by Linz, Cathie
“I don’t know,” she replied, trying not to panic. “I told you I had a bad feeling about this.”
“I must have gotten my directions turned around,” Kane muttered. “Maybe the burger place was this way.” Pivoting on his heel, he turned right and headed down the street only to find that there was nothing but houses in what should have been a commercial business area.
Frowning, Kane gave Susannah a look that clearly stated he held her responsible for this situation. “What’s going on here? Did you slip something into my drink? Either that or the punch I drank was a hell of a lot stronger than I thought,” he noted in an undertone as yet another buggy passed them by. “I must be either drunk or hallucinating.”
“I had nothing to drink at the party at all. And it’s highly unlikely we’d both be having the same hallucination,” Susannah observed, trying to be logical about things. It was the only way she could cope with their present circumstances—to take the situation bit by bit. Not to look at the large picture. Not yet.
“Then I must be dreaming,” Kane muttered. “That or I’m dead.”
“How do you figure that?” she demanded, chilled by his comment.
But he wasn’t listening to her anymore. “There’s only one way to find out.”
To her amazement he marched off, straight toward—
“Watch out!” Susannah shouted.
Kane ignored her warning...and walked smack into one of the metal streetlamp posts.
Picking up her skirts, Susannah rushed to his side as he stood swaying slightly.
“That was a stupid thing to do!” she told him. “What were you thinking of?”
“Hypothesis.”
She looked at him as if he’d scrambled his brain.
“I figured if I was dreaming, walking into the lamppost would wake me up,” Kane said, his voice brusque. “And if I was dead—”
“We’re not dead and we’re not dreaming,” she interrupted him.
“Fine, Einstein, then what are we doing?”
“I’m not positive,” she noted in a soft voice, as if speaking too loudly might cause them even further trouble. “But I think Einstein had a theory about this—the relativity of time.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that something happened. We’re clearly not in the 1990s, anymore,” she stated, trying to sound as if this were a situation she’d run into before. The truth was that her instincts were on red alert. And, as her grandmother had always told her, Susannah had always had excellent instincts. She and Kane weren’t dead. They weren’t hallucinating. She felt sure of that. Which left precious few alternatives.
Susannah paused, only now noticing a paper pasted to the lamppost Kane had walked into. Peering closer, she gasped as she read the date on the handbill advertising a circus coming to town. Her instincts had been right. “Look at this handbill!”
“Unless it’s got directions to the nearest hamburger I’m not interested,” Kane muttered, rubbing the goose egg quickly rising on his forehead.
Someone was approaching them on the sidewalk. A man wearing a hat, and using a cane. A bushy muttonchop beard covered a great deal of his face. His clothing was like something from a movie set—one of those period pieces the film critics liked so much.
Was the man able to see them? Susannah wondered. Hear them? There was only one way to find out. “Excuse me, sir,” she hesitantly asked. “Could you tell me the time, please?”
The gentleman gave her a leery look, which meant he could see her and hear her, as well. Thank heavens! Relieved that at least she and Kane weren’t invisible, Susannah released the breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.
Pulling his watch from his fob pocket, the man said, “The time is quarter past nine.”
“Thank you.” She could tell he was impatient to move on, so she went right to the heart of the matter. “And the year is...?”
At her question, the gentleman’s leery look now turned downright suspicious. “What kind of foolish prank is this? The year is 1884, of course.”
Susannah went cold all over. The year he’d just given her matched that on the circus handbill. She’d had her suspicions...but even so, hearing them confirmed—hearing the man say that it was 1884—left her feeling as if a rug had been yanked out from under her.
Eyeing Kane, who was still a bit unsteady on his legs, the bewhiskered gentleman muttered something about the downfall of civilization being caused by an overindulgence in alcohol before hurrying on his way.
It took her a moment before she could speak. “Did you hear that?” she whispered to Kane.
“Yeah, he thought I was drunk,” Kane replied irritably.
“The part before that. About the year being...1884.”
Kane nodded, grimacing as he did so. His head was hurting like hell. “I heard what he said. The old guy clearly isn’t playing with a full deck. Surely you’re not buying what he said, are you?”
“It would certainly explain a lot.”
“Oh yeah, right,” Kane noted mockingly.
“What if we have somehow traveled back in time?”
“It’s too ridiculous to even consider. Come on.” Grabbing her hand, Kane led her toward a larger thoroughfare with more foot traffic. “I’ll prove it to you.”
Everyone was dressed in period clothing suitable for the late 1800s. The crowd was mostly male. The gaslight from the streetlamps lacked the harshness of the piercing orange lights used in so many cities these days. All of Susannah’s senses were bombarded with proof of the time—the strong smell of horse manure mixed with human perspiration, the dull clip-clop sound of horses maneuvering buggies down the busy thoroughfare. The street itself wasn’t asphalt or blacktop but appeared to be softer, perhaps dirt or sand. Even the sidewalk beneath her feet was different—constructed of red bricks.
