Kiss Across Seas Read online

  “How’s the patient?” Sydney asked.

  “He woke up for a bit,” Marit said.

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked if Athair was Brody Gallagher. Athair said yes, then he passed out again.” Marit put her bowl on the coffee table and leaned over it to eat in neat spoonfuls.

  Taylor and Rafe arrived together, even though they came from different directions. Rafe dried his dark hair with a towel as he walked.

  Marit patted the cushion next to her and Taylor dropped onto it, while Rafe settled next to Sydney.

  “You smell like chlorine,” Sydney observed.

  “There’s a shock,” Rafe said and kissed her. He licked his lips. “The sauce needs something….”

  “It’s perfect,” Marit said, pushing her almost empty bowl away. “Don’t mess with it.”

  “Cumin,” Rafe declared and got up again.

  “I’m getting some more,” Aran decided and followed Rafe into the kitchen.

  Marit put her arm around Taylor’s waist and leaned her head on her shoulder. “So much for the vacation,” she whispered.

  “Things do seem to happen around your parents, don’t they?” Sydney said in sympathy.

  Taylor patted Marit’s cheek. “You’ve been the root cause of many of those things, missy,” she reminded her.

  Marit smiled. “You taught me well.” She sat up again. “Where do you think he came from?” She didn’t need to elaborate. They were all thinking of the man in the pool.

  “He wasn’t there earlier,” Sydney said. “I remember checking the length of the pool before anyone got in this afternoon. I wanted to make sure the vacuum hose was packed away. After that, there was at least one person in the room at all times.”

  “He would have had to jump the wall just to get here, too,” Alannah pointed out. “Which he couldn’t do without setting off Aunt Sydney’s alarms.” Her cheeks colored, for she had been guilty of doing that in the first couple of days, when she had been exploring the boundaries of the grounds.

  “A man who is a stranger to all of us decides to ghost over the walls, avoid all the alarms, and sneak into the pool room while we were all there. Then, unnoticed by anyone, he drowned himself in the deep end.” Taylor wrinkled her nose, just as Marit did. “It sounds very unlikely.”

  “Impossible, really,” Sydney said in agreement.

  “There’s one way he could have done it,” Marit said, her voice getting lower.

  “Through time?” Taylor asked, just as softly.

  Marit nodded.

  “But he was by himself,” Sydney pointed out. “Who jumped him here? Where did she go?”

  Taylor frowned. “Maybe it was like Constantinople. Veris found himself in Pergamum, hundreds of miles away from me. He had to sail across the Sea of Marmara with Rafe to get back.”

  “Then there’s a time traveler stranded somewhere else?” Sydney asked. She shivered suddenly. “To arrive in deep water, like that…it must have been terrifying.” It was also something to think about. She hadn’t considered the possibility that the end of a jump wasn’t guaranteed to be flat, solid earth.

  “He was looking for Brody,” Taylor said. “Maybe Brody does something in the future that prompts the man to jump back here.”

  “Why must he be from the future?” Marit asked, her tone reasonable.

  Taylor considered her. “He can’t be from the past. He wouldn’t have any memory of now to jump to.”

  “Alex jumped across timelines,” Sydney said.

  “With Marit’s help.” Taylor turned on the cushion to study her daughter. “You can cross timelines.” It wasn’t a question.

  Marit nodded.

  “By yourself,” Sydney added. “And without Alex’s time serum.”

  Marit crossed her legs and wrapped her hands around her knee. “I’ve been thinking about it.” She looked around the room, at the three of them—Taylor, Sydney and Alannah. “I don’t think women need the drug. I think any woman jumper can jump by herself, to anywhere on the time-plane.”

  “It’s not something only you can do?” Taylor asked.

  Marit shook her head, smiling. “I’m not special, Mom. The only special thing about me is that I had time-travelling parents, who opened up the idea of time to me in a way the average kid doesn’t think. I never believed it was impossible. I just did it.”

