Some Enchanted Dream: A Time Travel Adventure (Seasons of Enchantment Book 2) (20 page)

Tara squeezed her eyes tight and thought of a place that was not high in the sky, but rather, close to earth, safe. She thought of the Pont-Neuf bridge stretching over the Seine. The moment she saw the picture in her mind and wished herself there, the ground disappeared beneath her feet. Her heart seized and her breath left her lungs as she clawed the air and then clung to Mick's sturdy form as they took off from the roof.

A sudden crunch beneath her heels made her gasp and open her eyes.

She and Mick stood at the bridge, unharmed as people walked past them without concern, as if they had not just appeared out of thin air. She leaned over the stone wall. The serene waters of the Seine were flowing below them. The steady clip-clop-clop of horses pulling an omnibus full of people past them drowned out the wild drum beat of her heart.

"An easy mark," Mick commented. "And it took little effort to transport me with you."

"You helped me."

"No. You achieved this on your own."

"
I
moved
you
? All by myself?"

"Yes. Now think of how that can work as a weapon. You are seized by a darkling Fey. You think of a place and leave your adversary there, stranding them in another country or another continent, removing the threat for a time. If they have wings, and most will, they can fly back, but if you can send them across the globe they will not return easily. They would need to use human transportation to return to the fight, and that could take weeks."

"What about
time
?" Her heartbeat stilled. "I did it once, when I was a child. I stranded the Fey who kidnapped me in another time, far from his family and those of his clan."

"No, you will never do that again!" Mick's caution had the appeal of a parental restriction, making Tara long to break it. "You stranded yourself in the process. You were lost to us for centuries."

"I was four years old, or four decades old," she waved her hands open before her in a futile gesture. "However you measure time in Fey development. I am not a child now."

His sharp rush of breath mirrored a cat's warning hiss. "The constant need to remind me you are not a child contradicts your claim.
Learn to control your gift
. Do not argue with me, your elder. Learn first, then use the gift successfully, and we will see how much you can accomplish." 

"Prove it," she muttered, annoyed with him for his arrogance. "You want me to prove it."

"Do not attempt time travel, not on your own." He grasped her wrist in an iron grip. "Hear me, Tara. You must learn to traverse through the physical plane with success before you attempt to move through dimensions of time. What if you were separated from Adrian forever because you couldn't return to his place in time? Time Travel is not easy or precise."

What an awful point to make
! The thought was crushing, living in another time, unable to come back to Adrian here, that would be a horrible punishment for both of them. It would be worse than death, knowing the other was alive in another time and you couldn't reach them.

"Choose another spot. Across the city." Mick surveyed the landscape with his hand shielding his eyes from the mid-day sun. "Over there, the cathedral. Move us to that south bell tower. Do you see it?" he pointed, "see the ledge just there, a walkway, focus on that."

"Yes." Tara took his hand. He placed his arm about her waist for security. She focused her mind on being on that stone walkway he pointed out. A swift whoosh of air made her grasp Mick more tightly, as she feared falling out of the sky. That sensation was over as quickly as it came, like dreams of falling where you woke suddenly to find you were in a safe bed.

They were standing outside the south tower on a little walkway, right next to a gargoyle.

"
Oh, my God
!" Tara let go of her brother and touched the cool stone of the ledge hemming them in. She gazed at the breath-stealing architecture. The steeply slanted green roof of the cathedral below would be impossible to land on, as they would slide right off. Not to mention that sharp gothic spikes pointing up into the sky along the ridge pole. Being impaled on one of those would be a gruesome way to go.

As she studied the magnificent building, Tara realized it was no easy task to land precisely on the walkway as he'd directed and not the spire, or the steep slanted roof. 

"I did this?" She glanced at her brother and then back at the life-sized pale green saint statues ascending diagonally to the spiked gothic tower in the center of the building. Uncertainty grew as she looked to the bridge across the city where they had been just moments before. "You didn't help me?" She turned to her brother to study his features, hoping there was no guile in his crystal blue eyes.

