Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (163 page)

Like most dogs, wolfhounds eat their weight
in dog food every month. Mitch had never even considered joining a
gym, the weekly adventure of hauling kibble and daily task of
doling it out for a very interested Cooley - never mind walking the
amiable beast - more than enough aerobics for him.

Characteristically placid, wolfhounds are
often referred to as “gentle giants”. Loyal and protective, they
keep an eye on everyone they consider to be their personal
responsibility. Cooley was great with the kids, more than tolerant
of Jen’s tail-tugging. He lumbered after Jason on the little boy’s
many adventures and Mitch often felt that the dog was the best
sitter they could ever have.

But on this particular Monday morning,
Cooley was uncharacteristically riled. It was more than a general
sense that his “pack” was in jeopardy, he could smell trouble. With
canine certainty, the wolfhound knew that the neighbor with the
sunflowers posed a dangerous threat to his family.

He paced the length of the new fence,
restless at his confinement in the yard. Cooley shoved his nose
into the small gaps in the fence and could barely wedge it through,
let alone the rest of him. He pawed at the fence and jumped on it a
few times, but this time, the fence seemed inclined to stay
put.

But there was more than one way to get next
door. He couldn’t go through the fence or around it, he couldn’t
jump over the six foot height, but with some diligence he could go
under
it.

So, determined to save his family from dire
peril, Cooley settled in to dig at the back corner of the lot.
Unbeknownst to the dog, he was hidden from view by a particularly
big and dangerously prickly thistle.

It would take a long time for such a large
dog to dig a tunnel big enough to accommodate his size, but the
thistle would ensure that days passed before the time anyone
guessed what Cooley was up to.

And then it would be too late.

*

Much to Lilith’s relief, there was no line
of panting men at the bookstore that Monday afternoon. A pair of
teenagers giggled as they waited for her, an older woman with sad
eyes fiddled with her wedding ring.

And a very serious looking young man waited
quietly. He was so different from her usual customers that Lilith
thought at first he must not be waiting for her.

He was dressed simply but neatly, in jeans
and a white shirt, a black leather backpack at his feet, a sheaf
that looked to have been torn out of the yellow pages in his hand.
His hair was dark, his skin was fair. He was handsome but unaware
of it. He looked about the age to be in university, although he
dressed with the somber and well-pressed style of someone older. He
sat quietly, barely moving, something about the fathomless darkness
- and the steadiness - of his gaze making dread rise in Lilith’s
throat.

The bookstore owner was delighted to see
her. Ryan had decked her little table with fresh flowers and kept
saying how he hoped she’d enjoyed the chocolates. Lilith smiled and
thanked him, then beckoned to the teenager first in line. She
shuffled her cards, feeling the young man watch her and refusing to
consider why he was here.

She knew without doubt that he was
Rom
, the first
Rom
she had faced since all those
years ago. The first
Rom
who had ever sought her out. That
couldn’t be a good thing. Lilith had actively avoided her kind,
refusing to consider herself among their ranks.

Because she was not. It was decided and
done.

But the young man’s presence made her
nervous, all the same.

*

Mitch came out of his meeting, buoyed by
praise for his final copy on a recycling materials scam, to find
crisis ready and waiting.

Isabel waved a phone at him. “Hey, you know
that source you hung your story on?”

Mitch’s heart sank as he guessed what she
was going to say. “Don’t tell me.”

“
He called. He’s
rescinding. His lawyer says he’ll sue.” Isabel grimaced. “Mitch, he
sounds scared.”

Well, that wasn’t too improbable. Mitch had
sniffed out organized crime connections to this scam, but hadn’t
been able to substantiate them.

The managing editor spoke from behind Mitch.
“Davison, don’t lose this one. I’ve cleared the front page for
this.” He looked grim. “I want that story, one way or the
other.”

“
Yeah, me too.” Mitch
turned back to Isabel. “See if you can get him on the phone again.
Let me talk to him - we’ll try to set up a meeting.”