  “You mean, float around the time-plane?” Alannah said.

  “And get a lot of people into very deep trouble as a result, Alan, so take note,” Taylor added.

  Alannah grinned. “Yes, Mom.”

  Sydney leaned forward. “Anyone can do what you do?” she asked Marit.

  “Any woman who can jump. Not everyone can do that,” Marit qualified. “You and Mom have always jumped with someone else driving the direction, so you never had a chance to find out.”

  “Crossing timelines…” Taylor let out a breath. “Just moving back along our own timeline is dangerous enough. What happens if we start messing with alternative universes?”

  Sydney sat back. “Not only are the men not the jumpers, they aren’t even needed for navigation.” She looked at Taylor. “Veris will love that.”

  Taylor smiled. “His ego will benefit from the let-down,” she said calmly. Her smile faded. “We need to find the jumper who brought the man here. She will have answers.”

  “Can you find her on the timescape, Marit?” Sydney asked curiously.

  Marit shook her head. “There’s nothing. No blips, no flares, no warm spots. It’s just as it always was. Nothing has changed.”

  “Then the man in Alex’s surgery may not even be a traveler,” Taylor surmised. “We’ll have to wait for him to wake to ask him.”

  “There’s no other explanation for how he got here,” Sydney pointed out. “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, yaddah, yaddah.”

  “Arthur Conan Doyle would be appalled by your dismissal of his wisdom,” Marit said.

  “Good thing he didn’t hear me, then,” Sydney replied.

  “I’m going to tell him, the next time I’m talking to him.”

  A small spurt of shock touched her. Sydney studied Marit. “You’re joking, right?”

  Marit just smiled.

  * * * * *

  Alex checked the man’s blood pressure again. It was holding at a good ratio, which was a positive sign. Most of the man’s vitals were steady, at last. “I would give my eye teeth for a mobile EEG,” he said.

  Veris glanced at him from across the bed. “He wasn’t in the water long and you got his heart started fast. There may not be any brain damage.”

  Brody looked up. He was sitting on the stool by the window, staying out of the way unless either of them wanted something. Brody had become a superior scrub nurse through practice. “How long was he in the water before he arrived in the pool, though?”

  Veris glanced at him. “That smell, did you notice it?”

  Brody nodded. “River water, or a pond. Something natural and inland.”

  “Then there are the ligature marks on his ankles and wrists, too,” Alex added.

  Veris crossed his arms, frowning down at the still man. “Someone tied his hands and ankles. The bruises on the ankles are deeper and more advanced, which says tighter…or the drag was worse on the ankles.”

  “Drag…or weight,” Brody added.

  “Someone weighted him,” Alex breathed. Horror touched him. “He’s human,” he added. “Someone tried to drown him.”

  “And someone jumped him here, right into your pool,” Brody said. “Where is the jumper, then?”

  “Separated, like in Constantinople?” Veris said.

  “And from how far in the future?” Alex asked. “His clothes are contemporary.” He glanced at the dark suit and tie and the perfectly ordinary shirt visible above the blanket.

  “We’ve never come across a human traveler before,” Brody said. “He can only direct a jump to somewhere on his own timeline, something that he rem
embers. That can’t be too far back, not if he’s still adult.”

  Veris shook his head. “I can’t figure out if that’s courageous or stupid. Human memory is so…flawed.”

  “He did land in a swimming pool,” Alex said. He dropped his hand to the man’s neck, reassuring himself that the pulse was still steady, even though the monitor was beeping regularly.

  Rafe stepped into the room and closed the door. “Any change?” he asked quietly.

  Brody shook his head.

  “They’re all eating,” Rafe added. “I tweaked the pot.”

  “That pork thing you made the other day? It smelled great,” Brody said.

  Rafe stood at the foot of the narrow surgery bed and frowned down at the man. “Tall sucker,” he said softly.

  Veris sighed. “I just realized. The poor bastard would need to be conscious to direct the jump. He would have been aware that he was drowning—that someone was murdering him.” He shook his head. “When he wakes, we should congratulate him on making the jump at all.”

