Heidelberg Effect (17 page)

Just after dinner, when Ella and another
novice had washed and dried the last plate, Greta returned. The
three older nuns scurried around her, helping her off with her
cloak, then led her to a seat by the stone fireplace in the main
dining room. Ella sat in the shadows and listened as Greta spoke
calmly to the nuns. But Ella understood not a word. Once, Greta
caught her eye and such pain and weariness was in her face that it
took Ella’s breath away. As Greta spoke, the nuns reacted in
varying ways. One of the older nuns—usually a veritable rock of
confidence and ability—broke down in front of the Mother Superior
and sobbed beyond all care. That scared Ella most of all. She knew
the woman had been close to Sister Therese. Ella could only assume
this meant the worst. She looked at Greta who had a gentle hand on
the old woman’s shoulder. She was murmuring to her in the medieval
German that Ella found so hard to understand.

The news, when it finally came her time to
hear it, was as tragic as the reactions suggested. Therese’s body
had lain in the square until after the men had ridden away to
Axel’s castle with the novice.

“I have a hope that Sister
Therese is alive,” Greta said. “They told me she was eventually
taken to the
Hexenturm
.” Ella knew this was what the villagers called the Witches
Tower, built in 1392 and used as a prison for women and
witches.

“I pray it means she lives still,” Greta
said as she accepted a cup of tea from one of the trembling
novices.

“And Anna?”

A tear traced down Greta’s cheek as she
looked at Ella. “Poor Ella,” she said. “You will never escape the
memory of this day. Anna?” Greta shrugged with what looked like
supreme exhaustion. Ella thought she saw her friend weaken. “And
what of Hannah before her?” Greta said. “And Margo, and Liza, and
all the others? What indeed?”

Later that night as the convent slept and
wept, Ella crept along the cold stone passageway to Greta’s
bedchamber. She opened the bedroom door without knocking and found
the nun kneeling in prayer by her bed.

“It’s time, Greta,” she said, moving into
the bedroom and shutting the door behind her. “It’s time for us to
deal with this bastard. I need to go back.”

Chapter Eleven

The sun would be another hour before it came
up. The street outside the abbey was black and glistening with the
rain that had only just stopped. Ella and Greta stood together in
the kitchen by the door that led to the little garden.

“You’re sure about this?” Ella asked,
patting the pockets of her leather jacket in a nervous habit as if
checking for her car keys.

“As sure as I can be without having actually
done it.”

“And you think I’ll be able to come back to
this specific time again?”

Greta shrugged. “If not, it won’t matter,”
she said. “As soon as you return to your own time, I and everyone
you have met here will be long dead and dust.”

“Really great pep talk, Greta. Might want to
work on the whole dead and dust thing, though.”

“When you came to us that night, you were
very emotional, yes?”

“Hysterical, in fact.”

“And you were thinking of your mother?”

“I was,” she said.

Greta nodded. “Great emotion seems to be the
push that makes it happen.”

“Well, I was certainly emotional when it
happened,” Ella said. “And you’re sure I can do this without a
storm?”

Greta held both of Ella’s hands in hers.
“Hold your mother’s necklace in your hand when you’re ready,” she
said. “Close your eyes and think of her. Think of her looking down
on you, loving you. Ask her to help you.”

Ella leaned over and kissed her friend on
the cheek.

“I pray you return to us,” Greta said
simply.

“Well, God’s been favoring your prayers
pretty good lately,” Ella said as she turned to open the door to
the garden. The pre-dawn morning was moonless and cold. “I’ll be
back. Don’t you worry,” she said. “I just hope it’s not ten years
from now.”

Ella slipped out of the door, blending into
the dark and grateful for her black clothes. She stole down the
garden path. They had decided she should go to the spot where she
had been found. It turned out that Greta had also come to this time
from that very spot. Trying to watch where she put her feet on the
uneven cobblestones of the garden path, Ella crept quietly to the
end of the garden wall and climbed over it.

When she eased herself to the ground, she
looked around to make sure she was alone. Before she even touched
the opal around her neck, she could feel something happening, a
vibration in her head and fingers. Her jacket was inadequate
against the cold but she didn’t feel the chill as she dug into the
neck of her shirt and brought out her mother’s opal. When she held
it, she felt a door opening in front of her. She couldn’t see it
but she could sense it. She closed her eyes and gripped the
necklace tightly.

“Mother,” she whispered. “Help me help these
people. Help me do now what you always did when you were alive.
Please be with me. I forgive you.” As she spoke, she felt her legs
give way and she sank slowly to her knees. Her head began to spin
and when she opened her eyes, she saw nothing—not the wall, not
even the black branches of the almond trees in the distance.
Terrified for a moment that she was caught in some kind of limbo,
she forgot herself and cried out: “Mother? Can you hear me?”
Suddenly she heard something she had not heard in nearly four
weeks: the sound of traffic. Her vision cleared as if in slow
motion and she lurched to her feet. The garden wall was no longer
there but the cobblestones were the same beneath her feet.

She was back.

Praying that the year was 2012 and not a few
decades earlier when the Nazis were rounding up everyone, Ella
moved down the dark alley from which she had first disappeared.
Above the shops in the alley, she could see apartments with window
boxes full of salvia and geraniums. She had no idea what year it
was.

She moved quickly toward
the
Altstadt
. Her
apartment was on the other side of it. As soon as she saw the
marketplace square, she had to stop and gasp. It was inconceivable
that this happy, bustling tourist attraction was the same street of
terror and death she had just left.

The cafés were still open
and busy. Even though it was early November, the street was full of
students, tourists, and office workers. She was tempted to grab a
bratwurst at the outdoor stand and eat it on the way to her
apartment. Or a Coke! But she was in too much of a hurry to stop.
Too many people were depending on her to collect what she needed
and get back as soon as possible.
That
asshole Axel could be gathering his forces to attack at any
minute.

