Across Time: Across Time Book 1

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  Across Time

  Across Time Series Book 1

  Elizabeth O'Roark

  Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth O'Roark

  Developmental Edit: Tbird London

  Edit: Stacy Frenes, Grammar Boss

  Cover Design: Lori Jackson

  Photo: Andrew Biernatt by Wander Aguilar

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Untitled

  Also by Elizabeth O'Roark

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  1918

  The woman walks with brisk steps, her dress sweeping her ankles. She’d forgotten what a bother it was, having skirts so long. She’s tripped over them three times already, but hastens toward the square anyway, eager to have this behind her. The sun has begun to set, and there’s a prickle of tension along her spine. She tells herself it’s merely that she’s longing for home, for 1935. Her daughter will be waiting there. Marie-Therese is seventeen but remains a child in some ways. A child who still needs her mother, the woman thinks, her heart drumming in her chest.

  The square, sitting in the shadow of Sacré-Coeur, is unnervingly quiet. She can’t escape the feeling that today is an ending of sorts, and thinks again of her children—Marie at home and Henri, away in England now. They’re too young to be orphans.

  “Chin up,” she says, forcing her feet forward. Her children are the reason, after all, that she is here in the first place. They both will play a role in the prophecy, with the help of the woman who is coming. She can at least do this much to set them on their way.

  A gust of wind whistles through her wool coat, whipping leaves around her skirts. The sound almost masks the crunch of gravel behind her…but not quite. She hears it and she knows, before she’s even turned her head, that this was a trap.

  A needle plunges into her neck. As she falls, her thoughts are of her children. She prays this is a beginning for them, rather than an end.

  And that the woman who will save them doesn’t take too long.

  1

  1987

  Saint Antoine is one of those crumbling, quaint cities you see on travel shows about France. The streets are cobblestone, every restaurant has al fresco dining, and the shops sell things you would never buy at home and wouldn’t buy if you lived here either: champagne bottles full of candy, bags that say J’aime Saint Antoine, boxes of macarons. The passing tourists are excited, gleeful, hitting me with their bags and elbows as they unfurl maps. I wish I were one of them.

  Sleep deprivation begins to weaken my resolve. Am I really going to do this? I’ve upended my life to get to this point, but for the briefest moment I fantasize about backing out. I’m only twenty-one. Shouldn’t I be allowed to wander the streets like a normal college girl, buying things I don’t need and stuffing myself full of brioche? Someday, I swear to myself, I will be that normal girl.

  But I won’t be her today.

  I find a pay phone and dial my mother’s number with a churning stomach. The coins I’ve stacked in front of me are optimistic. Odds are she won’t answer, but even if she does our conversation won’t last long. She didn’t care for me before Kit died. It became exponentially worse afterward.

  “Hi Mom,” I say when she picks up. “It’s me.” The words come out too eager, too needy—something she hates. I wince at the mistake.

  “Oh,” she says, a blunt, disappointed sound. “Why aren’t you calling from your own number?”

  I swallow hard. I guess I know why she answered.

  “School ended last week,” I tell her, taking a deep breath—this where the lies begin, and she always knows when I’m lying, though perhaps it’s just that she always assumes I’m doing something wrong. “I’m in France. For my internship. It was supposed to be in New York but something better came up.”

  She sighs. The sound is disgusted but also weary, as if I’ve failed her and it is nothing more than she expected from me. “What about Mark? I thought he was proposing or something.”

  My stomach churns anew. This was the one week Mark and I would have had together in months. I bought him off with some promises I wasn’t quite ready to make, but he still didn’t understand. There’s so much he doesn’t know, and telling him the truth—my dead sister is haunting my dreams, demanding I help a stranger in France—wouldn’t exactly have cleared things up. Especially since he doesn’t even know I had a sister.

  My relationship with him is the only thing about me my mother has ever approved of, so my answer will only disappoint her. “He’s in Nepal most of the summer,” I reply. “I guess it’ll happen when I get back.”

  “You do realize,” she says, “that if he ever finds out what you are, it’s over.”

  What you are. She makes it sound like I’m some kind of demon or vampire. In her eyes, I suppose, I am. “I’m changing,” I whisper. “Really.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” she says, her voice hard. “Well, I should go. Steven and Natalie are coming over for dinner.”

  “Okay, take care of—” I begin, before hearing the dial tone. “Yourself,” I conclude quietly, hanging up the phone. For a single moment I allow my forehead to rest against the wall. I was stupid to have hoped the call would go any other way. My ability feels more like an addiction than a gift most of the time, especially when I hear myself swearing I’m going to change. Until I stop, there’s no chance of earning my mother’s forgiveness.

  But until I’ve used it one last time, there is no chance of earning Kit’s.

