19

Normally Corey liked snow. But he preferred it fluffy and soft and under his feet. Not wet and icy and in his face.

“What just happened?” Leila asked. “Corey, did the bomb go off?”

“Pkaacchh.” Corey spat out the snow and sat up, in a mound of slush on the side of an icy river. He was happy to hear Leila’s voice, because he couldn’t see much. His head felt swollen, making his vision blurry. Above them the sky was gray and greasy-looking, tinged orange by streetlights barely visible though the fog. The temperature had dropped about twenty degrees. The night was quiet save for the laughing of distant voices, the putter of a car engine, and the clopping of horse hooves. “I don’t know. I guess so. It feels like we got blown out of the restaurant.”

Leila stood. “Through the roof of the kitchen and clear across town to the Isar River? Where five inches of snow fell in a sudden furious blizzard that we didn’t notice?”

“Yeah, good point.” Corey blinked and took a few deep wintry breaths. He could see more now. They were on the broad bank of a broad river. To their left, at the base of an ornate stone bridge, a homeless man slept curled in a blanket. Each stanchion of the bridge held a lamp with a flaming torch. A soot-faced man in a dark suit was adjusting one of the flames, but he paused to tip his hat to another man crossing the bridge on horseback. “This doesn’t feel like nineteen thirty-nine,” Corey said. “I think we hopped backward.”

“Duh,” Leila reacted. “But how?”

“I reached into my backpack, Leila,” Corey said. “We have artifacts in there. I wanted to get us out—”

“But we were in the kitchen!” Leila protested. “We were far enough from the bomb. We wouldn’t have been affected.”

“You wanted to stay?” Corey said.

“Yes! Now we don’t know what happened! Did Hitler escape in time? Did we get him?”

Corey groaned with the effort of standing up. The last few hours were running in his mind, in all their nightmarish detail. “I messed up. We failed, Leila. Hitler survived.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“He and his people were racing out of the place way before the bomb was set to blow,” Corey said. “They were gone by the time we were at the door at the back of that stage.”

“But the bomb could have collapsed the place—”

“In all those archival photos I saw back in New York? The only damaged part of the restaurant was under that balcony, remember? He was far from that. And it’s all my fault. Because I was too careless about my phone. It would have worked if that guy hadn’t seen my cord.”

“Yeah, but we changed history, remember? We changed the timing of the bomb—”

“I changed history.”

“Right. So anything could have happened.” Leila stood up, too. She exhaled a white puff of breath and shuddered. “I’m dying to know.”

Corey was already checking his phone. “No cell service.”

“What a surprise.”

In the fog it was hard to see very far. On the other side of the bridge, torchlit paths wandered through what looked like a park setting. On this side, people were streaming out of a grand brightly lit building ornamented with statues of cherubs and bare-chested Greek gods. The locals strolled arm in arm down a set of stairs, the women in furs and the men in top hats and long wool coats. Some were met at the curb by horse-drawn coaches and some by drivers in shining old-style cars.

“Model Ts . . .” Corey murmured.

Leila drew her arms around herself and shivered. “Where are we?”

Corey reached into his pack and pulled out the framed painting by Leila’s great-uncle. “I must have touched this.”

Leila’s face brightened. “Vienna, nineteen oh eight,” she said. “This is where I wanted us to go in the first place. It’s where Opa’s dad went to school—”

“The Vienna Academy of Fine Arts,” Corey said.

“Exactly!”

From the street came a loud voice attempting some kind of song. “We-e-e-r hat so viel Pinke-Pinke . . . we-e-e-er hat so viel Ge-e-e-eld?”

Two men were staggering off the sidewalk toward Corey and Leila. The snow was throwing them both off-balance, so they put their arms around each other’s shoulders for support. One of them, a broad, blue-eyed young guy with a cleft chin and bright red hair, held up a half-empty bottle and shouted “Guten Morgen!” This made the other guy burst out laughing. He was thin, dark, and dressed in black, with straight black hair that jutted out the sides of a knit cap.

