Straying From the Path Read online

  She rubbed her wrist. The blood stain didn’t grow any larger. It was just a scratch. It didn’t even hurt. “I’m—I—” Then again, if she played this right . . .

  “I—oh my, I do believe I feel faint.” She put her hand to her neck and willed her face to blush. “Oh!”

  She fell on Lady Petulant. With any luck, she crushed Frufru beneath her petticoats. Servants convulsed in a single panicked unit, onlookers gasped, even Ned was there, murmuring and patting her cheek with a cool hand.

  Lady Petulant wailed that the poor girl was about to die on top of her. Pressed up against the good lady, Madeline took the opportunity to reach for the brooch. She could slip it off and no one would notice—

  The brooch was already gone.

  She did not have to feign a stunned limpness when a pair of gallant gentlemen lifted her and carried her to a chaise near a window. Ned was nowhere to be seen. Vials of smelling salts were thrust at her, lavender water sprinkled at her. Someone was wrapping her wrist—still gloved—in a bandage, and someone who looked like a doctor—good God, was the man wielding a razor?—approached.

  She shoved away her devoted caretakers and tore off the bandage. “Please, give me air! I’ve recovered my senses. No, really, I have. If-you-please, sir!”

  As if nothing had happened, she stood, straightened her bodice over her corset, smoothed her skirts, and opened her fan with a snap.

  “I thank you for your attention, but I am quite recovered. Goodbye.”

  She marched off in search of Ned.

  He was waiting for her toward the back of the hall, a fox’s sly grin on his face. Before she came too close, he turned his cupped hand, showing her a walnut-sized diamond that flashed against the green velvet of his coat.

  Turning, he stepped sideways behind the same potted fern where he had ambushed her.

  He disappeared utterly.

  “Damn him!” Her skirts rustled when she stamped her foot.

  Ignoring concerned onlookers and Lady Petulant’s cries after her welfare, she cut across the hall to the glass doors opening to the courtyard behind the hall, and across the courtyard to a hideously baroque statue of Cupid trailing roses off its limbs. She stopped and took a breath, trying to regain her composure. No good brooding now. It was over and done. There would be other times and places to get back at him. Stepping through required calm.

  A handful of doorways collected here in this hidden corner of the garden. One led to an alley in Prague 1600; tilting her head one way, she could just make out a dirty cobbled street and the bricks of a Renaissance façade. Another led to a space under a pier in Key West 1931. Yet another led home.

  She danced for this moment; this moment existed because she danced.

  Behind the statue Madeline turned her head, narrowed her eyes a certain practiced way, and the world shifted. Just a bit. She put out her hand to touch the crack that formed a line in the air. Confirming its existence, she stepped sideways and through the doorway, back to her room.

  Her room: sealed in the back of a warehouse, it had no windows or doors. In it, she stored the plunder taken from a thousand years of history—what plunder she could carry, at least: Austrian crystal, Chinese porcelain, Aztec gold, and a walk-in closet filled with costumes spanning millennia.

  She dropped her fan, pulled the pins out of her wig, unfastened her dress and unhooked her corset. Now that she could breathe, she paced and fumed at Ned properly.

  She really ought to go someplace with a beach next time. Hawaii 1980, perhaps. Definitely someplace without corsets. Someplace like—

  The band played Glenn Miller from a gymnasium stage with a USO banner draped overhead. There must have been a couple hundred G.I.s drinking punch, crowding along the walls, or dancing with a couple hundred local girls wearing bright dresses and big grins. Madeline only had to wait a moment before a G.I. in dress greens swept her up and spun her into the mob.

  Of all periods of history, of all forms of dance, this was her favorite. Such exuberance, such abandon in a generation that saw the world change before its eyes. No ultra-precise curtseys and bows here.

  Her soldier lifted her, she kicked her feet to the air and he brought her down, swung her to one side, to the other, and set her on the floor at last to Lindy hop and catch her breath. Her red skirt caught around her knees, and sweat matted her hair to her forehead.

