Across Time: Across Time Book 1 Read online

  "It’s I938," she replies.

  Three years closer to the Nazi occupation than I intended. I should have been more careful. "Then I've traveled...about fifty years."

  "Mon Dieu," she says on a gasp. "Fifty years?”

  For better or worse, the future remains a mystery to her, just as my future remains one to me. While the past is neatly blocked off, what lies ahead for my kind is hazy. It would be like jumping off a ledge on a foggy day, clueless to whether you were five feet in the air or five hundred.

  I open my mouth to say more, but am cut off by a preemptory knock as the door swings open. A woman steps over the threshold, basket hanging off her arm. Her mouth is pinched, her eyes narrowed. "Marie, tes poules sont—," she begins, her words dying off as she notices me. "Qu’est-ce que c'est? As-tu un invité?" She sounds positively indignant to find me here.

  Marie-Therese's mouth has opened to reply just as Henri bursts through the door, looking at the two of us with panicked eyes. I remember thinking he was handsome when I first saw him, but in truth the word barely does him justice. He has features that would be called exquisite were they on a woman—high cheekbones, full mouth—but with a strong jaw and broad shoulders that render him not feminine by any stretch of the imagination.

  "Oui," says Marie, shooting an alarmed glance at Henri. "Notre cousine…um…Amelie. Amelie Durand."

  "Our cousin Amelie," Henri translates, looking me hard in the eye, as if I’m a child in need of scolding. "Amelie, this is our neighbor, Madame Beauvoir. Amelie est Americaine. Elle ne parle pas le francaise."

  I'm tempted to argue that I do indeed speak French, but the guy did just hold me at gunpoint. It might prove useful to overhear what he believes he’s saying in private. Between my exhaustion and how fast they talk I struggle to follow the conversation anyway. I catch a few sentences here and there: she's had a long trip, the daughter of our uncle, we were not expecting her. Mostly what I get from the conversation is Henri’s eagerness that I be gone. For every time his sister expresses pleasure at my arrival and suggests I might stay a while, her brother says precisely the opposite.

  Eventually I tune them out and let my gaze drift toward the window, realizing for the first time that their home is in the middle of a vineyard, lush and peaceful in the late May sun. I wish Mark could see this, I think, though in truth it wouldn’t be his cup of tea. He’d want a luxurious vineyard experience, the kind that offers 600-thread-count sheets and a butler. Probably the sort where they actually want guests, too.

  At last Madame Beauvoir rises to leave. She looks me over from head to toe like a dress she might consider purchasing, though she doesn't especially like it. "Elle est très belle, n'est-ce pas?" Madame Beauvoir thinks I’m beautiful. Maybe she’s not as awful as I thought.

  Henri shrugs, looking me over once from head to foot. I don't see it, he replies, but not all men have options.

  My teeth grind in response.

  He walks her to the door and watches her drive off before turning back inside and latching the door behind him. "Dieu," he says, glancing at me. "Trust the old witch to barge in just as the new witch finally wakes."

  Witch harkens a little too closely to the type of words my mother used all my life, because she views time travel as something akin to drug dealing or human trafficking. And I might put up with them from her, but I’m definitely not putting up with them from him. "I'd watch who you start calling names.”

  He raises a brow. "Is that right? Because I'm fairly certain you can't jump right now, and I'm the one with the gun." He turns to Marie-Therese. "And why exactly would our American cousin have a French name?"

  Marie-Therese heaves a sigh. "I panicked. The only American females I could think of were Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt. And she's too pretty to be named after Eleanor Roosevelt."

  He comes forward with heavy steps, reluctantly taking the seat across from mine. "And did you get her actual name,” he asks Marie-Therese, “or were you too busy giving her yours?"

  My mouth opens but Marie-Therese holds out a hand to stop me. "No, don't. For your own safety, it's best you give us as little information as possible about who you are or where you’re from. So for now, you are Amelie Durand. I am Marie-Therese, as you know, and the sullen one here is my brother Henri."

