by Kyra Whitton
Hope Street, where she spent a year of her life living in splendid student squalor, was one of the first turns after arriving in town. It was just beyond the lane down to the North Sands, up the hill from the Old Course. In the shadow of old Chattan Hall, cloistered between North and Market Streets. It skirted a pretty little rose garden that bloomed beautifully in the summer, and the Victorian townhouses stood stately and clean among some of the oldest buildings in one of the oldest universities in the world.
Her driver turned onto Hope Street quickly, pulling up to a halt outside the light gray townhouse her old flat was carved into. She recognized Sarah’s little red car a few parking spots down next to the rose gardens. Their flat was in the cellar, and she limped down the stone steps to the cold, dark doorstep, knocking thrice and waiting.
A few moments passed before a string of muffled curses neared and the door was hauled open.
“Do you know what bloody—Evie!”
Sarah launched herself at her roommate, nearly pushing them both off balance. She wrapped her arms around Evie’s neck, rocking them back and forth before yelping something about cold feet and jumping back over the threshold. She held the door open and motioned Evie in, executing a little bouncing jig before she slammed the door shut behind her.
“What are you doing here?” she cried.
Oh, where to start? “Can’t I just want to see you?”
“Too right you can! But I am not daft enough to think that would be your only reason for flying halfway ‘round the world and right before Christmas!”
Sarah spoke at a mile-a-minute in a thick Glaswegian accent not unlike Flora MacDonald’s. However, where Flora’s was posh and upper middle class, Sarah’s was decidedly not. She dropped half of her consonants, and when she spoke too fast, her voice growing in volume, she sounded a bit like a sheep. Her thick riot of black curls flew out from her head in a round puff of a ponytail, and ratty pajamas covered her light brown skin. She flopped down onto the overstuffed sofa in the living space and drew her slender feet up under her.
“No luggage?”
Evie shook her head and took the small armchair that had always been her favorite. White with a riot of little flowers, it looked like something belonging in a little old lady’s drawing room, but had always served her well when she drank wine out of a mug while watching the small television in the corner.
“I came on a whim.”
“A whim?” Sarah repeated, one of her thin eyebrows shooting up. She gave Evie a look that was meant to convey concern for her friend’s mental state and depths of her pockets.
Evie let out a sigh. “I need to do some soul-searching. I think I got in a fight with… I don’t even know what he is… And—”
“There’s a he?” Sarah raised her hands into the air. “It’s about bloody time! I thought you would never find anyone, you would just be off by yourself in a library for the rest of your life while the world passed you by.”
Dumbfounded, Evie stared at her. “What are you talking about?” Did she not remember Calum, the permanent fixture in her life?
“Oh, come on, Evie,” Sarah threw back her head in mock exasperation. “I was always trying to get you out, to meet someone—anyone—who might flick your fancy, if you know what I mean, and you were always off on your own making photocopies and ringing up archives for Professor Bacon-Munchkins.”
“Bascomb-Murray,” Evie corrected reflexively, her mind still whirring.
Had Sarah been completely oblivious? She was out with Calum or at his flat as often as she was here. Sure, they hadn’t spent much time here, but he didn’t have a roommate.
Sarah waved her hand dismissively. “Ach, but look at you! You’re looking so fit! How is that even possible? When you left last month, you looked positively dreadful.”
“Thanks, Sar.”
“I mean it. You were being wheeled onto a plane with half your hair shaved off and now…” She trailed off.
Evie’s eyes grew wide, but she managed to school her features before Sarah caught her looking like a deer in the headlights. Her accident and her current timeline’s proximity was something she failed to take into account, wasn’t it? If her calculations were correct, she had gotten onto that airplane six weeks before. Her mother had indeed pushed her up in a wheelchair, her leg still in a brace, stuck out in front of her because she wasn’t supposed to bear weight on it. She’d still been wobbling around on crutches at Christmas. And here she was with a fairly normal looking face, a mostly full head of hair, and a gait still a bit wonky, but not a far cry off from undetectable.
