Chapter Thirty-Two

We don't solve the mystery of who killed Sir Alastair. Oh, Lord Muir tops the list, but I'd known that when I'd seen who'd been strangling me… in the exact same way Sir Alastair had been strangled, right down to the knee in my back.

Except Muir has an ironclad alibi, which McCreadie has verified. I still suspect he's framing Selim, but that will need to be proven. No one else makes an obvious suspect. Mom is delighted by the link to the Edinburgh Seven and fangirls over me meeting Sophia Jex-Blake, but the students' only connection to the murder is that Lord Muir seems to have been using Sir Alastair to speak out against them.

I won't say Selim's fate gives me an excuse to return to the nineteenth century. If there is a choice to be made, then I must make it, and I can't take the cowardly route, casting myself as a martyr who sacrificed her place in the world to save a near stranger. I must go back for me, as painful as it is to even think of leaving my parents.

That won't happen by walking into 12 Robert Street. Still, we're going to try, and the next afternoon, we're making our way down the sidewalk, pulling our luggage behind us.

Walking down Robert Street physically hurts. I can't help but think of all the times I walked it with Gray and Isla, or with Simon or Alice, heading out on errands. If I half close my eyes, I can imagine I'm with them… until a car rumbles past, shattering the illusion.

No one meets us at the house. It's just us and a lockbox. I push open the familiar door and unfamiliar smells roll out, and I want to back away.

This isn't Gray and Isla's house. It's a sterile rental, stinking of floor polish and disinfectant. It's like a family home after everything has been moved out and cleaned for the next residents, except I'd actually have preferred bare walls and empty rooms. This is fully furnished—in upscale Scandinavian, like Ikea for the one percent. Normally, minimalist decor suits my minimalist tastes, but here, in this grand old town house, it makes me shudder.

How many times have I grumbled about the eyeball-assault that is Victorian decor? But there was warmth and enthusiasm in the jumble of colors and styles, like when I was five and insisted on a purple bedroom with a princess bed and posters of unicorns and rainbows. I loved that room, and I love my parents for giving it to me without a single "Are you sure?"

As we leave our bags in the front hall, I remind my parents of that old purple bedroom, how much I appreciated it, and how it reminds me of the Gray town house.

"The gas lighting helps," I say. "You can't see as well, so the colors don't completely blind you. I keep imagining the day when the world gets electricity and they realize exactly how garish that gold and scarlet wallpaper is."

"Or they don't care," Mom says. "Remember Aunt Lillian's house?"

"I do," I say with a smile.

We've come in the front door, and the room layouts on this level are also the same. I take my parents into what would have been the "funerary parlor" and I give a mini lecture on undertaking in the nineteenth century, and they are as patient as they'd been when I'd regale them at dinner with whatever weird facts I'd learned at school.

The funerary parlor has been redone as bedrooms, and I smile to think of people settling into the cozy little beds where Addington had performed autopsies and Gray had dissected corpses. Do guests ever wake to the dull splat of an organ being dropped into a bowl? Or hear a distant voice saying, "Hugh? Please hold this severed limb for me"?

Next I go down to the basement. What was Mrs. Wallace's domain—the kitchens and her living quarters—is a children's suite, with two small bedrooms and a den with a TV and game consoles.

Then it's two flights to the second level or, in British parlance, the first floor. This area is the least changed. The rooms remain intact, and even in their original functions, from the dining room to the library. The only difference is that the drawing room has been divided to form a tiny bathroom and a kitchen even smaller than the one in my condo. I guess if you can afford to rent this place, you aren't planning to cook.

We're in the library, where I run my hands over the built-in bookcase. "These shelves are original. Back then, this one here would be for fiction. Over here is medical—"

Footsteps patter up the distant stairs, and I wheel toward them.

"Mallory?" Mom says.

"Someone's here." I follow the patter of those steps overhead. "Maybe the cleaners aren't done?"

"I… don't hear anything, Mal," Mom says.

The footfalls have stopped now, and a door creaks.

"There," I say, looking up. "You must have heard that."

They exchange a look.

"No, hon," Dad says. "What do you hear?"

Footsteps on the stairs. Someone running up in… In soft-soled boots, light-footed.

Alice running up to the next level and then opening a door.

My mind is playing tricks, replaying a sound I've heard so often I can barely walk through this house without imagining it. Alice scampering about. Mrs. Wallace snapping at me for something. McCreadie's laugh, and Isla's answering quip. And then heavy footsteps, Gray pacing about, deep in thought.

"Let's go up to the top floor," I say, a little too brightly. "I want to show you where my room was."

"I think we should go to the next floor," Dad says. "You heard something up there."

I make a face. "My imagination. It's Alice's fault. She's always scampering about. Isla bought her softer-soled indoor boots, but I swear they still echo like me with my cowboy boots. Remember those?"

"We're going to the next floor," Mom says, and heads that way before I can stop her.

As we climb, I keep up the tour-guide spiel, overeager now. "This is just the bedroom level. Duncan's room first and then Isla's across the hall, and two smaller rooms farther down. I think they use what would have been their parents' rooms, and the others would have been the children's quarters."

I stride into the hall, pointing to my left first. "That's Duncan's and—"

The beige paint seems to shimmer, gold damask wallpaper appearing behind it. I shake my head and the wallpaper vanishes.

"Mallory?" Mom says.

"Is this entire place painted builder-beige?" I say, shaking my head as I pull open Gray's door and—

There's a desk beside the hearth, Gray's papers and books scattered over it, spilling onto the floor.

I slam the door shut, my heart pounding, but the image stays burned on my retinas.

When I look up, light flickers. Gaslight, from a brass fixture down the wall.

"Mal?" It's Dad now, his hand closing on my elbow. "Tell us what you see."