  A muscle ticks in his jaw. "Well don’t get attached. We have no idea who she is or what she's capable of."

  "What she's capable of?" Marie-Therese asks with a laugh, setting a round of cheese in front of me, along with more bread. "She was comatose for days after she traveled here. You can't think she's capable of much."

  She’s right, but it’s not the most flattering defense I’ve ever heard.

  "Maybe it was all an act," he counters.

  I turn toward Henri with an exasperated exhale. "What on earth do you think I'm planning to do? I'm a college student, not a criminal mastermind."

  He rolls his eyes. "Believe me, I know you're no criminal mastermind. You couldn't even manage to steal an apple from my barn without being caught. Now tell us why you’re here.”

  I’m deeply tired again, and my temper has begun to fray. "I'm here to help you, though you’re making me wish I hadn’t bothered."

  Henri leans back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. "Help?" he scoffs, his pretty lip curling up at the corner. “Is this a joke?”

  “Henri,” snaps Marie-Therese. “Tu es impoli.”

  "You’ve forgotten," Henri says to his sister, "that our future savior doesn't speak a word of French."

  I’m officially sick of his shit. "You don't have to be rude about it."

  He sighs. "And you don't have to be idiotic about it. Who arrives naked in a country where she can't speak the language and can’t even stay awake?"

  Marie swats his arm and turns to me. “Ignore him. Our mother insisted we both become fluent in several languages. Henri seems to forget not everyone has been so fortunate. Please continue.”

  "By all means,” says Henri, turning back to me, “you were in the process of telling us how you—who showed up here naked and defenseless and proceeded to sleep for over two days—could offer assistance?”

  His attitude leaves me longing to lash out rather than respond, except…he has a point. I'm young and terrible at time jumping. Aside from giving them some vague warnings about the future, I have nothing to offer.

  I sigh, trying to think back to the weeks and weeks of nightmares before they finally got a little too realistic. They were always about Marie-Therese—other things came up too but since they made no sense to me, I mostly ignored them.

  “My sister told me to find Marie-Therese, and I was hoping she’d understand. All I know is it’s got something to do with saving people and a circle of light.”

  Marie-Therese’s jaw drops and the legs of Henri’s chair land heavily on the floor. They exchange a quiet, stunned look that worries me. It obviously means way more to them than it does to me. "C'est elle," Marie-Therese breathes, so stunned she's reverted to French. It's her. "Ma mere—my mother, she told me you would come.”

  Ummm…what? “I don’t know your mother. This is the furthest I’ve ever gone back.”

  But Marie’s eyes are bright, her head nodding eagerly. “She told us someone would come and would be important to us,” she argues. “That you would help us. It must be you.”

  I shake my head. "I seriously doubt I’m the person your mother was expecting, but maybe if you told me what you need help with I could do something.”

  She and Henri exchange another look. It’s clear that whatever it is she wants, Henri wants the opposite.

  “Marie,” he growls. “Non.”

  We need to know, she hisses back at him before she turns to me. “My mother left three years ago without explanation and never returned. If I travel back to see her, she won’t tell me anything. She’ll realize she’s not going to return, and she won’t say a word. But you could go.”

  The conversation and Marie-Therese’s expec
tations have begun to drag on me like a weight. It’s the fatigue coming back, I’m sure, but the fact that I’m going to disappoint her in a minute doesn’t help. “You really have no idea where she went?” I ask.

  Marie-Therese stares at the table. “Her car was found in Paris, along with her clothes, but we don’t know what year she was visiting.”

  A chill goes down my spine. I have a disappearance in my family as well—my aunt, who left for Paris long ago and never returned. Though it happened before we were born, the mystery of our missing aunt always fascinated Kit. More than once she suggested I should travel back in time to help her. But if two people disappeared going after the same thing, I’m certain I don’t want to be the third.

  “What’s the circle of light thing about?”

  Marie-Therese’s eyes widen. "Did your mother never tell you the prophecy?”

