Chapter 25

Imogen couldn’t begin to find the words to describe how exhausted she was. Rose and her cadre of keepers looked daisy-fresh and lethal; she knew she looked like a wrung-out, dingy dishrag. She was covered with the grime of travel and she wasn’t sure she would ever, ever again walk as she was meant to. She would probably be accused of being bowlegged for the rest of her life. That was okay. She would just wear skirts.

Rose looked at her gravely. “This is the spot we’ve determined is the most haunted. I’m not sure I can aid you past that.”

Imogen looked down the little alleyway and had to agree it looked pretty damned spooky. In fact, all of Edinburgh looked pretty damned spooky. It was slathered in a layer of medievalness far past what it wore draped about itself in the future. It was particularly bizarre to walk up a street with a handful of lethal men behind her and realize she’d walked down that same street not two weeks earlier with other men trailing her, only those men had only been interested in what had been plastered across her backside. She wished she’d had Rose’s men within shouting distance then. She imagined she would have had far fewer comments about her availability.

She looked at the close that stood a dozen feet away, that gaping hole between two buildings. If she were going to choose a place to put a time-travel portal, she definitely would have been satisfied with what she was looking at. It screamed here lies the path of no return, but with a funky, medieval sort of accent that she thought she might suggest to the set designer for use on the movie she was just sure she was going to be back to doing pre-production work on in a few hours.

“Of course, I’m not an expert,” Rose said slowly, “but if these things are gates, I have it on good authority that there is a gate there. Perhaps that’s enough.”

Imogen looked at her quickly. “Good authority?”

“Don’t ask.”

Imogen thought she wouldn’t. “Any other suggestions?”

“Keep your fingers crossed?”

Imogen smiled in spite of the fact that her face felt as if it might be frozen forever in an expression that said please let me off this horse before I never walk again. “You know, this could be a very brief and humiliating experiment.”

“Or it could be farewell for now,” Rose said. “Safe journey to you.”

Imogen embraced her briefly, then watched Rose herd her lads off around the corner. She could only hope her friend had taken her younger brother with her. Thad was too curious by half. Put him together with those little twins and no one stood a hope of any crannies remaining uninvestigated.

She took a deep breath... and immediately regretted it. If modern Edinburgh had a city sort of smell, medieval Edinburgh had another thing going entirely. She wasn’t altogether certain that she wouldn’t walk into that close, turn a little left, open that gate, and find herself in the middle of some sort of pigsty, but there was no sense in not at least attempting the trip.

No time like the present to get back to the, er, well, present. She refused to think about what she was potentially leaving behind. Phillip might be engaged in name only to Heather, but she had the feeling that he would move on quite quickly to some medieval miss with buckets of money and a big fancy title. What she needed to do was get herself back to her proper place in time, get his sword back from Heather and see it returned to him somehow, then get on with her own life. It had been great to be treated like a maiden in distress by a real live medieval knight, but she was just going to have to consign the whole experience to the past where it belonged. It might make a great movie some day. Too bad she wouldn’t have Phillip de Piaget around to star in it.

She forced herself to walk forward, turned a little to the left, then opened the gate. The pigsty was disgusting and smelled horrendous, but she was nothing if not determined. She closed her eyes briefly, then stepped forward...

Into the middle of a coffee shop.

She dropped to her knees and almost wept.

“Are you unwell, miss?”

She looked up at the barista and wondered why it was she had never thought to get that sort of job. Free food, nice people, steady pay. Really, she might have to rethink her life plan now that she was back where she was supposed to be.

Or so she hoped.

“Brilliant costume, by the way,” the girl added.

Imogen didn’t want to point out that it wasn’t a costume, so she didn’t. She simply accepted help up to her feet, then swayed right down onto the nearest stool. Her new friend looked at her with obvious worry.

“What can I get you?”

“A mocha,” Imogen managed. “Biggest one you’ve got.”

The girl looked startled, but not unwilling to do what was necessary. Imogen would have burst into tears, but she was just too damned tired to. So she sat on her little stool and simply breathed in and out for a few minutes. When she thought she could manage it and not look as shell-shocked as she felt, she looked around the shop.

It was full of Future stuff. There were mirrors on the walls, trendy artwork, sayings about things that involved food and love. There were fairly clean millenials bent over phones and computers, taking advantage of what had to be free Wi-Fi. There was the smell of food that hadn’t been caught and cooked earlier in the day.

She loved the Future.

“Here you go, miss. Enjoy.”

Imogen patted herself for her wallet, then realized it was in Rose’s trunk—or, rather, most likely in the kitchen fireplace at Ravensthorpe. She fumbled for her phone, but the barista waved her off.

“My treat. If you don’t mind my saying so, you look as if you could use it.”

“You have no idea.”

