The Day Before Forever (6 page)

I still had my back toward him, but my shoulders shook from laughing with him.

“Aren't you going to ask me how we're going to get more money?” he asked. “Or did your blushing make you forget all about that too?”

I
had
completely forgotten, but I wasn't going to let Henley have the satisfaction of knowing. “How are we going to get money? Not by pickpocketing again, I hope?”

“God no. I hated doing that the first time around. I was amazed that it worked, though. I had only done it a few times as a child . . . Best not to get into that now,” Henley said. “What I was about to say was that we could sell that jewelry.” He pointed to the pouch on the belt I had just taken off. “There's no harm in pawning off that stuff. It's not like we'll have any use for it here.”

“But who'll take it?” I paused. “And even if we did find someone to sell the jewelry to, they'll only give us the price of costume jewelry. No one would know that they're worth far more than that.”

“They would if they were experts.” Henley grinned, opening the newspaper. He tapped a certain page.

Carter House Auction Specialists
,
it read right under his finger.

“They even have a jewelry specialist,” Henley said. “It's perfect.”

“It is pretty perfect. They could just write us a check and . . . Before you go on feeling pleased with yourself, did you think about how we'll explain why we have this old jewelry in the first place? It's not even
vintage
. It's jewelry straight from Henry
VIII's court, without centuries of aging.”

“Not exactly a normal find on the street, no, but we'll think of something.” Henley sounded so sure of himself. “And we don't even have to sort it all out now. We can go to dinner, maybe sleep on it. We have time.”

“Our money will run out quickly, though,” I reminded him.

“We have a fair bit left. You could even say we're comfortable. Three hundred and sixty-four pounds isn't too bad. At least it's enough for a few dinners.”

I shrugged. I didn't have any concept of how much dinner would cost. We would definitely be able to afford it tonight . . . but a week's worth of food in addition to the rest of the money for room and board? I wasn't sure we had enough.

“Just order small amounts of food,” Henley said.

Henley was worse than I was, I reminded myself. Though he had been a successful businessman in his time, I remembered he had never carried cash. People knew his father, and he would just put everything he bought on his tab. Henley had no concept of money, period.

THREE

“HERE THEY ARE,”
Alanna chirped as she saw us come out to the parlor.

“We were beginning to take bets on whether Alanna had scared you off permanently,” Peter said.

“Sorry we took so long,” I said.

Henley took the backpack I had slung over one shoulder.

“No problem. Settling in takes time,” Alanna said. “And I see you've changed! That outfit fits you perfectly.”

“She has a tendency to look lovely in whatever she wears,” Henley said behind me.

Being the topic of conversation made my cheeks burn.

“Shouldn't we get going to dinner?” I said.

“Do you have any food preferences?” Alanna asked. “Paleo, pescatarian, vegan?”

I shook my head. I didn't know what any of those things were.

“That makes things easier for us. Why don't we go to this pub we found a few nights ago, then? It serves food too.”

“That sounds great,” Henley said, wrapping an arm around me.

Henley had his white button-down shirt tucked into his jeans. It was very much like him to look so neat and well-groomed even when we were barely unpacked and staying in a hostel.

“You couldn't have just bought a T-shirt?” I whispered to him as we set off walking.

“They all had ‘I heart London' on them. Couldn't have that sort of atrocity on my person, could I?”

“I'm wearing a shirt that doesn't come down to my belly button.” I tried to say it sternly and keep a straight face, but Henley's smirk got me laughing.

“Oh, stop being a cute couple,” Alanna said. “We're at the pub already.” She turned to Peter. “Do you think we look like that to other people?”

Peter twisted a dreadlock. “Are you asking me if we sappily stare into each other's eyes and sigh all the time? Probably.”

Alanna shoved him, but Peter only looked amused.

“Is this it?” Henley was looking up at a double door painted black. A sign hung above: Goldmann's Pub.

“Yes it is.” Alanna ushered us in. “You
have
to try the fish and chips. Very touristy, but so good here.”

My eyes took a minute to adjust to the dim lighting.

Everything was hardwood here. The floor, the ceiling, the bar—they were all paneled in dark wood. A handful of old blown-glass lighting fixtures completed the murky look.

I expected there to be tables, but as there were none in sight, I followed Alanna and Peter to the bar, and took a seat between Peter and Henley.

