12

The rain had let up. The air outside felt like an Arctic blast after the sweaty, overheated restaurant. Corey shivered as he and Leila crept around the brick building. Their eyes scanned the walls for extra doors, or any method that Georg Elser could have used to enter or escape.

At the rear of the building, Leila found a wooden hatch with open diagonal doors. Inside, steps led down into the kitchen. “Aha!” she exclaimed.

“Aha what?” Corey said. “We were sitting near the kitchen and we didn’t see him go in. Maybe he snuck out the front when we weren’t looking?”

“I had my eye on the front of the restaurant,” Leila said. “I would have seen him. I swear, he never left this place.”

“We could look at the surveillance cameras.”

“Ha ha. I have some ideas. Come on.”

Leila sped back into the Bürgerbräukeller through the front door. She led Corey down the inner stairs and back into the restaurant. A couple of workers were still mopping floors and stacking chairs, and Wolfgang was counting cash at the bar.

Waving a quick hello, Leila made her way to the stage area and went right to the door behind the podium. “This is where the guy hid from you, right?” she said, yanking the door open.

“Not so fast—!”

Corey flinched, half expecting the guy to jump out with a hammer. But Leila stepped inside and flicked on the light to reveal a totally empty room. The piano and chair were exactly as Corey remembered them.

“Okay, so he’s not here,” Leila said. “That eliminates one possibility. Are there any other rooms?”

She turned. Directly across the stage area was another door, a mirror image of the one they’d just opened. Leila ran to that one and pulled it open. They both stared into a long, cement-walled hallway that led deeper into the building, in the direction of the kitchen.

Carefully, quietly, they stepped in, their footsteps rapping sharply against the hard floor. Before long they came to another door. Beyond it were the sounds of clinking glasses and rushing water. Corey pushed it open into a steaming back room of the kitchen, where a team of workers were hand-washing plates and glasses.

To their right, another flight of stairs led up into the higher floors of the Bürgerbräukeller. It was the same stairs Corey and Leila had taken to get to room 208, Maria’s room.

“Do you think he went up there . . . ?” Leila said. “It’s all, like, apartments. And he doesn’t live here. Maria said he was staying with people she knew. And when he came in to dinner, he was wet from the rain.”

“He’s not washing plates down here,” Corey said with a shrug. “So he must be up there. I think he’s hiding, sneaking around. He was here this morning when Maria unlocked the place. The restaurant should have been empty.”

“Wait, you think he comes here for dinner, hides out in the building until the restaurant closes, and then sneaks out in the morning when the place opens?”

Corey nodded. “He’s up to something. And if he is hiding out, I’m worried about Maria. He seemed kind of like a maniac.”

“I’m not liking this one bit,” Leila said.

“If anything bad happens, I can always microhop and fix it,” Corey said.

“Now you want to time travel?” Leila looked at him in disbelief. “Curb your enthusiasm, Superman. We have to reserve your powers, remember?”

Together they climbed the stairs to the second floor and emerged into a long hallway lined with dark wood. It smelled musty and slightly moldy, with an open window at the other end providing the only ventilation.

At room 208, Corey rapped on the door. “Maria?”

He heard a murmur of voices within. A moment later Maria appeared at the door with a smile. She had changed from her waiter uniform into a plain button-down shirt and a pair of khaki pants. Her room was dark except for a lamp on a desk, over which a sheer scarf had been draped, bathing the room in red. “Willkommen! Come in!” She gestured into the room. “You come to say good-bye? Franz is here?”

“Franz?” Corey asked.

“Your Onkel,” Maria said.

Leila exhaled. She gave Corey a long look and stepped into the room. “Maria, we have something to tell you. I mean, after you finish closing up the restaurant.”

“My work is done. The others do late work because I do shopping in the morning.” Maria sat, looking at them expectantly. Four tapered candles cast soft light across her face. On her table was a brownish rectangular board. It was covered with letters and mystical symbols. On top of that was a kidney-shaped object about the size of Corey’s hand, supported by four tiny legs. “Please. Sit. I was just about to contact my Horst.”

