Unraveling Timelines by Lise Breakey

Author:Lise Breakey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: families, precognition, paranormal romance, telepathy, fantasy, adventure, timewalking, parallel universes
ISBN: 9781936460748
Publisher: Candlemark & Gleam
Published: 2017-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

Cobbled pavement materialized underfoot. A brisk ocean wind rearranged the twilight sky and blew some of the fog out of Nikki’s head. “Okay,” she said, breathing easier. “Seriously. They can’t reach us here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, there are Hunters around here somewhere, but we’re a hundred years away from X and Y.”

Peter opened his eyes and his jaw hit the paving.

The arc-lamp streetlights were just coming on, and great Victorian block and brick buildings loomed over them. Naked power lines and telegraph wires netted the intersection, humming and sparking. COCA WINE for FATIGUE of BODY and MIND blared in letters painted ten feet high on the side of a building, reminding all time-travelers to be careful what they drank. Homburg hats, muttonchops, and sack coats paraded by. Shirtwaists and button-boots glided along the sidewalk, a swish of poplin fringe against kid leather. Traffic didn’t cruise—it rattled, jingled, and clip-clopped on the cobbles, squeaked, clanged, and grated along the rails. The air stank—sewage, manure, coal, and tobacco smoke.

“It’s in color!” he said, and she was grateful for the giggle that pushed itself out of her chest.

She held up the photograph of the Palazzo Building until she found the matching original: three stories of granite arches and windows in the Italian Renaissance style, all new from foundation to rooftop, suffused in cold amber as the lowering sun broke through seething cloud cover.

“Your dad’s here?”

“Should be. He built the place. Let’s go see.”

The locals were staring at them, curious, befuddled, cold, and in a couple of cases, outraged stares. She sighed for the contemporary clothes they’d had no time to change into. Their clothing didn’t exactly look out of place in this juncture, but it did look inappropriate on them. Blue jeans, worn exclusively by working men, neither concealed her gender nor sanctioned it. And though Peter would just look foreign if he were by himself in his oddly cut suit, together they were a mixed-race couple. His presence made her a whore; her presence made him a fiend.

She dealt with the hostility in the usual way: by moving too fast to register it. They crossed the street, dodging a Model A and a cab drawn by a bay Standardbred. Peter tugged against her grip—“Hey! Did you see that woman?”

She steered him around a steaming puddle. “What woman?”

“She was right there!” He pointed at a blank arch in the Palazzo wall. “A lady in a tangzhuang, and—”

“A what?”

“—and she was just gone!”

“I didn’t see anything.”

“Maybe I’m having visions again….”

A doorman blocked their way into the building, subtle as a billboard in royal blue with gold trim. A black guy, stress lines sunk deep in a still-young face probably just from being born here in the Progressive Era. His voice was deep and unexpectedly steady. “Can I help you, miss?”

She tightened her grip on Peter, who was wobbling a bit and inclined to stray. “Is my fath—is Mr. Varian in?”

“Do he know you?” the doorman asked.

“He will. I’m his daughter.”

The doorman rubbed his jaw.

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