Neven swiveled to look at the corner stall. Dajana cried out, pointing at a man with long hair, who was dodging through the crowd, a large carton under his arm. “He took our stuff!” Dajana cried. “Stop him!”
Aran took a step forward. Neven shot out his arm, halting him. “No,” he said quietly and firmly. “We stay out of it.”
“But—”
“No,” he repeated. “Besides, everyone else is reacting. Let them take care of it.”
Everyone was reacting. Almost everyone in the square was turning, trying to see what was happening, what all the shouting was about. The man who had taken the cheese was having trouble moving fast because of the press of bodies. So were the few people who had moved to pursue him, including Dajana’s father.
Neven swiveled his gaze to Remi De Sauveterre and his men, just in time to see one of the big men reach under his coat.
Neven’s heart squeezed. Not here, surely? Where there were so many strangers? If it was just village people, they might get away with drawing a gun, but not today.
Remi De Sauveterre clearly thought the same. He shoved on the man’s arm, tearing his hand away from his coat. He was scowling, the thick brows together. He said something. Neven could see his lips moving.
Then Remi leaned past his man and picked up one of the beer bottles sitting on the table. He turned on one heel and barely without aiming, threw the bottle in a hard overhand toss.
The bottle whizzed through the air, turning over and over as it flew. It struck the back of the thief’s shoulders, just below the neck. The thief fell forward and sprawled, the carton flipping over a couple of times before coming to a halt. The thief didn’t move again. The beer bottle lay fizzing on the cobblestones, the glass cracked.
“Holy fuck!” Aran breathed. “Did you see that? He took him out with a bottle!”
Neven nodded, keeping his gaze on Remi. The man had turned back to talk to Dajana and her father. Dajana was shrinking back behind her father, afraid of Remi. Her father seemed to quail, too, yet he responded.
Two of Remi’s men hauled the man to his feet. He was groggy, his head lolling. A third picked up the box of cheese and returned it to the stall. The first two hauled the man away.
Aran gripped Neven’s sleeve. “What are they going to do to him?” His tone was urgent, frightened.
“Maybe dump him at the train station and watch him leave town.”
“He stole from their people,” Aran said shortly. “These guys are psycho. You told me that. They were all extremists from the wars. That’s what you said. They’re really going to put him on a train and let him roll out of town?”
Neven grimaced. It sounded unlikely, put that way. “We still can’t get involved,” he replied, which was the only argument that counted right now.
Aran looked at him. “My dads and my mom…they’d do something about it. Something that doesn’t fuck up time. Anyway, we’re not out of our own time right now.”
“Neither of us should be here,” Neven said. “That’s the same thing as time jumping and you know it. We’d be changing the future if we do anything here that has consequences.”
“You’re just going to let them do whatever they want with the guy?” Aran said. “What if they kill him?”
Neven watched the corner of the square where the fuss still had not died down, despite the overriding actions of Remi’s men.
“Neven?” Aran said, prompting him. People were moving around them on the stairs now, for they were standing two up from the cobbles of the square, staring.
Neven shook his head. “Whatever happens to the man, he brought it upon himself. He stole food in a town that is run by gangsters, which was his mistake.”
Aran looked disgusted.
The problem was, Aran hadn’t done enough time jumping yet to learn how slippery interfering with local anything could be. Every jump Aran had completed had been in the company of Neven or his mother, Taylor, or his aunt, Sydney. Nothing had gone wrong on any of those jumps, which meant Aran still had an idealized view of the world.
Aran climbed down the steps.
“Where are you going?” Neven demanded.
Aran looked over his shoulder at him. His smoky gray eyes, so like his mother’s, were narrowed. “If you’re not going to do anything about the man, then I’m going to talk to Dajana. Make sure she’s okay.”
Neven wanted to protest, his instincts leaping. Then he remembered what Aran sounded like to a native Serbian, with his tortured vowels and horrible consonants. “Knock yourself out,” Neven told him, relaxing. Aran could hardly get into trouble when he couldn’t make himself understood in Serbian.
