Pangur Ban, the white cat, would never meet Astrid because Elliot would never ask the cat to look after his younger cousin. Her kittens, Frieda and Diego, would never be born.
Yukiko would live on in America, never meeting the Time Corps.
He didn’t know what would happen to the raven, Huginn.
But there was one other thing hanging behind all these thoughts. He would be a golem again, a killer unable to exercise his own free will. The thought grew huge and then slipped in among the others, less important, less urgent. He didn’t matter now. Elliot and Hazel mattered.
He tore around the corner, racing to the house where the two had gone. They were saying good-bye to a woman who closed the screen door. The moment they registered his appearance, they first looked surprised, then terrified. He couldn’t see himself, but the faces of the two he loved best told him enough.
He explained everything.
“We have to get home,” said Hazel. “We have to tell the Professor.”
“Not enough time. It’ll be any moment now.”
“My ship! It can’t exist in my home world. What will happen to it? What will happen to my crew?”
“The ship will have to stay here,” said Neil.
“Elliot!” she said. “I give it to you. I give you Skidbladnir, to own as captain. It’s yours.”
“I don’t want it. I can’t.”
“Accept it!”
He paused, then he said he did, but Neil knew how reluctant he was to do it. The ship’s ownership was governed by ancient laws. It could be bought, sold, stolen or bartered. It could travel in many worlds, but Hazel’s wasn’t one of them.
Elliot dialed his phone to speak with Astrid, but she didn’t answer. Neil knew it was futile, that she was still be trapped in the void, but he didn’t stop Elliot. There was nothing any of them could do.
Hazel took Neil’s hand.
“Don’t let go,” she said. “Whatever happens, just don’t let go.”
“You’ll be all right. You’ll be with the Professor. Find him.”
“I’ll already know him. I met him when I used to dress as a boy and run errands for him. But if Felicia hadn’t come …”
Tears welled in her eyes and he pulled her to him.
“I can’t go back,” she said, a hitch in her voice. “I can’t go back there. Without you to save me from my uncle, I’ll be trapped. Oh God, Neil. Don’t let them take me. Don’t make me have to live my life all over again.”
She was crying now and he kissed the top of her head, her cheeks, her mouth.
“Just hang on to me,” she said. “Don’t let go, no matter what. You’re strong enough. Just don’t let go.”
She wrapped her arms around him and he held her. Elliot wrapped his arms around them both, but lightly. He understood, even if Hazel did not.
“I don’t want to go back,” whispered Hazel.
The sun went dark. Everything went dark. He grabbed Hazel harder, her small form fragile. He could kill her with his grip, and he held her tight enough to hurt her, but not break her ribs. Sound vanished and all sensation disappeared. There was no feeling of air around him or breath moving in and out of his lungs, no rub of clothing on his skin or the press of his feet on the sidewalk. No feeling of Hazel. Then, even his ability to process these thoughts vanished and he fell into the black.
Chapter 8
The ocean air was bracing and cold on Elliot’s cheeks as he shouted an order to the monkey crew to raise the red and white striped sail. The carved dragon head prow of the ship turned northwest, away from Alexandria, Egypt, where he and Sister and the crew had just delivered a hundred bolts of fine sidhe fabric. It was so fine, it was nearly liquid to the touch and came in colors both bright and subtle. Fairy cloth. Sister had wanted some to make a dress, but of course, she couldn’t have any. To do anything less than to completely fulfill a promise to the Seelie was about as terrible an idea as one could have.
They sailed away from Alexandria, and Elliot felt better the farther they got. He didn’t like the city, and he couldn’t say why. The sleek metal lighthouse winked at him in the distance and he rested his hand on the gunwale and looked deep into the water where dolphins occasionally accompanied them. There were none today.
Sister came up from below decks, barefoot and with her blonde hair flying wild and loose in the wind, like a fairy girl. She was Astrid’s duplicate, and as his cousin had not returned after saving the world from the Wild Hunt, Sister had taken over her identity. Of course, tongueless and mute as she was, it was hard for her to fit in. She had come to this world illiterate and deeply troubled, but she was intelligent and was learning quickly.
“I had a bad dream,” she signed. “I dreamed of terrible things and beautiful ones too.”
“Not surprising.”
“Do you have dreams? I dreamed that you said you had dreams that could tell the future. Dreams of memories that hadn’t happened yet.”
He had never told her any such thing, but every word was true. But his dreams, strange as they were, always came to nothing. They predicted mundane events with no meaning. They were distractions, useless distractions.
Sister held out her mobile phone. “I have a text from Yukiko.”
Yukiko, the fox woman who had helped Astrid to get Sister out of captivity had kept in touch with Sister, texting back and forth since Sister could not speak. It had helped Sister learn to read, and had given her someone other than Elliot who helped her feel like she belonged in this world.