“Good evening.” A man with slicked-back hair walked up to the other side of the bar. “Thanks for joining us at Goldmann's. You'll find the stack of menus right next to you, but before we can serve you, could I see IDs?”

He looked like he should be working at a five-star restaurant rather than a pub. He also sounded like he took his job rather seriously.

“IDs?” I didn't know who said it first, Henley or me. But we looked at each other with wide eyes.

Alanna and Peter each calmly took out their IDs and showed them to the man at the bar.

“Good, good.” He nodded. Turning his attention to us, he stopped. “It's policy for us to ask to see the ID of anyone who might look younger than thirty. Is that a problem?”

“We—” I started.

“We don't have our IDs with us,” Henley said. “We must have left them back in our room.”

I was surprised Henley even knew what an ID was. I supposed that was one of the things he picked up as a ghost peering into all times simultaneously.

“I'm sorry,” the barman said. “We can't serve you without ID.”

Henley nodded and stood up.

“Do you want to eat somewhere else?” Alanna asked. “Or we could try buying food and bringing it outside. The weather's so nice anyway.”

“That actually sounds like a great idea,” Henley said. He started digging through his pocket for cash.

“No, no,” Alanna said.

“But—”

“Absolutely not.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Henley looked a bit defeated as he pulled me outside.

Once we were outside, I squinted past the lowering sun at Henley. “Why couldn't you just say we didn't have IDs instead of saying we left them in our room? What if Alanna wants us to get our IDs for something else later?” I hissed.

“You can't travel without some form of identification,” Henley said. “That's true in any time.”

I sighed. He was right, and there was no way around it.

I heard a cough and I looked up, about to ask Henley what he wanted now. But it wasn't Henley.

A man in an oversized sweatshirt approached us from around the corner of the pub. He had graying facial hair that looked like it hadn't been shaved in a week. His brown hair was plastered to his forehead and the sides of his face with what looked like sweat.

He had a gruff voice. “Saw you guys get kicked out.”

“And what of it?” Henley drew himself up.

“You need ID to sit in there.”

“So we heard,” I said.

The man grinned, and I saw he had yellowed teeth.

“I have a person who could hook you up.”

“Hook us up?” I had no idea what that phrase meant.

“My guy specializes in IDs—driver's licenses and
passports . . . He does other things too.”

Henley's hands were clenched. “We don't—”

“How much?” I asked.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Henley's face blanch, but I kept my eyes trained on this strange man.

“Rebecca, you don't mean—”

I ignored Henley. “How much?” I asked again.

“Nothing we can't negotiate,” he said.

“Would we have to pay up front?” I asked.

His eyes darted the length of the street. “I'd prefer not to discuss this here . . . Where are you staying?”

“Rebecca . . .”

“The Brock Terrace Hostel.”

“Nice and close.” The man leered. “I'm looking forward to doing business with you.”

Just at that moment, Alanna and Peter came tumbling out of the dark doors of the pub.

“Don't drop it, Peter!”

The man looked alarmed for a second. “I'll find you,” he quickly said before turning the corner and taking off.

“Well, that man was sure creepy.” Alanna stood with her hands on her hips. “Wherever you go, even across the world, each country definitely has its own creeps.”

I didn't think they had caught much of what the man said, so I simply smiled.

Peter walked toward us with paper plates of fried fish and a mountain of french fries.

“Fish and chips!” Alanna squealed. “They wouldn't let you eat them inside, so we decided to bring them out to you. I didn't
know if you liked salt, vinegar, tartar sauce, or ketchup, so I just put them all on the side.”

My stomach gurgled its thanks. I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten.

“Let us pay you back . . . ,” Henley started, but Alanna stopped him, touching his shoulder.

“This one's on us. You can get the next meal . . . Besides, someone sounds hungry.” She laughed, looking at me.

“You heard that?” I was already grabbing a handful of fries.

“I never understood why fries are chips here and chips are crisps.” Henley was loading his fish with a massive amount of tartar sauce. “It's so complicated.”

“Got enough sauce there?” I teased.

“It looks like he has more sauce than fish.” Alanna wrinkled her nose. “Look, Peter does the same thing, except with vinegar.”

Sure enough, Peter was busy drowning his fish in the little cup of vinegar.

“I like it with a tang,” he said.

