Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  Carlotta had set him with a fence of thorns. Her sorcery gnawed him. To be thus unhinged terrified him. Never before had he felt this helpless—almost formless. Pride he could swallow, disappointment he could conquer, anger he could smother, but magic—this tantalizing danger—he had no power here.

  “I have to get her away. Get her home,” he muttered.

  The longer Heath remained without either doing Carlotta’s will or finding an impossible way around it, the more of a danger he was to Maria. It felt like a scale: the moments stacking and sliding and slipping. The longer he spent returning Maria to the future, the closer he was to Carlotta demanding he kill her. And when that order came, Heath knew he could not resist.

  “I hate you,” he whispered. He wasn’t sure to whom he spoke. Himself? Carlotta. But the thought sprang back at him with her golden laughter attached and he felt like vomiting.

  He hated the public conscience that forced him to care about the world’s fate. He wished it could just be about Maria. He could allow her to stay on as a princess and he would stay with her and if they would not let him marry her, he would at least find a way to be alongside her and if Carlotta killed him, what then? There had to be a place at the palace for interns.

  But no, it was about Europe. It was about international politics and the lives of millions. He could not reshape history with his clumsy hands and expect things to come out in balance, not even for a woman he loved. Martyrs to a cause greater than themselves. They would have to be. As much as he hated it, as much as every healthy cell in his brain fomented against it, Carlotta’s will was the only one that managed to save most of humanity.

  Curse a reasoning conscience.

  Heath exited his room and skimmed down the great staircase. “The drawing room?” he asked a servant.

  “Which, sir?” she asked in a sing-song voice which he grimly identified as Carlotta’s reaching into his psyche.

  “In which might I find the young lady?”

  The servant simpered and batted her eyelashes. “I can take you.”

  “No, please. Tell me which direction.”

  “That way, sir.”

  Heath stretched his fingers, easing out of them the thought of pressing against a white throat. “Thanks.”

  He walked, stomach flipping, heart slamming, soul howling and damning him in three languages, to the door of the drawing room. He paused a moment to collect himself, lowered his hand, and stepped inside.

  “Heath! I thought you were resting.” Maria rustled across the drawing room, leaving on the table the start of a sketch. The queen’s remark about drawing Heath’s face had got her thinking—but Maria wasn’t much of an artist, really, and Heath might not be extraordinarily flattered by her depiction of him.

  “You don’t look very well.” Awful, actually. “You’re sweating like a pig!”

  “Pigs don’t sweat, Miss Wied.”

  “What, did you intern at Old MacDonald’s farm before working for Fischer-Thurman?” Maria saw some flicker of tenderness in his face. She patted his hand and dragged him to a long, low sofa. “Sit here and please don’t refuse brandy. Or cognac. Or whatever this is.”

  She sniffed it, poured him a glass, put it into his hand, and pushed him back against the sofa. “I’m still your boss, though I’m not even sure cinema has been invented yet, so do as I say and sit down.”

  Heath raised the amber liquid. “You didn’t put any black magic in here, did you?”

  “As if I’d know what to do with magic if it hit me on the head.”

  “How’re your hands?” Heath asked softly.

  Maria looked at them and made a face. “Oh, you saw that.”

  “Yeah, the last bit of you I saw before you whizzed through into another world was you bleeding like a suicidal kleptomaniac. Skills, woman.” He sipped and made a face. “This is not brandy. And it’s not cognac.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “A very expensive waste of a decanter.” He put the drink aside and chewed on his lip.

  Maria watched him. He had not behaved a single bit like his old self yet and it bothered her. Heath, to her memory, had never not acted like himself before. He was a man to whom acting like oneself—dignity and all—was on equal footing with keeping the Ten Commandments and voting Democrat every election and going Burberry when it came to choosing a trench coat.

  She pushed the conversational door open with her toe and waited for him to come in, arching his back and purring as usual: “So, tell me all about it.”

