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I took no notice of him, but climbed the narrow chimney-sweep’s staircase up to the roof and opened the trapdoor at the top of it. It was a fairly mild spring night—the perfect evening to come up here, and yes, for smooching too, why not? From up here, there was a wonderful view over the nearby buildings, and the moon was shining in the east above the rooftops.
“Where are you?” I quietly called down.
Gideon’s curly head appeared in the hatch above the trapdoor, and then the rest of him followed.
“Wow. I can understand this being your favorite place,” he said, taking his backpack off and kneeling cautiously down.
I’d never noticed before that the roof really was romantic, especially at this time of night, with the sea of bright city lights reaching out forever beyond the intricately decorated roof ridge of the house. Sometime we’d come here with a picnic, plus soft cushions, and candles … and Gideon could bring his violin … and with any luck Xemerius would be taking a day off.
“What are you grinning at?” asked Gideon.
“Oh, nothing. Just letting the fancy roam. ”
Gideon made a face. “Oh, yes?” He looked carefully around. “Okay. I guess the show can begin. ”
I nodded and cautiously made my way forward. The roof here was flat, but the slope began a couple of feet beyond the chimneys, marked off only by the knee-high decorative iron border. (And immortal or not, I didn’t feel that plunging four floors down to street level was a great way to enjoy the weekend. )
I opened the ventilation flap in the nearest of the broad chimneys.
“Why up here of all places, Gwenny?” I heard Gideon ask behind me.
“Charlotte’s afraid of heights,” I explained. “I knew she’d never come up to the roof because of her vertigo. ” I took the heavy bundle out of the chimney, balancing it carefully in my arms.
Gideon jumped up. “Don’t drop it!” he said nervously. “Please!”
“Don’t worry!” I had to laugh at his horrified expression. “Look, even standing on one leg I can—”
Gideon let out what sounded like a tiny whimper. “This is no joking matter, Gwenny,” he gasped. Obviously all that instruction in the mysteries had gone deeper than I thought. He took the bundle from my arms and cradled it like a baby. “Is that really…,” he began.
I felt a cold draft of air behind us. “No, dummy,” crowed Xemerius, putting his head through the hatch. “It’s an old cheese that Gwyneth keeps up here in case she feels peckish in the middle of the night. ”
I rolled my eyes and signed to him to go away, which to my surprise, he did. I suppose Tinker Bell was so exciting that he had to go back to it.
Meanwhile, Gideon had put the chronograph down on the roof, and now he began carefully unwrapping it.
“Did you know that Charlotte was phoning us about every ten minutes, trying to convince us that you had this chronograph? In the end, she even got on Marley’s nerves. ”
“What a shame,” I said. “And the two of them might have been made for each other. ”
Gideon nodded. Then he removed the last of the wrappings and audibly took a deep breath.
I carefully stroked the shiny, polished wood. “There it is, then. ”
Gideon said nothing for a moment. For more than a moment, to tell you the truth.
“Gideon?” I finally asked uncertainly. Lesley had begged me to wait a few days longer, until we could be sure that he was really to be trusted, but I’d dismissed the idea out of hand.
“I simply didn’t believe it,” Gideon finally whispered. “I didn’t for a second believe Charlotte. ” He looked at me, and his eyes were dark in this light. “Do you realize what would happen if anyone here knew about this?”
I didn’t bother to point out that quite a number of people did know about it already. Maybe it was just because all of a sudden Gideon seemed so bewildered, but I was suddenly afraid. “Are we really going through with the plan?” I asked. I had a queasy sensation inside me, and this time, it was nothing to do with the beginning of a journey through time.
It was one thing for my grandfather to read my blood into the chronograph. What we were about to do now was something else again. We’d be closing the Circle of Blood, and there was no way we could foresee the consequences. To put it in as positive a way as possible.
My memory went through all those horrible rhyming prophesies with lines ending death and last breath, and dredged up a few more rhyming slain and pain. The fact that I was apparently immortal was no consolation whatsoever.
Oddly enough, it seemed to be my own uncertainty that brought Gideon back to his normal self. “Are we going through with it?” He leaned forward and dropped a little kiss on my nose. “Do you mean that seriously?” He stripped off his jacket and took the loot we’d lifted from Dr. White’s room out of the backpack. “Okay, here goes. ”
First he put an elastic band around his left upper arm and tightened it. Then he removed a syringe from its sterile plastic pack and grinned at me. “Nurse?” he said in commanding tones. “Flashlight!”
I made a face. “That’s one way to do it, of course,” I replied, shining the beam of the flashlight on the inside of his elbow. “Typical medical student!”
“Do I hear a touch of scorn in your voice?” Gideon cast me an amused glance. “How did you do it, then?”
