When the sound of his feet on the stairs disappeared, Etta whirled to face the girl beside her. “What the hell is going on?”
Sophia sagged against the wall, the back of her hand pressed against her lips. At Etta’s words, her face drew up. “Don’t breathe another word until I say so, otherwise I will not be responsible for my actions.”
Etta pushed the cabin door open again, and stepped inside with her fingers around the warm metal of the knife.
“Tell me who you are,” she demanded. There was a small porthole window in the wall, but the light that filtered in was minimal. Sophia bent on unsteady legs to lift a metal lantern onto a small desk.
Etta shifted, trying to get some distance from the smell of vomit and Sophia’s cold, assessing gaze. She wanted her back to the door—if this took an ugly turn, she could get herself out and lock Sophia in.
The girl sat heavily on the edge of the built-in bunk, drawing a bucket over to herself with her foot. “Damned ship, damned traitor, damned task—”
“Tell me!” Etta said. “How did we get here—and where is here? And who are those people?”
“I shouldn’t tell you anything after that truly breathtaking display of stu—” Sophia heaved slightly. “Stupidity.”
“You pushed me,” Etta said, letting her words rage on. “You did something to me—you brought me here!”
“Of course I pushed you.” Sophia sniffed. “You were as slow as a cow. We would have been there for ages, you crying all over yourself like a fool. I did us both a favor.”
“Did you—” She could barely force the words out. “Did you shoot Alice? Was she trying to stop you from bringing me here?”
Etta’s mind was frantically trying to connect why Alice would have been there, not in the auditorium, not with her mother in her office upstairs. She hadn’t checked to see if she was carrying her purse—in any other circumstances she might have believed that someone hiding in the museum had tried to mug her. But it was too much of a coincidence. It was too simple of an explanation.
“Alice?” Sophia repeated, confused. “You mean the old bag? I have no idea who shot her—there were other Ironwood travelers there keeping an eye on our progress. And if it wasn’t one of them, well, I wasn’t going to stand around and let whoever it was get us, too.”
Etta stared at her, a thousand thoughts spilling into questions. Sophia laughed at her stunned silence, and the last, frayed grip Etta had on her composure finally snapped.
She drew the knife up, her chest heaving, body trembling as she pressed it against the other girl’s neck. Instinct overrode logic, compassion, patience. The ugliness that poured through her veins was unfamiliar and frightening.
What are you doing?
Sophia stared up at her, dark eyes widening just a fraction. Then she clucked her tongue impatiently and leaned forward into the blade, until a droplet of blood welled up at the tip.
Before Etta could stumble back, Sophia wrapped her hand around hers, pulling it back a fraction of a centimeter from her throat. Her skin would have been the envy of the moonlight, it was so pale and smooth. Her dark eyes burned with a wild kind of approval. Like Etta had passed an unspoken test.
Etta could feel Sophia’s pulse flutter, light and warm, as the girl drew their hands toward her own throat again, skimming the exposed flesh.
“Here,” she said, “right here. They’ll bleed out like a stuck pig before they can squeal, and you’ll be able to get away. Remember that.”
Etta nodded, her throat too tight to speak as Sophia pried the knife out of her fingers and threw it hard enough for the tip to embed itself in the wall and stay there, shivering.
“They won’t expect it from you,” she continued, “and, fool that I am, I didn’t either. Good for you. I like a fighter. But it won’t do you much good against me.”
“Says the girl who can’t stop throwing up.” Etta barely recognized herself in her anger, and she knew herself even less in her helplessness. It left her feeling the way she’d felt while drowning, watching the surface of the water grow darker by the second.
Sophia rose, picked up the silver pitcher from the desk, and poured it into a small porcelain basin, then splashed water on her face, her neck, her hands. When she finished, she gave it a look of ire. “I hate this century. It’s so…rustic, don’t you think?”
“What century?” Etta heard herself whisper.
“You really haven’t done this before, have you? You truly had no idea. Remarkable.” Sophia glanced up, lips twisting. “Guess.”
She didn’t want to say it out loud, but it was the only way to know. “Eighteenth?” she guessed, thinking of the costumes. “You brought me back to the eighteenth century?”
Desperation raised the pitch of her voice. Tell me, tell me, just tell me—
“No one brought you anywhere,” said Sophia. “You traveled.”
TRAVELED. ETTA ROLLED THE WORD around in her mind like clay, letting it take shape, smoothing it out, trying it again in different form. Traveled.
To travel was to imply some kind of choice; to cross a distance willingly, for a reason. Etta had followed that noise, the screams, because she’d wanted to prove to herself that she wasn’t crazy, that there was a source, a reason for it. And it had led her…
To the stairwell.
The wall of shivering air.
Except, no…that wasn’t the whole truth of it, not really. It had led her to Sophia, and Sophia had brought her to the stairwell, because…