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“Considering how often that happens, perhaps you should consider ankle straps.”
“They’re dangerous.”
He tossed a disbelieving look over his shoulder. “That is what
you consider dangerous?”
“You can break a foot.”
“And we wouldn’t want that,” he said, sweeping me up in his arms as we came to the entrance to a tube station.
I stared around as we were swallowed up by London’s steamy underbelly, but I didn’t see anything but coat-clad torsos, all of which appeared to be in a hurry. Finding one hustling couple in the wall-to-wall crowd wouldn’t have been easy at any time. But doing it while being buffeted by pointy elbows, harassed mothers and kids with the hyperactive look of the overly sugared was pretty much impossible.
“I’m not tall enough,” I told him, only to be hoisted up onto a strong shoulder. I put a steadying hand on the grimy wall and tried to spot a tall woman in an electric blue evening dress. The mage’s tux blended with the standard city uniform in any era, but that color would be hard to miss.
Only apparently I was missing it, because I didn’t see them.
“Did they shift again?” Mircea asked, as I desperately scanned the crowds.
“No, I’d have felt it.”
“Are you certain?”
“She’s the heir, but I’m Pythia. I’m certain.”
And a moment later I spotted her, wearing a shabby brown overcoat that wasn’t quite long enough to cover an eye-searing hem. The mage was by her side, a lanky figure in a tan trench hiding his formal blacks, but it was the right guy. I saw him clearly when he turned from the ticket counter, a panicked look on his face and that damned suitcase in his hand. And then he dragged his captive back into the crowd and down a hallway.
I hopped down and we took off after them, Mircea hoisting me over turnstiles and then forging ahead to clear a path. It was still tough going, but the crowds parted for him a lot better than they would have for me, and my bare toes got stepped on only a few dozen times before I limped onto a platform behind him. And stopped in confusion.
There were maybe three dozen people sitting on benches or leaning against walls, waiting for the next train. But a quick scan showed that none of them were the two we were after. “They didn’t shift,” I said, wrinkling my nose at the pungent smell of pot and body odor.
They were coming from a busker in beads and buckskin who was standing beside the platform, shaking his filthy hair and doing an enthusiastic rendition of “Proud Mary.” At least he was until Mircea thrust a bill into his hand. “Woman in a brown coat and blue dress; man in a trench. Where did they go?”
I was about to protest the bribe—not in principle, but because you never knew what seemingly little thing could alter time. And there’d been enough done to this era already. But then the hippie smiled the smile of the happily buzzed and pointed at the yawning mouth of the train tunnel.
And my protest turned into a curse.
I started toward the side of the platform and the dropoff to the tracks, but Mircea pulled me back. “I’ll go.”
“And if they shift again?”
“I’ll come back and get you.”
“And if there isn’t time?”
“I’ll be quick.”
I shook my head, hard enough to cause my wig to slide over one eye. I threw it down in annoyance. “I don’t know how the link between us works. If I get too far from them physically, I may not be able to follow if they shift again.”
“That seems unlikely. If the power is meant to retrieve the heir, it couldn’t be that restrictive.”
“I can’t risk it!”
Mircea’s brown eyes narrowed, like a man who was prepared to argue indefinitely, but I didn’t give him the chance. I kicked off my other shoe and jumped down beside the tracks, feeling the collected muck of who knew how many years squelching between my toes. And a second later, he landed lightly beside me, a scowl on his face and a penlight in his hand.
I assumed the little flashlight was for my benefit, but it didn’t help much. Neither did the work lights set into the walls here and there, which did little more than stretch the shadows. I couldn’t see squat once the brightly lit station had faded behind us.
Not that there was much to see. The tunnel itself was claustrophobically small, to the point that it seemed impossible that trains actually ran through this. It was also warm and damp, and reeked of dust and mildew. I was kind of glad I couldn’t see details. I could hear, though, and it wasn’t helping my nerves.
