“Is that whisky essential?” I raised an eyebrow.
“If we manage to find Morrie, it will be.” Heathcliff added a second bottle. “Haven’t you noticed how much more peaceful things are around here without him?”
“Can’t argue with that,” Quoth added.
I glared at them both. “Morrie is our friend, and we’ll do everything we can to save him.”
“If you say so.” Heathcliff dropped a third bottle into his rucksack. “What’s a pocketknife?”
“It’s like a small portable knife that flicks out of a handle – but it usually has other tools as well, like a can opener, toothpick, or screwdriver. Something small that will fit in a pocket—”
“Like this?” Heathcliff pulled a curved hunting blade.
“That doesn’t fit in your pocket.”
“It does if I cut the bottom seam out.” Heathcliff dropped the knife in his bag, then bent to peer under the desk. “Now, where’s my sword?”
“Victoria Bainbridge kept it, remember?” Victoria was an occult book dealer who owned the building Nevermore Bookshop occupied during the late 1800s. We met her when we decided to spend the night in the time-traveling room – it turned out we were getting carnal in her bed, and she kept Heathcliff’s sword as recompense. He borrowed a rapier for his Jane Austen costume, but he’d had to hand that in to the police after it had been used in the fight that had unmasked Christina Hathaway as the killer. Personally, I wasn’t sure I wanted my hulking, often-drunk, grumpy boyfriend to be swinging a sword around, but he’d saved my arse too many times to discourage him. I just had to hope he wouldn’t discover some late-night medieval combat shop that could sate his last-minute stabbing needs.
“It’s time she gave it back. Want to come with me?”
“Hell no.” I shuddered. As we’d left her home in the past, Victoria said that the next time I saw her, I’d be covered in blood. I didn’t want to risk stepping through that door and hurting Heathcliff.
Heathcliff nodded, then stormed off.
Quoth handed me a steaming cup of tea. “Do you think he’s going to get Victoria’s room when he opens the door?”
“I don’t need Morrie’s brilliant mathematical mind to tell me that with all the possible periods in history, the odds of him opening that door to find Victoria Bainbridge with his sword in her possession and in a mood to return it to him are infinitesimal.”
There was a glint in Quoth’s eye. “Fancy a wager? Say, for the last wagon wheel in the packet. My money’s on the dinosaurs.”
I laughed. “I hope he terrifies some poor medieval scribe.”
Quoth held out his hand, and we shook. My cheeks warmed at the touch of his skin on mine. “You’re on.”
As I raised the cup to my lips, the entire flat rumbled with a deep roar that reverberated in my chest. Quoth’s eyes met mine, and the corner of his mouth tugged up.
SLAM.
A moment later, Heathcliff stumbled into the kitchen, his eyes round as saucers.
“Sooooo…” I struggled to keep a straight face. “Did you get the sword back?”
“Is Victoria well?” Quoth chirped.
Heathcliff slumped into his favorite chair and pressed a hand to his brow. “I need whisky.”
“You packed all the whisky.”
“Then I need to bleach my eyeballs.” He grunted again.
Quoth and I exchanged a glance, and without a word I slid the biscuit package toward him.
I turned to Quoth. “We should bring some things for Morrie, too. We’ve only got Sherlock’s word that he’s properly stocked that cabin.”
“What kind of things?” Heathcliff hugged his rucksack to my chest. “He’s not getting my whisky.”
“I don’t know… what things would you want if you were trapped in a mountain cabin indefinitely—”