"I did not interfere," Mick answered. "Practice is the key. Think of a place and go there, but remain in the city. Try again. Move to a place and return here to me. Five minutes. Go." 

His self assured tone and the fact that he had his arms crossed about his chest again screamed domineering older brother. And yet, Tara found his challenge fun, and his willingness to let her move without him bolstered her confidence. It was like training for softball, to compare it to a normal childhood experience. Her older brother was in the back yard of Paris, training her to use her gift of teleportation.

Tara thought of the Louvre. She focused her mind on the stairway leading inside the museum. Instantly, she was there. Alone. Mick was not with her. That was creepy. She looked about at the swelling crowds as people moved past and she felt a little scared, like a little kid on a school field trip who suddenly realizes the bus has left without them.

Okay, you made it here alone. You did it. Now, go back to the bell tower at Notre Dame.

Tara wobbled as the stones beneath her feet disappeared. She staggered forward again when the ground solidified beneath her feet.

Notre Dame Cathedral loomed before her. She was on the ground, not up on the south tower terrace. Mick waved down at her from high above.

Point taken
.
Practice
.

*  *  *

Adrian walked out of the bank with his jaw clenched tight. The bank officer was an arse

Sure, the fellow agreed amicably, he might be Lord Dillon's grandson, but until he provided some paperwork, be it birth certificate, a deposit receipt, or a letter of introduction from someone in the city of Paris--a French citizen who could vouch for his identity, the funds could not be touched.

As it was, they were in a closed account that had become marked as inactive after decades of no one responding to their letters on his grandfather's end. The bank manager had brought Adrian into his office, and they had a long, but futile discussion on the matter.

He was stuck, sunk, nearly dead broke.

His meager purse, plus the extra Dan contributed to their family coffers now and again did not promise a long and prosperous life in ahead of them. They would be solvent for a short time but food cost money, and so did lodging, coal to heat the apartment, and so on.

He still would buy a modern pistol.  That would be worth the sacrifice. Worth the investment. Perhaps just one, not a matched pair. One gun capable of shooting six rounds before reloading was still a better than an old one shot pistol from his day. 

He crossed the boulevard, and headed home. Instead of taking the omnibus back he decided to save the two sous fare and walk the three miles back to Montmartre.

It wasn't fair to Tara, this penury existence. She was fey born. She deserved to be kept in style. It was an insult to her, in his mind, to not be able to give her the lovely things she deserved as his wife.

Beneath his rationalization, fear lingered.

Would she tire of him, now that he'd fallen so low?

Would she seek another mate, one capable of giving her the things she desired? 

He married an enchanted being. He had to keep her well, or risk losing her.

Chapter Sixteen

"Come on, Artie, wake up!" Dan shook the fellow, to no avail.

Arthur wasn't dead, he knew that much. He was barely conscious. He stared up at the ceiling with wonder, as if seeing things that were not there. It looked as if he were in a trance. This wasn't natural. It wasn't like the quick witted man he knew.

He'd stopped at the man's apartment to talk to him after his night with Gisele. He needed to talk to someone, and since Lord Dillon thought Gisele was spoiled goods, he would rather talk to Arthur about the situation. He intended to set up an evening of entertainment for himself and Artie; Absinthe and dinner, and then some rounds to the clubs to see the dancers and find a good game of cards.

When Arthur hadn't answered the door, Dan convinced the landlord on the first floor to open the door for him, with a couple of francs to aid that decision. He found Arthur flat on his back in his bed, arms out, as if he'd been murdered. Only he wasn't dead, he appeared to have been heavily drugged.

"I'll be back," he told the landlord. "I'm getting the doctor."

The man's face soured. "You'd better have money to pay a physician, M'sieur, as this one doesn't have the funds. He's past due on his rent. I gave him the rest of the month to come up with the funds or he's out."

"How kind of you," Dan commented, and hurried down the narrow stairs to the street. "Leave the door open, please. I'll be back in a few moments." He hoped that was true. It wasn't more than a ten minute walk to their lodgings, but he wasn't sure if Doc Riley was at home. The brothers seemed to disappear regularly to find their own distractions.