“You have a horse?” Corey asked.

Maria looked at him oddly. “Horst was mein husband. He died sixteen years ago. We talk, through my Ouija board. You know these boards? Very popular in America. Place fingers on the planchette and the dead spell out answers to your questions. The dead, they are still with us, meine Kinder. The past is Jetzt—now. But you sit. They will wait for me. Horst is patient.” She smiled. “You do not think I am crazy?”

“No. I don’t.” As Corey sat slowly on the bed, he thought about his trip into 1862 Central Park, 2001 downtown New York City, and 1917 Greenwich Village. “Sometimes I speak to the dead too. People in the past.”

Leila shot him a wary look. But Maria just nodded and smiled. She took his hand and Leila’s. “Ja, I know this about you.”

“You do?” Leila said.

“I know too that you do not have this Onkel Franz. Ja?”

Corey cleared his throat nervously. “Ja.”

“You are not so good at telling lies!” Maria said with a laugh. “Maria tells you der Wahrheit. The truth. Maria tells everybody the truth. Except, sometimes, foolish drunken German men at the Bürgerbräukeller. So you are to tell me truth, ja?”

“We . . . can’t,” Leila replied.

Maria cocked her head. “Warum?”

“Why? Because you wouldn’t believe it,” Leila said.

“How do you know?” Maria smiled. “Try me. I do not bite.”

Leila look uncertainly at Corey.

“Would you think we were crazy,” Corey said cautiously, “if we told you we’re from the future?”

“Corey!” Leila said.

“Was bedeutet ‘future’?” Maria asked.

“She’s asking what that means,” Leila said. “Zukunft, Maria.”

“We are from the Zukunft . . . twenty-first century,” Corey continued.

Maria’s smile fell. She looked deeply into Corey’s eyes, then Leila’s. “Das ist ja die Wahrheit?”

Leila took a deep breath. “Ja. It’s the truth.”

Maria stood and turned away from them, her hand on her chin.

“She thinks we’re loony birds,” Corey whispered. “I knew it. We should have stuck with Uncle Franzy Pants.”

“Mein Vaterland . . . my fatherland, Germany . . .” Maria blurted out. “So much bad things now. Kristallnacht . . . you know this? Last year they take away the Jews, smash their windows, steal everything.” Maria looked pleadingly at Leila, then Corey. “The Zukunft . . . future. Tell me about this. Does these Nazis . . . ?” Her voice drifted off.

“Succeed?” Leila said. “Take over the world? No. But they come close. The entire world becomes involved in a war. Thousands of soldiers die. Millions of Jews, not to mention Poles, gay people, anyone they hate . . . all slaughtered in cold blood. In death camps.”

“Ach, mein Gott,” Maria said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “This cannot happen.”

“You wanted to know why we were here,” Corey said. He took a deep breath and sat up ramrod straight. “The truth is, I have a power. A superpower, really. I can change the past. We came here to stop Hitler. We travel through time using metal artifacts. Like this one.”

He reached into his pack and pulled out the corroded old metal shank. Maria took it, not knowing what to make of it. “What is this thing?”

“We think it’s part of a chandelier in the restaurant,” Corey said. “We also found a note from you to someone named Clara. Who is Clara?”

“Meine Freundin,” Maria replied. “My friend.”

“Help us, Maria,” Corey said. “I can change history, if I have a plan. But I don’t know what to do.”

“I—I—” Maria’s voice caught in her throat. Her eyes were drawn upward, to something behind Leila’s and Corey’s shoulders.

That was when Corey heard the thump of a footstep.

He whirled around to see in the doorway a scowling woman with high cheekbones and hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“Clara?” Maria said with a quizzical look. “Alles in Ordnung? Was ist los?”

From behind her stepped Georg Elser, aiming a pistol at Corey’s head.