A Rip in Time (Out of Time #7) (5 page)

He looked up from his reading and followed her gaze. Laying the files aside, he reached over and picked up the notebook.
 

“I have,” he said, and held it out to her.

Elizabeth clambered up onto her knees and took it. She opened the book and inside, written in his bold hand, were just three words:
She loves me
.

Her heart clenched and she looked up at him.

“That,” he said, “is the only thing I need to know.”

E
LIZABETH
MADE
A
FINAL
adjustment to the front of her bodice jacket and then stepped back to see her full reflection in the changing room mirror. A small, plump woman fussed about her, straightening this and smoothing that, trying in vain to wrangle a stray curl that was trying to make a break for it.

Elizabeth looked the part—the ideal lady of 1888. Apparently, the ideal lady had no internal organs and a butt the size of Quebec. The corset was doing its evil work and her waist had been squished to Barbie-like proportions. If that weren’t bad enough, the bustle, which she had fought against, stuck out in a way only Sir Mix-A-Lot could appreciate. From the front she looked all right, she supposed. But when she turned to the side she looked like a scoliosis patient in a medical journal.

She sighed as deeply as the darn corset would let her and turned to look at Simon, who, of course, looked dashing and dapper, and worst of all, comfortable.
 

He brushed the brim of his top hat with the cuff of his jacket sleeve and turned to her with smile. Putting on his hat, he held out his arm for her. “Ready?”

She wasn’t. She was worried about Jack, worried about all of them, but the only way to save the past was to dive into it and hope it wasn’t the shallow end. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
 

Elizabeth slipped her arm through his and he covered her hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “We always find a way,” he said.

Elizabeth ignored the ballet of butterflies in her stomach. “We do.” And they would again, she thought. There was no alternative.

The escort that Travers had assigned to help them navigate the maze that was Council headquarters stood waiting patiently for them out in the hall. He gestured for them to follow him. They started down one of the long corridors that radiated out from the central hub and then turned left to walk down one of the long curved hallways. Something inside Elizabeth clicked.

“It’s like a wheel,” she said.

Simon gazed down at her, one eyebrow arched in silent question.
 

“The layout,” she explained. “It’s like a wheel with spokes.”

“It’s a gear actually,” the man said over his shoulder. “Each floor is designed in the shape of a unique gear. We call it the Watch Works.”

“Don’t tell me they move because—” Simon began, but stopped when they heard voices, raised voices.

“They’re amateurs,” a man said in a hard voice with a soft French accent. Victor Renaud.
 

The other was unmistakably Travers. “Don’t underestimate them, Victor.”

“It is insane to trust them with this mission,” Renaud said. “Let me go alone. I work better alone—”

“I’m sorry, Victor,” Travers said. “You have your orders. You’ll—”

He stopped in mid-sentence as Simon, Elizabeth and their escort came into view.

Renaud leaned down and whispered something to Travers, whose eyes went wide briefly, but he nodded curtly, quickly, before crossing to meet Simon and Elizabeth. “You two look wonderful. Every inch the part!”

Behind him Renaud grunted and pulled his woolen cap from his ratty jacket pocket and put it on. His clothes were worn and tattered and, as they got closer, Elizabeth noticed also a little stinky. From his shabby clothes to the sackcloth bag he had slung over his shoulder, it was clear he was dressed for a London that was the same and yet wholly different than the one they were going to.

Travers tried to usher them into a room, saying something about their trunks being inside and waiting for them, but Simon stopped walking.

He ignored Travers and fixed his eyes on Renaud, looking him up and down.
 
“What’s this?”

Renaud met his disapproving gaze with quiet defiance.

“Oh,” Travers said, with a voice straining to be casual, “Victor is going as well. We thought—”

“I think,” Simon said icily, “you should have told us that.”

Travers nodded. “You’re right. I-I should have. I apologize. Just so many things—I’m sorry.”

Renaud and Simon stood like two bucks who were deciding if they were going to smash heads.

