Downtime

by James Allen

  I’d probably be dreaming of Sully, myself. I followed Ezra to his room, getting another look at it from a less sleepy perspective. Unlike Henry's showroom, Ezra's was decorated without an awareness of other eyes that might see it. Books crowded on the mantle were propped with mismatched candlesticks. A coat sleeve stuck out between the closed doors of the wardrobe cabinet and on the dressing table next to it were scattered linen collars, stick pins, cuff links, a flask--empty--and Ezra's shaving equipment. The guy was even more of a slob than I was.

  The high-backed mahogany chair by the fire was the nicest piece of furniture I'd seen in the whole house; Ezra had tossed an old blanket on it and a big, tasseled pillow. A smaller pillow crowned the footstool and I suspected the whole set up had served on more than one restless night as a place to sleep. More pillows were piled at one end of the window seat and on the sill above them sat a plate with a candle burned nearly out of existence. The edge of the curtain was singed and I wondered if Kathleen didn't live in fear of Ezra burning the house down.

  I'd never seen so many makeshift beds in one room--for one person--before. A dark blue brocaded bathrobe lay rumpled on the floor and it wouldn't have surprised me to learn he'd been sleeping there off and on, too. At the far end of the mantle was an oval wood frame holding a photograph of two people I assumed were Ezra's parents; the small golden-haired boy on the woman's lap no doubt Ezra himself. I studied the woman's gentle features and the man's forbidding ones and wondered if Ezra was an only, like me. Probably not, in the era of huge families. I took off my jacket, then realized I didn't have the PJs Derry had lent me. “You have something I can sleep in?”

  “Nothing clean, I’m afraid.” He looked around at me hesitantly and I realized he thought I’d stripped down to nothing.

  I gave him a grin. “No peeking,” I said and pushed off my jeans. It was a little too cold to sleep in the buff; besides I wasn’t sure Ezra could take it. Sticking with my briefs and tee shirt, I dropped into bed and stretched out gratefully under the thick layer of blankets and quilt. These people had gotten something right.

  Ezra had only shed his jacket and vest and I had the sneaking suspicion he wasn’t even intending to go to bed. “When the hell do you sleep?”

  “When I can.”

  “You might have a fighting chance if you’d get into bed and close your eyes.”

  “Is that how it’s done?”

  And people thought I was a stubborn son of a bitch. I rested my chin on the pillow and watched until he’d finished poking the coals to life. When he reached for a book, I checked a sigh. I’d been through this routine with Henry; but I had the feeling Ezra could be rescued from becoming a boring old man. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything you like,” he said absently, flipping through the book without much enthusiasm.

  “How’d he look?”

  “Healthy. Happy.”

  I didn’t want the routine answer. Sully had seldom looked either healthy or happy. He’d always looked like a guy who needed a vacation--or some Alka Seltzer. “Did he say anything else? Anything you didn’t tell me?”

  Ezra looked up at me distractedly. “He mentioned he finally found a good cigar. Does that mean anything to you?”

  I would’ve said yes, but the unexpected lump in my throat prevented it. The pillow was fortunately close at hand or it could’ve gotten embarrassing.

  Unfortunately, Ezra seemed to realize what he’d provoked. I felt the mattress shift as he sat beside me. “Morgan? I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have…” A hand touched my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  God, I hadn’t thought of Sully’s smelly cigars in ages. The last time he’d smoked one, I’d thrown it out the car window and told him the damned things would kill him before he was fifty. His old habit of rolling a cigar between thumb and fingers, Ezra had been doing that during the séance--and with his left hand, I realized. Sully was a southpaw, but Ezra was right-handed. Being a leftie myself, I'd noticed it, though I'd hardly given it a spare thought at the time.

  “Morgan?”

  He was persistent. I swallowed the lump and sucked in a steady breath. “Yeah. Fine. Never better.”

  He snorted softly. “Never better. A Nash euphemism for perfectly miserable. You should know he hasn’t gone anywhere. Certainly not anywhere you won’t eventually end up, yourself.”

