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  Robert found his attention drifting to the corset and the areas above and below it. He realized there was a small, purple stone nestled next to her belly button. He swallowed dryly. He liked the current package just fine. Wouldn’t change a thing. He had to clear his throat before he got out, “That’s not necessary. Please continue.”

  “Let’s see, original contents, handed down…key.” She held it up.

  Was he having a typical male reaction to a female? It was possible, though until today he’d have thought it not probable. He couldn’t blame this on anyone but himself.

  “As I said, this key was given to my great-great-great grandmother, on condition she not use it until his death.”

  “So she never looked?” This from Carey.

  “She looked,” Fyn said.

  Emily grinned. “You’re right. That’s how we know most of Uncle E’s inventions were either disposed of by him or stolen,” she shifted back into presentation mode, “which eventually led to the suspicion of foul play. Inside, you will see his workshop as it looked the day it was opened by Angeline Twitchet Myers and her sisters. Before they moved anything, they sketched the placement of the contents, for reasons that still aren’t clear, but were helpful later when the first museum was established.” A pause, possibly for dramatic effect, then she continued, “And now we’ll step into the past. Well, the antechamber to the past, then the past.”

  She turned, working the stiff old lock with some difficulty. Fyn shifted, like he wanted to help her, but she got it before he could. She used her knee to push the doors open, then turned with breathless aplomb. Not a shock when this door hissed at them, too. She turned on the lights. They flickered a couple of times before settling down, and she indicated they should enter. As warned, there was a small antechamber with a guestbook stand behind the double doors. The walls of the small chamber had several framed drawings rigidly arranged on one side. A closed curtain hid the museum.

  “These are the drawings done by Uncle E’s sisters. The quality varies, but there is, as you can see, great attention to detail. Here, next to the guestbook, are accounts from the newspapers of the time.”

  It was clear that until they signed, there’d be no stepping into the past. If Robert hadn’t already known the machine wasn’t present in her workshop display, a look at the drawings would have confirmed it, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be useful information in what had been secured by the sisters. Next to the guestbook was a pen with a feather sticking out the end. Robert wrote in the first spot with a weird sense of unease, trying to make his signature less than legible, but not look like he was trying to make it illegible.

  Don’t leave a trail anyone can follow.

  He looked up just in time to see Emily wobble just a bit. He gripped her arm. “Are you all right?”

  Her smile beamed out. “I’m fine. I just forgot to eat this morning.” She gave a small, almost puzzled shake and continued, “As you can see, the stories begin with his disappearance, getting more salacious when it was discovered that his comely assistant, Olivia Carstairs, was missing, too.”

  She touched a framed drawing of Olivia. It was a good likeness.

  “She didn’t run away with—” Ric coughed and Carey stopped. “She doesn’t look the type to run off with her boss.”

  “Her family agreed with you. Not sure they convinced the authorities at the time and the family remains conflicted about her. Uncle E’s money didn’t disappear with him, a fact that helped ease the sting of his loss.” She gave an impish smile. “When it was discovered that his inventions were missing, rumors of murder most foul began to circulate.” Her fingers brushed the last framed story, careful not to block the lurid headline. “I’m sorry to tell you that Miss Carstairs remains a suspect.” She looked apologetic. “Aside from the family, there were only two, neither of whom was ever apprehended or seen after Uncle E vanished.”

  “Smith.” Carey spat out the name.

  Emily’s brows shot up. “Yes. Professor Tobias Smith.”

  “We browsed the website before we came,” Ric said, sounding easier than he looked.

  “Of course you did.” The question marks were back in her eyes.

  It seemed a good time for a distraction, and Robert liked it when she looked at him, instead of his companions. “So you used these drawings to recreate the museum?”

  “We did have to scale it down some. Uncle E had a ton of empty space dead center in his workshop, though for what isn’t clear. Or the aunts kept one secret. But other than that, everything is arranged as it was found following Uncle E’s disappearance.”

  Robert expected her to move aside for them.

  “We’ll be able to enter the museum proper once we’ve taken some photographs.” She didn’t phrase it as a question. It did have a hint of ultimatum about it.

