set into a large rectangle of polished rosewood ran along the base of the dome. Just as with McCullen’s hexapod, the faces of the dials were hand-lettered, but these were in a familiar hand. At the end of the row of dials was an on/off switch, sitting under a hinged glass cover, presumably to keep it from accidentally being flipped. The con
trol panel was edged in swirls of metal scrollwork. It was Seamus’s little artistic touch.

  The base of the machine was long and rectangular, almost like a box stood on its end. It looked like it had once been a trunk, and perhaps it had, with metal latches on one side and hinges on the other.

  She studied the dials, but knew better than to touch the knobs beneath them without knowing what she was doing. Under the panel with the dials and knobs was a sliding latch, and now that Felicia looked more closely, there were two hinges about eight inches down from it. It was a small door that spanned the width of the trunk. She slid open the latch and the door fell open and banged flat as two metal hinges snapped open to hold it in place. It was like a little desk, she thought, a little writing surface with a compartment in which to keep things. There was a long, shallow indentation for a pencil, and tipped against the back of the machine, a handmade book. It was not a book, properly speaking, but was a sheaf of papers that had been hand bound with thread. The leather cover was blank.

  Felicia turned to look for Hazel, but she must have gone downstairs. Felicia thought of calling to her, but something made her want to be alone. This was Seamus’s creation, his life’s work, and though he could not give it to her in his own time, he had left it for her.

  She laid the book flat on the little desk and turned the pages. It was filled with lists and numbers, which must correspond to the dials. There was some kind of rating system as well, with words like “well-explored,” “dangerous” and “do not attempt.”

  She looked for dates, and saw that there was no rhyme or reason to the order listed in the book. Aside from the rating system on a time’s safety were other notes. It looked like a code of letters and numbers.

  She flipped through the pages and stopped at a thin envelope nestled between two of the pages. It was just large enough for a half sheet of paper and had one word written upon it: Felicia. She slid out the paper inside.

  Dearest Miss Sanchez,

  I hope my letter finds you in good health. I regret that I cannot be there to assist you, but I have no doubt you will be successful. I have enclosed coordinates. I know you will be brilliant.

  Yours ever,

  Seamus Doyle

  There was a set of numbers at the bottom and a diagram of the dome of the machine with arrows and positioning notes. Hazel had returned and was standing just outside the laboratory door, watching her.

  “What time is it?” Felicia asked.

  Hazel glanced at her watch. “Four minutes to noon.”

  “Then we’ll need to pull this into the hall.”

  Hazel helped Felicia drag the machine into the hallway. Felicia set the dials to the coordinates and moved the panels on the dome as indicated in Seamus’s note. Then, she grabbed the laboratory door and pulled it closed.

  Hazel moved away until she was all the way down the hall, watching from a distance.

  “Aren’t you coming?” asked Felicia.

  “I’m already there.”

  Of course, Felicia thought. She lifted the glass cover and flipped the machine’s power switch. The hum of the machine was so low that it made the floor vibrate. Then came a second note that started low but grew in pitch, higher and higher until it was inaudible. Felicia wanted to back away from the machine. Every part of her said that it was dangerous, unpredictable and that she should flee. But she stood firm. Her future was waiting. The air shimmered.

  In another world, a man would be in front of a tack board covered in papers full of notes and diagrams and equations. His hair would be sticking up at all angles as he paced amid the chaos of wires and tubing and mechanical joints.

  And then at noon precisely, when it was time for lunch, there would be a knock at the laboratory door.

  CAT’S PAW

  Chapter 1

  December 24, 1863

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  At the precise moment the grandfather clock began to chime noon, there was a knock on the laboratory door. Seamus Connor pushed himself away from his table covered in assorted mechanical parts and equation-covered papers and rose to answer it. Mrs. Washington, his housekeeper, stood in the hallway bearing a lunch tray with a small pot of tea, a thick slice of cornbread and a covered bowl.

  Mrs. Washington always arrived precisely at noon, per his instructions. Seamus knew that he was not an orderly man, and having Mrs. Washington bring his lunch at noon every day reminded him to eat regularly and ensured that he didn’t get so wrapped up in his work that he neglected to eat, sleep, or make the trip to Tulane University where he taught physics classes a few days a week.

