by April White
“Saira’ll have to sell ‘em then. Or you. Nothing about me is posh enough to get away with it.”
I looked straight at Ringo. “Unless you want to get sent to prison.”
He scowled at me and stuck out his tongue. “Excrement and blasphemy!”
I barked out a laugh. “What?”
There was a wry, resigned expression in Ringo’s eyes, despite the twinkling that never left them. “As ye like t’say – crap and damn.”
We had time to kill until lights-out when we could go down to Mr. Shaw’s office. Ringo filled the time playing with Ava’s iPad. I showed him the pocket version of Minecraft, and he spent an hour building an elaborate fortress just to blow it up with a well-placed explosive trap. Archer and I went up to the roof of the tower and sat on the cold slate tiles watching the clouds cover and uncover the stars.
I told him about my conversation with Miss Rogers, about the theory of inertia and the possibility of a time stream split.
Archer’s tone was mild. “If Wilder killed Elizabeth Tudor before she could become queen, that would be a fair-sized anomaly.”
I turned to stare at Archer. “Are you kidding? That would be the mother of all splits. Can you imagine? No world exploration. No patronage of Shakespeare? If Elizabeth died before becoming queen, the English crown would have gone to one of Jane Grey’s sisters, whose husband would have taken over, leaving England totally vulnerable.”
“And the Spanish would have come in to hand England to the Pope.”
“Or the French Catholics.” I contemplated the ramifications of a history I couldn’t even imagine. “Devereux is French though. Your family would probably be fine.”
Archer shook his head. “My ancestor was Robert Devereux, a cousin to Elizabeth through his mother, Lettice Knollys. My family would have been summarily executed.”
“Are you serious? You’re actually related to Queen Elizabeth?”
“Very distantly, through the Boleyns.”
“What about your mother’s people?”
“I never knew any of the Foss family. When I killed my mother, they wanted nothing more to do with us.”
I forced his eyes to meet mine. “You didn’t kill your mother, childbirth did. There’s a huge difference.”
“Not in the outcome. Dead is dead.” The bitterness in his voice hurt my heart.
“But you lived, and that counts for everything.”
Archer wrapped me in his arms and we sat there in silence. I finally spoke. “What would have been different if your mother had lived?”
He scoffed. “What wouldn’t have?”
“For example?”
He didn’t even have to think about it. “My father wouldn’t have hated me.”
There was nothing I could say to that. I never met Lord Devereux and only knew him from Archer’s stories. And he wasn’t a hero in any of them.
“It doesn’t matter. He’s long dead now and I can’t change what happened.” Archer stood and held his hand out to help me to my feet. “Besides, if he hadn’t hated me I wouldn’t have run away to King’s College to escape him. And I never would have met you.”
My heart actually ached for him – for the little boy who thought his father hated him, and for the man who never felt his dad’s approval. I wondered what was worse: having an emotionally absent dad, or never having one at all.
The school had shut down for the night, and we headed out for Mr. Shaw’s office. At the last minute Ringo grabbed our bags. He slung his own over a shoulder and handed ours to each of us. “Ye never know what yer gonna need.”
I couldn’t argue with that at all, though I thought carrying around a five-hundred-year-old musty smelling dress was a little overkill in the being-prepared department. I almost left it behind, but Archer stopped me. “Take it.” The worried look in his eyes said there was something he wasn’t telling me.
So I took it, as well as one last long look at Doran’s painting, before we left the tower.
The halls were eerily quiet as we made our way downstairs, and my own survival instincts started to kick in strong. The school had always been a place of relative safety for me, but something was off tonight, and I thought Ringo’s plan to be prepared was a good one.
The light was on in Mr. Shaw’s office, and he opened the door almost as soon as we knocked. He locked the door behind us and then answered my unspoken question.
“Monger whelps were a bit restive today.”
Archer nodded. “They’re planning something.”
Mr. Shaw looked surprised. “You’ve seen that?”
