It’s a clear night, and the reflection of the moon and stars on the ocean’s surface reminds me of the lights from the boardwalk on the Thames when I was with Trey. Was it really last night? It seems longer. I’m not certain how many hours it’s been since I slept.
The breeze carries the same damp chill as it will in London a century in the future, except I don’t have Trey’s arm around me to ward off the shivers. His flight has probably landed and he’s back in DC by now . . . or is the correct term by then? I just wish he was here and now.
Kiernan is waiting by the entrance when I arrive at the Queen’s Hotel. “I’ll be in the lobby. The bar is over there, through the double doors. Houdini should be here soon. If you need me—”
“I won’t.”
That’s not true, unfortunately. Less than a minute later, I discover that I need him in order to even get a table.
The maître d’ informs me that unescorted women are not allowed in the bar. In fact, he says with an imperious look, unescorted women aren’t even allowed in the restaurant.
“You can’t be serious!” I stand on tiptoe and look around to see if Houdini has, by some chance, arrived ahead of me, but there are no familiar faces among the mostly male diners. “How are female travelers expected to eat?”
The guy draws himself up to full height, which really isn’t necessarily since he’s easily a foot taller than me, and shoves a menu into my hands. “Please lower your voice, miss. Choose something from the menu and I will have the plate delivered to your room.”
“No. Someone is meeting me here.” His face is a closed door, so I adopt a tone I’ve heard Mom use. “I’d like to speak with your manager, please.”
“The manager is busy, and our policy is absolute. No respectable establishment—” The man breaks off in midsentence about the time I feel a hand on my elbow.
Kiernan leans in and plants a quick kiss on my cheek. “So sorry to leave you stranded, dearest. You were right—my notecase was lying on the bed, right where I left it. Don’t they have a table?”
The maître d’ lets out a relieved sigh. “My apologies, sir. Your . . . wife . . . failed to tell me you would be joining her. Please follow me.”
“I do hope she wasn’t battering you with the whole women’s rights routine. If so, you have my sympathies. I hear it day in and day out.”
Two middle-aged men at the table we’re walking past seem to find Kiernan’s comment amusing. One barks out a cloud of foul-smelling smoke as he laughs.
There’s this scene in an old martial arts film I watched with Charlayne once upon a time in that faraway reality where the Cyrists and CHRONOS were of no concern. Jackie Chan, or maybe it was Bruce Lee, single-handedly took out every man in the restaurant. While I’m under no illusions that I could actually do that, the feminist inside me would dearly love to try right now.
I wave smoke out of my face and follow Kiernan. Our less-than-gracious host is now explaining why it would be best if we were seated in the restaurant rather than the bar.
“Very well,” Kiernan says with a touch of annoyance. “But we’re waiting for a business associate who expects to meet us at the bar. So when Mr. Houdini arrives, please show him to our table.”
If the maître d’ recognizes the name, he doesn’t show it. He just gives a deep nod that borders on a bow. “By all means, sir.”
Kiernan reaches to pull out my chair, but I beat him to it and then nudge the chair across from me out about six inches with my foot.
He pulls it out the rest of the way and says, “Thank you, dearest,” in a droll tone before retreating behind the menu.
I scan the menu simply for something to do while we wait. I’m really not hungry. Connor and I finished off some leftover pizza after I got back from 1872. I think we both needed comfort food. Neither of us is sure I did the right thing by giving Prudence my spare key, and we’re both worried about Katherine. Connor says headaches like the one that hit her in the library earlier are becoming fiercer and more frequent.
Kiernan still has his nose in the menu. It’s mostly in French, and it’s a single handwritten sheet, so I suspect he’s using it to avoid talking to me.
“Do you know what you want?” he says as the waiter approaches.
“Yes. To get the key and get the hell out of here.”
“I meant to eat.”
“I know what you meant. I’m not hungry.”
“Fine. I’ll order for you.”
I give him a scathing look and glance back at the menu.