“That's so gross.” Alanna was eating her fish plain.

“Eh.” Peter just shrugged.

A phone audibly buzzed at the table, and Alanna and Peter simultaneously held their fish with one hand and patted their pocket for their phone with the other hand.

“Oh, it's mine,” Alanna said, looking at her white iPhone. She turned to me. “My friend had the cutest baby! And they finally posted pics.”

“Janice?” Peter said.

“Yeah, Janice. And the baby looks just like her . . . Give me
a second and let me pull up the photo on Facebook.”

Alanna handed me her phone. “Isn't she just the cutest?”

The baby was openmouthed, looking at the camera. You couldn't really tell she was female. If Alanna hadn't told me, the only way I could guess at the baby's gender was the giant bow seemingly taped onto her bald head.

When I grabbed the phone from Alanna's hands, I accidentally tapped on a banner on the bottom of the screen. An advertisement of some sort?

A news article filled my screen.

Regency Chest Excavated in London Parking Lot

But it was what was underneath the title that caught my eye.

There was a letter next to a wooden chest. The letter looked ancient and the ink was faded in some parts, but the letter was magnified in a separate photo.

Querida Emilia . . .
it started.

I scanned the letter. The entire thing was in Spanish, but two words made me stop.

Juana Ruíz.

That was the signature on the letter.

I stopped, wondering if I had read that right. I skimmed the article. It mentioned that the letter was written in the 1500s while the chest was a Regency piece from the 1800s. The article also mentioned that Juana might have been the first European woman to set foot in the Americas.

So it was her? The woman who had drunk from the Fountain of Youth with Ponce de León?

The article said that the artifacts were found in what was now a parking lot in London. They had been doing construction
when they found the artifacts. I took note of the address of the parking lot. The article didn't say much else after that.

“Still looking at the baby?” Alanna said.

I quickly clicked out of the page and handed Alanna her phone.

“She's adorable,” I said.

The conversation continued on around me, but I was barely listening. Juana. Why hadn't it occurred to me before? If all the Miss Hatfields were dead and killed by someone immortal who had gone back in time to murder them one by one . . . maybe Juana was the killer. She had drunk from the Fountain of Youth with Ponce de León. So what if she had never died? She was the only one I could think of who could be a suspect. I had to talk to Henley about this, but I felt the letter could be a starting clue.

And of course, there was that man . . . I knew that man who had just come up to us was more than a little “off” and might potentially be dangerous, but he was really our only option. We couldn't just sit here forever.

I glanced at Henley. Though he was sticking an entire piece of fish into his mouth, he had a worried crease between his brows.

“What do you think, Rebecca?”

I looked up into Alanna's expectant face. She had said something, but I had completely missed it.

“Uh, sorry?” I said.

“Much too into your fish and chips, I see. I was just saying that Peter and I are going to do some touristy stuff tomorrow—Buckingham Palace, the London Eye—you and Henley should join us,” she said.

“Oh we'd love to . . . but Henley and I have a few things we need to take care of,” I said.

“A few things?”

“We just received news that a family member of mine passed away,” Henley said suddenly.

“A family member?” This time it was me with my mouth open in surprise. “Um, yeah. A family member.” I tried to recover.

“My grandmother, actually,” Henley went on. “We just have a few matters to clear up.”

“Of course,” Alanna said. “I'm so sorry to hear that.”

“She's resting much more comfortably now,” Henley said.

When we were done with our food and had thrown our plates away, I took Henley's hand and began to excuse ourselves.

“But the night's still young,” Peter said.

“We've had a rough day of traveling,” I said. “We both need some downtime, and we should also get some rest.”

I looked at Henley, and he rubbed his eyes on cue.

“They're right. It's been a long day for them,” Alanna said to Peter. To us, she said, “Let us at least walk you back.”

Though it further postponed me talking with Henley alone, we agreed. There was only so much we could protest.

We started our way back to the hostel. Peter was walking with Henley ahead, while Alanna was by my side.

“Such a shame about Henley and his grandmother,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Were they close?”

“As close as any grandchild is to his grandmother, I suppose.”

“Was it sudden?” She had tears in her eyes, and I was taken aback.

“Oh no.” I tried to reassure her. “She had been sick for a while. We saw it coming and had time to prepare.”

“Prepare and try to come to terms with it, I guess, right?”

“Yes.”