My grandmother finally walked toward me. Red eyes glinted from her hair. My own Dek and Mal also uncoiled from around my neck. Her pace faltered when she saw them.
And then she took a deep breath, and kept coming until she was so close I could smell the fried sausages on her body, and the beer, and the cigarette smoke.
I smelled like somebody’s piss. Not that I cared, right then. My grandmother had died four years before my birth. Every time I met her it felt wrong and heartbreaking, and unspeakably profound.
“What are you?” she finally whispered. I had no ready answer, even though I had spent the past hour trying to imagine what I would say.
I was still holding my cup of tea. Zee pushed up against my leg, and the shadows rippled around us. Raw and Aaz appeared, but they were not alone. Another Raw, another Aaz, gathered close behind them. And Zee. Her Zee.
The boys stared at their counterparts, gazes solemn, knowing. As though this had happened before. As though they knew it would happen again.
Dread sparked. Time had become fluid in my hands. Perhaps there was a very good reason that Zee kept secrets from me. Because he did know things that I should not—because there was no safe warning for what had brought me here. Not without possibly changing some distant outcome that he knew would come to pass.
Terrified me. Gnawed at my gut. Surely the future was not set in stone. There had to be more than fate. More than the bleak certainty that what I did now was leading to some inevitable destiny that I could not change.
“I’m from the future,” I said, figuring my grandmother could handle the truth; not having anything better to tell her. “Far, distant future.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Bullshit.”
Well, at least that was familiar. “You think the boys would just be standing here if I was lying?”
Her lips tightened with displeasure—also familiar, and startling. I had seen that expression on my mother’s face. Made me wonder if it was something else I shared with them. Little bits and pieces of us, bleeding true in our veins from across decades and centuries.
Blood never lies, Zee had said.
But there was something else that bothered me. We’d had this conversation before. In my past, in her future. I had met my grandmother the first time I ever time-traveled. She had been in her thirties, and my mother had already been born. Fourteen years old.
But that had been the first time for my grandmother, too. She had never met me before then, I was certain of it. No one could be that good of an actress, and my grandmother would not have bothered trying to hide the truth. All of us were poor liars—if such a thing could be inherited.
Here we were, though. Standing side by side. Almost twins, except for the expressions in our eyes. I was glad that much was different. Something of me that was mine, and mine alone.
But it made no sense that she would not remember this encounter later in her life. No sense at all.
“Assuming you’re telling the truth—” she began, but my patience had finally worn too thin.
I made a sharp gesture. “I’m here for Ernie. For Winifred, Samuel, and Lizbet. I’m here because you asked me to finish something, to save them, and now they’re almost all dead. In my time, dead.”
My grandmother flinched. “How?”
“A woman named the Black Cat.” I watched carefully for her reaction. “Seems to come right down to her, though I don’t know why or how.”
But I thought my grandmother might. She closed her eyes, rocking back on her heels. Then, without a word, turned and walked away. Demons slipped into the shadows. I gave Raw my teacup.
And I followed.
Chapter 6
We did not talk. Not even when her Raw appeared from the shadows with a cream-colored silk scarf, which she passed to me. I wrapped it around my head, with special care to hide my face. Best if no one saw us together. It would be hard to explain where her twin had been all this time. Maybe the boys could find me eyeglasses or a wig—though that sounded stifling.
No one else was out. I remembered my grandmother reminding the children about a curfew, but except for a distant scuff of boots, and low drunken laughter, I saw no soldiers, no one at all positioned to enforce that rule. I felt the oppression, though—worse than the heat. There had been life in the streets earlier, but now it was just ghosts and a hush that was as heavy and suffocating as a plastic bag pulled tight over the mouth of the city. Life, choked out.
And hiding. Quivering. I thought of Winifred Cohen, and her presence behind that closed locked door. Like a mouse. Same now, but deeper. The fear and weariness of the people hiding behind the walls of their homes had bled into the air. Each breath made my skin prickle. My sweat felt like the product of poison, or fever.
We walked only five minutes before we reached a long street lined entirely with row houses. My brief impression was of large arched windows and gray brick; laundry lines sagging with holey shirts and underwear; and one light burning from a first-floor window. Every other was dark.
We entered a place of oppressive silence and climbed a set of rickety wooden stairs to the third floor, where my grandmother unlocked the last door at the back of the landing. Hot, stifling air rolled over us when we entered. I smelled mildew, so strong I choked, and tried to breathe through my mouth. We were in one small room with wooden floorboards, cracked walls. Not much furniture. Just a long, lumpy sofa, two battered chairs painted red, and in the far corner by the window—which opened out onto a glassed-in private balcony—a white porcelain sink that had been bolted into the wall, rusted piping trailing free from the bottom like a naked spine. A tin bucket sat on the floor, with washrags hanging over the edge, and a hose coiled from the faucet.
“Don’t drink the water,” said my grandmother suddenly.
I unwrapped the scarf, pushing sweat-soaked hair away from my face. “Don’t touch the food, either?”
“Be careful,” she replied testily. “Better if you only eat what the boys bring you. There’s not much food here anyway, but what’s available is usually spoilt rotten.”
“No one at your restaurant seemed to notice. Especially the Nazis.”
Her mouth tightened. “Locals usually only order drinks, but the Japs allow in special shipments of fresh fixings to keep the Krauts happy. They’re the only ones who can afford those meals. We get a couple of them every week, crossing the creek to Little Vienna because it reminds them of home.”
The disdain in her voice was biting, even hateful. I marveled at her acting skills in front of those men. “Your American accent doesn’t bother anyone?”
Her dark eyes glittered. And then she spoke a stream of what was probably invective—and that sounded perfectly, flawlessly German.
I raised my brow. “I see.”
“I doubt that,” she muttered. “If you are from the future, then how does this war end?”
“Well. And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”
She gave me a cold look. “I don’t like this. I don’t even know if I should believe it.”
“You’re a spy,” I said, matching her tone. “You should be used to a lot of things you don’t like or believe.”
She stared. And for one moment stopped being my grandmother, becoming simply, Jean: a young woman alone, with her whole life ahead of her. Dangerous, maybe—but vulnerable, too. Flinching, as Dek and Mal freed themselves from my hair, slithering down my arms.