Instead, Neven glanced around the square once more, still standing on the second step, where the vantage point was good. It let him see what no one else did. He watched as Remi casually swiped a whole plate of cheese samples off the table and walk away, the plate in his hands.
“Son of a bitch…” Neven breathed to himself.
Then, before he could talk himself out of it, he followed.
Remi’s men were still fussing over the stall and Dajana’s father and the anxious and outraged village citizens, who had gathered around to discuss the daring of the thief. It would be a highlight of this year’s cheese festival, for sure.
Remi moved alone through the crowd. No one stopped him or asked about the entire plate of cheese he’d taken. Even without his men on either side, no one jostled Remi or got in his way. He moved through the crowd, a tall, foreign-looking man with unsmiling eyes. When he turned into one of the narrow lanes that turned off the square, Neven hurried after him and paused at the mouth of the lane, considering whether he should follow or not.
The lane was barely wide enough for two men to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. Remi looked as though he was shorter than Neven. Most men were, which was one reason why Neven liked hanging out with Brody and Veris and Alex, who were all taller than him. Remi might be shorter, yet his shoulders made up for any lack his height imparted. Two men might be able to walk down the lane together, but not if one of them was Remi.
Twenty-five yards down the lane, Remi turned and looked behind him.
Neven withdrew, hiding around the corner, his heart thudding. Of course the man—the vampire—would look behind to check. It would be almost automatic to do that.
Neven eased himself around the corner to glance down the lane again. Remi was still heading for the end of it.
Several feet inside the lane, a set of old, worn and narrow wooden steps ran up to a long, just as narrow, balcony on the second floor. The wooden palings that made up the railing had round shapes cut out of them, every few planks along, in the traditional manner. It wasn’t a fire escape, as New Yorkers would assume. Someone lived up there. It was part of the charm of the village, which on the surface, looked quaint and old and traditional. Every time he arrived here, Neven was reminded sharply of his childhood in Kosovo. Then he would remember that this entire quaint little village was engaged in criminal activities and that the prettiness was just on the surface.
Whoever lived there was probably involved in hacking computer systems just as the rest of the village were. They were phishing, controlling perfectly ordinary people’s computers, stealing their identities and selling them, stealing data and selling that. They were living off the misery of innocent people.
Neven didn’t hesitate about climbing the private stairs. He clung to the wall, treading where the stairs would be least likely to squeak, then hurried to the far corner of the balcony and cautiously looked down.
Remi De Sauveterre was at the end of the lane, in a tiny courtyard. Two more houses had their front doors there and someone had put out a tiny round table and two small chairs in the corner of the yard.
Remi was standing at the table. He had put the plate of cheese samples down and was now busy crumbling the cheese into tiny pieces.
Sitting in front of the plate, sniffing eagerly at the cheese, was a mangy black kitten. It was clearly homeless.
It was so thin there were deep hollows on either side of its belly.
Neven watched, astounded, as the vampire finished crumbling the cheese, then stroked the cat’s head. Even from up here, Neven could hear the kitten purring as it chowed down on the cheese.
Remi looked over his shoulder once more, to check for observers. Neven shrank back from the balcony rail in case he should think to look upward. Then he eased himself over to watch once more.
Remi had settled on the tiny seat and was holding up one hand so the kitten could rub its face against his knuckles in between bites.
Neven squashed his deep bafflement. He’d lingered long enough. He backed away from the railing and moved soundlessly over to the stairs and crept down them, keeping in mind the phenomenal hearing most vampires enjoyed. Crowd noise filtered the length of the lane from the busy square beyond. It would be enough to hide little shuffles and creaks.
Out in the square once more, Neven headed for the corner and Dajana’s stall, to find Aran and take him back home. If Brody and Veris were looking for him, then he’d better get back before they got pissed about his absence. He didn’t want to have to explain what he was doing here.
