Page 131 of The Girl Out of Time
He reached the end of the deck and stopped at the railing, his breath catching in his lungs. Only now, only from here, did he notice how far below the ship had gone already. The side-to-side list was barely palpable, but the bow was going under. The ocean had swallowed more than half of it, only one line of portholes still visible above the surface as, little by little, those too extinguished.
Time was running out.
He clenched the railing, thinking, running over the events of the evening and the map of the ship in his head. Where on Earth would Emmeline be? Pain stung through his chest and straight into his heart as he remembered their last conversation, Emmeline’s eyes tearing up, but flashing in anger.I wish I wasn’t a part of this family and never had to see you again.
Like lightning through the dark, clarity cut through him.
Leon.Emmeline went to see him. That’s why they couldn’t find her anywhere else. She wasn’t in first class anymore. She’d gone to third class. To their male passenger cabins.
He stared at the bow, slowly being drawn into the ocean.
The cabins which were right below it.
***
Emily patted her face dry, checked herself in the mirror—not much better than usual, but she’d looked greener—and exited the bathroom. She found James in the living room, once again bent over the Watchers’ notes, spread all across the coffee table. He looked up, scowling.
“If you’re about to tell me I look awful, remember, this is exactly fifty percent your fault,” she said.
“You always look beautiful.”
“You could’ve put slightly more conviction behind those words.”
He scowled more. “Sorry. I was studying something and …”
“Ah, frowning because of studying.” She sat next to him. “NowthatI can relate to.”
“I tried to follow my family a few generations back, to see when the pendant popped up,” he said. “I know it’s not pertinent …”
“Hey.” She smoothed his hair. “We all need our distractions.”
The almonite in her blood had somehow been activated again. She could freeze time, do regular time travel—though still not far back enough to find what happened to Will and his family—and she didn’t have a single explanation for it. Will would surely figure it out if he were here. But he wasn’t, and maybe she’d never see him again.
After twelve years, she was finally a time traveler again, but she felt more helpless and stuck than in the whole past decade. She couldn’t blame James for trying to focus on random bits of history. Her brain direly needed a break, too.
“Did you find where the pendant came from?” she asked.
“No, but I found something else.” He pushed a scan of an old paper excerpt in front of her. “It’s a newspaper section with marriage banns.”
“With what?”
“Marriage banns. In my time—well, in the nineteenth century—if one wanted to get married by anything else than a license, they’d need their marriage banns to be read for three Sundays before they could do so. Some also had the engagement announcement published in the papers. I found one for my ancestor.” He tapped on the paper, next to a line that said,Mar. 17 - The Right Hon. Viscount Haverston & The Lady Louisa Ascombe.
“That’s sweet,” she said.
“Yeah, but look atthis.” He pointed to another pair of names a few lines above.
Mar. 10 - Leon Theodore Royer & Emmeline Marshall
“It can’t be her, right?” James looked up from the newspaper. “But still, it’s strange.”
“I suppose it’s a common enough name.” Emily squinted at the writing. “What year is this from?”
“March 1816.”
“Well, Emmeline isn’t a time traveler, much less a Leader, so she couldn’t get there.” Emily bit her lip in thinking. Something hid on the fringes of her memory—some detail that might help explain it, but was just out of her grasp.
Her head swam as her stomach groaned again. “Thanks for showing me this, but the toilet beckons.”