“I, um, they’re very pleased with my recovery,” she explained lamely.
“I would think so. Now tell me about this man. He has to be bloody brilliant to get your head out of a book.” She leaned forward, her dark eyes twinkling teasingly.
Alec’s image reared up in the back of her mind, and the sick feeling she carried around since she left that shop in Georgia steamrolled through her with renewed ferocity. Despite the hurt he caused her, he was never far from her mind. But then all she had to do was think about the last time she saw him and the anger resurfaced.
He betrayed you, he lied became her mantra.
“He’s an army doctor. He’s tall. He’s a good cook, likes travel, and, um… history.” She shrugged.
“Ooh, at least something good came out of you going to the middle of nowhere, right? A doctor.” She grinned. “Does he have any doctor friends in uniform?”
“I’m sure he does,” Evie answered wryly, aware she had never met any of his friends. Did he even have friends? She really hadn’t known him long enough to find out, had she?
“Must have been some fight to have you fly all the way here.” Sarah tilted her head knowingly.
Evie couldn’t tell her she really didn’t have any other place to go. It wasn’t like she could have just gone back to Kansas to share a room with herself. Besides, she needed Professor Bascomb-Murray’s expertise to connect the dots not in her book. How were Flora, Anne, and Elizabeth linked?
And why the hell was Sarah acting like Calum hadn’t existed?
“Ah, shite. I have to be at class in twenty minutes!” She jumped up. “I’m done at one. Meet me for fish and chips at lunch?” And then she ran off into her room, feet slapping against the old wood floors.
Evie got up slowly, the jet lag pulling at her. She wanted nothing more than to go crawl into her bed, but she knew that was the worst thing she could possibly do for herself. Besides, she had so much to do.
She peeked into Sarah’s room. Sarah was in the process of pulling off her pajamas with one hand and spraying herself with hefty amounts of body spray with the other.
“Do you mind if I shower?”
“What? No! Why would I mind? I think your mum left some of your clothes in the wardrobe in your room, too!” She pulled a jumper over her head. “I am going to be so late,” she muttered.
Evie retreated, wondering what the hell was going on.
Laena had left about half of her wardrobe, all of the things Evie loved and her mother abhorred. Old jeans soft as butter, sweatshirts so worn the cuffs were fraying, a pair of panties she bought her sophomore year of high school that made her ass look amazing. Evie left the pretty sweater and jeans Alec bought for her in a pile on the bed and pulled some of those old favorites on.
Despite the softness of her curves, the jeans still hung low on her hips, threatening to fall off if she moved too swiftly, and the hooded sweatshirt hung down to her mid-thighs. She borrowed a pair of boots from Sarah’s closet and a heavy coat before exiting into the cold mist.
Her eyes still drooped with exhaustion, but she needed to get through the day if she wanted to get acclimated to the time change.
Mrs. Baird’s Bed and Breakfast was located halfway down North Street across the road from St Salvatore’s Chapel. It was one of many in a long line of stone townhouses much older, much less ornate, than the Victorian ones on Hope Street. She pulled her coat t
ightly around herself as she brushed past a gaggle of students, their black robes still worn despite the harsh temperatures and biting wind. She turned up the stone stairs to huddle under the little overhang and knocked gently on the door.
There was no answer.
She tried again with more force, her knuckles smarting against the old wood. Silence. Shifting back off the porch, she stepped into the mist and looked up at the paned windows. Every one of them was dark.
“House’s been empty for years,” a graveled voice called out from the next door down.
Her heart dropped as she turned to the middle-aged woman standing on the doorstep. She was dressed smartly in tailored trousers and a cashmere sweater, pearls hanging from both her neck and ears. Her coat hung open and she clutched an umbrella in one arm, shaking it out toward the street. She carried a reusable bag with the local grocery’s label plastered across it and a fine leather purse in the crook of her arm.
