Lucy felt the lab almost tremble with intent. Brad’s face was a comical combination of eagerness and guilt. He wanted so badly to try the machine. Badly enough to risk her life? Apparently. “Brad?”
He took a long breath. Fear flashed across his face before he pulled down a mask over both the fear and the eagerness. “You’ll be okay, Lucy.”
So that was it. He did want it that bad, but he didn’t have the courage to use it himself.
Casey looked at her. Brad looked at her.
It all came down to this moment. The months of obsession, the feeling of her life being without purpose, stale, and tasteless since her father died, her fascination with how happy Frankie Suchet had been. If she walked out now, what would she be walking out to? She had nothing out there. A successful business, maybe even wildly successful since Frankie and Henri had directed all their friends to frequent her shop, but it didn’t mean anything to her. She had no friends except a crazy old loon of a landlord and Brad, and Brad didn’t look to be a great friend right now. She had nothing but her obsession with the book. And if she walked out, they’d never let her take the book with her. That left . . . nothing. Her life beyond the walls of this lab had not a shred of magic in it. But here, in this sterile place, magic hung in the air, delivered across time by a magician named da Vinci.
A thrill of . . . expectation made it hard for Lucy to breathe. How long since she had had expectations of life? A feeling of rightness washed over her. Everything was about to change, and that was as it should be. Her breathing calmed. “Okay.” She turned to the machine. “Rev up your lunch box, Brad.”
Brad looked back at Casey. Casey nodded. Brad took a breath and turned to the machine. “Get me more light,” he called over his shoulder.
“Nix. That’d attract attention,” Casey snapped. He turned off the light on the table. “Only the work lights.”
Brad knelt in front of the machine without further protest.
“Let me watch you,” Lucy said, leaning over him. “I’ll have to start it up myself to make it back.” She watched him flipping lighted switches and murmured the pattern to herself. “Blue, then the two whites from left to right, twice, and then the red.”
The machine began to hum. Vibrations just at the edge of her awareness filled the room. She steadied her breathing. She was going to do this. How . . . miraculous was that? The right feeling pushed her fear behind some kind of curtain in her mind. She knew all the things that could happen. She could get stuck in the past. She’d probably be burned as a witch. A red-haired witch. It was an insane risk. She just didn’t care anymore. All this was meant to happen. “Okay, to you two it will probably seem as if only a moment has elapsed before I reappear.” She closed the book, tucked it into her bag, and slung the bag on her shoulder. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“You should leave the book here.” Brad was trying to sound like Casey. Not.
“Hey, I’m not going back to who-knows-when without my references.”
“Let her take it,” Casey said. “Does us no good if the thing doesn’t work.” He nodded to her. There was respect in his eyes.
“I’ll go back far enough that they’ll be in awe of me and my machine.” She was wearing the outfit she’d worn to the Exploratorium, a flippy knit skirt and matching slinky jacket over a green shell, and ballet slipper flats.
“Better pick summertime,” Casey said, echoing her thoughts. “Hate to see you ruin those shoes in snow.” Was Casey kidding? How did you know with a guy like that?
“You got it.”
“Give her all your change,” Casey ordered Brad. “Just in case she’s there long enough to need to buy food and lodging. Silver is good.” They each piled a handful of coins into her bag.
“I won’t be there long. I’m going to figure out where I am, grab something to bring back with me as proof, and hightail it back here.” Was that true? She stepped up under the machine in front of the lever topped by that impossibly huge diamond.
Brad knelt by the lunch box again. “After you do the switch sequence push this chrome button here, and that will start the power.” It was a rounded pad you pressed with your palm.
She nodded and put both hands over the diamond knob. Brad slapped the button. The power hum passed out of hearing range, but she could feel it in her chest and throat. She pulled the lever down. No gears moved. The feeling of power in the air made it difficult to breathe. At last the big gear in the central portion of the machine creaked.
God, it was going to happen! She had to think of a time period. The small gears began to spin, faster and faster. Shakespearean England? Fin de siècle France? She spoke French pretty well. The gears whirred until they were only a blur. She couldn’t decide! A white glow filled the room. She thought Brad was shouting, or maybe it was Casey. She couldn’t make out the words.
What she really wanted was to go back to a time when magic was possible. Any time, it didn’t matter—a time when people believed in magic and it transformed their lives.
The gears seemed to stop; time hung suspended. Oh no! Did Brad’s lunch box not provide enough power? Or was Leonardo’s design flawed? The glow was cut by a hundred beams of light, colored like the jewels. They crisscrossed the ceiling, illuminating the girders above. What was happening here? She felt that possibility of magic she’d imagined receding. A sense of loss suffused her. . . .
Then everything happened impossibly fast. The sensation of time slowing changed in an instant to a feeling of being flung forward from a slingshot, and everything was a blur and she was screaming, only she couldn’t hear herself scream. . . .
Chapter 2
Her breath was knocked back into her as she hit the ground. Grass, punctuated with great gouged muddy places. The earth shook as the machine thunked in behind her. She blinked, disoriented. Around her shouts and screams reverberated. Dim figures leaned forward through the smoke. Were they peering at her? And what was that other smell? Like a butcher shop.
It was blood.
Lucy got to her hands and knees, clutching her bag. My God, it actually worked! Leonardo had built a time machine. In spite of all her obsession, all her daydreaming, she hadn’t really thought it would. Figures loomed out of swirling smoke, frozen, peering at the machine. Where in God’s name was she? A single bulky figure brought up a sword and cleaved another in the neck. The bearded man dropped to his knees with a scream. All around her men sprang into action. Steel clanged on steel.
She’d landed in the middle of a battle. And the fact that she’d appeared so suddenly had meant but a moment’s interruption in the carnage. She staggered to her feet. Giant men in chain mail and leather greaves with huge sharp axes and swords that looked impossibly heavy surged around her. Hair and beards flowed out from under peaked helmets with nosepieces. Saxons? Vikings? Maybe she was in the time of King Arthur. The smell of blood and sweat and smoke was almost overwhelming. Lucy choked as a giant of a man lunged for her. She screamed and pulled away. He turned to parry a sword thrust by another giant. She scurried to the shelter of the machine. Get this thing started and get out of here, wherever and whenever here is.
She crouched beside the silver lunch box. “Blue switch. Check. Two whites. Check, check.” Her voice trembled. She looked up at a shout and saw a man lose his head. She screamed. She’d seen it in movies a lot. But real was something else entirely. No comforting latex, no soothing CGI. Blood spurted. The body staggered forward even as the head thudded to the ground and rolled. The attacker whirled away, beset on all sides.