by Meg Cabot
Fabulous. A thunderstorm. I was stuck in an 1850 thunderstorm with nowhere to go.
Then the wind picked up, carrying with it a scent I couldn't place right away. It took me a minute to remember it. Then, all at once, I did: my occasional forays into Central Park back when I'd lived in Brooklyn.
Horse. There were horses nearby.
Which meant there had to be a barn. Which might be dry. And which might be unguarded by hoopskirted women who consider me bad rubbish.
Ducking my head against the rain, which was coming down harder now, I ran in the direction of the horse smell and soon found myself behind the house, facing an enormous barn, right where Andy had said he was going to have a pool installed one day, after we'd all finished college and he could afford it.
The barn doors were closed. I hurried toward them, praying they wouldn't be locked . . .
They weren't. I heaved one open and slipped inside just as another bolt of lightning streaked through the sky, and thunder sounded again, more loudly, this time.
Inside the barn it was dry, at least. Black as tar, but dry. The horse smell was strong - I could hear them moving uneasily around in their stalls, startled by the thunder - but the smell of something else was stronger. Hay, I think it was. Not exactly being a country girl, I couldn't say for sure. But I thought the stuff that crunched and rolled a little beneath my boots might be hay . . .
Well, this was just great. I'd come to save my boyfriend's life - or rather, to keep someone else from saving it - and all I'd accomplished so far was to enrage his landlady.
Oh and I'd been rained on. And found a barn.
Perfect. Dr. Slaski hadn't been kidding when he'd warned me against time travel. It sure hadn't been any picnic so far.
And when, a second later, I'd reached up to wring some of the water from my hair and felt a heavy hand on my shoulder -
Well, I had definitely had enough of the mid-1800s.
Fortunately for me, a roll of thunder drowned out my scream. Otherwise, the landlady - or worse, her husband, if she had one - would have been out here in a flash. And I probably would have gotten a lot more than just a bad scare.
"Shut up!" Paul whispered. "Do you want to get us both shot?"
I whirled around. I could only dimly make out his figure there in the darkness. But it was enough to send my pulse, which had been racing before, to a near standstill.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded, hoping he couldn't hear the confusion in my voice. I was feeling an odd mix of emotions at seeing him: anger, that he'd gotten there before me; fear, that he was there at all; and relief, at seeing a familiar face.
"What do you think I'm doing here?" Paul tossed something rough and heavy at me.
I caught it inexpertly. "What's this?"
"A blanket. So you can dry yourself off."
I gratefully threw the blanket around my shoulders. Even though I still had my motorcycle jacket on, I was shivering beneath the leather. I don't think it was from the rain, either.
The blanket smelled strongly of horse. But not in a bad way. I guess.
"So," Paul said and moved into the sliver of light thrown through the still-open barn door, so that I could finally see his face. "You made it."
I sniffled miserably. I tried not to pay attention to the fact that I was cold, wet, and inside a barn. In the year 1850.
"I can't believe you really thought you would get away with it," I said, glad I'd finally seemed to get the trembling of my voice under control. My chattering teeth were another story. "Did you think I wouldn't try to stop you?"
Paul shrugged. "I figured it was worth a try. And there's still a chance I'll succeed, you know, Suze. He isn't here yet."
"Who isn't?" I asked stupidly. I was still busy trying to figure out how I could possibly ditch Paul and get to Jesse without him noticing.
"Jesse," Paul said as if I were mentally impaired. And you know what? Probably I am. "We're a day early. He gets here tomorrow."
"How do you know?" I asked, wiping my dripping nose on the back of my wrist.
"I talked to that lady," he said. "Mrs. O'Neil. The one who owns your house."
"She talked to you?" I couldn't hide my surprise. "She wouldn't talk to me. She threw me out."
"What'd you do, materialize in front of her?" Paul asked with a sneer.
"No," I said. "Well, not right in front of her."
Paul shook his head. But I could see that he was grinning a little. "Bet you gave her a coronary. What'd she think of your getup?" He gestured at my clothes.
