Archive of Our Own ^beta

Cassandra’s thin cloth coat doesn’t cut the icy wind blowing off the Thames.

1932. Almost a hundred years back in one jump — she wouldn’t have thought it possible, but here she is, and there’s no use arguing with an Artifact, as Jenkins is fond of saying. If the Hourglass of Kronus decided to fling her back here, she’s got to accept the situation as it is, and find the Hourglass before it can do any damage. Before it can change the past.

Her cell phone’s still on, but without a cellular data network, it’s no more use than a brick. Cassandra switches it off to conserve power. She might need a flashlight or camera later, and there’s no use letting it run down its battery looking for cell towers that aren’t there.

She considers finding the Librarian of this era, briefly, but rules it out. The Library is all the way in New York in this era. And the Library archives don’t record the Hourglass of Kronus being collected by the Library until the previous year, which means Cassandra must not have turned it in to the Library in this era, which means Cassandra must be successful here — or the Hourglass must have escaped. Or maybe —

“Time travel makes my head hurt,” she mutters, and then looks back down at the ground when a passing man gives her a peculiar look.

She pulls her coat closer around herself and starts thinking. She may not have the internet, or other Librarians, but she still has herself, and a head full of magic.

She waves a hand, and symbols of fire trace themselves across her view of the narrow London street.

The spiral, there — her path through time, and the hourglass’s as well. The glass is locked for a few hours, at most — after that, anyone can touch it, and go anywhere. Anywhen. But if she can trace it —

She turns her attention to a set of numbers and flips them around, solving the matrix.

“Of course,” she mutters to herself. “A tracing spell.”

Ignoring the stares of another passer-by, she begins flicking her fingers against the numbers in her sky.

Hours later, her feet sore and cold, Cassandra finally pins the hourglass’s location down to a narrow, brick building. The spell leads her to a narrow doorway, the door painted dark red. She has no money — no money that she can spend in 1932, at least — but the doorman lets her past without asking.

The inside of the club is smoky and dark, packed with Londoners leaning against the bar or swaying on the dance floor to slow jazz from a pianist at a battered upright piano at the front of the room. Cassandra slips behind the people standing, trying to keep out of sight, when a spotlight comes up on the tiny stage.

The woman who steps out is short and lithe, her movements like those of a predator in a zoo, pacing across the stage. Her dark hair is loose, streaming down over her red satin bias-cut frock.

Cassandra freezes. Estrella.

She wants to think it can’t be, but it is. Cassandra woke up next to those dark eyes this morning, nearly a century on and unchanged.

And she knows Estrella has been alive for centuries. She must have been somewhere during the 1930s, even if Cassandra couldn’t have said where until this very moment. They’ve never talked about what Estrella was like before the Vida de la Luz retreat. Where she lived. How she lived.

Maybe I didn’t want to know, Cassandra thinks.

“Good evening,” Estrella says, from the stage. Her Spanish accent is a little stronger, her voice a little smokier. The piano player keeps up a low rumble of music below her voice, chords and notes without a direction. “It is a cold night outside, so inside, let us warm you up with good drinks and jazz.”

She nods to the piano player, who plays a series of rippling notes to lead into a song. Her voice is slow, easy, carrying over the noise of the club’s patrons as she sings.

After a moment, Cassandra recognizes the song. It’s one Estrella sings, sometimes, while she’s working in the gardens at the Retreat.

It used to sound like a happy song.

Cassandra lets herself watch a little longer, and then tears her attention back to her mission. The hourglass. If she doesn’t find it soon and return with it to the present, the hourglass might be cut loose from its temporal moorings. She doesn’t need Jenkins to tell her what a catastrophe that would be.

She slips to the end of the bar and waits for the bar man to look away before sneaking in behind, to the service entrance. There’s a narrow, wooden staircase leading down into the basement, and Cassandra listens carefully before heading down the stairs.

At the Retreat, Estrella’s bedroom is in one of the towers, at the very top, with wide windows looking out over the valley and the pond. Each morning she wakes with the sun. Sometimes Cassandra joins her; sometimes Cassandra snuggles into the warm bed and watches, half-asleep, while Estrella does her morning yoga on the balcony, in the sunlight.

Here, though, Cassandra finds three narrow, wooden boxes, hidden behind a false panel under the stairwell. The floor is earthen, the shallow casement windows hidden behind black paint and splintered boards.

She searches through the basement, looking for anything that might be the hourglass’s hiding spot. Instead, she finds only ordinary things. A few mystery novels with battered spines and mildew-spotted pages. An electric lamp, the paint chipping, with a cord leading to the floor above.

Cassandra doesn’t realize that the singing from the club above has stopped until she hears the creak of the door at the top of the stairs, and then she’s suddenly pushed against the brick wall of the basement by Estrella, whose eyes flash red-gold.

“Who are you?” Estrella snaps the words out. Her teeth are close to Cassandra’s neck.

“I’m —” Cassandra waves one hand. “I’m just looking for something.”

“Why can’t you people leave my family alone? We hurt nobody. We take nothing that cannot be given freely.”

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” Cassandra protests, her voice a squeak.

