NINETEEN

I WOKE UP to the sound of Juana rummaging around the tent. That was the problem with sharing a small space with someone—whether that was Juana or Henley—they always managed to wake you up even if they were trying to be quiet.

“Good. You’ve finally woken up,” Juana said as I rolled over in the hammock to face her. There was no sign on her face of what had happened last night.

Maybe she didn’t remember . . . or maybe she was pretending.

“You overslept. Everyone’s done with breakfast. I left some for you, but it’s getting cold.”

I stared blankly at her, the sleep still in my eyes. Best not to mention it.

“Get up. Get dressed. That’s what I mean,” she said.

I got up from the hammock, practically sliding out, and went over to the chest where I had put my dress. I noticed that the bone was gone, but the wooden dish was still there.

“Damn it, dog.” I had wanted Juana to see the cleaned-off bone to show I appreciated her taking care of me. Now it looked like I had taken the whole leg, bone and all, and disposed of it somewhere. She was going to hate me.

I pulled the dress over the top of my head and looked at Juana.

She had frozen in place, looking at me with a slack jaw. I suddenly realized it was probably down to my swearing. I shouldn’t have said “damn.” It was too strong. Much too strong. What did they say in this time? God’s teeth? I needed to transition back to an acceptable level of swearing for the sixteenth century.

“The dog took the leftovers?” Juana said, once she had recovered from her shock.

“There wasn’t much left,” I said. I didn’t mention the fact that there wasn’t much left because the dog had eaten everything the night before. “Only the bone, really.”

“We can’t leave leftovers around camp like that. Might attract wild animals,” Juana said. “But the old dog should still be close around here somewhere. She’s much too aged and feeble to have dragged a large bone very far.”

“So it’s a she? I’d thought it was a he,” I said.

Juana started lifting tent flaps and looking behind some of the chests. “Do you know your dogs well?”

“Not really. I never had one. I wanted one when I was younger, though.”

“Our family had a dog named Alegria. It means happiness. She had puppies one day. My sisters and I couldn’t bear to give them away, so we grew up always having a pack of dogs at our feet.”

Juana lifted the tent flap at the front and laughed when she found the guilty-looking dog with the bone between her paws.

I petted the dog and she rolled over, exposing her stomach to be rubbed.

“There you are. We’ve been looking all over for you.” Juana took the bone in one hand and grabbed the dog by the scruff of her neck. “We need to get you back to José.”

“José?” I followed Juana and the dog out of the tent.

“Her owner.”

“Oh.” I felt a slight twinge of sadness. For some reason, I had thought it was the camp’s dog and belonged to everyone. Foolish of me. Besides, she had an owner. I shouldn’t have cared that much.

“José!” Juana barreled into one of the tents with the dog.

I stood by the opening, taking care not to enter.

A man had hopped out of his hammock. He raked his hair back and looked disdainfully at both the dog and Juana. The dog looked guilty, as if she knew this was all about her.

Juana said a few things in Spanish and led the dog over to the man.

He didn’t look that pleased to have her back. He stroked his beard and said a few words. He took a few steps toward the dog. I thought he was going to pet her, but instead he kicked the dog and sent her flying a few steps.

My heart was in my throat, and I automatically lurched forward. I quickly stopped myself.

What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t help the dog. I shouldn’t, at least. I had to remain as inconspicuous as possible.

But the man had seen my sudden move. He pointed at me and said a few words to Juana. Then he looked toward the dog again.

Juana said something back then tried to get me to leave with her.

“No, what did he say?” I said, not moving.

“He doesn’t like you.”

“That much I can gather. But why kick the dog? I thought it was his,” I said.

“She was supposed to be a hunting dog. One that would also get the rats on board the ship. But she’s past her prime. Look at her.”

The dog was now lying by the back of the tent, her head on the ground and her tail tucked between her legs. She tilted her head, as if she wanted to lift it, but finding it too heavy she just let it drag on the ground.

“José says it’s only a matter of time before she goes. Until then, she’s only another thing to feed.”

I looked hard at José. “So he’s waiting for her to die.”

Juana shook her head. “Conditions are harsh out here. No place for an old dog that can’t be useful anymore. He’ll probably put her down. Her portion of food could go to the men,” Juana said.

“It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not, but what ever is?”

“I want her,” I said.