  As Heath had spread his story before her, Maria sat, for once, without fidgeting. His story of what would happen if they remained here, of what might happen to the world and what would certainly happen to the royal family ached under her breastbone. She had, of course, thought about all this at some point since coming. She’d managed to stuff it behind her head, though, and not think about it.

  “Carlotta deserves to be scalped,” she said mildly.

  Heath chuckled and picked up her hand.

  She felt a secret in his touch. An unpleasant, unsettled thrill. “There’s more…”

  His brow contracted. “No there isn’t.”

  “Heath.”

  “There isn’t.” His eyes tore at her. “I’ve told you everything.” But he continued to hold her gaze and a parade of horrors passed through her mind as she looked at him. She pulled her hand away and hugged herself.

  “You said Carlotta got me to the future by using a spell from The Spindle.”

  Heath’s breath came heavy and laboring now. Black circles underscored his eyes. “Yeah.”

  “But I left it in the grave. Or the bookcase. Whichever it was.”

  “Fine work there.”

  She rolled her eyes. “So if I can find The Spindle again, I can just use the same spell and get us back?”

  “I’m not sure if that’s how it works… but we have to try it.”

  “But Heath, I’m a princess here. I’m not sure I… what if I don’t want to leave?”

  His eyes threw the kind of sparks made by tossing more wood on a fire. “You have to.”

  Or what? “I’m part of the royal family. If you only saw the queen’s face when we figured out who I am. If I left, it would kill her.”

  “What does the king think of you?” Heath asked.

  Maria relaxed an increment. That question was like her intern of old. “I think he doesn’t dislike me. He said he was glad to have me home. Even you, Mr. Fischer, got over despising me.”

  “I never despised you.”

  “Oh, really? I could have sworn that was what caused all the eye rolling.” She smiled at him but his confused countenance still bothered her. “I’m important here, Heath. Maybe I could do something helpful. What am I at home?”

  “You’re a set designer with an important film project you’ve left Fischer-Thurman to finish. Last I knew they were scuttling around like an overturned anthill trying to cover for you.”

  “Seriously, Heath.”

  He took her hand again. “You’re a good friend, a beautiful soul, and a faithful employee.”

  “Who loves me there, Heath? You are the only person who loves me in that modern age. What do I have there? What sort of life do I have if I go back?”

  “I’m sorry, Maria, but this life…” Heath swept his hand around the opulent room and his angered, almost amused look settled on her costume. “This is almost as much of a sham as playing dress up. What might have been is tantalizing.” His grip tightened on her fingers. “But what is… what you have and what you’ve lived and the life you’ve made. That’s reality. This isn’t real life. Maybe it could have been, but it’s not. Nothing will be the same if you stay. Most of what would happen could end tragically. Look at history, Maria.”

  She looked. She looked at history with a fearful mind and at Heath with a fearful heart. What he said was true enough, but here she had value. She’d lived a very quiet life in L.A. and not many people realized she was missing at all. But her rea
l, royal parents had mourned the loss of their only daughter once already. Was it fair to subject them to a second death? Besides—in the modern age she was nothing close to a princess. Here, she was a sort of second Kate Middleton, sans motherhood and British accent. And long legs.

  “Oh, Heath,” she whispered. “Tell me where I belong.”

  She dropped her head onto his shoulder. His thumb caressed the back of her hand. For a moment the world—whichever world in which they were meant to live—had settled into peace once more. Heath’s other hand moved to a letter opener on the desktop.

  Now what was he—Maria jolted upright and tore her hand from his, fighting down her heart which had jumped into her mouth.

  Heath raised the letter opener. The light caught on its clever blade and flashed into his tortured face. His eyes, full of a great, great weariness, begged forgiveness.

  Maria’s terror scalded Heath. His hand shook as he raised his knife.

  Who am I?

  What is this?

  I’m no murderer.

  I love her.