Ella darted into the shadows and jogged the
half mile down residential streets to the street of her apartment.
She knew she had paid the rent up to the end of the month. She
walked across the street and pulled open the heavy door to her
building.

As soon as she moved into the hallway, the
lights flickered on and she had the unshakable feeling that she was
being watched. Ignoring the ancient lift, she took the stairs two
at a time to the third floor. When she saw her apartment door, she
hesitated but shook off her reluctance as irrational.

The first thing she did
when she entered her apartment was to go to the large wooden chest
of drawers against the wall in the living room. She pulled open a
drawer and took out her iPhone charger and a cloth mail pouch that
she sometimes used to carry to the office. She plugged her phone in
and waited for it to reactivate. She knew it had to be
some
time in 2012
because all her things were still in the apartment. That meant it
hadn’t been rented in her absence. The screen on her phone buzzed
and when she looked at the date, her shoulders sagged with relief.
It showed the date as November 2, 2012, only four weeks from the
day she had crossed over to 1620.

She left the phone to
charge and looked around the living room before taking the bag down
the hallway. It looked different. It looked
lived in
. Shaking herself out of the
thought that someone was living in her apartment, she took the bag
into the bathroom, where a sudden longing for a hot shower nearly
put an end to any possible resolution to the nunnery’s warlord
problem. She saw a razor on the sink and a toothbrush that wasn’t
hers.

Someone
was
living here. That meant someone
would be coming back. Hurriedly, Ella flung open the linen closet
door and grabbed two bars of soap. A horn honked outside the window
and suddenly she was seized with disbelief that she had lived the
last four weeks in another century.

How was it possible? Was it
all a dream? Had she really gone back to 1620 Heidelberg?
Instead of raiding her apartment, should she just
go to the nearest med center and get a CAT scan?

The sense that someone was
watching her intensified. The thought of getting caught, and
leaving Greta to die at the hands of that monster Axel, fueled Ella
with added urgency. She had a list of things she would need but
grabbed a few other things as she discovered them: a jar of
Nutella, a bottle of instant coffee, six tampons, and a
washcloth.
It’s the little things,
she found herself thinking, as she stuffed the
washcloth into the bag. Just being able to properly wash her face
would make such a difference. She froze as she stood in her dining
room, listening to the sounds of traffic outside and straining to
hear if there was anything else.

She was sure she had heard something. She
held her breath and listened. Except for the cars and trucks
outside her window, all was quiet.

The urge to stay in 2012—where it was warm
and dry, where you didn’t have to pick the bugs out of your
breakfast, where people understood you when you spoke—was nearly
irresistible. Ella shook off the temptation and returned to the
living room, moving quickly to her desk. She could tell instantly
that someone had gone through it. Notepads were upside down instead
of stacked neatly as she always had them. A picture of her father
was sitting at an angle making it not visible from where she sat at
the computer terminal.

She was tempted to turn on
her computer, but resisted. She opened the lower drawer of her desk
and pulled out the false bottom. From its contents she took the
block of C4, six blasting caps and two more Taser shotgun shells.
She filled the mail pouch with these. She would have to dig up the
Taser in the convent garden and hope it still worked, but a weapon
was a weapon. She heard a sudden voice in her head dictating a
letter to the manufacturer: “
Dear Sirs:
I’m writing to report that your product, the Taser XREP, functioned
remarkably well when attacking a 17
^th
century German castle even
after being clogged with dirt for nearly a month
.”

She scanned her apartment bookshelves. There
was nothing there she needed. She moved into the kitchen and took a
few items from the cupboard. She couldn’t resist opening the
refrigerator to see if there was anything still edible in
there.

A six pack of beer. Not her brand.

She was beginning to feel off-kilter and
edgy. As she turned to leave, she noticed the framed photograph of
Rowan next to the television set. When she saw it, she felt like
she’d been kicked in the stomach. Just the sight of his crinkly,
confident blue eyes and his I’ve-got-all-the-answers grin made her
want to sit down and cry. She reached to take the photo but
immediately realized it was too big. And she was in a hurry. She
disconnected her phone from the charger and, without bothering to
close the apartment door behind her, turned and ran down the three
flights of stairs to the street.

Rowan stared at Ella’s open apartment
door.

Son of a bitch! The first time he takes five
minutes to grab a damn espresso and someone breaks into the
apartment?

He pushed the apartment
door wide open with the toe of his cowboy boot and peered in. Dust
motes danced in a shaft of sunlight from the living room window. He
listened. And then entered the apartment. Within fifteen seconds,
he knew it was empty and he knew
someone
had been in the apartment
recently. When he saw the iPhone charger dangling from the
electrical socket, he knew
who
.

The mailbag banged against
her stomach as she ran. Images of Axel beating and cutting Greta
fueled her urgency. Except for the Taser, she had no weapon, not
even a knife.
Idiot! Why didn’t I grab a
kitchen knife?

She saw few people as she
tore down the lonely city streets. She gulped in huge breaths of
air, praying she would not hyperventilate before she reached the
spot. At the quiet and dark north end of the
Altstadt
, she ran into the first
alley and tried to remember which alley contained the spot near the
convent garden wall. She cursed herself for not marking it better
in her head.

As she approached the spot, she felt an
indescribably intense sadness as she imagined Rowan Pierce’s face.
. In fact, the closer she walked toward 1620, the greater her
sadness grew. When she reached the portal, she walked right on
through. She didn’t need to touch the opal to feel the door open
for her, she only needed to think of what she had lost.

She had been gone from the convent only for
a few hours of the early morning, but she was still worried about
what had happened while she was gone. Greta assured her, nothing
had happened at all.