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“Gwyneth—” He interrupted himself. “Look, we’ll be traveling back any minute. Maybe we should continue this conversation later. In peace and quiet. I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re getting at.…”
“I only want to know whether it’s true,” I said. Of course it was true, but as everyone knows, hope dies hard. I was getting the familiar feeling that we were about to travel forward in time again. “Whether you really planned to make me fall in love with you—the same as you did with Charlotte before me.”
Gideon let go of me. “This isn’t the moment,” he said. “Gwyneth. We’ll talk about it when we get back. I promise you.”
“No! Now.” The knots tying up my throat broke apart, and my tears began to flow. “Just say yes or no—that’ll do. Did you plan it all?”
Gideon was rubbing his forehead. “Gwen—”
“Yes or no?” I sobbed.
“Yes,” said Gideon, “but—oh, please stop crying.”
And for the second time that day, my heart—only this time its second edition, the phantom heart that had grown out of sheer hope—fell over the precipice and smashed into thousands of tiny little pieces at the bottom of the ravine. “Okay, that’s really all I wanted to know. Thanks for being so honest.”
“Gwen. I want to explain.…” Gideon disappeared into thin air in front of me. For a few seconds, as the chill came back into my body, I stared at the flickering torchlight and the death’s-head, tried to suppress my tears, and then everything blurred before my eyes.
It took me a few seconds to get used to the light in the chronograph room of my own time, but I heard the alarm in Dr. White’s voice and the sound of ripping fabric.
“It’s nothing,” said Gideon. “Only a tiny cut. It hardly bled at all. I don’t even need a plaster for it, Dr. White, and you can put those clamps away again! Nothing happened.”
“Hello, haystack girl!” said Xemerius. “You’ll never guess what we’ve found out! Oh, no! You haven’t been crying again, have you?”
Mr. George took hold of me with both hands and swung me once around my own axis. “She’s not injured!” he said, with relief in his voice.
Not injured, no, except for my heart.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Xemerius. “Bonehead’s brother and your friend Lesley have something very interesting to tell you! Guess what? They’ve tracked down the place described by the coordinates in the Green Rider code. You’ll never believe it!”
“Gwyneth?” Gideon was looking at me as if he was afraid I might throw myself under the first bus to come along, all because of him.
“I’m fine,” I said, without looking him in the eye. “Mr. George, could you please take me upstairs? I have to go home. It’s urgent.”
“Of course.” Mr. George nodded.
Gideon made a movement, but Dr. White was holding him. “Oh, keep still, for heaven’s sake!” He had torn the sleeves of Gideon’s jacket and the shirt he was wearing under it right off. The bare arm was encrusted with blood, and I saw a small cut up almost by Gideon’s shoulder. The little ghost boy Robert was staring at all the blood in horror.
“Who did this? It will have to be disinfected and stitched,” said Dr. White gloomily.
“Certainly not,” said Gideon. He was pale, and there was nothing left of the high spirits he’d shown back in the eighteenth century. “We can see about that later. I have to talk to Gwyneth first.”
“There’s really no need,” I said. “I know all I want to know. And now I have to go home.”
“I should just about think so!” said Xemerius.
“Tomorrow is another day,” Mr. George told Gideon, as he picked up the black scarf. “And Gwyneth looks tired. She has to go to school tomorrow morning.”
“Exactly!” said Xemerius. “And tonight she’s going on a treasure hunt. Or a hunt for whatever those coordinates lead us to.”
Mr. George blindfolded me. The last thing I saw was Gideon’s eyes, looking unnaturally green in his pale face.
“Good night, everyone,” I said, and then Mr. George led me out of the room. No one had answered me anyway, except for little Robert.
“Okay, I’ll put you out of your suspense,” said Xemerius. “Lesley and Raphael had a lot of fun this afternoon—unlike you, I guess from the look of you. Well, anyway, the two of them managed to locate the place described in the coordinates precisely. You can have three guesses where it is.”
“Here in London?” I asked.
“Bingo!” cried Xemerius.
