Time's Edge

by Rysa Walker

  As soon as we’re on the other side, I yank my arm away. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “What?” He looks like he hasn’t the slightest idea what I mean, until I shoot a pointed glance toward the street.

  “Waiting politely won’t get you across the street in Boston,” he informs me, “at least not in 1905. There aren’t any of those blinking idiot signs that show a hand and count down the seconds for you.”

  “I like the idiot signs,” I mutter. “Your method seems more likely to get me killed.”

  Lock Sen Low is apparently on the second floor, but there’s a cart just inside the stairwell. A young Chinese guy opens the lid of the large bamboo steam tray, and Kiernan points to a plain white bun and then to one scattered with black sesame seeds.

  Kiernan hands the sesame bun to me. It’s huge. “I thought these were for you. I’m really not that hungry.” While I’d have sworn that was true, my tummy picks that precise moment to contradict me with a growl, possibly because the bao really does smell delicious.

  I would also have sworn the street was far too noisy for Kiernan to have heard that small noise, but either he’s got excellent hearing or my glance downward at my traitorous stomach tipped him off.

  “Sorry, but I think you’ve been outvoted,” he says, taking a big chomp out of his bun, which smells like barbecue pork. “Just take a bite. I’ll finish what you don’t want.”

  It tastes even better than it smells. We walk as we eat, thankfully avoiding any more near collisions. Kiernan polishes off the pork bao while I still have a good half-dozen bites left, and I hand him the rest of mine, even though I could definitely have finished it. Maybe a bit of deprivation will teach my stomach who’s boss.

  Boston Commons is only a few blocks over, and we catch the train just this side of the park. Once we’re on board, I clear my throat, giving Kiernan an impatient look.

  “What?”

  “We’re now on the train,” I say. “You owe me information.”

  He nods and begins to rummage around in his canvas bag, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. I smooth it out as best I can and see that it is a flyer. See the Amazing Boudini, Now Disappearing Nightly at the Great Steel Theater. The words are in the foreground in green, printed over the black silhouette of a top hat.

  “The poster is nice—” I begin.

  “Thank you. I thought it turned out rather well myself.”

  “But Boudini? You can’t be serious?”

  “The name wasn’t my idea.” He lowers his voice and leans in so that we’re not overheard. I follow his lead, although I doubt anyone could make heads or tails of this conversation if they did catch a few snippets. “That part is historical. Apparently some other guy pulled this same stunt or, rather, will pull it this coming September, calling himself Boudini. Houdini finds out and gets all pissed off. Or we think he does. It might have been a publicity stunt Houdini was in on from the beginning. Either way, he challenges the guy to an underwater competition, which Houdini, of course, wins. The other guy nearly drowned, or at least that’s what the newspaper says.”

  “What’s this other fake Houdini going to think about you stealing his plan?”

  He shrugs. “Don’t care. Kate tried to get past Houdini’s bodyguards in London to ask about the key, but she failed. This was Plan B—get Houdini angry enough to come here and challenge me. Then we confront him, and he hands over his key.”

  “Which he’s going to do willingly?”

  “Maybe. He’s supposed to be a nice enough guy. He’s not a fan of people who try to manipulate others through bogus claims about the spirit world, so maybe we can convince him. But willingly or not, we’ll have to get his key.”

  He’s right, although I have the feeling this isn’t going to be as easy as he thinks. “So . . . where did you learn to do magic?”

  “I picked up the basics watching street magicians that year at the Expo. You watch long enough and you can tell what they’re doing. And a guy over on Cairo Street taught me a few tricks. I’m not really good with the showman side, but I can still do enough to prime the audience for the main event.”

  “I’m guessing that’s an escape trick?”

  “Yep. The assistants put cuffs on me, and I hop into the container. When they open it up a few minutes later, I’m uncuffed and unchained. Ta-da. As long as I can reach the CHRONOS key, it’s easy as pie.”

  “So who unlocks the cuffs?”

  He looks down at the floor. “Um, Jess did, the first few times. But I don’t like pulling him into this. I’ve just been doing it myself, back at the apartment.”