  There’d been no sign of a question mark after anything she’d said, Robert realized. He wanted to dive into the exhibit, but he felt his chin go up and then down. Had he just nodded? He felt incredulous looks from his companions burning into his back, but her smile—a high beam one—redirected the burn to the area around his heart. He resisted the urge to rub the spot and tried out another smile. It felt creaky and unfamiliar, but she seemed happy with it.

  “I’ll take one of all of you and then one of you can take one of me with you.”

  Again, not a question. Before Ric could volunteer, Fyn stepped forward. “I’ll take it.”

  “Take one with my phone, too, Chewie,” Carey said, ignoring Ric’s grimace.

  Emily opened her mouth, perhaps to object or to ask a question, but closed it again and handed him her cell phone. Robert wasn’t surprised. Nothing about Fyn encouraged objecting or questions. Robert might have shifted so as to blur the photograph, but he knew Fyn would take care of it. He’d been paranoid before he came to Earth and nothing he’d seen since had mitigated that.

  THREE

  Time is persistent.

  It was also indifferent until you got in its way. Time hated that, hated anyone who took side trips. This was one big ass side trip, even if it was just a small slice of an alternate reality.

  Tobias Smith hated going into them. It was as if time knew it shouldn’t be, that he shouldn’t be there and resisted. It wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t comfortable either. In some other reality, one dimly recalled, he knew he’d fought through flood and mud and snow to reach objectives. This felt harder than the deepest water or snowdrift. It was mud on a galactic scale.

  And if he didn’t time it right, when time won the battle for control of this time and this space, when it blinked out of existence again, it would take him with it.

  Not that he’d mind getting wiped from all existence. Like the specimen he sought here, he’d been collected from somewhere, from some when and forced into service. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know where or when. He for sure didn’t like any of it, but he had to do what he was told. If he didn’t, the pain would come. He could fight it for a while, but not forever. Like time, it was indifferent and patient. Oh so patient.

  He dropped in, felt the ground shift underfoot from some kind of impact. Wasn’t hard to find the problem, though he knew what it was without looking. Not that knowing stopped him from looking. He was human—sometimes. He’d been a soldier in that other life. In this one, brilliant flashes lit the sky, the result of determined impacts smashed against the outpost’s defensive shields by a ship in orbit over this reality, caught like he was, playing its role, just as he must.

  Normally he wasn’t permitted technology of any kind, but this collection—and his repeated failures—had dictated a new approach. It was minimal, just shy of rudimentary, but should do the job. He scanned for the contaminant and got a hit. A strong hit. Concentrated, too. This time it had to be the target specimen. Guilt mixed with relief. It made it easier to think of them as specimens. He didn’t like taking anyone into his hell, but he had no choice and in the end, neither would the specim
en.

  The contaminant was close, real close. Should be a quick snatch and go. He looked around. No surprise no one was out in the open with the outpost under attack. He turned in a slow circle, trying to get a direction, but the signal stayed the same. On impulse, he pointed it down. It spiked off the scale.

  His target was down there? Underground? He tried to remember if he knew of anything down there from any of the other realities he’d been sent to and couldn’t. Didn’t look like a grave site—

  His scanner flat lined.

  He cursed, long and loud, even as relief spiked in the small part of his brain still under his control. The miss would cost him, his master would see to that.

  Overhead, the shields started to give way. Part of him wanted to race into the heart of it, but his hand hit the recall. That’s when he saw the figure. Silver from head to toe, hard to tell if it was a female or a small male. A tracker?

  He didn’t waste time wondering if it was possible, not after all the weird things he’d seen since his collection. Didn’t matter. When the reality ended, so would the tracker. A ball of fire raced to the ground on an intersect course. Or the hostile fire would do it. Either way he was hosed. The impact, and his recall flash, came close enough together. He felt heat scorch his face before the chill of the stream closed around him.

  * * * *

  “Tobias.”

  It didn’t help knowing the man behind the voice was a monster. Did the voice have power because of the control device in his head? Without it, would he still have given in? He didn’t want to look, but he did. He always looked. Always obeyed. Meeting that gaze was a relief, though a part of him recognized the cold deeply buried under the warm concern.

