The room was beginning to spin around.
“I love you, Grandpa!” I called.
“Some documents showing, among other things, that reading the blood of all twelve time travelers into the chronograph isn’t the whole story! The secret will be revealed only when—” I heard Lucas say, before I was swept off my feet.
A fraction of a second later, I was blinking at bright light. And I was close up to a white shirt front. Half an inch to the left, and I’d have landed right on Mr. George’s feet.
I let out a small cry of alarm and took a few steps back.
“We must remember to give you a piece of chalk next time, to mark the spot where you land,” said Mr. George, shaking his head, and he took the flashlight from my hand. He hadn’t been waiting for my return on his own. Falk de Villiers stood beside him; Dr. White sat on a chair at the table; the little ghost boy, Robert, was peering at me from behind his father’s legs; and Gideon, with a large white plaster on his forehead, was leaning against the wall by the door.
At the sight of him, I had to take a deep breath.
He was in his usual attitude—arms crossed over his chest—but his face was almost as pale as his plaster, and the shadows under his eyes made the irises look unnaturally green. I felt an overpowering desire to run to him, fling my arms around him, and kiss his forehead better, the way I always used to with Nick when he hurt himself.
“Everything all right, Gwyneth?” asked Falk de Villiers.
“Yes,” I said, without taking my eyes off Gideon. Oh, God, I’d missed him. Only now did I realize how much! Had that kiss on the green sofa been only a day ago? Not that you could describe it as one kiss.
Gideon looked back at me impassively, almost indifferently, as if he was just seeing me for the first time. Not a trace of yesterday was left in his eyes.
“I’ll take Gwyneth upstairs so that she can go home,” said Mr. George calmly, putting his hand on my back and propelling me gently past Falk to the door. And right past Gideon.
“Have you … are you all right again?” I asked.
Gideon didn’t reply. He just looked at me. But there was something very wrong with the way he did it. As if I wasn’t a person at all, only an object. Something ordinary and unimportant, something like a … a chair. Maybe he did have concussion after all, and now he didn’t know who I was? I suddenly felt very cold.
“Gideon ought to be in bed, but he has to elapse for a few hours if we don’t want to risk an uncontrolled journey through time,” Dr. White brusquely explained. “But it’s ridiculous to let him go alone—”
“Only to spend two hours in a peaceful cellar in 1953, Jake,” Falk interrupted him. “On a sofa. He’ll survive.”
“How right you are,” said Gideon, and his look became if anything even darker. Suddenly I felt terrible.
Mr. George was opening the door. “Come along, Gwyneth.”
“Just a moment, Mr. George.” Gideon was holding my arm. “There’s one thing I’d like to know. What year did you send Gwyneth to?”
“Just now, you mean? Nineteen fifty-six. July 1956,” said Mr. George. “Why?”
“Well—because she smells of cigarette smoke,” said Gideon, and his grip on my arm tightened until it hurt. I almost dropped my school bag.
Automatically, I sniffed the sleeve of my blazer. He was right. Hours in that smoky café had left obvious clues behind. How on earth was I going to explain that?
All eyes in the room were on me now, and I realized that I needed to think up a good excuse in a hurry.
“Okay—I admit it,” I said, looking at the floor. “I did smoke, just a little. But only three cigarettes. Honestly!”
Mr. George shook his head. “Gwyneth, surely I’d made it perfectly clear to you. You can’t take—”
“I’m sorry,” I said, interrupting him. “But it’s so boring in that dark cellar, and a cigarette helps me not to get scared.” I was trying my best to look embarrassed. “I collected the stubs carefully and brought them all back. You don’t have to worry someone will find a pack of Marlboros and be surprised.”
Falk laughed.
“It seems that our little princess here isn’t quite such a good girl as she makes out,” said Dr. White, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Don’t look so shocked, Thomas. I smoked my first cigarette at the age of thirteen.”
“So did I. My first and also my last.” Falk de Villiers was leaning over the chronograph again. “Smoking really isn’t a good idea, Gwyneth. I’m sure your mother would be rather shocked if she knew.”
Even little Robert nodded hard and looked at me reproachfully.
“It does your looks no good, either,” added Dr. White. “You get bad skin and ugly teeth from smoking.”
Gideon said nothing. But he still hadn’t relaxed his firm grip on my arm. I forced myself to look him in the eye as naturally as possible, trying to summon up an apologetic smile. He looked back at me with his eyes narrowed, shaking his head very slightly. Then he slowly let go of me. I swallowed hard, because I suddenly had a lump in my throat.
Why was Gideon acting like this? Nice to me one moment, kind and affectionate, next moment chilly and unapproachable? It was more than anyone could bear. Well, I couldn’t for one. What had happened down here, between him and me, had felt real. And right. And now all he could find to do was expose me to the entire team at the first chance he got? What was his idea?