He thought again of Remi De Sauveterre and the kitten and realized he wouldn’t be able to explain what he’d seen at all.
Chapter Two
They jumped back to the courtyard at the front of the rambling Cape Cod mansion. It was getting easier and easier to precisely pin-point where he arrived, to the point where Neven wouldn’t have been worried about picking a landing spot somewhere inside the house, which would have been more discreet. Aran, though, didn’t want to arrive in the house, where he might get roped into something.
“There’s a music festival in Edgartown,” Aran told Neven just before they jumped away from Serbia. “Alan won’t go because she’s mooning over that jock that won’t talk to her. Mom and Far and Athair will insist I take her and she’ll sulk the whole time…it’s easier if I just grab the car and go.”
Neven withheld his opinion about sneaking off that way, because their jump to Serbia was also sneaking off—of a different scale.
The gravel crunched underfoot as they arrived, which might alert anyone in the public rooms. Neven looked around curiously. It was silent in the courtyard, except for the wind overhead and the never ending soft rumble of waves from the beach, at the end of the estate. He could smell salt and sand and seaweed in the air. The pines were waving softly and leaves lifted and skidded across the concrete and gravel.
“Where is everyone?” he wondered.
“No idea. They’re not here, though,” Aran said, digging into his denim jacket for car keys. “I’m outta here.” He moved away. “Marit was in the kitchen, last I saw, just before I jumped to get you. Tell ‘em you were in your room.”
That would make Neven sound like a rebellious teenager.
Neven took off the shapeless hat he used to disguise his face, tucked the sunglasses away and ran his hand through his hair. In way, he was a rebellious teenager. He had no life of his own, yet. The current one was starting to chafe with its restrictions and limitations.
With a sigh, he opened the big French doors and moved through the lounge. Far off to the left, he could hear someone pottering around in the kitchen. That would be Marit. The rest of the house was silent. Alan would be in her room, for she was a teenager.
The center section of the big u-shaped house was all loungeroom, with banks of French doors on both sides, giving a view of the ocean on one side and a view of the state park and rolling acres of trees and wilderness on the other. The Edgartown Road lay between the house and the park, yet was hidden by bushes and trees, so the view was unmarred by traffic, although there were plenty of Cape-Cod-style houses dotting the salt-brush land.
Neven moved over to the other side of the lounge and peered through the windows at the half-acre of lawn between the house and the nearest belt of trees, and the three great oak trees dotting the open spaces. They cast shade in summer which was welcome. Now, they were brown and yellow, the big leaves starting to drift down.
A blanket lay beneath the nearest oak, with another over the top of it. The top blanket was moving. Neven saw blond hair.
He’d found Veris, at least. He suspected Veris had Taylor and Brody beneath the blanket, too. He didn’t want to disturb them. He moved through to the kitchen.
The white and dark gray kitchen was another family gathering point. The long, narrow table sited in front of the big windows, looking at the ocean, tended to draw people. Twelve wicker armchairs were drawn up around it, also painted soft gray, with cheerful cushions on the seats.
Marit, though, was standing at the island, pouring cake batter into a pan. She was twenty years old now and as tall as she was going to get. At five foot ten, it was plenty tall enough. She had Veris’ height, in female form. Add in her coppery red hair and blue eyes and it was little wonder people actually turned their heads to watch her walk by. It wasn’t just men anymore. It was also women, drawn by her air of self-possession. Sometimes, she seemed to be nearly as old as Veris, to Neven.
“You were looking for me?” Neven asked.
“I was?” She put the mixing bowl down and licked her fingers. “Who told you that? Aran?”
“Yes.”
“He might have mixed up what I said.”
“He said he thought it was actually Veris who was looking for me?”
“Wrong on both counts,” said a voice from the kitchen door.
Neven turned. Rafael De Leon stood at the door, his shoulder against the frame, his arms crossed. “Rafe!”
