Brisbane sighed, making them both recoil from the foul stench of his breath. " 'Twill be the fulfillment of a life's dream to pick my teeth with your bones."
"I'd rather pick your teeth with my sword," Colin retorted.
The dragon's lumbering steps picked up speed, forcing them to waltz backward in double time. Smoke was beginning to roil from those gaping nostrils.
"Now might be a nice time for one of your spells," Colin muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
Given her current run of luck, Tabitha was afraid she'd wish them inside the dragon's stomach and spare him the inconvenience of swallowing them. "I think you'd better take care of this one. After all, you are my hero," she whispered back.
"Do you mean…?"
She nodded. "It's the only way."
But still he hesitated. "Are you sure, lass?"
"I've never been more sure of anything in my life."
He gave her a squeeze that warmed her all the way to her bones.
"Bidding your whore a tender farewell?" Brisbane growled. "How touching! I'd weep if I weren't so happy."
Tabitha suspected his good cheer didn't bode well for either of them. Her suspicions were confirmed when his tail lashed out, knocking them both off their feet. Colin bore the brunt of their fall, but before he could recover, that pesky tail of Brisbane's snaked around her ankle and began to tug.
Colin grabbed for her, but Tabitha fought her way free from his desperate grip, knowing he would need both hands for what he must do. She tried not to panic as she went sliding across the grass toward Brisbane's yawning maw. Her fingernails dug into the dirt, but found nothing of substance to cling to.
"You'll be sorry if you eat me," Tabitha shouted, casting Colin a frantic glance. "I'll give you the worst case of heartburn you've ever had."
The dragon loomed over her, baring his teeth in a ghastly smile. "What's a little indigestion among friends?"
Tabitha could almost hear the cold smile in Colin's voice. "We're not your friends."
Without warning, he leaped over her and charged. A battle cry tore from his throat as he shifted his grip on the sword's hilt, using both hands and every ounce of his might to ram the blade through the amulet and into Brisbane's black heart.
The dragon flung back his head, unleashing a deafening roar of rage and pain. Tabitha went sailing as the beast's mighty tail thrashed from side to side, uprooting trees and tearing great gouts of earth from the meadow. Colin let go of the sword, tumbling back to the grass just in time to roll to safety.
Tabitha landed fifty feet away in a clump of soft grass. She clapped her hands over her ears, screaming without even realizing it as the sky darkened and a web of supernatural lightning enveloped the dragon. His roar went on and on until it became a high-pitched keening – half beast and half human. Tabitha closed her eyes and when she opened them again, the meadow was drenched in sunshine and Lord Brisbane lay on his back in the grass, Colin's sword protruding from his chest and blood trickling from the corner of his pale mouth.
She drew Lucy from the knapsack and buried her mouth in the kitten's soft fur. It was done. Colin was free from his past and she from her future. They were free to build a life together in the present, free to savor every precious moment as if it were to be their last.
She rose with Lucy in her arms, wanting her loving smile to be the first thing Colin saw when he staggered to his feet.
He was already standing. His people were swarming out from their hiding places to clap him on the back, but Tabitha could barely hear their shouts and cheers. Maybe the dragon's unearthly howl had temporarily deafened her. Frowning, she held Lucy to her ear. The kitten's purr seemed as boisterous as ever.
Colin cast a frantic glance in her direction. "Where's Tabitha?"
She cocked her head to the side. Oddly enough, she could read his lips, but she couldn't hear him.
"I'm right here," she shouted.
Then with an icy chill, she realized she wasn't.
For the sun no longer warmed her and the whisper of the wind stirring the tall grasses was nothing but a memory. There were no chirping birds or whirring grasshoppers. The meadow had no more substance than a watercolor painting, glimpsed briefly on a museum wall and seen afterward only in dreams.
She clutched Lucy, who with her downy fur and stout little body, had become the only thing of substance in her universe.
That was when she realized they had made a horrible miscalculation. They had assumed that destroying the amulet would forever close the door to the future, not send it crashing open.
