“I’m fine,” she said. “The Seelie just played a trick with time to intimidate me. But I’m okay.”
“I’m not certain about that,” he said. “Something has happened, but I can’t tell what it is. I was hoping you could.”
“What sort of thing?”
“Things are off. They’re wrong. And I have no idea what that means. It’s simply a feeling. I came back from some business in the void, and the smells here were not the same. And there are other things too.”
“Someone else is living in my apartment. And I don’t have any messages on my phone. The psychopomps haven’t called me. Neither has Elliot, but I think he’s on a mission.”
“You may wish to check.”
She tried to call the Time Corps safe house, but the phone had no connection. Thought it registered the date and time and her contact list was intact, the phone no longer worked. The service was disconnected.
“I’m going to LA,” she said. “You shouldn’t come.”
“Are you ashamed of me?”
“I just don’t know if you’ll get along with everyone. Some of them might be able to tell what you are. Your kind are not popular.”
He shrugged, but she could see that he didn’t like the situation. He dropped into a chair, stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles.
“I’ll wait here.”
She made a Door to the Time Corps safe house in Los Angeles, and when Julius saw her, he went pale and rose from the sofa where he had been talking with Santiago, the Coyote.
“I wanted to check on everyone,” Astrid said. “Is everyone all right?”
“Ah, the Door girl returns,” said Santiago with a wide, delighted smile. “Been a while. Julius, this is that girl from the boardwalk that your sister was palling around with a few years ago.”
Julius studied her, then touched his beard. The shock she had seen on his face was not the look of happy surprise.
“It seems I’ve forgotten your name,” said Santiago. He hadn’t moved from his sprawled position with his feet on the coffee table.
“It’s me, Astrid. I’m not Sister. Is that what you mean?”
She tried to make sense of it. Why would he not know her name?
“She’s the Door that Red Fawn spoke about,” said Santiago to Julius.
“If you know who I am,” she said, turning to Santiago, “then tell me what’s going on. I’ve been in the Seelie world for a little over a week, and now people don’t remember me.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, putting his feet on the floor and leaning forward. “You weren’t there for a week. You were there for, let me see,” he counted on his fingers. “Four years or so.”
She asked the year and he told her.
“A week then,” she said. “I left this year. I left on October 17th of this year.”
“Being in Seelie messes with your time sense. Happens to the best of us, believe me. But, wait a moment. I thought you got stuck in the void. The Wild Hunt came, and you led them away. From what your brother said afterward, I thought it was the void, not the Seelie world.”
“He’s not my brother, he’s my cousin, Elliot. Where is he?”
“I don’t know where he is now. Why would I?”
“Because this is the Time Corps safe house. Because he lives here!”
Santiago seemed to have an idea. “The Seelie might have done things to your mind. They do that. Do you remember your address? I’ll drive you home.”
“I’m not crazy, and I need to find my cousin. Is he at his trailer on the beach? He lived there before joining the Time Corps.”
“Last I heard, he was sailing that crazy Viking ship of his. Your little twin was with him. He comes into my territory now and then, so I hear things. Last I heard was a few months ago. But I don’t know where he is now.”
Sister shouldn’t be with Elliot. She should be safe in Hazel and Seamus’s home world. Safe from the Seelie and their threats. Julius was still looking at Astrid, and she felt something from him she had never felt before. Normally he was jovial and thoughtful, sometimes distant and distracted. Now, he was calculating, thinking over something, and it involved her.
“I’m going to find my cousin,” she said, happy to get away from him. Something about his look made her feel like a game piece on a board. She made a Door to the beach where Elliot had once lived, found his trailer and knocked. A different man now occupied the place, and she apologized for disturbing him.
She needed to locate Elliot. She did it all the time with the other psychopomps. They could find each other so easily. She searched for Elliot in her mind, imagining him on the deck of Skidbladnir. Something flickered inside and she followed the thought. Reaching out, she touched something like a thread. She felt it and followed it the way Jeff had taught her. Then she thought of Sister, and the two of them together. There. She thought she had it. She made a Door, glanced through to make sure it was the right ship, and stepped through.
The moment she came on deck, three of the monkey crew leapt away and one called out a warning to the others. Elliot was near the prow and he turned.
It took a moment for him to realize that she wasn’t Sister, and the moment he did, he froze. “I thought you died.”
“I’m back, but something happened. Something happened with time.”
He moved toward her slowly, then pulled her into a hard embrace. It was only after a few moments that she heard his sniff and realized he was crying.
“God, Elliot, I’m fine. It was only a week. I was in the Seelie world.”
“I thought you were in the void. All these years … and we couldn’t have a funeral because Sister needed your name and no one else knew you were dead.”
He hugged her again and she let him. Then Sister came from below decks, let out a cry and embraced her. She held the two of them until Elliot asked how she had gotten out of the void.