Isabel chewed her lip. “What if he says
no?”

“
Then I’ll find what I need
somewhere else,” Mitch affirmed, rummaging through the files on his
desk. “The story’s there and I’m not the only one who knows it.
That forensic accountant knew more than he told us, I knew it at
the time. I’ve got his card in here. And the security guard at the
plant wasn’t surprised. I’ll revisit everybody and go over it
again.”

Isabel’s eyes shone. “Wow! Can I tag
along?”

“
It’ll be a long
haul.”

“
But the closest I’ve been
to real reporting yet.” Isabel leaned both hands on his desk in her
appeal. “Please, Mitch, get me out the goddamn files.”

Mitch considered her for a moment and could
understand her frustration. And she could be a great help to him if
things were heating up. He looked to the managing editor, who
nodded subtle approval.

Mitch flicked the forensic accountant’s card
at Isabel. “Sweet talk him into a lunch meeting, just the three of
us. Tell him you’ll make it look like a date, he was worried before
and might be more worried now.” Mitch eyed her funky clothing
wryly. “But to make it look plausible, Isabel, you’re going to have
to change.”

*

Even though she sensed the truth, Lilith was
still shocked at his first words when he finally took the seat
opposite her.

“
Rom san?
” he asked
earnestly, his gaze searching, his pronunciation
meticulous.

Are you Rom?

Lilith caught her breath at the question,
her gaze flew to meet those eyes so like her own. She licked her
lips, then shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said flatly,
disliking the taste of the lie on her tongue.

But she had made her choice and she would
stick with it.

The boy heaved a sigh and frowned. “Neither
do I,” he confessed quietly and leaned back in his chair, “but my
grandmother told me to ask fortune tellers that until one answered
me.” He shoved a hand through his hair and looked suddenly very
young and burdened. He smoothed the yellow page listings on the
table and Lilith saw that he had torn out the section on Occult
Bookstores.

They were crossed out in succession, Ryan’s
- with its declaration of “Real Fortune Telling on Mondays!” being
the one he took a pencil to now.

Lilith couldn’t stop her question, although
she was certain hers was just a normal curiosity. “What’s
wrong?”

He shook his head and summoned a
half-hearted smile. “It’s really not your problem.”

Lilith smiled. “But it might make you feel
better to talk about it.”

“
You’re busy.”

Lilith indicated the lack of line behind
him, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Not now. Tell
me.”

He looked steadily into her eyes as though
considering whether he should do so, then abruptly nodded and
leaned closer. “It’s my grandmother.”

He swallowed and Lilith saw how deeply he
was troubled. She guessed the pair were close, that perhaps the
grandmother was not well, and felt sorry for boy opposite her. She
wondered if there was anyone else left in his family, and he almost
immediately answered her unspoken question.

“
She raised me since my
parents died and we used to talk all the time. But since she’s been
in the hospital, she seems to be forgetting English. She’s
stubborn, though, so maybe she just
refuses
to speak
it.”

Lilith watched his fingers tap nervously and
thought of another stubborn
Rom
grandmother she had known.
“What does she speak?” she asked, already fairly certain of the
answer.

“
Rom
,” he declared
and Lilith’s heart skipped. “Gypsy. She’s a Gypsy, I guess we all
are. But now, I can’t even understand her,” he confessed with
rising frustration. “No one ever taught me the language. It’s like
she’s pulled away to a place where I can’t reach her anymore. I
can’t help her, or explain what’s happening, what the doctors are
doing. She has to be scared.”

Lilith’s sympathetic heart twisted a little.
“But she must have told you something, otherwise you wouldn’t be
here.”

“
Yeah. She taught me that
question last weekend, told me to look for dark-haired, dark-eyed
fortune-tellers.” He smiled sadly. “She sent me on a search for a
Gypsy fortune-teller who could speak
Rom
to her. It’s the
only English she’s spoken in a month and she refused to understand
anything after that. The whole thing is nuts, it’s never going to
work, but I have to try.” He frowned and heaved a sigh in
frustration, his gaze flicking back to Lilith. “What else am I
going to do?”