  “Yeah?” Certain scenes from the past wanted to replay themselves in my mind. If I let them, I’d be bawling for sure—and Sully’d probably find a way to smack me in the head, even in his noncorporeal state. I wrapped my arms around the pillow and stared at my distorted reflection in the row of brass spindles.

  Ezra leaned back against his own pillow. “He was a part of the FBI as well, I take it. He worked with you?”

  “He did a whole lot more than that. He kept me from going off the deep end when my dad died. He stayed on me through college and training and stuck with me until I got the hang of the job. Then I guess he figured he’d been around long enough. Six months ago--” And that was about all of it I could relate. The lump returned and I nestled my chin in the crisp linen and closed my eyes.

  Ezra's hand was light but comforting on my shoulder. "It's been my impression that we’re fairly decided on what we want to do when we take up a life here, including how long we mean to stay. Mr. Sullivan seems content with the result of that life with you.”

  “So he couldn’t hang around a while longer? Just for laughs?”

  “I imagine co-existing with you is rather exhausting after a while.” The comment was delivered with such rueful earnestness, it caught me off-guard. He’d been oozing sympathy and then, out of the blue, that damned sense of humor that snuck up as swiftly and lethally as a knife between the ribs.

  It took some effort on my part to glare at him instead of laugh. “How come I didn't hear you making cracks like that to those grieving widows?”

  “That would hardly be good for business, would it?” Pale lashes that had been drifting to his cheeks lifted and he fixed me with an amused and still sympathetic blue gaze. “Are you all right? And please do not say, ‘never better’.”

  “Fine and dandy?”

  “You are really quite impossible.”

  My little nap earlier had taken some of the edge off my own sleepiness. I was wired by the idea that I could be going home tomorrow. I might be getting used to this place, and I didn’t want to. I was ready to go.

  Ezra’s breathing had evened out. When he finally did let himself sleep, I noted, he went fast. He’d have a crick in his neck tomorrow like nobody’s business, not to mention another wrinkled suit. Well, I could fix the neck at least. I caught a handful of his sleeve and pulled until he slid down to lie on his side. I realized I couldn’t let him freeze, either. Sneezing through whatever magic he had to work to get me home would not improve our chance of success.

  It was a little more work to tug the quilt loose and throw it over him. Ezra sighed in his sleep and burrowed under the blankets I’d warmed up. Dropping back onto my pillow, I stared over at my bunkmate. It was a good face, I’d give him that. A few small freckles along the straight nose, a little flush of color in the hollow of his throat, gold in his lashes, and a definitely tempting mouth; yeah, a good face. And what I’d seen of the rest of him wasn’t bad either.

  So why was he all by himself? Even in the era of just say no, he was too handsome to be alone. Just because he’d gotten himself engaged didn’t mean he’d taken a vow of celibacy. I was pretty sure keeping a lover on the side was as common a thing now as it was in my own time. He had to be seeing someone, unless the psychic thing scared potential boyfriends away.

  I didn’t any longer think he was a conman, but whether he was a few cards short of a full deck remained to be seen. Hell, maybe I was the crazy one, to believe he’d talked to Sully. But I’d talked to Sully--and how Ezra had managed that trick so convincingly, I had no idea.

  And even though it was painful, I wanted to talk t
o him again. I wanted to share a pizza with him, rehash cold cases, and talk baseball. I could still picture him at my games, sitting at the top of the bleachers with the same sort of instinct that drove cats into trees, wearing a shirt and coat wrinkled from a late-night stakeout, his booming voice carrying across the field with enthusiasm every time I hit a ball past the fence or stole a base. The other parents hadn’t known what to make of him, but my mom was grateful, I knew. As hard as Archie’s death was on her, her primary fear had always been that I’d lose my way without my dad to keep me straight. So to speak.

  Maybe I wasn’t fourteen anymore, but I still needed him around. Who else was going to cheer for me from the top of the bleachers?

  Ezra mumbled in his sleep and rolled over, taking more than half the blankets with him. He was as bad as Reese. Yeah, Charlotte was going to love being married to this guy. Well, as far as I was concerned, blanket possession came under the guideline of survival of the fittest. I took back my share and then some, and rolled onto my stomach to sleep.