I shake my head.

His voice lowers. "Please, Mallory."

I hesitate. Then I do. I tell them I saw Gray's room and that there's gas lighting in the hall here, and wallpaper shimmers beneath that builder-beige paint.

A noise in a room down the hall has me jumping.

"Mallory?" Mom says.

I don't answer. I just start walking. There's a scrape and a clatter, as if someone is picking up something that fell. Then a voice. The low murmur of a voice that sends prickles through me.

Gray's voice.

I keep walking as if in a trance. My fingers close on the doorknob to one of the guest rooms. The same room I'd woken in six months ago. Under my fingers, the knob feels smooth and modern, but when I look down, it's antique brass, with a key in the hole.

I push open the door. The room inside is dim. No lamps or candles. Just a single window, the light outside fading. White specks hit the glass and slide down.

"Snowing," I whisper. "It's snowing."

I walk in, entranced by that snow. I get three steps, and a deep sigh has me spinning. My hand flies to my mouth, and I stagger back. The bed is there. The bed where I'd woken… and I'm in it. Catriona is in it, with sheets pulled up to her neck. She's pale and lying flat on her back. Under the sheet, her hands are visibly folded on her stomach, as if she's laid out for a funeral. Only the shallow rise and fall of her chest says she's alive.

Beside her Gray is just sitting there, in the gloom, watching her. Watching me.

I can tell myself I'm seeing a scene from last May. I know I'm not. Gray checked in on Catriona, but he wouldn't have sat with her like this. And there wasn't snow.

Gray shifts, pulling in his long legs and running a hand through his hair.

"Duncan," I say, because I can't help myself.

I say his name again as I step toward him, and his head jerks up. He peers in my direction, as if he heard something, but his gaze doesn't focus on me.

My mom rests her hand on my arm, making me jump. "What do you see?" she whispers.

"Me. Catriona. Well, me. In bed. It's snowing out, and it's getting dark already, and Duncan is sitting beside the bed."

"So Mum was right," she says with a sigh. "As usual."

I glance over.

Dad has moved into the room, too, and he's looking around. When I focus on them, I see what they do—just a regular guest room. As soon as I look away, though, the other room returns.

"You're seeing through the veil," Dad murmurs. "Just like your nan dreamed. That was the key. Get you in the same place you are over there."

I don't know what to say to that. I can't form thoughts. I just stare at Gray. I thought I'd lost him forever, and now he's right there. Except he's not right there. A hundred and fifty years stretch between us, an impassable gulf.

"You said there was a floorboard loose in your room," Mom says.

I startle at the change in subject. "What?"

"You mentioned a loose floorboard. You should put letters in there, and we can rent this place to look for them. But still do the classified ads, of course."

I stare at her. She's calm. Too calm, as if she's sending me off to summer camp and reminding me to email and send postcards.

"I… I can't just…" I look back at Gray.

"Oh, I think you can, Mallory." She kisses my cheek. "I think you can do anything you put your mind to." She straightens. "Now, where is your room and that floorboard?"

"I'll show—"

Her hand on my arm stops me. "You aren't going anywhere, just to be sure. Tell me where to find the board."

I do, and Dad murmurs he'll be right back. Moments later, he returns with a smile that looks a little forced.

"They haven't done much up there," he says. "It's an overflow bedroom. They've refinished the floors, but that board is still loose. Almost as if it was meant to be loose."

"All right then," Mom says, straightening. "Time to see if this works."

"What?" I say. "I can't just… It's not like walking through a door."

"No? Then it won't hurt to try."

When panic washes over me, it's Dad who pulls me into a hug.

"You've got this, sweetheart," he says. "We'll be fine."

I open my mouth to protest. But he's right. They will be fine without me. They raised me and launched me into the world a decade ago. We might live less than an hour's drive apart, but that doesn't mean I see them every day or even every week. As close as we are, most of that closeness these days is in our hearts and thoughts. There are phone calls and texts, but I live my life and they live theirs, and I'm not a vital part of theirs the way I was when we all lived under the same roof.

They have each other, and they will be fine.

Are they right then? That it's time for me to chase my own dreams? I feel as if I've been doing that ever since I left home, but I hadn't been chasing dreams. I'd been pursuing goals.

What do I want?

Everything. I want that damned magical door so I can come and go as I please. To live in 1869 Victorian Scotland and still be able to visit my parents and, if it doesn't work out there, to come home again.

I want the safety net, and that's not an option.

So do I stay where it's safe? Or do I jump anyway, knowing I leave behind part of myself?

"You want this," Mom says, taking my face between her hands and meeting my eyes. "Don't you dare pretend otherwise. You want this, and we want you to have it."

I throw myself into her arms. They both hug me, and we stay there, and it is like being back at Nan's bedside. If I cross over—now or some other time—I might never see them again, and there is so much I want them to know.

I tell them how much I love them and how much this is going to hurt. They tell me how proud they are of me, how glad they are that I found my place in the world, how much they will miss me and look forward to the updates.

Mom also, being my mother, hits the practical notes. They presume I'll lapse into another coma, but they'll be sure I'm cared for, because who knows what would happen if the plug was pulled, though she doesn't say that, of course. They'll look after telling my department and friends what happened—well, that I lapsed back into a coma, not the truth.

Then Mom takes me by the shoulders and says, "Go," and gives me the softest push. I feel her hands on my shoulders and Dad's hand locked in mine and then I let go. I walk toward that bed with my gaze fixed on Catriona.

No, with my gaze fixed on me. I am lying in that bed. I don't know where Catriona has gone, but she's not there. That's me. I step up to the bedside, reach forward to touch my cheek, lying in that bed and—

And I gasp, disoriented and flailing, as if I've woken in a strange place.

As if I've fallen through time.