Chasing Time Read online

  I felt the loss of them like a knife to my gut, twisting and pressing deeper in, trying to find my heart. The air was sucked from my lungs in a great rush, and I couldn’t seem to get it back again. Couldn’t breathe. What happened? Why had I come back?

  No, no, no.

  My heart felt like it was going to explode from the lack of oxygen and the pressure that was crushing it from all sides, causing it to ache with sharp pains.

  Vaguely, I recognized a voice trying to calm me while another one requested police and ambulance through the receiver of a phone.

  “Are you okay?” the voice asked me, a calm, motherly voice that I loathed because it wasn’t a voice I wanted to hear. I wanted Everett’s gruff baritone. Or Alex’s throaty Scottish accent.

  She tried to touch me, and I shoved her away roughly. “Get away!” I said, voice utterly broken. I pulled my knees into my chest and rocked…and rocked…

  I rocked; head buried in the darkness of the robe covering my knees. The robe that still smelled like the fire from the hearth in the drawing room, and…like them.

  Chapter 32

  BECK

  Two Weeks Later

  They said it wasn’t real.

  After the police were finished with me, they handed me off for a psych evaluation. The seventy-two-hour hold would have turned into a much longer affair if I hadn’t gotten smart and nodded along with their words.

  When they said that I’d been hallucinating and that I must’ve broken into the heritage house, I agreed. When they said that the reason I “couldn't remember” anything from the past few days aside from my “delusions” was because I was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, I agreed.

  There was no other choice, I realized with frightening clarity. If I told them the truth, they’d think I was batshit crazy and I’d never get out of here.

  But after seventy-two hours of being poked and prodded and questioned and examined—after seventy-two-hours of pulse-pounding dread…doubt began to set in.

  The only bit of proof I had was the thin white shift and fluffy off-white robe I was wearing when they came to take me away.

  And they said I’d stolen them from an upstairs closet—that they were display clothes. Not even real vintage, but fake—very well-done replicas of the wardrobe in the Victorian era.

  Could they be right?

  Could it all have been some vivid hallucination brought on by breaking into a Victorian era home while on really fucking strong drugs?

  I didn’t want to believe it.

  Refused to for a while, even… but it was a question that I knew would haunt me unless I found the answer.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Hmm?” I whirled around to face Aunt Deb, my heart in my throat and my slim black clutch tightly in my grasp at the door.

  “Oh, I thought I’d go down to the library,” I said in a rush. “You know, find a good book to curl up with until my flight on Saturday.”

  Not entirely the truth, but not a lie, either. I was going to the library—but it wasn’t to rent out a damned book.

  Deb watched me with barely concealed apprehension and scrutiny. She’d barely allowed me to leave the house since the hospital released me almost two weeks before. But I had to thank her—because she insisted she could watch me and would personally deliver me to my flight on Saturday, my father had agreed to remain home.

  Thank god because if he deigned to show up here right now and try to drag me home, he’d have the fight of his life on his hands. I was not leaving until I had answers.

  Besides, I was a goddamned adult. I knew they were worried. And I knew they thought maybe I’d developed some kind of drug problem, even though my blood panels came back negative for most every drug save for a drug that wasn’t a drug at all—but poison. And some other drug-like toxin that they didn’t even have a name for…but they were wrong.

  If I was guilty of getting addicted to anything—it was them.

  Alex, Jasper, Ellis, and Everett.

  I felt the itch to be reunited with them like an addict would feel the itch for a hit. I saw them now only in my dreams. A small reprieve. But it wasn’t enough.

  Three days—that was all it took for them to take root somewhere inside me. And those roots ran deeper than I could fathom. I’d tried to remove them, but they were set firmly in place, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw them.

  “I thought Amy was coming by today?”

  She’d come by twice now. Once to see if I was alright, throwing her arms around me as a blubbering mess of running mascara and smudged lipstick. I felt terrible knowing that she’d blamed herself for, how did she put it, oh yeah dragging me out with her and pressuring me to take that stupid drug.

  And the second time she came it was to return my wallet to me, still intact, with all my IDs and bank cards inside. I’d all but forgotten about it, and I remembered pulling out the slim bits of plastic and shaking my head—near laughing at the ridiculousness of money being stuffed into something as trivial as a bit of plastic for convenience.

  It seemed strange to me now. Lots of things that I never thought twice about seemed strange now, though.

  Yet another indication what I’d experienced was not a hallucination.

  It was all too real to have been imagined. They were too real.

  “She is,” I replied, swallowing hard to clear the cobwebs from my throat. I’d been hiding in my room so often lately, I hadn’t had much occasion to speak and it was like my mouth and throat had forgotten how. “I’ll be back by then.”

  “Beck—”

  “I’m fine, Deb,” I snapped, unable to help myself. Her curly silver hair bounced as she recoiled from the harshness of my tone. “I’m sorry,” I amended. “I just—I need some air,” I told her. Reaching for the door handle, I wrenched the door open and took a breath of the crisp, briny breeze. “I’ll be back for dinner,” I added as I stepped outside, stopping her before she could say another word.