“Y-Years?” Evie repeated dumbly.
The woman’s head tilted to the side, much like a dog’s does when it doesn’t quite understand the command given.
“Do you know where I could find Mrs. Baird?” she asked, her voice roaring in her own ears.
“Oh, dear, I don’t believe I’ve known any Bairds to live in this part of town for some fifteen years. The last owner was Alan Kirk and his wife Mags. He retired from the biology college some time ago after poor Mags passed.”
Evie blinked and looked back to the bright blue door. The paint was duller than she remembered it, more worn.
“Thank you,” she called, likely not loud enough for the woman to hear her over the turning of tires through puddles. “I must be mistaken.”
She had come to this door at least once a week for months. She’d entered through it, walked down the cheerily papered halls to sit at the small kitchen table overlooking the garden the row of houses shared to the back. She’d hugged the woman who owned it. She had kissed her son. Was going to marry him.
And it was like neither of them existed.
She stood in the mist as it grew to a steady rain, collecting in her hair, seeping into her clothes and down her borrowed boots, staring up at those dark windows. And wondered what had happened to her life.
****
It hadn’t taken Alec long to know that Evie was gone.
In fact, he knew it the moment he had entered that little shop to find Flora McDonald casually reading a paperback, the leather journal gone.
He ran back to the hotel, his footsteps pounding in tune with the muscles of his heart, only to find the room exactly as they left it. She hadn’t returned.
And there was no telling where she was heading.
He tore apart the room, looking for anything that didn’t belong there, knowing he would find an apple or a slender branch or even a ball of yarn. They were everywhere, small keys to the Otherworld gateways. In the back of the small closet he found one, a single branch with an apple bloom in pure silver. He held his breath as he was shot across the veil, landing in a clearing he recognized as one of the Otherworld’s favorite gates.
It was located along the far eastern edge of the summer kingdom ruled by Hafgan, just along the southern edge of the peninsula shooting into the ocean separating Scathag’s Island from the Solstice Kingdoms.
The challenge was to remain unseen, and so he traveled under cover of darkness, up through the mountains and into the forest where his cottage sat nestled in the trees. But it was just as untouched as the hotel room.
If she was in the Otherworld, he may never find her. But if she wasn’t, where would she have gone?
Home.
Chapter Seventeen
Evie found herself nursing a hot tea for the rest of the morning as she waited for it to be time to meet Sarah. She’d scrounged a bit of paper off the printer, eventually found a pen lodged between two sofa cushions, and began taking notes of each memory she still possessed.
How had she met Calum? Outside a bakery near the castle. She hadn’t intended to go inside but stopped to pet a dog standing at the door. The smell of freshly baked meat pies was enough to drag her inside, and she ended up leaving with a take-away order and cup of fresh coffee. Calum was the first person in line standing behind her.
“Your accent. It’s beautiful. Where are you from?” he asked after she stepped away from the counter after placing the order.
“I, uh, what? Th-thank you. No one has ever said, I mean… Where I’m from, it’s boring,” she amended, flustered.
The memory still made her warm with pleasure. He’d escorted her to St. Katharine’s from there, and she’d nearly been late for her first meeting with Sylvia Bascomb-Murray. But the professor didn’t see them together that afternoon; he left her at the outside door and continued on his way.
Their first date had been a film at the theater over by the library. Also alone. She had not gotten popcorn even though it had smelled glorious and she could have easily eaten a whole bag on her own.
She absently tapped the pen against her cheek, going over the fine details of her life at St Andrews for almost a year. Second date? Dinner. Third date, she’d cooked for him while Sarah was gone for her brother’s birthday weekend. Fourth date? Sex at his flat.
She blushed. He hadn’t had a roommate and what was planned as a guided tour of the most haunted spots around town ended up being a sweet, breathless coupling on his sofa. He was so eager to please, so focused on her, she couldn’t help but feel a little guilty it hadn’t been the best romp of her life.
