The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance

Holly Lisle Last Thorsday Night

The Thorsday Night Writers were getting down to business when a cold autumn wind swirled through the room, leaving a tall, rugged blond in its wake. He stood in the doorway, looking a little lost and a lot out of place — a man who did not belong.

It’s hard to look out of place in a writers’ group — especially one like ours, which specializes in science fiction and fantasy.

Jason MFA-Working-on-PhD had the mandatory professorial waist-length ponytail, goatee and tweed jacket; William I-Write-Bleeding-Edge-Crossover dressed only in black turtlenecks and black jeans; Carol My-Tiny-Heroines-Can-Kick-Your-Big-Ol’-Heroes’-Asses dyed her hair carrot orange in homage to Robert Heinlein’s heroines, wore elf-green contact lenses, and favoured spandex — which admittedly looked fantastic on her; Apocalypse-and-Dystopia Tophe (short for Christopher) had run out of places to tattoo, and had moved on to making sure he’d never pass through a metal detector alive; and Shora I-Only-Write-in-the-Nude (who thankfully wasn’t writing at the moment), favoured low-cut skintight angora sweaters, miniskirts, and six-inch heels when she did deign to dress. An ex-stripper, she was smart and tough, hated her job as an office manager, and wrote unfinished fantasy novels about women who conquered the universe by lying on their backs.

In contrast, the stranger’s summer-blond hair was short and neat, and he wore a plain dark-brown T-shirt with a pocket — no clever sayings — and faded blue jeans a little on the tight side (bless you, handsome newcomer). He did have well-defined muscles; what he did not have was a Look. “Sorry I’m late,” he said to Jason, and my heart hit the floor at the rumble of his voice. Oh, that voice. “I had a little trouble finding the place. Thank you for inviting me.”

He glanced at everyone in the room, studied me for a longer moment, and gave me the sort of smile a five-year-old gives an icecream cone. He strode through the circle of folding chairs and took the empty seat to the right of mine.

Which simply doesn’t happen.

Because. me, I’m the woman men notice when there aren’t any busty twenty-something ex-lap dancers or sylphlike Heinlein heroines around. We were full-up on both, and they had empty seats next to them, too.

The new guy swung his enormous backpack to the floor beside him, where it made a substantial thud, pulled a legal pad and pen out of it, then leaned over to me and whispered, “What have I missed?”

All the oxygen leaving the room, I thought. When did that happen?

I managed to find my voice though, and I said, “Pizza. When Jason hosts, he always has pizza for us before the meeting.”

“No writing yet?”

“No. Official start time is in ten minutes. You’re not actually late,” I told him. “We ’re waiting for two other writers to arrive — Narnie, who has a long drive to get here, and Tyler.” I’d been halfheartedly and sporadically dating Tyler for about four months, a fact I suddenly wished wasn’t true.

Tyler arrived like the king for his coronation, spotted the stranger sitting beside me, and glared at him. He came over and took the empty seat on my other side, leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Who’s he?”

“New guy,” I whispered back. “Jason invited him. We haven’t done introductions yet. We’re still waiting on Narnie.”

Narnie Hampstead was our resident pro. She had fifteen published novels, plus a bunch of shorts in various magazines. Jason had an MFA and taught creative writing, but Narnie actually wrote for a living. She was the one whose crits we all saved and double-checked as we were writing and revising.

The rest of us were wannabes. I was the Wannabe-Least-Likely-to-Ever-Publish-Anything.

It wasn’t that I didn’t write. Seven completed novels gathered dust and mouse droppings in the trunk at the foot of my bed, and I could not muster the courage to send out any of them.

After a year in the group, I’d finally brought myself to read Wall of Rivers, the best of my trunk novels, to everyone. Narnie told me I should send it out, that it was really good.

But I hadn’t. I couldn’t.

Next to me, the stranger was introducing himself. I realized Narnie had come in and taken her seat while my head was in the clouds.

“Thanks, Jason,” the stranger said. “I’m Per Tordönsson. I’m just getting started writing. I didn’t bring anything to read tonight. I want to see how this works first.”

Both Carol and Shora oozed “Hi, Per,” in melting tones. Beside me, Tyler snorted.

“I’m Nila,” I told Per. “I write, but I haven’t sold anything yet.”

Per looked into my eyes and smiled again. All he said was, “Wonderful to meet you,” but he said it like he meant it. Really meant it. Like meeting me was the most important thing he’d done all year.