  Her partner was a good looking kid, probably nineteen or twenty, clean-faced and bright-eyed. Stuck in time, stuck with his fate—a ditch in France, most likely. Like a lamb to slaughter. It was like dancing a minuet in Paris in 1789, staring at a young nobleman’s neck and thinking, you poor chump.

  She could try to warn him, but it wouldn’t change anything.

  The kid swung her out, released her and she spun. The world went by in a haze and miraculously she didn’t collide with anyone.

  When a hand grabbed hers, she stopped and found herself pulled into an embrace. Arm in arm, body to body, with Ned. Wearing green again. Arrogant as ever, he’d put captain bars on his uniform. He held her close, his hand pressed against the small of her back, and two-stepped her in place, hemmed in by the crowd. She couldn’t break away.

  “Dance with me, honey. I ship out tomorrow and may be dead next week.”

  “Not likely, Ned. Are you following me?”

  “Now how would I manage that? I don’t even know when you live. So, what are you here for, the war bonds cash box?”

  “Maybe I just like the music.”

  As they fell into a rhythm, she relaxed in his grip. A dance was a dance after all, and if nothing else he was a good dancer.

  “I didn’t thank you for helping me with Lady Petulant. Great distraction. We should be a team. We both have to dance to do what we do—it’s a perfect match.”

  “I work alone.”

  “You might think about it.”

  “No. I tried working with someone once. His catalyst for stepping through was fighting. He liked to loot battlefields. All our times dancing ended in brawls.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Somme 1916. He stayed a bit too long at that one.”

  “Ah. I met a woman once whose catalyst was biting the heads off rats.”

  “You’re joking! How on earth did she figure that out?”

  “One shudders to think.”

  The song ended, a slow one began, and a hundred couples locked together.

  “So, how did you find me?” she asked.

  “I know where you like to go.”

  She frowned and looked aside, across his shoulder to a young couple clinging desperately to one another as they swayed in place.

  “Tell me Ned, what were you before you learned to step through? Were you always a thief?”

  “Yes. A highwayman and a rogue from the start. You?”

  “I was a good girl.”

  “So what changed?”

  “The cops can’t catch me when I step through.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question. If you were a good girl, why do you use stepping through to rob widows, and not to do good? Don’t tell me you’ve never tried changing anything. Find a door to the Ford Theater and take John Wilkes Booth’s gun.”

  “It never works. You know that.”

  “But history doesn’t notice when an old woman’s diamond disappears. So—what do you use the money you steal for? Do you give it to the war effort? The Red Cross? The Catholic Church? Do you have a poor family stashed away somewhere that you play fairy godmother to?”

  She tried to pull away, but the beat of the music and the steps of the dance carried her on.

  The song changed to something relentless and manic. She tried to break out of his grasp, to spin and hop like everyone else was doing, but he tightened his grip and kept her cheek to cheek.

  “You don’t do any of those things,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  He was right, of course. She only had his word for it when he said he was a rogue.

/>   “What are you trying to say?”

  He brought his lips close to her ear and purred. “You were never a good girl, Madeline.”

  She slapped him, a nice crack across the cheek. He seemed genuinely stunned—he stopped cold in the middle of the dance and touched his face. A few bystanders laughed. Madeline turned, shoving her way off the dance floor, dodging feet and elbows.

  She went all the way to the front doors before looking back. Ned wasn’t following her. She couldn’t see him at all, through the mob.

  In the women’s room she found her doorway to Madrid 1880 where she’d stashed a gown and danced flamenco, then to a taverna in Havana 1902, and from there to her room. He wouldn’t possibly be able to follow that path.

  Unbelievable, how out of a few thousand years of history available to them and countless millions of locations around the world, they kept running into each other.

