by Peter Clines
He scanned the crowd again. One of the Asian women who’d been speaking with John, the one in black, had wandered over to share James’s cigarette. James spoke to her in an offhand way, still focused on the piano player.
Eli looked up at Harry again. She had a drink in her hand, and some of it rained on Christopher as Eli watched. “John,” she shouted across the room. “Come toast our happy day with us!”
John’s laugh boomed across the crowd. “That was two days ago.”
Laughter from the crowd now.
“Then come toast today with us,” she cackled.
Eli smiled and turned to watch the room again. Young Theo had wandered across the room to lean over the lumberjack’s shoulder. A woman with a long black braid and a battered motorcycle jacket led the other Asian woman, the one in red, upstairs, but kept gazing back at Harry with a wistful smile.
The crowd spat up a woman in front of him. Eli guessed her to be maybe ten or fifteen years older than him, with just enough silver hair for it to stand out. He recognized the woman’s leather bonnet, but this close he could see that what he’d mistaken for a brass button back in Pasadena was actually some kind of large coin, or maybe a medal, pinned to the hat. Her trench coat was folded open to reveal a long red scarf and khaki cargo pants. “Begging your pardon,” she half-shouted at him, “can you wave down Siobhan?” She pointed past him to the bartender.
He turned and tried to get the woman’s attention. How did people get a bartender’s attention before there were paper bills or credit cards to flash? Did they wave a quarter back and forth? Shout? The bartender turned and he straightened up, catching her eye. She wandered down and money changed hands.
Eli studied the bonnet. It didn’t look much newer than it had in Pasadena. Neither did she. That afternoon couldn’t be more than a year or two in her future.
“You’re staring,” said the woman. “Do we know each other?”
He shook his head.
She gave him a sly smile, showing a set of wide teeth with a narrow gap. “Do we know each other eventually?”
He shook his head again. “No,” he said. “I think I saw you at a distance once. You were…across the road.”
“Oh, that’s cryptic,” she said. “I like that.” She studied his face for a moment and gave a single nod, but said nothing else. Siobhan the bartender brought her a thin bottle and the bonneted woman winked at Eli before vanishing back into the crowd.
Eli turned to look for Harry and Christopher again. She’d dropped back into the crowd. John had waded over to her and their conversation now included young Theo. The man did get around.
The crowd parted and Eli glimpsed a large man in army green sitting at a table across the room. The crowd shifted again and he got another look. The man’s mouth and brow formed two flat, parallel lines above and below his eyes. They made the stern face look even more like a block. Something about it seemed familiar.
The face or the expression.
Five years ago—or a hundred and thirty years from now—Eli’d been the best man at Corey and Robin’s wedding. Not the youngest couple he’d seen get married, but still pretty young even with a little hindsight. A few times at the reception, Eli had happened to glimpse Robin’s father watching all the barely-out-of-college kids drinking and dancing and celebrating, and more than a few of them making out right there on the dance floor.
Robin’s father had smiled proudly for photos and whenever his daughter and new son-in-law looked at him. But his overall expression, his mood, had been disappointment. At the wedding. At the behavior. At the public displays of affection.
The man on the far side of the First Time Around was proud of all this, but on some level the party disappointed him.
Just as Eli realized who the man had to be, Abraham Porter’s eyes shifted and locked onto Eli’s. He gave a faint, polite nod of acknowledgment, maybe even a hair of approval. Then the crowd shifted again and Porter vanished.
Eli lifted his drink and let his eyes slide over the crowd. Where had Christopher gone? Had he ducked into a bathroom—or run to an outhouse? Had he—
Something slammed into his back and shook his teeth. A hand like a baseball mitt. “Siobhan,” bellowed a voice. “Another round of the good stuff for the party. And one for my new friend here.”
Christopher dropped against the bar. His brilliant blue eyes swept up and down Eli even as he brushed his scruffy hair back across his scalp. “Do I know you?”
Eli shook his head.