I looked down at myself. In my jeans and motorcycle jacket, I guess I didn't really resemble any nineteenth-century miss I'd ever seen in the movies. Or, more important, in pictures from the era.
"She said she ran a respectable house and I should know better than to show my face there," I admitted and was stung when Paul laughed out loud.
"What?" I demanded.
"Nothing," Paul said. But he was still laughing.
"Just tell me."
"Okay. But don't get mad. She thought you were a lady of the evening."
I glared at him. "She did not!"
"She did so. And I told you not to get mad."
"I'm not exactly dressed like a hoochie mama," I pointed out. "I'm wearing pants."
"That's the problem," Paul said. "No respectable woman in this century wears pants. Good thing Jesse didn't see you. He probably wouldn't even have talked to you."
I had had about all I could take of Paul. I said hotly, "He would so. Jesse's not like that."
"Not the Jesse you know," Paul said. "But we're not talking about the one you know, are we? We're talking about the one who's never met you. Who hasn't sat around for a hundred and fifty years, watching the world go by. We're talking about the Jesse who's on his way to Carmel to marry the girl of his - "
"Shut up," I said before he could finish that sentence.
Paul's grin got broader. "Sorry. Well, we've got a while to wait. No sense spending it arguing. Come up to the loft with me, and we'll sit out this storm together."
He slipped back into the shadows, and I heard a foot scrape on a wooden rung. One of the horses whinnied.
"Don't be scared, Suze," Paul called down to me from a few feet in the air. "They're just horses. They won't bite. If you don't get too near them."
That wasn't why I was scared. Not that I was about to admit any such thing to him.
"I think I'll stay down here," I said into the darkness his voice had come from.
"Fine by me," Paul said, "if you want to get caught. It'll just make my job easier. Mr. O'Neil came by a little while ago to check on the horses. I'm sure he wouldn't shoot a girl though. If he realized you were a girl in time, I mean."
This got me moving toward the ladder.
"I hate you," I commented, as I started to climb.
"No, you don't," Paul said from the darkness above me. I could tell by his voice that he was grinning again. "But you go right on telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better.
Chapter fourteen
It was warm in the loft. Warm and dry. And not just because of all the hay. No, also because Paul and I were sitting so close together - for body-heat purposes only, I'd informed him, when he'd shown me the hole he'd dug in the giant pile of hay at one end of the loft.
"Because I don't want to die of hypothermia" was what I'd said, since the horse blanket didn't seem to be doing the job. At least, my teeth hadn't stopped chattering. My jeans weren't drying as fast as I'd have liked them to.
"I'll keep my hands to myself," Paul had assured me.
And so far, he'd been true to his word.
"What I don't get," I said as the rain pelted down outside, with occasional flashes of lightning, though the thunderstorm portion of the evening seemed to be mostly over, "is what you're doing here. Aren't you supposed to be looking for Felix Diego? To stop him?"
"Yeah." In the darkness of the loft, I could only make out Paul's profile by the light that crep
t in from chinks and knotholes in the wood that made up the barn walls.
"So . . . why aren't you? Unless" - my blood ran cold - "you already found him. But then why - "
"Relax, Simon," Paul said. "I didn't find him. Yet. But we both know he's due to show up here tomorrow, same as Jesse."
I did relax then. Well, just a little. So Paul hadn't gotten to Diego yet. Which meant there was still time . . .
To do what, though? What was I going to do when I found Jesse? I couldn't tell him not to stay at Mrs. O'Neil's boardinghouse or he'd be killed, because the truth was, I wanted him to be killed. How else was I ever going to get to meet him - okay, date him - in the twenty-first century?
I was just going to have to stick to Paul, was all. Stick to Paul and keep him from stopping Diego. Maybe I wouldn't even see Jesse. Which would probably be just as well. Because if I did, what on earth was I going to say to him? What if he, like Mrs. O'Neil, mistook me for some random hoochie mama? I didn't think I could bear it. . . .
Which reminded me . . .
"Are people going to notice we're gone?" I asked. "In our own time, I mean? Or when we get back, will it be like no time has gone by?"
