Page 1 of Across Time

Prologue

1918

The woman walks with brisk steps, her dress sweeping her ankles. She’d forgotten what a bother it was, having skirts so long. She’s tripped over them three times already, but hastens toward the square anyway, eager to have this behind her. The sun has begun to set, and there’s a prickle of tension along her spine. She tells herself it’s merely that she’s longing for home, for 1935. Her daughter will be waiting there. Marie-Therese is seventeen but remains a child in some ways. A child who still needs her mother, the woman thinks, her heart drumming in her chest.

The square, sitting in the shadow of Sacré-Coeur, is unnervingly quiet. She can’t escape the feeling that today is an ending of sorts, and thinks again of her children—Marie at home and Henri, away in England now. They’re too young to be orphans.

“Chin up,” she says, forcing her feet forward. Her children are the reason, after all, that she is here in the first place. They both will play a role in the prophecy, with the help of the woman who is coming. She can at least do this much to set them on their way.

A gust of wind whistles through her wool coat, whipping leaves around her skirts. The sound almost masks the crunch of gravel behind her…but not quite. She hears it and she knows, before she’s even turned her head, that this was a trap.

A needle plunges into her neck. As she falls, her thoughts are of her children. She prays this is a beginning for them, rather than an end.

And that the woman who will save them doesn’t take too long.

1

1987

Saint Antoine is one of those crumbling, quaint cities you see on travel shows about France. The streets are cobblestone, every restaurant has al fresco dining, and the shops sell things you would never buy at home and wouldn’t buy if you lived here either: champagne bottles full of candy, bags that say J’aime Saint Antoine, boxes of macarons. The passing tourists are excited, gleeful, hitting me with their bags and elbows as they unfurl maps. I wish I were one of them.

Sleep deprivation begins to weaken my resolve. Am I really going to do this? I’ve upended my life to get to this point, but for the briefest moment I fantasize about backing out. I’m only twenty-one. Shouldn’t I be allowed to wander the streets like a normal college girl, buying things I don’t need and stuffing myself full of brioche? Someday, I swear to myself, I will be that normal girl.

But I won’t be her today.

I find a pay phone and dial my mother’s number with a churning stomach. The coins I’ve stacked in front of me are optimistic. Odds are she won’t answer, but even if she does our conversation won’t last long. She didn’t care for me before Kit died. It became exponentially worse afterward.

“Hi Mom,” I say when she picks up. “It’s me.” The words come out too eager, too needy—something she hates. I wince at the mistake.

“Oh,” she says, a blunt, disappointed sound. “Why aren’t you calling from your own number?”

I swallow hard. I guess I know why she answered.

“School ended last week,” I tell her, taking a deep breath—this where the lies begin, and she always knows when I’m lying, though perhaps it’s just that she always assumes I’m doing something wrong. “I’m in France. For my internship. It was supposed to be in New York but something better came up.”

She sighs. The sound is disgusted but also weary, as if I’ve failed her and it is nothing more than she expected from me. “What about Mark? I thought he was proposing or something.”

My stomach churns anew. This was the one week Mark and I would have had together in months. I bought him off with some promises I wasn’t quite ready to make, but he still didn’t understand. There’s so much he doesn’t know, and telling him the truth—my dead sister is haunting my dreams, demanding I help a stranger in France—wouldn’t exactly have cleared things up. Especially since he doesn’t even know I had a sister.

My relationship with him is the only thing about me my mother has ever approved of, so my answer will only disappoint her. “He’s in Nepal most of the summer,” I reply. “I guess it’ll happen when I get back.”

“You do realize,” she says, “that if he ever finds out what you are, it’s over.”

What you are. She makes it sound like I’m some kind of demon or vampire. In her eyes, I suppose, I am. “I’m changing,” I whisper. “Really.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” she says, her voice hard. “Well, I should go. Steven and Natalie are coming over for dinner.”

“Okay, take care of—” I begin, before hearing the dial tone. “Yourself,” I conclude quietly, hanging up the phone. For a single moment I allow my forehead to rest against the wall. I was stupid to have hoped the call would go any other way. My ability feels more like an addiction than a gift most of the time, especially when I hear myself swearing I’m going to change. Until I stop, there’s no chance of earning my mother’s forgiveness.

But until I’ve used it one last time, there is no chance of earning Kit’s.

* * *

I climb into a cab for the final leg of my journey, staring at a picture of me and Mark as if it can offer me a way out. It’s from the summer we met, when I was interning at a gallery in New York City and he was getting ready to leave for grad school. It’s all kind of a blur now, but I remember how happy I was then—perhaps for the first time.

I made him happy too, and I want to keep doing so. I want to be the woman he believes I am, and that’s not possible right now. The nightmares have gotten so bad that I’m barely getting through the day anymore, jumping at every unexpected thump, terrified of falling asleep. The night before last I woke in my bathtub with the shower on, screaming at the top of my lungs, and it wasn’t the first time. I can’t let Mark see that version of me, have him hear me crying for the sister he doesn’t even know I had.

Which leaves me stuck, once more, with this ridiculously vague plan, based on nothing more than a terrifying dream. Find them, Kit begs me every night. Save them, help Marie. No mention of what they need saving from or how I’m supposed to help.