  From the distance, Carlotta’s fingers closed around his chest and squeezed the last honest breath from his lungs. Somehow—perhaps because Maria had now told him the location of the spellbook or because they had talked too long of staying—Carlotta wanted her dead. Heath moaned and lurched clumsily at Maria.

  “Heath!” She scrambled backward in a flurry of too much skirt. He watched himself grab for her dress, clumsily trying to make her stay, and then saw her hand swing at him before he felt the considerable punch of her left fist to his right ear. The mist before his eyes began to lift.

  “What the heck do you think you’re doing?” she yelled at him. Tears pooled in her green eyes and spilled down her chin, down her neck. The lace at her throat dampened.

  He rubbed his eyes, tried to say something. He didn’t want to kill her but it had become a physical urge, like vomiting. It would happen and Heath could do nothing to prevent it.

  Heath opened his mouth to say, “Carlotta gave me some philter to drink,” but the words stuck in his throat. He couldn’t say them because it was against the gypsy’s will.

  “Maria,” he churned out, “find The Spindle. It is not safe for you to stay.” To stay here, to stay with me.

  She stared, trembling, at him and the reproach and agony in her face was almost too much for him to bear. “You came here just to kill me?”

  “Yes.” No, you misunderstand. But could he say that aloud? Carlotta’s hand clenched around his lungs again, compressed his thoughts into one: kill.

  “Maria, go. GO.”

  He roared the command and lunged at her again. Maria gathered her skirts and quickly outpaced him. She was not laboring under a curse. She was well and quick and would, please God, understand his meaning.

  She fled the room, leaving a wake of rattled silence. Heath took up the cup of expensive liquor again and sipped it, regaining his composure. He could breathe a little easier with Maria out of his presence.

  Some thirty minutes later, when the queen entered, Heath rose and answered truthfully that he had not seen Maria in the last half hour. Where had she gone? He was not certain, but Bucharesti might not be the worst place to look.

  The queen stepped toward him, then hesitated. Peals of fractured, colored light washed over her Madonna’s face from the stained glass windows high behind Heath. She rested a slender hand on the satin finish of her beloved piano. Detached as he made himself from this moment, Heath nevertheless noticed how that hand trembled, how the arm supported her whole, pleading body.

  “The gypsy is in you,” she accused. “I cannot tell how, but I sense it.”

  “Yes.” Answering ‘yes’ was not forbidden.

  Dangerous mother-light filled her eyes. “You will not harm the princess.”

  Heath did not answer.

  “You love her.” The queen darted out of the tempered rainbow-shadows and gripped Heath’s arm convulsively. “Whatever you do, whatever you need to do, keep her safe.”

  As much as Heath wanted to, he could not promise. Carlotta forbade that with another golden crushing of his chest. But promise in word and promise in purpose were two different beasts. Saying nothing, he kissed the queen’s hand and sent a prayer for time heavenward.

  “Your Majesty, have you a horse you might lend?”

  Hours along her way to the church at Cotroceni, Maria sat in the hired carriage, fuming. She would not think or wish or do anything except ride to the church and try to find a way back into the grave.

  Heath had tried to kill her.

  Heath had tried to kill her.

  Nope, she wasn’t thinking about that. Maria clamped her folded hands in her lap as the royal carriage jolted along the lengthy road to Bucharesti. Somewhere in her grave lay The Spindle. If the place was real and not just a temporary holding room for the magic that had transported her from modernity to history, Maria knew she could find it again. Just squeeze back down into that terrifying hole and grab the thing. And if I find it, I can read the spell and get back to normal.

  Even to Maria, it seemed a paling hope. What did she know of magic? How would she make the magic? And why did she want to? All she loved remained in this world where she had a place and a purpose. And now the man she loved pursued her with the intent to murder.

  When the carriage dropped her off at the proper point, Maria inhaled deeply of the city air. It was a mistake, of course, for the city at this time did not smell of patisseries. There were no knots of young men in nice clothes waiting at the bus stop with bouquets of red roses or perfumeries wafting scents into the streets.

  Urine. Horses. Steam. Coal.