  I glanced back to find her tight-lipped with a lick of hurt in her gaze behind her horn-rimmed glasses.

  Feeling the weight of guilt press down on my chest, I sighed. “I promise,” I told her. “I’ll be back.”

  Deb was just trying to be a good aunt. She was trying to protect her only niece—the last vestige of her blood relatives still drawing breath. And she was trying to do right by my mother. How could I fault her for that?

  But I’d had enough occasion to feel guilty lately, and I was done with the pesky emotion.

  It wasn’t as though it was my fucking fault I’d fallen through a gap in time or whatever the hell had happened. Not my fault at all. I didn’t want to have to apologize for something I had no control over.

  No matter if it was all a figment of my drug-addled imagination.

  But that was what I was hoping to find out.

  If not at the library, then at the ‘heritage house’. It had been their house. If I paid for a tour would I find some piece of them still lingered there? I wanted to look through the rooms—see if I could find any more things I recognized. Was the bed I’d slept in still in the room upstairs? Was the bathtub still the claw-footed monstrosity I’d bathed in with Jasper there blushing furiously at my lack of modesty?

  I had to see it all for myself. Maybe then I’d know for sure one way or the other.

  Was it real?

  Or was I really just on a massive drug trip, and when I’d fallen forward in time, it was just the last dregs of the drug leaving my bloodstream and sanity returning?

  I didn’t believe that…but I had to consider it.

  People didn’t just vanish for days on end—travel over a hundred years back in time. It wasn’t possible. I knew that.

  And yet it happened.

  The twenty-one-minute ride to London was a study in déjà vu. As I sat there, headphones blaring in my ears, I remembered getting on this same metro for an entirely different purpose. Except it’d been later in the evening then. I’d been all but alone on
the train. This time, I was squashed between two businessmen on their way to the city, and the reek of their cologne clogged my nostrils with its musky scent.

  I craved the wild heather and horse smell of Alex. Or the soft vanilla scent that seemed to always cling to Ellis. Not this acrid odor that was so strong it nearly brought on a migraine by the time I got off in the heart of the city.

  The air outside was no better, and I found that I’d grown used to the cleaner air of…

  I stopped myself from finishing the thought. It was too painful to keep thinking about. If they were real, I intended to find proof. There had to be some record of them. And if they were—then I had a decision to make.

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I weaved my way through the throng of people at the station and was eventually expelled from the stuffy heat of hundreds of bodies pressed close together into the coolness of the London street in early autumn.

  The sky threatened rain, but I didn’t pay it any attention. I’d withstand a lot more than a downpour to get what I was after.

  The walk to the library felt long, and I had to check the map on my new cell more than a few times to keep from getting myself lost in the labyrinth of buildings and one-way streets and dead-end alleyways.

  The rain started only a second after I found my way inside the old gray stone building with the tall walnut doors.

  By the time I’d made it there, my hands had begun to tremble at my sides, and it felt as though even my insides were quivering. The nervous energy fluttering through me almost made me dizzy with its strength.

  I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.

  I’d chanted the words all the way there like a mantra. Even if I don’t find anything, I’m not crazy. Even if I found some proof they never existed—no matter how much the thought repulsed me—I still wouldn’t allow myself to fall prey to thoughts of insanity. I was not crazy.

  “Um, excuse me,” I said, my voice alternately rough and then squeaking as I clutched the edge of the information desk, unable to meet the woman’s gaze as she halted her typing on the keyboard and turned from the screen to look at me.

  “Yes, dear, can I help you?”

  A pit yawned open in my stomach, and I blurted, “I need to see your old periodicals.”

  “Oh,” she remarked. “Studying for an essay, are you? We’ve had a few come in lately requesting access.”

  “Right. Yeah.”

  Let her think what she wanted. I needed in that room, and I wouldn’t be leaving until I got in. “I’ll just need to see your membership card, dear, and then I can show you the way.”

  Fuck.

  Heat crept up my neck as I made a show of searching through my clutch for the card and rifled around in my pockets, knowing full well I wouldn’t find anything even vaguely reminiscent of a library card anywhere on my person. Finally, with an exaggerated sigh, I dropped my shaking hands and shrugged. “I seem to have left it at home,” I said, lamely.

  The elder woman pouted. “The Times Room and the area where we keep the periodicals is for members only, I’m afraid…” she paused, pulling her thin bottom lip between her lip as she considered a solution.

  “I’ve come a long way, and—”

  “Let me look you up. I’m afraid without your physical card we won’t be able to allow you to take anything out of the library, but you can at least take notes on what you find so you don't waste your time coming.”

  Jackpot.

  “Your name?” she asked, fingers poised over the keys—eyes turned back to the screen.

  Oh crap….

  “Um—it’s Amy,” I said, having to come up with something quickly. I couldn’t have the woman growing suspicious or I’d never get in. “Amy Harkness.”

  “Address?”

  Double crap. But at least that meant she actually found Amy’s name in the system…

  I blurted out her old address—the one I’d used to send her Christmas and birthday gifts after her parents moved them to the city. I knew she didn’t live there anymore, but I hoped she never updated it.

