30

Alexander’s house had real glass in the windows.  The small panes were held in place by lead, but the strips of lead did nothing to break the beam of morning light that shone in Kendra’s face, waking her from a dreamless sleep.

The side of her that had not been pressed into the warm feather bed was cold and stiff.  She stood, rubbed her arms briskly, then stretched.  Her scarf had slipped off , and her hair was in her face.  Working without a mirror, Kendra did her best to twist her long thick hair into a bun, and pin it in place.  Not until she’d finished did she spot what seemed to be a mirror on the wall.  Scarf in hand, she peered into it.  Her image wavered so much that it was impossible to be sure, but she might have achieved the sexy/messy look that Xenopoulos and hot women everywhere had mastered.  Xenopoulos.  Thoughts of the spy filled Kendra with a burning need to get back to her research and the mysteries of her own timeline.

She looked again in the dull, distorting mirror, and then out at the street.  A horse and rider clopped by.  The shod hooves created quite a clatter on the cobbles.  A thrill shot through her--she really was in England in 1593.  Kendra whirled where she stood, then took in the room in the morning light.  Its white walls and oak furniture seemed so light and fresh.  Alexander…he had been so…so…intriguing, compelling, and handsome.  She blushed.  “Dangerous,” she whispered.

Determined not to leave him wondering, she searched the room for a pen and paper, but found neither.  With trepidation, she widened her search to include the rest of the house.  Afraid that she would see a coffin in one of the rooms, Kendra moved timidly from room to room, scanning each from the doorway before she entered.  She found no coffin, and no sign of Alexander, but she did find parchment and a quill in what seemed to be his study on the first floor.

Kendra had never used a quill or parchment.  It seemed straight forward enough.  Leaning over the desk, she unrolled the parchment a little and immediately identified the first problem.  When she lifted a hand to grab the quill, the corner of the parchment that she’d released curled.  She spotted four polished stones, put the quill down, and placed a stone on each corner.  She’d only planned to leave a small note, about the size of one of the stones, but with the stones in place her note would have to be at least three times bigger than she’d intended.  Kendra hoped that paper did not cost much--was it even paper?  It did feel like thick paper rather than vellum.

She picked up the quill again, uncapped the ink, and realized that she didn’t know how deep to dip the quill.  She barely touched the tip to the ink, then touched the pen to the page and made the slanting downstroke of a capital ‘A’.  She left only a small blot on the page at the top of the stroke.

Kendra exhaled impatiently, and tried again after a deeper dip into the ink.  That earned her a bigger blot and a small streak.  The pen screeched in protest.  Maybe I should just finger paint.

She soaked the feather rather than the quill, and used it like a brush to paint her message on the parchment.  By the time she’d finished, it looked as if a kindergarten class had conspired to write the note.  Because she knew what she’d written it was easy enough for Kendra to make out the message, but Alex…was it okay to call him that?  He might have a tough time making sense of it.  He’ll just have to try hard.

She smiled, then, eager to return to her own work and her own time, Kendra removed the top two stones from the parchment, which promptly rolled, smearing the ink. 

“Damn!”  She didn’t want to see how much more indecipherable the message had become.  It would be pointless to look because she definitely lacked the patience to try again.  Kendra had intended to leave the scroll on the bed she’d slept in, but her increasingly foul mood left no room for such a romantic gesture.

She left the roll and the ruined quill on Alex’s desk, and stuck the cork back in the bottle of ink.  She’d gotten ink on the sides of the bottle while she “painted” her message, and managed to ink her fingers when she recapped it.  Ink had also leaked onto Alex’s desk around the bottom of the bottle.  Great!  He’ll probably wish he’d bitten me last night to avoid this mess.

Giving up on the bungled message, Kendra drew the fob from under her blouse.  She glanced around the study once more.  It was so cozy that she wondered, even as her thumb pressed the button, if she felt more at home in the sixteenth-century dwelling of a vampire than she ever had in the twenty-first century.  Something had shifted in her psyche, she was sure of it.

She landed off balance near her lab bench, and grabbed the tall stool to prevent a fall.  The stool crashed into the bench, and Kendra followed, knocking her computer monitor back a few inches, but avoiding all blows to her face.  All in all, it wasn’t a horrible landing—a little loud, but not painful, or so she thought.

Someone knocked on her door.  “Kendra?  I hear you in there.” 

It was Neil, her nosiest colleague. 

“It’s Neil.  Let me in.  We need to talk.”

“Just a minute!”

Kendra pulled off her scarf and wiped her ink-stained fingers on it.  Next she stripped off her smock and dress, then stuffed them with her shapeless leather “shoes” in a bottom drawer on her bench.

“Kendra!  Come on.  Let me in,” Neil whined.

“I’m coming!” she shouted then pulled her shirt over her head and zipped up her jeans.  She slid her feet into her sneakers as she walked, but didn’t tie them.

She jerked open the door.  “What?!”

“Geez, don’t get your panties in twist,” Neil said, hands up with both palms toward Kendra as if he might need to hold her off.

“Neil, I don’t have time for your bullshit.”

“All right, all right,” he said soothingly.  He sidled past Kendra and into her lab.  “I just want to see how you are.  Our dissertation deadline is tomorrow.”  He scanned her lab as he spoke, “I wanted to see what you’ve--I mean I wanted to see how you are.”  His eyes came to rest at the bottom of Kendra’s lab bench. 

She followed his gaze.  Crap!  Her ink-stained headscarf and part of one shoe stuck out of the drawer.

“That’s nothing, just some rags--hey!”

Neil had rushed to the drawer, and pulled out her costume.  “Middle Ages?!” he gloated.  “Was she right?  Have you figured out how to travel in time?  Wait until she sees this.  I am so going to be out of debt!”