The girl smiled. “You might be surprised. We get all kinds in here.”

Imogen didn’t want to think about what that might mean, but she didn’t doubt what the girl had said. Never mind the delicious coffee smell, it was obvious that there was something about the place that was odd. If it were some sort of gate between times... well, what a place to land for travelers from the past. Food, drink, and baristas who didn’t seem to mind doling it out freely. She suspected Rose might have found the employees and patrons terribly hip—heaven only knew what her cadre of keepers would have thought—but she thought Phillip might have stared too long and blinded himself.

She sipped, closed her eyes, and tried to stop the tears from slipping down her cheeks. She knew she was on the verge of a really serious meltdown, something she just didn’t want to have in public. It was almost impossible to believe that ten minutes ago, she had been walking though medieval Edinburgh with a couple of English noblepeople and their guards. Now, she was back to being all by herself in a crowd.

She knocked back the rest of her drink in record time, thanked her new java-dispensing friend for the sustenance, then pushed herself to her feet and stumbled out the front of the shop instead of the back.

No sense in tempting Fate.

She walked out into rain, which shouldn’t have surprised her. What did surprise her was how nicely a medieval cloak kept that rain from leaving her shivering. She pulled it more tightly around her, then tried to get her bearings. After a few minutes, she gave up and just started walking. It was dark, so she hoped she wouldn’t stand out all that much. It occurred to her that it was entirely possible that while she had come back to the future, she hadn’t come to the right time in the future, but she supposed that was something she could put off figuring out until later.

She had to walk halfway up to Edinburgh Castle before she realized really where she was. It took her half an hour to find where she’d been staying and by then she was so desperate for a shower and something real to eat, she was almost past reason.

She walked into the lobby of her little hotel only because she was afraid if she crawled in, people might talk. She saw the concierge and was vastly relieved to find it was the same guy she’d met before. When he gasped, she almost burst into tears on the spot. Right time, right place. She was back.

“Miss Maxwell?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I have a room—”

“But your family has taken a suite across town.”

“My family?”

He looked profoundly unsettled. “When you went missing, Miss Jones called them and they immediately flew over to aid in the search.”

She could just imagine. She put her hands on the desk and looked at the guy, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “Search?”

“For you, Miss Maxwell. There was a search made for you.” He spoke slowly and distinctly, as if he feared she wasn’t going to catch half of what he said. “They have a suite across town. They have your things there.”

“That’s great,” she slurred. “I’m sure they’ll enjoy it, but I don’t want to enjoy it with them. I don’t even need my clothes. I just need my key.”

“But your family has taken a room somewhere else,” the man said helplessly.

She frowned at the desk clerk. “But I paid for my room for three weeks, in advance—”

“You did, but we thought...” He considered, then shrugged. “’Tis empty, that room. The police have been all over it. Your family was insistent.”

“Ah, I... I got lost,” Imogen said, because it was the best she could come up with on short notice.

“Miss Jones has been working with them extensively, of course, but since you hadn’t told her your plans...” He trailed off, then looked at her meaningfully.

“Yeah, I’m a flake,” Imogen said with a careless laugh. “I’m working on a movie, see, and it’s all sort of hush-hush. I was off doing research. My bad for not having at least let Tilly know, right? I’ll do better next time.”

“Would you like me to call your family?”

“Oh, why don’t you give me their hotel name if you have it. I’ll get in touch with them after I get upstairs and charge my phone.” And she had to charge her phone because Jake Kilchurn, modern guy lost in the past, had run out her battery playing games—

“Imogen!”

Imogen looked around to find Tilly standing by the stairs, looking at her in shock. She attempted a smile. “Oh, Tilly,” she said feebly. “Hi.”

Tilly burst into tears.

Imogen left the security of the front desk and walked over to give Tilly a hug and a brisk pat on the back. “I’m all right. Just got lost.”

“I don’t believe you,” Tilly said in a low voice, pulling back and looking at her with an expression that wasn’t immediately identifiable. “What sort of crazy stuff are you into? Who are you doing crazy stuff with? Are you doing drugs?”

“Of course not,” Imogen said in surprise. “I just got lost. I was off looking for stuff for the set and I took a wrong turn.”

Tilly sniffed. “You couldn’t have called? And you smell terrible, by the way.”

“No, I couldn’t. And I know. I went off to see a castle and got involved in a... in a reenactment sort of thing.” She nodded vigorously. A little too vigorously, actually, because it made her want to sit down very soon. “It was a golden opportunity, you know, and I didn’t have any signal that far out in the boonies and then I had to give up my cell phone for authenticity’s sake.” She smiled. “It was amazing. I’ll tell you all about it later, after I’ve had a shower. And charged my phone. I ran out of battery in spite of not having it to use. You know how that goes.”