“I’ve seen them running through St. Brigid’s with torches.”
My eyebrows hit the ceiling with images of ogre-hunting villagers in my brain. Archer gave me a half-smile. “The electric kind.” Oh, right. British for flashlights.
“You’re here for vaccinations then?”
I nodded, but Ringo looked blank. “What’s them?”
“Shots.”
His eyes widened.
Mr. Shaw interrupted me efficiently. “It’s a kind of medicine I’ll give you just into your skin. It stops things like pox before it can ever take hold.”
This time Ringo’s eye-widening was accompanied by a look of disbelief. “Ye can stop the pox?”
“It’s completely gone in this time because of shots like these.” Mr. Shaw was getting two doses ready as he talked. Ringo eyed the needle and syringe with wary respect.
“Me mam had the pox. It’s why she sent me away when I was small.”
“How small?” It struck me that Ringo never spoke about his parents.
He held his hand out about waist-high. “’Bout five I think.”
I gasped. “Who did you live with?”
Ringo looked at me funny. “Weren’t no one. I jus’ took to the streets. By the time I finally figured out she died, the landlord took whatever was left for back rent.”
My face must have had shock written all over it because Mr. Shaw tapped my shoulder to bring my attention around to the needle in his hand. “Let’s get this done.”
I nodded mutely, not trusting myself to be intelligible. Mr. Shaw prepped a strange-looking, multi-pronged needle, and Ringo watched with complete fascination as Mr. Shaw carefully jabbed my upper arm several times. He checked my face quickly, and I held my expression totally neutral. It took a lot because I was still reeling from the knowledge Ringo had been a homeless five-year-old. I noticed Archer behind Mr. Shaw watching the process with an unusual amount of tension in his face, and I wondered what he was reacting to.
“Okay, that’s smallpox, and here’s a measles booster.” A smaller needle went into the fatty tissue in my arm; I remained impassive. When it was done Ringo stuck his arm out preemptively.
“Give me the shots for pox and anything else you have.” His voice sounded so eager Mr. Shaw had to stifle a grin as he prepped his arm.
“I’ve prepared smallpox, measles, and influenza type A. We think it’s what contributed to Mary Tudor’s death in 1558, which means it was already likely brewing in 1554. It should also keep you safe in the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak.”
The shots Mr. Shaw was giving Ringo would save his life during his natural lifetime too. The thought made me feel a little sick.
The flu shot was just going in when someone banged on Mr. Shaw’s office door.
“Shaw! Open up!”
And I realized why my stomach had twisted. It was a Monger voice.
Morgan
To his credit, Mr. Shaw didn’t flinch as he finished Ringo’s shots. We looked wildly at him, but he just put his finger to his lips to keep us quiet.
He clicked off the desk lamp and leaned over me as he stood to answer the door.
“Ward yourselves.” Mr. Shaw’s whisper was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it. A chasm opened in my guts. Could I ward all three of us in such close quarters? I moved closer to Archer on the sofa, then pulled Ringo to the other side of me so I was sandwiched between the two of them.
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Mr. Shaw grabbed the genealogy off his desk and tossed it into my lap. The pounding outside his office door intensified.
“Shaw, damn it! We know you’re in there!”
There were three of them. Three adult Mongers just a few feet away, and I would have climbed out of my skin to get away from them if I could have. Fight or flight was definitely the trigger for my wards, and I could feel it slam up around all three of us. The cold threatened to freeze all the blood in my body, and the only comfort I could feel at all was Archer’s thigh pressed against mine. It was a very small thing to hang onto, but I grasped at it with everything I had.
Mr. Shaw’s eyes widened very slightly at our sudden invisibility, then he grunted to himself and opened the office door.
Seth Walters and the Rothbitch were there behind a big, nasty piece of work with a scarred face and wild, gray hair. Something about him looked familiar, but in a rough, barely civilized kind of way, and I wondered if he’d been one of the toughs in the fight outside Walters’ office. But then he spoke, and I knew without a doubt he was somehow related to Bishop Wilder.