  “Master.” Smith heard and hated the supplication in his voice.

  The master smiled. It wasn’t pretty, though it had a charm, an insistence about it that complimented the power of voice and gaze. He was an ugly man, all the way to his black heart, from his cadaverous face to over-large feet. Smith knew this to his soul—if he still had one—but it didn’t change the longing to fall to his knees before his master, the need to beg for his approval, to promise not to fail him again. None of which could change what would happen. All he knew is that he didn’t know what the master would do until he did it.

  He liked to do the unexpected. Sometimes the pain hit the minute of reintegration when he didn’t have time to brace for it. Other times he’d wait, perhaps hoping to lull him into a false sense of security. Smith knew better than to be lulled. There was no security in the master’s laboratory. So when the master waved off his explanation in a manner that was almost absent-minded, Smith didn’t relax.

  “Something odd is happening with Twitchet’s timeline.”

  Smith almost asked if he’d found the weird duck, but stopped. The master didn’t like questions, except when he did. No way to tell yet where he was on the topic until it was too late.

  “Come look.”

  The invitation sounded friendly, which heightened Smith’s wariness. The master was his most dangerous when he appeared friendly. Still, he knew better than to refuse an order, even one that sounded like a request. He went and looked.

  The item appeared to be a book, though it was hard to tell with it phasing in and out of sight. The instability impacting it made it appear almost fluid.

  He looked to the master for enlightenment, the one thing he was sure the master liked.

  He was rewarded with a smile. “Did I ever tell you that Emelius’ crazy sisters created a museum for him after he went missing, a tradition that continued through several generations?” He raised one brow, a sign that a question was required now.

  “No.” Smith hated using the word in his head, really hated saying it out loud, but like everything else, he couldn’t stop the inner imperative to do it, “master.” In his mind, though, it was always with a small “m.” Sometimes he wondered if the master knew. “What is it?”

  “It’s a guestbook. It turned up at an estate sale, so I held on to it. Kept an eye on it and until now it’s never changed, never been signed. Until this.” He smoothed a hand over it, as if stroking it.

  It was an illusion, like most things about the master. Neither the book nor the master was physically present. He arrived as a virtual presence that still had the power to inflict punishment. Even with the control devices in their heads, the master didn’t dare be in the same place with his specimens.

  Smith didn’t make the mistake of asking what it meant. It wasn’t his role to find meaning in events, though he did wonder when the master had been to Earth. He’d always assumed—don’t assume. Good to remember. He filed the question, the information with everything else he knew about the master. Someday he’d know enough to end his tyranny.

  He picked up something else. Smith shifted just enough to tell it was a photograph. Whoever, or whatever it was supposed to be, looked like a crazy mirror.

  “And then there is this.”

  This item seemed to phase in and out of view, but he saw enough to realize it was about a missing girl. For a second, he thought he saw her, but not long enough to fix more than a grainy impression of dark hair and eyes in his memory.

  “I wish I could read it.” Frustration wound into the master’s voice. He sighed and tossed it to one side. “Time is fluxing. And Twitchet’s transmogrification machine is at the heart of it. Assemble a team and be ready to move when I send the order.”

  “Yes, master.” He turned and left, relieved to move away, but going as slow as the device would allow. Even this small resistance helped him feel less controlled, less trapped.

  “I need that machine secured. Don’t fail me again, Tobias.”

  The cool words sent a chill through Smith’s microscopic resistance.

  “I’ve grown quite fond of you.”

  FOUR

  Emily had questions, but questions led to answers. Answers were a mixed bag—a baggie better kept zipped when your family inheritance could be boiled down to one word: crazy. After three generations, it didn’t seem unreasonable to expect the crazy gene to get diluted some. Based on observation of her grandma and mom, diluting wasn’t the direction crazy had gone. She lacked the perspective on where she fell on the crazy scale, but it had to be pretty high up there or she’d have left a long time ago. If she knew she was crazy to stay, did that make her more or less crazy? Her jury was still out on that one. And she wasn’t that eager for it to come back with a verdict.