There may be a moment in every woman’s life when she sees someone she doesn’t know and, for just that moment, wants what she cannot have because every cell in her body is screaming at her that this. this is the person she’s supposed to be with. Or maybe that’s just me. But right then, right there, feeling the bass vibrations of Per’s voice resonating in my chest, staring back into his eyes, with his left knee bumping my right one. that was my moment.

I wanted.

I could feel Tyler stiffen in the seat on my other side. He put his arm around me and said, “I’m Tyler Boothe Mayall, the defence attorney. I intend to be the John Grisham of fantasy.” He was a Thorsday Night charter member, and he’d been using that as his introduction since I joined.

Per called him on it. “Terry Brooks beat you to that thirty years ago, big guy.” This caused Tophe and Carol, who couldn’t stand Tyler, to burst out laughing. Giggles echoed around the rest of the room. I stifled my own laugh, but not fast enough.

Tyler’s arm around me tightened.

The tension between the two men grew palpable.

After Tophe finished reading his latest reworking of his third chapter, which should have been called “Why My Hero Should Drink Arsenic Right Now and Make the World a Better Place”, Per gave Tyler a sidelong glance that would have killed small animals at a hundred yards.

Tyler glared at Per and groped me, and I shook him off. The two of us were not there — never had been.

They were two big dogs, circling. I had no idea what was going on.

But whatever it was, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Halfway through the meeting, Tyler leaned over and murmured in my ear, “Why don’t we get out of here and go to your place? I have court tomorrow morning, and I don’t think I can stand any more of Shora reading.”

While I agreed with him on Shora — her heroine that night had already slept with a werewolf, a were-tiger, two dark elves (one male, one female, both at the same time), and was at that moment being chased by a vampire through the reptile display at the zoo, where I winced to think what was going to desire her next — I was sitting beside the handsome enigma, and the burning question on my mind was, if I hung around, would he smile at me again? Besides, Thorsday Nights only happened every other week, and I loved them. “I still haven’t read yet,” I told him. “I brought chapter one of my new story, and I want to get some feedback.”

Tyler said, “Read it another night. I don’t want you going home alone. I don’t trust your neighbourhood,” but he wasn’t looking at me when he said it. He was looking at Per Tordönsson.

Per Tordönsson. Who rested a hand lightly on my shoulder and said, “Nila, please stay and read your chapter. I’d love to hear it.” He looked past me to Tyler. “I’ll see her home, or one of the other men here will.”

“She doesn’t know you, and neither do I,” Tyler said.

Tyler had a point. Per’s interest in me, in my writing. it was completely out of place. It unnerved me. But I didn’t want to leave the meeting. I was having fun.

And Tyler was being possessive way past anything our half-dozen dates entitled him to. We weren’t a couple. We hadn’t slept together. He’d driven me home one night and had stayed over because it was so late, but he’d spent the night on the couch. And brought me breakfast in bed the next morning, which he’d gone out to get, and which had creeped me out, though I couldn’t figure out why.

“I haven’t invited you over,” I told Tyler. “And I’m having fun. My neighbourhood’s good, and I’ll be fine.”

He looked completely unbothered that I’d blown him off. “I’ll drop by first thing in the morning, sweetheart,” he said, loud enough that Shora stopped reading, which was a blessing, and that everyone else looked at the two of us with surprise, which was awkward.

Tyler was one of those men who didn’t get it. We weren’t working out, but he seemed to think we were. I decided in that instant that our last date had been just that. The last.

“I’ll bring you breakfast in bed again, baby,” he added.

He might as well have peed on my leg. He was telling Per, “Don’t be there,” without actually coming out and saying it. As if Per and I. well, as if there were any possibility for there being a “Per and I”.

“Don’t,” I said.

I was glad to see Tyler leave.

The rest of the evening was fun. Long, but fun. I read, and people made useful comments. Per sat silent after I finished reading, blinking like he was trying not to cry, which was crazy, because my first chapter wasn’t sad at all. He reached over and touched my hand once, just brushed it, and said, “Thank you.”

I didn’t know what to make of that.

Narnie read. Jason read. The Thorsday Nighters talked. We laughed.

At 3 a.m., we were all packing up and telling tired, silly jokes just prior to heading out the door, when Per stepped in front of me and took a deep breath and said, “Before you go, can I show you something?”

I looked at the earnest expression on his face, and said, “Sure.”

He turned so his back was to everyone in the room but me, and pulled a book out of his backpack. He put a finger to his lips, then handed it over.

