“We’ve met before,” I reminded Victoria as she helped me into one of her chairs. She set one of the larger lamps onto the table beside me, giving me a wider circle of light through which to see. The lantern cast a warm glow over my lap. She placed Quoth in my arms. My heart leaped as I stroked his back, feeling the places where his feathers were bent and matted with blood. He was still alive, cooing quietly, but he was very weak and bleeding profusely from a wound in his neck. Victoria slammed a white cloth and a jar of salve on the table in front of me.
“You might believe that,” said Victoria. “But I can assure you, I’ve never seen you on this side of the door before. Tea?”
I nodded. Victoria moved to a sideboard and fiddled with a silver tea service. Her words sank in. “That’s not possible. We came through the door months ago. You found us in your bed.”
“Just because it happened in your past, doesn’t mean it was in mine.”
As I rubbed the salve into Quoth’s wound, my gaze fell on the window, which faced over the shops next door and gave a view of the village green. In the center stood a towering inferno. The Halloween bonfire. Mrs. Ellis’ crowning joy had begun without her.
Please, Hathor, Isis, Athena, Hecate, any goddess who’ll listen, let Mrs. Ellis be okay. Please let her have got out along with Mum and Jo and Socrates and all the Spirit Seekers.
Oh, Morrie, Heathcliff. I miss you so much already.
It hurt my heart to think about that visit to the time-traveling room – Morrie and Heathcliff and Quoth and I crowded into Victoria’s bed, bodies and tongue entwined. I remembered Victoria speaking to me as though she knew me, as though we’d met before.Next time I see you, you’ll be covered in blood.
Of course. I’d been speaking to Victoria in herfuture. She’d already lived through this meeting with me, but I hadn’t. Now, I was the one who’d met her before and she was the one who didn’t know what to make of me. But if she wasn’t expecting me, if she didn’t know who I am, why were the candles lit? Surely she would see this as wasteful and excessive?
I rubbed my temple. “I’m so confused.”
“Don’t ask me to tell you how time travel works.” Victoria set down my tea and offered a small jug of milk. “I’m just the bookseller. But if you want answers, I have someone who wants to meet you. Leave your tea to cool.”
I set down the cup and saucer, cradled Quoth to my breast, and let her lead me across the darkened room. She pushed open the door to her bathroom. I heard splashes coming from the bathtub.
I stepped inside.
Candles crowded every inch of space, set into niches in the walls and scattered across the floor, leaving only a narrow path from the doorway to the tub. Through the window, the light of the bonfire splashed an orange glow over the bathtub, illuminating the features of an old man lying in the bubbly water, his head bent back in ecstasy as he washed his underarms with a large sponge.
The old man’s face was etched onto my childhood.
Mr. Simson.
His own private joke. Mr. Simson. Homer Simpson.
Homer. The Ancient Greek poet.
It was the eyes that gave him away. Deep green with flecks of gold around the edges. They were the same eyes I’d stared at hundreds of times before.
In the mirror.
They weremyeyes.
The word caught in my throat. “Dad?”
“My Mina.”
I knelt on the floor beside the bathtub. He opened his arms and I fell into them. I fell only a few inches, but it felt like forever. I didn’t care that if I turned in the wrong direction I might see more of my father south of the equator than I’d ever wanted to see.
He was my father and he was here in my arms, cradling me and Quoth like we were the most precious things in the world to him.
How many times growing up had I wished for this moment? Mum never talked about him – she left me to build a picture in my mind of this loser petty criminal who walked out on her as soon as he found out she was pregnant. It was why I ran away to Nevermore Bookshop, because I felt as though I could find my father between the pages. Little did I know how right I was.
“My baby girl,” Homer whispered into my hair, his shoulders trembling with emotion.
I pulled back so I could look at him again. I raked my eyes over his body, trying to save all his features for future analysis. The broadness of his shoulders, the scattering of fine hairs over his chest, the parchment and leather scent that rose from his skin. “How can you be here? Dracula said he killed you.”
“Time, my love.” He waved a hand wistfully. “It heals all wounds, even death. I could explain it to you, but we have only a few moments together. Is that what you really want to talk about?”
I shook my head, the words robbed from my tongue. I had so many questions, a lifetime of questions, but they all swirled together and became mush in my mouth. I managed to choke out, “You set up these candles. You knew I wouldn’t be able to see you.”