  Ned wore black. He had to, really, because they were at the dawn of the age of the tuxedo, and all the men wore black suits: black pressed trousers, jackets with tails, waistcoats, white cravats. Madeline rather liked the trend, because the women, in a hundred shades of rippling silk and shining jewels, glittered against the monotone backdrop.

  Gowns here didn’t require the elaborate architecture they had during the previous three centuries. She wore a corset, but her skirt was not so wide as to prevent walking through doorways. The fabric, pleated and gathered in back, draped around her in slimming lines. She glided, tall and elegant as a Greek statue.

  He hadn’t seen her yet. For once, she had the advantage. She watched behind the shelter of a neoclassical pillar. He moved like he’d been born to this dance. Perhaps he had. Every step made with confidence, he and his partner might have been the same unit as they turned, stepped, turned, not looking where they were going yet never missing a step. It always amazed her, how a hundred couples could circle a crowded ballroom like this and never collide.

  He was smiling, his gaze locked on his partner’s the whole time. For a moment, Madeline wished she were dancing with him. Passing time had cooled her temper.

  She’d already got what she came for, a few bits of original Tiffany jewelry. After a dance or two, she could open a door and leave. In a room this large, she could dance a turn and Ned would never have to know she’d been here.

  But she waited until his steps brought him close to her. She moved into view, caught his gaze and smiled. He stumbled on the parquet.

  He managed to recover without falling and without losing too much of his natural grace. “Madeline! I didn’t see you.”

  “I know.”

  He abandoned his partner—turned his back on her and went straight to Madeline. The woman glared after him with a mortally offended expression that Ned didn’t seem to notice.

  “Been a while, eh?”

  “Only a month, subjective.”

  “So—what brings you here?”

  “That’s my secret. I’ve learned my lesson about telling you anything. You?”

  He looked around, surveying the ballroom, the orchestra on the stage, the swirl of couples dancing a pattern like an eddy in a stream. Each couple was independent, but all of them together moved as one entity, as if choreographed.

  “Strauss,” he said at last. “Will you dance with me, Miss Madeline?”

  He offered his hand, and she placed hers in it. They joined the pattern.

  “Have you forgiven me for that comment from last time?”

  “No,” Madeline said with a smile. “I’m waiting for the chance to return the favor.”

  Step two three turn two three—

  “Do you believe in fate?” Ned said.

  “Fate? I suppose I have to, considering some of the things I’ve seen. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s a wonderful thing, really. You see, we never should have met. I should have died before you were born—or vice versa, since I still don’t know when you’re from. But here we are.”

  “That’s fate? I thought you were following me.”

  “Ah yes.”

  Madeline tilted her head back. Crystal chandeliers sparkled overhead, turning, turning. Ned didn’t take his eyes off her.

  “Have you thought of why I might follow you?” he said.

  “To reap the benefits of my hard work. I do the research and case the site, and you arrive to take the prize. It’s all very neat and I’d like you to stop.”

  “I can’t do that, Madeline.”

  “Why not? Isn’t there enough history for you to find your own hunting grounds without taking mine?”

  “Because that isn’t the reason I’m following you. At least not anymore.” He paused. He wasn’t smiling, he wasn’t joking. “I think I’m in love with you.”

  Her feet kept doing what they were supposed to do. The music kept them moving, which was good because her mind froze. “No,” she murmured.

  “Will you give me a chance? A chance to show you?”

  It was a trick. A new way to make a fool of her, and it was cruel. But she had never seen him so serious. His brow took on furrows.

  She stopped dancing, and he had to stop with her, but he wouldn’t let go. There, stalled in the middle of the ballroom floor, the dance turned to chaos around them.

  “No. I can’t love you back, Ned. We’re too much alike.”

  For a long moment, a gentle strain of music, he studied her. His expression turned drawn and sad.

  “Be careful, Madeline. Watch your back.” He kissed her hand, a gentle press of lips against her curled fingers, then let it go and walked off the dance floor, shouldering around couples as they passed.