“With a Japanese vegetable knife!” I said, a little boastfully. “And Grandpa caught the blood in a teacup. ”
“Ah, I see. That cut on your forearm. ” All of a sudden, he didn’t sound amused at all. He plunged the needle of the syringe into his skin, and blood began flowing into the cannula at the other end of it.
“Are you sure you know exactly what you have to do?” I asked, jerking my chin at the chronograph. “That thing has so many different flaps and little compartments, you could easily turn the wrong cogwheel—”
“Chronograph Studies is one of the exams you have to pass to become an adept, and I did all that ages ago. ” Gideon handed me the syringe with the blood in it and undid the elastic band on his arm.
“Makes me wonder how you had any leisure time left to watch masterpieces of the silver screen like Tinker Bell. ”
Gideon shook his head. “A little more respect would do no harm. Give me that cannula. Now, turn the flashlight on the chronograph. Yes, that’s it. ”
“And the occasional please and thank you would do no harm either,” I remarked, while Gideon began dripping his blood into the chronograph. Unlike Lucas, he did it with hands that didn’t shake in the least. Maybe he’d make a good surgeon someday.
I was biting my lower lip in excitement.
“Three drops here, under the head of the lion,” Gideon murmured, concentrating hard. “Then to turn this cogwheel and switch the lever over. There we are. ” He lowered the cannula, and I switched off the flashlight in a reflex action.
Several little wheels began going around inside the chronograph, clicking, clattering, and humming, just like last time. Then the clattering grew louder and the volume of the humming rose. It sounded almost like a tune. A wave of heat hit us in the face, and I clung to Gideon’s arm, as if the next thing would be a gust of wind strong enough to blow us off the roof. But instead, the jewels in the chronograph lit up, one by one, there was a flickering all around it, and if it had seemed like a fire was blazing inside the chronograph at first, now the air was suddenly icy cold. The flickering light went out, and the cogwheels stopped turning. The whole thing had taken less than half a minute.
I let go of Gideon and rubbed my arm. All the little hairs on it were standing on end. “Is that all?”
Gideon took a deep breath and raised his hand. This time it was shaking slightly. “We’re about to find out,” he said.
I took one of Dr. White’s little laboratory flasks from my pocket and handed it to him. “Go carefully. If it’s a powder, a breeze could simply blow it away. ”
“That
might not be such a bad thing,” murmured Gideon. He turned to me. His eyes were shining. “You see? Under the sign of the twelvefold star, all sickness and ills will flee afar. We’ll see about that. ”
The hell with the twelvefold star. I’d rather rely on my flashlight.
“Go on,” I said impatiently, leaning forward, and then Gideon pulled out a tiny drawer in the chronograph.
I’ll admit I was disappointed. After all that mysterious carrying on, blah-blah-blah about secrets, it was kind of an anticlimax. The little drawer contained neither a liquid, Lesley’s best guess (“Sure to be red as blood,” she had said, wide-eyed), nor a powder, nor a stone of any kind.
All it held was a substance that looked like salt. Although particularly beautiful salt, if you looked more closely—tiny, opalescent little crystals.
“Crazy,” I whispered. “I don’t believe it! All that trouble and expense over the centuries, just for these few crumbs of whatever it is. ”
Gideon held his hand protectively over the drawer. “Let’s hope no one finds out that these crumbs of whatever it is are in our hands now,” he said rather breathlessly.
I nodded. Again, apart from the people who already did know. I took the cork out of the flask. “Hurry up, then!” I whispered. I suddenly had a vision of Lady Arista, who as far as I knew was afraid of no one and nothing, certainly not of heights, coming up through the hatch to snatch the little flask away from us.
Gideon seemed to be thinking something similar, because he tipped the crumbs into the flask without any ceremony at all and put the cork back in. Only when it was safely stowed away in his jacket pocket did he breathe freely again.
But at that moment another idea occurred to me. “Now that the chronograph has done what it’s supposed to do, maybe it won’t work anymore for time travel,” I said.
“We’re about to find that out too,” replied Gideon, smiling at me. “Off we go to the year 1912. ”
THIRTEEN
“OH, SHIT, I think I sat on that damned hat,” Gideon whispered beside me.
“Stop swearing, or the roof will fall in on us!” I hissed. “And if you don’t put zat ’at on, I’m telling tales of you to Madame Rossini!”
Xemerius cackled with laughter. He’d come along this far for the ride today. “The hat won’t save him. With that hairstyle, everyone in 1912 will take him for a roughneck. He might at least have given himself a proper side parting. ”
I heard Gideon swearing quietly again, this time because he’d obviously knocked his elbow on something. It wasn’t all that easy to undress and get dressed again in a confessional, and I was pretty sure that it was also sacrilege to use one as a changing room. Quite apart from the fact that it was certainly also a secular offense to break into a church, even if you didn’t want to steal anything but just planned to use it as a launchpad for a quick trip to the year 1912. Gideon had unlocked the side door with a metal hook so fast that I didn’t have time to feel nervous.