Ripped (49 page)

“Nor I, you.”

“Promise you'll write? Something. Anything I can remember you by.” Katie was sobbing.

Toby nodded and bent closer. “Here's another promise for you, lass. In my heart, I shall love you forever. Throughout time, throughout history, throughout eternity.” And with that, he gently guided her index finger through the metal bars toward the pitted hole in the London Stone.

Katie's pulse raced.

Love you forever?
Is that what Toby had said?

And a moment later, Katie was hurtling through time and space.

Chapter Fifty-seven

Mountebanks and Liars say the Bells of Blackfriars

A 
deafening explosion
. Shock waves pounded through Katie's body. She was falling, falling, falling, her limbs and torso tumbling this way and that as a cacophony of roaring sounds reverberated in her head, along with familiar words:
Beware of what you wish for . . . !

When the gut-wrenching sensation of free-falling finally subsided, Katie took a deep, shuddering breath, but kept her eyes shut against the intense bright light flashing against her lids.

A voice was shouting at her.

And what was that smell? Peanut butter and smoky cheese?

The shouting grew louder as if a tin can were rattling inside her skull, clanking and banging.

“You all right, luv?”

“Stop yelling!” Katie moaned, clamping her hands over her ears and squinting her eyes open a crack.

“Not shouting.” It was Toby—the twenty-first–century Toby — peering at her in an odd way.

Katie gave a weak smile. “Just whisper, Toby. Please. It sounds as if my eardrums will burst.”

Toby was standing in front of her, his black duster skimming his ankles, his dark hair falling to his shoulders. With his strong jaw and piercing brown eyes, he looked like her own Toby, only taller, less broad across the chest. His nose wasn't crooked like
her
Toby's; his front teeth weren't chipped; and his complexion was clear—no knife scars or pitted indentations from childhood diseases. Katie felt a pang of regret that swirled in her gut until Toby turned his full dark gaze on her and said, “How do you know my name?”

Katie froze, then slowly lowered her hands from her ears.

“What do you mean?” she choked out in a hoarse whisper. “Of course I know your name.”

“Well, I don't know yours. And unless I was totally stoned out of my gourd when I met you, I'm sure I'd remember a twist 'n' swirl with such a beautiful boat race.”

“Toby, it's me! Katie.”

“Pleasure to meet you.”

“Shit! Don't you know who I am?”

He looked blank.

“I'm Collin's cousin!” Katie cried. “Katie Lennox.”

“Sorry, luv. Dunno anyone named Collin. Care for a Milk Dud?” He held out his hand, but she noticed it was shaking slightly. He was nervous. Or worried. Or lying.

What
'
s going on?
Katie wondered. “Is this one of your stupid rum and cokes, Toby? Because if it is, it's not funny.”

Again the blank look, but the hand holding out the chocolate candy was definitely not steady.

“I'm Collin's cousin,” Katie said slowly, patiently. “His American cousin. His ham shank cousin? Please tell me you're pulling my leg, Toby.”

“I'm sorry, but I really don't know anyone named Collin.”

“Collin Twyford. He goes to school with you.”

Toby shook his head. “Sorry, luv.” He took a step closer. “Look. You're looking a bit green around the gills. Pale as a ghost, actually. There's a god-awful little tea shop downstairs, soupy little biscuits, but if you'd care to—”

Katie's stomach tightened. “There's no time for . . .
tea!
I need to find Collin.” Her eyes swiveled to her backpack on the ground. She lunged for it, and tugged out her cell phone from the inner pocket.

“No mobiles allowed in the museum,” Toby warned.

“I don't give a crap,” Katie said, feeling oddly emboldened. “I just helped push the most notorious serial killer in British history over the side of a pier. I don't have time for cell phone rules. I need to know—”

She held up her iPhone and scrolled down the list of her contacts. No Collin.

There
'
s a glitch in my phone
, she told herself, and hastily tapped in his number, which she knew by heart, but got someone else's voice message. She swiveled her gaze back to Toby.

“
Omigod!
Collin hasn't been born! I mean, he
couldn
'
t
have been born. I killed his ancestor. His direct ancestor! Collin never married Prudence Farthington. So my Aunt Pru—”

“Slow down.”

“No, you slow down! What am I going to do? I can't go back and change everything to the way it was, like you did, Toby. I can't!”

“What do you mean . . . like I did?”

“You told me the London Stone transported you back in time as well—but in the end, you had to go back and undo everything. You asked me if I'd ever read ‘The Raven's Claw.' It's a short story about—”

“I know. I know. It's about a guy who changes history then uses his last wish to return everything back the way it was. But about time travel . . . I never told anyone—”

“Well, you told me.”

“I swore on my grandfather's grave, I wouldn't reveal it to anyone. What did I tell you . . . exactly?”

“Oh, Toby. I can't remember
exactly
. Something about Madeleine Smith who killed her lover with arsenic in the eighteen hundreds.”

“Yes. Okay. Now I believe you. We've obviously met before. Tell me about this cousin of yours . . . ?”

“His name's Collin, and I just helped push his ancestor over a very high construction pier—where the future Tower Bridge will be built.
Has been built
. It was built, right?”

Toby nodded. “Why did you push—”

“He was Jack the Ripper!”

“Who?”

“You never heard of Jack the Ripper?”

“Nope.”

“Does that mean there's no Jack the Ripper exhibit here in the Chamber of Horrors?”

“There's a gruesome one about an ax-murderess, the Demon Duchess of Devon. But no Jack—”

Katie grabbed Toby's sleeve. “What am I going to do? I can't go back and change everything to the way it was! I can't—”

“You can. And you have to. At least that's what I did. If generations of your cousin's family have been wiped out, it doesn't look as if you have a choice, Katie. I went back and undid all the harm I'd caused. Just like my grandfather did when he was my age.”

