IT HAPPENED TOO FAST FOR ETTA TO EVEN SCREAM. One moment she was falling; the next, her arm was caught and yanked in its socket as two hands closed around her wrist and dragged her toward the pale exterior of the house. Her cheek slammed against the rough stone, and she squeezed her eyes shut as the scaffolding began to shudder, folding in on itself and collapsing down onto the old-fashioned cars parked on the street below.
“Reach up, will you?” the young man said, the words strained. Etta shook her head. Her wounded shoulder was too stiff, and the whole length of it, from neck to fingertip, felt like it was filled with scorching, sunbaked sand.
Instead, he released her wrist with one hand and reached down to grab her nightgown. There was a loud grunt overhead as he heaved her up. Etta’s feet scrabbled against the wall. She didn’t breathe again until her elbows were braced on the windowsill. Then she was spilling through it, onto the young man and the carpet below.
She rolled off him and onto her back as soon as she landed. Her whole body sang with pain and adrenaline, and it was several long moments before her heart steadied enough for Etta to hear anything over its frantic rhythm.
“Well, that was exciting. I’ve always wanted to rescue a damsel in distress, and you’ve given me twice the fun on that front.”
Etta cracked open an eye, turning her head toward the voice. Next to her, propped up on his elbow, the young man was making an appraising, appreciative study of her. She pushed herself upright and scooted back against the desk to put some much-needed distance between them.
He was young—her age, or a few years older, with short, chestnut-colored dark hair brightened by streaks of red. It was mussed to the point of standing on end, and Etta had the horrifying realization that she really had gripped it for leverage when she’d tumbled back into the house. His shirt was open at the collar and inside out, as if he’d picked it up and thrown it on without a second look. He scratched at the shadow of scruff along his jaw, studying her with piercing light blue eyes that warmed with some unspoken joke.
His voice…those eyes.
Ironwood.
Etta pulled herself to her feet, but her path was blocked by the desk. He’d claimed they were with the Thorns, which could only be true if he’d defected from Cyrus Ironwood’s ranks and joined theirs. Or if he was a prisoner, same as her.
Or it would make him a liar. But if this was the truth, then…Etta was exactly where she needed to be.
With the people who had stolen the astrolabe from her.
“I suppose you gave me a bit of a fright, I can be man enough to admit that—”
“Where am I?” she asked, interrupting him.
He seemed startled by her ability to speak, but he stood and retrieved a glass of some amber liquid from a corner table for her. “You sound as terrible as you look, kiddo. Have a sip.”
She stared at it.
“Oh, you’re no fun,” he said with a little pout. “I suppose you’ll want water instead. Wait here and be quiet—can’t raise the alarm just yet, can we?”
Etta wasn’t sure what that meant, but she complied all the same, watching as the young man walked to the door and stuck his head out into the hall.
“You, there—yes, you—bring me a glass of water. And don’t bloody well spit in it this time—you honestly think I’m not well versed enough in that fine art to notice?”
The response was immediate and irritated. “I’m not your damned servant.”
So there are guards after all. The only question was whether they were protecting him, or protecting themselves from him.
“I do believe the official decree from your master and commander was, ‘Give the dear boy what he wants.’ This dear boy wants water. And make it snappy. Pep in your step and all that. Thanks, old chum.”
Etta’s lip curled back. Definitely an Ironwood. And, by the sound of it, definitely working with the Thorns.
“I’m not your—” The young man shut the door on the response and leaned back against it with a pleased little smirk.
“They’re such a serious bunch that it’s all too easy to rile them up,” he whispered to her with a wink. “You and I will have the best fun together now that you’re here.”
She glared back. Unlikely.
After a moment the door popped open and a hand thrust itself in with a glass of cloudy-looking water. The instant the young man took it, the door slammed shut. This time, Etta heard the lock click from the outside.
“You use your old bathwater?” the young man shouted through the wood.
“You’d be so lucky!” came the reply.
He was still muttering as he crossed the room again and handed it to her. It was tinged a putrid brown, with a few suspicious particles floating in it.
