Chapter Thirteen
Time is not linear, it is a stack of palimpsest pages
that all too often gets shuffled in our minds.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
“We’re wasting our time,” Caleb declared on Saturday morning, rubbing the back of his wrist across his brow as he looked around at stacks of vintage ashtrays chattering with low-grade thaumaturgic energy on the shelves of the drawing room.
“We should just transfer the British Museum to here instead.”
“You do talk such nonsense, Professor Sterling,” Amelia grumbled, although in fact she agreed with his sentiment.
Sullen after yet another restless night, and with a headache gnawing at her thoughts, she had reached the conclusion that she’d be trapped in this house forever, counting spoons, shuffling through cigarette cards, too busy to even become a ghost. The rain would fall endlessly, the dust would drift around her relentlessly, and she’d be haunted by echoes of Vanity giggling until she went mad.
“You shouldn’t listen to me, then, Professor Tarrant,” Caleb snapped. But as he marched across the room to work at a cluttered sideboard, he allowed his smallest finger to brush her hand, electrifying her entire body. Amelia wanted to gasp but instead frowned at him.
“Really, young lady,” Dummersby told her with a smirk, “you ought to smile more. Men would like you better if you did.”
Suddenly the tar-stained ashtray in her hands flew to the floor near Dummersby’s feet, shattering upon impact.
“Oh dear, I am so sorry!” Amelia told Sir Nigel, who looked as if he might faint at this tragedy.
“It was obviously, and completely unexpectedly, a flare of thaumaturgic energy. I assure you that no one in this room, for example, Mr. Dummersby, was in any danger of being hit in the head by it.”
At which the museum curator choked on his pipe smoke.
“Where is the gold locket I put here yesterday?” Caleb interrupted tetchily, searching through an array of jewelry on the sideboard. “Oval, etched with roses, gold chain. I set it down right here so I could assess it properly when I had the chance.”
“Maybe it’s joined the wine goblet I was working on earlier this week,” Dummersby said. “Fine Carolingian piece, completely vanished from its cabinet.”
Crack! Lightning split the storm-dark sky outside.
For one eerie second the drawing room glowed with an eldritch light that dragged everyone’s shadows into strange, distorted shapes.
The historians all paused, their sudden, troubled silence born from a lifetime of studying narratives and recognizing portents.
Vanity, however, remained innocent of all but her dogged enthusiasm. “A telekinetic goblet!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands with delight.
“I hope not,” Dummersby said. “As a museum display, that would be—”
“Worthless!” Throckmorton inserted, and made brisk back-and-forth gestures by way of explanation. “Zip! Zap! Everywhere!”
“Exactly,” Dummersby agreed.
“Oh.” Vanity’s cheerfulness slumped. “If it’s not magical, who cares where it went?”
“It might be interesting in a purely historical sense,” Dummersby told her.
“I’m not interested in a goblet,” Caleb grumbled. “I want the bloody locket, and then I want to have my bloody luncheon, and then I want to go home.”
Another uncomfortable silence followed this declaration. Not only was it remarkable for Caleb to show genuine irritation, but he’d managed to precisely encapsulate the feelings of everyone in the room. Thunder rumbled across the hills as if in agreement.
Then Vanity perked up, reliably. “Maybe someone already packed it. Professor Sterling, you’re so efficient, you’re probably ahead of yourself.” Smiling coyly, she patted his arm.
“Unlikely,” Amelia said in a tone so brisk it came close to being a snarl.
Snatching up her clipboard, she scanned the attached list of antiques that had been chosen for donation.
She and Caleb had thus far identified seven significant thaumaturgic items and nine of lesser value, which was a remarkable haul; sometimes entire years could pass without any new discovery of magic-infused artifacts.
It nevertheless made for a very short list, nowhere upon which was a gold locket. “It’s not recorded here,” she reported.
“Oh, things go missing all the time,” Sir Nigel said, and gave a flaccid laugh that soon disintegrated when he noticed everyone was staring at him. “What?”
“You’re saying that items with potentially deadly power ‘go missing all the time’ from your custody?” Amelia inquired. “Items that unscrupulous people could employ as weapons of considerable destruction, should they get hold of them?”
