MIA, THE HOUSEHOLD NANNY and unofficial body-guard, let Alex in. “They’re in the library,” she said. Her expression was grave. “The police detective is very upset.”
Alex pushed away the fear that was building in him and hurried through to the library. Everyone was there, although Taylor stifled a yawn as Alex crossed over to where all the chairs were spread in a rough circle in front of the sofa.
Rafe wasn’t sitting, though. He was moving on his feet in restless little circles, just behind the chairs. Alex could see Sydney’s head over the top of the chair closest to him.
Veris looked up at his approach. “We have a development,” he said shortly. “Let me bring you up to speed.” He began to speak in terse sentences designed to get the facts across quickly. His words were bereft of any rhetoric, but they didn’t need poetics for the emotions of the situation to communicate themselves.
With growing dismay, Alex filled in the blanks. No wonder Sydney was sitting in the chair, a china doll with no color in her cheeks. He glanced at Rafe. Rafe wasn’t looking at anyone. He was just shifting on his feet, staring at the floor. Tension screamed from every stiffly held joint.
Veris finished up quickly. “After the miscarriage and the complications, Sydney arranged a new identity and left for the east coast. Now, we could theorize that the moment that they jumped back to tonight was engraved upon her memory, except that she doesn’t remember the moment at all. That fits with how it has always worked for us. If you go back to your younger body, you take over that body and the younger version of yourself doesn’t remember the time you borrowed it. But if she can’t remember it, how the hell did they get back there?”
“Because of me,” Rafe said, his voice hoarse. “This is all my fault.”
Everyone looked up at him, except for Sydney. She was staring into middle-distance, almost like she was hypnotized.
Rafe looked at Alex. “Your serum,” he said simply.
Alex caught his breath, wanting to deny it.
“When you gave it to me, I went back there. I saw Sydney. Only I didn’t know it was her. I hadn’t even met her. I saw me, but I didn’t know it was me at the time. I’ve been thinking about that place ever since. The anger of the man…of Peter. The fear in Sydney’s eyes.” He pressed the heel of his hands against his eyes. “It has haunted me ever since, and I took us there.” He pulled his hands away and moisture glittered in his eyes. He choked and spun around, hiding his face from everyone.
Alex crouched down next to Sydney and touched her arm. “The complications after the miscarriage,” he said gently. “Did they perform a hysterectomy?”
Sydney turned to look at him. Her eyes were wide. Fear-filled. She nodded slowly. Then she laid her left hand on the flat arm of the chair and spread her fingers. The little finger was slightly crooked. “When I got home from the hospital after the procedure, Peter broke my finger. He said he would break all of them if I ever told anyone the miscarriage was his fault. When the police came around…his chums…I told them I had slipped on the ice.”
Brody made a small sound. “He was a cop?”
Sydney didn’t look around. She kept talking to Alex like he had asked the question. “He was a detective. First grade.” She gave a ghost of a smile. “I out-rank him.”
“That’s who you’ve been competing against in the force,” Veris said softly.
Taylor reached out for Veris’ hand and he picked hers up and held it both of his big ones.
Rafe gave a soft sound. It sounded like a moan.
Alex couldn’t help it. He got to his feet and went over to him and took his arm. “Come with me,” he said softly.
Rafe let him lead him out into the foyer, where the stairs wound up to the second floor in a graceful curve, the wrought iron banisters airy and fragile-looking. Once they were out of reach of the lights from the library, Alex turned him to face him. “It’s not your fault,” he said firmly. “No one is blaming you for something you could not possibly anticipate, that you had no way of even beginning to guess might happen.” He held Rafe’s face. “Not even Sydney blames you.”
Rafe looked at him. His eyes were still glittering with slightly pink tears. “I do,” he said heavily.
“Then you’re indulging in Mediterranean melodramatics,” Alex said crisply. “Sydney needs you. And Veris needs you to recall everything that happened. You have the perfect memory and she’s in shock.”