Rafe smiled and moved over to Neven and hugged him. “Surprise,” he said.
“You just dropped by?”
“We can do that now, remember? Thanks to Aran. Sydney just dropped me off.” Rafe hugged Marit, then swiped his finger through the batter and licked it clean. “Mmm, mocha, yes?”
“You’ll get sick, doing that,” Marit chided him.
“Just a taste,” he assured her.
“You fire up your taste buds, you’ll go into lock-down,” Marit warned him. She swatted at his hand. “Enough, Uncle Rafe!”
He blew her a kiss then moved over to the long table and pulled out one of the chairs. “Have a seat, Neven.”
“Is this a ‘we need to talk’ moment?” Neven asked.
Rafe looked up at him, his black eyes hiding everything. “Does it need to be?”
“If it is, we don’t need to bother Marit with it.”
“She’s the one who told me to come.” Rafe patted the table. “Sit.”
Neven looked at Marit, startled. How much did she know?
Marit stared back at him. With that expression and with her eyes, she might as well have been Veris standing there, as unmoving as the rock under the lighthouse.
Neven sat down, hiding his sigh. “Speak, then.”
Rafe put his chin on his fist, studying Neven. “I saw Veris and Brody and Taylor outside. That leaves you free to talk without Veris yelling. Is it true, Neven? You’re still heading back to Serbia every day to spy on the other Kristijan?”
Neven sighed again. This time he didn’t bother hiding it. “You make it sound more dire than it is. I just go to watch. That’s all.”
Rafe dropped his hand. “We talked about this before. About obsessing over Kristijan’s life.”
“I couldn’t give a damn about Kristijan’s life,” Neven said. “You don’t understand. You’ve never run into other versions of yourself and seen how…strange they are.”
Rafe shook his head. “It’s a simple time variance, that’s all. Somewhere in your past, you faced a decision. You chose one alternative. This Kristijan went the other way and now you’re looking at the result. You’ve been a jumper for a long time, Neven. Hell, you taught us about alternative timelines. You know all this.”
“I don’t know why,” Neven ground out.
Marit closed the oven and tapped on the controls, which peeped as she set up t
he timer, then she came over to the table. “Why do you have to know why?” she asked softly. “It happened. You’re not that other Kristijan—not even close.” She shrugged.
“Only I am,” Neven pointed out. “He’s me. We have the same DNA—”
“Except his is defunct, because he’s a vampire now,” Rafe added. “Marit is right. Why does it matter why he went the way he did? It’s a fact. He’s not a nice man. You, though, are.”
“Am I, though?” Neven touched his chest. “In me, here, is the capacity to be him.”
“The potential, maybe. It all comes down to choices, doesn’t it?” Rafe said. “Of all the major decisions you’ve made in your life, or even the smaller ones, no one knows which one split off our world right here and the one that you were living in until Tira tried to kill you. You’d have to trace back through history, check every single moment, to figure out what decision split the timelines. It could be something as minor as choosing to not clean your teeth one morning. It doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter what you could be. Only actions count and you chose to be a decent man.”
“Thank you,” Neven said gravely.
“He doesn’t believe you,” Marit told Rafe.
Rafe raised a brow.
Neven sighed. “I’m sorry. I look at Kristijan’s world in Serbia, I watch the fear he induces, the terror his men spread every time they walk through the village and I think, ‘I am the one who did that.’ I have to ask myself how I could do it and still look the world in the eye. How does he live with himself, Rafe?”
Rafe considered him for a long moment, his olive features troubled. “Look, I can’t say I have any true idea what it’s like for you. You’re the first traveler I know who has taken up a life in a different timeline, where there’s still a contemporary version running around. I think of some of the decisions I’ve made in my life and how they might have turned out, what my life might have been if things had gone a different way—”
“Bardelies refusing to sell you to Far,” Marit said softly.
Kiss Across Worlds (Kiss Across Time Book 7) Page 3
