Page 38 of Misadventures with a Time Traveler

Silence.

I close the door behind me but find myself alone in a small storage closet. What the hell?

“Max? Are you in here?”

His harsh exhalation knifes the air. I can feel him in here, his presence a welcome weight across all my senses, but all I can see are brooms and mops and old-world wooden shelves stocked with New World cleaning stuff. The high slit windows are hardly any help, their streams so bright that more shadows seem to be created than illuminated.

“Alessandra.”

My next step is practically mandated by the desolation in his voice. “Where are you?”

“Go away,” he orders.

“The hell I will.”

“Dear Jesu.” Back to his misery, his grate rougher than the whole box of scouring pads at my eye level. “Damn it, woman. Just go away.”

“Screw you,” I retort. “Just tell me where you…”

The words fall away as my attention latches on a vertical divide in one of the shelves. Not such a strange thing—except that the shelf below and the shelf above have the same gap, in the same location. In the stone floor, there’s a gap between the supply boxes—and it corresponds to the same divide. It’s as if someone’s recently pushed back all of that shit and then walked straight through the wall at the back of the storage closet.

Like I do right now. But the action makes my toe collide with a tiny pedal embedded in the back wall. I depress the lever, and a new squeak of hinges marauds the tower—from the fastenings of a hidden panel in the closet’s wall.

I push harder on the portal.

It gives. I gasp.

“Holy. Shit.”

There’s a secret passage beyond the hidden door.

With my inner Nancy Drew on apeshit overdrive, I step onto the bottom landing of a bell tower about five feet square on all sides. I gaze up—to the narrow, winding stairway that leads to the top. I have to squeeze around to the tower’s other side in order to access the stairs, their bottom aligning with the more obvious entrance to the space. Clearly not a lot of people know about the trap door through which I’ve just sneaked.

Following a man whom I hope is still sane. And safe.

There’s only one way to find out for certain.

I have to follow my heart.

Chapter Six

Max

I hear the woman’s impatient huffs as she ascends the bell tower. She is now just a few feet away, ready to emerge onto the small landing with me.

I’m stupefied by her tenacity—until I recognize my own idiocy. Did I expect she would give up looking for me now, when I survived centuries to get to her?

Centuries.

Once more, the concept of it—the reality of it—bursts my mind apart like a gust through summer dust.

Is it truly possible? The scholar in me fights the idea, but that same logic confirms its viability. I think about all the wonders that came to pass in the short decades I was first on this earth. All those inventions and ideas would seem fantastical to even my closest ancestors. Hot-air balloons. Circular saws. Bifocal eyeglasses. Threshing machines. Iron bridges.

And iron killing machines.

Such as the newest, demonstrated the last time I was at court, by that Dr. Guillotine…

As I clutch at the base of my throat, a shuddering sough escapes from it. And then a name, drenched in pure gratitude.