I hadn’t thought before I said that. It wasn’t inconspicuous, but in that moment, I couldn’t stand by and let it happen.

Juana put a hand on my arm. “The dog’s not yours to want.”

“Tell him,” I said. “Tell him I want her. I’ll take her off his hands.”

Juana hesitated before translating my words.

José looked at me with new interest. He didn’t say anything that needed translating. He simply gave me one nod.

He moved to get the dog, but I moved faster than him.

I walked to the back of the tent and scooped up the dog in my arms. She wasn’t that little. She was quite heavy actually, and my shoulders hurt under the strain of picking her up, but I didn’t care. I walked straight out of that tent with her.

I think Juana might have said something to José as I left, but she quickly followed me back to our tent.

“You don’t have the slightest idea what you’re going to do with that dog, do you?” Juana said as I put the dog down in the middle of our tent.

“I don’t,” I admitted.

Juana didn’t chastise me, though. “You think you’re similar to her, don’t you?”

“Perhaps,” I said, rubbing the dog’s stomach. “It’s just not fair that she shouldn’t be given a chance like the rest of us.”

“You don’t want to be thrown out when you’re not useful.”

It wasn’t much of a question.

“Stay here.” Juana excused herself and walked out.

“It’s just you and me again, buddy,” I said.

The dog seemed to understand. She looked up directly at me with her belly up.

“Yeah, I don’t know what we’re going to do with you either.”

The dog cocked her head.

“You don’t have to be a hunting dog or a rat catcher to be useful, though. I’ll take you the way you are, if you’ll take me the way I am.” I scratched her chin.

She seemed to like that. Her tail feebly flopped from side to side.

“Neither of us are the way we would like to be. We’ve changed. I know that.”

Juana came in with two wooden bowls. She handed one to me and put the other in front of the dog. They both had a stew-like substance in them. I was hungry, and I knew I didn’t want to ask what the food was before I ate it . . . probably not even after I ate it.

There was no spoon, so I ate by putting the bowl to my lips, tipping and sucking.

“It’s cold, isn’t it?” Juana said. “And runny. We have to add wine to stretch out the daily provisions.” I knew it was her way of apologizing for the food.

“Do you know the dog’s name?” I asked.

Juana shook her head.

“Oh. Maybe we could ask José later.”

“I mean she doesn’t have a name,” Juana said. “We only have one dog. She answers to a whistle. There was no need to name her.”

I looked at the dog rushing to lap up the contents of her bowl. It wasn’t right not to have a name that was your own.

“We have to name her.”

“Pick something suitable. Something that fits her,” Juana suggested. “That way, the name will really be her.”

I knew what she meant.

The dog was curled up by the now-empty bowl. She shouldn’t have had wine, but I supposed there was no clean water. Still, her tail frailly wagged from side to side, showing her appreciation.

“I want something fiery,” I finally said.

“For her? She isn’t exactly what I think of when I think of fiery.”

The dog was fast asleep in the middle of the floor. She seemed to be wheezing a little in her sleep.

“I know, but she could be.”

“You shouldn’t name living things with your expectations of them,” Juana said.

“I want to name her something hopeful.”

Juana leaned down to pet the dog while she wheezed on in her sleep. “What about Alma?”

“What does that mean?”

“Soul.”

I looked down on the dog’s sleeping form. She had as much soul as we did.

“It’s perfect.”

“Rebecca, I have to ask you something. Yesterday . . .”

Juana looked so serious that I thought she had somehow followed me into the woods and seen me disappear in front of her.

“Yesterday, you had said that you’d drunk too much water.” She carefully watched me as she spoke. “I meant to ask if you had found a fresh water source . . . Perhaps a lake?”

I suddenly remembered the moment she was talking about. I had been so desperate to see Henley that I had made up an excuse about needing to empty my bladder in the middle of the woods.

Now Juana thought I had found a source of drinking water . . . Or was she feeling out what I knew?

“Um . . . no, it was more like a river,” I tried.

“And you’re certain that there wasn’t a lake around when you were journeying here?” Juana’s face felt too close to mine. “Perhaps the river flowed into the lake?”

“Uh, no. No lake.”

She sighed, but was it a sigh of disappointment or a sigh of relief?

Juana definitely knew something. But what was it?