  Henri’s eyes narrow. “Marie, if she doesn’t know, it’s not your place to tell her.”

  Marie shrugs. “She’s a time traveler. She’s supposed to know,” she says before returning to me. “The prophecy says that there will be a child born after a great war—it calls her the hidden child—who will produce this circle of light, which is somehow supposed to keep our pasts safe.”

  My shoulders sag. I don’t especially believe in prophecies, particularly ones passed down by word of mouth. Honestly, it’s a little shocking that both my aunt and their mother might have believed in it enough to actually go seek it out.

  "What's it supposed to keep you safe from?"

  Henri frowns. "From you," he says. At my startled look he begrudgingly completes the thought. "Not you, specifically. But from future time travelers. My sister, any children she might have...even those of us who don't have the power, we are all at risk. Any one of you can come from the future and destroy everything, can't you? Even this impromptu visit right now...what if you've changed something? What if the simple act of your arrival has led to some trickle that will become an avalanche?"

  I close my eyes and take a small breath. Even in 1938, I can't escape people who think I'm evil. Not that I disagree with them.

  Marie-Therese frowns at him. “You’ve done nothing wrong,” she assures me. “My mother believed the circle could keep us from having our futures stripped away.”

  I could point out that their futures could be stripped from them anyway. I did a fair amount of research about what’s coming for this part of France when I was preparing to jump to the 1930s. Saint Antoine, given its position between Germany and Paris, will be Nazi-occupied throughout the war, but I hold onto that information for now. I'm not here to change the past any more than is necessary to get back home.

  “I don’t really see how I can help you with any of this,” I tell her. “I’m sorry I got your hopes up.”

  “Please,” Marie-Therese begs. “If you could get her to tell you her plans, we might still be able to save her.”

  Henri's face is drawn and sad in a way that makes him, momentarily, hard to hate. "Marie," he says quietly, "she's not trapped. She's dead, and that's something even you can't fix. No matter what year she went to, she'd have found her way back to us by now if she were alive."

  "You don't know that," Marie breathes. She turns to me. "Please consider it. I have to find her.”

  I think of the nightmare that led me here. Kit, sitting up in her coffin, her skin a mottled blue and white like a sickly robin’s egg—the way it looked when they pulled her out of the lake.

  You have to find them, she told me again and again. For one horrible moment I wonder if it wasn’t Marie I was supposed to save, but her mother and my aunt. I dismiss the thought immediately. Wherever they went, it was obviously very dangerous, and no time traveler alive is more ill-equipped to make that journey than I am. Even Marie shouldn’t attempt it, and I’m not sure I want to help her try.

  "I'm sorry," I reply. "My aunt also went missing in Paris, which tells me that what you’re talking about might be a little harder than it sounds. And I'm just doing this one thing for my sister. Once I return to my own time, I’m never jumping again.”

  Marie-Therese laughs as if I'm joking, or a child making insane promises I can't keep. "Of course you'll continue to jump. We can't stop ourselves."

  Her laughter irritates me, perhaps because my greatest fear is that she’s right. I’ve done nothing but try to stop since I started jumping a decade ago, and yet here I am, time traveling again when it feels like my whole future depends on giving it up.

  "I can,” I reply.

  Marie-Therese’s hands press to the table. "Your aunt is missing, my mother is missing. How many others must there be? Don't you at least want to see if you can help?"

  "I'm mostly interested in not dying," I reply. "Maybe we should all just take their failure as a lesson and stay the hell away from wherever they went.”

  Marie-Therese’s shoulders drop. I barely know her and I already hate that I’ve disappointed her. “But your sister said you were supposed to help me.”

  My stomach swims uneasily. The nightmares have been unrelenting for weeks and escalated dramatically before I got here. If I don’t provide some kind of help they’ll start back up. I’m sure of it. “Maybe I can help in other ways. I can tell you what's coming."

  "We don't want to know what's coming," Henri says firmly.

