She swallowed this with horror and vowed never to help him again. See how he does without me, she thought. The Batman installment succeeded and records were broken once more, the highest trilogy takings of all time. More parties were thrown; people inside their LA bubble behaved toward Jack as though he had cured cancer. Sofia went off to shoot another film in Prague, while Jack stayed in LA. Their relationship remained suspended in a frosty holding pattern.
The studio ordered a fourth Batman in the wake of the trilogy’s success. The trade papers alleged that paychecks for director and stars would run to eight figures. But Peter was looking quite old by then, maybe too old to play Batman once more. He had reached his late forties; he’d lost weight and his neck skin hung loose. Rumors abounded: the studio would be replacing him; they were already searching for a new Batman.
Sofia called Peter every day in support. He had a fierce team of agents and handlers who put up a fight, and everything came to a head between the studio and Peter’s camp. Words were thrown, endorsements were threatened, and Peter looked set to depart.
Turned out, they did not replace Batman. They replaced Batgirl.
To make Peter look younger, they put him next to a younger woman. As soon as Sofia heard their decision, she nodded with wisdom. Of course they’d replaced her, not him.
As for Jack, he privately raged to Sofia about unfairness and disloyalty, but he said nothing publicly. When a few journalists asked him his opinion about no longer directing his wife in the film series that had made them both famous, he said it wasn’t appropriate to comment when the new film was still in preproduction, like it was a court case and he didn’t want to influence the jury. Sofia took the sting and added it to the list of tiny treacheries they had enacted upon each other. When Sofia returned to LA, they separated.
She had always thought this was the moment when Jack changed. She thought she could change him back, if they could just spend time together again, but it was Sofia who had changed, and actually Jack had been the same all along. Even on that first night, he’d thought of her a certain way.
“You’re too beautiful to know all this,” he had said to her when she’d arrived fuming on his doorstep and told him how to direct a movie. She had taken it as a compliment at the time, which it may have been, but now she saw another side to those words. It was as though Jack had accused her of treachery, of misrepresentation, of some cunning trick, that she’d gone to his house pretending to be one thing, then turned out to be something else. She knew Jack thought she was beautiful, but if that were to change, would he value her at all? In the beginning, he had seemed to adore her, to need her so much. Sofia was sure Jack had loved her, at least for a while, but now she suspected there was also a bit of hate mixed up in that love.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
As the time drew near for Jane and Fred’s midnight departure to the secret location, Jane marked the whole endeavor as folly. She sat by the sitting room window and chewed her lip. Sofia had again promised to get Jane back to 1803, assuring Jane she’d made progress on the mission, before leaving the house with a cheerful wave. Jane had thanked her, racked with guilt. She possessed a singular ally in Sofia, and to sneak from the house and defy her in this way not only invited censure, it abounded in stupidity and took Jane one step further down the path of not returning to 1803. Leaving the house invited only ruin.
Yet she could not bring herself to decline him. She put on the nicest of the shirts and men’s trousers Sofia had given her and brushed her hair many times, cursing herself as she did so. She clicked a magic candle on and off and worked herself into such a state that she did not notice when Fred entered the room.
“What are you doing?” Fred asked her with an amused look. He wore a green shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows and black trousers, and his eyes shone an agitating shade of emerald.
Jane ceased her abuse of the candle switch. “Nothing at all,” she said with a shrug. “I merely admire this desk lamp.” She ran her finger along the lamp’s arm and pretended to study it.
Fred smirked. “You are a fan of desk lamps in general? Or this one in particular?”
“I am an ardent fan of all lighting contrivances,” she replied. She looked up from the apparatus. She did not know how to feel at that point: annoyed at his continued teasing or terrified at what was about to happen. She settled for a combination of both.
“Shall we go?”
They walked through dark streets to the center of Bath. “Where are we going?” Jane said. Fred did not answer.
They arrived at a cast-iron gate. Fred opened a heavy lock and slid back a chain. He swung the gate open and held out his hand. Jane took it and he led her inside a stone building. Jane strained her eyes to see where they were, but darkness enshrouded them. His hand felt warm on hers; she commanded her breath to slow. Her mind darted this way and that; she could focus on no single thought for longer than a moment.
They stepped under an arch and entered a cavernous tunnel, carved from stone. A rocky path of smashed flagstone lay under their feet. Fred pulled her along. Jane tripped on