  “That’s . . . not a good idea, is it? I mean, from what you’ve told me . . . from what Katherine’s told me—”

  “It’s not ideal, but I can handle it. I don’t say anything to myself, and I schedule all the jumps for the week on my day off, at a time when I’m half-asleep.” He shrugs. “It takes a little longer to get the cuffs off when I’m groggy, but it’s not bad if I go right back to sleep. Kind of like it was a dream.”

  “No. I’ll do it. What time did we leave your place this morning? A little after ten?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “When you do the trick today, set the coordinates for your place at 10:15 a.m., and I’ll be there. Then do it for 10:16 for the next jump, and a minute or so later for each of the others. We’ll get a week out of the way before I go. It will only take a little of my time, and it would be nice if you came out of this with your marbles intact, too.”

  His expression is a combination of reluctance and relief, so it must be a bigger deal than he’s letting on.

  We switch trains at Lake Street, boarding an open trolley that Kiernan says will take us out into the suburbs. I spend most of the ride looking at the scenery and thumbing through a day-old Boston Globe that someone stuffed between the benches.

  Kiernan reads over my shoulder, and when I flip the paper around to the back, he points to an advertisement for Keith’s Vaudeville House.

  “Lambert and Pierce. They’ll start at Norumbega next week.”

  “Two Men in Black?” For me that pulls up a visual of Will Smith and that other guy in dark sunglasses fighting intergalactic troublemakers.

  “Yeah, Kate got a kick out of that, too. It’s a minstrel show—they should call it Two Men in Blackface. Like a lot of acts, they run a circuit of vaudeville houses within a few hundred miles. Some headliners travel the entire country, even around the world.”

  “So is that your goal, O Great Boudini? Bump Houdini out of the limelight and take it for yourself?”

  “Dear God, no. Not my goal and not even a remote possibility. Houdini actually has some escape-artist skills, and he’s a master showman. It’s not just the CHRONOS key. I’m lucky to keep them awake until I do the vanish.”

  “Do you think there’s any chance he’ll be here today?”

  “Houdini? No. I’m pretty sure I’ll get a letter from his attorneys before the great man himself comes all the way to Boston. Like I said, this is just prep, so we could have ski—”

  “No. We couldn’t have. I could’ve read for weeks and never have gotten as much information about 1905 as I have in the past hour.”

  He chuckles. “Careful, love. You’re starting to sound like a true CHRONOS historian.”

  I shake my head. “Not CHRONOS. Just the cleanup crew.”

  Kiernan’s description of Norumbega as a poor man’s World’s Fair is dead-on. There’s a huge fountain near the center of the park that looks like the electric fountains at the Expo, scaled down and heavily speckled with bird droppings. A carousel sits near the center of the park, and Kiernan says they’re planning to add a Ferris wheel and other rides. The Charles River is a much smaller stand-in for the shores of Lake Michigan.

  The main attraction at Norumbega seems to be canoeing. There are so many canoes on the river that I can barely see the water.

  “Is it always this crowded? The boats can barely move.”

&nbs
p; Kiernan laughs. “The passengers aren’t in it for exercise. They’ll gradually work their way a quarter mile or so downriver. The police have increased their arrests, but the couples keep on coming.”

  “Arrests? For what?”

  “Necking in the canoes. Canoedling, some of them call it.”

  I give him a skeptical look. “Why make out in a canoe? There are people all around them. It’s not very private.”

  “People in the other boats are doing the same thing, so they aren’t gonna pay you any mind. In a few years, when there are autos everywhere, the backseat will put these canoe vendors out of business, but right now, those boats are the most privacy you can buy for a dime.”

  We wander around for a while, and then a light rain begins to fall, so we trudge up the hill toward the building at the top. The sign out front reads Great Steel Theater, and that’s a pretty accurate description of the massive gray structure.

  Kiernan groans, then digs in his pocket and pulls out a couple of nickels. “If Josephine was working, you wouldn’t need a ticket,” he says in a low voice. “But Agatha is hard-nosed. I’m pretty sure she resells some of the tickets and pockets the difference. She’s gonna get caught if she’s not careful. Easley may be stupid, but his wife isn’t.”