Seeing her face, he said, “Sorry, the water situation is none too good after the earthquake, as you can imagine. No one’s gotten sick from it.” And then, after she’d already taken a sip, he added, “Yet.”
The water did have an odd taste—a little metallic, maybe, a little dirty too—but she downed it in two quick gulps. Her hands and arms were still trembling as they tried to recover from the strain.
“Where am I?” she demanded. “When?”
“San Francisco,” he said. “October 12, 1906. You’ve been out a number of days….”
Etta’s heels seemed to sink further into the rug as the weight of his words slammed into her. Thirteen days. She’d lost thirteen days. Nicholas could be anywhere. Sophia could be anywhere. And the astrolabe…
“We were briefly acquainted in the middle of the Texas desert, just after you were spat out by a passage. You might remember?”
“Are you looking for a thank-you?” Etta asked.
“Don’t I deserve one? You are damn lucky we were orphaned through the same passage. I saved you from both the nearby guardian and the coyotes circling nearby, waiting for you to croak. In fact, I’d like to think that if it weren’t for me, the boss man would be lowering your tattered remains into the ground.”
That confirmed her suspicion, at least. Some change must have been made to the timeline that orphaned all the travelers born after that time. Etta closed her eyes. Took a steadying breath through her nose.
“What changed?”
“What changed—oh, you mean the timeline? Judging by the party they neglected to invite me to, the timeline’s shifted the way they were hoping it would. The dimwits running this joint said something about Russia losing but winning. Drunken nonsense. Why we’re still in scenic post-earthquake San Francisco is anyone’s guess, though. Stay with these people long enough and, believe me, they’ll show you the armpit of every century.”
“You haven’t even tried asking them, have you?” Etta asked, unimpressed. “What year?”
His look was lightly scolding. “I told you. 1906.”
She swallowed her noise of irritation. “No, I mean, what year was it in Texas?”
“I’m not entirely sure I should say—”
Etta lunged forward, barely catching the words burning the tip of her tongue before they had the chance to singe him. He wasn’t going to keep the last common year from her—that was the only way she could figure out how to retrace her steps to Damascus, and to Palmyra.
“Oh ho—!” He stood and backed away from her. “You’ve got that wild look in your eyes like you did just before you bopped me on the nose. Believe me, they’ve removed everything that can be used as a weapon.”
Etta looked down at the glass in her hand, then back at him, one brow arching. “I’ve gotten pretty creative over the past few weeks. I think I can handle one minor Ironwood.”
“Minor?” he shot back, his voice wavering between incredulity and outrage. “Don’t you know who I am?”
“No. You were so busy congratulating yourself, you never got around to making introductions,” Etta said. “Though I take it you know who I am?”
“Everyone knows who you are,” he muttered, sounding annoyed. “How far I’ve fallen that I actually have to introduce myself.”
He placed one arm behind his back and the other across his waist, giving her a mocking little bow. “Julian Ironwood, at your service.”
HER DISBELIEF MUST HAVE BEEN SPLASHED ACROSS HER FACE, because his smile shifted, becoming sardonic. Clearly not the reaction he had been expecting.
Julian Ironwood? Etta let out a small, lifeless laugh. Time travel had already presented a number of brain-bending possibilities—meeting an eighteen-year-old version of the violin instructor she’d known from the moment she was born, to name only one. But, surprise, experiences like that didn’t make it any easier to come face-to-face with the dead. Etta tried to keep her expression neutral, knowing that staring at him in horror was going to raise some flags in his mind.
Nicholas had warned her repeatedly about the dangers of telling anyone their fate, that knowing how and when they would die could affect the choices a person made, and potentially, the timeline. Alice had given her an out, had specifically asked her not to say, but now…
The guilt felt familiar as it pooled in her heart. Etta bit her lip. It was just…what were the chances of meeting Nicholas’s brother, and here, of all places? And why hadn’t Nicholas mentioned that Julian had been held at some point by the Thorns?
“Either my adorably sadistic grandfather has done something terrible to you, or you’re about to inform me that I’ve died by—rather stupidly, if I say so myself—falling off a mountain,” he said. “Those seem to be the only two reactions I get these days.”