"I don't know." I got the feeling Paul had been trying to get some sleep when I'd shown up. He seemed to be atternpting to get back to it now and my endless questions were only serving to irritate him. "Why didn't you ask my grandfather? You two are so close and all. . . ."
"I didn't exactly get a chance, now, did I?" I stared at him - or tried to, anyway - in the darkness. I still wasn't sure why Dr. Slaski had chosen me as his confidante and not his own grandson. Well, except for the fact that Paul is a user. And a thief. And, oh yeah, had possibly purposefully drugged him.
"He's not who you think he is, Paul," I said, meaning Dr. Slaski. "He's not your enemy. He's just like us."
"Don't say that." Paul's blue-eyed gaze suddenly bore into me from the darkness. "Don't ever."
"Why? He's a mediator, Paul. A shifter. He's probably who you got it from. He knows a lot. And one thing he knows is that the more we play around with . . . with our powers . . . the better our chances of ending up like him - "
"I told you not to say that," Paul snapped.
"But if you'd just give him a chance, instead of calling him a gork and purposefully - "
"We're not like him, all right? You and I? We're nothing like him. He was stupid. He tried to tell people. He tried to tell people that mediators - shifters - whatever - that we exist. And everyone laughed at him. My dad had to change his name, Suze, because no one would take him seriously, knowing he was related to someone they all said was a quack. So don't you ever - ever - say we're like him or that we're going to end up like him. I already know how I'm going to end up."
I just blinked at him. "Oh, really? And how's that?"
"Not like him," Paul assured me. "I'm going to be like my dad."
"Your dad isn't a mediator," I reminded him.
"I mean I'm going to be rich, like my dad," Paul said.
"How?" I asked with a laugh. "By stealing from the people you're supposed to be helping?"
"There you go again," Paul said, shaking his head. "Who told you we're supposed to help the dead, Suze? Huh? Who?"
"You know perfectly well it was wrong of you to take that money. It wasn't yours."
"Yeah," Paul said. "Well, there's more where it came from and, unlike you, I suffer no moral compunctions in taking it. I'm going to be rich someday, Suze. And, unlike Grandpa Gork, in control."
"Not if you kill all your brain cells flitting in and out of the past," I pointed out.
"Yeah, well," Paul said. "This is a one-time trip. After this, I shouldn't need to go back again."
I stared at his profile. Only our sides were touching beneath the horse blanket we shared. Still, Paul radiated a lot of heat. I was getting a little hot under the blanket.
That was when I realized the only other guy I'd ever lain this close to was Jesse, and that the heat he gave off? Yeah, a lot of that was in my mind. Because ghosts can't give off heat. Even to mediators. Even to mediators who happen to be in love with them.
"It's wrong," I said quietly to Paul as I looked at his closed eyelids. "What you're doing to Jesse. He doesn't want it."
Paul's eyes opened at that.
"You told him?"
"Of course I told him," I said. "And he doesn't want it He doesn't want you to interfere, Paul. He was going down to the Mission to stop you when I left."
Paul looked at me for a few seconds, his blue eyes unreadable in the darkness.
"Are you sleeping with him?" he asked bluntly.
I gaped at him, feeling heat flood my cheeks. "Of course not!" Then, realizing what I'd said, stammered, "N-not that it's any of your business."
But Paul, rather than grinning over his so fully discomfiting me, as I would have expected him to, was gazing down at me very seriously.
"Then I don't get it," he said simply. "Why him? Why not me?"
Oh. That.
"Because he's honest," I said. "And he's kind. And he puts me ahead of everything else - "
"So would I," Paul said. "If you'd give me the chance."
"Paul," I said. "If we were in an earthquake or something, and you had a chance to save me but it was at the risk of your own life, you would save yourself, not me."
"I would not! How can even you say that?"
"Because it's true."
"But you're saying that your perfect Jesse would save you, at the risk of his own life?"
"Yes," I said with absolute certainty. "Because he has. In the past."
"No, he hasn't, Suze," Paul said with equal certainty.