Lilith studied him and saw more than he
probably wanted her to see. “She’s very ill.”

His lips tightened, and looked down at his
hands. “Yeah. Yeah, she is.” He shrugged and straightened,
deliberately looking at the torn pages once more. “But like I said,
it’s not your problem. Thanks for letting me dump a bit. Hey, do
you know where Mirvell Street is?”

“
It’s just west of here. It
runs south.”

But he wouldn’t find any
Rom
at the
occult store there, Lilith knew. Her conviction wavered ever so
slightly when she considered the difficulty of the task he had
taken on, no less his determination to chase down every lead.

“
Why don’t you give me your
name and a way to reach you?” she suggested, without ever intending
to do so. The boy looked up hopefully, but Lilith tried to keep her
words light. “You never know how things might come together - the
world works in mysterious ways.”

He smiled suddenly, then delved in his
backpack for a pen and paper. “Now, you sound like my grandmother,”
he commented. He bent to write out an address in a precise hand and
probably missed Lilith’s quick intake of breath.

Then, he thanked her and was gone, his
footsteps turning west when he left Ryan’s store.

Unfortunately Lilith couldn’t wipe the
exchange from her mind as easily as that. And she knew it wasn’t
her imagination that his sheet of paper seemed to generate an
insistent heat of its own from the depths of her pocket.

Obviously, she was just jangled from sharing
the story of his earlier demise with Mitch on Saturday night. That
must be the only explanation for any uncertainty that had crept
into her mind.

Because Lilith
knew
she could not do
this. There was no question of it. In her mind’s eye, Lilith saw
again the condemnation in a dozen pairs of dark eyes, etched in the
features of those she thought cared for her. The memory was
painfully vivid, now that she had dredged it up, and the ache of
rejection burned in her chest as though she had just been knifed.
Lilith had been judged, found unacceptable, and cast out by those
she loved.

She was
mahrime
, after all.

Time had not erased that. No doubt, this old
Rom
woman would reject her, too. To visit her would be
inviting a replay of that painful experience.

Lilith just couldn’t do it.

The Hermit card, though, separated itself
from the deck as she absently shuffled, and Lilith’s fingers
hovered over it. The man pictured there was elderly, like a
guardian in a fairy tale or a pilgrim seeking penitence.

Or like a wise teacher pointing out the
thread of meaning that might otherwise be missed in the great
tapestry of life.

Lilith thought of Dritta; she thought of a
stubborn
Rom
grandmother dying in the alien world of a
gadje
hospital. The prevalence of white alone would make her
crazy, white being considered a fiercely unlucky color by the
Rom
.

Lilith frowned when compassion coursed
through her and defiantly shuffled The Hermit back into the deck.
She even managed to smile for the next person who stepped up to her
table.

*

The whole story fell apart in Mitch’s hands.
Someone had been busy doing some major intimidation. He didn’t much
care where the leak was, he just wanted to get to the truth and get
it on the front page.

His source had not only clammed up, but
disappeared.

The longer it took to confirm his story
through other sources, the greater the chance that the competition
would catch a whiff of what was going on. Mitch met with the
managing editor at close of business and that man made the
call.

“
We don’t have enough to
run on, not for our reputation,” he said with a frown. “You’ve got
another day, Davison. But at four tomorrow, I don’t want to be
disappointed.” He shook a finger at Mitch. “This is good stuff. I
want it.”

Mitch nodded and ducked out of his boss’s
office. He eyed his watch, knew he had to pick up the kids. He
stuffed every file he could imagine was remotely pertinent into his
briefcase and closed up his laptop.

Isabel looked on enquiringly.

“
I’ve got one more day and
it’s in here somewhere,” Mitch informed her grimly. “I’ll find
another way to get this story, if it takes me all goddamned
night.”

But when Mitch got into the office the next
morning, desperately short of clues and REM sleep, the managing
editor was waiting for him.