Colin was gazing at the place where she should have been in helpless horror. Arjon and Lyssandra had joined him, their own faces reflecting their bewildered dismay. Oh, God, what did they see? she wondered. A ghostly outline of a woman clutching a cat, tears streaming down her face?
Tabitha began to run toward Colin, longing only to reach him before she faded away altogether, longing to breathe the leather and woodsmoke scent of his skin one last time so she would never forget it. But the grass no longer crunched beneath her feet and every step she took seemed to carry her farther away from him.
She was still running when she saw Brisbane sit up, wrench the sword from his chest with inhuman strength, and draw back his arm to hurl it at Colin's back.
A scream tore from her throat, but she was the only one who heard it. Then everything went black and the meadow and Colin were gone forever.
Chapter 29
Tabitha woke up crying, her sense of loss so keen she wished she were dead.
But as they always had before, wishes failed her, leaving her no choice but to uncurl herself from her fetal position, shake the glass out of her hair, and slowly sit up.
She was sitting in the middle of her living-room floor, still wearing a wrinkled, grass-stained medieval gown. Every time she moved, bits of safety glass that had once been the screen of her computer monitor tinkled to the carpet. The monitor sat on the workstation above her, its guts visible through a gaping hole in its belly.
Her heart almost stopped when she caught a whiff of dragon breath. Then she realized it was just the stench of melted plastic and scorched wiring. Smoke was wafting up in wispy little curlicues from the analysis pad where her amulet had once rested.
Everything was exactly as she'd left it. Her abandoned ice cream bowl sat on the floor near the window. The manila envelope that had contained her mother's video disc rested on the coffee table. Even the snow continued to drift past the window, its tranquil beauty a mocking reminder that winter still held the city in its relentless grip.
How could the world seem so much the same when everything had changed forever?
No one had missed her. No one had even realized she was gone. Because the amulet had returned her to the precise moment when she had left. If it wasn't for the emptiness of her arms and the desolate ache in her heart, it might have been as if none of it had ever happened. As if Sir Colin of Ravenshaw had never existed except in her repressed imagination.
Lucy clambered into her lap, demanding attention. Tabitha snatched up the little cat and buried her nose in its fur. The kitten smelled of rich earth and fresh grass and wildflowers. Tabitha rocked back and forth, inhaling those summer fragrances as if she could bottle them up in her lungs and savor them forever.
When something mechanical dinged, it took her a confused moment to recognize it as the bell heralding the arrival of the elevator. The sofa blocked her view, but whoever was disembarking began to talk even before the doors glided shut.
" – so terribly sorry, ma cherie. I had no idea your Uncle Cop was going to give you such a fright. I hope you don't mind Sven giving us the key to the elevator. As soon as we got off the plane and Cop told us what he'd done, we rushed right over. If we had known making an unscheduled fuel stop in the Bermuda Triangle was going to cause such a stir, we wouldn't have done it. I hope you didn't think – "
"Mama?" Utterly dazed, Tabitha blinked up at the petite brunette who rounded
the corner of the sofa. She was wearing sandals, a floral sarong, and sunglasses.
The man accompanying her was wearing a wool Burberry coat with its collar turned up. His broad shoulders were dusted with snow and the wings of silver at his temples only made him look more striking than she remembered. He looked solid, vital, and very much alive.
He blinked down at her with smoky eyes identical to her own. "Good God, baby, what happened to you?" Tabitha's face crumpled as she whispered, "Daddy?" Then she did something she hadn't done in a very long time. She cried in her mother's arms while her father stroked her hair.
In the end she told them everything.
Given their own experiences with the amulet, they had no choice but to believe her. Her mother earned a dark glower and a stern "I told you so" from Tristan for keeping the amulet squirreled away in the showerhead all those years, but as Tabitha had long suspected, he couldn't stay mad at Arian for more than a few minutes.
They sat huddled on the sofa until the snow stopped and dawn tinted the sky a pearlescent pink. Her father wrapped a blanket around her, but she couldn't seem to stop shivering until he awkwardly draped an arm over her shoulders and hugged her close. Her mother sat on her other side, pressing mug after mug of warm milk into her hands until drowsiness began to take the edge off her anguish.