Yukiko had not answered any of Elliot’s calls, most likely because she felt guilty that she had survived the trip back from Unseelie and Astrid had not. Or, if Astrid had, she hadn’t returned to this world. There was no telling. The Seelie, Santiago and Yukiko all had no idea of her whereabouts. Neither did Red Fawn or any of the other strange people who spent much of their time near the Luna Park boardwalk. Astrid was simply gone.
“Are you having strange dreams?” Yukiko’s text said.
Elliot sighed and turned to Sister. “I think it’s a coincidence. Everyone has dreams and some of them are weird. Simple as that.”
“But why would she wonder about it? Why ask me?”
“Because she’s checking up on you. You’ve had such bad nightmares since you came back.”
“No. There’s more to it. I can tell. The dreams aren’t making me cry at night any more. I’m doing better.” She turned away, texting Yukiko back.
With luck, they could get back to California in a few weeks, stopping a few times to take on supplies. The Seelie paid well and he would have enough to give a good amount to his mother. It might even give her the chance to move to a different apartment, or maybe start saving toward a down payment on a modest townhouse. Elliot hated her current boyfriend and wished she’d leave him. But there were factors, always factors. Money was only one.
He glanced at the position of the sun. It was late afternoon, sometime between three and four, maybe. He asked Sister to check the phone to tell him what time it was. She did.
“I need a watch,” he muttered, and a small digital clock appeared in the lower edge of his vision. He stepped back involuntarily.
“What the hell is that?”
Sister touched his arm and looked up at him, worried. He waved his hand in front of his face, noting the position of the clock and its movement as he turned his head.
“I have a clock in my eye. I can see it.”
She glanced at the phone. “Is it like a phone?”
“No. A phone doesn’t make things happen in front of your eyes.”
Nothing did that. Sure, there was always talk about the latest wearable technological development, but he owned nothing like the experimental scientific devices found in the technology magazines. Aside from his phone and computer in his quarter
s, he led a simple life.
“I told you things were weird,” she signed.
“Clock on,” he said, testing it. “Clock off.”
“Do you think the Seelie put that into you?” signed Sister.
“It doesn’t seem like something they’d do. They’re not technologically savvy.”
“But it is strange, like I said. What have you been dreaming about?”
He did have one memory of a dream. It was a woman, a short freckled woman with brown eyes and hair in a braid. She was looking up at him, upset. And she said he had to take something from her. But her hands were empty. Still, she was insistent. He had to take something from her.
As he thought of it, the memory partially solidified. It was like waking, with reality becoming clearer each moment. It had something to do with the ship. But Skidbladnir had been in his family for generations. The Van Dorns had always owned it. They were descendants of Vikings. That’s right. That was how things were. Why had it taken him so long to recall it?
Once, the Seelie had poisoned him with something that made him see time slips more clearly. Perhaps his slow memory had something to do with that.
But no. He knew better. His dreams might be strange, but the little digital clock in his eye was real.
Sister got a look on her face, one he had seen so often on Astrid’s face, a look of determination and deep thought.
“Too much is wrong,” she signed, glancing around the quarters they shared as if something out of place might give her a clue. “We should find out what.”
Elliot did not disagree.
Chapter 9
Neil Grey had known, always known, that he was alone in the world. He remembered foster parents, a few teachers, a few friends from school, but he knew none of them now. They were only memories, small and fleeting.
He sat alone in a train car in 1857, heading south through Louisiana to New Orleans, watching the world speed by the window as it had done so often before. Through glass and metal cities far in the future, through towns nearer his time of birth in the twentieth century, even in underground tunnels in cities around the world, always the world sped by. Or he sped through it.
He had no home, no family, no friends, no purpose other than working for Mr. March. And even that was now in question. He had left March, wondering if some of the killings he had committed were of genuinely bad people. He had questions, ones March had been reticent to answer.
His pocket held a folded paper with the address of a woman in New Orleans, one September Wilde. When he reached the city, he could leave a letter with her, and she would notify March that Neil no longer wished to work for him.
That meant that he would be trapped here, in this world, in this time. The Civil War hadn’t started yet, but it wouldn’t be long. He might be conscripted. He might have to kill people.
Maybe he could find work on a ship. He could sail to Europe and get work there and avoid the war here. He could go to California and farm. The gold rush was over, but there would be other jobs. He only needed to make sure never to remove his shoes in front of anyone, as the people in this world of steam power and war had a prominent big toe, like an ape, and he had narrow, ordinary feet.
The train pulled into the New Orleans station and he stepped out. The platform bustled with people, all of them with a destination, with a purpose. A raggedy man on the far end of the platform played a scuffed violin, his case open in front of him. He did not play particularly well, but now and then, he would play a particular measure and Neil would feel something move inside him. He listened for a few moments.
He wished he could create beauty. Paintings or sculpture or music or poetry, he loved them all, but could only duplicate and imitate. He listened for a minute, tossed a coin into the open case and left the violinist to find the address on the piece of paper. Mr. March was waiting on the sidewalk just outside the station, thin and pale, elderly but vibrant.