“I’ll have the salmon with potatoes and haricots verts. A pint of bitter. The lady will have the same.”
“No.” I hand the waiter my menu. “The lady will have the cherry . . . tart?”
He nods, so my layman’s interpretation of tartes cherise chantilly must be correct.
“And to drink, madam?”
“Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”
Yes, it’s stupid, but it gives me a perverse pleasure to see that the joke is lost on both of them.
“Of course, hot,” Kiernan says under his breath as the waiter heads back to the kitchen. “The British don’t serve tea over ice, even in your time.”
“I actually know that. Why don’t you just go back into silent mode?” I think about that for a moment. “No, on second thought, who knows when Houdini will arrive, if he arrives at all. I have questions. Answer them or I walk out, because I think I can get this key on my own now. It doesn’t have to be here. My first question is what in hell happened in the past six years to make you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you, Kate. Although I can’t say I’m particularly fond of your tendency toward adolescent drama.”
“Okay, I’ll rephrase. What happened in the past six years to turn you into a total ass? It can’t be anything I’ve done, since I’ve lived . . . oh, let’s see . . . maybe seventy-two hours in that time, and no more than three of those in your presence.”
He doesn’t answer, so I latch onto his wrist and flip his arm over. A tiny sliver of the scar shows beneath the cuff. “Then let’s start here. What happened to your arm? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this scar is in the same spot as Prudence’s extra key.”
And I really don’t think it’s a coincidence, even though the similarity didn’t dawn on me until I looked down at his arm.
“It’s not,” he admits. “I went along when Pru had the upgrade. A black market operation in a hotel room in Philly.”
“When?”
“Fall of 2152,” he says in a whisper. “Or about four years ago, if you’re asking about my own personal calendar. But this isn’t the time or place to—”
“You had the chance to answer my questions in private. So here and now works fine for me.” I nod at his arm. “Why?”
“Wasn’t my idea. I woke up one morning with the bloody thing grafted onto my arm. Pru’s idea of a gift. She said we were twinsies now.” His sneer, both physical and vocal, makes it clear what he thinks of that term.
“How did it get . . . out . . . of your arm?”
“Got infected. It was a long jump for me. Pru left the day after the operation—she wouldn’t stay put long enough to wait for my batteries to recharge. Said the doctor would check back in on me, but he didn’t. I spent about a week with a raging fever in a flea-bitten hotel room. When the owner finally called the cops, the temporary visa Prudence gave me didn’t hold up to closer scrutiny. They moved me to a detention center for illegals. One of the more zealous guards decided to remove the key on his own.”
The waiter chooses that exact moment to appear with our food. He slides the plate in front of me—blood-red cherries inside a flesh-colored crust—and my stomach churns. I wait until he leaves and push the tart away.
“I’m sorry, Kiernan.” The words seem insufficient, and the scar along my right jaw tingles for a moment. If not for Kiernan’s help in Chicago, I’d be even more visibly scarred than he is.
He shrugs, cutting into the salmon with the side of his fork.
“It was a long time ago. Pru finally remembered to come looking for me. She paid a hefty bribe to a guard at the detention center to return my key. And she hasn’t let me forget it since.”
“Couldn’t she have just jumped back and stopped them from apprehending you?”
“Could’ve,” he says, taking another bite. “But didn’t. Said it would teach me to be more careful in the future.” He flashes a brief, chilly smile and pops a forkful of green beans into his mouth.
I know this is the older Pru, not the one I just left in New York. But given that someone—me—helped her avoid jail in the past, it would’ve been nice if she’d had the decency to pay it forward.
“How long were you stranded?”
“A while.” Something about the way he says it makes me shiver.
“And they couldn’t fix it? I mean, they have doctors at the Farm, don’t they?”
Kiernan doesn’t answer, just takes another bite. He seems intent on polishing off his dinner in record time.
I’m about to repeat the question when he says, “By the time I got back, it had scarred over. June said she could cut away the scar tissue and stitch it up proper, but I didn’t see the point in getting cut up again.”
