Downtime

by Tamara Allen

  He eyed me with a cold sparkle. “If you are representative of the world a hundred years hence, I take some comfort in the knowledge that I will not live to endure it.”

  Letting him go, I went up to find Ezra in the bathroom, washing away the dirt from his gardening stint. I came up behind him and slipped my arms around him. “You all right?”

  “I’m an idiot,” Ezra muttered, scrubbing a towel over his face.

  I pressed a kiss on the nape of his neck. “Want me to kill him?”

  That got the smile I hoped for. He looked at me in the mirror, annoyance fading as wistfulness took its place. “You should know….” His gaze dropped and wistfulness became uneasiness.

  “What should I know?” I prompted, taking away the towel he was painstakingly folding.

  He peeked up at me in the glass. “There’s a theory in vogue that I’m not entirely sane.”

  “That’s a theory with no credence whatsoever. Just because Henry thinks—”

  “Henry isn’t the first nor the only one to believe it. My father has consulted a number of doctors and, to a one, they agree.”

  “Ezra, doctors in your century barely know enough to get by without killing every patient in their care. They don’t have the first clue about mental illness.” I knew I wasn’t qualified to actually diagnose him, but he desperately needed to hear that he was all right. Everyone in his life had damned near convinced him otherwise. “You have to trust me, okay? Chatting with ghosts, that’s not mental illness. This….” I turned him around and kissed him, “is definitely not mental illness. You’re sane. Maybe too sane for your own good,” I added, pulling him into a hug. He buried his face in my neck and stood still, with his arms around me. I moved a comforting hand up and down his back. “You okay?”

  Without a word, he lifted his head and kissed me. If he wasn’t okay, he knew how to work his way back to it. The kiss deepened and I realized we were moving toward the door. “Wait. I’ve got a capital idea.” I pushed him into the wicker chair and started up the bath, tossing in some kind of fragrant bath powder for the heck of it. As the tub filled, I closed the curtains and shut out the sun, leaving the room in a soft hazy light.

  “Who’s Evelyn, anyway? A girlfriend?”

  “His sister. She died of typhoid when they were sixteen.”

  “Oh. A twin?” For the first time since I’d met Henry, I felt sorry for the cranky son of a bitch. “He saw her after she died?”

  Ezra nodded, wrapped up in his own thoughts. I straddled his lap and pressed a kiss in the hollow of his throat. “You’ve known for a pretty long time, haven’t you? That he couldn’t see any of the ghosts you did.”

  “I knew. I suppose I just kept hoping….” He fell quiet, but I didn’t need to hear the rest. He wanted to think Henry could see the ghosts, because a little confirmation would go a long way toward reassuring Ezra he wasn’t losing his mind.

  I didn’t like that too-solemn expression. “Don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I saw the ghosts too?”

  A smile slow and warming like a sunrise spread over his face. Taking me by the lapels, he kissed me. Firm, insistent lips parted mine as he pushed the coat off my shoulders, my vest joining it on the tile. “Even yet, I can’t quite believe you’re real,” he whispered.

  “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to convince you,” I said promptly, and he laughed. I liked his laugh. We got each other undressed like a pair of kids tearing into Christmas gifts, leaving tweed and linen scattered over the floor, along with a few popped buttons.

  “The bath will spill over.” He leaned around me to shut off the tap. I couldn’t seem to let go of him. Bending, I trailed a kiss along his spine, and he snorted in exasperation. “You’ll have us both in, and water everywhere.”

  “Yeah?”

  Ezra started to shake his head, but it was too late. My arms around him, I plunged in, sloshing water to the floor. As fantastic as the rush of warm liquid felt on my skin, even better was the naked body tangled with mine. His head came out of the water, hair in his eyes, and I crushed him against the white cast iron and kissed him hard. He agreeably let himself be pinned, melting into the kiss. I got a grip on the rim of the tub with one hand to keep us above the water and rocked against him, making up for the lack of friction with relentless pressure. Before I could take him in hand, he twisted me around until I was sitting in his lap. His arms came around me and he nuzzled his face against my neck.

  “Ez….” But it didn’t come out as quite the protest I had in mind. One arm stayed close around me as fingers moved with a feather light touch over my stomach. “Ezra—” His hand circled me, so gentle and so strong, and I very nearly lost it before he’d done so much as squeeze. That firm grip stroked up and down experimentally once, and I knew he was calculating just how close I was. Close, so close—and then he wasn’t teasing any more. Pleasure spread in waves that swelled so swiftly, I didn’t even try to stay afloat on them. Hell, I might’ve literally gone under and never noticed. Ezra’s hips rocked under me. He was pumping against me, his breath hot and fast in my ear, and that did it. I melted into the warm water and into him as he curled against my back and echoed my breathless groan.

  For several luxurious minutes we lay absorbing each other’s warmth as the water grew tepid around us. The room—the whole house—was so quiet in the hush of a Sunday afternoon that it was easy to imagine we were the only ones around. No one would disturb us and we could spend the rest of the day curled up under Ezra’s quilt. His breathing had quieted and his arms were comfortably wrapped around me. I didn’t want to move, but I was concerned that the bathwater would leak through the downstairs ceiling if we didn’t clean it up.