I took it, turned it over, and saw the title. Wall of Rivers.

My title.

My heart started to race, and when I glanced at the author’s name, I had to sit down.

Nila Sturgess.

It was a new copy, printed beautifully by a publisher I’d never heard of. I opened it to the middle and out of habit sniffed the pages. There is no smell like book.

I turned to the copyright page.

And closed my eyes.

Wall of Rivers was in its thirty-seventh printing, with a copyright renewal in the name of the Estate of Tyler Boothe Mayall. And a print date more than fifty years in the future.

I turned to the back of the book, to the author photo on the inside flap of the dust jacket. The picture was mine — one Tyler had talked me into having taken only a few weeks earlier. “Because you’re so pretty,” he said, “and when you’re famous, you’re going to want a nice picture of you when you were young to go inside your books.”

It was the stupidest reason I’d ever heard for someone wanting a photo. I figured he’d just wanted it for himself.

But. there it was. I turned to the first page. The words were my words.

I handed the book back to Per, and saw how badly my hand was shaking.

Per took it, and touched my fingers lightly in the process. What he said next was the biggest understatement I’d ever heard.

“We need to talk.”

We went to an all-night diner — one of those chains where you can have breakfast or dinner twenty-four hours a day. It had the advantage of being public while still being anonymous. Wall of Rivers was the manuscript Tyler had asked to read the night he stayed over because he said he was having trouble getting to sleep. I would have been insulted, but Tyler did not exactly have a way with tact. I’d put it down to him being him, and hadn’t thought about it again.

But now I needed an explanation. How and where had my novel come to be published, what did the date and number of printings on the copyright page mean, why did Tyler’s estate own the copyright? How had Per gotten his hands on it?

I ordered a diet drink. I didn’t think I was going to like what he would say, and diet cola was all I could trust my stomach to keep down.

Per, on the other hand, ordered half of everything on the menu.

He started by saying, “I’m not supposed to be here, and I’m screwing things up by doing this. But I love your books. You’ve been my favourite author for years.”

I shivered. He was heading into the territory I’d feared.

“You want a sweater?” he asked. “I have one in my bag.”

“I’m. fine,” I lied, which was clearly the stupidest thing anyone has ever said. I was a long damn way from fine. He shook his head, his half-smile telling me I wasn’t fooling either of us.

“No, you’re not. How could you be?”

“I started out being fine,” I amended. And that was true enough. He’d sat beside me at Thorsday Night, he’d smiled at me, and he’d made my heart beat faster. But now everything had gotten scary, and I had to ask. “You’re not from. here. are you?”

“Swedish Institute of Historical Research, Time Validation Division,” he said. “In Helsingborg.”

“That’s where. How about when?” I’d written time travel. I was proud of myself for making the leap so sensibly, for not falling apart over the situation that was presenting itself to me. I was, I thought, at least as cool as my characters right then. I was a bit freaked out. But I’d seen one of my future books. So at least I knew I was going to eventually get up the nerve to send out my work. And that when I did, at least one of them would sell.

The idea that I might also end up marrying Tyler, though, wasn’t doing too much for the residual pizza churning in my stomach.

Per nodded. “I’m from about sixty years ahead. But you and I don’t have much time. We mustn’t talk about me. You have to know the truth about you before you go home tonight.”

Something about the way he said “tonight” made my skin crawl.

“Why tonight. specifically?”

He reached into his bag and pulled out a ring binder. It was gunmetal grey, and made of a material as cool and hard as metal, but as pliant as plastic, impressively space-age-y.

He handed it to me, and said, “Skim. You’ll get the gist of this quickly.”

The binder held copies of newspaper articles far more exotic than the originals had ever been: the paper was creamy with a semi-gloss finish, and the words on the first page scrolled down as I read them. I didn’t have to touch anything. The paper seemed to be tracking my eye movement and helpfully putting the next words I needed to read where I needed them to be.

Any doubts I had about the legitimacy of my printed book were laid to rest by the binder with its tech-we-don’t-have-yet paper. Per Tordönsson was from the future.

And the date on the first article was tomorrow. no. We weren’t in the middle of Thorsday Night any more. We’d slipped into plain old Friday morning. The paper’s date was today. The headline read WOMAN SLAIN BY INTRUDER IN HOME INVASION. The photo Tyler had badgered me into getting identified me as “woman slain”.

I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around myself. “I should have let Tyler take me home,” I said.

“No,” Per said. “You did the right thing. Just keep skimming.”

