Time Crossed: A Time Thief Novella (A Penguin Special from Signet) Read online

  “That must have been horribly frightening,” I murmured.

  Gwen visibly shuddered. “You have no idea. I mean, it was a long drop, but not long enough that I could speak a protection spell.” She paused and rubbed her arms, her expression pensive. “I wish I’d seen who threw me over the edge.”

  “And you found yourself in Anwyn?”

  “Yes. Woke up to find myself lying on a green, grassy hill. The sun beamed down in the bluest sky I’ve ever seen. Birds sang. Trees, arranged in grace clumps, swayed gently in the breeze. Daisies that dotted the hill bowed their pale heads and seemed to dance to some distance music that only they could hear. Butterflies landed on me and fanned me with their sparkly wings. Bunnies pattered to and fro on lupine business. A family of deer strolled past. It was the most idyllic thing in the world, and I was just thinking about taking a nice little nap with the butterflies and the bunnies, when suddenly I was yanked out of Anwyn and back onto the road that led to the cliff where I got tossed over the edge.”

  I made a few notes. “That seems like a very curious thing to have happened. How did it make you feel?”

  She gave me what could only be termed a scathing look. “How do you think you’d feel if you were yanked from an idyllic, Disney-esque paradise and were set down in a wind-battered cliff several thousand feet above the place where you died?”

  “That would be a remarkably tall cliff indeed,” I murmured, making another note. “Perhaps that height is a slight exaggeration?”

  Gwen suddenly leaped to her feet and slapped her hands on her thighs. “Well, of course it’s an exaggeration. It’s supposed to tell you just how I feel about that cliff. One minute I was lying in an exquisite moment of summer bliss, and the next I found myself returned to the spot where I had been a few minutes before some unknown person flung me to my death.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Well, of course, what was I to think but that I’d gone crazy and hallucinated the whole thing? I mean, I’m not in the least bit psychic or anything, so that whole dying thing couldn’t have been an elaborate premonition of my death.” She paced across the room, turned, and paced back. “I figured I was losing it, or that Seawright had slipped me some sort of wacky juice when I wasn’t looking, or something like that. And I thought long and hard for about ten minutes about going back to the pub to have it out with Seawright, but that wouldn’t really answer the question of what really happened. I had to know, you know?”

  She waited for me to validate her curiosity.

  “You had to know who, if anyone, was waiting for you on that lower cliff top?”

  “Exactly. So after arguing with myself for a bit over that, and making sure I wasn’t hallucinating anything else, I went over to the edge of the cliff and started climbing down. Just as I arrived at the top of the lower level cliff, a man shot up over the lip of it—there was a wooden staircase that led down to the beach—and looked around wildly.”

  “Wildly?” I asked, glancing up from my tablet of paper.

  “Yeah, you know.” Her hands gestured vaguely in the air. “Wildly. He looked one way, then the other, and his hair was standing on end, and his eyes were as big as saucers.”

  “Did that make you feel threatened?”

  Gwen slapped her hands on her thighs again as she resumed pacing. “Of course I felt threatened! Here was a man right on the same spot where I had been thrown down to my death, and he looked like a madman, all wind-ruffled hair and crazy eyes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “He started asking me about the magic, and I told him I wasn’t going to give him anything, and was about to tell him just what I’d do if he continued to harass my moms, when a second guy popped up. Only he came out of the shrubs, so he must have been hiding there.”

  “You must have been greatly concerned about that situation: one man alone is dangerous. Two against one can be quite daunting.”

  “Well . . .” Her nose scrunched in thought. “Yes and no. The second guy didn’t give off a bad vibe. Not then, anyway. He was blond and had these really nice blue eyes, and a little cleft in his chin that just made me want to bite it.”

  “Do you think that was an appropriate reaction to have given those circumstances?”

  She gave me a look out of the corner of her eye as she strolled to the window. “Look, you deal with potentially murderous, handsome madmen the way you want to deal with them. I’m going to notice sexy chins. Where was I? Oh, so there was the crazy first guy, yammering on all sorts of threatening stuff, and all of sudden he grabs me, and the second guy pops up and punches him in the face. I mean, really nails him. Down goes the lawyer—did I mention that this guy who threatened my moms is a lawyer? How ironic is that? Down he goes, and I’m left standing on a windy cliff with this blond stranger. I’m no idiot, so I certainly wasn’t going to stand there and let this man kill me again—assuming I actually was killed the first time, and not premonitioning the whole thing. And also assuming that blondie was the one to kill me, not that I think he is now, because it seems to me the lawyer pretty much proved he was the bad guy, but I couldn’t know for sure, could I?”

  I tried to untangle everything in that statement, and clung to the one thing that made any sort of sense. “I don’t believe ‘premonitioning’ is an actual word.”

  “And then,” she said with a dramatic gesture, “the blond guy said the worst thing he could possibly say, which was—”

  The door to my office burst open, causing Gwen to spin around. A middle-aged woman entered, short of stature, and somewhat plump, her dark hair streaked with silver in a short pageboy cut. “Gwen!” she said in an excited manner, rushing over to take the younger woman by the arm. “We have to leave, dear.”

