by Bobbi 

The Wager - chapter 1

He had known the risk. Julia had warned him. Eliot he had warned him. He had known the risk and proceeded anyway.

There had been no choice; not for him, not after Ben's ghost had appeared to him, begged him to help protect Giles Stokes from Thaddeus Trask. He owed Ben Stokes that much, at least.

The problem, the first problem, had been how to return to the past. The stairway was gone, destroyed. The I Ching, Eliot warned, could prove unstable, this time. There was, of course, astral projection; but Eliot counseled against the attempt by one who was not an adept.

"How does it work?" Barnabas demanded, prepared to proceed, whatever the danger.

"If I explain it to you, you will only make the effort; and I won't be responsible for that."

"Stokes," Barnabas pressed, "This is your great grandfather in danger, if Ben is to be believed, and I believe him. Are you prepared to accept the risk of his dying, without a child?"

Stokes toyed with his monocle. The prospect was not pleasant. He rather enjoyed life, the finer things, his books, his comforts.

And so he relented, and relented a second time when Julia made it clear that she would accompany Barnabas. If, as they expected, he would be joined to his body in his coffin, he would need to be released, protected during the day. And, in 1870, they had no way of knowing who at Collinwood, if anyone, might be relied on as an ally, or feared as a foe.

They had set out together, from the widow's walk, shortly after sunset. Barnabas had gone up to the walk early, determined to enjoy the last light of day, and she had joined him there. They had stood, side by side in companionable silence and watched the bright blue deepen, the clouds take on a pinkish hue. He reached out and took her hand after a time, and they held hands and said nothing still until it was time, and then they placed their hands on the railing, and concentrated, and spoke together the incantation as Eliot had taught it to them.

Julia watched her body below her as her astral self was flung out and away, swirling higher, spiraling faster, and then...nothing. There was nothing until she sensed a deceleration, and reversal of course, a falling back toward the earth.

She concentrated. Substance, weight: that was her mantra. And, as she concentrated, she took on substance, materializing just outside the gates to the mausoleum. Granted their past journeys, she paused before entering: would she find him there, chains undisturbed, as Willie would find him, in almost a hundred years. As she stood, she heard it, them, voices, a man and a woman. She entered the mausoleum and stood back, against the wall, unobserved. The voices came closer, clearer.

"With the rest of the family away, there's no reason to skulk around here," the woman, young, looking incredibly like Carolyn, stopped just inside the gate.

"Perhaps not," the young man replying could have been Joe Haskell's older brother: "But you're promised to Stokes, and servants have ears, and eyes and mouths, although not so pretty as yours." He took her in his arms, kissed her, hungry for more and impatient.

Julia could wait no longer, fleeing inside, into the secret room, just before the couple entered the mausoleum, carrying blankets with them, and a picnic hamper.

With those two in the mausoleum, Julia turned her attention to the coffin. It was there, as it had been, chains intact. The paradox of time travel did interest her, but it would have to wait. They had been here, in 1840. But it was 1870, and Willie had not yet freed Barnabas from his long uninterrupted captivity. She and Eliot could work through the physics and the philosophy, perhaps, if all went well, later. If all did not go well, she mused, would there be a later for Eliot, and if there had been no Eliot, how could he have traveled by way of the staircase to 1840? For now, Julia stood next to his coffin, waiting, rusting he had arrived, was safe, until she could attack the lock.

Outside the mausoleum, hovering above, obscured by the dark gray clouds hanging low in the darkening sky, four figures looked down, smirked.

"What fools," the small one smiled, smug.

"You were right, Alma, they are here. I didn't think he'd be fool enough to come, or she'd be fool enough to let him. But that doesn't mean they'll succeed."

"Don't be so haughty, Vera," the ghastly one responded," Those two have made it this far. They have been underestimated before. You have made the same mistake, you'll find. What do you say, Bethea?"

Bethea stroked her fur along her shoulders: "I merely hold the stakes." The little one, Lil, giggled: "Stakes. Yes. Stakes, how very appropriate." And she giggled and she vanished. And one  after the other, her colleagues followed her to nowhere.

Chapter 2