There was an article where Tyler said my murder was a huge tragedy, that I’d just sold my first novel, that we were engaged, that I had no one else in the world. That we’d been so happy together. The bit about me having no one else in the world was true enough. But everything else was a lie.

Through newspaper articles, videos (also on the amazing paper, with sound included) and copies of legal documents dated well into the future, I discovered that Tyler had somehow had himself designated the executor of my estate. He’d managed my first novel sale into a bestseller by playing heavily on my emerging talent cut short by the tragedy of my brutal murder. I tried hard not to think too much about the “brutal” part.

It didn’t hurt that the books had been good. But the promotion had been. well. inspired.

I looked up at Per.

“I’ve loved you. your work. since I found the first book by you,” he said. He put his hand on mine and said, “You are a brilliant writer. And I lo—” He shook his head.

I couldn’t catch my breath. “I. you. ”

He touched a finger to my lips and said, “You have to understand the situation — quickly — because there are some choices you must make. I need to know what you want. Your work has become classic in my time. Millions of people have read you, have had their lives changed and made better by your stories. You’re famous, you’re beloved.” He took a deep breath, and continued, “But all the probabilities suggest that your work only found its audience because you died so horribly — and because Tyler Boothe Mayall jumped in to market your just-sold book on your death. The odds are that if you had lived, all seven of your novels would have stayed in the trunk in your bedroom, along with any others that you might have written, and neither I nor anyone else would have ever heard of you.”

So.

If I died later this morning, I could be famous. Big-time famous. My words would live on long past my final breath. I would achieve the sort of literary immortality most writers dream of — and almost none get.

If I lived, odds were good that when I was dead no one would know I’d been here.

He was watching my eyes, looking for answers there. I doubted he could find any.

I buried my face in my hands.

I loved writing. And I loved the stories I told, the characters I created, the themes I explored and pursued and eventually pinned down and answered. I wanted people to read what I’d done, to love it as much as I did. And I wanted to leave something of me behind when I was gone.

But I loved breathing, too. I loved waking up in the morning to the sunlight falling across my face. I loved walking the block to work, where I was a copywriter for a small ad agency. I loved the taste of cherries in summer and apples in autumn, the way my muscles burned when I stretched, and the way my heart pounded in rhythm with my feet when I ran.

I could be immortal if I died today.

I could be nobody at all if I lived tomorrow.

But the odds were I couldn’t have both my life and my fame.

“Writers dream about reaching millions,” I said. “But we also dream about being around to enjoy it.”

He nodded. “I know. And I can’t know how long you will live if you don’t die today, or how much more you will write. There are no odds for that, no way to predict, no way to track what didn’t happen. But I can tell you. having heard the first chapter of your new book, I would give anything to read the rest of it.”

I frowned. “Only. whether I live or die, you never will. Because either I won’t live to write it. or I won’t manage to publish it.”

“Those aren’t exactly the options. Don’t worry about what comes next. Or about me. Tell me what you want now. Do you want to become as famous as. well, not Shakespeare, but as famous as Tolkien? If you have to die today to do it? I know some writers would give anything for that guarantee.” He took a deep breath, and said, “Or would you want to live, knowing that if you do, odds are no one will ever know who you were?”

I drank the last of my diet soda and put my hand over his. “How long do I have to make up my mind?”

“Your murder happens at 7.24 a.m.”

I looked at my watch. It was 4.10 a.m.

I put my hand on his and said, “I have to go home. I want you to come with me.”

“I. ” He looked away and blinked and swallowed, and I saw one tear slide down the side of his nose.

Without another word, he went to the counter and paid the bill, and we walked out together.

He was staring at his shoes as he walked me to my car. “So you have decided? You want to die and be famous in the world you leave behind?”

“No, Per. I just want to know there’s something worth living for.

I had to go back to my place. My gut demanded it, but my mind wouldn’t say why.

I couldn’t run away. Well, I could — running away had been what I’d been best at my whole life, frankly. Foster homes, jobs, relationships.

But holding the book I’d written in my hands and knowing I hadn’t lived to see it published, that someone I didn’t like much had taken my work and my passion and made it successful after I was dead because I hadn’t had the guts to even try while I was alive.

Yeah. I had to go back to my place. I didn’t know what was going to happen there, but I wanted to have a say in what did.

Per didn’t talk much on the drive over.

He sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. When I glanced over at him I could see the muscles in his jaw working. I realized he was angry. I wasn’t sure why.

Finally he said, “You know why I came back?”