  Emily felt that odd, floor tilting feeling again when the big weird guy took their picture. She’d first felt it when she noticed her visitors and again when she shook hands with the one called Robert. She got a grip on the doorframe and it passed, leaving an itch in the center of her back. Or maybe it was that nagging feeling she’d forgotten something important. She forgot a lot of stuff, so she hid the wobble in movement, pulling the curtains back so her curious quartet could step into her family’s version—or was that vision—of the past.

  Robert went first, but almost immediately stopped to look up, his brows pulling into a frown. The illusion of height, the sense of being in an old warehouse, was quite well done. The brick walls and cement floor boosted the impression a bit with a faint echo. Not that the floor looked cement. Mom had painted that, too.

  “The ceiling and floor were painted the same time as the outside murals,” she pointed out in her museum guide voice. His gaze shifted back to her. She didn’t mind. She might be crazy, but she wasn’t blind. There was something about Robert that intrigued a bit more than the others. Cute, well into seriously cute, but with an odd mix of confident and diffident, a little dangerous, a lot geeky. She was particularly fond of geeky. And that slight British accent mixed with his yummy self? Mental sigh. His last name begged for her to go down the oh-my-darling path, but she managed to fight the impulse. The song wasn’t about a guy anyway, was it? She thought for a minute and decided it was about a girl. Not that knowing that helped kill the impulse all that much.

&nb
sp; “That’s not real?” This question came from one of Robert’s companions, the one who’d introduced himself as Carey. No more. No less.

  Emily shook her head, her gaze dancing between all of them, as she tried to figure out why Robert popped out of the mini-hunk cluster. Not that it hurt to spend time looking at any of them. They were all eye worthy. She had no clue how long they’d planned to stay. One should look while the looking was good. No way they’d stick around once they realized how little there was to the museum.

  “Luckily, it doesn’t suffer from the weather, which is pretty bad. I mean, this is northern Wyoming. We get a lot of weather, bad weather, I mean. And some good.” She sounded inane, but Emily couldn’t help it. Maybe it was a side effect of the curious quartet. Each guy had a high level of hotness and combined, their hotness factor was like the sun or something. Okay, so she didn’t know that much about the sun, but she did know cute guys when they walked into her place. Heaven knew she’d been waiting for that almost as long as she’d been waiting for someone to sign her guestbook.

  She studied each guy, curious why Robert seemed to tangle her tongue and the other guys didn’t. They were fine, almost like they’d emerged from the covers of romance novels—she frowned a bit—there was something a bit off about the one who’d said his name was Fyn, but Carey called “Chewie.” And it wasn’t just the guy braids and the height that made it a good fit. He had a definite aura of “Chewiness.”

  Then there was the Carey. Totally cute. Adorable even, but he gave off taken vibes. Ric no-way-his-last-name-was-Jones reminded her of a young Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black. Not any of his other movies. Just that one.

  Her attention drifted back to Chewie. He seemed taken, too. Now that she considered it, there were no “I’m available” vibes until her gaze returned to Robert. Oh my darling. Okay, now that she’d gone where she’d been determined not to go, maybe she could get over him and do her dang tour. It’s not like he was here for a date. He wanted to see the museum. It shouldn’t be this hard. She’d been rehearsing for this moment for most of her life. And if that wasn’t sad, she didn’t know sad. But she did know sad. It was her dang zip code. She felt a longing for a counter to lean on, a place she could prop her elbows, rest her chin in her hands and gaze at the guys, even the taken ones. The moment begged for it and she hoped the powers-that-be would forgive her for devoting the most attention to the untaken guy. Those eyes demanded it. Face that looked a bit aristocratic and intelligent, but with a sweetness that kept him from snooty. Tumbled brown hair with lots of gold highlights that begged to be smoothed and light blue eyes that tempted a girl to forget just how broad those shoulders were. Her mom used to say, look at the shoulders and imagine delivering them on a baby. It worked better than birth control until now. Those shoulders could make you forget those shoulders.