And all the while she talked. Tabitha doubted she'd spoken that many words to her parents in her entire lifetime, but it all came pouring out – her first disastrous meeting with Colin; his delighted grin when he tasted the Big Mac; the mercy he'd shown when he defied both superstition and law and freed her from the stake.
She painted word pictures for them until they could see and hear the people she spoke of as clearly as she could – Auld Nana, her broad face wreathed in a smile; sweet Jenny with her elfin nose and cropped curls; Arjon with his dry wit and fondness for a pretty face; the lovely Lyssandra, who'd finally won his fickle heart. She told them about everything except the shattering pleasure she and Colin had discovered in each other's arms and that last awful moment she couldn't bear to relive. Maybe if she never said the words aloud, they wouldn't be true.
When she was done, they sat in silence for a long time before Tabitha turned to her mother. "Please, Mama, you have to help me get back. I know he'll wait for me. If I can just find a way back…"
Arian shook her head sadly. "I'm sorry, darling, but traveling through time without the amulet is completely beyond my capabilities. And yours," she added gently.
Tabitha shifted her frantic gaze to her father. "You can make it work, can't you, Daddy? You're the one who designed the amulet all those years ago. All you have to do is make another one. I know you have a photographic mind. Even if you've destroyed the specs, you must remember how to re-create it."
Tristan shot Arian a helpless look before covering Tabitha's hands with his own. "And risk it falling into the hands of another monster like this Brisbane? Is that what your Colin would want?"
Tabitha bowed her head. "No," she finally said softly. "He wouldn't want that at all."
She withdrew her hands from her father's and stood. "Thank you for coming by," she said, her voice so lifeless her parents exchanged another anguished glance. "I think I'll take the day off if you don't mind."
As Tabitha shuffled off to the bedroom, the blanket dragging the floor behind her, Arian cast her husband a beseeching look, tears sparkling in her eyes. "Oh, honey, what are we going to do? She was always such a self-sufficient little thing. I never thought she needed us."
Tristan drew her close, brushing her hair with a kiss so she wouldn't see the calculating glint in his eyes. "Well, she needs us now. And I have every intention of being there for her."
Tabitha called in sick for five weeks.
She spent most of her time lying on the sofa in her pajamas, watching soap operas and game shows, barely moving, barely thinking, and never crying. She also spent hours sitting cross-legged at the window with Lucy in her lap, gazing dry-eyed at a world full of strangers. The days and nights began to blend into one formless mist, broken only by the daily visits from her parents, who came bearing crock pots of chicken soup and gourmet meals from her favorite restaurants. Soon her refrigerator was crammed with their untouched offerings.
After four and a half weeks, they could no longer hide their concern behind brave smiles and false cheer. Fearing that she'd picked up smallpox or the plague or some other obscure disease from her trip to the Middle Ages, her father insisted that she see a doctor.
Tabitha informed him that she didn't need a doctor.
She wasn't sick.
She was dying.
Although her body had been transported neatly back to where the amulet must have figured it belonged, it was nothing but an empty shell. She'd left her heart in that sunlit meadow with Colin.
Her father had finally gotten angry and shouted that it was time for her to stop mooning over a man she could never have, but she'd seen the fear in his eyes and was sorry to have caused it. But not sorry enough to eat the Big Mac in the crumpled sack he carried.
Later that afternoon she was lying on the couch staring sightlessly at the television when her mother stormed off the elevator, snatched up the remote, and thumbed off the power.
Before Tabitha could murmur a protest, Arian stamped her small foot, reminding her eerily of Lyssandra, and shouted, "Your father went to McDonald's for you! Do you understand how hard that was for him? He's never set foot in any restaurant that boasts less than a four-star rating." Her mother paced the length of the coffee table, then whirled around to point a finger at her. "He could have sent your Uncle Sven or one of his other security men, but no! He had to go himself. He had to make sure his baby girl got the freshest sesame seed bun and the crispest pickles in the entire franchise. Why, he practically made the poor manager cry!"