I should have asked that. “No.”

“I’ve been reading and rereading your books since I was fifteen. They changed me. They gave me a way of looking at the world that I don’t think I could have found on my own. I’m a better man because I read you than I ever would have been without you. And there are a lot of people like me out there, which is why your books are still selling. You said something that mattered.

“But,” he continued, “the whole story of how you died never felt right to me. Your lawyer fiancé—”

“Tyler has never been my fiancé. He’s someone I’ve gone out with about maybe six or seven times in the last four months. He belongs to the same writers’ group I do. That’s it.”

Per bit his lip and took a deep breath, and I realized my relationship with Tyler was beside the point at the moment.

“The man everyone in my time thinks was your lawyer fiancé told a good story. He had all the paperwork to prove you’d made him your designated heir and the executor of your estate. The signature on your publishing contract perfectly matched the signatures on everything else he had on his desk—”

“I never signed a contract,” I said.

“I know that now,” he said, and the muscles in his jaw jumped harder. I told myself to shut up and let the man finish. He said, “In my time, I went through everything available on your life, because there was this air of wrongness about your lawyer.”

I forced my mouth shut, but I thought, He’s not my lawyer, as loudly as I could.

“When I read the interviews that didn’t get wide coverage, I realized your Thorsday Night Writers were too surprised that the two of you were engaged, and absolutely flat-footed that you’d sold a novel and hadn’t even mentioned it at the last meeting you attended.” He glanced over at me, his expression unreadable. “So I became a field historian — a time-travelling researcher — because I needed the truth. Always in the back of my mind I held this tiny hope that one day I might be able to travel back to see you while you were alive. Maybe even talk to you. Nothing consequential, nothing that would change anything. But just. I held that hope.” His voice broke, and his body tensed.

I sat silent for a moment. “And now you’re doing something that is almost certain to change the future,” I said. “Why?”

“One week ago in my time, I made a registered trip back to this morning. A few hours from now. To your apartment. I’d spent the last two years building a case against Tyler Boothe Mayall being your legitimate heir, and I presented my case to the Head of Literature Research. Because you’re an important historical figure, my request to validate Tyler Mayall’s story about his association with you went through. I was allowed to come back here, set up recorders in your room and in Tyler’s home and office to document the specific details of your death and his actions following it. Once the recorders were in place, I had to leave. I couldn’t be in the room because just my presence could break the rules of historical engagement.

“I did the standard three-month forward-time transfer to a point when I knew both apartments and the office would be empty, and I dropped myself in, extracted the recorders, and went back to my own time.”

“One week ago — in my time — I saw the man who killed you break into your room, almost the way Tyler said it had happened. Except that prior to his breaking in, Tyler used his key to let himself into your apartment while you were still at the meeting, and unlocked your bedroom window. I saw him do it. And I saw the intruder. ”

Per’s voice broke again. He took a deep breath as I pulled into the parking lot in front of my apartment. The apartment in which an unlocked window would be used by a murderer intent on killing me.

I’d never given Tyler a key to my place. But he had spent a night over. Had brought me breakfast the next morning. Had left the house to do it.

Per said, “The intruder slapped duct tape over your mouth while you were sleeping, and then. ” He shook his head. “He brought both a knife and a gun. You didn’t die quickly. It was the. horrific details of your murder that made your death famous enough to guarantee immediate public recognition when your publisher overnighted your book to the stands. Several million copies of your first novel sold. The quality of your work — and Tyler flogging the tragedy of your death every time he and your publisher brought another one of your trunk novels to print — kept you a household name. But. ”

He turned and stared into my eyes. “You weren’t yet dead and your killer was still busy with you when Tyler got there.”

“And tried to save me?”

We sat there in the parking lot, in the dark, and Per took my hand, and held it tightly between both of his. It was as if our hands had been created just to fit into each other like that.

He said, “No. Tyler told the killer to hurry up, because he had other things to do.”

I had no words.

I fell into the darkness inside my head for a long time, until pain pulled me back to the world. I realized the stick shift was digging into my right hip, and that Per had his arms around me, and that I was sobbing into his shirt.

“Oh, God,” I whispered. “And you came back to. to what? If you change history and I don’t die, won’t you have never read my books? Won’t there be a paradox that will make it impossible for you to come back at all? The fact that you’re here means that I have to die, doesn’t it? You just came to be with me, to. give me something to put me to sleep or something so my death wouldn’t be so awful, and then you’re going back. ”

“No,” he said. “You don’t have to die. I’m not here officially. It took me a week — my time — to arrange my absence and bribe the people who could get me here. If you wanted to guarantee that your work would live on after you do, I did bring something you could take so that you wouldn’t wake up during your murder.” His arms tightened around me, and his voice went hoarse. “If that was what you wanted.