“Do you still have the stable point in your key?” My voice is hesitant. I know what he’ll say, but I can’t not offer. “I could go back . . . or forward, I guess . . . and get you out of there.”
He doesn’t look at me, but his expression softens. It’s only for a moment, however, and then the mask is back up.
“No, Kate. You couldn’t. So . . . is that it? I’d like to finish my dinner so I can move to the bar before Houdini arrives. I still think it’s best if he doesn’t see us together.”
“I think you’re lying.”
“About what?”
“About why you’re wolfing down your food and retreating to the bar. Houdini will be annoyed either way. It won’t matter whether he knows you’re behind this or thinks I’m in it alone. And both of us together would have a better chance of convincing him. I think you just don’t want to spend any more time with me than absolutely necessary.”
He raises an eyebrow. “And you always said I was the one with the ego.”
I ignore him and continue. “What I don’t know is why. Julia would say it’s because you’ve been with Saul and Simon all along. She thinks you were involved with the death of her son—”
“Anthony.” Kiernan’s mouth twitches downward. “What? You think I killed him?”
“No.” And I really don’t. Whatever else is going on, I still have a hard time buying Kiernan, even this older, harsher version, as a cold-blooded killer. “But the way you’re acting isn’t really helping your case.”
“Anthony was stupid.” While Kiernan’s words are more callous, it’s pretty much the same thing Delia said in the video. “Why he thought it would be safe to let Saul know he could use the key is beyond me. He’d just split up with his wife—she moved out and took the kid. Maybe he thought he had something to prove. Or nothing to lose. All I know is that he got hold of a key and showed up at Estero in 2028 thinking Saul and Simon would welcome him into the club. And they do—shake his hand, slap him on the back, and say it’s great to have him on board.”
He takes a long drink from his beer. “Two days later, Anthony’s walking out of a convenience store back in 1997. Car zips around the corner, and he catches a bullet in the head. Next time I see Abel—he’s nearly a hundred by then, using one of those metal walkers—anyway, he starts waving his fist at me, screaming I killed his grandson. Simon’s right there next to me, and I can promise you that if Simon didn’t shoot the man, he paid for the bullets. But Abel doesn’t say a damn thing to him. Just me.”
Kiernan stabs a potato with a bit more force than necessary. “And I still had to talk Simon down, tell him Abel was old and senile. Otherwise Abel would’ve been dead. Delia, too, most likely. Maybe even Julia. It only bought Abel and Delia a few more years, but at least they went from natural causes. Yet they paint me as the bloody villain.”
“No one expects Simon to have a conscience, Kiernan. And when you’re hanging around with him, acting like old friends, well . . .” Some of the old vulnerability is in Kiernan’s eyes when he looks up at me, but I continue anyway. “It’s hard not to lump you together is all. Why did you lie to me in Georgia?”
“I explained that.”
“You explained part of it. But I watched the two of you through the key that night. Before you got into the car. You and Simon . . . it’s like watching two brothers argue. And before I went back to save Martha, you promised you’d tell me everything you know. You promised on the ring I saw in that picture. The one you drew onto your Kate’s finger.”
Kiernan shakes his head. “You’re reading more into that sketch than you should. It was drawn by a lovesick kid, the equivalent of a schoolgirl writing Mrs. Johnny Jones over and over in the margins of her paper. Wishful thinking.”
He scoops the last bit of fish into his mouth. “And now I’ve told you what I know. Once we’re done with Houdini, we’ll go forward, get the keys at CHRONOS, and let Connor work his magic on them. That’s going to shake up the Cyrist world, to say the least. We stop the Culling, you go back to your life, and I go back to my cabin.”
“Does Prudence get the keys before or after she takes the Book of Cyrus and Book of Prophecy to the past?”
“After,” he says. “She drops off the books about six months after she finds Saul and—”
“How does she even find him? What happened to her when she landed in the future?”
I’ve already heard Prudence’s abbreviated version. Will I get the same version from Kiernan that I got from her? And if I don’t, who’s lying?