  I climb into a cab for the final leg of my journey, staring at a picture of me and Mark as if it can offer me a way out. It’s from the summer we met, when I was interning at a gallery in New York City and he was getting ready to leave for grad school. It’s all kind of a blur now, but I remember how happy I was then—perhaps for the first time.

  I made him happy too, and I want to keep doing so. I want to be the woman he believes I am, and that’s not possible right now. The nightmares have gotten so bad that I’m barely getting through the day anymore, jumping at every unexpected thump, terrified of falling asleep. The night before last I woke in my bathtub with the shower on, screaming at the top of my lungs, and it wasn’t the first time. I can’t let Mark see that version of me, have him hear me crying for the sister he doesn’t even know I had.

  Which leaves me stuck, once more, with this ridiculously vague plan, based on nothing more than a terrifying dream. Find them, Kit begs me every night. Save them, help Marie. No mention of what they need saving from or how I’m supposed to help.

  Wh
at I know about Marie-Therese Durand, thanks to my sister’s hints and a long day at the library, is almost nothing: she was born in 1918, and lived on the outskirts of Saint Antoine until 1940. There is no record of her beyond that, and I don’t know if this means she died during World War II or if she simply left home—given it’s the year France fell to Germany, either possibility seems likely.

  The cab comes to a stop in front of some massive industrial farm. There are thousands like it back home in Pennsylvania, but I’d expected a quaint farmhouse, not huge silos and aluminum siding. I suppose my mistake was expecting anything in the first place, since I’m going into this blind.

  This, right now, is my last chance to back out. I pay the cab driver and climb from the car. One last jump, I swear to myself, and I'll never, ever do it again.

  The sound of the door closing feels unsettlingly final. And with what lies ahead of me, it’s entirely possible it is.

  2

  When I pictured pre-war France, I envisioned sun-dappled fields of lavender that would capture me like a fragrant cloud. But that is Provence, not Saint Antoine, and I've landed indoors despite my best efforts. I hit a hay bale so hard I flip over it—I’m pretty sure I’ll never master a graceful landing—and I know before I even open my eyes that I will find hay wedged into my hair, my mouth and...other parts. This hay has now hit more bases than Mark ever has.

  On the bright side, the barn I’ve landed in is not the modern one I saw only moments before. It’s old enough that the wood has warped to let sunlight into open spaces. I see no trucks, hear no machinery.

  As I force myself to stand, I feel the deadening fatigue setting in, my head fogged as if I have one of those colds that puts you to sleep for days. My limbs are growing heavier by the moment, weakness setting ever faster into my bones. A cow not four feet from me bellows a warning, and I can't even summon the energy to jump in surprise.

  And I'm hungry. My God I'm hungry. If I could just eat, I tell myself, I'd have the energy for this. I spot an apple sitting on a stool five feet to my left—small and dull, barely fit for livestock, but right now it might as well be a large pizza with a side of cheese fries.

  I grip the stall door and take one small step on trembling foal legs, but catch movement outside before I can take another and dive back down to the hay, trying not to cough as I inhale the dust around me.

  It’s a man who’s entered. I can tell by the heaviness of his tread, the certainty of it. He moves through the barn and a bucket clangs against the metal hinge of the stall next to mine. There is a moment of silence, during which I hear no movement, no breath. "Ici," he says—to the cow I assume—and then mutters something else in French that I don't quite make out as he sets the bucket down.

  The steps recede, and after a moment of silence I rise, forcing myself, one foot in front of the other, toward that apple. I’ve never wanted anything more in my entire life. Just as my hand closes around it, the man steps back inside the open barn door, this time pointing a gun straight at my head.

  He is about Mark’s age and handsome—a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead like some old Hollywood film star. Though I freeze in surprise, it’s hard to picture him as a killer. I’m more bothered by my nudity than I am his gun.

  “Pourquoi etes-vous ici?” he demands. He wants to know why I’m here.

  Good question, I think. I wish I knew. I'm too exhausted and unsettled to form a reply in French. "Can I... Give me your shirt."

  His eyes flicker downward. I guess he didn’t notice I was naked until I pointed it out. My hair covers my breasts and my hands cover the rest, but he looks unsettled anyway. “I think not,” he replies in perfect, British-accented English. “In order to give you my shirt I’d have to put down my gun.”

  It’s illogical, but his British accent sounds sort of posh and James Bond-ish and puts me at ease. Granted, lots of villains in James Bond movies have British accents too, but they generally don’t look like this guy.

  "I'm looking for Marie? Marie-Therese Durand?" I explain. “Do you know her?”

  I wait for a sign of recognition. Instead his eyes narrow and he raises the gun higher, pulling back the hammer. "There is no one here by that name," he snarls. "You need to go back where you came from."

