The Time Tutor (9 page)

“Yes, yes, I know what you mean.”

“Hannelore had me and Bertrand down in the room, the room with the mosaic floor. She called in Susan, held me and Bertrand by the hand, and . . .” Alva paused. “And she sucked the power out of us. Or rather, she put her power into us, and somehow we magnified it. And then she took it back and used it against Susan.”

Vogelstein put his cup down, and took his arm from around her. “Who is Susan?” He was glowering, and she had to assume it meant he was concentrating, not that he was angry at her. But it was difficult to be sure.

“My maid. Or rather, that's what I thought until last night. I think she was actually a Favorite, but she is a maid now, in some kind of penance. Yesterday I learned that the Favorites are all working on experiments that Hannelore is conducting about the talent, and what it can do. Ed said that they have been doing this for years.”

“Who is Ed? And what kind of experiments?” Now he really did look angry. His dark eyes seemed to be shooting lightning bolts.

“It isn't my fault,” Alva said, pushing against his shoulder with the heel of her hand. “I'm just telling you what people said.”

“What precisely is that damned evil Transylvanian genius getting up to?” he barked. “What the hell is she cooking up in that creepy mansion of hers?”

“She's from Transylvania? I thought she was German.”

“Austro-Hungarian,” he muttered. “You know. Evil scientists, the whole lot of them.”

“No, I don't know. Will you listen to what I am trying to tell you, or not?”

He subsided, and she explained what Ed had told her in the kitchens. That some fifteen years ago Hannelore had started experimenting with time manipulation. She discovered that if she channeled her power through other people, she could produce strange, sometimes horrifying effects. She stopped training her Favorites in time travel and started using them instead, as both conduits for her power and subjects of experimentation. It had been fifteen long years since she had trained anyone to jump in time. Instead, she kept her Favorites close, experimenting with them and on them. When Alva had asked Ed why they all stayed, he had gotten passionate. “We are pushing the boundaries of our knowledge,” he had said. “It is noble work.”

“But you are being aged; you are giving her your life's breath,” Alva had said.

And with that the worst of the truth had come out. He believed in the work, he said, but the emotional power of the experiments was also addictive. “You don't know it yet. But there is no feeling like the feeling of her power coursing through you, and no feeling like being held suspended in time at her will, then all at once rushing through more of your life than you can live on your own. It is the best and the worst feeling in the world, and the intensity . . . anyone who has once felt it wants more and more of it. We all have come to depend upon it. Upon her.”

When Alva was finished telling Vogelstein about it, he sat, staring at her. “Well I'll be drawn, hung, and quartered,” he said after a long pause.

“It's horrible,” Alva said. “And even more horrible to witness. I felt that power flowing through me, and perhaps it takes more than one time to become addicted, because I certainly never want to feel it again.”

But Vogelstein was shaking his head, not listening. “That blasted, bloody prodigy of an old vampire! She stole a goddamn march on me!”

Alva drew back. “What?”

Vogelstein waved an angry hand in the air. “It's just exactly like everyone discovering photography at the same moment all over the world, or when everyone invents the telephone simultaneously, or what have you. That woman has pipped me to the post! I'm arsing around making pathetic little advances with Stan, Stan the Madrigal Man, and she's got a mansion full of zombies to practice on!”

“But”—she put a hand on his arm—“she was
torturing
Susan, do you understand?”

He frowned. “I thought this Ed person said they wanted it, that it felt good.”

“He did say that. And you could tell that it brought Susan a strange sort of pleasure. But she didn't
want
it. She accepted it for reasons of her own, but she didn't want it.”

“What do you mean? What did Hannelore do to her?”

Alva took a deep breath. “She . . .” But she found she couldn't go on. She didn't want to remember what had happened to Susan, and how Susan had writhed in the silver chair, seeming to both love and hate what was happening to her. Afterward Hannelore had said it was because Susan was experiencing the entirety of three days' physical sensations in one brief period of time. All the sorrow, all the joy, all the physical pleasure and pain, all the dreams and all the waking thoughts.

