The Juliet Spell (13 page)

me knew that wasn’t going to happen. So I said, “I didn’t know you had a job, Drew.”

“Ten hours a week as a library page,” he said back. “It’s a good gig. Pay’s not bad, and the hours are flexible. They’re not scheduling me nights while I’m in the show. Otherwise, there’s no way I’d have the time.”

“What do you have to do?” I asked.

“Shelve books. That’s most of it.”

“It must be a wond’rous thing to be among so many,” Ed.mund said.

“It’s a skull-cracker,” Drew said. “641.5932 White. 641.5932 Wilson. 641.5932 Yates. Half an hour of that and your brain wants to jump out and throw itself in front of a bus. But, yeah. I like it. Miri, you should bring Edmund down there and get him a library card.”

“Oh. Yeah. Maybe.”

I tried to shoot Edmund a warning look, but he missed it. He was sitting forward, asking Drew, “What is a library card, friend Drew?”

“Come on, Edmund. I know they have public libraries in England,” Drew said.

“Of course we do. ’Tis this card I’ve never heard of.”

“Give me a break,” Drew said. “I work with an English librarian. She says it’s just about the same there as here. You get a card and you check out books.”

“Sure they have, Edmund,” I said. “We’ll go down and get you one tomorrow. Just like home.”

“Great,” Drew said. “Just bring your picture ID and any.thing with your current address on it. We’ll do a card for you in five minutes.”

“Ah. ID,” Edmund said.

“Sure. Anything,” Drew said.

“As soon as it gets here from England, we’ll be down,” I said.

“Just use your passport,” Drew said.

“Me passport. Of course,” Edmund said.

“Sure. That nice little document Queen Elizabeth passes out to her faithful subjects when they go to visit the colo.nies,” Drew said.

“Elizabeth?” Edmund said. “You jest, friend Drew. Surely that old bitch is in her grave.”

“What? When did that happen?” Drew said. “She was fine this morning. One of her weird relatives did something stupid and the paper was full of ‘Her Majesty regrets exceed.ingly.’”

Edmund realized that Drew was not talking about the same Elizabeth he knew.

He sat back, silent. I was silent. Because what could I say that would make sense? And Drew was silent the rest of the way.

I was surprised when he swung by Bobby’s house first. So was Bobby, I think. But he got out without saying anything more than “Later, dudes. Break it.”

“See you tomorrow after work, dude,” Drew said to him, and drove off.

Then we went slowly and silently back to my house.

When Drew pulled his car into our driveway, he turned off the engine. It was very quiet all of a sudden.

“Let me take a wild stab at something,” Drew said. “Ed.mund isn’t really English. Right?”

“Wrong,” I said.

“I’m as English as St. George himself!”

“That’s kind of what I thought,” Drew said. “St. George wasn’t English, either, was he?” Then he said, “Look, I don’t care. I like you, Edmund. Whatever you’re covering up, I’m good with it. And I’m not asking you to tell me what’s really going on. But if you want to tell me, maybe I can help.”

No, no. This is bad, I thought. But I couldn’t think of a way to turn Drew down that wouldn’t make things worse.

Finally, Edmund asked, “What help can ye be more than you have already been, Drew?”

“What help do you need?”

“So much,” Edmund said.

“Edmund, don’t,” I said. “Drew’s a good guy, but if he knows, then Bobby’s going to know. And if Bobby knows, sooner or later everybody will.”

“Not true,” Drew said, with a hint of annoyance. “I’ve been running interference for Edmund since he got here, and Bobby doesn’t even realize it. And I’ll go right on do.ing it, whether you tell me what’s happening or not. I’m just saying, if I know what I’m helping to hide I can do a better job.”

“I can trust Drew,” Edmund said. “He’s already proven that I can.”

And that was true, I realized. Drew had been covering for Edmund tonight. And before, when Vivian was so interested in why Edmund didn’t know how to drive. Maybe being a little weird himself made Drew able to pick up on weird.ness in general. In any case, he’d figured out from the start that there was something strange about Edmund and that it needed to be protected. But still. But still.