  “Ah,” the librarian remarked. “There you are.”

  My body sagged in relief, and the tremor in my hands lessened, if only for a second. Thank you, Amy.

  The librarian rose and came around the desk, whispering to the only woman there that she’d be back in a few minutes.

  “What time period are you looking for?” she asked conversationally as she waved a hand for me to follow her down into the heart of the library and to a staircase nearer the back.

  “1888,” I said without missing a beat. “The fall of that year…to be exact.”

  “Ah—the Ripper, then?”

  “The…what?”

  She led me down the stairs in a well-lit wide corridor and eventually, into a viewing room with what looked to be stacks upon stacks of shelves with large volumes bound in burgundy cloth with the little leather handled on the ends. Each one said Times on the top, and had a date printed along the base. The shelves went far back into the recesses of labyrinthine basement.

  “Jack the Ripper?” she asked with a quirk of her brow. “That’s usually the top of the times for that year—and a popular choice for creative essays.”

  “Right,” I stammered. “No, I just didn’t hear you. That is what I’m after.”

  She nodded, though I could see the beginnings of suspicion in her expression. “Very well. You’ll find what you need just down that corridor there. Careful with the bindings and pages—they’re fragile.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  The librarian hesitated, but after a moment, left me to do my research in peace. With my heart in my throat and my hands clasped tightly at my middle, I propelled myself down the stacks she’d indicated.

  I passed row upon row of tall bound articles. Decades of news—years of lives. It took me longer than I liked to find the section that held what I was after, but when I did my breath caught and I fell to my knees against the rough carpeted floor, staring straight ahead at three volumes with the gilded number 1888 embossed in the bottom.

  Wetting my lips, I settled it on the floor to read—unsure of my ability to stand back up again until I saw this through.

  You might not even find anything, I told myself.

  What were the chances that they would be mentioned in the news, anyway?

  I’d already phoned to check the ledgers at the old shipping museum on the other end of the city—the kind woman on the phone was happy to check and see if she could find the name Alex Reid when I told her he was a distant ancestor and I was trying to trace my heritage. He said he’d moved here as a lad—which meant there should have some record of them landing here.

  But the woman hadn’t found his name anywhere for any of the years I’d specified and there was no way Alex was older than thirty, or younger than eighteen. It struck me that there was still so very much I hadn’t learned about them. I didn’t know Ellis’ last name, or Jasper’s, or Everett’s. I didn’t know all of their favorite colors, or what sort of music they liked. There was still so much I could have learned—I wanted to know.

  Even if none of it was real—I’d happily go back into the fevered fantasy I’d conjured while I was high as a kite to get the answers to those questions.

  I’d bet Jasper liked classical music. And I had a feeling that Alex's favorite color would be green. He favored it in the clothing he wore. A kerchief of palest mint. And the sage colored trimming on the inside of his cloak.

  I’d keep looking for them as long as it took to find something—or to be proven a fucking loon.

  With renewed vigor, I tore through the remaining pages of the newspaper articles in the first book and shut it closed with a thud, discarding it next to me on the carpet as I drew out the next one. My knees were starting to grow sore and the muscles in my neck and back were stiff. Clicking on my phone, I saw that I’d somehow already been down here for more than an hour.

  I sighed.

  At least the c
ontent was…interesting, I mused as I flipped through a couple more pages of condensed text and bold headlines. The librarian had been right—there were a plethora of articles about Jack the Ripper.

  Funny—I hadn’t even known that was the year the famed serial killer had lived. I shivered as I realized that I could have been one of these headlines for not heeding the guys’ warnings about going out alone at night.

  Jack the Ripper Again.

  Ghastly Murder in the East End.

  Two More Victims Claimed by the East End Ripper.

  The headlines went on and on about him. And interspersed between were personals, entertainment pieces, and the like.

  After a while, it all started to blur together, and I thought I might have to go and find something to eat before I passed out where I was, leaning against the stacks for support.

  That was when I found it.

  At first, I thought it was just another article about the Ripper, but it wasn’t. I must’ve been looking in the wrong column because there it was. I sat bolt upright, uncaring that my back spasmed in protest as the sudden, jerking movement. I clutched the page, forcing it closer, blinking away the blurring substance that’d started to coat my eyes.

  It was them.

  It was all of them.

  I was vibrating as I read their names, my blood buzzing, a wide grin cleaving my face in two as a long peel of excitement escaped my lips.

  Alexander Ian Reid, Jasper Smith, Everett Leslie Turner, and Ellis Bishop.

  I didn’t realize I was crying until I had to wipe the tears away just to be able to keep reading the article.

  I couldn’t fucking believe it!

  I’m not crazy.

  Which meant I really did travel back in time. They existed. They were real.

  Choking on the continuing surgency of tears as they kept welling in my eyes and swelling behind my breastbone, I forced my eyes to focus back on the page, skimming back to where I’d seen their names printed in the ancient ink.

  My smile faltered.

  Wait…no—this wasn’t right.

  Brows knitted together, I struggled to comprehend what I was reading. It didn’t…