He frowned, as if he didn’t understand her meaning. “I have until my thirty-fifth birthday to choose my path,” Sir Rothschild said. “And that date is coming up here very quickly.”
“Thirty-five years?” Mama looked truly dumbfounded. “Where is your mark?”
“On my lower back,” he said, as if it hardly mattered.
Mama turned to me. “There are other time-crossers out there with different rules. I’ve never heard of one on the lower back or someone with thirty-five years.”
“You don’t have thirty-five years?” Sir Rothschild asked, suddenly more curious than he’d been a moment before.
“I only have twenty-five years,” I told him and lifted the hair on the back of my head. “My mark is here. Mama’s grandmother had her mark on her chest, and she only had twenty-one years.”
Sir Rothschild was quiet for a moment, but then he shook his head. “None of that matters right now. I found out who you were in 1888, and I realized that you could help me. But it occurred to me that you didn’t know what was going to happen to your sister.”
“To Mary, you mean?” I asked.
He nodded. “That’s why I invited you to create an exhibit about Jack the Ripper and asked you to come to London. I needed youto realize who your family is in 1888.” He narrowed his eyes again. “I’ve been waiting for today, for this very moment. Because I believe that we both have something the other might want.”
I leaned back on the couch, my shoulder brushing Mama’s as I waited. What might I have that he wanted? And what did he have that I wanted?
“I’ve been watching you,” he said. “That day when we were in the basement at New Scotland Yard, the moment you saw your sister’s name for the first time.”
I had been shocked and horrified. But he’d known all along who I was and who Mary was to me. A shiver ran up my spine, just thinking about it.
“I tried to get her away from Miller’s Court, but nothing changed. She still died.”
“What?” Mama turned to me, her face blanching. “What do you mean?”
“Mary still died,” I told her as I shook my head. “I don’t know how—or why.”
“Maybe you can’t change history,” Mama said. “Maybe God doesn’t allow it.”
“But—” I swallowed. “I thought we had free will. That we could choose to change things, even if we weren’t supposed to.”
“Stop talking!” Sir Rothschild roared. “I don’t care about Mary. It was your father’s fault that she died. Now I need to focus on you and what I need.”
I jumped at his sudden anger, perplexed at the change in his demeanor. “My father’s fault?” I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“He wouldn’t tell me where the Book is! None of them would!” he yelled, clearly frustrated.
Mama squeezed my hand tight as we stared at him.
“That’s what this has all been about.” Spittle formed in the corners of his mouth as he raged. “I should have known your father and the others wouldn’t give in.”
“The Book?” I asked, almost too afraid.
“The Book your father, Sir Bernard Kelly, brought home fromJerusalem.” He paced as he rubbed his whiskered jaw. “I need it. I need to know where it is. None of the other families would cave with threats, and I had to take their women out, one by one. But Sir Charles Warren gathered the pieces of the Book together right after the Double Event when he realized what was happening, before I could get to them, and now it’s whole again, hidden away.”
Realization dawned, and my heart felt like it stopped. “You’re Jack the Ripper.”
The look that came over his face made my blood run cold. His gaze was so calculated, so cool, it was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen.
“In another time and place,” he said. “But I knew Sir Bernard Kelly wouldn’t betray his Brotherhood, even though I threatened to take Mary’s life.” He paused as he stared at me. “He thought he’d hidden her, though it didn’t take much work to find her. But I thwarted his plans, because I still have you. A time-crosser who has a lot more to lose than the rest of them.” He walked toward me and bent down until his face was mere inches from mine. “I have someone very important to you in a warehouse nearby.”
“Papa?” I asked, my breath catching in my throat.
“Your dear papa wasn’t as easy to capture as I had hoped, but the gestapo are just as eager as Hitler to put an end to the Freemasons, so they were told to do whatever I asked of them. And they did.”
“Put an end to the Freemasons?” Mama asked, her voice small as she stared at the monster in front of us.