  He slides the coins across the wooden ledge. “Hi, Agatha. I brought a guest today. We’ll go backstage first, but she’ll be watching the show afterward.”

  A heavy-set, older woman glances up briefly from her book and does a double take at my face, like she’s trying to figure out where she’s seen me before. Sure enough, there’s the fading ghost of a lotus flower on her hand. I don’t hold her attention for long, however. The book—a tattered paperback entitled Mischievous Maid Faynie—is clearly more interesting than a girl who bears a passing resemblance to a picture at the temple.

  We wait for a moment, and then Kiernan says, “Her ticket, please? Just in case Tito checks.”

  Agatha gives him a foul look and then tears off a ticket, shoving it toward us.

  The show doesn’t start for twenty minutes, but there are already a few people who’ve come in early to snag a spot near the front. The auditorium is partly enclosed, but the large steel curtains on the sides are open, letting in a bit of a breeze. Kiernan leads me toward a door near the stage, and we walk into a dim room crowded with stage props. There’s a trail of sorts between the junk, and Kiernan seems to know where he’s going.

  A few yards in, we pass a wooden coffin on a raised platform, and he knocks on the top. “This was the trick I auditioned with. But I’ve upped the ante since then.”

  At the back of the room, a small flight of wooden steps goes up to stage level. A curvy blonde in her midtwenties turns as we approach, a welcoming smile on her face.

  “Somebody pinch me. Are you Kate? I’m Eliza Easley. It’s nice to see you actually exist.” She slides her hand up Kiernan’s arm and winks at me. “You have no idea how many girls ask me to introduce them to this guy, but he keeps saying he’s taken.”

  Kiernan shoots me an apologetic glance and squeezes my hand. I wouldn’t blow his cover either way, but I wish I could believe that he’s been saying that simply to ward off her matchmaking attempts rather than because he’s still convinced that we belong together.

  “Hi, Eliza. Nice to meet you.”

  “I’m gonna show her the setup,” Kiernan says, “then take her out front. I’ll be back about five minutes before I go on.”

  She shakes her head. “Sorry, kid. Perry up and quit. I’m going to need some extra muscle moving the sets between acts.”

  He makes a face. “That’s okay. I’ll get her settled and come right back. Why’d Perry quit?”

  “Same reason you’ll quit, and same reason I’ll quit eventually. My jackass of a husband.” She grins, but I get the feeling she’s not exactly joking.

  Kiernan nods, then leads me to the other side of the stage, toward a black rectangular box about the width and maybe two-thirds the height of a telephone booth. It’s sitting on a wheeled platform a few inches above the floor. He pulls the curtain that surrounds the box to reveal a glass case, filled with water. Another cart a few feet away holds an assortment of metal cuffs and chains.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope,” he says. “We pull someone from the audience and cuff him, just to show everyone these aren’t trick cuffs. Then I jump in the bath, they pull the curtain to hide me and parade around—and when they slide the curtain open, I’m out of the cuffs.”

  “What about your tux?”

  He taps his chest. “Bathing suit. Underneath.”

  “Oh, please tell me it’s not one of those one-piece things that come down to the knees?”

  “Yes. And I look very handsome in it,” he deadpans.

  “I’m sure you do,” I say, fighting back a laugh.

  The auditorium is filling up rapidly when Kiernan walks me out. The light rain has turned into a downpour, and most of the people coming through the doors are shaking water out of their hair.

  A tall, thin man with a mustache, wearing a deep red jacket, is on the far side of the auditorium, trying to lower a heavy metal curtain to keep the rain from gusting in. He’s already fastened the one on the wall closest to us, but it looks like the other curtain is stuck. He jerks the crank back and forth to jar it loose, but it doesn’t seem to be working.

  “It’s gonna be a full house. Ticket sales always go up when it storms. I was hoping you’d get a better seat. Do you want to go backstage and jump back a few minutes so we can get you closer?”