Alva had watched, unable to look away, feeling her own power and Bertrand's being funneled into and through Hannelore, used by her to speed time, and to hold another human being pinned in that rushing cataract of minutes, hours, days.

When finally Susan was released, she had slumped in the chair, unconscious. Hannelore, murmuring feathery endearments, had rushed to her side, lifted her in her arms with the tenderness of a mother, then they had both winked out, leaving Bertrand and Alva alone in the cold room with just the chair and the mosaic man and the serpents. When Hannelore returned, she had looked older, as if she, and not Susan, had had three days of her life torn from her. . . .

“Alva.” Vogelstein was speaking. “Alva, come back to me. Try and tell me what happened.”

But Alva shook her head. He was warm beside her, and the morning sun was pouring in the window, and it was hundreds of years ago, and it was spring. She didn't want to tell him, didn't want to even remember it. She wanted to live, right now, in this hour. Live it in delicious real time, with each second tumbling voluptuously after the last. She turned to him, looked him in the eye. Between one heartbeat and another she was on fire. “Ignatz,” she said, tasting his name. And she leaned in and kissed him. Then she climbed on top of him, her legs straddling his hips. She kissed him fiercely, demandingly. He tasted good. She began pulling at his smock.

He pushed her away by the shoulders, a sad smile on his face. “Hush, now, Alva. I want you, too, darling, but first you have to tell me—”

“No,” she said, straining toward him. “I shall tell you later. I promise. Let me have you, Ignatz.”

“Sweet chuck,” he murmured.

“What does that mean?” she whispered.

“It means . . .” He seemed to think about it for a moment. “It was something my nurse called me,” he said. “I think it means sweet chicken.”

 • • • 

“Never call me that again. Never, do you hear me?”

He held up his hands. “It's just a name. I shall never call you it again.”

She sank her face into her hands, and he could feel, from the tension in her, that she was fighting back some huge emotion. “Call me lovely names, Ignatz,” she said after a moment. “Just not bird names.”

“No more bird names.” He stroked her thighs, on either side of his hips. “How about . . . sweet pea? Peach?”

Silence. Then a little sigh. “No. I don't like that. No fruits or vegetables.”

“Mignon?”

“No. No French. Bertrand is French.”

“Hell.” Now it was his turn to pull back. “Bertrand.”

“Yes. Bertrand.” He watched her eyes widen. “Oh, no. I just remembered. He told Hannelore that we were engaged. I'm not sure whether or not he believes it to be true.”

 • • • 

Ignatz pushed her up and off of him and scrambled out of bed. “He told her what?”

Alva sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. She couldn't help but smile. He looked quite magnificent—tall, enraged, with his black hair all wild and that bandage wrapped round his head at a dashing angle. She wished he would take off his absurd smock and just let her see him. She wanted to see him quite desperately. “He told her that we were engaged. It was when she was testing us, and he was trying to prove that we were both trustworthy. It seemed to work. But what if he believes it?”

Ignatz paced back and forth. “He's wildly in love with you. Told me he was going to marry you, come hell or high water.” He groaned. “Alva, he's like a little brother to me. Sixty percent pain in the ass, forty percent pride and joy. What's this going to do to him?”

Alva flopped back against the headboard and rolled her eyes to heaven. “I like your arrogance. It's actually one of your more attractive qualities. But if you are thinking that I would be marrying Bertrand if only you hadn't come along—”

He rounded on her, pointing. “I am arrogant,” he said, “because I'm a great time traveler and a great teacher. What I'm not, apparently, is a great friend.”

She shrugged. “You haven't done anything yet, and I'm certainly not going to force you. But as a point of information, I've told him a hundred times that I don't love him. He has no reason to believe I do.”

“Except that you've slept with him.”

“Ignatz.” She reached for and took his hand. “Do you believe that a woman loves you just because she sleeps with you? Do you believe that a woman loves you even if she's told you many times that she does not?”