“You—” Etta sputtered, whirling back around. “I didn’t mean to—it’s just—”
“Calm down, will you? You’re going to give yourself the vapors for no good reason,” he said. “As you can see, I am not dead.”
“Wait…” she began, coming closer to better study his face. His eyes were the same icy shade of blue as Cyrus’s, and she could detect, under the scruff and grin, the same high cheekbones and long, straight nose that age had tempered on the old man’s face. Julian also seemed to have the Ironwood affinity for grappling for control of every conversation, no matter how short.
“You’re alive,” Etta finally managed to get out. “You…you didn’t die after all?”
He grinned, enjoying the conversation, and motioned down to his body. “Still in one piece. The luck of the devil, as old Grandpops used to say. Rather odd, that, considering he is the devil—”
“What happened?” she interrupted.
He gave her an infuriating grin. “Tell me what you think happened.”
Etta, with patience she had no idea she possessed, managed to tamp down her temper long enough to say, “There was a storm….You slipped on the path leading up to the monastery, Taktsang Palphug—”
“Did Grandpops really give the world that much detail?” Julian asked, flattening his hair with his hand. “He’s usually so quick to defend the family’s honor, but I guess even he couldn’t resist making me sound like a right idiot.”
There was a sharp undercurrent to the words that seemed at odds with his jocular tone. Etta studied him again—the slouching posture, the unkempt clothes, the glint in his eyes she’d originally taken as mischief—and wondered which side of him was the truth, and which he’d simply made a home in.
“I thought he would have…” He kept pacing, but this time turned his eyes to the floor. “Did he…I never heard anything about a memorial or the like…?”
Etta’s brows rose. “I don’t know. I’m assuming.”
“It’s not that it matters to me,” he said quickly, shaping the words in the air with his hands, “but it’s sort of…anticlimactic to disappear into a puff of snow and mist. A chap wants to know that—you know, actually, it doesn’t matter. None of it really matters.”
“Stop—stop pacing, you’re making me nervous,” Etta said. “Can you stand still for one second and actually explain this to me?”
He popped himself up onto the corner of the grand desk, folding his hands in his lap. Within seconds, his bare feet were swinging, drumming against the leg of it, and Etta realized she’d asked for the impossible. Not only did he not shut up, he couldn’t seem to burn off enough energy to stop moving.
“In that instance, the Thorns were also responsible for orphaning me,” Julian said. “Three years ago, they used a passage to New York in 1940 to set a fire at the New York World’s Fair, hitting at Grandfather’s business interests in that period. At the same time, I happened to be stupidly falling down a mountainside in Bhutan. Since I was born in 1941, I was kicked through the passages to 1939, which was, at that point—”
“The last common year between the old timeline and the new one,” Etta finished. Between tracking the timeline, the collection of years at the mercy of the travelers’ actions, and each traveler’s personal life that they lived straight through, even when they were jumping between centuries, she thought her brain might explode. “But I was born after 1940, too, and I wasn’t orphaned when that change occurred.”
“Then the change must have been confined to that year, and not rippled past 1941. I’m sure you’ve heard this a thousand times by now, but you know how the timeline is about inconsistency.”
Etta did know. It had self-corrected as if passing over a speed bump, instead of the road completely diverging. Interesting.
“At least that time I got spat out in the Maldives. Made for quite the vacation. But by the time I located the necessary passages and resurfaced, I caught news of my supposed death and decided I might as well make the most of it.”
“And it never occurred to you once—once—over the past few years that you might, you know, tell someone that you were alive?”
Not Nicholas? Not Sophia? Not any other member of his family?
Julian pushed away from the desk. He moved to the bookshelves, dragging his fingers along the beveled spines of the books as he made his way around the room. It was like watching a cat pace in front of a window, restless and watchful.
If she hadn’t heard the words leave Nicholas’s mouth, she would never have believed they were related at all. It went beyond their looks. Where Nicholas moved in assured, long strides, even when he was uncertain of where he was going, Julian had a kind of agitated undercurrent to his movements. He didn’t have Nicholas’s height, either, and his body hadn’t been honed and chafed by the hard work of life on a ship. Julian’s words fell over each other, as if fighting over which got to escape first, while Nicholas took careful measure of each and every word he said, knowing how they might be used against him. Julian seemed to be bursting at his seams, and Nicholas had been so careful, so steady, in holding his feelings in check.