“Your grandfather
knew
about the London Stone? Did he . . . by any chance . . . learn about it from his . . . father?”

“
His
grandfather
. My namesake. Tobias Becket.”

“Jeez! I just kissed your . . . er . . . um . . . I was just talking to your great-great-grandfather. He promised . . . oh, never mind. Look. I can't go back and undo everything. If I do . . . innocent people will die. Lady Beatrix, Dora Fowler, Molly Potter, and Mary Jane Kelly will all have their throats slit and their bodies eviscerated. And Molly Potter is pregnant!”

“Katie, luv. If your cousin was alive when you left, but isn't now, you've likely wiped out far more than four people—”

“But he's related to Jack the Ripper! Maybe it's for the best! Maybe my cousin Collin has these, like, weird genes that shouldn't be passed on!”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Wait! Maybe Collin
was
born after all. But has a different name. You told me that I could change small things, but not big ones. Maybe—” But Katie couldn't dismiss the uneasy feeling in her gut that she'd wiped out generations of her cousin's family.

“Katie. Tell me what happened. Tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”

Katie took a deep breath and began talking fast. Very fast. She told Toby the saga of what happened in the year 1888 when Jack the Ripper began his rampage. And though she rambled a bit, when she finally came to the part about Collin's tumbling over the edge of the pier into the Thames, Toby nodded his head.

“Katie,” he said, his voice grim and low. “You've got to go back and change things to the way they were.”

“No. Not until I've checked. Maybe Collin's here. Or maybe there's a reason he's not here. Maybe he's not
meant
to have been born.”

“Can you really play God? Can you actually say this person should live, and that person not? The only sensible thing to do is return things to their natural order.”

“You're right. I know you're right. I just have to double-check. I need to go home to my grandmother's house and make sure. If it's true . . . if Collin was never born, can I actually just go back and undo everything?”

“Yes. That's what I did. And if it's any consolation, you can go back and explain everything to this other Toby, my great-great-grandfather. If he's all that you claim he is, he'll see to it that this Ripper lad—the future Duke of Twyford—doesn't harm any more girls
and
produces an heir. That's how I did it when I went back. I asked Madeleine Smith—”

“That's it! You're a genius! I remember reading in the family Bible that Tobias Becket—your ancestor—was with Collin on the moors when Collin died. He fell into a bog and drowned. He was only twenty-one. Collin had married Prudence Farthington the year before, and they were in Dartmoor, at Bovey Castle, because their baby had just been born—a boy they named Collin! That's what actually happened. I mean, that's what the family Bible recorded.”

Katie took a breath and continued. “When I went back in time again, I warned Toby never to let Collin go anywhere near the moors. I didn't want Collin to die so young and without ever getting to know his son. I didn't have a clue that Collin was Jack the Ripper. So, if I travel back to Victorian London one last time—to a day or so
before
we pushed Collin over the pier—and lay it all out at Toby's feet, maybe he can save Lady Beatrix and the others. Keep them safe. He can do it. I know he can! Then, after Collin produces an heir, Toby will make Collin's death on the moors appear to be an accident!”

“That's asking a lot of this other Toby bloke—my ancestor.”

Katie smiled thinking about Toby.
Her
Toby. “He'll make it happen. He's the most amazing person on the planet. I know it sounds silly, but he's my
hero
.”

Toby grinned. “Must be in the genes, this hero stuff. One never thinks of one's ancestors as being really cool dudes . . . but of course, he would be, if he's anything like his twenty-first – century namesake!”

“Except for the modesty gene, you're actually very much like him,” Katie laughed, then grew serious. “OK. Here's the plan. I need to go home before I make any decisions. Maybe we've got this all wrong . . . or backwards. Maybe Collin was born after all . . . maybe we're missing something.”

Toby sucked in his breath and let it out slowly. “I think you should go back now,
this instant
, and undo—”

“No. I'm going home first.”

“Don't go home.”

“Why not?”

“Because it won't change anything. You're still going to have to travel back in time and undo what you've done. There's a Latin inscription at the bottom of the Stone, hardly legible: ‘Beware of what you wish for.' ” Toby's jaw clenched, then he continued, “My grandfather told me—as his grandfather had told him—that the London Stone always gives you what you wish for, but not in the way you wanted it.”

“Obviously. I get it.”

“I don't think you get it at all.” He stared hard at her. “Look, Katie. When you touched the London Stone that first time, what
exactly
did you wish for?”

“I wanted to catch Jack the Ripper.'”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I'm sure. I was thinking: ‘How hard could it be to catch Jack the Ripper?' Knowing what I know in the twenty-first century and having watched lots of crime shows on TV, I thought it would be easy to figure out who the Ripper was and save Lady Beatrix. I put my finger into the fissured hole in the London Stone, wriggled it around, and
poof!
I landed in the nineteenth-century to chase a serial killer.”

“That's all? Think, Katie.
Think
. What else did you wish for?”

Katie's cell phone rang out, startling them both. The peeling ringtone was totally unfamiliar. A loud, roaring car engine. A pedal-to-the-metal
vroooom-vroooooming
sound. Katie glanced at the number but didn't recognize it.

She slid her finger across the bottom of the iPhone.

“Hello?” she said tentatively.

“Katie? Sweetheart.” The voice was deep and masculine. “Where have you been? You forgot to leave me a note. Did you go to the museum after all?”

Katie's mouth dropped at the same instant that the phone slipped from her hand and smashed with a resounding
thwack
onto the tile floor. It bounced and crackled and spun toward the corner. The battery light blinked . . . and just before the phone went totally dead, Katie heard the familiar voice once again: