“You’re wondering why you should trust me, aren’t you?” Bill asked.
“No, I—”
“I get it,” he said, hovering in the air in front of her. “I’m an acquired taste. Especially compared to the company you’re used to keeping. I’m certainly no angel.” He snorted. “But I can help make this journey worth your while. We can make a deal, if you want. You get sick of me—just say so. I’ll be on my way.” He held out his long clawed hand.
Luce shuddered. Bill’s hand was crusty with rocky cysts and scabs of lichen, like a ruined statue. The last thing she wanted to do was take it in her own hand. But if she didn’t, if she sent him on his way right now …
She might be better off with him than without him.
She glanced down at her feet. The short wet ledge beneath them ended where she was standing, dropped off into nothing. Between her shoes, something caught her eye, a shimmer in the rock that made her blink. The ground was shifting … softening … swaying under her feet.
Luce looked behind her. The slab of rock was crumbling, all the way to the wall of the cave. She stumbled, teetering at the edge. The ledge jerked beneath her—harder—as the particles that held the rock together began to break apart. The ledge disappeared around her, faster and faster, until fresh air brushed the backs of her heels and she jumped—
And sank her right hand into Bill’s extended claw. They shook in the air.
“How do we get out of here?” she cried, grasping tight to him now for fear of falling into the abyss she couldn’t see.
“Follow your heart.” Bill was beaming, calm. “It won’t mislead you.”
Luce closed her eyes and thought of Daniel. A feeling of weightlessness overcame her, and she caught her breath. When she opened her eyes, she was somehow soaring through static-filled darkness. The stone cave shifted and pulled in on itself into a small golden orb of light that shrank and was gone.
Luce glanced over, and Bill was right there with her.
“What was the first thing I ever told you?” he asked.
Luce recalled how his voice had seemed to reach all the way inside her.
“You said to slow down. That I’d never learn anything zipping around my past so quickly.”
“And?”
“It was exactly what I wanted to do, I just didn’t know I wanted it.”
“Maybe that’s why you found me when you did,” Bill shouted over the wind, his gray wings bristling as they sped along. “And maybe that’s why we’ve ended up … right … here.”
The wind stopped. The static crackling smoothed to silence.
Luce’s feet slammed onto the ground, a sensation like flying off a swing set and landing on a grassy lawn. She was out of the Announcer and somewhere else. The air was warm and a little humid. The light around her feet told her it was dusk.
They were sunk deep in a field of thick, soft, brilliant green grass, as high as her calves. Here and there the grass was dotted with tiny bright-red fruit—wild strawberries. Ahead, a thin row of silver birch trees marked the edge of the manicured lawn of an estate. Some distance beyond that stood an enormous house.
From here she could make out a white stone flight of stairs that led to the back entrance of the large, Tudor-style mansion. An acre of pruned yellow rosebushes bordered the lawn’s north side, and a miniature hedge maze filled the area near the iron gate on the east. In the center lay a bountiful vegetable garden, beans climbing high along their poles. A pebble trail cut the yard in half and led to a large whitewashed gazebo.
Goose bumps rose on Luce’s arms. This was the place. She had a visceral sense that she had been here before. This was no ordinary déjà vu. She was staring at a place that had meant something to her and Daniel. She half expected to see the two of them there right now, wrapped in each other’s arms.
But the gazebo was empty, filled only with the orange light of the setting sun.
Someone whistled, making her jump.
Bill.
She’d forgotten he was with her. He hovered in the air so that their heads were on the same level. Outside the Announcer, he was somewhat more repulsive than he’d seemed at first. In the light, his flesh was dry and scaly, and he smelled pretty strongly of mildew. Flies buzzed around his head. Luce edged away from him a little, almost wishing he’d go back to being invisible.
“Sure beats a war zone,” he said, eyeing the grounds.
“How did you know where I was before?”
“I’m … Bill.” He shrugged. “I know things.”
“Okay, then, where are we now?”
“Helston, England”—he pointed a claw tip toward his head and closed his eyes—“in what you’d call 1854.” Then he clasped his stone claws together in front of his chest like a gnomey sort of schoolboy reciting a history report. “A sleepy southern town in the county of Cornwall, granted charter by King John himself. Corn’s a few feet tall, so I’d say it’s probably midsummer. Pity we missed the month of May—they have a Flora Day festival here like you wouldn’t believe. Or maybe you would! Your past self was the belle of the ball the last two years in a row. Her father’s very rich, see. Got in at the ground level of the copper trade—”
“Sounds terrific.” Luce cut him off and started tramping across the grass. “I’m going in there. I want to talk to her.”
“Hold up.” Bill flew past her, then looped back, fluttering a few inches in front of her face. “Now, this? This won’t do at all.”
He waved a finger in a circle, and Luce realized he was talking about her clothes. She was still in the Italian nurse’s uniform she’d worn during the First World War.
He grabbed the hem of her long white skirt and lifted it to her ankles. “What do you have on under there? Are those Converse? You’ve gotta be kidding me with those.” He clucked his tongue. “How you ever survived those other lifetimes without me …”
“I got along fine, thank you.”
“You’ll need to do more than ‘get along’ if you want to spend some time here.” Bill flew back up to eye level with Luce, then zipped around her three times. When she turned to look for him, he was gone.
But then, a second later, she heard his voice—though it sounded as if it was coming from a great distance. “Yes! Brilliant, Bill!”
A gray dot appeared in the air near the house, growing larger, then larger, until Bill’s stone wrinkles became clear. He was flying toward her now, and carrying a dark bundle in his arms.
When he reached her, he simply plucked at her side, and the baggy white nurse’s uniform split down its seam and slid right off her body. Luce flung her arms around her bare body modestly, but it seemed like only a second later that a series of petticoats was being tugged over her head.
Bill scrambled around her like a rabid seamstress, binding her waist into a tight corset, until sharp boning poked her skin in all sorts of uncomfortable places. There was so much taffeta in her petticoats that even standing still in a bit of a breeze, she rustled.
She thought she looked pretty good for the era—until she recognized the white apron tied around her waist, over her long black dress. Her hand went to her hair and yanked off a white servant’s headpiece.