Rafe swallowed. “Cold hearted infidel,” he muttered.
“I was a Fatimid, thank you. A long time ago.”
“Why aren’t you tending to Sydney, doctor, if she’s the one in shock?”
“Because you’re in shock, too,” Alex said gently. “Emotional shock, the closest vampires get to a physiological reaction. But you’re coming out of it.” He studied him closely. Rafe was focusing properly now.
He drew in a breath as Alex watched and nodded. “Okay.”
“Very good.” Alex waved toward the library. “Ready to talk, now, Spaniard?”
“Spaniard?” Rafe spluttered. Then he rolled his eyes. “That was for the Infidel crack, right?”
“I thought some indignation might do you good, too.”
Rafe blew out another breath. “I’m not indignant,” he said softly. “I’m fucking angry.”
“Hold onto that. We both may need it before this ends.” Alex headed back toward the library, knowing that Rafe would follow. His gaze was caught by movement in the far corner of his eyes and he looked up at the top of the stairs. Marit was sitting on the top one, her dressing gown hem wrapped around her ankles. She had been listening. As he looked at her, she lifted her finger to her lips in a request for silence.
Beware, Uncle Alex.
He almost tripped over his own feet as he walked back inside.
Veris was standing over Sydney’s chair, holding her wrist while he measured her pulse, his other hand on her forehead, for her temperature.
“You see?” Sydney said, her voice the same light, bodiless murmur. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Veris said. “But you’re not in clinical shock, either, which was what I was afraid of. I have sedatives on hand, though. They might make you feel more comfortable.”
“No drugs,” she said firmly, her voice a fraction stronger.
Veris looked up at Alex. “Maybe a second opinion?”
“If Sydney says no, then it’s no,” Alex said.
Veris turned to Taylor. “Your vitals are all sluggish, too. Perhaps you should go back to sleep.”
Taylor looked at him sharply. “Stop trying to send the women out of the room, Veris.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it again, and sat back down on his chair.
Brody sat forward. “He’s not getting rid of you. Either of you.”
“No, but he’s gearing up for a war council and the old instinct is to get the women and children out of the room so they don’t hear anything distressing. He knows this is ugly and Sydney is already stressed. So he’s trying to spare us.”
Brody grimaced and sat back. Taylor rested her hand on Veris’ arm. “It’s sweet of you, but Sydney and I have a big stake in this. Bigger than yours. We stay.”
Sydney gave Taylor a small smile.
“War council?” Alex asked.
Veris looked up at him. “Taylor is exaggerating to make a point.”
“Not much,” Taylor muttered.
“But we do need to consider the ramifications of this…development.”
“And deal with an asshole or two,” Taylor added and Veris glared at her. She smiled sweetly back.
“Pull up a chair, you two,” Brody said. “You might as well get comfortable.”
Alex went over to the far wall, where the last two chairs sat on either side of a tall bookcase, and carried them over to where everyone waited.
Sydney watched him with a curious look on her face, and he realized that she was still getting used to vampires being themselves, including using more of their strength and their enhanced perceptions. Then she straightened. “Why is this even under discussion?” she asked. “I mean, this is my personal history.”
“Agreed,” Veris said easily. “But it’s a personal history that you shouldn’t have been able to jump back to. That’s what we need to think about.”
“What Veris is trying to say in his usual delicate way,” Brody added, “is that you’re family now. You joined the tribe tonight, when you jumped back to Alex’s days in the desert. Your problems are our problems, now.”
Sydney’s eyes widened and her mouth opened. She shut it with an audible click. “I…um…thank you.”
Alex caught her eye. “They really do mean it when they say ‘family’. I’ve been privileged to have been family for several years now. They will give their all to help you. Of course, they sometimes expect you to pull out a few stops of your own to assist them from time to time.”
Veris grinned. “Like laying guards out cold, Alex?”
Alex shrugged. “It was the least I could do.”
