CHAPTER SEVEN

Mr. Velés puts me to work immediately the next morning, hauling equipment back and forth, standing guard at the corner of the stage during each performance, and cleaning up afterward. When Juliette performs the bullet catch, I watch obediently from the side of the stage, though my heart leaps at the sound of the pistol firing.

The manual labor is exhausting work, using all sorts of muscles that somehow are overlooked by my gym’s automated training equipment, and it doesn’t take long for my palms to become scraped and chapped. A few more days of this, and I’ll have some nice calluses.

As we gather for dinner the evening of that first day, I’m distracted by thoughts of how nice it’d be to collapse into my bunk and sleep solidly until the morning.

Juliette, however, is a bit of a night owl.

The four of us dine together on some sort of vegetable stew that’s somehow both too hot and too cold at the same time, with barely a word exchanged between us. Afterward, Juliette sneaks out of sight and into the darkness. Before I can follow, Viggo throws an arm around my shoulder and holds out his bowl.

“Where do you think you’re off to? Don’t you know the rules? The newcomer’s in charge of washing up.”

I look to Mr. Velés for confirmation, but he’s already leaning back with his feet propped up on a wooden crate. His hands are crossed over his chest and his eyes are closed.

The next day, I get a jump on him. As soon as the bowls are empty, I swoop in with an elegant bow, gather them up while everyone else is still seated, and rush them to the washbasin which I’ve already filled with boiled water prior to sitting down to eat.

“Nice to see someone take initiative around here,” Mr. Velés says as he lights his pipe. Over the wisps of smoke, Viggo glares at me.

Me, I’m still scrubbing as fast as I can so that, by the time Juliette stands, clears her throat, and excuses herself, all I have to do is wipe my hands on my towel, leave the heavy iron pot soaking, and sneak away after her.

Out past the supply wagons, I lose sight of her. If we were in the 22nd century, I’d head for the nearest data port, hack into the GPS of her personal vision device, and track her that way, but things are more complicated here. Without data ports or personal vision devices, I’m left to stand there, looking lost like an idiot.

“Are you following me?” She steps out from behind a shed.

“Yes?” I try to smile, but I know how this looks. I look obsessed. “Just wondering if you’d like company.”

I don’t know what I’ll do if she says no. I care about her safety because it’s my job. It’s what I’ve come here for. But I’ve found that I also care what she thinks of me, and I don’t want her to think I’m a stalker.

She stares at me, her hands on her hips, obviously trying to decide whether she can trust me. Whether I’m a stalker.

“I’m not a stalker.”

“Stalker?” She raises her brows at what must be an anachronistic slip-up.

“Harasser. Prowler. Creep.” I shake my head; that sounds too modern, too. “Look, I’m your bodyguard, right? So it’s my job to make sure you’re safe—onstage and off.”

She slowly nods. “All right.”

And that’s how our evening outings begin.

As the weeks pass, our walks along the shores of Saginaw Bay quickly become my favorite time of day. Each evening after dinner, Juliette bundles up against the lake’s chill and together we walk the beach as she recounts her idyllic childhood in rural Ohio, her decision to join up with her childhood friend and his father on their tour of the country, and the latest adventures of her day—and there are always adventures.

“Today during rehearsals, I accidentally set Viggo’s silk scarf on fire,” she says with a laugh that bursts from her like sunshine. She readjusts her own scarf over her head as a gust of wind threatens to yank it free. “You should’ve seen his face. He couldn’t decide whether to be frightened or angry.”

“I suspect he feels that way rather often,” I mutter.

“He’s really not that bad once you get to know him,” she insists.

“Right,” I say, then fall silent, hoping she’ll fill in the gaps, give me some clue about the extent of their relationship. His interest is obvious, at least to me, but Juliette’s feelings toward him are harder to read. Not that it’s any of my business, I suppose. It’s not like I have a shot with her; we’re from different eras, and eventually, I’m going to have to return to mine and leave her here. I kick a stone toward the lake.

“He just takes this show so seriously,” she says. “He’s always had lofty ambitions, and he works so hard toward them that you can’t help but to admire his gumption.”

I can, though I didn’t say so.

“At any rate,” she continues, “he sent me to the storage wagon to fetch him a new scarf, and I found this.”

She holds out a book and I take it in my hands, squinting to see its contents in the moonlight. It’s handwritten, and at first, I assume it’s a journal, but as I page through, I see that it is, in fact, an instruction booklet of some sort, with all sorts of equations and diagrams and sketches that seem too technologically advanced for this era.