  Sun warm on my skin woke me. It brightened the room, slanting across the mound of blankets I’d kicked off sometime during the night. Barely awake, I took curious note of the fact that sunlight wasn’t the only thing warming me. Ezra had gravitated from his side of the bed to mine. His arm rested across my stomach, his hand nestled under my ribs. A soft, even breath caressed my shoulder--not exactly an unpleasant sensation, no matter how I might want to deny it. Fine, so I was attracted to him and it was getting harder to ignore. That didn’t mean I had to do anything about it. Worlds apart might sound clichéd, but for us, it could be taken literally. And I had enough disturbing memories to take home without the added bonus of a roll in the hay with a guy who’d died decades before I was born. I wasn’t, nor would I ever be that hard up.

  However, due to a combination of factors, hard and up still applied to the situation.

  I looked at Ezra to make sure he was asleep; yep, out cold, but keeping warm all the same. I moved the limp arm from my waist to the mattress. Now all I had to do was climb past him and I had a clear shot to my clothes. With exquisite care honed from many an early morning exit, I got one leg over him without waking him. But my talents were restricted to box springs, not this overstuffed feather concoction. I over-shifted and, losing my balance, landed on top of him.

  He blinked at me groggily. "Morgan?"

  Feeling my face heat up, along with various other parts of me, I threw on a breezy grin. "Sorry." I pushed myself onto hands and knees. "Just trying to get past..."

  He glanced down--hell, I would have, too--and cleared his throat. "I do beg your pardon."

  That would teach me to hog the blankets. I shot him a dark look. "You started it, treating me like your own personal teddy bear." I eased to the edge of the mattress and folded my arms gracelessly over my lap. “Maybe you’d better bump the wedding up a few months. You need some action and fast.”

  Ezra was red-faced himself as he struggled against an obvious desire to laugh. “Some--action? Teddy bear? What--”

  “Forget it. Can you just hand me my clothes?” Then I remembered. The museum. Shit, shit, shit. “What time is it?”

  He picked up the pocket watch on the bedside table and frowned at it. “That can’t be right."

  I leaned forward and plucked it out of his hand. Ten o’clock. Shit. I scrambled out of bed and, my back to Ezra, reached for my clothes. When he didn’t move a muscle. I threw him an impatient look over my shoulder. “Come on. Get up and get dressed.”

  He raised his head, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I slept.”

  “Yeah, we both did. Too much. Now get up. Clothes.” I scooped up a shirt and tossed it to him.

  It landed in his lap and he utterly ignored it. “I slept,” he marveled on. “Ten hours. Without waking once.”

  “Yeah. I’m very happy for you. But the point is, it’s ten o’clock. Can we go?” God, I had to stuff myself into that damned suit again. I gingerly pulled on the pants, then grabbed the shirt and the vest. Ezra was still lost in his own blissful world. “Ez, let me just remind you that if this Whitby guy sells the book before we find him, you’re going to be stuck with me for a very long time.”

  That seemed to wake him up. He dressed quickly and we went down to find that nearly everyone else had already gotten up and gone off to work. “You’d think someone would wake us,” I said as we left the house and flagged down a cab.

  “They probably thought we’d manage it on our own,” Ezra said.

  “So if all your acolytes are at work, who’s going to send me back? You?”

  He grimaced. “I really do wish you would stop referring to me as some sort of…of…”

  “Spell caster? Isn’t that what you are?”

  “Not intentionally.”

  “So you just cast a spell by accident?”

  “Are you saying I should have expected it to be successful?”

  “I’m saying you brought me here, the three of you. I have a feeling it’s going to take all three of you to get me back home.”

  Ezra looked pensive. “I shall just have to copy the incantation down when we find it and we will send you back later tonight. Will that suit you?”

  “Doesn’t appear that I’ve got much of a choice.”

  “I cannot bring the book home, Morgan.”

  “I didn’t say you should.”