“Come along,” Mr. George told me again.
“I’ll see you the day after tomorrow, Gwyneth,” said Falk de Villiers. “Your big day.”
“Don’t forget to blindfold her,” said Dr. White, and I heard Gideon laugh briefly as if Dr. White had made a bad joke. Then the heavy door closed behind me and Mr. George, and we were out in the corridor.
“You’d think he didn’t like smokers,” I said quietly, though I felt like bursting into floods of tears.
“Let me put the blindfold on, please,” said Mr. George, and I stood still until he had tied the scarf into a knot behind my head. Then he took my school bag from me and carefully helped me forward. “Gwyneth … you really must be more careful.”
“A couple of cigarettes won’t kill me stone dead this minute, Mr. George.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then?”
“I meant you should be careful about showing your feelings.”
“What? What feelings?”
I heard Mr. George sighing. “My dear child, even a blind man could see that you … you really should take care where your feelings for Gideon are concerned.”
“But I—” I stopped. Obviously Mr. George saw more than I’d given him credit for.
“Relationships between two time travelers have never turned out well,” he said. “Nor, come to that, have any relationships at all between the de Villiers and Montrose families. In times like these, we have to keep reminding ourselves that, fundamentally, no one is to be trusted.” Maybe I was only imagining it, but I thought his hand on my back was trembling. “Unfortunately it’s an incontrovertible fact that sound common sense flies out of the window as soon as love comes in through the door. And sound common sense is what you need most of all at this point. Careful, there’s a step coming.”
We made our way up from the chronograph room in silence, and then Mr. George took off the blindfold. He looked at me very seriously. “You can do it, Gwyneth. I firmly believe in you and your abilities.”
His round face was covered with little beads of perspiration again. I saw nothing but concern for me in his bright eyes—it was the same with my mother when she looked at me. A huge wave of affection swept over me.
“Here’s your signet ring,” I said. “How old are you, Mr. George? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Seventy-six,” said Mr. George. “It’s no secret.”
I stared at him. Although I’d never thought of it before, I’d have guessed he was a good ten years younger. “Then in 1956 you were…?”
“Twenty-one. That was the year when I began work as a legal clerk in the chambers here and became a member of the Lodge.”
“Do you know Violet Purpleplum, Mr. George? She’s a friend of my great-aunt’s.”
Mr. George raised one eyebrow. “No, I don’t think I do. Come along, I’ll take you to your car. I’m sure your mother will be anxious to see you.”
“Yes, I think so, too. Mr. George…?”
But Mr. George had already turned to move away. I had no option but to follow him. “You’ll be collected from home tomorrow,” he said. “Madame Rossini needs you for a fitting, and after that Giordano will try teaching you a few things. And after that, you’ll have to elapse.”
“Sounds like a wonderful day,” I said wearily.
* * *
“BUT THAT … that’s not magic!” I whispered, shocked.
Lesley sighed. “Not in the sense of hocus-pocus magical rituals, maybe, but it’s a magical ability. The magic of the raven.”
“More of an eccentricity, if you ask me,” I said. “Something that makes people laugh at me—and anyway no one believes I can do it.”
“Gwenny, it’s not eccentric to have extrasensory perception. It’s a gift. You can see ghosts and talk to them.”
“And demons,” Xemerius pointed out.
“In mythology, the raven stands for the link between human beings and the world of the gods. Ravens carry messages between the living and the dead.” Lesley turned her file my way, so that I could read what she had found on the Internet about ravens. “You have to admit your abilities suit that very well.”
“Your hair too,” said Xemerius. “Black as a raven’s wings.”
I was biting my lower lip. “But in the prophesies it sounds so—oh, I don’t know, so important and powerful and all that. As if the magic of the raven was some kind of secret weapon.”
“It could be that as well,” said Lesley. “You have to stop thinking it’s only a kind of strange eccentricity allowing you to see ghosts.”
“And demons,” Xemerius repeated.
“I’d love to know exactly what those prophesies say,” said Lesley. “It would be so interesting to have the full text.”
“Charlotte can certainly rattle them all off by heart,” I said. “I think she learnt them when she was being taught the mysteries. And everyone talks about them in rhyme. The Guardians. Even my mum. And Gideon.”
I quickly turned away so that Lesley wouldn’t see my eyes suddenly filling with tears, but it was too late.
“Oh, sweetie, don’t start crying again!” She handed me a tissue. “You’re making too much of it.”
“No, I’m not. Remember how you cried for days on end over Max?” I said, sniffing.
“Of course,” said Lesley. “It was only six months ago.”
