Downtime (50 page)

I couldn’t help asking. “Knows what?”

“What’s important. And I think now you do too.”

“I’m a slow learner,” I said with a rueful twist of my mouth.

“We learn when we’re ready.” She put down her fork, her own dessert half-eaten, and took up the photo again. “Will you be able to visit?”

“I don’t know. It’s a rough trip.” I couldn’t tell her it was a trip I might not survive. “You want to keep the picture?”

“May I?” She brightened. “Why don’t you leave some more photos and maybe a few letters in a safe place for me? I suppose your father will let me know how things turn out for you. But I would so like a few keepsakes. Could you?”

I was hesitant to make any promises, but I wanted to give her something before I left. I noted she had not alluded to the idea that I might be the one to eventually tell her just how my life with Ezra had gone. Not even seeing the big picture shielded a person from the hurt of losing someone in the flesh. “Remember the board I hid those cigarettes under in the storm cellar?”

Her eyes widened. “I’d have to sneak back onto the property.”

“Nah. Just tell them you left some keepsakes behind. They’ll let you dig them out.”

I rode back to the boutique with her, wanting to leave her among friends. As I headed for the airport, I had a typical one-sided conversation with my dad—only this time, I was the one doing the talking. I asked him to look after her and keep her in good cheer when she missed me the most. Maybe he wasn’t as thick-headed as he’d been in life—as we’d both been—but I wanted to make sure he remembered. And I tacked on a reminder that I loved him too.

As surreal as it felt to leave my familiar life behind, the prospect of being with Ez again had me in a buzz of anticipation and excitement that grew with every mile passed. The flight back across the pond was damned near interminable. I dozed intermittently and dreamed of him, then woke to see lush green far below and the gleam of tall buildings in the distance. London, the most beautiful city in the world…

What Leonard Gladstell would have given to hear me admit that.

Thirty minutes to closing, I slipped in past the crowds heading out of the museum. The dreamlike sense that had cocooned me for the last several hours was yielding to ever-increasing anxiety. What made me think whoever had pulled me back the first time would let me return? I was asking for a hell of a lot. What if the answer was no?

“Come on, Sully,” I muttered as I pushed open the door to the storage room. “Look, I know my track record stinks. But you know me well enough to know….” I sucked in a breath, refusing to accept that I was only talking to thin air. I sat for some time as the noise of people coming and going dwindled to a deep cavernous quiet broken only by the lone shuffle of a security guard checking for stragglers.

Dead tired, I decided I needed a good night’s sleep. Maybe Sully would give the matter some thought and maybe tomorrow morning….

I checked into a nearby hotel and dropped into bed without bothering to undress. The brutal buzz of an alarm clock woke me at eight and I lay in bed, still jet-lagged, and wondered what the hell I was going to do. Had Sully heard me? Had anyone? Was there any way to convince them to let me slip back to 1888?

Maybe I needed to make a more direct appeal.

I closed my eyes and willed him near. “Ezra? Any chance you can hear me? And help me? I’m trying to get back to you.” An unexpected lump in my throat choked me into silence. I shoved away the blankets and shot out of bed. Goddamnit, I was going back. If I had to spend day after day in that musty little room until someone up there got the message, I would.

I showered, dressed, then grabbed breakfast on my way back to the museum. The day passed with excruciating slowness as I tortured every spirit within earshot with a rambling monologue, appealing to Sully, Ezra, my father, and anyone else with even the smallest influence.

It all got me approximately nowhere. I’d heard the old saw about God sometimes answering prayers with a firm no. But if this was a no, He was going to have to speak up a little. In fact He was going to have to slam me down hard, because I wasn’t giving up. When the museum opened the next day, I was the first one through the door, ready to plead, beg, grovel, and bribe, if necessary. By late afternoon, it was sinking in that this might be some sort of object lesson intended to impress upon me the error of my ways. Someone up there wanted me to learn what a dumb jerk I could be. Okay, I’d learned it. I didn’t like to think I’d have to spend the rest of my life paying for it.

But maybe that was the case. Another day gone and I was no closer to finding my way back. I went to bed earlier, though after dozing off and on in the storage room I wasn’t particularly tired. I wanted to fall back into the dreams I’d had lately, to spend some time with him—the only time I’d ever have with him again, it was beginning to seem. But the dream that came was more a nightmare as I walked down a snowy road in the middle of nowhere, Ezra far ahead of me and oblivious to my presence. Wrapped in his coat, he carried a book under his arm, and despite my calls, never turned once to look in my direction. I woke in the dark and buried my face in the pillow, refusing to consider that someone was once again trying to send me a message.

On my way back to the museum, I stopped at the library to get my hands on photocopies of half a dozen newspapers surrounding the date of the next murder. I didn’t expect to find anything helpful in them, but I figured I might as well have something to read while I waited.

Back in the dusty storage room that had become the center of my universe, I tried to think about anything other than that dream. It wouldn’t leave me alone. Perhaps I was viewing it in my present single-minded context of wanting to get back to him, but the dream had seemed so real and—deliberate. Why had he been walking away so determinedly? Was he trying to tell me he didn’t want me back? Was Sully trying to tell me I simply couldn’t go back, no matter how much I wanted it?