  “No, you didn’t. I just…” He avoided my eyes. “Thought you might.”

  “Reading my mind again?” I cracked.

  “I don’t read minds.”

  As we drew up to the museum gates, I saw the crowd of policemen and onlookers scurrying around inside. “This may be a good time to start.”

  Chapter Eight

  Ezra pushed out of the cab and paying the driver, shot off across the courtyard so fast I had to run to catch up with him. Henry, on the museum steps with a group of co-workers, came down as soon as he saw us. “Mr. Nash.” He acknowledged me with a nod and turned to Ezra. “You’ll never guess—“

  “Henry, please.” Ezra latched onto his arm and drew him to the edge of the crowd. “Tell us what’s happened.”

  “Adam Whitby. He has been pilfering books right out from under our noses and selling them to collectors. Can you imagine? The curators are livid.”

  “Henry, our book. Where is it? Did you find it?”

  Henry blinked. “Our book?”

  Dear God. I was going to kill him. “Where the hell is the book?”

  Ezra unobtrusively raised an arm in front of me to keep me from getting any closer to Henry. “The book we used to bring Morgan here. Did Adam still have it?”

  “Good heavens, how am I to know that? They wouldn’t let anyone talk to him or come anywhere near the offices this morning. I daresay he’s already sold it,” Henry added with an uneasy glance at me.

  They might not let anyone else talk to Whitby but I was going to have a word with him, one way or another. “Where did they take him?”

  “The police station—“

  “Which one?”

  Henry shook his head. “He won’t be permitted visitors.”

  I moved Ezra to one side with a firm push and fixed Henry with the stare Sully used to refer to as hard-assed G-Man. “Which one?”

  Henry backed up a step and cleared his throat. “Bow Street. Or Brunswick Square,” he spit out, shaking his head. “I don’t know. You’ll have to inquire of the constable. I have work to do.” He smoothed down the front of his vest with not quite steady hands and eased himself around Ezra to break for the door.

  I let him go. I should have known this would happen. I should have staked out the museum last night instead of letting Ezra haul me home to bed. Damn it. “Guess you’ve got to get to work. Lend me the money for a cab?” I hated asking but I had no idea how far it was to the station.

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll come with you.”

  “You’re not going to get into trouble for this?”

  �
�I’ve taken a man over a hundred years away from his home. I don’t believe I could get into any more trouble at the moment.”

  Ezra inquired of a handy constable and got us a cab. Soon I stood in what Ez termed the “charge room”, listening to his unproductive chat with the officer at the desk.

  “No visitors,” the man placidly repeated without even a glance up at us.

  “Oh, for the love of…”

  Ezra’s fingers around my wrist in a warning grip shut me up. I had a feeling he was about to give up on the man, but then he leaned down and, lowering his voice, asked for an Inspector Saffery with clear reluctance. The officer looked up from his ledger and eyed Ezra narrowly for an instant before waving his pencil in the direction of a corridor off to the left.

  With a grim sigh, Ezra led the way to a row of offices where we found Saffery issuing instructions to a group of lounging constables. He himself sat casually on the corner of a desk, a long, lanky figure with a drooping black moustache and matching brows. He threw an inquisitive glance our way as we came inside and a sly grin lifted the moustache a good inch. “Well, well. Mr. Ezra Glacenbie. There’s the fellow with the answers, gentlemen. They haven't called you down to Bishopsgate yet?”

  With that comment, all eyes were on us. Ezra doggedly avoided the stares, keeping his attention on Saffery. “I wish to ask a favor of you, Inspector.”

  “A favor?” Saffery said with mock amazement. “You need our help? With all of heaven at your disposal?”

  Whispers behind us turned to snickers and I glanced around at the men. They grinned openly at us and I knew why. Even if I could’ve busted their humps for it, I had to acknowledge I’d always had the same reaction to psychics who were brought in to assist on cases. Ezra looked around at them, too and refused to be cowed. He turned back to the Inspector. “Yes, if you please. Adam Whitby was just brought in. He’s a colleague of mine and I would like a couple of minutes to talk with him.”