“I was wrong,” March said, without preamble. “I will explain everything to you. I promise.”
March reached out his hand and Neil paused before taking it. The man pulled him into another place, another time, this one closer to his home time. They had traveled this way many times before.
In front of an isolated house sat two automobiles. He guessed by their models that they had arrived close to the early 2020s. Maybe a little earlier.
“I have the proof you wanted,” said March. “For all three of them.”
Neil had killed more than three people, but the last three had bothered him the most. One was a Mr. Andrew Dubois, supposed child molester in the 1850s. Another was a nightclub owner in 1982 Las Vegas, and the third was a scientist in 2032.
March took him from the desert heat outside into the house of glass and chrome, an expensive home that was sleek and modern but with enough wooden accents and soft furnishings that it did not feel cold. Inside, Neil admired the few paintings on the walls and a well-placed white and gold sculpture on the entryway table.
“Where are we?” he asked. The living room windows were large, almost floor to ceiling, and let in the hard, bright desert sunlight.
“Palm Springs. Do you like it?”
“Do you live here?”
“I do. And you can stay here as well, if you like. I have plenty of room.”
March took him to another room with a computer and showed him everything, from genetic evidence linking the nightclub owner to the killings of the Las Vegas showgirls to the future horrors the scientist’s technologies would one day become. The molester was more difficult to prove, but March provided him with an interview of an old woman, the daughter of a neighbor, who named him as a sexual deviant from her youth who harmed a few vulnerable children.
“How do I know if all of this is true?” asked Neil.
“Do you think I made these things up? That I created them?”
“You can travel in time and between worlds. You can falsify information.”
“I haven’t lied to you, Neil. I never have. I’ve kept information from you because our working relationship is based on trust. You trust me to take you from world to world and to deposit you in the correct place and retrieve you after. Have you ever wondered if I’d leave you?”
“No.”
“Then don’t wonder now. I hope this information puts your mind at rest.”
It did, mostly.
“You are my strong right arm,” said March. “And as such, you are entitled to know what we do, the ideals we work for. None of this is random. We have a glorious purpose, you and I. Perhaps I have been selfish not to share it with you. Would you like to know?”
“I would.”
“Then come with me. Because there are those who would wish to stop us, to leave mankind enslaved. It is our responsibility, our duty, to free them from lies and give them the truth. Come and I will show you.”
Freedom was beautiful. So was truth. While he could never create beauty on his own, he thought, perhaps, he could defend it.
Chapter 10
Astrid stepped through her Door from the boardwalk office and into the human version of Luna Park and checked the time on her phone. Immediately, her phone tried to synchronize with its network and she shoved it into her pocket while it did so. The park was emptying out, the sun was low in the sky, and she was hungry. She made a Door to her apartment in New York, and the moment she stepped through, she saw she had made a mistake. This wasn’t her apartment, but someone else’s. She had never made such an error, but she was distracted and jumpy from her visit with the Seelie.
She stepped back through a Door, into the hallway of her building and checked the number on the door. It was hers. She pulled her key from her purse and slipped it into the lock, but it wouldn’t open. She made a Door inside and stepped through, only to find that she had not made a mistake with her first Doo
r after all. The apartment was no longer hers.
She returned to the hallway, not eager to be discovered by whoever lived there now, and she pulled out her phone, trying to decide between calling Jeff, Yelbeghen or Elliot. But then she spotted the date.
October 25th.
She had left on October 17th.
Damn the Seelie! They must have done this on purpose, another way of demonstrating their power. Oh, sure, we can force you to lose time. We can do it to your friends and family. We can hurt those you love without truly hurting them. And then we can really hurt them. We can also make you gone long enough for someone else to take your apartment. But why would the landlord rent out her place if she was only gone for eight days? Her rent was paid up for the month.
She had no voice mail and no texts. Odd. But where were the calls from the other psychopomps? She had left her post for more than a week. Surely they wondered where she was. They would have to free all the souls she did not, which meant extra work. All of them kept an eye on each other, though they lived continents apart. Not even Jeff had called her, and he kept tabs on everyone.
And why hadn’t Elliot called her? He usually checked in with her regularly. Maybe he was on a mission for the Time Corps.
If the Seelie were up to tricks with time, then she knew the person she ought to speak to. She made a Door to Yelbeghen’s island.
The instant she stepped through, she knew he would feel her arrival. She opened the front door without knocking, and Yelbeghen rushed down the stairs and took her hands in his.
She watched as his eyes ran over her, his nostrils dilating slightly as he took in her scent. The set of his shoulders, the way he turned his head and the slight lifting of his chin were reptilian. She forgot sometimes what he was, mistaking his mask of humanity for the real being beneath. She also knew that only distraction and emotional upset would make him forget his human mannerisms, even for a moment.
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