Juana walked a few paces away from me. “I’m . . . I’m going to go to confessional today,” she said. “The men went this morning. They should be done by now. The priest is in the farthest tent across from the fire pit. He’s an educated man and speaks English. I suggest you make the time to go today too.”

I told her I would before Juana left for the priest’s tent.

I made sure I waited a full five minutes before peeking outside to check that she wasn’t anywhere near. With Juana at confessional, this was my time to check the maps that she had hidden from me.

As I walked to the chests in the tent, Alma whined. I guessed she was waking up from her nap.

“I know this isn’t exactly the best thing to do, but I need to know. She’s hiding something.”

I opened the top chests where I had seen Juana put away the maps. I pulled out the rough pieces of paper, careful to maintain their order so she wouldn’t know I had been there.

As I had quickly glimpsed before, they were hand-drawn maps of Islamorada. Each page was the island in different detail. Juana must have done them. Closer up, I could see the detail in certain areas of the coast and the part of the island I assumed we were on now. She must have mapped out the details of the areas the expedition had journeyed through.

But what was she trying to find? Each of the maps had one X. They were all in the same location. It was close to the camp. What was that?

It crossed my mind that it could just be fresh water that she was after, but if that was the case, there seemed to be closer rivers and small pools of water that would be more convenient to get to from where we were.

Then maybe it was the lake. The Fountain of Youth. Juana had seemed too interested in the possibility of me finding a lake earlier. If she was after one specific lake—the fountain—then she must have known what its powers were.

She was either trying to turn herself immortal, or was already immortal and was trying to find the fountain for a different reason.

The maps were snatched out of my hands.

“I know exactly what you are.”

My head snapped up. It was Juana.

Juana’s face was red, and her body shook as she stashed the maps back into the open chest.

“You’re not supposed to be here. Not like this. In this tent or in this world,” she said.

I opened my mouth, but I knew an apology wouldn’t suffice. I also knew I didn’t want to apologize to a killer.

As Juana moved toward me, I ran out of the tent.

When I burst out into the middle of the camp, heads turned. I slowed my pace to a walk. I couldn’t go into the woods to travel forward in time, though all I wanted was to talk to Henley, because eyes were on me. Instead, I walked toward the tent of the priest. That would have to be my refuge for now.

Juana had said it was the farthest tent across from the fire pit. It was set apart from the others and therefore was easy to spot.

The inside of the tent was split into two by a simple opaque sheet that ran lengthwise. I entered the side on the left, which had the tent flap up to indicate that it was empty.

I pulled down the flap and sat alone on the dirt floor. I closed my eyes and took a breath.

Those things that Juana had said to me. She obviously knew. She knew that I was immortal. Maybe it was because she had sensed something off about me all along. She knew that I had found out that she was after the Fountain of Youth. And it made sense that she knew everything—after all, I thought she was out to kill me. I just didn’t know why.

Did she want the Fountain of Youth all to herself? She had said, “You’re not supposed to be here. Not like this. In this tent or in this world.” What had she meant by that? That I wasn’t supposed to be here in this time period? And therefore she wanted to murder me?

My thoughts felt unbearably heavy. I held my head in my hands.

“I just can’t do this,” I whispered.

“Repent, my child, and the Lord will forgive.”

I looked at the dividing cloth. I could barely see the outline of the priest sitting on the other side.

“Forgive me, Father, I feel lost,” I began.

“Tell me how you have lost your way, my child.”

I remembered the last time I had been in a confessional. It hadn’t been in a tent, but it had been very much like this. The priest had the same warm, soothing tone; he was someone I felt I could talk to. I felt like I could do no wrong in a confessional.

“There is a woman who has helped me. Juana has taken me in, and for that I’m grateful. But I fear her reasons for doing so are not right.”

“And how are they not right?”

“I fear that she’s exactly like me. Someone who God has turned away from.”

“The Shepherd will always lead His flock.”

I placed my palms on the cool earth. “Not if one of them is damaged irrevocably.”

“You believe you are damaged irrevocably?”

“There is an abnormality that I can’t fix or change. It’s an unnaturalness that wasn’t supposed to happen . . .”

There was a pause. “And you think this woman has this same . . . disease?”

“I know it,” I said.

“Our Lord loves and forgives, if you attempt to set it right.”

“I know,” I said, but I didn’t mean it.

