TWENTY
I get my necklace, and I have money left in my pocket afterward. Dover flirts, but he makes no indecent offers in exchange for the locket.
Outside the shop, I resist the urge to take out the locket for a better look. I’d examined it briefly inside, just enough to be sure it matched Isla’s description. It’d be hard to fob off a fake with that snake symbol. Not exactly a common design for women’s jewelry.
As I walk, I can’t help thinking about the story Isla told. I am a sucker for a good family legend. She said her grandfather gave it to her grandmother because she could not become a doctor in more than theory. Was it a sop?Oh, sorry you can’t be a doctor, dear—here, have a pretty locket with a medical symbol.Or was it recognition of her loss? A shared understanding?
It’s easy to look into the past and presume few women wanted a job or an education. Just those “special” ones, who “aren’t like other girls.” That’s bullshit. Isla—and her grandmother—might not be the norm, but only because someone had encouraged them to dream bigger. Someone said they deserved to use their keen minds however they saw fit.
I can be grateful that Gray isn’t a lecher or a raving chauvinist, but that’s obviously his upbringing, and I don’t think it’s as unique as it might seem. For as long as women have had dreams, there would have been men who supported them, and it may be sentimental of me, but I can’t help hoping Isla’s grandfather was one of them, this locket representing—
A sound cuts me short. I stop in the middle of the road and turn. It’s quieter out here than I realized. I don’t know how long I’d been in the pawnshop, and when I came out, I’d been too wrapped up in my thoughts to be properly aware of my surroundings.
When I look around, I see that the pubs are all closed. Did they shut down at eleven? That would explain the flurry of activity just before I’d gone into the pawnshop.
I vaguely recall a few drunken revelers on the other street, but then I turned the corner and now I am alone on this narrow, cobbled lane. All the shops are closed, and the apartments above are dark.
The sound comes again. It’s a snuffle, like someone crying. I squint up at the apartments. The windows are all shuttered, as if security is more important than fresh air. The cry is clear and unmuffled and comes from the even narrower lane ahead to my left.
Another whimper, one that sounds like a child, and when I hear it, dread creeps down my spine.
I have been here before.
Out at night in narrow and empty streets, discovering I’m more alone than I realized. Hearing trouble in a shadowed lane. The difference is that I recognize this as a potential trap. I’d been so damned confident that night. I was a police officer. I had my cell phone. I would be fine.
I was not fine. If I hadn’t tumbled through time, I might have been found dead on the cobblestones the next morning. Strangled to death by a serial killer.
My fingers rise involuntarily to my throat. A woman’s cry in an alley. A child’s cry in a dark lane. It swirls together, enveloping me in a fog of unreality.
What if this is the way home?
It can’t be pure coincidence that I’m back in the Grassmarket at night hearing cries of distress. The rip might have opened again, showing me the way back.
Or it might have opened into a new time that will trap me someplace else.
Do I want to go someplace else?
No. I have Isla’s locket, and the reason I worked so hard to get it was that I don’t want to go anyplace else. If I can’t be home, I want to be where I am, in a household where I am both safe and intrigued by the possibility of more.
Even as I hesitate, the snuffling continues, punctuated by whimpers and soft cries.
It could be an actual child in danger. It could be a rip into another time, maybe even my own. It could also be a trap. Hell, in Victorian Scotland, it could be an actual childfakingdanger to trap me.
I pull out the knife and hold it low against my coat. A flick and the blade extends. Then I affect the most vacant-eyed expression I can manage and step into that alley.
My gait falters as soon as I round the corner. The streetlights don’t reach here. Neither does the moon. I can make out a child-shaped form on the ground. A whimper ricochets between the narrow, high walls.
Am I doing this?
Am I giving up a shot, however long, to get home again? Nope, I am not.
I let out a girlish cry as if just seeing the form on the ground. Then I run toward it, saying, “Child? Are you injured?”
I don’t even get the last word out before I stop short. That shape could be a pile of rags or could be an actual child. That’s not what stops me. It’s the paper pinned to the fabric, the word on it, in block letters.
CATRIONA
I stop, and I blink, that sense of unreality seeping back. When a shape swoops from the shadows, I spin to see a black-cloaked figure holding a rope. I see the rope more than anything. A raised length of rope, and in that moment, the last week evaporates, and I’m back in that alley, a killer lifting a length of old rope in exactly this same way.