“As if I would not hear you, creeping about like a mouse.” Estrella pauses, looking at Cassandra. Her face is so close, Cassandra could lean forward and kiss her. “What are you looking for?”

“An hourglass,” Cassandra says. She can feel her heart pounding in her chest. “It’s fancy and old, and it’s somewhere in this building.”

Estrella studies her, and then steps back. “If you are lying, we will cut your heart out and feed it to the pigs of Mallorca.”

“I’m not lying,” Cassandra protests. She rubs her neck. “Do you attack all your guests that way?”

“The ones who creep into our basement?” Estrella huffs. “Yes.”

“Is….” Cassandra can’t think of how to ask. “Is this where you sleep?”

Estrella stares at her. “Yes, vampire-hunter, this is where we are weak and helpless during the day. Please return to hammer a bulb of garlic through our hearts.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Cassandra shakes her head, tries to clear away the thought of Estrella asleep in this damp basement, with a chipped lamp and the smell of mildew. The Estrella Cassandra knows is a creature of the sunlight, the air. It hurts Cassandra’s heart, thinking of her living like this. “I promise, I’m just trying to find something I lost.”

Estrella’s face is still guarded. “Why should I believe you?”

“We could find the hourglass,” Cassandra suggests. “It’s about this big?” She holds her hands out. “It’s dark wood, carved, and the sand inside is glowing.”

Estrella pauses for a moment. “If I knew where this hourglass was….” She shakes her head. “If I knew. I am not saying I do. What would you do with it?”

“I need it to get home,” Cassandra says. “And I need to keep it safe. It’s extremely dangerous. It could change the timeline — anything out of place, and the entire history of the world could change. And maybe in bad ways.”

Estrella considers Cassandra. Cassandra feels a prickling running up her spine at the weight of Estrella’s gaze.

“Come with me.” Estrella turns and walks toward the rickety wooden stairway in the corner. “Yes?”

“I — yes.” Cassandra pulls her coat closer around herself and follows.

They push through the jazz club upstairs. It seems darker now, the air tasting of cigarette smoke and sweat. The piano player is playing as loud as he can, but his music is a background to the noise of the people inside, talking and laughing and yelling across the room to one another.

Estrella pulls Cassandra through the crowd to the back of the room, and pulls her into a small space behind a curtain. “If you tell anyone —”

“I won’t,” Cassandra says. “I promise.”

Estrella leans down to touch a bit of the paneling, and a doorway silently swings open in the wall. There’s a bulky flashlight on the floor inside, and Estrella picks it up and fiddles with it for a moment before it flickers into life.

The passageway runs between two walls of plaster and lathe, the bulging plaster lines between the wood strips creating a regular pattern. The sound of the club is muffled by the walls. Estrella leads Cassandra through the walls of the building to a narrow stairway. It goes up, and up — three stories up, until Cassandra knows they must be in an attic.

There’s another thick curtain to duck through, and then Estrella hits a button and the room flares with artificial light.

There are no windows, not even covered ones. The light from the electric bulbs illuminates plain white walls, plastered heavily, not a crack on them. Three beds, low, metal frames, sit in each of the corners, with shelves beside them. It’s not the dank basement, but still — the darkness, the omnipresent heavy curtains — it’s not the life Estrella was meant to lead.

Cassandra turns to find Estrella staring at her. “I won’t tell anyone,” Cassandra says. She won’t. She wouldn’t.

Estrella’s eyes are wary, but she sits down on the foot of one of the beds and opens a dark, carved chest. There’s a glow of white light when the chest opens.

“It appeared this afternoon,” she says.

Cassandra holds her breath as Estrella draws the hourglass out. The sand glows with white light. The glass is on its side, but the sand still runs from the upper chamber to the lower.

Estrella turns it, this way and that, watching as the glowing sand ignores the direction of local gravity. “What does it do?” she asks.

“Time,” Cassandra says. She crouches down in front of Estrella, studying the carving on the dark, weathered wood that holds the hand-blown glass. She’s careful not to touch it. Not yet. “It’s one of the keys of Time.”

Estrella’s hands tighten around the wood, and Cassandra’s stomach churns. She doesn’t know if Estrella touching it could activate it again. It should be a closed loop — one trip out, one trip back. That’s what all the mathemagic she’s done since landing here tells her. But it still worries her.

“I’ve wondered,” Estrella says. “What I would do — what I would choose. If I could go back to that moment.”

“When you became a vampire?”

“When I was made into one.” Estrella doesn’t sound bitter, just sad. Tired. “I was so young.” She gets up from the bed and starts pacing around the room, the hourglass in her hands. “I had no idea what the choice meant. And for this? A lifetime in the shadows, hiding inside our own home during the day?” She turns to look at Cassandra.

“I’m sorry,” Cassandra says. She can hear the pain in Estrella’s voice.

“It is not your problem.”

Cassandra knows should just put her hand on the hourglass to turn it for real, but she can’t step away. Can’t let another Artifact pull her from another set of problems. Not with Estrella. No matter when she is, no matter which Estrella, she’s still Cassandra’s beloved.

