“Just so, Reginald,” Clem replied, mimicking him with an over-exaggerated crisp, upper-class accent, “but I left a message for my aunt and uncle for the very purpose of alleviating any worry. So sorry to put you out, but you see you needn’t have bothered. I’m quite capable of catching a cab home.”
“Helena felt that my presence might help mitigate any possible whiff of scandal.”
“Helena!” she exclaimed with muted outrage, “The bearer of all tales! If she’s troubled poor old Uncle Matthew—”
“No… well, yes,” he amended, “but I assured him that I would bring you home safe and sound.” His mask was slipping, and Ettie could see the green eyes take on a softened expression. She had a feeling that there were many things about his young “cousin” that he wanted to admire, but that this inclination went very much against his social programming.
Clem, on the other hand, saw nothing but officiousness and interference where it was most definitely not wanted.
Inspector Hamilton cleared his throat. They were squabbling children, and he was clearly impatient to have them gone. But one was the son of a powerful peer, so he said in an even, respectful tone, “Lord Easterly, if you please, I would like to take Miss Speex to see her father—”
“Oh, I am beastly!” Clem exclaimed, clasping Ettie’s hands. “Forgive me! Of course, you’ll be wanting to see your father. Well, I’m off then, but tomorrow I’ll come visit him. I’ll make sure he is the most comfortable patient in the entire hospital.”
Ettie smiled and returned the pressure of her hands. “Thank you again for all your help. I really don’t know what would have become of me if you had not intervened.”
Clem waved away her thanks, but beamed at the praise and announced, “I’m ready, Reginald.”
She swept regally past him and nimbly avoided his guiding hand on the small of her back. Two swift strides brought him alongside her, and they left the waiting room together.
Ettie unobtrusively put the piece of paper Clem had pressed into her palm in her pants pocket before asking, “Will I be able to speak with the doctor?”
“I believe Doctor Grayson is waiting to talk with you.”
They walked down the long hallway lined with hospital rooms on either side of the corridor. Finally, they reached one situated at the very end with two guards stationed on either side of the door.
Ettie raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Do you think he is still in danger?”
They had rounded the doorway as she spoke, and Ettie felt the room shift and blur. The bed on which her father lay looked like the strange hybrid offspring of an old-fashioned cot and modern day hospital bed. The I.V. pole with its blinking lights wavered in and out of focus, and the heart monitor looked no more substantial than a shadow. She gasped and reached out to steady herself on the doorframe.
Misinterpreting her sudden weakness as a reaction to her father’s condition, Inspector Hamilton and the doctor quickly led her to a chair, murmuring words of solace.
“I know it’s a shock, Miss Speex,” Doctor Grayson consoled. “He was stabbed multiple times. But we have been able to stop the bleeding, and he should recover fully.”
Ettie pressed the palms of her hands hard against her eyes. In all the trauma and excitement of the last few hours, she hadn’t thought to check the phantasometer. She had never felt this disoriented during a shift; it was as if she were being split in two.
She pulled in a few deep breaths and dropped her hands from her eyes. The scene before her was thankfully in focus, but the prime timeline was clearly unable to reassert itself as her father lay on an old-fashioned hospital bed with the crisp, white curtain pulled back. There was an I.V. pole, but it looked like a metal hall tree. A glass bottle hung from it, the liquid dripping into a rubber tube inserted into her father’s arm.
Ettie smiled reassuringly at the two men hovering next to her. She got up a little shakily, and walked over to her father’s bedside. She was unsettled by how small he looked. Only a few days before, they had dined together in a city that was fading further and further away. She took his hand in both of hers and leaned over to kiss him gently on the forehead.
On the ride over, Inspector Hamilton had told her some of what had happened. “He was attacked in his own apartment. There was no forced entry, so we assume it was by someone he knew or who appeared nonthreatening.”
He’d had to stop the car to let her throw up when he described the manner of attack and number of wounds. Nothing more passed between them during the rest of the ride.
Doctor Grayson said, “It is best you go home and get some rest. He will sleep for many more hours yet.”
“Do you have anyone you can stay with?” asked Inspector Hamilton.
“I left my dog with a neighbor. I can stay with her tonight.”
Inspector Hamilton looked at her searchingly. She returned the look and thought randomly that he was younger than she had at first supposed. His long, gaunt frame seemed always to be encased in an overcoat, bestowing upon him a middle-aged silhouette. Like most of his class, he was clearly of mixed race. She calculated his age to be somewhere in the mid to late thirties, and with his thin physique, dark skin, wide brown eyes, and long straight hair he had the makings of a sixties-era rocker.
It seemed he had made a determination of some sort, for he said, “One of his neighbors saw who we think might be the assailant at his door.”
Ettie had the feeling that his next words were not going to be pleasant, but prompted, “And…?”
“She thought it was you. But she wasn’t sure, because the woman looked older.”
Ettie felt numb, but forced herself to breathe and said calmly, “So you think I had something to do with this attack.”
He shook his head. “Actually, I know you had nothing to do with it.”
She sighed wearily. “Then what, Inspector?”