  “If he wakes,” Brody added.

  “He’ll wake,” Alex said, for he had watched far too many patients return from dire states and knew this man’s emergence was guaranteed. “It’s the state of his brain functions that are in question.”

  “Speaking of brain functions,” Veris said. “What on earth were you thinking, jumping in the pool after him, Alex?”

  “My question, too,” Brody murmured.

  Rafe just looked at him and lifted a brow.

  Alex looked from one to the other of them, startled. “He was drowning,” he said.

  “And how, exactly, were you going to get him out of the water when you can’t do that for yourself?” Veris asked.

  Alex was genuinely baffled. “I don’t know,” he said simply. “I didn’t think that far ahead. Anyway, it worked out.” Although he was going to have to throw out the shoes he was wearing. They were still squelching in an unpleasantly cold way. “I couldn’t let him just die, could I?”

  The little silence went on for a while. He glanced down at the man. There was color in his cheeks, now. Another good sign.

  “It’s just how Alex is,” Rafe said.

  Alex looked at him gratefully.

  “I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. You’re too good to be a vampire, Alex.” Brody shook his head a little.

  Veris stirred. “The patient’s well-being above all else. I can’t think of a doctor who is so stringent about ethics as you, Alexander.”

  Alex shifted on his feet, discomfort making him squirm. His shoes gurgled again. “I’m really not,” he confessed.

  “Not what? Ethical? Don’t be bloody stupid,” Brody said.

  Alex shook his head. “It’s not the real me,” he said. “It’s a veneer, that is all. I was handed rules I was told would change my life and preserve it, so I followed the rules and they worked. I’ve followed them ever since, but that’s all it is. Obedience to principals.”

  “Most people struggle all their lives to abide by their principals,” Veris said softly. “You do it.”

  “I do it, because it makes a difference,” Alex said. “You didn’t know me before. You wouldn’t have liked me, as I was back then. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t changed. You would never have dreamed of asking me to help you find water in Jordan, Brody. I wouldn’t have been in Jerusalem at all.” Alex frowned. “No, I would have been there. I would have been fighting you, not helping you.”

  Brody frowned, too. “You’re talking about your faith?” he asked.

  “It was all wrapped up in faith, back then,” Alex said. “Religion these days has stopped serving me. I’m unclean, impure and soulless to them. Yet the principals, the rules…they’re still good values. They did change my life. Therefore, I choose to follow them.” He shrugged and wished he could find a reason to leave, for this conversation was stirring up things he hadn’t thought about in a long, long time.

  Yet he couldn’t leave the unconscious man’s side, either.

  “He’s talking about Peter the Hermit,” Rafe said. “The man who baptized him.”

  Veris straightened. “You were baptized by Peter the Hermit?” He sounded impressed.

  Alex cleared his throat and studied the monitor readouts.

  “I didn’t think Peter got as far south as Egypt,” Brody said. “That’s where your tribe was, Alex?”

  Alex sighed. They were going to pull this out of him whether he wanted to talk about it or not. When Veris and Brody turned stubborn, it was hard to deflect them. “Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Algeria…we moved around a lot in a year, although we headed back to Cairo frequently because that was where the Caliph was and we had to report in. It wasn’t Peter who wandered into our camp. It was one of his converts, a knight from the Holy Roman Empire. I treated Etienne for dehydration and sun exposure. He seemed quite mad at times. He would speak about a world beyond my understanding. He would speak of sailing across the sea.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t imagine open water from horizon to horizon. The idea wouldn’t even form in my mind.”

  “The knight convinced you to go to Jerusalem?” Brody asked.

  “He died a few weeks after we found him,” Alex said. “He had a crucifix, that he asked I give back to a man called Peter, who was somewhere across the sea.”

  “So you went looking for Peter,” Veris finished.