Because he had to.
Because he’d had none of the privileges Julian had, born into a family that never wanted him and a society that scorned and disrespected him.
Anger bloomed, vivid as the crooked portraits on the wall. If this really was Julian Ironwood, then it was the very same person who had taken advantage of Nicholas’s love for him, the one who’d turned around and treated him like little more than a servant, rather than genuinely teach him the ways of travelers.
I’m the fool, Nicholas had told her, because in spite of everything, he was my brother. I never saw him as anything else. And it clearly wasn’t the same for him.
Julian hadn’t even had the common decency to find a way to tell his half brother he was still alive. Instead, he’d let Nicholas drown in his guilt. He had let him spend years questioning his honor and decency. He had let Nicholas take the exile and rage-fueled beating from Ironwood.
All of this time, Nicholas had been suffering—and for what?
Nothing.
“Well, kiddo, to continue this tale, I floated around for a while, living life as one does—without much money to speak of, which got me into more than a few scrapes. It all became rather tedious and boring. Enter: the Thorns. I thought it might be best to sell some knowledge about Grandfather, try to exchange it for steady meals and a safe place to sleep at night.”
He glanced at her, as if expecting Etta to coo with sympathy. She kept her gaze on the unlit brass chandelier overhead, fingers curled so tightly around the lip of the desk that her hands prickled with pain. Don’t do it. He’s not worth it.
“Speaking of,” Julian said, swinging around toward her, “I’d like to get back to you—holy God!”
Etta relished the throbbing pain in her knuckles as her fist made contact with his cheek and he stumbled back over his own feet, landing in an ungraceful heap on his bottom. He stared up at her with huge eyes, one hand still cupping the red mark on his face as she shook out her hand.
“What the bloody hell was that for?” he howled.
“Do you have any idea,” she said, voice rising with each word, “what your ‘death’ did to your brother? Do you have any idea what he went through—what your jackass of a grandfather put him through?”
“Brother?” Julian repeated, rather stupidly. Her instinct to give him another kick, this time beneath the belt, must have registered on her face, because Julian scrambled back on the rug.
Then, to her surprise, he said, “But…how do you know Nick?”
Etta studied him. He looked genuinely shocked, either from her hit, Nicholas’s name, or both. Unsure of how much information to trust him with, she answered, “I traveled with him for a little bit.”
His brow creased. “On behalf of Grandfather?”
She shook her head, but before she could elaborate, a key scraped in the door’s lock. It should have been enough to send Etta diving behind the desk, out of sight. Instead she stood there, towering over Julian, the door letting out a tortured groan as it was thrown open. Two men barreled in with guns in hand, both dressed in trousers and plain white shirts, coming up short at the sight of her. The one out in front, a dark, bushy mustache disguising half of his face, actually took a generous step back, crossing himself.
“Christ,” said the other, glancing at the first. He was somewhat shorter, his pale hair cut close to the scalp and almost gone from balding. “The others were right. It’s the bleeding ghost of Rose Linden.”
The other one merely crossed himself.
“Aren’t you supposed to be protecting me?” Julian complained. “This girl is clearly deranged—”
“Deranged is one word for it,” the dark-haired man said. Now Etta recognized his voice as that of the man who had sparred with Julian over the water. “How in the hell did you get in here, miss?”
“I think the better question is, why did it take you almost a half hour to realize I was gone?” Etta said, reaching back for the water glass she’d left on the desk. Before either man could answer, she slammed it down on the edge of the desk, shattering its top half and leaving a jagged edge on what was left. For one insane instant, Sophia’s lesson on where to cut them, how to slit their throats, floated to the front of her mind.
Get a grip, Etta. She needed to stay here and find the astrolabe, and she wouldn’t be able to do that if she was locked away. But part of her hated that these people had seen her at her weakest, her most helpless, and she couldn’t ignore it. They needed to know she would fight back if they pushed her.