“I’ve had officers on you most days since your brother disappeared—”
“Odell had nothing to do—” she interrupted heatedly
He held up his hand, not to be distracted. “That’s why we were so close when the guard reported your assault. So you see, Miss Speex, you are in the clear. But your brother’s absence is troubling. Albeit, Mister Speex is not a slender blond woman, so I think he is unlikely to be your father’s attacker as well.”
“Thank you for that! But you forget that he has no motive to hurt either of our parents, regardless of his size or gender.”
He looked at her impassively. “Your mother has been murdered, your father brutally attacked—our prime suspect is a woman who looks very much like you—your brother is missing, and you have been assaulted. That’s some run of bad luck for one family, Miss Speex. Can you shed any light on these crimes?”
“I really wish I could, Inspector Hamilton,” she replied with heartfelt sincerity.
*
Charles Drake stood at Arthur Bradley’s bedside and looked down at the injured man. He had seen Ettie leave the hospital with the inspector and waited patiently until only the overnight crew remained. Through a corrupt police intermediary, Faith had bribed the guards, and he had found no one outside the hospital room. He knew this state of affairs would not last long and picked up one of the pillows from the bed. Drake stared down at it with unfocused eyes.
His initial assignment had seemed to be moving forward as planned. Then the woman appeared, and suddenly everything crumbled and fused together again into an entirely different reality. Like Odell, he had recovered his memories of other dimensional lives through someone else’s needs and actions.
The woman never told him her name, so he used the pronoun as a substitute. He had thought to give it another spelling such as Shi or Xhi, something more like a real name. But he had abandoned that in favor of the anonymity and universality of the word itself. It fit her… She of the past and present, She of death and shadows, She of pleasure and torture, a woman defined only by her mission and her increasingly unhinged desires.
&n
bsp; She had shown up at his doorstep, dangling a crystal key in her hand. Her appearance seemed to envelop him in a warm, sticky fog, a vaporous shroud he breathed in and was transformed. As memories of his exploits crept back under his skin and found homes in the folds of his brain, he knew his life was irrevocably changed… and not for the better.
Drake had travelled forward in time to recruit Odell and steal his technology. It was a mission he believed he had yet to fully embark upon. There was no sufficient adjective to describe his shock in finding that, not only had he completed this mission, he had apparently done so twice before. But She was there to tell him everything had changed.
The last time someone had sought to control him, it was at the hands of the man who lay before him. Drake gritted his teeth in frustration—no, not this man. He threw the pillow away from him and walked over to the darkened window. That particular honor had belonged to Sir Archibald Brandon, a man who had both given him and taken away his life.
At nine, he had been part of the ragged multitude, the human offal that polluted the streets of eighteenth-century London. Abandoned at birth, he had never known a mother’s care. He remembered only vaguely the cold comfort and neglect of the workhouse. At four, he escaped with other children onto the streets of London where, ironically, they had a better chance of survival. And survive he did… barely, begging and working when possible. He was finally thrown into Newgate Prison when caught “stealing” scraps from the trash pile of a local innkeeper.
Ragged, filthy, and covered with fleas, he had been plucked from that hell by none other than the King’s spymaster. He had appeared to Drake like a god, a savior and, in many ways, he was. There was no doubt in Drake’s mind that, if not for Sir Archibald, he would have died, starved and forgotten.
But the price exacted from him had been enormous. The years of work and study were not supplemented by warmth or kindness. While he would never again experience the level of deprivation that defined his early childhood, his living conditions were stark. Sir Archibald was a megalomaniac of the highest order; he exhibited neither compassion, nor even appreciation. Drake was being fashioned into a tool for his use, and like any other tool could be easily ignored or discarded.
A torment of doubt and insecurity latched with sharp talons onto his subconscious and led him to kill Sir Archibald and seize the future for his own. But the paradox of time travel had sent Drake to complete his mission yet again, and this time, it was he who was killed—gunned down by the pitiless hand of his savior.
Drake touched his chest. He could feel it, the white-hot bullet cauterizing the wound as it pierced his heart. Was he there now, being killed again and again? Were there other dimensions where his life was being played out with a very different script? His hand dropped to his side. The mechanics of time travel were beyond his comprehension. He had begun to believe they were beyond anyone’s, that even Odell was playing this game without fully understanding the rules. Drake sometimes wished that he had been left to die in the dungeons of Newgate, a nameless boy lost to history, neither mourned nor remembered.
Except, now there was Ettie. She was his target, his new assignment. “Get close to her,” She had told him.
An easy task for one so ruthless, he had thought. He believed himself beyond love, a creature molded from societal neglect and greed… an automaton to be wound up and sent into battle.
He turned abruptly from the window and walked out of the room. He would bring her no more grief.
What a fool, he thought derisively of himself as he exited the hospital by the alleyway door. It seemed he was human after all.
Thirteen
ODELL AND AVA sat in the comfortable parlor of a modest two-story home. The nighttime journey from the stables to the house on Walnut Street took a little under twenty minutes. For Ava it was the most astonishing walk of her life.