  I’m officially too tired for this. I press my head in my hands, resting my eyes. “Fine, whatever. I’m sorry I’m disappointing you. If you could give me one day here to rest, I’ll be out of your hair."

  “You're not going anywhere,” says Henri. “You've identified my sister, a secret we've guarded our entire lives. I can't just let you go back and tell others."

  Panic begins to rise in my chest. I think about my arrival, his hand on the hammer of the gun. He was really prepared to shoot me for being here. I wonder if he still might be.

  My head swivels, looking for the exits and his eyes follow mine. "There's one exit to this home, and I stand between you and it. Don't even think about trying to get by me."

  First he’s demanding I leave, and now he’s basically holding me hostage. One extreme to the next, and both extremes suck. Henri is proving to be far less delightful than those pouty lips of his might lead a female to believe.

  "And how do you propose to keep me here once my powers have returned?" I demand. "You're going to kill me? That's your plan?"

  A muscle ticks in his jaw. "No. It's not my plan. I just haven't come up with a better one yet."

  I was being sarcastic. I’m not sure he is.

  "Look,” I say with a heavy exhale. "I don't know what you think is going on here, but I'm not evil. I'm just a stupid college student who thought she might be able to help you, and you live more than five decades before my time anyway. What possible use is your sister’s location to me?"

  Marie-Therese looks at her brother as if it's a valid point, but I see something in his eyes before he averts them. Fear, knowledge. What does he know about this situation that his sister does not?

  "You may remain until we figure it out," says Henri.

  He rises and I watch as he returns to the vineyard. My sense of self-preservation tells me I should run at the first opportunity. Except I’ve barely got the energy to walk, so running is out of the question.

  Marie places a hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry. I know my brother. He talks big but he doesn't have it in him to kill a pretty young girl."

  I raise my worried face to hers. "I'd feel better if you'd just said he doesn't have it in him to kill anyone."

  Her smile falters. "I wish I could tell you that too."

  4

  I return to bed for most of the day, so ill I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps I just truly have the flu, because the exhaustion feels exactly the same. Even when I try to wake up I find myself drifting back to sleep, my dreams feverish and illogical, blending the morning’s incidents with memories from home in various ways I’m certain never happened.

  When I finally ge
t downstairs again, Marie-Therese pushes me to sit and I’m too tired not to obey, but I also feel guilty just lounging here while she appears to be doing five things at once.

  “Let me help with something,” I say.

  “You could knead the dough?” She slides it to me on a floured wooden board and goes back to check on whatever’s bubbling on the stove.

  When she turns back a minute later she laughs. "What are you doing?" she asks. "You have to form a ball and punch it down, with your ummm…" She holds up her closed hand. "Fist? Is that not how you do it in your time?”

  I raise a shoulder. “I don’t know. I’ve never done it before.”

  Her jaw drops. "Never? Mon Dieu. How? You must be quite wealthy."

  My family is anything but wealthy, which is sort of ridiculous given how many ways my ancestors and I could get money. "It's just not a thing people do in my time," I explain. "We’re too busy. We just buy it at the store."

  She frowns. "What is it that keeps you all so busy?"

  I bite my lip. I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. “Well, most women work or they’re in school. They aren’t home to make bread.” But it's not as if Marie-Therese has a life of leisure here, and when I’m not in class I have plenty of down time. “I guess maybe we’re not all that busy. We’d just rather, you know, read. Or watch TV.”

  “TV?” she asks.

  It slipped, but is there any harm in explaining it? "Television. It's like a box in your house that plays movies and shows. I guess it hasn’t been invented yet.”

  Her eyes go wide. TV has never struck me as a wondrous invention, but I see in her face that it really must have been something when it first came out. Like a rollercoaster that comes to your home when you want to ride it. “I’ve heard of something like this—it was at the world’s fair, I think. I just never imagined it would become common.”

  “What about you?” I ask. “What do you do for fun?”

  Her smile grows a little sad. “I help with the language classes at the church or sometimes see my friends. Things changed…after my mother left.”