Sir Nigel blanched at the degree of polite restraint in her voice. “I—I—”
“We had a mad scientist break into the museum last month, trying to steal an enchanted scarab from Egypt,” Dummersby said with a chuckle. “Even before our security staff got to him, he’d been thoroughly chewed.”
“I,” Sir Nigel attempted again, wringing his hands as if he anticipated being devoured at any moment. “I—I—”
Thwack. Amelia set down her clipboard on a small table with such force, not only did the table shake but also Sir Nigel and, over one hundred miles away in Oxford, several third-year students.
“Perhaps the locket is merely in a different place than Professor Sterling remembers,” she said, and brought forth a thaumometer from her cardigan pocket.
The efficiency of her manner both frightened and calmed everyone in the room: she was that most daunting of creatures, a Woman Who Knew What She Was Doing; but on the other hand, who better to solve the problem?
With her at the helm, they need not fear England’s destruction at the hands of some lunatic wielding a magical necklace—or worse, a delay in getting their luncheon until said necklace was found.
“Hmm,” Amelia murmured, frowning at the thaumometer. It’s intensity indicator was at seven, and the secondary needle, a direction guide, pointed to where Caleb and Vanity stood at the sideboard.
“It is there,” she said. “Or, at least, something is.” Watching her gauge, she began to cross the room, weaving around furniture. With each step, the intensity needle flicked higher.
“Oh dear!” Vanity exclaimed, backing up until she was against the sideboard. Something fell to the floor, but she ignored it, her expression tightening with anxiety. “Is there going to be another explosion?”
“No,” Caleb reassured her.
“Maybe,” Amelia said at the same time. “Go and stand on the other side of the—”
Completing this sentence proved unnecessary, for Vanity had dashed across the room to huddle behind Professor Throckmorton even before Amelia was halfway through it.
Stepping up to where the girl had been, Amelia set a hand on Caleb’s arm to shift him aside.
The density of his muscle beneath her fingers sent such a rush of emotion through her that she felt briefly woozy.
The man stood right beside her—they were in actual physical contact—and still she missed him quite desperately.
She wished she could have just one quiet, private hour with him, chatting about inconsequential things, knocking their feet together in mock battle the way they sometimes did when they forgot they were grown-ups.
But this was entirely the wrong moment to indulge in sentimental imaginings.
Two of her worst nemeses watched from across the room: Throckmorton, whose gossip had almost ruined her career, let alone her relationship with Caleb, and Dummersby, whose sleazy comments over the years, and whose spite whenever she’d enforced boundaries with him, had at times come close to draining her courage for academia altogether.
Together, the men embodied everything a woman of intellect and ambition faced in the world these days, and she would not willingly provide more fuel for their chauvinism.
Besides, any moment now Vanity was going to either giggle or say something flirtatious to Caleb, and Amelia feared her headache would flare into an inferno of pain should that happen.
So she focused with staid professionalism on the sideboard…
Thwomp.
The air seemed to jolt. Lamplight blotted out as if the entire world had blinked, and two seconds later she found herself standing in a small, dirty room, blinking through shadows, inhaling the smell of ashes and old fish.
Amelia raised her brow with a professional degree of surprise (and wrinkled her nose in disgust).
Evidently, she was not in Cumbria anymore; the stench alone confirmed that, assisted by noises of traffic and machinery that permeated the thin, stained walls of the hovel.
“Hm,” she said, and turned to survey her predicament.
Sickly light filtering through broken window shutters illuminated a small, weeping boy huddled on a mattress so filthy, Amelia’s skin crawled to see it.
A tangle of blond hair obscured the child’s face as he hugged himself, but Amelia didn’t need to see it to know exactly who he was.
The recognition came from her very soul.
“Caleb,” she whispered, her pulse staggering.
So she was gone not only from Cumbria but from 1890 as well.
Fascinating. Also possibly irreversible—but Amelia had dealt with magic for so long now, a little thing like being shunted twenty-some years back in time did not immediately alarm her.
She checked the thaumometer still in her hand. Its needles were flat.
The boy did not see her, of course. She was less than a ghost; she was a memory of the world to come, a dream of time, beyond his perception.
Nevertheless, instinct propelled her forward, drawn as always to be close to him, to touch his head or his tearstained cheek if she could, and so complete her own existence.
“You’re dead,” he whimpered.