“I will tell ye, Drew,” Edmund said at last.

“You’d better come into the house, then.” I sighed. “But ’tis an idea I like not.”

Chapter Fourteen

It turned out that Drew had actually heard of Doctor Dee. Of course he had.

“He was the greatest polymath of the Elizabethan era,” he said. “I think so, anyway. Better than Francis Bacon any day for my money. I mean, Dee would try anything.”

“Aye, that he would,” Edmund agreed. “Bacon’s learning was but a flitch to Dee’s.”

Which made him and Drew snort, and made Mom and me look at each other.

“Flitch. It’s a cut of bacon,” Drew explained.

“Hilarious,” I said.

“But how do you start out with necromancy and end up with time travel?” Drew said. “Wait. Maybe I sort of get it. Necromancy, raising the dead, may in fact be the suspension of linear time and its replacement by nonlinear time over a limited area defined by the pentagram. But no, because then—”

“Nonlinear time?” Edmund said. “Drew, ye make no sense.”

“He means something like synchronicity,” Mom said.

She had gotten up when we came in. She was sitting in Dad’s armchair looking sleepy and beautiful in her gray ki.mono with the cranes on it.

And now it was Drew’s and Edmund’s turn to look blank along with me.

“Synchronicity is an important concept in Jungian psy.chology,” Mom said. “What we call coincidence isn’t at all. Things happen together but not because of cause and effect. We don’t know why, but we know that they do.”

“Mom, how did you—?” I began.

“I’m married to your father,” she said and shrugged.

“And that sounds a lot like what we seem to see when we look at subatomic reality,” Drew said. “I wonder if what Doctor Dee isn’t—wasn’t—isn’t—whatever—transposing sub-atomic time and super-atomic time? In any case, my guess is that Edmund got caught in that channel. Doctor Dee opened it, Edmund fell into it and Miri, you pulled him out. Your spell formed the other end of the channel.”

“But how?” I said.

“Maybe you touched synchronicity,” Drew said.

“Drew, this is all very interesting, but it’s not very help.ful,” Mom said. “Whatever happened, we have to deal with the results. Edmund’s here. And we have to proceed on the assumption that he’s here forever.”

“Right. You’ll need a birth certificate,” Drew said. “One that says you’re at least eighteen. Yeah, eighteen’s perfect. You’re old enough to be an adult, and too young for anyone to wonder why you haven’t shown up on the radar screen be.fore. Then there’s voter registration, draft registration. Pretty soon we’ll have you so nailed down in the twenty-first cen.tury you couldn’t leave if you wanted to.”

“But how can we get him a birth certificate?” I said.

“I’ll work on it. And, Ms. Hoberman, do you still have an old cassette recorder?”

“Yes. Why?”

“We have some accent reduction tapes at the library,” Drew said. “I’ll check them out for you, Edmund.”

“Farewell, Warwickshire. Edmund must sound a new note….” Edmund said. “And mayhap I can paint myself like a red Indian, too. What d’ye think?”

He smiled when he said it, but he looked so sad I wanted to hug him.

“Intriguing. But unnecessary,” Drew said. “If you have any more great ideas like that, do share them, though.”

“I will,” Edmund said. “And Drew, if ye have any more thoughts about subatomic synchronicity or whatever it may be—”

“I’ll let you know,” Drew said. And he went out the door muttering, “Time travel...necromancy…metaphors for…?” or something like that.

“There goes a mighty mind,” Edmund said.

“Nice kid,” Mom said.

I was glad now that we’d let him in on Edmund’s secret. Drew might have been a little weird, but so was the secret. And maybe a weird guy was just what Edmund needed now to help keep him safe.

The next afternoon, Drew was back.

“The accent tapes,” he said. “Keep them as long as you need. I set them to ‘Missing’ in the computer. We’ll search for them for six months, then they’ll either magically reap.pear or be discarded.”