This priest didn’t understand. Immortality wasn’t something that I could ever “set right.”

And yet here I was, trying to get water from the Fountain of Youth to subject Henley to the same fate I had been subjected to by Miss Hatfield.

It was all a twisted mess, but there was no getting out of it.

“You’re right,” I told the priest. “I need to set it right.”

I left the confessional before he could say anything.

When I came out of the tent, lunch was being served. Everyone was there apart from me and the priest—the men and, of course, Juana.

“Soup,” a man grunted to me in his heavy accent. He handed me a bowl of stew much like breakfast.

“Thank you.”

Juana’s eyes met mine. She looked like she wanted to talk to me, but I figured if I didn’t let myself be alone with her, she couldn’t say anything about immortality or try anything—like kill me.

I tried to stay in front of as many people as possible. The men were taking seats around the fire. I waited till Juana got her soup and sat down before taking the farthest seat across from her.

From there I could watch her and make sure she didn’t come anywhere near me.

I looked at the men to keep my mind off Juana. They came in all shapes and sizes—some were broad and square, while others were tall and lean. There didn’t seem to be any extra fat on any of them. I supposed that was what expeditions like this did to you.

The men looked back in my direction too. I was a new face, and they looked curious. Most of them, surprisingly, had kind faces—suspicious, but still gentle at the core. There was a man with the bushiest eyebrows I had ever seen. One of the men I recognized from the altercation yesterday had a pointy beard that kept dipping into his soup as he tried to drink it. I also saw José there. He glowered at me when our eyes met, but I supposed that was normal for him—he hadn’t seemed too friendly in the first place.

The priest even walked out from his tent to join us for lunch. He looked surprised when he saw me amid the men.

He had a familiar, neatly kept goatee. Maybe I recognized it because it was the way my—Cynthia’s—father had kept his facial hair. Even with the facial hair, the priest looked young and surprisingly handsome. He was probably twenty-five at most—too young to be wearing that solemn black. But his age fitted with most of the men there.

This was a younger group; there were few gray hairs. I guessed they needed the younger, stronger men for hard voyages like this. It made sense.

As the men were finishing their soup, some of them brought metal flasks out. One was passed around. The men were taking swigs of whatever was in it. The flask passed me once, but on the second time around, I decided to try it.

I took a sip, and the liquid burned my throat. I coughed and simultaneously tried to swallow and get the taste out of my mouth.

The men guffawed as I sputtered.

More flasks came out. Some belonged to individuals and weren’t passed around. I guessed that these were the men who were sick of the expedition and just wanted to get drunk.

The men started to clear their plates and go back into their tents for what I assumed was siesta time.

I saw a flask that had been left behind and quickly picked it up, checking that no one was about to claim it. I’d had enough of whatever that drink had been, but I could use the flask to get water from the lake . . . once I found it. Finding the lake was another issue.

The area around the fire was almost empty. Most of the remaining men were done clearing their bowls. Only Juana, the priest, and a couple of others stayed behind. I had to move quickly. Juana looked like she wanted to talk to me.

I headed into the woods. Let the men think that I was emptying my bladder. Juana probably knew I was trying to get away from her. I had to tell Henley that I was sure I had found the killer—I mean she tried to strangle me in my sleep.

The tree that bent at the waist and fifty-four steps from that. I mentally counted all of them, until I made it to the tree I had marked.

“Rebecca?”

Juana had followed me into the woods. Her voice didn’t sound that far off. I dug frantically.

“Rebecca! I know you’re here.”

My fingers hit metal, and I scooped up the clock. I was turning the hands when the trees parted.

I looked up and the scenery was already dissolving around me. Juana’s face had drained of blood, and her hand was frozen in midair, as if she was about to say something.

It was too late.

She had seen me time travel.

“Henley!” I burst into our room with the clock and the metal flask in my arms.

I must have looked a sight, but Henley wasn’t there to see it.

Damn it. Where was he?

I ran back through the lobby. Al at the front desk looked confused, but there was no one else around.

The pool looked full. I could see it from the back windows of the lobby. Maybe Henley was there.

I ran out, unconcerned what the tourists thought of me in my yellowed, dirt-stained antique dress.

“Henley!”

He was sitting at the edge of the pool with his feet in the water.