On the one hand, Elizabeth agreed with Simon. Surprises from the Council were never good and they knew nothing about Renaud. But on the other, they’d lost Jack and she had a feeling they’d need a lot of help before this mission was over.

Sensing an opening in the quiet, Travers bubbled on. “Victor is a very skilled operative. If I were going, I’d be thrilled to have him along.”

“Then maybe you should go,” Simon said, staring down at the little man.

Travers laughed nervously.

“This is what I am saying—” Renaud began impatiently, but Travers waved him off as he checked his watch.
 

“We really don’t have time for this.”

Simon glared at Renaud and then looked to Elizabeth.
 

Renaud was an unknown, but while she didn’t exactly get warm and fuzzy from him, she didn’t sense anything villainous either. Not that he’d exactly be wearing a “Team Evil” t-shirt, if he were. For now, with all they had to face, they’d have to trust him. Some.

She nodded and Simon sighed heavily. “Let’s get on with it then.”

“Excellent!” Travers said and approached the keypad.
 

After he entered his code and the scan was complete, the gears embedded within the door began to unlock and the door swooshed open. The four of them stepped into an enclosed antechamber of sorts. The main door shut behind them.

Elizabeth’s heart began to race as the lights dimmed to near darkness.

“Don’t worry,” Travers said. “It’s just a scan. Making sure there’s nothing anachronistic.”

A long, thin blue beam of light washed over them and within a few seconds, the main lights came back up and the interior door opened. Travers led the way.
 

The main room was round, large and windowless. The ceiling was high, perhaps twenty feet and twice that for the diameter. In the center of the room was an enormous glass cylinder, ten feet across, divided vertically into two pieces. Each piece was embedded in a track on the floor. Their trunks were waiting for them inside it.

Simon walked over to it, but Elizabeth’s attention was on something else.

Three people were already inside the room waiting for them. Two were the ubiquitous, large, armed security types, but more unsettling was the third, a doctor with full paramedic gear.
 

“What’re they doing here?” Elizabeth asked, nodding toward the doctor and guards.

“Just precautionary,” Travers said.
 

Simon carefully touched the glass cylinder. “Another precaution?”

“Bullet-proof glass.”

At first, Elizabeth had thought it was all there to keep the wrong people from going, but, she realized, it was the opposite. It was all there in case the wrong people came back.
 

Renaud walked over to stand in the middle of the glass cylinder. He took out his watch and then looked up over Travers’ head.

“Time,” Renaud said, nodding toward the area above the door.

An immense screen hung over it. An image of the moon filled the black space. A clock had already begun counting down the time remaining in the eclipse.

“Yes,” Travers said. “Are you ready? Have everything you need?”

Simon looked back once at Elizabeth before nodding. He took her hand and they walked into the glass cylinder.

Once they were securely inside, Simon took out his watch.

Travers gave a signal and one of the guards pushed something on the wall behind him. The two pieces of the cylinder began to rotate toward each other.

Elizabeth’s heart sped and she tried to push out a calming breath, but her corset wouldn’t let her. She tightened her grip on Simon’s arm and laid her free hand on the trunks.

“Godspeed,” Travers said.

The glass pieces met and then shifted slightly, sealing themselves together with a
thwump
.