“But that’s not why I came back. That’s not why I became a historical researcher. That’s not why I specialized in literary research. Nila, I fell in love with you through your books when I was fifteen. You were in them, in every one of them, and I wanted to meet you. And in person, at the meeting tonight, you were the woman who wrote those books. I was afraid I’d be disappointed, that you wouldn’t be anything like what came through in your work — but it was you. The you I’d known existed. The you I’ve loved for half of my life.”

“If I don’t die, you’ll never read me. You’ll never become a historical researcher.”

“I’m here, Nila. And I’ve already read every book you wrote, and I loved every word, but more than the books, I love the woman who wrote them. And I’d rather have you alive and unknown than dead for the betterment of millions of strangers. That’s selfish. But just knowing that you didn’t die today would get me through a whole lot of years.”

“If I live, you’ll lose your job, won’t you?”

He managed a laugh. “It’s more complicated than that. But yes. At the very least, I’ll lose my job.” I felt his hands against my back clench into fists. “Screw the job.”

I pulled out of his embrace. “How much time do we have before. you have to go back?”

“The killer comes through the window at 7.24 a.m. We have two hours and forty-eight minutes.”

“Come on,” I told him. “We have to hurry.”

I nearly dragged him through the door and locked it behind us.

“You love me?” I whispered when we were inside.

“I love you,” he said.

“I’ve never been in love,” I told him. “And I’ve never had anyone who loved me. I’ve wanted, and dreamed, and hoped, and looked, but there was never anyone. There may never be anyone again.” I reached up and touched his face. “But right now, just this once, I want to know what it feels like to be loved. To love. In the little time we have, can we. Can we do that?”

He pulled me into his arms and kissed me.

I don’t know about perfect kisses. I know only that I will never forget that one. In Per’s touch, in his taste, in his hunger lay the promise of a lifetime of wonder.

We held each other, undressed each other, moved over and against and into each other, and I knew that our one brief moment wasn’t going to be enough.

It wasn’t the sex. I’d had good sex.

This was everything. It was knowing that he knew me, and knowing that I needed to know him just as well. It was wanting to hear all his stories, wanting to wake up every morning to roll over in bed and find him there. It was needing to walk down the street holding his hand, and wanting to sit on the couch beside him, not doing anything in particular, because being with him, just breathing the same air, had a magic to it that I had never had before.

And was never going to have again.

There wasn’t ever going to be another moment for us. And there wasn’t ever going to be another him.

We lay in my bed afterwards, and I realized he was looking at me with a worried expression. “I’m. sorry?” he said.

I realized I was crying.

“It’s not. It wasn’t you. You were — you are amazing. Wonderful. I just. ” I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath and said, “I’ve been waiting all my life to meet the man I wanted to be with. I knew when I found him, I’d know. And now I know. And I can’t have you.”

“You would want me?”

“I do want you.”

He looked away, and I saw his jaw working again. Under his breath, he muttered something that sounded a lot like “. no guarantees. ” And then he said, “Your computer. is it on? Is your internet connection working?”

“I shut down the computer, but I have broadband. The internet will work as soon as the computer comes on.”

He nodded, pulled on underwear and his jeans, grabbed his backpack. He said, “We’re almost out of time. I’ll be right back. Stay here.”

I nodded, and he jogged out of the bedroom. I wondered what he wanted with my computer. I wondered even more what he wanted with the internet. I heard the computer’s boot-up sound, and him walking around in the living room, and then a couple of quick taps on the keyboard. And then nothing. A whole lot of nothing. I waited. That “stay here” had sounded important.

Then I heard footsteps on the little patio outside my bedroom window, and I looked at the clock.

7.23 a.m.

7.23 a.m.

I stopped thinking at all.

I stared at the window, shuddering, willing my body to move. I heard the aluminum frame start sliding open. The blinds were drawn, so I was in near blackness. There were no sounds from the living room any more. Which meant.?

That Per had realized he was out of time, and had used the internet to connect to his time travel device?

That he’d been. beamed home?

Or that time had grabbed him and ripped him away from me while he was trying to stop it?

It didn’t matter. He was gone.

And there was a killer outside my window.