Tilly still looked stricken. Imogen wasn’t quite sure how to take that, but she was beginning to think that her disappearance had caused a bit more of a stir than she would have expected it to. She considered trying to reason with Tilly but decided that that conversation would go quite a bit better if she didn’t look so much the part of someone who’d been out of cell phone reach for several days.

“I’ll shower, then I’ll fill you in,” she said confidently, then she went back over to the desk to throw herself on the mercy of the court. She managed to wrangle a key out of the poor desk clerk—maybe time in medieval Scotland hadn’t been without its benefits—then wondered how best to make a break for her room without having to offer more unsatisfying explanations for her whereabouts.

Tilly was putting her phone back in her pocket. “I just called your parents. They are only a couple of blocks away at supper. They’ll be here soon.”

Damn, caught. Imogen suppressed a gusty sigh. “Thank you.”

“They were very worried. So was Marcus.”

Imogen frowned. “Marcus Davis?”

“He was extremely worried.” Tilly continued to look at her in that stricken way that wasn’t at all reassuring. “I had no idea you two were engaged.”

Imogen shut her mouth when she realized it had fallen open. “Um—”

“How long ago?” Tilly asked. “If I might ask that.”

“It feels like just yesterday,” Imogen said honestly.

“I’m sure that’s not why you have this job,” Tilly said, obviously trying to convince herself of that.

Imogen wanted to respond, but she was just too tired to. Tired and overwhelmed and, to her very great surprise, actually missing the peace and quiet of medieval times. No cell phones, no crazy family, no coworker looking at her as if Imogen were responsible for stabbing her in the heart.

“I’m sorry,” Imogen said frankly. “That whole reenactment thing was so sudden and I had to jump on the chance to be a part of it before they left without me.”

“But your clothes,” Tilly said, gesturing at her. “Your shoes. Your hair!”

Imogen would have laughed, but it wasn’t at all funny. “Again, it’s a long story. But about Marcus, I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on—”

Or she would have if her family hadn’t chosen that moment to assault the hotel’s lobby. She had to admit there was no other way to describe her family’s entrance into any space, enclosed or not. It was a little shocking just how quickly they’d managed to get there, but she had the feeling they’d been circling the place like vultures, just waiting for the proper moment to land.

She felt herself doing what she usually did when faced with that onslaught: she tried to sneak out of the middle of the action.

Her parents were having none of it. Her mother took her by the arm in a grip that felt less like a hold and more like a pinch.

“What is this?” her mother asked in astonishment. A look of horror descended on her face. “You’ve lost your mind and joined one of those nature cults, haven’t you?”

“Well—”

“And your hair! It’s horrible, Imogen, but I’ve been telling you for years that there’s nothing you can do about it besides cut it very short and hope for the best.”

Imogen’s father assessed her with his usual disinterest, then looked around for the nearest useful sibling. The selection, Imogen was happy to see, wasn’t as robust as it could have been. Only Prissy and Howard had apparently made the trip. She could guess why: Prissy had come to help her parents use their frequent flier miles and Howard had no doubt come along to assess any medical issues that might have cropped up. Either that, or their mother had brought him along for his ready access to an endless supply of Valium. At the moment, Imogen wasn’t sure she wouldn’t value him for the same thing.

“Prissy,” Donald Maxwell said in a tone that brooked no argument, “go buy Imogen some decent clothes.”

“I don’t think anything is still open,” Prissy said with a gusty sigh, “but I’ll go look. It’ll be a miracle if they have anything in her size.”

Imogen could hardly wait to see what would come back in those shopping bags. She would have shot her sister a pleading look, but she knew there was no point in it. What she needed to do was get back upstairs and get her own stuff.

Which wasn’t there any longer. Hadn’t the desk guy said as much? Her room was empty because her parents had arrived or the police had been upstairs or something had happened and she was once again without anything to wear. She hoped that wasn’t a harbinger of things to come in her life.

She found herself hustled out of the hotel before she could use the key to her room or explain anything to Tilly or make sure that she was perhaps going to have some sort of job by morning. She was tired enough that she didn’t kick up a fuss.

She would figure it all out, though what that would look like, she didn’t know. She’d had an unbelievable adventure, met an unparalleled guy, and seen medieval life up close and personal. Now she was back where she belonged, her future was apparently laid out in front of her by people who wanted her to do things to suit them, and the guy she thought she might really want was hundreds of years in the past.

Maybe she was loving the future a bit less than she thought.

“Come along, Imogen,” Donald said briskly. “I have a conference call in fifteen minutes. We might need a police escort to get us to our hotel in time.”

Of course. Imogen sighed, made motions to Tilly indicating that she would call her later. Day One back in the Future was just not going like she’d planned. She spared a wish for a guy with a sword to come to her defense, then sighed and followed her family out the door.