  “There were other reasons to leave. It was an excuse. Only, by the time I found Peter in Jerusalem, Etienne’s ramblings about a better life had done their work. Peter, though, was a force of nature, beyond mortal power. He made me see…” Alex sighed. “He convinced me the Christian way would save my life and I converted. A year later, the Christians galloped across the plains of Jerusalem to claim their holy city back.” He straightened the blanket over the sleeping man’s chest. “Peter was right. It did change my life.”

  Rafe’s fingers tangled with his for a moment. He squeezed, then let Alex’s hand go so he could keep working.

  Veris put the stethoscope back on the counter next to him. “You couldn’t imagine the sea? I have a harder time picturing you as anything but principled, ethical and good, Alex. I don’t care what you were once. What you are now is as you have been for a thousand years. You say it’s merely a veneer. I say any veneer would have worn away by now. What we see is the real you, whether you accept it or not.”

  Alex found it difficult to meet Veris’ gaze. “I’d like to believe you,” he said truthfully.

  “And he says we’re stubborn,” Brody muttered.

  Rafe laughed.

  Alex couldn’t laugh, though. They didn’t understand. They hadn’t met him, as he had been, then. No one could understand and that was just as well.

  Chapter Three

  In the middle of the house there was a courtyard laid with cream and red bricks. It was open to the sky above although there were walls all around it, closing the house off from the outside. The climate at that altitude was cooler than Seville, only a few hours away.

  It was early morning and cold, which meant they wouldn’t be interrupted. Everyone hovered about the surgery, waiting for the man to wake, which Alex said would happen sometime that morning. Their interest in the man and his story further reduced the chance of being discovered.

  Marit sat cross-legged on the chair she had pulled out from the cupboard and placed in the corner of the yard. Sydney sat on a hassock that was faded with age and sun. Each time she moved, the smell of hot days and bougainvillea wafted from the cushion. She wrapped the coat more firmly around her. Marit didn’t seem to notice the cold, although she wore a trench coat, too.

  “You have to remember there is another version of you in any other timeline,” Marit said. “That person isn’t actually you, even though you both were the same person, somewhere back in time before that timeline branched off.”

  “I don’t get to inhabit that version’s body, as the guys do?”

  Marit shook her head. “They’re moving along their
own personal timeline. There’s only one version of you in each timeline, so they have to inhabit the current body, wherever they land.”

  “Makes sense. How do I access the time-plane?”

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Aunt Sydney?” Marit asked. “It’s…well, Mom is right. This stuff is dangerous. Even I don’t like doing it unless I have to.”

  “I don’t want to do it, no,” Sydney said. “I just feel as if I should be able to do it, if I need to. It’s a cop thing, honey. I always wore a back-up gun and it saved my life twice.”

  Marit grimaced. “The thing is, wherever you go, you have to be careful, because there’s already another you there. It means you can’t just pretend to be the contemporary version as you would anywhere along the same timelines. If anyone sees two of you at once, then that’s a problem, right there. It’s best to avoid the other you if you can.”

  “If you can?”

  “It’s like jumping along your own timeline. You get drawn to that other you, because in a way, it is you. Which means you arrive right in the middle of that version’s life. That’s what I mean. Crossing timelines is dangerous.”

  “If you change history on that other timeline, does it affect this time, too?”

  “I don’t know,” Marit said blandly. “I’ve made sure not to change anything.” She resettled her legs. “Okay. To get there is…well, it’s like falling asleep, only staying awake, too.”

  “A meditative state?” Sydney said. She had studied meditation years ago, when the stresses of a cop’s life had added up.

  “I suppose…” Marit said doubtfully, reminding Sydney yet again that she was only sixteen. Sometimes she seemed to be older than Veris, who was approaching his sixteen hundredth year.

  “You have to find your own way there,” Marit added. “Once you’re there, I can help you.”

  “I meditate and…what?”

  “You reach out.” Marit frowned. “With your mind. That’s the staying awake bit. You have to think about everything beyond you and far away. You have to go inside your mind, too.”