The other man studied his face and grinned. “Am I going to know you?”
“I don’t think so.”
The bartender set down two glasses, each brimming with at least a triple of something that smelled of Halloween candy and wood fire smoke.
“I only ask,” said Christopher, “because you seem to have such a keen interest in me and my lovely new bride.”
Eli glanced back at Harry again. He reached for one of the glasses and Christopher set a hand on his arm. It was a gentle touch, but Eli felt the strength lurking behind it.
“It’s my wedding,” said the broad-shouldered man. “I want it to be a happy, peaceful celebration without any trouble. But if trouble comes looking for me and the folks I love, well…I’ll still do what needs to be done.”
“Nothing needs to be done,” Eli said. “Honest.”
“Excellent.” Christopher moved his hand. He picked up one of the glasses and nudged the other toward Eli. “To the happy couple,” he said with a grin.
“To the happy couple,” echoed Eli.
They drank. Eli gasped. Christopher chuckled and slapped him on the arm. A few drops of liquor flew from Eli’s glass to the floor.
“It’s a bit strong,” said Christopher. “Puts hair on your chest. And a few other places too.” He raised his glass again and Eli tried to keep up.
“Thank you,” said Eli. “For the drink.”
“The groom pays for everything. That’s what my da taught me.” He looked at Eli’s clothes again. “Nineteen…seventies?”
“Eighties,” Eli said. “Sort of. I think.”
“Oh, swell times,” said Christopher. “I spent more than a few nights then before my Harry made an honest man out of me.”
“It’s a nice place,” said Eli. “Or time, I guess.”
“From the 1920s myself,” said Christopher. “Used to be a banker, believe it or not.”
“Really?”
He nodded sagely. “Worst of the worst. Just a grubby step or two above being a loan shark.”
“What happened?”
“The crash,” he said. “Invested poorly, lost everything. Wealthy as Midas one morning, poor as a priest the next night. I was trying to throw myself off the Brooklyn Bridge when a woman grabbed me.”
“Phoebe Fitzgerald?”
Christopher’s brow shifted. “You know Phoebe?”
“Reputation only.”
He mulled over the phrase and nodded in approval. “She’s a good woman.” He gazed across the room. “I owe her a lot.”
Eli followed his gaze. “Is she here? I thought she was…” His tongue tripped over the words. “I mean, for me she’s…” This time he made no attempt to recover and let his tongue face-plant between his teeth.
“Still a bit wet behind the ears, aren’t you?” Christopher raised his glass again. “No insult meant. Took me months to wrap my noggin’ around it all. Harry, she’s brilliant and it took her two or three weeks. It’s a strange life we’ve chosen, and it can be a lot to take in.”
Eli nodded in agreement.
“How long have you been on the road?”
“Ummmm…about a week now, I think, actively. Maybe six days.”
“Six days. Christ on a crutch. And you’re already in Hourglass. Took me almost a year just to hear about this place.” Christopher finished off his drink and waved to the bartender. “Shut me off after this next one, Siobhan,” he said, “or I won’t be able to perform my duties tonight.”
&nb
sp; The bartender laughed as she poured another two fingers into the glass.
“So,” Christopher said, raising his fresh drink, “you know of Phoebe, but you don’t know me, and you were staring at me and my lovely bride. Which makes me wonder if you were just staring at her.”
Eli sipped his own glass. The liquor steamed in his throat. He’d barely finished half his first drink.
Christopher gulped another mouthful. “Can’t fault you for that. She’s a fine-looking woman. Couldn’t take my eyes off her from the first time I saw her.” He looked at Eli. “That’s not why you’re staring, though, is it? You know her.”
Eli mimed taking a long drink of his own, but let most of it wash into his mouth and back out into the glass. The vapors numbed his tongue. He glanced at the door. There were almost a dozen people between him and the swinging panels. If he understood the rules, the other man wouldn’t follow him into the other bar.