Veris looked at Sydney. “And they were vampire guards, too.” His expression sobered. “Alex’s serum has the ability to….” He blew out his breath. “I don’t have the vocabulary for it, yet. But the serum, at a high enough dose, lets you travel. Mental travel, for both Alex and Raphael say they couldn’t see their own bodies and direction was achieved by willing themselves where they wanted to go. We’ve theorized that this sort of travel is probably what Tira has experienced in the past. It is time travel of a sort, for you can go back in time, and you do see real events that happened, but you can’t participate in them. They unroll like a movie in front of you.”
“It feels real enough,” Rafe said. “I felt the cold on both occasions.”
“Which is probably why you were able to go back for real,” Brody said. “It was very real, and left a distinct impression.”
“But, Taylor, you said the first couple of times you jumped, it was this same sort of mental travel,” Sydney said. “It really wasn’t mental for me and Alex, because you saw us there and spoke to us.”
Taylor nodded. “I think Alex was pre-conditioned by listening to us talk about time travel for years. He’s always wanted to be able to do it himself. And his memory of that time and places is extraordinarily vivid and detailed. I think your abilities are very strong and you by-passed that intermediate step.” She glanced at Veris. “Would you agree, oh, master?”
He rolled his eyes at her. “Let’s not get into the trap of considering who might be a better jumper. The last thing I could stand right now is two women in a cat fight.”
“Liar. You’d love it,” Brody muttered.
Alex smothered his laugh as Veris glared at Brody. Even Sydney smiled.
Rafe pushed his fingers through his wavy hair, pushing it all back from his forehead. “So…if I can find places in the past with the serum, can anyone?”
“The past,” Veris said in agreement, “and possibly the future.” He looked at Alex.
“That’s where you think I was, when I…” Alex dropped his voice, aware that Marit was eavesdropping. “When I spoke to Marit?”
“She was older, you said,” Brody pointed out. “The future is one possibility.”
Taylor drew in a sharp breath. “Or was it the past, for Marit?”
“Marit time travels?” Rafe asked, startled.
“Not that we’re aware of…yet,” Veris said grimly. “Although I think we’re going to need a family conference when she’s awake.” He dismissed the subject with an impatient shake of his head. “We’re losing focus. Alex and Rafe both saw people and events that were real. Does that mean that if anyone uses the serum and sees something, they can jump to it, later?”
The room was silent as everyone considered it.
“You said that it was your perfect memories that let you jump back into the past,” Sydney said slowly, clearly working it out as she spoke. “So if someone sees something with the…the serum, if they see it clearly enough, then why wouldn’t they be able to jump to it later? Rafe did, so that’s proof it’s possible.”
Veris nodded. “That’s the first axiom, granted. Rafe did it. Now…can anyone do it?”
Sydney shrugged. “You won’t know until someone other than Rafe or Alex tries it.”
Veris sat back. “I don’t think anyone is willing to try it right now. Certainly not me. I saw the physical effects it has on the brain.”
“Don’t you heal from anything?” Sydney asked.
Brody laughed. “Skewered, coward.”
Veris laughed, too, unabashed. “Well, let’s say I’m not in a hurry to try it. We’ve got enough on our plate.”
Sydney frowned.
“Yes, we’re talking about you,” Alex told her.
“But what is there you can possibly do?” she asked. “It happened twelve years ago. That was a whole other life and another person.”
“And you’ve lived in fear for twelve years,” Veris said gently. “Tell me you haven’t been looking over your shoulder the whole time.”
Sydney pressed her lips together, her green eyes narrowing. “Yes,” she said at last.
“How good is your ID?” Rafe asked. “It’s clearly stood up to a decade of use, and even passed the LAPD screening, but the original documents…can they be traced back to Arlene?”
Alex could detect Sydney’s growing anxiety, her rising heart rate.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “That was a long time ago. My connections and my skills weren’t as good as they are now.”
“Maybe that’s something we can fix?” Taylor asked of no one in particular.
There was a thoughtful pause.
“You mean,” Sydney said, “go back in time and fix it?”