  I shake my head and take a seat in the center aisle, a few rows from the back. “That’s okay. I can come another day and get a closer look if I need to.”

  “As much as I enjoy your company, I think we should avoid that. Listen, I’m gonna help Tito with that storm curtain, and then I’ve got to get backstage. See you after.”

  He pushes through the crowd, and I watch as the two of them give the crank an extra hard shove and the barrier begins to roll down. When it reaches the bottom, Kiernan pats Tito on the back and says something to him, nodding in my direction. Then Kiernan hustles down the aisle, turning to flash me a quick smile before he disappears through the stage door.

  I start to feel a little uneasy as soon as he’s out of sight. I tug at the ruffled neck of my blouse until I locate the cord attached to my CHRONOS key. I rub the cord between my fingers nervously while I look around at the audience. Some are eating popcorn from soggy cartons, while others try to read the program in the dim light.

  After a couple of minutes, a small orchestra begins to warm up. A violinist takes his bow for a practice run across the strings, making an eerie screech at exactly the same moment I feel a tap on my shoulder.

  I jump, but it’s just the guy Kiernan called Tito. He’s older than he looked from a distance. When I look up at him, I see a flash of recognition in his eyes.

  Dear God, do they only hire Cyrists at this park?

  But then he breaks into a grin that deepens the wrinkles in his face. “You are Kate?”

  I return his smile, still a bit wary.

  “The magician boy, Boudini, he ask me to give you this.” His accent sounds Italian, or maybe Portuguese. He hands me a program and leans in a little closer. “So it finally work, eh? You make him notice you?”

  I look at him, puzzled, and shake my head.

  “Ah, no need to be shy. Tito will keep your secret. I no forget a pretty face, such pretty eyes. And is nice to see you smile for a change. Every show I see you watch him, you and the other man.” He nods toward the other side of the theater. “Then you sneak away before the next act, never stay to see the whole show. You stay today, okay? Is good show!”

  The smile is frozen on my face, as I glance around the auditorium to see if I spot Prudence or the blue glow from her medallion.

  Tito obviously mistakes my expression for embarrassment, because he pats my hand and says, “No, no, don’ worry. The magician boy likes
you. I can tell these things. And he seems a lot nicer than your other namorado. That one, he no make you smile, so is good you get rid of him.”

  “Thank you, Tito,” I say and give him the biggest smile I can muster, hoping that he’ll leave if he thinks I’m happy. It works—he pats my hand again for good measure and then heads down the aisle to the orchestra pit.

  I wait until his attention is elsewhere and then move toward the exit, keeping my head down. From the corner of my eye, I’m almost certain I see the blue flash of a medallion off to my left, at the very back. I tell myself not to look in that direction, but when I reach the rear of the theater, I do. Everyone is moving forward, folding umbrellas, shaking water from their hair and clothes, and craning their necks to find a cluster of seats where they can sit together.

  All but two of them, that is.

  The couple near the back isn’t wet at all. Their backs are pressed against the rear wall of the theater. The guy is a little above average height, kind of chunky, and I recognize Simon’s pale, pudgy profile scowling out at the people pushing in front of him. He has a tight grip on the upper arm of the girl standing next to him, who wears a high-waisted dress. Prudence is about my age, my height, pretty much my everything, but it’s her face that draws my attention. It’s slack, almost vacant. She’s staring at the door that Kiernan entered a few minutes ago, her mouth slightly open, her eyes empty.

  Whirling around, I shove my way through the stragglers still filing into the theater and run out into the rain. I tug the medallion out of my blouse as I look for a place with a bit of cover. The rain is coming down so hard that I decide it’s probably a lost cause, and I just press myself against the side of the building, pull up Kiernan’s room at 10:15 a.m., and blink.

  I take a deep breath and then slide away from the stable point, leaving a trail of water behind me on the wooden floor. A few seconds later, Kiernan appears, dripping wet, with three sets of cuffs on his arms and two on his ankles, the CHRONOS key clutched in his hands.

  The black one-piece suit does in fact look good on him.