BRODY WATCHED TAYLOR LOWER Rafe back to the mattress. He still forgot, sometimes, that her strength was so much more than human.
Taylor shook her head. “No bruising, of course. Nothing. It’s just Sydney who is being put through the wringer.”
Veris finished injecting antibiotic into Sydney’s IV and capped the syringe. Her arm was wrapped in a neat white bandage. Taylor and Brody had changed the sheets beneath them and cleaned up the blood, and bathed Sydney and changed her clothes. “She could have scraped her arm walking through a door,” Veris said firmly.
“And hit her head on the same door frame?” Brody asked.
Veris glared at him. Brody wasn’t moved by the scowl. Veris was worried. They all were. Veris always vented his worry by being impatient with everyone who couldn’t keep up with his mental speed.
“Well, she didn’t do this with her embroidery needle,” Taylor pointed out. “She’s fighting, Veris.”
“You think I don’t recognize a sword wound by now?” Veris shot back. “Just don’t let Alex hear you speculating. He doesn’t need any more fuel for his imagination.”
“Where is Alex?” Brody asked, looking around. “I expected him to be back here before long, inspecting your embroidery.”
“He and Marit were heads together over something in the dining room when I came through,” Taylor said. “It sounded like Marit was giving him a Latin lesson.”
Veris snorted.
“Her Latin is better than yours, big guy,” Brody told him.
Taylor frowned. “Brody’s right, though. We’ve been up here for ages. Latin isn’t that absorbing.”
Brody caught his breath. “The manuscript itself might be,” he said slowly. He turned and headed for the door.
“Why?” Veris demanded behind him.
“He thought he’d found another cypher in the story itself,” Brody called back over his shoulder as he headed down the stairs. “Only he didn’t know Latin well enough to figure it out.”
“Marit does,” Taylor breathed. Her quick steps followed right behind him.
The dining room was empty. Marit’s books were still sitting open at the end of the table and her hot chocolate was untouched. The manuscript pages were gone.
Veris came into the room behind the two of them, frowning. Brody turned to him. “Was Alex still screwing around with the serum, Veris?”
“The sedative antidote?” Veris sighed. “We both were.”
Taylor glared at him.
“It’s interesting,” Veris said flatly. “A sedative that works on vampires is ground-breaking.”
“So there is more of the stuff in the house,” Brody said. “Except Alex doesn’t have a surgery here.”
“His office,” Taylor said. She spun and ran out of the room. Brody and Veris followed her into the wood-paneled front room that Alex used as his office.
Marit was sitting on the big desk, her legs kicking, as she watched Alex. Alex was sprawled in the armchair in front of the desk, his head back and his eyes closed. His shirt sleeve was rolled up and a bottle and syringe sat next to Marit’s hip.
She held up the manuscript as they entered. “He said he was going back to look, and that I should give you this.”
Veris picked up the bottle as Brody took the sheets from her. “Marit, could you go upstairs and watch Aunt Sydney and Uncle Rafe for us, please?” Veris said.
She rolled her eyes.
“He’s not shoving you out of the room, honey,” Taylor said quietly. “They really do need someone to keep an eye on them and we’re going to have to help Alex now. If anything happens, especially to Aunt Sydney, you yell, okay?”
“Okay,” Marit said quietly.
Once she was gone, Veris swore. “This is the juiced up stuff,” he said, putting the bottle on the shelf behind the desk. Then he cleared off the desktop with a sweep of his arm. “Brody, put him on here. We’ll have to hold him down if he starts convulsing.”
Brody looked up from the sheets in his hand. “He found the cypher,” he said.
Veris shook his head. “I don’t care right now.” He bent over Alex, pulled him up, lifted him and laid him on the desk. He pressed his fingers against Alex’s neck. “Rapid heartbeat. He’s deep into it.”
“I mean it,” Brody said. “This explains why he took the stuff.”
Taylor looked at him. “He isn’t just desperate?” she asked.
Brody shook his head.
Veris raised his head. “Read it to me,” he said.
Brody studied the sheet. He had spoken and thought in Latin all through the long years he had been a slave in New Rome, the city that had been known throughout the world by its nickname, Constantinople. He knew the language organically. Most recently, he had used it when they had jumped back there, so he had reacquired it via time jumping, too.
Someone had underlined each fifth word with orange pencil crayon, probably Marit’s. Now the words seemed to leap off the page as they would if they were English. “It was every fifth word,” he said. “Not letters at all.” He started reading them aloud.
“English, Brody,” Taylor told him.
“Sorry.” He looked at the words, building the whole sentence in his mind and then translating it. “Physician, you must go, too. The queen’s favorite will take you. Edward must live and peace be found. Hurry.” He lowered the sheets and looked at Alex lying on the desk. “He did what he was told to do.”
Taylor looked ill. “He’s trying to go back there using the serum?” she whispered. She looked at Veris. “That’s not possible, is it?”
Veris folded his arms. He was staring down at Alex’s still form, frowning.
“Veris?” Brody prompted.
Veris sighed and looked up at them. “We’ve established that the serum lets you see across the timescape, into any time, any place. It removes the linear blinders we all must have to live. Until now, I would have said that was all it lets you do.”
“Until now?”
“The Queen’s favorite,” Taylor said slowly.
“Marit is upstairs!” Brody shouted, as fear grabbed his throat.
“That Marit is upstairs,” Veris said softly. “That isn’t the Marit that Alex found in the timescape, before.”
“A Marit from a different time?” Brody asked.
“Another woman who can jump through time as she pleases,” Veris added. “One who knows her way around the timescape, too.”
Veris looked down at Alex again. “We will have no way of knowing if he makes it there or not until he comes back to tell us. If he comes back.”
* * * * *
It had been such a long time since Alex had found himself floating freely through time in this way, yet it felt as if no time had passed at all. Life marched on beneath him and the beautiful silence surrounded him.
Ahead was the familiar place, the Alice in Wonderland hall with its books and black and white tiles and emptiness. Except it wasn’t empty.
Marit was there waiting. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and tilted her head to study him, looking more like Brody than Veris. “I was pulled here. Was that you, Uncle Alex?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It has been a long time since I was here, although it might not seem that way to you. I may have forgotten how it works here.”
“No, you haven’t forgotten,” she said, “because you never learned in the first place. It’s instinct, Alexander. You know what you need to know.”
“Except I need to move to a place that I don’t know at all. Rafael and Sydney are there now, or will be there, or have been there.”
“Just as you have been there,” Marit said. “Time is not linear here.”
Of course. The knowledge settled in his mind. He knew the place he needed to go to because he had been there/would go there. He lifted himself up and groped around with his mind, looking for the tug, the beckoning that came from familiar places.
Over there.
He began to move in that direction, as time and people and places flowed beneath him at faster and faster rates. “Marit!” he called.
“I’m here,” she said calmly, although he could not see her.
The timescape below him was becoming a rushing stream. Then he saw where he was going. “The stream is divided!” he cried. There were two streams—a major one, wide and well-trodden. A smaller stream branched off from it. The place he was looking for was at the junction of the two streams. He could see it ahead, calling to him.
The two streams were parallel to each other, until they joined. He reached for that place and details became clear. Hills, green growing things. Mist.
He could only see it. It was too far away.
“Marit! I must go there!”
“You really must, Alex?”
Yes! The shout echoed in his mind and before the echo died, a giant, invisible hand grabbed him and threw him like a pebble. He rolled and twisted and rolled some more, even as he began to fall….