“I’m wearing a shirt that doesn’t come down to my belly button.” I tried to say it sternly and keep a straight face, but Henley’s smirk got me laughing.
“Oh, stop being a cute couple,” Alanna said. “We’re at the pub already.” She turned to Peter. “Do you think we look like that to other people?”
Peter twisted a dreadlock. “Are you asking me if we sappily stare into each other’s eyes and sigh all the time? Probably.”
Alanna shoved him, but Peter only looked amused.
“Is this it?” Henley was looking up at a double door painted black. A sign hung above: Goldmann’s Pub.
“Yes it is.” Alanna ushered us in. “You have to try the fish and chips. Very touristy, but so good here.”
My eyes took a minute to adjust to the dim lighting.
Everything was hardwood here. The floor, the ceiling, the bar—they were all paneled in dark wood. A handful of old blown-glass lighting fixtures completed the murky look.
I expected there to be tables, but as there were none in sight, I followed Alanna and Peter to the bar, and took a seat between Peter and Henley.
“Good evening.” A man with slicked-back hair walked up to the other side of the bar. “Thanks for joining us at Goldmann’s. You’ll find the stack of menus right next to you, but before we can serve you, could I see IDs?”
He looked like he should be working at a five-star restaurant rather than a pub. He also sounded like he took his job rather seriously.
“IDs?” I didn’t know who said it first, Henley or me. But we looked at each other with wide eyes.
Alanna and Peter each calmly took out their IDs and showed them to the man at the bar.
“Good, good.” He nodded. Turning his attention to us, he stopped. “It’s policy for us to ask to see the ID of anyone who might look younger than thirty. Is that a problem?”
“We—” I started.
“We don’t have our IDs with us,” Henley said. “We must have left them back in our room.”
I was surprised Henley even knew what an ID was. I supposed that was one of the things he picked up as a ghost peering into all times simultaneously.
“I’m sorry,” the barman said. “We can’t serve you without ID.”
Henley nodded and stood up.
“Do you want to eat somewhere else?” Alanna asked. “Or we could try buying food and bringing it outside. The weather’s so nice anyway.”
“That actually sounds like a great idea,” Henley said. He started digging through his pocket for cash.
“No, no,” Alanna said.
“But—”
“Absolutely not.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Henley looked a bit defeated as he pulled me outside.
Once we were outside, I squinted past the lowering sun at Henley. “Why couldn’t you just say we didn’t have IDs instead of saying we left them in our room? What if Alanna wants us to get our IDs for something else later?” I hissed.
“You can’t travel without some form of identification,” Henley said. “That’s true in any time.”
I sighed. He was right, and there was no way around it.
I heard a cough and I looked up, about to ask Henley what he wanted now. But it wasn’t Henley.
A man in an oversized sweatshirt approached us from around the corner of the pub. He had graying facial hair that looked like it hadn’t been shaved in a week. His brown hair was plastered to his forehead and the sides of his face with what looked like sweat.
He had a gruff voice. “Saw you guys get kicked out.”
“And what of it?” Henley drew himself up.
“You need ID to sit in there.”
“So we heard,” I said.
The man grinned, and I saw he had yellowed teeth.
“I have a person who could hook you up.”
“Hook us up?” I had no idea what that phrase meant.
“My guy specializes in IDs—driver’s licenses and passports . . . He does other things too.”
Henley’s hands were clenched. “We don’t—”
“How much?” I asked.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Henley’s face blanch, but I kept my eyes trained on this strange man.
“Rebecca, you don’t mean—”
I ignored Henley. “How much?” I asked again.
“Nothing we can’t negotiate,” he said.
“Would we have to pay up front?” I asked.
His eyes darted the length of the street. “I’d prefer not to discuss this here . . . Where are you staying?”
“Rebecca . . .”
“The Brock Terrace Hostel.”
“Nice and close.” The man leered. “I’m looking forward to doing business with you.”
Just at that moment, Alanna and Peter came tumbling out of the dark doors of the pub.
“Don’t drop it, Peter!”
The man looked alarmed for a second. “I’ll find you,” he quickly said before turning the corner and taking off.
“Well, that man was sure creepy.” Alanna stood with her hands on her hips. “Wherever you go, even across the world, each country definitely has its own creeps.”
I didn’t think they had caught much of what the man said, so I simply smiled.
Peter walked toward us with paper plates of fried fish and a mountain of french fries.
“Fish and chips!” Alanna squealed. “They wouldn’t let you eat them inside, so we decided to bring them out to you. I didn’t know if you liked salt, vinegar, tartar sauce, or ketchup, so I just put them all on the side.”
My stomach gurgled its thanks. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten.
“Let us pay you back . . . ,” Henley started, but Alanna stopped him, touching his shoulder.
“This one’s on us. You can get the next meal . . . Besides, someone sounds hungry.” She laughed, looking at me.
“You heard that?” I was already grabbing a handful of fries.