He trudged down the narrow street in a hurry, feeling a little winded by the time he arrived at their building on the Rue Lepic. The stairs were the next to be conquered, all in a quest to get word to a doctor. Jesus, what he wouldn't give for a cell phone about now.

Once he made it up the four flights, Dan pounded on the door of the apartment across from the one he shared with Tara and Adrian. "Riley, Mick, open up. I need help."

No answer. He swore, and turned to his own lodgings, peered in, and noted that it, too, was empty. Dan turned, and was just about to jaunt back down the stairs and down the street to Arthur's again when Riley called down from the stoop above.

"Is Tara unwell?" The russet head gazed down at him with concern.

"No, it's my friend. He's sick, he seems to be drugged, it's like he's in some friggin' trance. Can you come help me?"

The young man moved down the stairway easily. Dan envied the man his youthful joints and lungs that didn't trouble themselves over the exertion of a flight of stairs. Oh, to be twenty eight again.

"I will just retrieve my coat and my bag." Doc Riley disappeared into his room and emerged a moment later.

When they arrived at Arthur's studio Doc Riley bent over the man, lifted an eyelid, and then sniffed Arthur's breath. He seemed perturbed. Dan wanted to question the young man on his findings, but having worked on patients as a surgical nurse and an EMT in the his own time, Dan knew how annoying it was to have family playing the fifty questions routine when you were trying to ascertain the patient's condition.

Dan glanced about the studio, noting the food decaying on the table near the window, the leaky roof with a pail to capture the drips, and the lack of cheer or warmth to the Spartan surroundings. Art never said he was in straightened funds, but then, being English, he likely wouldn't. The way Art went through money at cabarets and their gaming haunts, ordering drinks all around and being a jolly English fellow, one would think he was well set up.

He moved to the table, and noted the letter lying open on it. The missive was from Arthur's father, the Earl. It basically was a grow up or starve letter, saying dear old dad would no longer fund his youngest son's degenerate lifestyle of painting harlots and drinking himself to death, that all funds were cut off from this date on. This date being three week ago. It was the old come home to the family, or starve in Paris trying to find yourself spiel. Dan knew little about his companion's family, aside from the distaste he heard in Art's voice whenever he mentioned his rich father.

Arthur hadn't become desperate, had he? He wouldn't try to do himself in with laudanum, an opium derivative that seemed as easy to buy around here as aspirin was in the future? Dan hadn't seen Art for a couple of days. Their last night out, Arthur had been jovial and full of enthusiasm regarding his search for the Green Fairy, the actual fairy mind you, not the euphemism for the drink named in her honor. He claimed to have found a new lead in his passionate search.

Emerald eyes glanced up at Dan with alarm. "You say this man is your friend?"

"Yes, I've been out about town with him many times." Dan lifted his hands in a casual gesture. He felt a little defensive by Riley's tone, and he didn't know why. The doctor seemed angry. "We've enjoyed a glass of spirits now and again at the cafes, is all. Arthur is a generous soul. He's a quick wit, a writer and a talented artist. He actually sells most of his artwork to the tourists in the park. He could be a great man someday."

The doctor gave a curt nod. "Look about, see if you can find any bottles he drank from recently. I need a sample to confirm my suspicions." Riley loosened Arthur's shirt collar and was listening to his chest with a stethoscope. "We should move him. Can you carry him to our flat? He'll be safer with us."

"What do you mean,
safer
," Dan demanded, concern creeping about his heart.

"He has the same symptoms I've noted in other victims. Let's hope he isn't too far gone."

"What do you mean by victims?"

"This man has been slowly and deliberately poisoned."

Mick gestured to the man behind the counter of the dress shop, urging Tara to step forward and state her need.  "Go on, lass. I've told you how it's done a dozen times, and didn't we have a good lunch from my example?"

She cleared her throat and swallowed her misgivings. This sounded so simple, to just walk into a shop and state the obvious, that she needed new dresses. She saw Mick do it, at the cafe, the chocolate shop, and then at the bakery. Still, she couldn't believe it was possible to acquire items from those about her just by asking for them.