  I sway on my feet again and grab the stool to hold myself steady. "Please lower the gun," I whisper.

  A hint of softness passes over his face before he blinks it away. He grabs a horse blanket hanging off the wall and throws it at me. "Are you ill?" he demands.

  I somehow manage to catch the blanket and wrap it around me, but the effort of standing up on my own is getting to be too much. With each moment that passes I feel a bit further away from him, as if I'm sinking fast in a deep, dark lake.

  "No. Please just let me talk to Marie-Therese and then I swear I’ll go.” I meant to sound stronger, more forceful, but it feels as if I'm speaking to him from under water.

  "Again, there is no Marie here," he says. "So you can go right now. Don't think for a moment I’m reluctant to use this gun.”

  I don’t entirely believe him, but even if I did, I wouldn’t have the energy to obey. I'm barely remaining on my feet.

  "Please," I beg. "I can't...I'm too—" I reach for the wall and use it to stay upright. If I allow myself to fall asleep right now, I'm not certain I will ever wake up.

  Footsteps approach and from around a corner comes a shockingly lovely girl about my age. I recognize her from the photo I found, the one that led me here, and my hunch is confirmed: she is a time traveler. Our looks are what set us apart, and though I’m blonde and fair, while she’s brunette and olive-skinned, there’s a similarity between us as well, in the symmetry of our features and in our eyes, which are backlit, as if a fire shines just beyond the pupil.

  "Mon Dieu," she whispers, staring at me as if I'm a ghost. She hisses at her brother in rapid-fire French and he lowers the gun.

  My mouth opens to tell her why I’m here. But I pitch face first to the ground instead.

  3

  When my eyes open, I’m lying on a grossly uncomfortable bed in a sunlit room. It takes a moment of staring at the exposed wood ceiling, listening to squawking chickens in the distance, before I remember I'm not in my own time.

  My arrival here is a bit of a blur, sort of like when you rise in the middle of the night to deal with something you're only half-awake for. I remember the man with the gun, and an exhaustion like I’ve never felt before.

  Most importantly, I remember that I found Marie. Now I just need to figure out what it is she needs from me.

  I rise slowly. Every muscle in my body hurts and the fatigue weighs so heavily on me that I am sorely tempted to lie back down. But the sooner I get downstairs, the sooner I can return home.

  I’m still naked, but a dress lies on the chair across from me, white and dotted with small pink flowers. It’s already too hot for a dress. I think longingly of home, of tank tops and shorts and air conditioning, before I slowly pull it over my head.

  I limp down the stairs like an old woman, gripping the handrail for support, and find myself in a room that is plain by the standards of home: stiff velvet chairs, a small coffee table covered with a lace tablecloth, a few vases. But the house itself is well-constructed and elegant, with high ceilings, arched windows, and French doors that lead to a small stone porch off the side of the room. If you have to pass out in a strange place, this wasn’t a bad one to choose.

  “Ah, awake at last,” says a musical voice. I turn to find Marie-Therese there, smiling at me as if I’m long-lost family. “Three days you’ve slept! I thought you’d never get up!”

  Three days, and I’m still so drained I can barely put one foot in front of the other. Any hope of getting this all over with quickly and catching Mark before he leaves for Nepal begins to dwindle. I blow out a breath. It was silly to hope for it in the first place, and I probably ought to focus on my present difficulties anyway.

  "You’re much friendlier than the
guy was,” I suggest, wondering for the first time if he still plans to hold me gunpoint and make me leave.

  She glances over her shoulder before she gives me a small nod. "I’m sorry. My brother Henri—he didn’t like that you knew who I was and what I was, but he's being ridiculous. You already know what I am on sight, just as I know what you are. Come. You must be famished.”

  She turns and I follow her into a kitchen that is slightly less ancient than I was expecting, but still pretty rustic. Cracked farmhouse sink, old cabinets that appear hand-made, copper pans hanging from the ceiling and a big white and black Aga stove.

  “Please sit,” she says. "You must be famished. Is it always like that with you when you time travel? It must be highly inconvenient." She speaks of the gift so openly, so plainly, as if it’s the color of the sky or the day of the week. I was raised to do the opposite.

  I take a seat at the rough-hewn trestle table where she’s placed a loaf of bread and a small pot of jam. I long to shove the bread into my mouth like a savage, like it might be ripped away from me. I’m so hungry it feels as if I could never get full. It’s only by force that I take reasonably sized bites.

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never gone this far back before.” I flush. How is it possible that I'm ashamed of what I'm able to do, and also ashamed of the fact that I'm not good at it? “What year is it? I’m…not great at landing where I plan to.”