“I never understood why fries are chips here and chips are crisps.” Henley was loading his fish with a massive amount of tartar sauce. “It’s so complicated.”
“Got enough sauce there?” I teased.
“It looks like he has more sauce than fish.” Alanna wrinkled her nose. “Look, Peter does the same thing, except with vinegar.”
Sure enough, Peter was busy drowning his fish in the little cup of vinegar.
“I like it with a tang,” he said.
“That’s so gross.” Alanna was eating her fish plain.
“Eh.” Peter just shrugged.
A phone audibly buzzed at the table, and Alanna and Peter simultaneously held their fish with one hand and patted their pocket for their phone with the other hand.
“Oh, it’s mine,” Alanna said, looking at her white iPhone. She turned to me. “My friend had the cutest baby! And they finally posted pics.”
“Janice?” Peter said.
“Yeah, Janice. And the baby looks just like her . . . Give me a second and let me pull up the photo on Facebook.”
Alanna handed me her phone. “Isn’t she just the cutest?”
The baby was openmouthed, looking at the camera. You couldn’t really tell she was female. If Alanna hadn’t told me, the only way I could guess at the baby’s gender was the giant bow seemingly taped onto her bald head.
When I grabbed the phone from Alanna’s hands, I accidentally tapped on a banner on the bottom of the screen. An advertisement of some sort?
A news article filled my screen.
Regency Chest Excavated in London Parking Lot
But it was what was underneath the title that caught my eye.
There was a letter next to a wooden chest. The letter looked ancient and the ink was faded in some parts, but the letter was magnified in a separate photo.
Querida Emilia . . . it started.
I scanned the letter. The entire thing was in Spanish, but two words made me stop.
Juana Ruíz.
That was the signature on the letter.
I stopped, wondering if I had read that right. I skimmed the article. It mentioned that the letter was written in the 1500s while the chest was a Regency piece from the 1800s. The article also mentioned that Juana might have been the first European woman to set foot in the Americas.
So it was her? The woman who had drunk from the Fountain of Youth with Ponce de León?
The article said that the artifacts were found in what was now a parking lot in London. They had been doing construction when they found the artifacts. I took note of the address of the parking lot. The article didn’t say much else after that.
“Still looking at the baby?” Alanna said.
I quickly clicked out of the page and handed Alanna her phone.
“She’s adorable,” I said.
The conversation continued on around me, but I was barely listening. Juana. Why hadn’t it occurred to me before? If all the Miss Hatfields were dead and killed by someone immortal who had gone back in time to murder them one by one . . . maybe Juana was the killer. She had drunk from the Fountain of Youth with Ponce de León. So what if she had never died? She was the only one I could think of who could be a suspect. I had to talk to Henley about this, but I felt the letter could be a starting clue.
And of course, there was that man . . . I knew that man who had just come up to us was more than a little “off” and might potentially be dangerous, but he was really our only option. We couldn’t just sit here forever.
I glanced at Henley. Though he was sticking an entire piece of fish into his mouth, he had a worried crease between his brows.
“What do you think, Rebecca?”
I looked up into Alanna’s expectant face. She had said something, but I had completely missed it.
“Uh, sorry?” I said.
“Much too into your fish and chips, I see. I was just saying that Peter and I are going to do some touristy stuff tomorrow—Buckingham Palace, the London Eye—you and Henley should join us,” she said.
“Oh we’d love to . . . but Henley and I have a few things we need to take care of,” I said.
“A few things?”
“We just received news that a family member of mine passed away,” Henley said suddenly.
“A family member?” This time it was me with my mouth open in surprise. “Um, yeah. A family member.” I tried to recover.
“My grandmother, actually,” Henley went on. “We just have a few matters to clear up.”
“Of course,” Alanna said. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“She’s resting much more comfortably now,” Henley said.
When we were done with our food and had thrown our plates away, I took Henley’s hand and began to excuse ourselves.
“But the night’s still young,” Peter said.
“We’ve had a rough day of traveling,” I said. “We both need some downtime, and we should also get some rest.”
I looked at Henley, and he rubbed his eyes on cue.
“They’re right. It’s been a long day for them,” Alanna said to Peter. To us, she said, “Let us at least walk you back.”
Though it further postponed me talking with Henley alone, we agreed. There was only so much we could protest.
We started our way back to the hostel. Peter was walking with Henley ahead, while Alanna was by my side.
“Such a shame about Henley and his grandmother,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Were they close?”
“As close as any grandchild is to his grandmother, I suppose.”
“Was it sudden?” She had tears in her eyes, and I was taken aback.
“Oh no.” I tried to reassure her. “She had been sick for a while. We saw it coming and had time to prepare.”
“Prepare and try to come to terms with it, I guess, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t think anyone can really come to terms with family dying. It’s not something I’ve ever learned to come to terms with, at least,” she said.
We walked in silence for a few strides before she spoke again.
“Sorry,” Alanna said. “My own granny died six months ago. It’s still a hard subject for me.”