Tabitha couldn't have explained why, but her own eyes were beginning to fill with tears. When Arian hurled a crumpled sack at her, she was so surprised she caught it.
"I told Daddy I wasn't hungry," she whispered weakly.
"Open it," Arian commanded.
Tabitha obeyed, staring with shock at the contents. It was a home pregnancy test, the kind you could purchase over the counter at any drugstore. She'd never even suspected her sheltered mother of knowing about such things. After all, Arian had been born in 1669 when such things didn't exist.
"You may have given your father the PG version of your little adventures, but I know that look in your eyes. I've seen it often enough in my own." Arian nodded toward the bathroom. "Go."
Refusing to even let herself hope, Tabitha obeyed. As she passed the bathroom mirror, her reflection caught her eye for the first time since returning from the past. She could not help but stare. The woman gazing back at her was a painfully thin stranger with gaunt hollows beneath her cheekbones and dark circles around her eyes. Tabitha felt a bleak flare of shame. The woman in the mirror didn't look like someone Colin would have fallen in love with.
When Tabitha emerged from the bathroom, Arian was sitting on the sofa, stroking the kitten in her lap. She watched her daughter warily, but neither said a word.
Tabitha simply went to the refrigerator, fished out the crumpled McDonald's sack, and began to cram bites of Big Mac into her mouth as fast as she could. She ate as if she were starving, as if she hadn't eaten for years and would never get the chance to eat again. When she finished the sandwich, even licking her fingers clean of dripping sauce, Arian handed her a banana cream pie and a tablespoon, grinning through her tears.
Tabitha went to the doctor the very next day.
To her father's pretended chagrin, twenty-first century medical technology determined that she hadn't picked up the plague or the pox, but a baby boy. Although Tristan blustered and fussed because some Scottish ne'er-do-well had gotten his little girl pregnant, he went to F.A.O. Schwarz that very afternoon and bought a stuffed giraffe so big they had to fold it to get it on the elevator.
Tabitha still wasn
't sleeping well, but now at night when she lay in the darkness aching with emptiness, she would fold her hands over her stomach and whisper to the baby. She told him stories about his father – a bold and true knight who always fought on the side of right and had once slain a dragon to win the heart of his lady fair.
She returned to her job the following week. She was surprised by how easy it was to throw herself back into her daily routine, to let the soothing rhythms of work dull the loneliness gnawing at her soul. She only had one bad moment on her first day back, when she was delivering a late report to the Accounting Department.
A dark-haired man was sauntering down the carpeted corridor ahead of her, his rolling gait betraying just a hint of a swagger. As she teetered after him on her high heels, Tabitha's heart began to skip more beats than it hit.
"Sir," she cried, unable to keep the pleading note from her voice. "Wait, please wait."
But when he turned around, his eyes weren't the color of sunlight, but a dull muddy brown. He looked blankly at her. "Yes? Can I help you?"
She recoiled a few steps, swallowing a bitter lump of disappointment. "I thought you were someone else. I'm sorry, Mr….?"
He extended his hand. "Ruggles. George Ruggles."
At one time Tabitha might have thought his bland face, neatly trimmed hair, and friendly smile were handsome, but now she preferred men with at least a day's growth of razor stubble and hair that looked as if it hadn't been combed in a week, even if it had.
Weekends were the hardest for her and one Saturday morning in early spring she found herself standing on the steps of the New York Public Library without knowing how she'd gotten there. The stone lions flanking the entrance were rumored to be the guardians of the truth, but she was afraid their noble and uncompromising visages might reveal more than she could bear.
But as she touched a hand to her belly, she knew she owed the child she carried more than fairy tales.
She could have probably found the information she was looking for on-line, but she'd always loved the vast Main Reading Room with its diffuse sunlight and bronze reading lamps. After she'd made her request, she sat at one of the tables and patiently waited, hoping the staff wouldn't be as efficient as she remembered. But a smiling blond woman quickly appeared with her selection.