Henley was wearing the swim shorts we had bought him. It must have been the most modern outfit I had ever seen him wear. I would have commented on it, if I hadn’t been frantic to talk to him about other more pressing issues.

“Juana’s immortal,” I blurted out.

“What?” Henley managed to say once he’d gotten over the shock of suddenly seeing me there. “And lower your voice. There are people here.”

I crouched down next to him. “Juana’s looking for the lake. Well, actually, it seems she knows its exact location.” I told Henley of the maps I had seen and of Juana’s reaction to me finding them. I told him of the pain Juana felt in her stomach and how she had let slip that it was worsening. I also told him of what she’d said to me: “I know exactly what you are.”

“There are too many matching pieces for this all to be a coincidence,” I said.

Henley looked away from me to think for a moment. “You’re right. There are too many points that align. You think she’s the killer?” His eyes met mine.

“She tried to kill me.”

Henley froze. “What? You couldn’t have started with that? And you’re all right now?”

I told him of her trying to strangle me last night. “That has to prove it . . . But there was something off about it. As if she didn’t know what she was doing . . . The whole thing felt like a manic episode of some sort. But there’s no other suspect. Who else could it be? No one else is immortal. There’s José, who doesn’t seem to like dogs and doesn’t seem to like me either, but I doubt he has any reason to want me dead. There are the rest of the men, but they barely acknowledge my existence, let alone talk to me. There’s the priest—”

Looking at Henley’s face, I suddenly understood why I had found his face and the way he conducted the confessional so familiar. That face. That voice.

“My God.”

“Rebecca?”

“It’s the priest,” I said. “It’s the priest. He was there at your father’s funeral. He was there at your house. He was at Henry’s court.”

“Father Gabriel?”

“He’s the killer.”

We both sat, stunned into silence.

All those attempts at my life. He killed Miss Hatfield. He must have been there in her house. He was there when I first met Henley. I saw him. He was there at Richard’s deathbed. My God.

My mind was whirling uncontrollably, but I struggled to vocalize my thoughts. “H-he was there. In each time period.”

“Each time someone tried to kill you,” Henley said.

I should have seen it earlier, somehow. I thought back to my conversation with him in the confessional. He hadn’t even had an accent like the rest of the men or Juana. I should have noticed it. He’d done so much damage over the years.

“He murdered Miss Hatfield.”

There was silence between us. We could hear the splashing of children playing in the pool.

“Do you think he killed my father?”

The priest—Father Gabriel, if that was even his name—had been there for months as Mr. Beauford deteriorated. Mr. Beauford had developed a fascination with immortality toward the end of his life and had collected artifacts with any connection with it. Was that reason enough to kill him?

“He was there in Tudor England. He was the priest in the confessional. He performed Richard’s last rites.” I tried to take a breath, but it felt like my lungs were being crushed.

“He tried to smother you there. Not to mention he tried to kill you before that, in the Heathrow airport.”

“He ransacked Miss Hatfield’s house before killing her. He sent me the text to meet at the same location where Miss Hatfield was killed. He must have been trying to kill us both at the same time.”

Henley’s body shook as he sucked in a breath.

“He was also in England with us in 2016. He was in the room. He wrapped the plastic beads around your hands.”

“Prayer beads,” Henley said softly. His face was devoid of color, and I knew I looked the same.

“He was everywhere. He’s been tracking our every move,” I said.

Henley bit his lip. “He must have his own way of traveling in time. His own clock or something.”

“That means we can’t run from him for long.” I forced myself to breathe. “I need to go after him.”

“Rebecca. He wants to kill you. You’d just make it easy for him.”

I snapped at Henley. “What choice do I have?”

“Turn me immortal first, so I can at least help you,” Henley said.

I knew he felt helpless, but would turning Henley immortal really help me? I didn’t know the answer, but I did know that turning Henley immortal would at least keep him safer. Immortality meant Henley would be able to travel in time far away from the killer’s grasp, as long as he had the clock. I was willing to do anything to keep him safe.

I nodded and held up the flask, which was still in my lap. “I’ll go back to get the water. I know exactly where it is now that I’ve seen Juana’s map.”

Henley’s forehead was creased with worry lines. I knew he didn’t want me to go back with the killer there, but we were out of options.

“It’s safer now that we’ve identified who the killer is,” I promised.

“Be careful. Please.”