I felt a sudden wave of guilt for the lie Henley and I had told. For though he had come up with it and told it first, I had helped him and elaborated on it.
“I’m sure she was a wonderful woman.”
“Yeah, she was . . . nothing like my mother,” she said. “Anyway, I’m sorry I brought that up. I just wanted to tell you that Henley’s lucky to have you by his side at a tough time like this. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had Peter.”
“It’s the least I could do. Henley’s been with me through a lot. I can’t begin to even the score.”
“How long have you two been together?”
Her question struck me. How could I answer it? Barely a year? Five centuries and counting?
“A while,” I said. “It feels like forever, but also like everything just happened yesterday.”
Alanna smiled. “That’s when you know it’s serious.”
I laughed. “I suppose you could say that. I can’t imagine being with anyone else.”
“He understands you, doesn’t he?”
“More than anyone,” I said.
“So you think he’ll put a ring on you soon?”
I stumbled. “Come again?”
“A ring,” she said. “He’s so in love with you. Head over heels, in fact. It’s obvious.”
I looked ahead to see Henley looking over his shoulder at me. Henley had in fact given me a ring long before. The year was 1904. And though Henley knew me well—better than anyone—he had no idea that I was immortal. No idea that I couldn’t stay with him. And he asked for precisely that: Henley had got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I had refused. Instead of telling him I was immortal, I croaked out that I didn’t love him. It couldn’t be further from the truth. He had insisted I take the ring anyway. “It’s not an engagement ring anymore,” he had insisted. I still remembered it like it was yesterday.
I realized I was still staring at Henley, and he was still looking my way.
“You all right?” he called back.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled, though I knew he was most probably too far ahead to hear me. “Just tripped.”
Henley and Peter waited in front of the hostel door for us to catch up.
“I don’t know him that well, but even I know that he doesn’t look at everybody like that,” Alanna said as we came up to the black door. “It’s only a matter of time.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Get lots of rest, and we’ll hopefully see you tomorrow.”
Alanna took Peter’s hand, and for the first time, as she waved good-bye, I noticed an oval diamond ring on her ring finger.
“Ready to go in?” Henley said.
“Not quite. We should probably go stock up on some food for the week ahead, don’t you think?”
“Oh, we could have asked Alanna and Peter where the closest shop was . . .”
“Grocery store.” I corrected him. “And I didn’t want them to come with us. You know them . . . They would have offered to walk us there, and I didn’t want them to see us using the credit card,” I said.
“You really think we should use the card there?”
“The grocery store is the perfect place. They won’t ask for ID. That’ll be the last place we use it. Then we can toss it, and we’ll be done with it.” I knew stealing someone’s credit card and cash would weigh on my mind a bit even after we were “done with it,” but we needed food. And we couldn’t use up all of the cash now.
“Let me pop in and ask Aaron where the nearest grocer is then.”
I waited outside while Henley went in. He didn’t take too long.
“It’s only three blocks that way.” Henley pointed away from me. “He said it was pretty small—a local little thing—but it sounds like it’ll have everything we’ll need.
”
“We don’t need much,” I said, starting to walk in the direction he had pointed out. “We just need enough to sustain ourselves.”
“Naturally.”
We walked quickly through the streets. It was getting late, and the sun was starting to set. The shadows were growing longer as we hurried.
“Let’s make this visit as quick as possible,” I said, once we saw the grocery store in front of us. “It’s going to be night soon, and I don’t want us to have to walk in the dark on our way back.”
Henley nodded. “Even from the outside it looks bigger than any grocer’s shop I’ve seen.”
“And have you seen many?”
“Well . . . our cook did do most of the food shopping, but I did occasionally pass the food districts,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess, from inside your carriage?”
“That was just how it was done,” he said.
I shook my head, getting back to the task at hand. “This is the last place we’re going to use the credit card,” I said. “So we need to make it count. But we can’t spend too much, since that’ll look more out of place in a small shop like this—not to mention poor Mr. Glazen’s credit card statement. We just need enough to get by.”
We stepped up to the doors, and they parted for us.
“Like magic,” Henley whispered.
I didn’t know if he was talking about the way the doors seemed to magically open for us or if Henley was talking about the magical food inside.
The cold air blew across our faces as we took our first step.
“My God . . .”
I glanced up at Henley. His lips were parted like he was going to say something more, but nothing was coming out.
“This is wonderful,” he finally managed to utter.
Rows of food greeted us. There was a row just for bread. Another row filled with cereal. A round table just for bananas. Another set up with a mountain of pastries.
“They have everything,” Henley said.
I realized Henley hadn’t seen a real grocery store . . . or at least not a modern one like this.
Henley took off running down the first aisle he saw. “What should we get?”
He grabbed a box of children’s cereal. “I-it’s so colorful,” he said as he stuck it under his arm. He picked up a loaf of french bread, then a frozen box of dumplings. He grabbed a miniature boxed chocolate cake in the dessert section then and moved on.
The Day Before Forever Page 5