"Yes, he has, Paul. You don't even know - "
"Yes, I do know. Jesse could never possibly have risked his own life to save yours, because in all the time you've known him, he's been dead. So he hasn't been risking anything, all those times he's saved you. Has he?"
I opened my mouth to deny to this, then realized that Paul was right. It was the truth. A screwed-up version of the truth, but the truth just the same.
"What have you got to be so bitter about?" I demanded instead. "You've always gotten everything you've ever wanted your whole life. You've only had to ask for it, and it was yours. But it's like it's never enough for you."
"I haven't gotten everything I've ever wanted," Paul said pointedly. "Although I'm working to correct that."
I shook my head, knowing what he meant.
"You only want me because you can't have me, Paul," I said. "And you know it. I mean, my God. You've got Kelly. All the guys in school want her."
"All the guys in school," Paul said, "are idiots."
I ignored that.
"You would be a lot better off," I said, "if you'd just be happy with what you have, Paul, instead of wanting what you'll never get."
But Paul kept right on grinning. Grinning and rolling back over so he could sleep. "I wouldn't be so sure of that, if I were you, Suze," he said in a tone that sounded way too smug to me.
"You - "
"Go to sleep, Suze," Paul said.
"But you - "
"We've got a long day ahead of us. Just sleep."
Amazingly, I did. Sleep, I mean. I hadn't expected that I'd be able to. But maybe Dr. Slaski was right. Traveling through time DOES wear you out. I don't think I'd have fallen asleep otherwise . . . you know, given the hay, the horses, the rain, and, oh yeah, the hot-but-totally-deadly guy lying next to me.
But I laid my head down, and next thing I knew, lights-out.
I woke with a start. I hadn't even realized I'd been asleep. But there was light streaming through the slits between the wood planks that made up the sides of the barn. Not the gray light of dawn, either. It was full-on sunlight, revealing that I'd slept way past 8:00. . . .
And kneeling in front of me was Paul, with breakfast.
"Where'd you get that?" I asked, sitting up. Because in Paul's hands was a pie. A whole pie. Apple, from the smell of
it.
And it was still warm.
"Don't ask," he said, pulling, of all things, two forks from his back pocket. "Just eat."
"Paul." I could hear movement below. Paul had been speaking in hushed tones. I knew why now.
We were not alone.
A man's voice said, "Git along there." He appeared to speaking to the horses.
"Did you steal this?" I asked, even as I was taking the fork and digging in. Time travel doesn't just make you sleepy, It makes you hungry, too.
"I told you not to ask," Paul said as he, too, shoveled a forkful of pie into his mouth, Stolen or not, it was good. Not the best I'd ever had, by any means - I don't know if, out in the Wild West, they really had access to the best sugar and stuff.
But it satisfied the rumbling in my stomach . . . and soon made me aware of another urge.
Paul seemed to read my mind.
"There's an outhouse behind the barn," he informed me.
"A what house?"
"You know." Paul grinned. "Watch out for the spiders."
I thought he was joking.
He wasn't. There were spiders. Worse, what they had to use as toilet paper back then? Let's just say that today, it wouldn't be considered fit to write on, let alone . . . you know . . . anything else.
Plus I had to hurry, so no one would see me in my twenty-first-century clothes and ask questions.
But it was hard because once I'd slipped out of the barn, I was flabbergasted by what I saw. . . .
Which was nothing.
Really. Nothing, in all directions. No houses. No telephone poles. No paved roads. No Circle Ks. No In-N-Out Burger. Nothing. Just trees. And a dirt track that I suppose passed for a street.
I could, however, see the red dome of the basilica. There it was, down in the valley below us, with the sea behind it. That, at least, hadn't changed in the last 150 years.
Thank God plumbing has, however.
When I crept back up to the loft, there was no sign of Mr. O'Neil. He appeared to have taken his horses and gone off to do whatever it was men like him did all day in 1850. Paul was waiting for me with an odd look on his face.
"What?" I asked, thinking he was going to tease me about the outhouse.