“No,” he said. “Of course not.”

She laced her fingers with his, and tugged, ever so gently. “You're mine,” she said.

But he resisted coming to bed. “‘Midway upon the journey of my life,'” he said with a lopsided smile, “‘I found myself within a forest dark.'”

“And I suppose that I am the forest dark. How dismal.” She let go of his hand. “You are welcome to overcome your dark, foresty urges and keep snuggling innocently with me in this bed for heaven knows how many more nights, Ignatz. But I put you on warning. I am going to make a concerted effort to seduce you.”

She loved watching that smile change into a wicked grin. “Then I am clearly doomed. But perhaps I shall be able to hold out for just a little while longer.”

She leaned forward and propped her chin on her fists. “I don't believe you will, Ignatz. I think you will find yourself beseeching me, before much more time has passed. Take off your smock. Let me see you.”

 • • • 

He stood before her, bare and forked as God had made him. She looked him up and down, and he felt like she was lighting him on fire with her eyes. He was bruised and scratched up and much the worse for wear, but her gaze seemed to heal all his wounds.

“Come here, Ignatz,” she said.

“My name isn't Ignatz.” He walked forward, and stopped by the bed, looking down at her.

She reached around and held him at the small of the back, then slipped her hands lower, spreading her fingers over his ass. She kissed his cock. Sweet, sweet, sugar-sweet longing spread from her lips, down the length of him, and back again. Then she raised those heavenly eyes to his, and he realized that she was welcome to call him any name that she liked, and she was also entirely correct that he was going to beg. “Please,” he whispered.

 • • • 

“Ignatz . . .” Alva pushed her fingers into the hair that dusted his chest. She had come to love the name. It was perfect for him, with that abrupt, rough beginning and that sharp ending, tied off with a dashing zed.

“I'm not sure that was good for your head. You fell asleep like a fallen giant and you slept for hours.”

“It was very good for me. Not so good for you. Greedy me.”

“I fully expect you to reciprocate.”

He pulled her to him. “I shall. Are you still in this damned night shift?”

“Indeed. Isn't it shocking?”

He fumbled with it, trying to get it off of her.

She sat up and raised her arms, to make it easier. He slowly slipped the resented garment up and off of her. She relished the feel of it whispering over her, with just the hint of his strong hands guiding the fabric. The promise that nothing would be between those hands and her flesh, very soon, very soon . . . now. She sighed as she felt him slide his hands back down her bare flanks. When she opened her eyes he was looking directly into them, and the darkness of his eyes startled her. He seemed to be seeing her for the first time. Then his gaze slipped down the length of her. She shivered, and felt the bright ache as her nipples tightened. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, one by one.

 • • • 

It was when he was buried in her, and she was on top, arching her back in order to clench his cock against just the right place, and calling to the heavens what was now surely his real name,
Ignatz
 . . . that was when he knew. He was in love, totally and irrevocably. And when he knew, he came. She was poised there for a moment, her fingers in between them, fluttering like wings. Then she plunged, and hurled her pleasure down toward him, but instead of striking, she came down to rest, lightly and sweetly on him, not a hawk, but the feather of a hawk. . . .

A bird metaphor. She seemed to call them up in him.

“Mm,” she said.

“Mm,” he agreed.

She rubbed the back of a hand to an eye, nuzzled into his neck, and was asleep on his chest.

 • • • 

Two things made teaching Alva different—and more difficult—than teaching any other student he'd ever had. First, he didn't want her to learn to jump, because he wanted her to stay forever in this little twelfth-century room, far from Bertrand, far from Hannelore . . . but very, very close to him. And second, he had never taught anyone to jump when he couldn't feel the River himself. He always felt it along with his students, always guided them by touch and empathy. Now his concussion was in the way, and teaching Alva to jump was like teaching someone to read when you yourself can make neither head nor tail of the alphabet.

It was much easier to simply seduce her again.