  “What? Right now? You said I had to talk to this woman before Mom Two would give me back—”

  A second woman entered, slamming the door behind her, and turning the knob that operated a bolt. “Quick!” she said, hurrying over to my window, which without even so much as a glance my way, she flung open. “We have to leave now!”

  “This is a private session,” I said sternly, noting that the second woman was taller, with a close-cropped, masculine hair style that nonetheless highlighted excellent bone structure, and a wide, mobile mouth. “Do I take it that you are Gwen’s mothers?”

  “Yes, I’m Magdalena Owens,” the plump woman said, pausing in the act of dragging her daughter over to the open window to smile in a friendly manner. “That’s Alice, Gwen’s other mother, over there at the window. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I do hope you’ve been able to help our Gwenny. She has been most distraught over some incident that happened yesterday, and since you came highly recommended by a very dear friend of mine—Amor Tantrize, the palm reader—I knew that you would be just the person to help with Gwen’s—”

  “Mags!”

  The interruption from the woman who was now in the process of climbing through the window stopped Magdalena in her verbal tracks. The latter turned to the window, with a mild, “What, dear? Oh! Come, Gwenny, we must leave right this second. Alice is most insistent on that point.”

  “What is going on?” Gwen asked as her mother resumed dragging her over to the window. For a small woman, Magdalena appeared to have prodigious strength. “Why are you running away? Is there someone out in the other room you don’t want me to see?”

  Someone pounded at the door, the sound of outraged, raised voices barely audible through its thick panels. I considered the door for a moment, then pressed a button on my desk phone. “Ludwig, would you please inform whoever is pounding so vigorously at my door that it is locked, and that I will not hesitate to present a bill for damages should it suffer from such an onslaught? Thank you.”

  Alice stuck her head back through the window, and grabbed Gwen’s free arm. “It’s more that you don’t want to see her, ducky. Hurry up. That door won’t hold her for long.”r />
  “Her who? Wait a second.” Gwen reared back and dug in her heels, refusing to allow her mothers to pull her through the window. “What exactly is going on? Who is that banging on the door? Seawright? It doesn’t sound like her. And Mom, stop trying to shove me through the blasted window! I made a promise to Seawright that I wasn’t going to escape by going through the window, and you know I always keep my promises.”

  The pounding continued at the door, upraised voices now more audible.

  “We’re just thinking of what’s best for you, ducks,” Alice said, and reaching in with both hands, physically lifted Gwen and began pulling her through the window.

  Gwen squawked and grabbed wildly at the edges of the windowsill, but she was unable to resist the combined forces of her mothers.

  “Tell Seawright I didn’t go through the window willingly,” was the last thing I heard before Magdalena, with another bright smile, crawled through the window and disappeared with the others.

  The pounding stopped for a moment, followed almost immediately by a splintering noise. The door was blown inwards with enough force to send the loose papers on my desk flying in a swirl around me.

  A small brunette woman in a bright red woolen suit stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips, and the light glinting off a thick pair of black-rimmed glasses. Behind her hovered the woman Seawright.

  “How dare she! I can’t believe she . . . argh! Well, this is the last straw, the very last straw. No one cheats death, no one! Not while I’m responsible, anyway. Where’d that tricky little alchemist go?” the red-suited woman asked without any form of apology for destroying a perfectly nice door, let alone a polite greeting.

  I flipped over the page on my tablet of paper, and made a new heading. “My name is Roberta Gently. I am the president of this company. How long have you had these uncontrollable outbursts of anger?”

  Akashi Record #2712

  2 August 8.55 am

  Malwod-Upon-Ooze, Wales (Outside some therapy place)

  Subject: Gwenhwyfar Byron Owens

  Seawright Pendleton, junior scribe (third class)

  Begin Transcription

  She escaped. Again!

  That’s it! I’ve had it. I quit! Consider this my notice that I hereby abandon this case!

  End Transcription

  Personal Logbook of Gregory Faa

  Probationary member of the L’au-dela Watch. Not for Official Review.

  I knew a meeting with Peter was inevitable. Hell, anyone would have known something was up when I stole time from that pushy reclamation officer (aka death’s perky little minion), but Peter is a Traveller. Even if he wasn’t directly affected by the time theft (and thus, aware of the changes made by the theft), he was still prescient enough to know something was up.

  Especially when the second we arrived (again, although he didn’t realize we’d been there before) outside the pub, and he got out of the car, I leaped back into it and yelled at him to meet me down the beach at the cliff’s head.

  “What? Where are you going?” he asked as I started up the car we’d just exited. Confusion was written all over his face, but I didn’t have time to explain what had happened. To be honest, I prayed I’d never have to, since it would mean the immediate end of what I had hoped would be a promising career.

  “Can’t explain. Have to go save someone. Just head east out of town and follow the beach until you get to the staircase. I’m going around the other way. I think that’s how she came.”

  “Who came where? What are you talking about? Gregory—”

  I put my foot on the pedal and shot out into the road, narrowly missing mowing down both my cousin Peter and some elderly old man. By my best reckoning, I had twenty minutes to get to the top of that upper cliff and prevent whoever it was who flung my suspect over the edge.