I keep a baseball bat under my bed. I couldn’t in the orphanage, when I had plenty of reason to want one, but as soon as I got into foster care, I found a way to acquire one. Mostly I didn’t need it. Once, with a dreadful foster family, I did.

The aluminum bat lay under my bed.

I grabbed it and moved fast, because there wasn’t much time. I ran to the window.

The digital display on my alarm clock changed to 7.24 a.m. There were no more sounds outside my window. But Per had been very clear: 7.24. He’d seen the recording of my murder.

7.24 became 7.25 a.m, and someone politely tapped on the glass.

Tapped?

Baseball bat at the ready, I gave the roll-up blind a quick tug. It shot upwards and rattled around its spindle for a second before falling silent.

On the other side of the window stood a complete stranger. He had duct tape over his mouth and around his wrists. Behind him stood Per, shirtless and rumpled.

The bat dropped to the floor with a clang, and I stared. It was 7.25 a.m., and Per had not vanished into the future. He was still here.

And looking a little uncomfortable. “Let us in before someone sees us.”

“Oh. Right.” I opened the window, and my would-be killer came through head first, propelled by a vicious shove from behind by Per. Per followed, with a speed and grace that made my heart thud in my throat.

“You’re here.”

“We’ll deal with that later,” he said. Up close, I could see that he was going to have a bad bruise under his right eye, and that his lip was split and bleeding. “We still don’t have a lot of time.”

He handed me a gun. “This is his,” he said, kicking the hit man in the thigh. “Shoot him with it if he so much as twitches.”

I shrugged my shoulders just enough that Per caught the gesture.

“Never shot a gun?”

I shook my head.

He stepped behind me, reached around me with both arms, and thumbed the safety off. (I looked at the red dot staring back at me — “red is dead”, I remembered someone telling me once.) He put me in a shooting stance with the gun aimed at the killer’s chest. “He makes one move, you pull the trigger. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” I said. “I can do that.”

He ran into the living room and came back with a manila envelope. He thumbed through it and pulled out one of those amazing sheets of paper of his. Then he crouched in front of the killer.

“Look at this, asshole,” he said.

I could not see what they were looking at, but I did see all the color drain from the killer’s face.

“How did you—”

I could not see the page in front of them, but I could hear it. Moaning and whimpering, and a man laughing, and then the front door opened. “Len, you here?”

Tyler’s voice.

And the voice of the other man saying, “Finishing up. You said make it messy.”

“Yeah. Messy.” A pause, then, “Look. I have a list of things to do after this, and I need her to still be warm when I make the 911 call. So wrap it up.”

One wet noise. And the sound of footsteps.

The killer’s eyes were bugging out as he tried to say something around the duct tape.

Per touched the surface of the paper and the sound stopped. He said, “I’ll take the tape off your mouth, but if you make any loud noises, she’s going to kill you. You understand that?”

The killer nodded.

Per ripped the tape off the man’s mouth, and he cringed and bit back a whimper.

“I never did that, man. It isn’t me.”

Per touched the paper again. “That’s what you came here to do.”

“No. Just rob the place. Seriously. That isn’t me, man.”

“See how I can make the picture bigger?”

The man nodded.

Per dragged a finger along the front of the page I could not see. “See how I can turn the image to get your full face? I can zoom in close enough to reveal your individual fingerprints. Want me to show you?”

Len shook his head. “What is that?”

“New police surveillance technology.”

“But I didn’t do. that.”

“You haven’t yet. And what happened next hasn’t happened yet, either.”

From the page in Per’s hand, I heard Tyler’s voice. “Holy shit, what a mess.”

“You said. ”

“Yeah.” I heard Tyler gagging. Then vomiting. “The smell. How can you stand it?”

“You guaranteed I walk on the Burgess murders is how. No death penalty, no life in prison. I get a dismissal. And this — we all have our needs, man.”

“You’ll get your dismissal,” Tyler snarled. “Get out of here. Let me do what I have to do now.”

I heard boots hitting the floor, and more walking.

And then a gunshot.

The heavy thud of a body falling.

“There’s your dismissal, you freak,” Tyler’s voice said.

Len was staring wide-eyed at the paper. “He killed me?”

Per told him, “His story was that you tried to escape, fleeing the scene of your crime, and he shot you before discovering what you’d done. Everybody believed him, too. Except me.”

My would-be murderer stared from me to Per, and back to me. “But you’re not dead. And I’m not dead.”

At which point Tyler walked into the room.

“Which makes this tougher for me. But not impossible.”