  Comforting myself with the thought I’d soon be warm and dry and wrapped around him again, I got out of the tub. I’d thought the water was cold—it was a damned sight colder standing naked on the wet tiles. I grabbed two towels, handing one to Ezra as he stood. “When are you people going to get some central heating, for God’s sake?”

  Ezra raised an eyebrow. “Central heating?” He gathered more towels and began to dry the floor. I picked up our damp clothes and wrinkled my nose at the idea of putting them on. Ezra wasn’t any more enthusiastic about it than I.

  We left the bathroom one at a time and made a silent dash to the bedroom. There, I enjoyed the novel experience of shivering in front of a fireplace while trying to get a fire going. Ezra draped our clothes over a small screen and helped me with the fire, starting it up with practiced ease. But the room couldn’t get warm fast enough for me. I crawled into the drift of pillows and blankets and waved him in. “Hurry, before I get frostbite.”

  He got into bed and pressed up against me. “Is it so much better in your world?”

  “Indoors, yes. I can twist a dial and have warm air filling every room in the house.” I knew I shouldn’t be telling him that sort of thing, but I got too much fun out of his reaction.

  His gaze narrowed. “Truly?”

  “Swear to God. Warm air in the winter and cool in the summer. Same with my car. Even if it’s a hundred and five in the shade, I can go from house to car to office without breaking a sweat.”

  “So you haven’t gained control of the weather, itself, just yet,” he remarked with a sardonic snort.

  “A little envious, are we? I’d better not drop any more hints about the future or I’ll end up with a stowaway.”

  “I’m not sure I would care for your world,” Ezra ventured. “It sounds so very different. We must seem dreadfully backward to you.”

  “Regular Neanderthals,” I said, winning a good-humored poke in the ribs. “But really not much more primitive than some foreign assignments I’ve been on.”

  As I elaborated, I noticed the concerned furrow of his brows. “Your work is very dangerous.”

  “Once in a while….” I trailed off as he ran a fingertip along the pale scar on my shoulder. “Yeah. We get hurt now and again.”

  “Do you mind if I ask ho
w you were hurt?”

  “It was a long time ago. We were busting—er, arresting some drug dealers. There were more than we’d thought, pouring out of the woodwork like roaches, and I got into it with one of them, a big guy with a knife.” I shrugged. “Sully took him down. Shot him,” I clarified before Ezra could ask. “One of many times he saved my ass.”

  “I imagine you saved him numerous times as well.”

  “A few times. Came up one short.”

  He kissed my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories.”

  “There are good memories mixed in. It’s okay. Better than okay since I was able to talk to him through you. It’s good to know he’s somewhere. You know?”

  He brushed his lips over mine, then pressed against them tenderly in what I thought was an affectionate buss until it turned into something a little more passionate. I didn’t remember this guy in any of the Dickens I’d drudged through in high school. What the hell had I unleashed?

  Sunday afternoons were made expressly for losing track of time—and since I’d already lost a hundred or so years, a few more hours wouldn’t make any difference. I didn’t think we’d sleep well past supper and on to dusk; but the room was dark when a soft but insistent knock at the door pulled me out of a sound sleep. Ezra slept on, and I gingerly climbed out of bed so as not to wake him. I pulled on a nightshirt and opened the door just enough to peek out. A frazzled Henry was the last person I expected to see.

  He wasn’t expecting me either. He frowned and tried to peer past me into the room. “Is Ezra awake?”

  About to tell him he could wait until morning to harangue Ezra further, I hesitated. Something in Henry’s face made me think he wasn’t in any frame of mind to do his usual griping. “What’s wrong?”

  Ezra echoed that question with a whole lot less irritation than I would have shown, under the circumstances. “Henry? The house isn’t afire?”

  The gentle teasing seemed to have no effect on Henry’s fretting. “Ezra….” He stopped and looked at me uneasily.

  But before he could chase me out, Ezra intervened. “You may speak freely in front of Morgan. He’s not as menacing as he seems.”

  “You have no idea how menacing I can be. Especially to the deserving.” I looked at Henry. “If you’ve come to apologize, though, I’d love to hear it.”

  Henry frowned again, but with none of the usual rancor, and addressed Ezra. “I do apologize, Ezra, for the insinuations I made earlier.” He curled a hand over the bed rail and spoke softly. “Would you….” he began and then hesitated.

  Ezra seemed as bemused by this side of Henry as I was. “Dear fellow, what is it?”

  “Could you just tell me….” He clung to the rail with both hands as if it were the only thing keeping him from falling to his knees to beg. “What does she say?”

  It looked like I wasn’t the only one who needed to hear from the dear departed. As Ezra got up and pulled on a nightshirt, I put on my jeans and headed for the door. I figured Henry would prefer it if I left them to talk. I didn’t want to be there and he wouldn’t want me there if he started bawling. I made myself comfortable in the parlor, dozing until I heard footsteps and figured Henry was off to bed. I slipped back upstairs to find Ez alone and nearly asleep. I dropped on top of him and kissed the back of his neck. “Henry okay?”