  The five-minute drive out to a rocky, barren field that edged the cliff face was spent mostly in trying to concoct a reasonable story that Peter would buy, thus keeping from him the truth. I had a horrible suspicion that he was going to know something illegal had gone down, however. He was smart enough, and savvy enough, to figure out that some funny business regarding the last half hour we’d just lived had taken place. I fervently hoped that he’d be willing to look the other way in the name of family.

  I parked, and headed off across the field at a lope, scanning the area for the raven-haired woman. She wasn’t there, but that didn’t surprise me. She had been in the pub while Peter and I were outside it, but I knew that it had only been a minute or so after our arrival that she had somehow escaped from the bathroom. Given that its window wasn’t a means for that exit, she had to have used some other method of escaping.

  Like magic. Not surprising in one who was illegally selling magic to mortals.

  I half-slid, half-fell down the slope of the first terraced cliff, onto the top of the second. A small stand of trees and shrubs clung to the wedge-shaped edge. The rest of the area was empty of all persons.

  “I just hope nothing happens to you on the way here, because my ass is in enough hot water without having to risk a second theft,” I muttered out loud as I headed for the densest bit of shrub and tree, kneeling to keep others from seeing me.

  I had prepared for a wait of about fifteen minutes, but only five had passed when the sound of harsh breathing caught my attention. I peered out from my hiding place to see a man emerge over the top of the lower cliff, obviously having just climbed the staircase. He doubled over for a minute, his hands on his legs as he caught his breath, then he stood up, straightened his jacket, and headed straight for me.

  A small rock the size of a half dollar cascaded down the upper cliff face behind me, followed by a couple of smaller brethren. We both looked up. The woman Magdalena Owens had a rope, and was rappelling her way down the cliff. I admired the sight for a moment, then recalled that I was an officer of the Watch, and we were not supposed to ogle suspects. I was fairly certain that was one of the rules to which I’d sworn a scant two months before when I joined the Watch.

  When I turned back to see what the mysterious stair-climber was doing, he had moved over to the wooden ladder, peering over the top in an obvious attempt to remain out of sight of the woman Owens.

  I frowned at the part of him visible to me. He looked vaguely familiar, but he was not the mortal Kleibschiemer, the man Peter had trailed from the pub. At least, he had in the previous version of time.

  This man was smaller and slighter, but I didn’t care for the way he was avidly watching my suspect. Just as she landed on even ground, he climbed up the last of the stairs, saying, “So you really had the balls to show up, did you?”

  She whirled around, her hair flying out like a curtain of raven’s wings. “So to speak. You’re the lawyer?”

  “That’s right.” He took a step toward her, menace all but rolling off him. “I hope you’ve come to your senses. My client should be here any minute, and I don’t want him disappointed. That wouldn’t be healthy for your family.”

  With calm deliberation, she brushed the dirt off her black jeans, not even glancing his way as she answered, “I don’t take well to threatening, you know. I find bullying of any sort repugnant, and especially so when the person doing the bullying threatens people weaker than him.”

  “You think I’m afraid of you?” he asked with a laugh.

  She finished brushing off her knees and gave him a long look. “I think you should be. I’m no lightweight, and I don’t intend to let you harm anyone, let alone my mothers.”

  “Give me the goods, and no one will get hurt.”

  “No,” she said, taking me by surprise. What was this? She was refusing to sell the magic? Why?

  The man shrugged. “I hate to have to do this the hard way, but perhaps a lesson is in order. People will think twice about double-crossing me if they have proof of what will happen if they do.”
/>   He lunged forward just at the moment I remembered where I’d seen him—he’d been inside the pub when I arrived at it the first time. He had been standing near Kleibschiemer, but had left immediately thereafter.

  All of that raced through my head at the same time that Magdalena Owens gave a high shriek, and turned to run. He caught her around the waist and started to drag her over to the cliff’s edge, clearly intending on throwing her down to her death. Again.

  “Over my dead body,” I snarled, and leaped out, flinging myself on the man in a tackle that sent all three of us rolling on the ground.

  “Who the hell—” he started to say.

  “I’m with the Watch,” I snarled, and somehow, my fist connected with his jaw, and he was out. I flipped him over onto his belly, pulled out a pair of zip ties that I keep for temporarily subduing culprits, and jerked his wrists together, binding them tight enough that the ties dug into his flesh. Served the murdering bastard right.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked the woman as I got to my feet. She crouched a few yards away, breathing heavily, her eyes huge and filled with the after-effects of adrenaline and fear.

  “Who . . . no. Who did you say you were?”

  “Gregory Faa. I’m with the Watch. I take it you know this man?”

  Slowly, she shook her head, her eyes never leaving mine. “Never met him. Um . . . did he do something wrong? Are you here to arrest him?”

  “That’s a bit of a complicated answer. He did originally kill y—er—someone, but this time I stopped him.”

  She looked puzzled. I didn’t feel inclined to enlighten her.

  “That does sound complicated. Well, thank you for stopping him from attacking me. He took me by surprise, so I wasn’t ready with a spell or anything.”