Tyler blocked the door, and I remembered again what a big guy he was. He wasn’t lean and hard like Per, but he was wide and meaty. And the gun he pointed straight at me made him a lot bigger.

The gun in my own hands had gotten pretty heavy by that time. I could feel the muscles in my forearms quivering. The muscles keeping my knees from buckling joined them.

I had been scared of the man who had come to kill me, but I was more scared of Tyler. He was urbane. Genteel. Respected and respectable. He had people — a lot of them. Law partners, parents, siblings, guys he went yachting with, guys he went big-game hunting with.

All of them would no doubt say he was the best guy ever born. Salt of the earth.

And me. who did I have? I had the Thorsday Night Writers, whose odd-lot appearance and diverse lifestyles would make their testimony a hard sell.

And for the moment, I had Per. He hadn’t yet disappeared, but was probably going to any second.

Small picture, there were three of us, and only one Tyler.

Big picture, Tyler knew how to use his gun. And had every other advantage, too.

And then Len, would-be hit man, pond scum, violent criminal, said, “You shot me in the back, you son of a bitch.” With his wrists still duct-taped in front of him, he lunged to his feet, yanked the gun out of my hands and charged Tyler with a speed and a fury that made me realize Len could have been on me and I would have been dead before my reflexes even had a chance.

I scooped up the baseball bat at my feet as Len’s animal leap launched him across my bed towards Tyler. Tyler swung his gun away from me to protect himself.

Len’s gun jammed, and Tyler shot him. He dropped like a bag of hammers and lay bleeding on my bedspread.

Per lunged at Tyler. I charged at the same time, baseball bat swinging in short, sharp arcs. I swung and kept swinging, and kept connecting, until Per dragged himself across the bed and pulled me away from what was left of the would-be John Grisham of fantasy.

Per introduced himself to the cops as Per Tordönsson, of Tordönsson Detective Agency, and told them I’d hired him to check out the man I was dating. He presented them with his card and a folder from his backpack that included copies of documents on which Tyler had forged my signature, giving him control of my estate, naming him as my next of kin for all my personal effects. He handed them what he said was a phone tap of Len getting the date and time of my murder from Tyler. He said it was clean, that the affidavit was in the folder.

The cops sent someone to the ER to talk to Len, who admitted that Tyler had hired him to murder me. He also said that he hadn’t intended to do it.

No one believed him.

It was the end of a long, exhausting Friday. Per sat across the table from me in the hotel room we’d rented, his leg stitched and bandaged, working his way through room service steak and eggs, salad, roll and a dessert of questionable origin.

“What happens now?” I asked him.

“What do you want to happen?”

“I want to be with you forever. I just keep waiting for this beam of light to surround you and whisk you out of my life, and I want to know how much longer we have.”

And there it was. That smile again. The one that melted me on the inside and made me know from the first instant I saw it that this was a man I had to know.

“I’m staying,” he said.

“But your time. The research historians. Won’t someone be along to drag you back?”

“I can’t go back,” he said. “Ever. The instant I loaded my life spider onto the internet through your computer and went after Len so he couldn’t come through your window to kill you, I broke my connection to home. I created a new branch in time, a new past relative to my own time. In this past, you live. In the past I come from, you always will have died — but there’s no way to this past from there. And no way there from here.”

“But your family? Your friends?”

“I had them. I’ll miss them. But I had a dangerous job, and they knew it, and so did I. Research historians get swallowed into alternate pasts from time to time. It’s why we travel with life spiders.”

“Which do what?”

“In your time, they create validation in public databases for all the information that lets me prove who I am. Every research historian working in the age of the internet carries a life spider with him that creates a name, social security number, driver’s licence. all of it. Complete with past. In my case, even a nice bank account.”

“You came planning to stay?”

“I came hoping to stay. Big difference. If you had not been you; if you had wanted to die so your books would live on; if you had not wanted me — then I would have disappeared. No light. No magic. I just would have blinked back to where I was supposed to be.”

“But you’ve given up everything to be here. And you decided knowing that I had just met you. You couldn’t know whether I would change my mind. and now you can’t ever go back.”

“Life doesn’t come with guarantees, Nila. What it does come with is chances. You’re the chance I wanted to take.”

I slid my hand into his. I might never be famous. I might never change someone’s life. I swear I’ll try. but when I’m gone, maybe no one will remember my name.

That’s all right.

I know what it is to be loved. I know what it means to love. And the chance I’ve won is better than any guarantee.