He set the pad aside and regarded the simple clay vessel Adala had been killed for. He’d been grinding his teeth all day over this. The poor woman had nothing of value in her pack when the thieving bastard Gaius took her life.
What a kingdom his brother ruled! Yet the nation across the western border was little better. The inventors of an amazing machine, a locomotive, practiced slavery, killed innocents in the arena, and slaughtered prisoners captured in battle, just as those in Virtus did. And the Mystics to the east? He’d heard tales of this tribe’s complicity in the capture of their own women to be sold as brides in Virtus, not to mention their branding of witches.
Oh, to find a people as noble as the pilgrims he’d met three years earlier! Worshipers of the one true God, disciples of a girl who never aged. Perhaps one day he’d cut across the border to Sanctimonia and track this Gabriella down. If she’d share with him the secrets for tolerance, kindness, and peace, he’d abandon his station in life and devote his final years to a higher purpose.
Quintus looked down at his feet. Who was he kidding? Gabriella would find him wanting. God would, as well. He could have protected Adala, but he hadn’t.
He dipped the pitcher into the rushing brook and brought it to his lips. Gritty desert water filled his mouth.
Unsanctified.
So unlike Adala’s wine.
* * *
Brewster shifted up and glanced around the bedroom. A tall oak dresser stood in exactly the right place, a foot from his window, across from his closet, and all in his Northbrook home. He sagged back down against his pillow.
If Carla had driven to Northbrook to change his past, something would be different by now. She’d be sleeping at his side. Loneliness wouldn’t be sucking the oxygen out of the room.
Two days had passed since their amazing meeting in the snowy wilds of Upstate New York. Had the cosmic merry-go-round stopped spinning for good?
No way. Either she’d visit him or he’d be whisked back to her again, and soon. To believe otherwise would be to believe an ordinary suburban existence complete with too much house, an unfulfilling job, and an unsuccessful stab at a writing career was all fate had in store for him. That couldn’t possibly be the destiny of a man linked to a woman as extraordinary as Carla or teased by a ponytailed imp who could twist time and space like a pretzel.
So…despite the pang of separation and the still unanswered questions about dangers looming at subway stations, the Virtus frontier, Sanctimonia, or wherever a puppet master might send either one of them next, he dragged himself out of bed to give life another shot.
A wonderfully hot shower breathed buoyancy into his soul. Afterward, he emailed Heather to let her know he’d be coming to work late. That way, he could take his time with breakfast, maybe enjoy a walk around the neighborhood, and perhaps finish off with a pilgrimage to the very spot in the street where he first met the woman of his dreams.
After a round of bacon and eggs, Brewster headed out of the house and down the block. The weather had turned colder, reminding him of the icy wind he’d endured hundreds of miles away and a year earlier. Or two days ago, depending on how he looked at it. Falling leaves paint-gunned the lawns in a variety of autumn colors. He caught a whiff of burning brush, a seasonal fragrance saying trick or treat. And so did the decorative pumpkins on streetlamps and stencils of witches and goblins in a few windows. Someone had even constructed a pirate ship and manned it with skeletons. Halloween loomed in the near future.
Or did it? He rounded the corner and came upon a house already decorated for Christmas. The sharp change in weather worried him. He couldn’t be sure whether he’d just finished touring a pre-Halloween neighborhood or one not fully dehaunted during the limbo of time stretching from that holiday to the big one. He didn’t even know the proper year.
With Gabriella and her wormholes always lurking, Brewster couldn’t simply assume anymore which page of the calendar or even which calendar he might have stumbled into. As he neared his house again, the dizzying sense of disorientation compelled him to seek reassurance, and fast. He snuck onto a neighbor’s porch and stole a quick peek at a newspaper waiting on the welcome mat. Whew. No less authority than the Chicago Tribune verified he was fine—right where and when he was supposed to be.
He glanced up at his own porch a few houses down. A policeman flanked by two other guys stood at his doorstep. Brewster swallowed. Maybe he wasn’t as fine as he’d been thinking.
Trespassing didn’t seem a good strategy anymore, so Brewster left the house he didn’t own and ambled over to the one he did, sizing up his three visitors along the way.
The cop was the same freckle-faced, starry-eyed young man who’d issued a warning several days earlier when Brewster cheated around a corner despite the no-turn-on-red sign in clear view on a lamppost. The friendly kid seemed like he’d just graduated from the local police academy and probably hadn’t seen any real action yet. Grizzled veterans, like the crew-cut, stony-eyed men now flanking this kid—plainclothes cops for sure—never gave warnings when a ticket would do. Not in his experience, anyway.
Tough as they seemed in some respects, those other two men could have won a Laurel and Hardy look-alike contest. The one on the left was shorter than average, red-faced, and about fifty pounds overweight. His thinner and taller pal on the right seemed to be favoring his side. The poor guy moved his hand