“What took you so long, Shifter? Hiding something?”
There was something oddly cultured in his low, growling voice, and I mentally dubbed him Silvertongue. Different than Wilder’s Silverback, but clearly of the same family.
“You hammer on my office door well after hours and then have the stones to hurl accusations at me?
“I think you have something that belongs to me.” Silvertongue strode into the room without waiting for Mr. Shaw to step out of the way. I held my breath, but the ward hung tight around us and the chill from it seeped into my bones.
He couldn’t see us.
I could feel Ringo tense up next to me. I’d told him about the wards I could do, but I didn’t think he really believed it until now. But the Mongers ignored the couch, and Silvertongue started prowling around the room, no doubt looking for the genealogy that was hidden in plain sight on my lap.
“Get out of my office.” Mr. Shaw’s voice deepened into one of those hair-raising growls that only a Bear-Shifter could do.
“Where’s my book?” Silvertongue’s tone of voice signaled a pissing contest. My nerves faltered, and I could feel the edges of my ward begin to slip. The air must have moved or something, because the Rothbitch looked over at the sofa. But Archer gripped my hand in warning, and I pulled the ward above our heads with all the mental power I had left. It held, but barely, and the Rothbitch looked back at Mr. Shaw.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I want you the hell out of my office.” I could see the space around Mr. Shaw begin to shimmer. He was about to lose it and Shift right in front of three Mongers. I didn’t think Shifters did that, at least not on purpose, and I could hear Ringo’s heartbeat pick up speed. I was a little shocked no one else in the room could hear it because it sounded like a metronome to my ears.
The Rothbitch put her hand on Silvertongue’s arm. “The girl’s clearly not here, and if he has the book we’ll get it through the Council. Let’s go.”
I could see that Seth Walters had been scanning the bookshelves and all the available surfaces in the office the whole time they were talking. He turned to the others. “She’s here in the school. Raven’s friend saw her.”
“Get out of my office, and get off this property, Walters. You’ve been warned about coming to St. Brigid’s already. I would be quite justified throwing you bodily out of this school.”
Seth’s hand twitched toward his pocket and I imagined a gun nestled in there. It didn’t seem possible that Archer could get more tense. Seth Walters was a coward, but it seemed he wasn’t a complete idiot because he backed toward the door.
“The girl is mine, Shaw, and I will find her.”
“I’ll be sure to tell the Council that when I speak to them next week.” The air was still shimmering around Mr. Shaw, but his voice had gone a little quieter, as if he was struggling to stay in control.
Silvertongue glared at Seth. “Enough, Walters.” Seth’s eyes narrowed but he was silent. It was so out of character even Shaw looked surprised. Silvertongue’s voice went hard. “I want my book, Shaw. I can make things very unpleasant around here if I don’t get it.”
The Mongers stalked out of the office, and Mr. Shaw strode across the room to slam the door behind them. He turned the deadbolt and I let go of the ward with a gasp.
“Good God! That was a ward?” Ringo’s whisper was shocked, and he rubbed his hands over his arms as he stood up to pace. “I’m nearly numb with cold. It seeps into yer bones, no?”
“You three have to go.” Mr. Shaw’s voice was ragged, probably from keeping himself together when his instinct was telling him to Shift.
“How long do you think they’ll be wandering around?”
“No. You have to leave this time.”
Something in Mr. Shaw’s voice scared me. Maybe it was fear I heard, and that made me mad. “I’m not afraid of them.”
Mr. Shaw took a deep breath, and I could see him struggle with his temper. But his voice was calm when he spoke again. “Saira, there’s something only you can do, and the more I discover, the more I believe it’s a job that has to be done. Wilder is up to something, and I don’t know if there’s a direct correlation, but that man was Domenic Morgan.”
Archer interrupted Mr. Shaw. “Morgan was the name of the man Wilder’s sister married.”
Mr. Shaw looked startled, then thoughtful. “That could be relevant.”