“I picked it up thinking that it was a record of magic tricks. Mr. Velés’s, perhaps. Or his father’s before him; I heard he was a magician as well.” Juliette leans in toward the journal, and I catch a whiff of her lavender scent. “I was hoping to find some new trick to use for the finale—”

“Instead of the bullet catch?” I ask in surprise.

I haven’t told her, but in the process of deconstructing the stage between towns, I’d discovered a bullet hole through the center of the bull’s eye target where she’d been standing for the trick. Viggo had scoffed and accused me of planting the “evidence” myself, and even Mr. Velés couldn’t say for sure that the hole hadn’t been there for weeks, months, or years.

“We can’t discontinue the trick without something just as impressive to replace it,” Mr. Velés had told me, firmly putting an end to the conversation.

Since then, I’ve personally inspected the ivory-handled pistol the Amazing Velés uses for the finale before each show, ensuring that the chambers are clean and that only blanks are stored with it. The “Amazing” Velés probably won’t be pleased if he finds out I’ve been poking around his props, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is just the sort of opportunity TUB would take advantage of.

Juliette shrugs and stares out at the waves. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. The trick does seem rather dangerous, particularly if someone was trying to cause trouble.”

“You think someone might be trying to cause trouble?”

“Oh, don’t make a fuss.” She laughs and waves me off, but I can tell by the set of her shoulders that she’s not entirely at ease. “Since you mentioned it the other day, I’ve been paying close attention. Yesterday, I discovered someone—a stranger—backstage before our first show, looking at the trick box that Viggo uses to cut me in half.”

Someone backstage? TUB? Or just an admirer hoping for a closer look?

“What did they look like?” I ask. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“He ran off before I could get a good look. I didn’t even think about it until later, during the show. There’s a little mechanism that pushes the false feet through the bottom of the box that I have to kick out before pulling myself up into the upper two portions of the box. But the mechanism stuck. I couldn’t get the false feet to pop out. I barely got out of the way before Viggo cut through with that first saw.” She hesitates, sneaking glances at me and obviously trying to gauge my reaction.

Being sawed in half would be an awful way to go, and the thought of someone doing that to Juliette makes me want to punch something. Or someone.

“I think you’re right,” she says. “I think someone is trying to ruin the Amazing Velés’ show.”

“Ruin his show?” I turn to face her. “Don’t you see? Someone’s trying to harm you.”

Juliette waves the notion away. “Who would try to harm me? I don’t know anyone here. I don’t know anyone at all who’d have any reason to hold a grudge. Whereas Viggo… Well, he’s not the most personable man. No, he’s gotten on someone’s bad side, and now they’re trying to destroy his reputation. I just know it. Another magician, perhaps. In fact, no, I’m certain of it. It’s the only logical explanation.”

My molars grind against one another. I’ve been too lax, too afraid of being found out or staying in Juliette’s good graces when what I really ought to have been worried about was her physical well-being. I’ve forgotten my real purpose here. After all, if Juliette dies now, there’s no Elise, and without Elise, my past is messed up in the most paradoxical manner possible.

But what can I do? Juliette won’t quit the show; that much is clear. Ever since her parents passed away, she’s been determined to learn the business so that she can someday fly on the trapeze. Besides, what would that do to history? Dr. Wells didn’t tell me a thing about Juliette’s life after this summer except the implication that she’ll go on to become Elise’s great-great-grandmother somehow. What if she needs to follow the Amazing Velés’s show to meet Elise’s great-great-grandfather, whoever the lucky guy will be?

A horrible thought crosses my mind. It better not be Viggo. The two may have been childhood friends, but I can’t bear the thought of Juliette marrying that creep. Why hadn’t I thought to look at the surnames on those genealogy pages Dr. Wells had waved around? I guess it hadn’t seemed important at the time, back when Juliette was just someone who’d lived long ago. Before I knew her.

“But look.” Juliette reaches over to the book, which I’d forgotten I was still holding. She flips quickly through it until finally, she lands on a page near the back. “Here. I’ve read a bit, and I don’t think the journal is about magic at all. It’s about traveling through time! Can you even imagine? Time travel! It’s not real, of course… It can’t be, but what if it were? Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

I lean in closer, certain that what I’m was seeing in the dim moonlight must be my imagination. There, sketched out in bold lines, with a cutout on one page and all the important inner parts labeled, is a spitting image of the Wormhole Device that’s tucked away in my pocket.