“What’s so funny?” Corey said.

“He said ‘Good morning,’” Leila replied.

“And it’s night,” Corey said dryly. “I get it. Hilarious.”

The guys approached them on rubbery legs. “Geld für Überlebenskünstler?” asked Blue Eyes. “Oder vielleicht ein Kuss?”

“Hau ab!” Leila said.

She and Corey backed away. “He asked if we have money for a starving artist. Or maybe a kiss. I told him to get lost.”

“Ew,” Corey said. “He doesn’t look starving anyway. He looks drunk.”

But Corey’s eyes were trained on Mr. Black Hair. He was thin and sensitive looking, with high cheekbones, piercing eyes, and a mole on his left cheek. Corey tried to imagine him with the hat off, thirty years older and heavier. He pictured bags under the guy’s eyes and a brown Nazi suit. “Leila,” he whispered, “do you think that’s him—the black-haired guy?”

“Who?”

“The Führer who must not be named!” Corey said. “He’d be about eighteen now.”

“No way. This guy is too handsome.”

The big guy let out a huge belch. He wasn’t looking at them anymore, but farther up the riverbank. Leila’s retort seemed to make him lose interest. Now he began dragging Black Hair toward the man who was sleeping by the bridge abutment. “Aaahh. Hahahaha!” he cackled. “Ein schlafender Hund.”

“He just called that guy a sleeping dog,” Leila whispered.

“Wow. Super clever insults,” Corey said. “He could go into politics.”

The two guys stumbled toward the unsuspecting man. Blue Eyes seemed to find him hilarious. “Arf, arf!” he barked. “Wachen Sie auf! Schon Zeit zu arbeiten, Sie Faulpelz!”

“‘Wake up! It’s time to go to work, lazybones!’” Leila translated.

“Jackass bully,” Corey murmured.

The homeless guy didn’t answer and didn’t move. “He looks dead,” Leila said.

“Arf, arf!” Blue Eyes repeated.

Black Hair began pulling him away. “Otto, komm.”

Instead the red-haired man, Otto, yanked himself free. With a grunt, he stepped toward the homeless man and delivered a sharp soccer kick to his side.

The guy cried out in agony. He struggled to his feet. Even tangled in his thick, tattered blanket, he was obviously small and skinny and no match for Otto.

His reaction made the bully howl with laughter. “Tanzen Sie, Teufel, tanzen Sie!” he yelled, as Black Hair tried again to pull him away.

“‘Dance, devil, dance,’” Leila translated.

“He can’t do this,” Corey said. “Come on, there’s strength in numbers.”

They both rushed through the snow toward the mounting fight. The old painting from Leila’s great-grandfather slipped out of Corey’s hand into the snow. But he couldn’t think about that now.

The homeless guy’s face caught the light. It was bony and hollow and sad, lined with soot. His eyes were wide with fear, his nose small and delicate. He muttered something that Corey couldn’t hear, but it made Otto scream with rage.

The big guy lurched toward the poor man, who leaped aside with the grace of someone who had not been drinking. He grabbed a rock from the ground and held it aloft.

“Otto!” screamed Black Hair, trying once again to pull his bigger friend away.

Otto, still a little unsteady on his legs, looked down at his feet as if he’d stepped on something.

He had—a branch. He dug it out of the snow and held it with two arms like a baseball bat. Otto and the homeless man circled each other warily, each lurching forward to threaten the other. Then, with a roar, Otto took a vicious swing at the homeless guy.

At the last moment the ragged man jumped away. The swing missed, and it spun Otto around. Planting his feet, the poor man reared back to throw the rock at Otto. But it was too heavy and the effort made him lose his balance. As he plopped down into the snow, the rock arced through the air and smacked Otto in the ankle.

Otto grimaced, gritting his teeth with pain. With a deep, angry cry, he charged forward. Steadying himself by the helpless man, he raised the branch high and brought it down toward the man’s head.