“Nineteen-eighties means you’re not from her past,” Christopher said, tapping his finger against his tumbler. “I’m guessing we meet up sometime in the future? And you decided to come back and invite yourself to the wedding reception.”
“She brought me,” Eli said, and regretted it.
“Ahhh,” said Christopher, his smile growing. “You’re traveling with us. You snuck over here from the Second Iteration, didn’t you? You cheeky bastard. Porter’ll slap you silly if he finds out.” He took another big mouthful of his drink.
“I don’t think I’m supposed to say anything. Rules and all.” Eli looked over at the crowd of people around the bride. “You should be getting back to the party, shouldn’t you?”
Christopher paused. “She brought you,” he echoed. “She brought you, but you don’t know me.”
Eli watched the man’s face soften. Christopher’s eyes shifted to the distant bride.
“Ahhh.” He set his glass down on the bar. “Them? The faceless men?”
Eli thought about cryptic answers, then direct ones, and ended up studying the half inch of liquid at the bottom of his glass. An answer in itself.
Christopher’s lips tightened. “Do you know when?”
“I…I really don’t think I’m supposed to talk about it.”
“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” he said. “Call it a wedding gift.”
Eli’s gaze shifted from the bourbon to the polished surface of the bar. He didn’t know much about woodwork, but he guessed the dark planks of the bar hadn’t been cheap. They made the chalky rings from past glasses stand out.
Christopher closed his eyes. “Nah,” he said. “You’re right. Better if I don’t know. Just…” He looked out across the room at the young Harry. “They don’t hurt her, do they? Tell me that at least.”
“No.” Eli shook his head. “No, she’s fine. I mean, she’s fine now, so if she was hurt then it wasn’t bad. Not physically hurt,” he added. “She’s still…”
“Yes?”
“She doesn’t talk about it much.”
“Still recent?”
“No. I mean, not today. Or, not when I know her. She’s not going to meet me for another nine years, I think. At that point, for her, it’s been almost…”
Eli stopped and looked over at Harry. She’d paused in her celebrating and now stared across the room at the bar. At her husband talking with the man in the short wool coat and the derby.
Eli studied his drink again. Christopher studied his.
“You want to know an ugly truth?” He waved his glass at the crowd without waiting for an answer. “This party isn’t for me and Harry. Part of it is, sure. But the reason everyone is so happy is because they don’t have to accept the future yet.”
“What do you mean?”
Christopher looked at him. “I saw you talking with Alice a few minutes ago. Phoebe’s here too. So’s Abraham.” He glanced across the room and took a slow breath. “More than half the people in this room are dead, from my point of view. Most of them were killed. Murdered. Everyone who makes it over to the Second Iteration either knows how they’re going to die or how someone they care about is going to die, if they haven’t already. Traveling through history, like we do…it’s all about meeting ghosts. And eventually realizing we’re all somebody’s ghost.”
They leaned against the bar for a moment, not talking or drinking.
“I should get back to Harry,” said Christopher. He smiled at Eli. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
The broad man lifted his glass and downed the last of his drink with two deep swallows. “You’ve told me I get to spend the rest of my life with the person I love most in this world. What more could anyone ask for?”
Christopher gave Eli one last pat on the back, set his glass on the bar, and pushed back into the crowd. He waded through to Harry, who glanced from her husband to Eli and back. Then Christopher swept her into his arms and she smiled and the searchers around them laughed at something he said.
People surrounded them again and they vanished from sight.
Eli took another look around the bar. Part of him wanted to finish his drink, and maybe spend his other quarter to get one more bourbon. Maybe flirt with Monica again. It seemed like a waste to leave before he had to, considering he could never come back again.
But he couldn’t stay. Harry hadn’t mentioned the man in the derby hanging around.
He took a last sip of his drink and left it sitting on the bar with a half inch still in the bottom of the glass.
Eli paused at the door to glance over his shoulder, the crowd parted one more time, and the last face he saw in the First Time Around ended up being Abraham Porter, still leaning back in his booth, although the woman with the leather bonnet had joined him. Something about the large man still set off little twinges of déjà vu.