Everyone was wearing hats. Except Kane and her. While Susannah had been taking stock of the people, she realized Kane was approaching everyone walking by, asking them what year it was.
Recognizing the disapproving and suspicious looks being cast their way, Susannah tugged on her hand—the one Kane was holding in a cast-iron grip—bringing his attention back to her. “What are you going to do, keep asking until you hear an answer you like, or until they call the police?” she demanded in an undertone.
“Since when has asking a simple question been illegal?” Kane countered.
“Stop this,” she hissed, yanking her hand free of his grasp. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“We may have fallen through a time hole and you’re worried about being embarrassed?” he asked in disbelief.
Pulling him around the corner and out of the flow of foot traffic, she said, “I’m worried about being put in an asylum, the way you’re behaving! Trust me, they don’t treat people very nicely in Bellevue, or the local equivalent, in this day and age. So try not to make a spectacle of yourself, okay? We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.” Tucking her hand in his arm, she led him back the way they’d come, deliberately walking at a slow and leisurely pace. Besides, with the long skirt of her heavy velvet dress, she could only travel at two speeds—slow and slower.
“This is all your fault,” Kane muttered, his head still throbbing. As they passed the infamous lamppost, he glared at it, before turning to glare at her. “Something must have happened when we stepped in that damn blue light. I told you not to go into that room!”
“No one held a gun to your head and made you come after me,” she retorted. “Listen, it’s useless to toss around accusations at this point. We have to go back into that room.”
He headed for the brick front steps of the house where they’d seen the blue light upstairs. “Fine. The sooner the better.”
“Wait a second. How are we going to get back inside?”
“By opening the door.” He did so before she could protest.
A servant hurried across the hall to greet them. “May I help you, sir?”
“We left som
ething here earlier,” Kane explained. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll only be a minute.”
Luckily, another servant carrying a full tray of food required the first servant’s assistance in the crowded front parlor, thereby momentarily giving Kane and Susannah the free access to the stairway they required.
As Susannah quietly passed the doorway leading to the crowded parlor, she only now realized that while the party was still going on, the mood was definitely more somber than festive. Then her attention was focused on catching up with Kane, who was already halfway up the staircase.
Once they were safely on the third floor, she turned to him and said in dismay, “There’s no blue light here anymore!”
“Don’t panic. Try and remember exactly what we did. Maybe if we reenact everything exactly, we’ll end up back where we started, in our own time.”
Susannah nodded. It sounded as logical a suggestion as any she could come up with. “I got to the top of the staircase here and saw the blue light coming from the room. Then I moved from the landing over to this doorway. It was almost as if I was being drawn forward. There was this same flickering candlelight, but the brightest light—that strange blue light that isn’t here anymore—was coming from the rocking chair over there by the second door. I reached out to touch it, but it disappeared as I stepped through this second doorway.” As she softly spoke the words, she went through the motions she was describing. Then she stepped over the threshold, with Kane right on her heels, almost tripping on the hem of her red velvet dress.
“Did it work?” he demanded. “Are we back in our own time now?”
Peering out the third-story window, Susannah said, “I don’t think so. Hey, did you know that there’s a mirror up here aimed at the front porch? From the angle it’s set at, you can see who’s at the door.”
“Would you stop gushing over the furnishings,” Kane exclaimed irritably, “and do something useful instead.”
“I never gush,” Susannah haughtily informed him before another thought struck her. “I remember something else. For one second, I’m sure I saw a face in that strange blue light. The face of that woman in the portrait. Elsbeth.”
“Look, I’m willing to acknowledge the possibility of time travel here, but I draw the line at ghosts,” Kane stated emphatically.
Help!
Susannah’s eyes widened. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.
“Hear what?”
Help me!
Susannah’s breath caught, at both the painful urgency of the woman’s voice and the realization that she was hearing it inside her head. Could it be...Elsbeth? Was she communicating with her?
Did you bring us here? It was more a thought on Susannah’s part rather than a deliberate attempt to talk to the now-invisible ghost. She could see no sign of Elsbeth’s presence, but she did feel something.... She shivered and ran her hands up her bare forearms.
Are you there? Susannah felt the silent confirmation rather than heard it.
Did you bring us here?
Again the silent confirmation.
But why?
This time Susannah heard the whispery reply in her mind: To help me.
“Help you how?” Susannah asked aloud.
It was as if her spoken words temporarily cut off the silent bond between herself and Elsbeth, if that’s what it was, for there was no longer any reply. And Susannah’s own sixth sense told her that she was temporarily on her own here, aside from an irritated-looking Kane.
“I said I could use some help,” Kane told her.
Was that what she’d heard? Kane asking for her help? Had she just imagined the ghostly presence communicating with her?
“Would you stop going all mistily sentimental on me and help me out, here?” Seeing her hesitation, Kane quickly added, “Do you want to be stuck in the past forever? Women don’t even have the vote yet.”