And then she tried to recount all of the times they went out with others. She remembered trying to convince him to come to a dinner party at her flat; he’d had a prior engagement. Meet up with her friends at Sarah’s favorite bar on The Scores? He had an exam to study for. Last minute trip to Monaco? He thought maybe he was getting sick.
The more she wrote down, the more she realized he had avoided meeting her friends. And the only person in his life she had met was his mother. Looking at it on paper, she realized how ridiculous it seemed, but how had she never noticed? How had it never bothered her that he didn’t want to meet her roommate? That he had never made mention of meeting her parents?
And her parents. She was angry at them for months for never mentioning him. She had been grieving and felt abandoned because no one would even utter his name, and… and had he existed at all?
How could she have been so stupid? The anger and embarrassment warred in the pit of her stomach and she dropped the pen to press the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. She ran from Alec when there was no reason to, chasing after, what? A ghost? A hallucination?
She was a jerk, pure and simple. It stung, but she had no way to reconcile it now. And… well, maybe she was still a little mad at him. After all, he hadn’t known Calum was a figment of her imagination, either. He should have said something. Warned her. Let her down gently. Anything but keep it a secret.
She threw back the remainders of her tea, the last dregs gone cold, and dropped her notes in the kitchen rubbish bin. She hadn’t bothered to change into dry clothes when she had arrived back at the flat, and she saw no reason to when she was just going to trudge back into the rain-soaked outdoors again, anyway.
Her favorite fish and chip shop sat on the western edge of the old town, near the cathedral and the pier, on the last narrow sidewalk on of Market Street. The location had been under construction when she first arrived in St Andrews. The previous owners had owned the small strip of real estate for nigh on forty years, selling beer battered fish, thick cut chips, and deep fried chocolate bars over a metal counter. The stone shop had been dark and cold according to those who had been there prior to the turn over, but the new owners brightened it up, bringing in little tables with checked table clothes, and ice cream parlor chairs. She and Sarah ate there at least twice a week before the accident.
The walk from Hope Street took her almost twenty minutes. By the time she stepped into the small dining room, it as crowded with hung
ry students and her leg twinged angrily at the prospect of waiting for a table.
“Evie!” Sarah waved her over to one of the little tables.
Evie let out a sigh of relief before pushing through the throng of waiting people and sliding into the chair opposite her former roommate.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Sarah said around a bit of vinegar-soaked chip. She motioned to the plate at Evie’s spot, filled with the same fare Sarah munched on. “I wasn’t sure how long you’d be, but I’ve only an hour.”
“This is great. Cheers,” Evie murmured before breaking off a piece of fluffy, battered fish.
It steamed deliciously into the air and she dropped it to allow it to cool. Time to test her theory.
“Sarah, have you heard from Mrs. Baird?”
“Who?” Sarah asked around her food.
“Calum’s mum.”
It was so easy to slip back into the local slang. But as right as it felt, her heart still pounded and she waited for Sarah’s answer, hoping it proved she wasn’t crazy. She had a sinking feeling disappointment was in her grasp.
Sarah regarded her with a slender eyebrow quirked. “Who is Calum?”
“The bloke I was seeing. He was driving the car when I had my… accident.”
Sarah’s eyes narrowed and she canted her head to the side. “Are you all right?”
Evie waited.
“You were alone, Evie. You were driving a rent-a-car. And there wasn’t anyone in it with you.”
Evie’s breath caught and a dry sob reared up, ready to break free. She stamped it down, the effort sending prickles to the backs of her eyes, and they began to water. It was just as bad as she’d feared. Were all her memories wrong? She told Alec she must have a brain tumor for the world to make sense. Maybe she wasn’t wrong. Maybe the trauma—that coma—had done more damage than she thought. What if everything she thought she remembered was… incorrect?
“But I remember you mentioning a Calum. Three or four times, perhaps.”
Evie’s attention snapped back to Sarah. “I did?” She sounded surprised even to her own ears.