Eli pushed the blue doors apart and stepped out into the dark night of Hourglass. They closed behind him with a faint creak, just loud enough to be heard over the music and voices.
The night watchman had vanished again. Down one side street or another. Or maybe he just went home after a certain point. The dark form of another figure wandered up the main road, a woman from the sway of the hips.
And then something hit the back of Eli’s head and sent a tremor echoing forward through his skull. The world spun, his legs collapsed, and everything went black before the tremor even reached his eyes.
31
The first pain, the one in his head, dragged Eli back to consciousness. He tried to lift his chin, and the pain in his neck and shoulders made him aware of his body. He tried to take a breath and a constricting pain tightened around his chest.
“I think he’s awake.”
Someone poked him twice in the breastbone. Thick fingers grabbed his chin and wrenched his head left and right. He tried to slap the hands away, but his own hands…
Coarse rope held his hands up over his head and pressed them tight together. He tugged and felt it bite at his wrists. The muscles of his arms ached.
He flexed his ankles and found nothing beneath his feet. He stretched his toes down. Still nothing, but now his body rocked with the movement.
Eli opened his eyes, blinked away the last dark cobwebs, and looked around.
A fire pit burned at the center of the room. It and two lanterns threw flickering shadows in every direction. Patches of straw covered the dirt floor, which sat a good six inches farther away than he was used to seeing floors. A few posts of bare wood broke up the space and stretched up into the exposed rafters. The closest post—or would it be a beam?—had a pair of black-iron horseshoes nailed to it, the prongs pointed up into the darkness. A coil of rope hung alongside the horseshoes, either on a hook or a bent nail. He looked around, tried to spot a door, but the space was just big enough that the flickering firelight couldn’t reach to illuminate the walls.
“Finally,” muttered a familiar voice. “Was starting to think you’d need a goddamned bucket of water thrown in your face.”
A strong hand settled on
Eli’s shoulder and pushed. He glanced back, caught a glimpse of fire-red hair, and felt a taut rope bounce against the back of his skull. It hit a tender spot and electric pain flared behind his eyes.
Svetlana shoved him, turned him more.
Truss sat on a crate. A blanket had been spread beneath him so his expensive clothes didn’t touch the bare wood. He peered at Eli over his square glasses. “You’ve probably got a few things you want to spit out. Might as well get that over with.”
“What the hell is this? What do you think you’re doing?” A chill ran through Eli’s arms. He didn’t know where his coat had gone. “What the hell do you want from me?”
Truss examined his fingernails.
Eli kicked and pulled and swung back and forth. He thrashed and felt the cord under his arms cut and bite at the soft skin there. The coarse rope scraped his wrists raw and plucked at the hairs on the back of his head. It hit the lump where he’d been knocked out and sparks flashed behind his eyelids again.
Exhaustion waited for an opening, lunged in, and dragged his legs back down. He took a few deep breaths and struggled against the double-loop of rope over his chest. He tried to slump and his shoulders and neck and wrists ached.
Truss yawned. “You’re thinking of me as some sort of criminal, Teak, am I right? I’m sure Pritchard and her—”
“Teague.”
The old man raised a shaggy brow.
“My name isn’t Teak. It’s Teague.”
Truss glanced at Svetlana. The big woman gave a single nod. He shrugged. “Still got some backbone,” he said. “That’s good.”
Eli glared at him.
“I’m sure Pritchard and her friends have filled your head with all sorts of stories. But you know me. You’ve known me for…five years?”
Svetlana held up both hands, six fingers.
“Six years. I think you know me better than they do. You’ve worked for me. You know I’m a businessman. I don’t have anything personal against you or them.”
“That’d sound a lot better if I wasn’t strung up in a barn.”
The old man’s face split in a grin. “Truth be told, it isn’t personal. I don’t care about any of you. Not in the slightest. You’re assets, to be used and discarded. Assuming you’re even worth the effort of discarding.”