“I was never trapped there, that’s how. Something is wrong. Something happened with time. People don’t remember things correctly. The Time Corps safe house doesn’t exist. It’s just Santiago and Julius there now.”
“I told you,” signed Sister to Elliot. “Something is wrong.”
“What is the Time Corps?” said Elliot.
They talked, and Astrid began to understand more fully. It wasn’t simply that time had changed or that the Seelie had played a trick on her mind or the minds of others. The entire world had changed, and she hadn’t changed with it.
Yelbeghen knew though. He understood. She promised Elliot she’d find him again. She’d have to get some money from Yelbeghen and have her phone service reconnected, then they could talk by phone. She made a Door to Yelbeghen’s island.
The drake was still in his living room chair, apparently napping. She knew he was only waiting, sitting perfectly still. It was his way.
“Do you remember the Time Corps?” she asked.
He opened his eyes slowly and said he did.
“No one else does. You said you were in the void. I think something happened while we were gone. Everyone thinks I was stuck in the void, that I never got out.”
“And how did you get out?”
“Elliot rang this little owl bell. He traveled in time and created it and he rang it and it led me home.”
She wanted the little object. It repelled the Seelie, and right now, it would be a talisman and a comfort. She had owned the thing since she was an infant and it had always stood sentinel near her bed.
“I don’t think the bell exists anymore,” said Yelbeghen. “And I think you’re lucky that you exist at all.”
Chapter 11
Felicia Sanchez kissed her nephew good-bye, hugged her sister and got into her rental car. She leaned back against the headrest. Everyone had hope now. Thi
ngs might just be all right. Even though her nephew, Nathan, had a rare form of bone cancer, Felicia had located a specialist in Brazil who performed pioneering work with an experimental treatment.
The specialist was working closely with Nathan’s doctors now, and Felicia would continue to monitor things. Even though Nathan lived in Los Angeles and Felicia was a resident at Tulane Medical Center in New Orleans, she would keep an eye on everything. It didn’t matter that no one in her family had much money; she would ensure Nathan got the best treatment. She would ask her colleagues at the hospital, she would research things herself. Her nephew would survive.
It was lunchtime, and even though she had skipped breakfast, she wasn’t hungry. Even the thought of stopping at her favorite sandwich shop was not appealing. It must be nerves and travel. She had flown in on a plane to Los Angeles yesterday and would be returning home tomorrow morning. Travel was stressful and could affect appetite. Jet lag must be taking its toll too, because she was exhausted.
She drove to her parents’ house where she was staying in her old bedroom. She closed her bedroom door, stretched out on top of the covers and fell asleep immediately, then woke to a darkened bedroom and her mother knocking softly on the door.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” she called, her heart still beating hard from her dream.
There had been a girl, a tongueless girl. Felicia knew that the poor thing had been mutilated without seeing the inside of her mouth. She had been playing with two striped tabby kittens. Though the girl did not speak, the kittens did. There was another girl identical to her and other strange people. People who were animals. Animals who could speak. The whole thing was a mad muddle.
But that wasn’t what made her heart beat hard and her body break out in a hot sweat. There had been a man, a dark-haired man whom she had never seen before. He looked at her with a knowing look, one that made her insides flutter, and leaned toward her. His hair, curly and wild, brushed her lips as he breathed words into her ear, his breath warm and his voice low, with an accent she couldn’t remember, only that it was beautiful and lilting. Then he was naked, as was she, and there was no sight, no images, only the press of his body against hers and the feel of him in the dark.
Felicia got up, went to the bathroom and ran a comb through her tangled hair. Everyone had erotic dreams now and then. It was normal. Nothing to worry about, she reminded herself. But she wasn’t ashamed of it, exactly. Shame wasn’t the emotion pooling in her stomach. It was something else, sadness and happiness mixed, as if she had lost something that made her happy.
A small earthquake shook the house, and she stepped into the door frame of the bathroom, leaning back against it. She called out to her mother to make sure she was all right, and her mother called back that she was. The quake passed, and Felicia headed to the kitchen, pausing to straighten a few curios that had moved a bit on the living room shelves.
Nathan would live. Her family would not bury a tiny body in a tiny casket. Her parents were alive and well, her siblings were fine, and she was in the process of achieving her dream of being a doctor. The scent of lasagna wafted from the kitchen, and though the thought of eating it was unappealing, there was comfort in the familiar smell.
Everything was fine. There was no logical reason for her to feel this keen sense of loss, of something missing. No reason at all.
Chapter 12
“Seamus, you will be the death of me.”
Seamus glanced at Oren McCullen, then at the items surrounding his colleague in their shared university laboratory, the devices and wires, the open set of chemicals left out on the table, the leftover lunch plate from the day before.