  Ezra murmured agreeably and rolled over to press against me, close and warm. “He will be.” He kissed my jaw with drowsy affection. “Did you have a bite?”

  “No, but I’d like to.” I brushed my lips along his hairline, then bent my head to cover his mouth with a soft but probing kiss. As sleepy as he was, he couldn’t seem to resist it any more than I could. What started out tender turned heated, and when we finally did get back to sleep, it was past midnight. I didn’t expect I’d be up bright and early, myself, but I woke just after nine. I left a soundly sleeping Ezra a note with deliberately vague information as to my whereabouts, borrowed a handful of coins, and headed back to Whitechapel with a grim location in mind.

  I’d put up with some primitive conditions so far, but nothing that compared with the Whitechapel morgue. The smell alone had me lingering in the doorway for a good five minutes, debating whether I could stand to be in any closer proximity to the bodies for the time it took to examine them for evidence—and whether I was willing to lose my breakfast in the process. But that five minutes gave me enough time to become semi-accustomed to the reeking interior of the place and I went in, hoping this was all going to prove worth the trouble.

  I’d never been much of an actor but I somehow managed to persuade an attendant that I was a grieving relative of the recently deceased and he took me in to the table where the remains lay—not, unfortunately, on ice but at least decently covered. I set to work, wanting to finish as fast as possible, and gathered a set of prints to eliminate hers as a match for the one on my tin. I didn’t have the tools to lift latent prints off her skin, but I did manage to get a sample of nail clippings before a man in a blood-stained apron came in and asked if I had come to identify the body.

  I shook my head. “Sorry, no. I don’t recognize her.” I tucked the evidence bags away in my pocket and left before I aroused any more suspicion than was already glimmering in the man’s eyes. Back outside, I sucked in a lungful of fresh—well, fresher—air and hailed a cab to take me to St. George’s Mortuary, where the other victim, Elizabeth Stride, had been moved. I was stopped there by the crowd of doctors apparently in the middle of an autopsy. A policeman led a weeping woman past me, and I caught soft words in Swedish. Remembering the Swedish Ezra had used, I wondered whether or not the Swedish community in London was close-knit enough to provide me with some background on the deceased. I still had the unshakable feeling the Ripper was well-known to the women he murdered.

  I made my way to the Swedish Lutheran church in Prince’s Square. There, I talked to a clerk who told me Elizabeth Stride had come to the church for financial help when sewing and cleaning hadn’t been enough to live on. I felt sure it was the case with all the murdered women, that they exhausted every resource available to them before turning to prostitution to survive. Elizabeth had been as painfully poor and desperate as the rest. The clerk knew nothing of her more recent history, not even where she had been living the past couple of years. The only thing he could recall offhand was the name of a shopkeeper who had some work for the deceased. But he had no idea whether she’d ever looked up the shopkeeper. It would probably be a dead-end and I’d have to hunt up friends and relatives another way.

  But for now, the investigation would be sidetracked—because I was about to get the lecture of the season, if the sight of Ezra waiting just across the road was any indication.

  Chapter 17

  I summoned my most ingenuous grin as I crossed the street and Ezra met me at the curb. He didn’t look pissed, but the relentlessly assessing gaze was somehow worse. That sort of patience with my foibles was not something I was used to.

  “I suppose I should be grateful to you for sparing me the trip to the morgue,” he said finally. “But for now, I can only manage to suppress a fervent desire to box your ears soundly for scaring me.”

  That was reasonable. “I’m sorry.” And unlike the millions of times I’d said those words to Faulkner, I meant them.

  It brought a reluctant smile to his lips. “Never mind. I couldn’t lie about in the hammock all afternoon, knowing you were wandering Whitechapel. Besides, it looked like rain.”

  He was right about that. The skies were threatening a deluge. But he had come prepared, so we went back to the crime scene in Berner Street to see if there was anything left.

  There wasn’t. It had been cleaned up; not thoroughly, but just enough so that any evidence left was worthless. It astonished me that the Ripper hadn’t been captured in the act of killing Elizabeth Stride. He had been interrupted just after cutting her throat. Realizing he was in danger of being apprehended, he’d taken off down the only route available to him.
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br />   I followed it and Ezra trailed behind. It occurred to me that he was way too quiet—and that he had been for a while. I threw a glance over my shoulder. “Seeing anything?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Ezra, everything you see is out of the ordinary. What’s bothering you?”

  He tapped a cobblestone with his walking stick. “Your Mr. Sullivan,” he said at last. “He’s come back.”

  “Yeah? He helped you track me down today,” I said in sudden realization.

  “Yes.” Ezra tucked the walking stick under his arm and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He stared up the windowless stretch of brick wall and clearing his throat in a casual way, added, “He’s been back rather longer than that. Since late Saturday, to be precise.”

  I looked at him curiously. “Why didn’t you say anything?”