Chapter 7
Dexter’s mood lightened as he wound the car through London traffic, keeping one eye on Ariana’s rapidly changing expressions at everything she saw. She gripped the door handle with one hand and her seatbelt with the other, gawking and squealing at regular intervals.
“What is it all for?” she asked, finally able to get words out. “Doesn’t your head pound after seeing all this every day?”
He grinned as she blinked her eyes against a particularly garish, flashing sign. “I suppose I’m used to it. I’ve always lived in London.”
“I have as well,” she said incredulously.
“I suppose it’s a fair bit different in your time.”
“My mum grew up like this?”
His smile faded at the sad ring to her voice. “Not quite like this. She’s from a much smaller town in the States. But she wouldn’t blink to see all this. Well, perhaps after so long away she would.”
“Why?” Ariana demanded. “Why did she stop visiting you? Why did you stop visiting us? It’s so unfair.”
He bit back on the reply that life wasn’t fair. He’d said that recently to Dahlia and gotten the sourest look ever before she slammed her door in his face. “I told you. The man who was able to do the spell to safely get us from time to time passed away. The portal is inconsistent to say the least.” They pulled into the car park for their flat and he turned to her. “There was no way to get from here to there anymore, plain and simple.”
“Rubbish,” she said, making no move to get out. He began to suspect she didn’t know how. “According to Mrs. Hedley my father supposedly dashed about in time. And my uncle is supposed to be so amazingly powerful. It’s rubbish that there was no way.”
“Uncle?” he asked, wracking his brain and not able to remember Ashford having a brother. And the Happenham relatives were anything but magical.
She sighed. “Uncle Kostya? He’s not really my uncle but he may as well be.”
He slapped his thigh as it all rushed back. “Ah, yes. His sister’s husband. From what I can recall being told he’d as soon cut off his own hand than use his powers. And with good reason.”
“He’s not married to Father’s sister anymore. She died long before I was born. And what reason?” she wailed.
He unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned over, popping open her side of the car. “Come along, let’s meet my lot. I’m sure you’re starving.” He could see she was about to protest but her stomach growled loudly. “Good, then. Follow me, young lady.”
He herded her up the elevator, surprised she wasn’t all that impressed with that bit of modern ingenuity. When it spilled them out on his floor, he could see her wavering, not wanting to leave the small, mirrored room. As the doors began to slide shut she jumped out with a gasp.
“Would it have taken me away?” she asked.
“Not unless you pressed a button,” he told her. He showed her how it worked, thinking he should have made her fearful of it. Now she had the means to easily escape and disappear into the wilds of twenty-first century London. Nonsense, he told himself. She came here to visit you. Cut her some slack.
He could hear yelling as soon as he pushed open the door. Dahlia was in her room hollering through the door at how unfair everything was. He glanced at Ariana to see if she could hear how foolish such an argument sounded. Her eyebrows shot up and she suddenly looked very small.
“Is that your daughter?”
“Step-daughter. And yes. She’s rather displeased with us at the moment. I take it you’ve never yelled at your parents?”
Her face turned redder than a pomegranate and she pressed her lips together. Emma came from their bedroom with a cold compress stuck to her forehead with a fluffy cotton headband. She had a yellowed note in her hand. She took in Ariana from head to toe, barely batting an eyelash at the sight of her fancy nineteenth century gown.
“Darling, this is my second cousin Ariana,” he said dutifully as she continued to inspect the gown. “Ariana, my wife, Emma.”
Ariana bobbed a curtsy. Before she could get a word out, Emma attacked. “That gown is beautiful but it’s not from the 1830s, which is when I believe you should be coming from.”
Dexter had been too upset over her appearing at all to take in her actual appearance, but now he noticed the differences in styles as well. He didn’t have as keen an eye for costumes as Emma but she was right. It seemed to come from a much later era. He had to remind himself with a sinking stomach that it wasn’t a costume at all, but what Ariana wore on a daily basis. Goodness, he was sunk if he couldn’t get her to go home soon. He almost couldn’t bear the thought of her wearing tattered jeans or ironic t-shirts with defunct band names on them.
“You didn’t come from the thirties?” he asked, doing the math. “You’re seventeen? That would be somewhere around 1832-ish?”
She scowled. “1832 is when I left my parents,” she sniffed. “The gown is from 1889.”
She seemed to dare them to ask why she was coming from a different time from the one in which she belonged, but he refused to give her the satisfaction. Until he remembered the letter. And the very reason she was never supposed to learn about her magical heritage in the first place.
“Bloody, bloody hell,” he said, looking hard at Emma, who still held the tattered, yellowing piece of paper.
“She’s safe now, at any rate,” Emma said, shooing them toward the kitchen. “Let’s get you both fed.” She raised a motherly brow at Ariana. “Dex missed his supper to collect you.”
Shockingly, she hung her head and apologized to him, breaking his heart a little.