“Man, the guys with the nets are going to be coming for me any minute.” I slumped down and stared at the dust motes floating in the light under the door. It was a light intermittently broken as museum visitors walked past, none of them in the slightest aware that a lunatic was sitting in their midst. “I’m not leaving, Sully. I’m not going anywhere unless it’s back to him. Got me?”

Whether Sully got me or not was left to my imagination. I wondered if I had any chance of finding my way back on my own. The book was probably still out there somewhere, a little more torn and faded, but still waiting on the shelf for anyone who wanted a little jaunt through the ages. There was bound to be some sort of local witches association who’d do the casting if the price was right. Only problem was, I had a pretty strong sense that if the higher-ups didn’t want a bit of hocus-pocus to work, it wouldn’t. Whatever had moved me back a century was something more than a circle of warm bodies and a few words in Latin.

The fact of the matter was, if they were going to let me go back, they’d have done it by now. I’d blown it. Worse still, I’d hurt Ezra in the bargain. Hurt him in a way I hadn’t wanted to think about. I thought about it now—thought until I knew I had to get out of the museum before the cops found me in a sobbing heap and threw me out.

I wandered into the museum proper, trying to adjust to the noise and flow of the real world—my real world. But I didn’t leave the museum. Instead I made my way back to the books, with a slim hope of finding one in particular. I’d given Ezra a lot of shit for not knowing the title, but I couldn’t remember it myself, now. It was a needle in one immense haystack.

Browsing on the chance it would turn up, I came across a familiar name. Montague, James Francis. My curiosity got the better of me and I started searching for information on the people I’d met, compelled to know if any of them had found some sort of happily ever after.

Jem hadn’t. Succumbing to mental illness, he had filled his pockets with stones and walked into the Thames. Though I hadn’t predicted a happy end for him, the reality shocked me. He had seemed a complex, intelligent man still in search of himself. A century later, he might have survived his demons.

Speaking of demons…. Another familiar name cropped up after a short search: Blanchard. George himself was mentioned by name, with no other personal information. Then my eye caught the name of Charlotte Eleanor Blanchard Weatherley, Mrs….

She had married and, judging by the photograph, not long after splitting with Ez. Plump and smiling, her curling dark hair still untouched by gray, she stood beside a bearded fellow with warm eyes and the faintest hint of a smile on his own lips. Around them sat a litter of five kids, all bright, mischievous-looking pups. I wished I could tell Ezra. He would have been happy and relieved to know she hadn’t suffered their broken engagement very long.

As for Sid, anything of him might be contained in one of the newspapers around November ninth—the date of the Ripper’s next murder—if I’d even affected history that much. The November tenth paper reported on Mary Kelly’s murder in stark detail, concluding with a report that an attempt to track the Ripper with dogs had failed. About to move ahead to the next issue for any indication of Sid’s recapture, I noticed an article with the headline, “Death in Bloomsbury House Fire”. It took me a long minute to force my gaze from the headline to the article itself, three tiny paragraphs which took all of ten seconds to read. The house had burned to the ground but only one resident was home at the time, a Mr. Ezra Glacenbie, the only son of Sir William and Lady Edith—

I could see him walking away from me in the dream, never turning, just moving steadily onward, farther and farther beyond reach. Now I knew. He was going to die when morning came. I stared at the words on the page while the inescapable fact of his death taunted me—shredded me to pieces with the knowledge that I was helpless to stop it. A voice from faraway announced that the museum was closing, and the sick fear in my gut burst into all-encompassing panic. This was my last chance. I couldn’t leave—

I wouldn’t. Forcing myself to breathe, I got to my feet and reeled blindly back to the storage room. It was the closest I could get to him and it was so goddamned far away. I shut myself in and dropped into the darkest corner, to let come whatever was welling up like a tidal wave inside me. The gasp that echoed in the gloom made me clamp my mouth shut. My throat might be too tight for breath, but the pain surging up from my gut had no problem erupting from my lips in wordless grief. Every minute that took me from November eighth to November ninth took Ezra to his last morning on earth. I had walked away from the life I wanted, the love I needed, and I was paying the price. But I wasn’t paying alone. “Sully, are you here? Listen to me. I’ve got to tell you something. You’ve got to listen.”

I had to believe he could hear. I had to know someone could. “I’ve fucked it all up. And I don’t expect you guys to fix it. Not now. I’m still here so—I get the message, all right? But listen. Why the hell are you pulling him out of the game so soon? Don’t you think he deserves better? Don’t you think Kathleen and Derry deserve better?” This would kill them. I couldn’t think about it, not now. “Whatever I’ve asked you for in the past, Sully, it’s all been minor shit compared to this. And I’m not going to ask for anything ever again, I swear to God—
not anything
—if you’ll just take care of this one thing for me. It’s all I want.”

Was he listening? Could he help, even if he was? “Sully, just one thing, all right? Let him live.”

Silence again, a steady companion of mine for the past three days. Of course I was so damned dense that Sully could have been standing in front of me, yelling in my face, and I’d have never known it. “Just give him the chance to find some happiness, and I won’t ask for anything else, if I live to be a hundred.” Not that I was planning to. Not without Ezra.

I knew in the morning I would check the newspapers and whatever I found there would be the final decree on Ezra’s fate. As soon as the museum closed, I intended to look for the book. Chances were I couldn’t go back even if I found it; but in the handful of hours left, I could do nothing else. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t think I could ever sleep again, in terror of dreams that might for a few brief seconds make me believe he was alive and well.