She looked up, suddenly hoping this wasn’t some sort of Star Wars trash compactor when she saw the tell-tale blue sparks of light. Renaud had activated his watch and snakes of light had already bound him. It was horrifying to see, and before she could finish her next thought, the blue lightning from Simon’s watch snaked up her arms and the world shook itself apart.

~~~

“Six bob for the week. Eight, if you be wantin’ dinner.”

Victor frowned at the heavy-set landlady and grumbled softly, complaining about the cost. He didn’t really mind, it was a fair enough price for the room which was, for the most part, clean and well-kept, but he knew her type. Mrs. McNally would feel better about renting to a Frenchman if he resisted, at least a little.
 

He dug into his pocket and pulled out a few coins, making sure not to pull out too many. Across the small room, he could feel her keen eyes already counting them.

Grunting in displeasure, he palmed the right number of coins and slipped the rest back into his pocket. He paused, as if weighing the wisdom of paying such an extravagant sum, and then closed the space between them and held out his hand.

She took the coins, a small, triumphant smile lighting her ruddy face for a moment.
 

She’d probably upped the price for him—a foreigner’s special—but as long as it wasn’t outrageous, something that would flag him as an easy mark, he was content to let her earn more than the pittance that was her usual lot.

The landlady slipped the coins into the pocket of her dress and then wiped her hands on her filthy apron. “Right then. Dinner’s at one, no later, mind you. I’m not your servant.”

Victor nodded, although he had no intention of eating with the other lodgers. Even in the best of hotels, he preferred to keep to himself.

The landlady gave one last look around the room, probably taking inventory should something come up missing or broken, and then left him alone.

The room and its furnishings were simple. A thin mattress covered with a coarse woolen blanket sat on a creaking iron and wooden bedstead along the far wall. In the corner, there was a small table and one chair. A dresser that had been worth something once, was now scuffed and water stained, the brass pulls on the drawers long-since traded out for knotted bits of rope. A water pitcher and chipped basin rested on top of it.

The lodgings were a far cry from the luxury of Mayfair where the Crosses were staying, but also just about as far from the horrors of the common lodging-houses where one room was shared by a dozen or more and twice as many rats.
 

Victor walked over to the small window and pushed aside the thin curtain. Overcast skies gave everything a dull, gray cast. Coal soot stuck to the sides of the buildings, darkening everything its fingers touched. The street below teemed with people slopping through the filth of life in the slums. Even through the closed window the stench was overpowering.
 

The room in Bishopsgate was a half-step up from most of the East End, but the street was still coated with a poisonous cocktail of animal and human waste. The urge to gag would pass soon enough, he knew. The human capacity to adapt, even, perhaps especially, to the worst of conditions always amazed and disturbed him. Of course, he thought, he was no different than the hundreds who streamed by his window, caught up in a current they could not break free from. His life wasn’t the one he’d thought he’d have, but then lives seldom were.

Letting his hand fall to his side, he turned away and the soot-stained curtain dropped back to cover the window. His path was a dark one, and this dark, dank city suited it well.

~~~

Elizabeth looked at herself in the vanity mirror in the bedroom of their hotel suite. Bits of soot colored her cheeks and she wiped them away with an embroidered handkerchief.

“It’s going to be impossible to stay clean,” she said.

Simon arched an eyebrow and nodded toward the hem of her dress.

Elizabeth twisted around as best she could and lifted the edge of her dress. It was already filthy. “Poop.”

“Probably,” Simon said.

Elizabeth made a sour face, wrinkled her nose and let her dress fall to the floor. This was going to take some getting used to.
 

They’d arrived in London at King’s Cross station. It was a hub of activity and a likely place to find travelers from America via Liverpool. Sadly, there was no sign of platform 9
3/4
.

At least something had gone right though. Their landing had gone blessedly unnoticed, but before Simon could even prepare for another clash with Victor Renaud, the man had said that he would contact them and then disappeared into the crowd. Simon was just as glad to be rid of him as Renaud was to be rid of them, but his departure left Elizabeth feeling uneasy.

She’d felt so much better when she knew Jack was coming along. At least he would have had their back. Renaud, she sensed, had no one’s back but his own.
 

She sighed heavily and Simon came to stand behind her.
 

“The hotel laundry can take care of it, I’m sure,” he said, misreading her worried expression.

Elizabeth smiled and stood. It wouldn’t do any good to worry about what might have been, irony aside, she thought. They were here now, and they had each other. She turned around and slipped her arms about his waist. His arms looped loosely around her in return.
 

Pushing herself up onto her toes, she kissed him.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“Does there have to be a reason?”