“What does Domenic Morgan have to do with anything?” Fear had begun to creep into my voice again, making it wobbly.
“Until tonight, I’ve always known Domenic Morgan to be a quiet man. He’s a bookkeeper for the Council, and I thought he was the least Monger-ish of all the Mongers I’d ever met.” Mr. Shaw’s gaze locked on mine. “He has changed. Almost overnight, it seems. He’s never been so aggressive and … entitled.”
“What do you think happened?” Archer hadn’t made the leap yet, but I had. And when Mr. Shaw looked at me, I knew he had too.
“Saira, you had this conversation with Mildred Rogers.”
“You think Wilder made himself powerful in the past and it’s affecting things now?” My voice squeaked on the question, and I felt my own heart kick start in time with Ringo’s. “Could he have caused a time stream split?”
“Several of us have been getting a crash course in the theoretical consequences of time travel. Your mother and Mildred don’t think there’s been a split. Maybe this is more like a ripple effect.”
“What does Miss Simpson think?”
Mr. Shaw looked steadily at me. “She believes information is the key to understanding. Without information, we’re all flying blind into what looks to be a hurricane.”
Nice and cryptic. Because apparently straightforward is too hard for Seers. I took a breath. “What else could it be? What if Domenic Morgan’s just having a really bad day and was in a mood?” I was grasping at straws.
Mr. Shaw looked me straight in the eyes. “Have you ever seen Seth Walters take a back seat to anyone?”
Oh, God. He was right, and my head started to pound. I looked at Archer and Ringo. “We have to go.” Ringo’s eyes widened to match mine, and Archer just nodded.
“I know.”
My head whipped around to Mr. Shaw. “Can we get back to the Clocker Tower?”
Archer put his hand out to stop me. “My cellar’s closer. Less exposed.”
Wow. Okay, that was huge. Archer just revealed his hide-out to Mr. Shaw, and to his credit, Mr. Shaw didn’t bat an eyelash. Archer whispered to me. “I’m glad you finished your spiral there.”
Mr. Shaw was already moving for the door. “I’ll keep working on the genealogy, but I can’t really get a message to you if I find something.”
“I’ll try to come back fast so you don’t have to.” I gave Mr. Shaw a quick kiss on the cheek, but he grabbed me for a solid hug.
“Be safe and come home to
us, Saira,” he whispered into my hair, and I had the sudden sensation of having been hugged by my dad.
Ringo and Archer shook hands with Mr. Shaw, and he held onto Archer’s hand a moment longer than strictly necessary. “All of you come back safely.”
Archer nodded solemnly, and Mr. Shaw unlocked the door. He stepped into the hall and listened for a long moment before finally gesturing for us to emerge. None of us said a word as Archer led the way down the back hall to the kitchens. I grabbed a last, quick look at Mr. Shaw before we turned the corner and were out of sight.
He looked sadder than I’d ever seen him.
St. Brigid’s School
We made it down to the cellars without being seen. Once we were inside the secret room and the door safely locked, Archer quickly gathered a few things from his room while Ringo admired all the books his friend had surrounded himself with.
Meanwhile, I suddenly had a pressing need to repack my canvas satchel. Because if I wasn’t busy, I’d have time to think. And I’d just become very nervous about taking two of my favorite people on a mad journey to a time I’d never been to and was only theoretically able to visit. And I was even underselling myself on the nervous bit. ‘Terrified’ was closer to the truth.
But there were only so many ways a bag could be re-packed, and soon my eyes wandered over to watch Archer. And he managed to shock the hell out of me.
“What are you doing?”
He looked up from the thread he was biting off with his teeth. The thread that was attached to what looked like an old wool blanket. He held it up proudly to show me. He grabbed a cord on either side of it and pulled, gathering the blanket onto the cord. “It’s cold in March. You needed cloaks.”
I stared at the cloak in shock. “You made that?”
“This one’s for Ringo. I made yours before dawn this morning.”