“There’s nothing there that’ll kill you,” said Seamus, “save that flask of liquid there. It’s an experiment. Now, careful. Don’t tip it.”
Oren handed him the flask. “Not that,” he said. “This.”
Seamus took the proffered paper and looked it over.
“Why are you reading through these old papers? We have other things to occupy us.”
“Those are the plans for the peroxide engine. But look, you wrote this note here, but it’s incorrect. I think we should go over it again.”
“Why? We went over it a thousand times years ago. It’s useful, but a silver catalyst is too expensive to be viable.”
“But even so,” said Oren. “Didn’t you ever get the feeling that we’re missing something? That if we only looked again, it would make sense?”
“I live with that feeling daily, my friend.”
“We need a better catalyst. With that, the engines could power machines. Such machines as we could only imagine.”
“I can imagine a great deal,” said Seamus.
“As can I.”
Seamus sighed. “That’s as may be, but I need your mind on our work, not sifting through the dust of some old and abandoned project.”
“I suppose,” said Oren, setting the paper aside. But Seamus saw that he set it on top of his current reading pile.
When they left to eat supper, it was already late. They each had their own houses, but they often dined together. For nearly twenty years they had done so. They had been cellmates in Ireland together, had escaped together and had built a life together in New Orleans teaching at the university and patenting their inventions.
They hailed a hansom cab and passed the shops, a club, then later a pub and a brothel as they rode through a different section of town. The lights glowed warmly behind pulled curtains upstairs.
“Sometimes I think it would be a fine thing to have a wife,” said Oren. “Someone at home.”
“It wouldn’t be fair to any woman to marry either of us. Not with our pasts. We couldn’t even tell them our real last names.”
It had been so many years since he had heard his own surname, Doyle, that it seemed like the name of another man. Perhaps it was. He was thirty-eight now. Twenty years had passed since he had killed a man. Twenty years since his mother had watched him taken away in irons.
They stopped at their club and ate, Oren going over the peroxide engine notes, Seamus sitting and thinking dark thoughts about his home, his family and his empty Garden District house. But no, he needed to fight against this melancholy turn of mind. There was no sense in dwelling on that which he could not change.
It was nearly ten o’clock when he saw Oren off at the door and decided to walk a few blocks to clear his mind. He knew which sorts of businesses lay ahead, but he had no plans to visit them. He could walk straight past. Just as he walked past the bar without going in, just as he could walk past a gambling den. He touched his hat at a woman leaning against a door frame.
A cat ran past, a stripped tabby, and he paused, a memory coming to him. He had a dream about a cat like that, speaking with him. But the cat was also Oren, discussing his notes. And it was also a little girl, sitting on a stool with her hands under her thighs, swinging her feet.
There were other things in his dream, machines and wonders, strange people. And there was a woman in the dream, a brown-skinned woman with dark hair and eyes the color of rich cognac. He remembered her scent, faint and sweet, almost edible, and the feel of the skin of her shoulders under his hands.
He thought about going back to the pub for a drink, or maybe going home and opening a new bottle of scotch before reading in front of the fire. But that wouldn’t help any, he knew. He had spent enough nights trying to quell the pensive thoughts that were always lying in wait. They were like crows sitting in a tree, waiting for something to die.
A steam carriage clattered past, its wheels loud on the cobblestones. It splashed through a puddle and turned the corner. One horse-drawn trap passed, but otherwise the street was empty. The shops were closed and it was too late for business and decent people to be out, but still too early for those who operated in darkness. The pubs and brothels were open, yes, b
ut they wouldn’t be busy until later.
He thought of his brothers and sisters, now all grown, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. And he thought of his parents, now gray-headed or possibly dead. They thought he was dead, and he had to leave it that way. He could never contact them again. He was a shadow, with no family and few friends, the product of a life lived under a false name and identity.
Ah, but this was too much. He knew where these thoughts led, and how they could pull him into a dark interior place that he would not escape for days. He knew one way to drown out the thoughts and the endless chatter of his mind. Turning down the next street, he saw the building with the front door propped open. Faint piano music drifted out into the street.
He had patronized the establishment a number of times before, and as he entered he found a petite woman playing the piano. Her music was playful and light, something for the early patrons who might stay a few hours.
She finished the piece and smiled at him, a genuine smile, not the one her profession required. She rose and came to him and he greeted her by name. They were old friends. He had known Hazel since she was a girl and had dressed as a boy to run errands for him.
Chapter 13
Elliot parked the car in the hospital parking lot and turned to Sister.
“You can stay here if you want.”
“Astrid called us both,” she signed. “I’m coming.”
Elliot almost told her that Astrid needed him, not her. Astrid insisted that he could sense things that even she could not, time slips and anomalies. He seriously doubted that he could be so useful, but he had to admit that in a world where he captained a monkey-crewed living dragon ship and found a clock in his eye, anything was possible.
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