“Easy there!” Julian cried. He craned his neck up to look at the men. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
The pale-haired man raised his small black pistol, then swore, tucking it back into the waistband of his trousers. “Come along, girlie, it’s time for you to go back up to your room.”
Etta swung her makeshift weapon toward him, ignoring the small, warm pool of blood collecting in her palm from where she’d cut herself. “I don’t think so.”
Dull footsteps grew to a pounding storm out in the hallway, and the music she’d heard before cut off with a loud scratch. She caught snatches of voices shouting, “She’s gone!” “Find her!” and a variety of swearing that would have made even the men in Nicholas’s crew blush.
“She’s here!” the dark-haired man called. “The office!”
The rush of panicked activity ceased, but one voice rang out. “Thank you; that’ll be all the excitement for this evening, God willing.”
The two guards straightened—the smaller of the two even reached up to fix the limp cloth hanging around his neck into something resembling a bow tie. A man strode into the darkened corner of the room, hands tucked into his trouser pockets.
“We were handling the situation, sir,” the dark-haired one said quickly. “I was about to return the girl to her quarters.”
“I see,” came the amused response. “But it seems to me that she’s the one who has this situation well in hand.”
The man stepped into the shallow firelight, giving Etta her first real glimpse of him. It was the guard from her room. Dark eyes swept around the room, studying each of them in turn, but his gaze lingered on her, so unflinching that it seemed to wipe everyone else away, leaving just the two of them.
The man’s presence made her blood slow, and finally still in her veins, but the trickle of uneasiness she’d felt at his appearance was nothing compared to the torrent of uneasiness that came in the moment where her memory met recognition. Etta wasn’t aware that the glass had slipped from between her fingers until it fell, striking the top of her bare foot, and rolled away.
The black hair, cut through with silver strands…his rough-hewn features…she wasn’t seeing him in the high-waisted pants or loose white shirt he currently wore. She saw him in a classic black-and-white tuxedo, wearing silver-rimmed glasses, in the Grand Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the twenty-first century.
“You recognize me,” he said, with a small, approving note in his voice—like he’d expected she wouldn’t?
Not only had she bumped into him, he’d come running when she and Sophia had found Alice dying in a pool of her own blood. Almost as if he’d known it might happen.
Or as if he’d been the one to pull the trigger.
The two guards immediately stepped closer to the man’s side, as though they’d been drawn into his orbit.
He looked to Julian and said, this time with a slight edge, “How did I know to check this room first?”
“She dropped in on me,” Julian protested, pointing to the window. “I was minding my own business. For once.”
The man flicked his dark gaze to Etta, and this time she forced herself to meet it. The corners of his mouth tipped up again. “I don’t need to ask how you got in here, for I suspect the mountain of scaffolding piled up outside is likely my answer. Tell me, did it ever occur to you that you could have broken your neck?”
He was so calm, his voice so measured, that he made the rest of them sound manic. Even his posture, the way he hadn’t once tensed up, made her want to ruffle his composure, just to see how far he could be pushed. To see where the boundaries of his anger began. It would be useful later, she thought, in trying to trick him into saying something about the astrolabe, and where the Thorns might be keeping it.
“You know,” Etta said, “you’re making me wish I had.”
She wiped her slick palms against the horrible nightgown, wary of the man’s warm laughter, the spark of enjoyment in his voice. He turned to the bald guard, knocking the back of his hand against the other man’s chest. “I told you she had some spirit, didn’t I?”
“You did,” the guard confirmed. “Sir, I take full responsibility for all of this—”
“Sir” waved his hand before placing it on the guard’s shoulder. “I was there and slept through her clever escape. Have Winifred dress her and bring her to me once she’s comfortable and presentable, will you?”
“Yes, of course, sir,” the guard said, nearly sagging with relief.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Etta said, taking a step forward. “I don’t even know who you are! What right do you have to order me around?”
The man had already begun to turn toward the door, but at her words, his shoulders stiffened. He glanced back over his shoulder, but the candlelight flared in his glasses, masking his expression. Julian coughed, either to hide a laugh or his discomfort.
“My name is Henry Hemlock, and you’re here at my mercy,” the man said. “You will do as I say, because I am your father and we have much to discuss.”