  Once again, he was surprised to discover that it was lunchtime already. If he had to guess, he would have said it was still mid-morning. Seamus thanked the housekeeper and took the tray, but she didn’t turn and leave. Instead, she looked past him, into the disastrously messy laboratory, as if assessing if she could safely enter. As a rule, she refused to enter the room, which Seamus found a satisfactory arrangement as it kept her from disturbing his things.

  “I already took yesterday’s tray down to the kitchen,” he said, wondering if she was searching for yesterday’s dishes. Occasionally, things became buried.

  “It’s not that,” Mrs. Washington said. “It’s just that it’s Christmas Eve.”

  “I know it is. Did you want to go home for the afternoon? Hazel and I can manage on our own until your return.”

  “No, I said I could stay until two, and I will. It’s just—I thought I ought to speak to you. It’s about Miss Dubois.”

  Hazel Dubois was Seamus’s ward. The girl had been a street urchin, sleeping in the abandoned buildings of New Orleans and playing her violin for money on street corners. Back then, she had dressed as a boy and had gone by the name of Henry. Before he knew she was a girl, Seamus occasionally hired Henry to run errands, retrieving packages or picking up items for Mrs. Washington. And beyond that, he had never given the lad much thought.

  But then Felicia Sanchez had come into their lives, arriving from another time in another world through a time rip that Seamus himself had accidentally created. She was a young woman in training to become a doctor in the early twenty-first century. Aside from being strange and unaccustomed to dressing and behaving in a civilized manner, she had been the one to discover that Henry was really a girl. She had encouraged Seamus to take in the child, and he had done so.

  Naturally, the poor woman had wanted to return to her home. Aside from missing her former life, Miss Sanchez had a nephew dying of a rare form of consumption, which Felicia called cancer. Before slipping through the time rip, she had been in contact with a doctor from Brazil who might have been able to help the young boy. Without Miss Sanchez present to speak with this doctor and put him in contact with her sister, the child’s mother, the little boy would surely die.

  Six years had now passed since Miss Sanchez had unwillingly fallen through another time rip accompanied by Seamus’s former research partner and enemy, Oren McCullen. It was Seamus’s duty to find her and then get her home to her own time, for her sake and for her nephew’s. He had worked in his laboratory every day for six years, hoping that eventually he would discover a way to find her.

  In that time, Hazel had gone from a scrawny eleven-year-old to an educated young woman. Occasionally, it struck Seamus that she was a different person than the girl he had known. It pleased him that she was sensible and good-hearted, but he sometimes missed the little girl who preferred trousers to dresses and liked to sit on a stool in the corner of the laboratory, asking him endless questions.

  “Does Hazel need anything? Is she all right?” he asked Mrs. Washington.

  “She’s well enough. It’s just that she’ll be home any time now and tomorrow is Christmas.”

  “A fact of which I am well aware.”

  Mrs. Washington looked uneasy, wh
ich was rare. She was usually composed and certain of herself. She ran the house almost single-handedly and knowing how much he depended on her, she was not shy about stating her opinions. “She’s almost grown now, you understand. Her birthday is in two weeks.”

  “Another fact of which I am aware.”

  “Have you gotten her anything?”

  Seamus had the feeling that Mrs. Washington had wanted to say something else, but studying her, he could not discern what it could be.

  “Not yet,” he said cautiously. “But I was thinking I would drop by one of the shops and buy her a new pair of gloves.”

  “It’s Christmas Eve, Mr. Connor.”

  “There’s still time. The shops won’t close for another hour or two.”

  Mrs. Washington sighed and looked like she was deciding on something. “Firstly, you would not have remembered at all had I not reminded you. Miss Dubois is alone in the world, but for the two of us, and you’re her only real family. She’s a good girl, but she could use a little guidance here and there.”

  “But you provide wonderful guidance for her.”

  It was true. Mrs. Washington was steady, practical and patient. Seamus knew that he was none of these things.

  “You’re her guardian. And she’s close to being a grown woman. She needs someone to look after her, to meet the family of her gentlemen callers—”

  “She has gentlemen callers?” said Seamus in alarm. “Why wasn’t I told?”

  “Just the one. Mr. Ross.”

  “Well, that’s all right then,” he said, relieved. “I know about him already. A decent enough young fellow. I have no problem with him courting our Hazel.”

  “It’s not him that’s the problem. You’re up in this laboratory at all hours. Or else you’re at the university working.”