  He left her alone, lost, in the middle of the floor. She touched her hand where he had kissed it.

  “Ned!” she called, the sound barely audible over the orchestra. “Ned!”

  He didn’t turn around.

  The song ended.

  She left the floor, hitched up her skirt and ran everywhere, looking behind every door and every potted fern. But he was gone.

  If Ned followed her, it stood to reason others could as well.

  Her room had been trashed. The mirror over the vanity was shattered, chairs smashed, a dresser toppled. Powdered cosmetics dusted the wreckage. The wardrobe was thrown open, gowns and fabric torn and strewn like streamers over the furniture.

  She didn’t have windows or doors precisely to keep this sort of thing from happening. There was only one way into the room—through a sideways door, and only if one knew just the right way to look through it. So how—

  Someone grabbed her in a bear hug. Another figure appeared from behind her and pointed a bizarre vice-grip and hairbrush-looking tool at her in the unmistakable stance of holding a weapon. A third moved into view.

  She squirmed in the grasp of the first, but he was at least a foot taller than she and he quickly worked to secure bindings around her arms and hands that left her immobile. All wore black militaristic suits, with goggles and metallic breathing masks hiding their features.

  The third spoke, a male voice echoing mechanically through the mask. “Under Temporal Transit Authority Code forty-four A dash nine, I hereby take you into custody and charge you—”

  “The what?” Madeline said with a gasp. Her captor wrenched her shoulders back. Any struggle she made now was merely out of principle. “Temporal Transit Authority? I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

  “You’ve never stepped through to the twenty-second century, then.”

  “No.” Traveling to one’s own future was tough—there was no record to study, no way to know what to expect. She’d had enough trouble with her past, she never expected the future to come back to haunt her.

  “I hereby take you into custody and charge you with unregulated transportation along the recognized timeline, grand theft along the recognized timeline, historic fraud—”

  “You can’t be serious—”

  He held up a device, something like an electric razor with a glowing wand at one end and flashing l
ights at the other. He pressed a button and drew a line in the air. The line glowed, hanging in midair. He pressed another button, the line widened into a plane, a doorway through which a dim scene showed: pale tiled walls and steel tables.

  He opened a door, he stepped through, and all he needed to do was push a button.

  In that stunned moment, the two flunkies picked her up and carried her through.

  They entered a hospital room and unloaded her onto a gurney. More figures appeared, doctors hiding behind medical scrubs, cloth masks, and clinical gazes. With practiced ease they strapped her face-down, wrists and legs bound with padded restraints. When she tried to struggle, a half-dozen hands pressed her into the thin mattress. Her ice-blue skirt was hitched up around her knees, wrinkling horribly.

  “Don’t I get a lawyer? A phone call? Something?” She didn’t even know where or when she was. Who would she call?

  A doctor spoke to the thug in charge. “Her catalyst?”

  “Dancing.”

  “I know just the thing. Nurse, prep a local anesthetic.”

  Madeline tensed against her bindings. “What are you doing? What are you doing to me?”

  “Don’t worry, we can reverse the procedure. If you’re found innocent at the trial.”

  She lost track of how many people were in the room. A couple of the thugs, a couple of people in white who must have been nurses or orderlies. A couple who looked like doctors. Someone unbuttoned her shoes. Her silk stockings ripped.

  Needle-pricks stabbed each foot, then pins of sleep traveled up her legs. She screamed. It was the only thing she could do. A hand pushed her face into the mattress. Her legs went numb up to her knees. She managed to turn her face, and through the awkward, foreshortened perspective she saw them make incisions above her heels, reach a thin scalpel into the wounds, and cut the Achilles’ tendons. There was no pain, but she felt the tissues snap inside her calves.

  She screamed until her lungs hurt, until she passed out.

  She awoke in a whitewashed cell, lying on a cot that was the room’s only furnishing. There was a door without a handle. She was no longer tied up, but both her ankles were neatly bandaged, and she couldn’t move her legs.