LITMIR.BIZ

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“That or I’m dead.”

      “How do you figure that?” she demanded, chilled by his comment.

      But he wasn’t listening to her anymore. “There’s only one way to find out.”

      To her amazement he marched off, straight toward—

      “Watch out!” Susannah shouted.

      Kane ignored her warning...and walked smack into one of the metal streetlamp posts.

      Picking up her skirts, Susannah rushed to his side as he stood swaying slightly.

      “That was a stupid thing to do!” she told him. “What were you thinking of?”

      “Hypothesis.”

      She looked at him as if he’d scrambled his brain.

      “I figured if I was dreaming, walking into the lamppost would wake me up,” Kane said, his voice brusque. “And if I was dead—”

      “We’re not dead and we’re not dreaming,” she interrupted him.

      “Fine, Einstein, then what are we doing?”

      “I’m not positive,” she noted in a soft voice, as if speaking too loudly might cause them even further trouble. “But I think Einstein had a theory about this—the relativity of time.”

      “Meaning what?”

      “Meaning that something happened. We’re clearly not in the 1990s, anymore,” she stated, trying to sound as if this were a situation she’d run into before. The truth was that her instincts were on red alert. And, as her grandmother had always told her, Susannah had always had excellent instincts. She and Kane weren’t dead. They weren’t hallucinating. She felt sure of that. Which left precious few alternatives.

      Susannah paused, only now noticing a paper pasted to the lamppost Kane had walked into. Peering closer, she gasped as she read the date on the handbill advertising a circus coming to town. Her instincts had been right. “Look at this handbill!”

      “Unless it’s got directions to the nearest hamburger I’m not interested,” Kane muttered, rubbing the goose egg quickly rising on his forehead.

      Someone was approaching them on the sidewalk. A man wearing a hat, and using a cane. A bushy muttonchop beard covered a great deal of his face. His clothing was like something from a movie set—one of those period pieces the film critics liked so much.

      Was the man able to see them? Susannah wondered. Hear them? There was only one way to find out. “Excuse me, sir,” she hesitantly asked. “Could you tell me the time, please?”

      The gentleman gave her a leery look, which meant he could see her and hear her, as well. Thank heavens! Relieved that at least she and Kane weren’t invisible, Susannah released the breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.

      Pulling his watch from his fob pocket, the man said, “The time is quarter past nine.”

      “Thank you.” She could tell he was impatient to move on, so she went right to the heart of the matter. “And the year is...?”

      At her question, the gentleman’s leery look now turned downright suspicious. “What kind of foolish prank is this? The year is 1884, of course.”

      Susannah went cold all over. The year he’d just given her matched that on the circus handbill. She’d had her suspicions...but even so, hearing them confirmed—hearing the man say that it was 1884—left her feeling as if a rug had been yanked out from under her.

      Eyeing Kane, who was still a bit unsteady on his legs, the bewhiskered gentleman muttered something about the downfall of civilization being caused by an overindulgence in alcohol before hurrying on his way.

      It took her a moment before she could speak. “Did you hear that?” she whispered to Kane.

      “Yeah, he thought I was drunk,” Kane replied irritably.

      “The part before that. About the year being...1884.”

      Kane nodded, grimacing as he did so. His head was hurting like hell. “I heard what he said. The old guy clearly isn’t playing with a full deck. Surely you’re not buying what he said, are you?”

      “It would certainly explain a lot.”

      “Oh yeah, right,” Kane noted mockingly.

      “What if we have somehow traveled back in time?”

      “It’s too ridiculous to even consider. Come on.” Grabbing her hand, Kane led her toward a larger thoroughfare with more foot traffic. “I’ll prove it to you.”

      Everyone was dressed in period clothing suitable for the late 1800s. The crowd was mostly male. The gaslight from the streetlamps lacked the harshness of the piercing orange lights used in so many cities these days. All of Susannah’s senses were bombarded with proof of the time—the strong smell of horse manure mixed with human perspiration, the dull clip-clop sound of horses maneuvering buggies down the busy thoroughfare. The street itself wasn’t asphalt or blacktop but appeared to be softer, perhaps dirt or sand. Even the sidewalk beneath her feet was different—constructed of red bricks.

      Everyone was wearing hats. Except Kane and her. While Susannah had been taking stock of the people, she realized Kane was approaching everyone walking by, asking them what year it was.

      Recognizing the disapproving and suspicious looks being cast their way, Susannah tugged on her hand—the one Kane was holding in a cast-iron grip—bringing his attention back to her. “What are you going to do, keep asking until you hear an answer you like, or until they call the police?” she demanded in an undertone.

      “Since when has asking a simple question been illegal?” Kane countered.

      “Stop this,” she hissed, yanking her hand free of his grasp. “You’re embarrassing me.”

      “We may have fallen through a time hole and you’re worried about being embarrassed?” he asked in disbelief.

      Pulling him around the corner and out of the flow of foot traffic, she said, “I’m worried about being put in an asylum, the way you’re behaving! Trust me, they don’t treat people very nicely in Bellevue, or the local equivalent, in this day and age. So try not to make a spectacle of yourself, okay? We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.” Tucking her hand in his arm, she led him back the way they’d come, deliberately walking at a slow and leisurely pace. Besides, with the long skirt of her heavy velvet dress, she could only travel at two speeds—slow and slower.

      “This is all your fault,” Kane muttered, his head still throbbing. As they passed the infamous lamppost, he glared at it, before turning to glare at her. “Something must have happened when we stepped in that damn blue light. I told you not to go into that room!”

      “No one held a gun to your head and made you come after me,” she retorted. “Listen, it’s useless to toss around accusations at this point. We have to go back into that room.”

      He headed for the brick front steps of the house where they’d seen the blue light upstairs. “Fine. The sooner the better.”

      “Wait a second. How are we going to get back inside?”

      “By opening the door.” He did so before she could protest.

      A servant hurried across the hall to greet them. “May I help you, sir?”

      “We left something here earlier,” Kane explained. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll only be a minute.”

      Luckily, another servant carrying a full tray of food required the first servant’s assistance in the crowded front parlor, thereby momentarily giving Kane and Susannah the free access to the stairway they required.

      As Susannah quietly passed the doorway leading to the crowded parlor, she only now realized that while the party was still going on, the mood

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