  Maria pressed the back of her hand to her nose, pulled her skirt away from the mud and, giving a backward glance to be sure that even now Heath wasn’t after her, entered the church.

  A different priest than before staggered to his feet from the altar at the sound of her entrance, brows knit disapprovingly. He spoke some reproof but Maria had no time for this. She put up an imperious hand, summoning from her core all the authority she might have had as a regent, and swept up the center aisle. For a space, she was unsure which grave had been hers, and then she saw a scar of new mortar in the slates of the floor.

  She stomped on the grave marker with her foot. It lay somberly sturdy in its place. No give. Not even the littlest. The priest frowned at her and Maria smiled.

  “Vorbesti Engleza?” she asked.

  “…Nu.”

  So he didn’t speak English. No matter. “I am going to ask you to leave now. I want a bit of privacy for the confessions I intend to make.” Maria knelt beside the grave and waved him away.

  It was obvious to Maria that the man did not trust her, yet she could not allow him to stand spectator-like as she chopped open a grave. Things like that were simply not done. Even in modern day America.

  With a sound that could have been a sigh or even a half stifled moan, the priest bowed and departed. Maria cast about for something she could use as a hammer. Along the left wall clung a ceramic wood stove and beside it tools for keeping a fire. She waited until the priest had exited the sanctum, then grabbed the poker, hurried back to the grave, and, hesitating only a moment, bashed the slate.

  Such a terrible racket! She might have been Death’s bells for how ghostly her blows sounded, shivering into the vaulted ceiling, battering her with soulless echoes. Sparks flew off the flagstone with each blow. Maria’s arms soon grew weary of hitting, but the stone still seemed immovable. Surely it was not as strong as all this, having been broken once?

  Slam.

  Clang.

  Slam.

  Clang.

  She paused, gulping for air, unused to the corsets preventing a real breath.

  Slam.

  Clang.

  Slam.

  Clang.

  The slate shingled into pieces and Maria, in dimness of reality, was aware of the priest’s head poking back through the arched cathedral doors, looki
ng concerned. She lowered herself into the black maw of the grave and slipped down again into the dusty, spider-laden room between the ages. There lay The Spindle, castaway alongside her tablet in a nest of dead leaves and daddy-long-legs. Maria bent to pick it up. Such an innocent, pretty book it had seemed when she first saw it. She knew the book now for what it was: a blood summoner. A love breaker.

  She knelt on the floor, skirts billowing, and flipped with frantic hands through the pages until she came to a page marked well with illustrations of the gypsy and a child. Black, scar-like text reared against the bone-white page and these words Maria began to sound out in a whisper. She drew a trembling finger against the page. Paper rattled as fear convulsed her body and she formed the spell with her words.

  “Maria!”

  Maria whipped about as a brawny arm grabbed around her waist. It pulled her backward into a muscled grip while another wrenched the book from her and threw it across the bricked floor of the hidden passage. It shrieked as it went, scattering sparks. Or perhaps it was her voice that made the sound. Maria jabbed her elbow backward and scrambled free of the grasp just long enough to see that it was Heath who had dropped after her into the passage.

  “Stop it!” she yelled.

  Heath grabbed for her again. Maria tried to kick him but her stupid, trundling dress made it futile. He held her tight against his body. Something cold and metal tipped against the soft flesh of her throat.

  Oh, God, Heath’s killing me. She squinted her eyes shut and stopped struggling. God, God, God.

  “You’re not going back, I’m killing you.” Heath growled. His chin dug into her scalp.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “I’m sorry, Maria. She…” His chest convulsed against her back. Even through of the tremor of her own heart, Maria felt his.

  “This isn’t your choice, is it?” she hissed.

  “I’m not allowed to choose.”

  The blade nipped at her skin. She felt her flesh flying apart. A droplet coursed down her throat. It was a tear. No, blood. “Okay, Heath. Heath.” She grabbed his hands with her own. Nearly frozen, they were so cold.