Sighing, Susannah acknowledged that he did have a good point. Their first priority had to be finding a way home. The idea of helping out a ghost did sound a little farfetched. Not that the concept of jumping a century in the blink of an eye was an everyday occurrence, either. “What do you want me to do?”
Stepping back inside the room, Kane said, “Try pushing on the walls.”
She did so, while asking, “What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know. Anything unusual. A time portal, maybe.”
“Sounds like something out of a science-fiction novel,” she noted with a nervous laugh. This entire situation was too bizarre for words. So much of it felt dreamlike, yet there was a hard-edged reality to it that dispelled any hope she had that she was dreaming.
Between them, they pushed on every square inch of wall space in the relatively small room. Nothing happened. After nearly an hour had passed, Susannah became more and more discouraged. As a last resort, she closed her eyes, clicked her heels together three times and whispered, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”
Upon opening her eyes, the first thing she saw was the derisive expression on Kane’s face. “Stop looking at me that way! It worked for Dorothy,” she said defensively.
“Well, it didn’t work for us,” he noted.
His glance lowered to the low neckline of her dress, which Susannah was disconcerted to discover he appeared to be studying with more than casual interest. Suddenly the words he’d thrown at her in the convention center that afternoon came back to her. A Mata Hari who played bedroom games with younger, married men—wasn’t that what he’d said? Or something to that effect. With that in mind, Susannah didn’t like the way he was eyeing her one bit.
She was tempted to put a hand up to shield her exposed skin from his hot gaze. But that would be admitting that he bothered her, and she wasn’t about to give him that advantage over her. So she threw back her shoulders instead and narrowed her eyes, as if daring him to make a comment. When he did, it was far from what she expected.
“Where did you get that necklace you’re wearing?” he demanded curtly.
Now her hand did fly up, to cover her necklace rather than her skin. “Why do you want to know?” she countered distrustfully.
“Because the woman in the portrait along the stairs is wearing one identical to it.”
“Elsbeth?” Stepping into the hallway and down a few steps, Susannah studied the portrait of Elsbeth Whitaker. Kane had blocked her view when she’d hurried upstairs an hour before. Now she could see the black bunting draped around the portrait. That hadn’t been there when the tour guide had talked about the painting in their own century. Susannah was familiar enough with Victorian tradition to know that such bunting was only used on a portrait to indicate the subject’s death. Her heart fell.
“She’s died already. We’re too late to save her,” she murmured.
“Save her?” Kane repeated. “Listen, I may not know much about time travel, but even I know that you’re not supposed to mess with things like life and death. What if this woman later had children who went on to become mass murderers or something?”
“Then why did she bring us here?”
“Who said she did?”
“I do. I can feel it here.” She pressed her palm against her heart. She’d also gotten confirmation from Elsbeth, but she didn’t think this was the best time to confess she’d communicated with a ghost. For she now felt sure that that’s what she’d done—communicated with Elsbeth. She hadn’t imagined it.
“Is the woman some kind of relative of yours?” Kane demanded.
Susannah shook her head. “I don’t have any relatives in Savannah.”
“How can you be sure?” he argued.
“Because I recently did a family history—a family tree, if you will—for my parents’ anniversary and I traced our ancestry back to the 1700s. Elsbeth Whitaker’s name didn’t show up, I’m sure of it.”
“Then how do you explain the necklace? It’s exactly the same as yours. Were a lot of them made during that time?”
<
br /> Again, Susannah shook her head. “This one was specially made to order for my great-grandmother.” Looking into the sad eyes of the woman in the portrait, she felt a strong sense of kinship. Her instincts told her that her necklace, the one that so exactly matched the one Elsbeth was wearing, was some kind of tie.
She scrambled to put the pieces together. Had her great-grandmother gotten the necklace from Elsbeth somehow? Perhaps the two women had known each other. Whatever the case might have been, Susannah only knew that she was here for a reason. All she had to do was figure out what that reason was. She didn’t realize she’d spoken her words aloud until Kane replied.
“And how do you plan on doing that?” he demanded.
“By getting more information about Elsbeth Whitaker.”
“How? By asking the people downstairs about her suicide?”
“Of course not. Nothing that crass. That’s more your style than mine.”
“Oh, right,” he retorted. “Like you’re the soul of discretion. I think not.”
“Think whatever you please,” she countered.
He groaned. “God, you’re even starting to sound like this time period.”
“I happen to have edited a book or two on this era, luckily for you.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m certainly counting my blessings about now,” Kane returned sarcastically.
“Just keep quiet and listen. You might learn a thing or two.”
“From you?”
“From the people at the party downstairs. The faster we can figure out what’s going on here, the faster we can get back to our own time period,” she reminded him.
* * *
Having attended more publishing cocktail parties than she cared to, Susannah had the moves down pat—just stand around the edge of the room, with eyes downcast, and tune in to the conversations going on all around. It was her way of surviving the stifling artificiality of the business functions she was required to attend. By nature she was more a romantic dreamer than a go-getting extrovert.