“Why didn’t you ask her yourself?” He looks a bit smug about having caught me off guard. “Yeah, I remember you stopping by the cabin, Kate. I probably wouldn’t have if Martha hadn’t mentioned you taking a blood sample. So when you start talking about me keeping secrets, just remember that you started it first.”
“I did not! That was just last night . . . no. Not last night. It was earlier today. Which means it was after you lied to me in Georgia, after I saw you in London, and after you acted like a jerk at Houdini’s show.”
He stares at me like he’s waiting for me to catch on, and I do, after a moment.
“Okay. Fine. Technically, it was before all of those things for you, if it triggered a double memory, but—”
“I couldn’t remember everything we said. Everything was fuzzy, probably because of the mostly empty bottle of Old Grand-Dad on my kitchen table. But I remembered you saying something about talking to Younger Pru, back when she was mad at Saul. Not sure what else we said, but it occurred to me that next morning that pretty much any time I ever talked to Pru, she was mad at Saul. And that got me to thinking about how I could use that to our advantage.”
“So you deciding to play double agent . . . or triple agent, whatever . . . is my fault?”
He flashes a quick grin. “Maybe. Partly.”
“Whatever. I’ll take the blame. And yes, I talked to Prudence, but we didn’t have much time. I know she was injured when she landed at CHRONOS.”
He nods. “She never talked much about it, but I think she dreams about it sometimes, or at least she did when she was younger. Simon got some of the story from Saul, and I got some of the story from Simon when he was drunk. Pru jumped into that black . . . static. I don’t know if she did it on purpose or if it was an accident, but there was nothing below her aside from a gaping hole that went clear down to the basement. This Tate guy found Pru. She was the only one alive in the rubble. And it wasn’t just people who were at the headquarters the day it was bombed. Four or five historians who were stranded in the field were found down there, too.”
“Oh my God. Grant? He was staring at that stable point that night at Martha’s—”
“No clue. But that confirms my suspicion about the stable point still being ther
e, just not being very reliable. Anyway, Tate gets the medics in there and they get Pru to the hospital. Most of her bones were shattered. She wasn’t doing any talking at that point, but her blood did the talking for her. They’d figured out whose daughter she was by the time she came to. Kept her quarantined, confiscated her CHRONOS key, but eventually someone slipped her another key, helped her get to Saul. Maybe the Tate guy, maybe—”
I’m so focused on what he’s saying that I don’t even notice Houdini until his hand is clutching Kiernan’s collar.
“Just as I thought. Sal said you were lurking around tonight.” Houdini’s expression isn’t nearly as friendly as it was on stage. He must realize that people are staring, however, because he drops Kiernan’s collar and laughs like it’s a big joke, slapping him on the back. “Good to see you again, my friend!”
He pulls out the chair next to me and steps to the side. I’m not sure why until I see Bess a few feet behind him. Houdini’s not much taller than I am, but Bess is so tiny that his frame completely blocked her from view. She slides into the chair, and Houdini takes the seat across from her.
The waiter hurries back over when he sees them. Houdini starts to wave him away, saying they’ve already eaten, but then he glances over at Bess, giving her a soft smile that crinkles his eyes.
“Unless you’d care for something, Mike? Some champagne, perhaps?”
It must be a nickname, because Bess shakes her head.
Houdini leans back in his chair after the waiter leaves, looking first at Kiernan and then at me. “I think introductions are in order. I won’t bother with our side, since you very clearly know who we are. So who are you?”
“Kate Pierce-Keller. This is Kiernan Dunne.”
“I won’t say it’s a pleasure,” Houdini says, “because it’s not. I’m here because Bess wonders why you wear a medallion identical to my good-luck charm.” He narrows his eyes and looks at my face again. “And I can’t shake the feeling I’ve seen you before. Otherwise I’d simply have sent Smith, so he could convince your friend here to adopt a more original stage name.”
“But . . .” I say, “you took your own stage name from another magician. Robert Houdin?”