Taylor looked at Veris. “There has to be a way to do that without screwing up the timeline. Sydney has stayed Sydney for fifteen years without anyone figuring it out, so maybe we already did go back.”
Alex glanced at Sydney to check that she understood what Taylor had said. The changes in tense and the time paradoxes were sometimes hard to understand, but Sydney seemed to be following just fine.
“No one helped me with my ID, the first time,” Sydney said, proving she had understood precisely.
“When was the last time you recalled the memory of arranging the ID?” Veris asked. “If we’re still to go back and help you, then your memory of it could have changed already.”
“But your memories don’t change until after you’ve gone back and changed something,” Alex pointed out.
Sydney was frowning. “No, it’s the way I remember it…although even if it had changed, wouldn’t it seem like it was the way it always had been to me?”
“Yes…and no.” Veris let out a breath. “I don’t know how it would work for a human. Your memory is so much less reliable than ours.”
Taylor gave a laugh and patted Veris’ knee. “I wish I was recording this. It’s been a long time since anyone skewered you with your own logic. This is fun.” She looked at Sydney. “Don’t let him get away with a generality. He’s too used to being the smart one in the room.”
Rafe spoke, his voice low. “If we’re going back, why don’t we go back and fix this properly and completely.”
Alex’s heart thudded. He knew exactly what Rafe was saying. “Yes,” he said. “Why not? Take Peter out of the equation altogether. Then Sydney would never meet him.”
Veris shook his head. “No. You can’t screw with the future like that.”
“Why not?” Rafe said hotly. “So we fuck with the future and Peter disappears. Who cares? I won’t shed a tear for the bastard.”
“No,” Veris said, his voice loud. “You have no idea what would happen once you did that. You don’t know how the changes ripple down to this time, how enormous the changes might be.”
Alex crossed his arms. “It would be worth it,” he said flatly.
“Would it?” Veris turned in his chair to confront him. He was angry…or perhaps he was afraid, and it was the first time Alex had ever been the focus of Veris’ temper and emotions, although Taylor had warned him about them. “Have you listened to nothing that Brody and Taylor and I have said about screwing with time? Do you not understand how something as simple as going back and killing a foul being that barely deserves the name ‘human’ would fuck with your life?”
Alex realized his heart had slipped lose and was beating heavily. He took in a calming breath. “I have listened. I know what you’re saying. I still say it’s worth it.”
“It’s not your choice to make!” Veris cried.
“What’s not his choice to make?” Rafe asked, his voice much calmer than Veris’. He was looking at Alex, expecting him to explain.
“If you…or I, or anyone else goes back and deals with Peter, then Sydney’s life would immediately alter. She wouldn’t have reason to escape to the coast, she wouldn’t join the police force because she never met Peter and wouldn’t need to prove herself.”
“Primary computation,” Veris said heavily. “She would never meet either of you.”
Alex nodded.
“But Sydney would never meet Peter, would she?” Rafe said, looking at Alex.
“No, she wouldn’t,” Alex said.
Rafe stared at him. “You’d give up ever meeting Sydney?” he asked softly, and Alex suddenly felt like there was no one else in the room but the two of them.
“For Sydney, yes,” Alex said calmly.
“Then so would I.”
“No!” Sydney cried. “I don’t care what an asshole Peter was, I won’t change a single thing about that time if it means I don’t end up right here, right now. I won’t consider it! Not for a moment.”
Veris smiled grimly. “There is your answer, gentlemen. For the time being, unless someone comes up with a bright idea that doesn’t involve changing the past, we do nothing. Not until we know a lot more about how the serum affects time travel.”
Sydney looked at him. “Does that mean you’re going to try the serum now, big guy?”
Brody snorted.
Veris just shook his head. “Ordinary time travel nearly destroyed my life twice already. When it comes to this, I’m risk averse.” His gaze flickered around the room. “I have too much to lose,” he said quietly.
Taylor leaned over and kissed his cheek.