“Whoa, Drew,” I said. “Bandit, dude.”

“No harm, no foul. They’re tapes,” Drew said. “They haven’t been checked out in three years. Who has a cassette player anymore?”

“Just this ancient, withered crone, apparently,” Mom said as she walked into the room.

“I just meant it’s—it’s really okay—just this time—to do this,” Drew stuttered.

“Thank ye, Drew,” Edmund said. “I promise ye your gen.erosity will not be wasted.” He took one of the tapes out and turned it in his hand, trying to figure it out.

“There’s one more thing. I hung around the library after my shift and did a little research in the newspaper back files. I found a guy named Kenny Kramer who died in a swim.ming accident about ten years ago. Local kid. Born at Ban.nerman, in fact. You apply for a birth certificate in his name, and you’ll get it in a few weeks. I downloaded a hard copy. I thought you might feel more comfortable with that than doing it online.”

He handed Edmund the application and a copy of an ar.ticle that said Local Swimmer Dies Tragically.

“Drew, you’re wonderful,” Mom said. “Criminally in.clined, perhaps, but wonderful.”

Drew blushed. “Thanks.”

Edmund rubbed his chin as he read the article. “’Tis just as we talked about,” he said. “Yet I like it not. I cannot say why.”

“Just do it,” Drew said. “Once you’re Kenny Kramer you can apply to change your name to anything you want.”

“Right. Like Edmund Shakeshaft,” I said. “Only the three of us ever have to know you were someone else for a little while.”

“I don’t see that you really have any choice, Edmund,” Mom said. “And Kenny Kramer won’t mind.”

“I must be ruled by ye,” Edmund said. “I know it. But for some reason my heart revolts.”

“’Twill all be well,” I told him. “Fill out the form.”

And he did, in his jagged, loopy Elizabethan handwriting. All three of us volunteered to do it for him, but Edmund in.sisted on doing it himself.

“If ’twere done when ’twere done, then ’twere best done quickly,” he said. “And by meself and no other.”

When he was done, none too quickly it turned out, we put it in the mail to go out on Monday.

Edmund looked shaky. I put my hand on his arm.

Then he whipped around and clutched me to him.

“Oh, cuz, I know what ’tis. ’Tis goodbye to England. To all my old life and everyone in it.”

Dad always said that when someone went through a big change they went through it over and over. That’s because different parts of us learn at different rates. So, where Ed.mund had accepted the fact of his being stuck in the twenty-first century almost as soon as he’d understood it, applying to be one of us had reached a whole new level, and that level had to grieve.

Mom tried to put her arms around us both.

All three of us shook with his sobs.

After a while, Edmund let me go.

“Thank ye both,” he said. “Excuse me now. I must be alone to pray, I think.”

He went into his room.

We heard him start to cry again.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” I asked Mom.

“We’re doing it, hon. They also serve who only stand and wait.”

“Is that Shakespeare, too?”

“Milton. But it’s true.”

“I guess I’ll go in my room, too,” I said.

“All right,” Mom said. “Damn it, I wish your father were here.”

So I sat in my room and listened to Edmund crying, and cried for him. Oh, Edmund, I’d do anything I could for you, I thought. You just have to ask.

My tears fell onto the damp patches he’d left on my shirt, and they flowed together.

Chapter Fifteen

After I felt a little better—a little calmer, anyway—I went back out into the living room. Mom was sitting in her chair reading.

“Do you want dinner?” she asked.

“I want to make dinner.”

“You do?” Mom said, and her eyebrows shot up. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Yeah. I’m tired of only standing and waiting. I want to do something.”

“Then don’t let me stand in your way keeping you wait.ing. What are we having?”

“I haven’t got a clue,” I said. “Maybe something English.”

But I didn’t know what they ate for dinner in London in 1597, and whatever it was, we probably didn’t have it any.way. I ended up making a huge salad with chicken and toast croutons in it. Chopping all those vegetables gave me a good feeling.