By modern standards, eighteenth-century Philadelphia was a modest city at best. But she knew it to be at the center of colonial life and the unofficial capital of a soon to be new nation. They walked beside the dirt-packed and cobblestone streets neatly laid out on an intersecting grid. Georgian architecture dominated in varying scale in both the public buildings and private residences. She could almost imagine herself on the set of a costume drama if not for the authenticity, the realness that could not be faked.
It wasn’t quiet. It had all the sounds of a city with the bustle of commerce just beginning to settle down at the onset of evening. But the lack of mechanical sounds was jarring. No car engines revved, no air conditioning or heating units hummed, no aircraft buzzed overhead. Even the crackle of electric wires was notable by its absence.
Real, yet unreal… she took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Two-hundred year old air, she thought. And for a brief panicked moment she believed her body would reject it, as if receiving the wrong blood type. She would go into shock and expire on the streets of 1776 Philadelphia.
Odell was walking a little ahead, talking with Gabriel. She had reached out into the space between them and grasped his hand. It was dark with only the infrequent streetlight to half-illuminate their faces. He slowed his gait only slightly and thrust their clasped hands into his coat pocket, bringing her securely to his side.
He had not turned to look at her or acknowledge in any other way her momentary dread. There was no need. They walked within the same space. The dry, firm skin of his palm pressed against hers. Their arms brushed together. He was there. He would not leave her to die gasping for breath.
Now, on the generously upholstered loveseat, Ava sat next to Evelyn. Both of them sipped at cups of coffee and stared contemplatively into the fire. Ava had discarded her coat and looked very much like a time-traveler from some distant future. Her cargo pants and black hoodie were a jarring modern accent to the homey environs of an eighteenth-century colonial parlor.
Odell sat across from them in an armchair. They were waiting for Gabriel to return. Upon arriving home, he had gestured them into the parlor and asked Hugh to put a kettle on before rushing out again.
During the walk from the stables, he and Odell had exchanged only the barest details of their respective experiences. But it was clear from this, that Ambrosius had put into motion a complex plan of action that encompassed them both, as well as Odette’s disappearance.
“You say she is with Ambrosius,” Gabriel had said. Odell caught the soft edge of hurt and disbelief in his voice. “He is the reason we are here in the colonies.”
“How?”
“Odette was having disturbing dreams. It went on for months. She would wake up shaking and in a cold sweat. Finally, she discerned a pattern, a message. So she went to… to the standing stones.”
“Stonehenge?”
“Yes, I believe so. She met Ambrosius there for the first time. I think she already knew him to be her father. It was after that we made plans to come here, to Philadelphia.”
“Just like that?”
Gabriel had laughed quietly. “No, Odell, not ‘just like that.’ It was an agonizing decision, surprisingly more so for Odette than me.”
“Fancy,” Odell stated with certainty.
Gabriel nodded. “Fancy has done truly amazing things, Odell. You would be proud of her, as we are. Odette refused to tell her the real motivation behind our move. Because—”
“Because she knew Fancy would insist on coming,” Odell finished for him.
“Yes, quite right,” Gabriel affirmed.
It was at this point that Ava had grabbed his hand. Like that moment in her kitchen when they had grieved for his mother, he felt a connection. As strange as ending up in Revolutionary-era Philadelphia was for him, he had done this before, and he was among his own people—his family. He had wanted Ava to be reassured without bringing undue attention to the fear and panic she was feeling. But observing her now, she seemed as calm and collected as when he had first approached her at the university. She and Evelyn exchanged the occasional murmured comment, but mostly they sat quietly drinki
ng their coffee.
During the last half of the walk, Gabriel had delivered a quick informational monologue. It seemed the appearance of Ambrosius aboard the ship had very nearly prompted Captain McKiddie to toss them all overboard. Only the presence of the prominent and respected Doctor Benjamin Franklin had kept him from committing so rash, yet understandable in Gabriel’s estimation, an act.
Ambrosius had felt the risk necessary to bring them news of what was happening in the colonies. Privately he told them that events were moving more rapidly than anticipated. The Time Traitors had made “tunings,” as Ambrosius called them, to the timeline in hopes of giving them more leeway in preparing for their mission, a mission to eradicate an evil that had poisoned a new nation from the moment of its birth. The very same that had brought Odell and Ava back through time.
“Slavery,” Odell had said.
“Slavery,” Gabriel agreed in his patient way. “It’s frustrating to hear the noble sentiments… the high-flown rhetoric associated with this revolutionary movement and know that those espousing these grand ideas have no intention of extending them to the slaves. For when one begins to speak of slavery in this new world, with these new freedoms, they don’t apply to the black man; he is not fully human.”
“George Washington was once quoted as saying, ‘Nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union.’ ”
Gabriel had looked astonished. “When did he say that?”
“Near the end of his life, I believe.”
Gabriel laughed a little harshly. “Well then, he made a long journey from where he is now.”
Odell wasn’t sure how much of this conversation was overheard by Ava. She didn’t venture a comment and seemed only too grateful to sit down beside the fire once reaching the house.
Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II Page 13