“The hourglass can’t send you back to that moment,” Cassandra says, gently. “It doesn’t work like that.” She steps closer to Estrella, inside the bubble of space that Estrella leaves with anyone who isn’t Cassandra. The bubble she used to leave with anyone who wasn’t family. “But I know something else that might help.”

“There’s a place,” Cassandra says. “In the foothills. In America. If your family ever needs to go somewhere, go there.”

She leans in to whisper the place in Estrella’s ear. She can’t tell Estrella all of it — not the Retreat’s future. Not who they’ll become to one another. But she can tell her how to get there. She can tell her how to find her true home.

Estrella pulls back, an expression of confusion on her face. “Why? When?”

“You’ll know.” Cassandra looks down at the hourglass. Just a tiny amount of glowing sand left in the upper chamber — it’s too late to explain anything more. She can’t stay. “You’re going to make a difference,” she says, fiercely.

Estrella sets the hourglass down on the bed and raises her hand to Cassandra’s face, uncertainly, like she’s checking that Cassandra’s really there, and Cassandra decides that she doesn’t care and leans in, kisses her desperately, like they’ve only got this moment. Like they don’t have a lifetime left together.

She reaches out without looking, and then takes the hourglass. Turns it over without taking her lips from Estrella’s.

And then she’s ripped away.

Cassandra’s spinning, a dense whorl of starlight around her, her body unmoored in space and time as the hourglass pulls her back. The stars are impossibly bright, and she thinks she might be sick. She clutches the hourglass closer to her chest.

This time, I won’t let go.

There’s a flash, and then Cassandra’s on the floor of the Library, its hard stones comforting against her back. She holds the hourglass tighter and focuses on her breath.

“Cassandra?” Eve bursts into the room. “Cassandra! Where did you go?”

Cassandra sits up, unsteadily, and waves Eve off. “I’m OK.” She can’t let anyone else touch the hourglass.

Ezekiel and Jake come into the room, running, and then Jenkins follows behind.

“I’m fine,” Cassandra says. She keeps one hand tight on the hourglass and uses the other to push herself up. “It just took me back to 1932. No big.”

Eve puts a hand behind her to support her. “It sounds like kind of a big.”

“I’m back now.” Cassandra looks over at Jenkins. “The hourglass?”

“Straight to the Ancient Artifacts wing,” he says. “It was your touch that activated it? I thought as much.”

“I’ll go with you,” Ezekiel says. He exchanges a look with Eve and then puts an arm around Cassandra. “Did you know you smell like a bar?”

“Really?” Cassandra laughs and lets him lead her down the rows of stacks towards the Ancient Artifacts wing. “The hourglass ended up in one, so I guess it’s not surprising.”

“Lucky. Do you know how much I could steal in 1932?” Ezekiel wrinkles his nose. “No computerized alarms, though. Wouldn’t be much of a challenge.”

Cassandra laughs, and lets him lead her down the hall.

Cassandra doesn’t officially live at the Vida de la Luz retreat. Not officially, even though most of her clothing and books have made it through the doorway, one evening at a time.

There are limitations to the Library’s doorway. Resetting to the same place is one of them — each evening, the door’s magic reaches out and finds a new door to connect to, one where people won’t see Cassandra emerge. It doesn’t really matter, not at the retreat, but the door doesn’t know that.

Sometimes she comes through the front door, or the greenhouse door, or the door to the bathroom in the rooms she shares with Estrella. The door to the sweat lodge out beyond the fields. The low, earthen door of Tomas’s secret lab.

This evening, Cassandra emerges on the far end of the property, through the door of the chicken shed. It means a walk through the fields, in the twilight, watching the gathering darkness as the stars come out above the retreat. The night is warm, the air soft on Cassandra’s skin, and she takes off her coat and swings it over her shoulder.

She only knows Estrella’s watching by the prickle in her blood and the shine of Estrella’s eyes from the path ahead.

“Hey.” When Cassandra reaches her, she bumps her shoulder against Estrella’s, and then takes her hand. “I was missing you.”

“I’m here,” Estrella says, and she squeezes Cassandra’s hand tighter for a moment before letting go. “Long day at the office?”

It’s Cassandra’s usual cue, to tell Estrella about the Library and everything they did that day, but today she hesitates.

“It was today, wasn’t it?” Estrella’s voice is calm in the near-darkness. “When we met.”

Estrella doesn’t say when. She doesn’t need to.

“You knew?”

“I suspected.” Estrella takes Cassandra’s hand again and starts walking. “Not at first. When you first came here, you were in such pain — but then you healed, and then I suspected. Perhaps. It didn’t seem possible, even with all of the stories you had told. Even with what you told me back then.”

“You saved me.” Cassandra swallows. “If — if we hadn’t come here when we did, before my surgery. You made me believe that I could be well again.”

“You’re strong,” Estrella says.

“We’re strong together.”

They walk back to the main house, hands tangled together. Estrella pulls Cassandra into the shadows of the main house before they go inside, and kisses her, slow and longing, the sort of kiss that says they have all the time together they could ever need.

“I’ve been waiting almost a century for that,” Cassandra says. She means it as a joke, but it comes out serious instead.

“You were like sunshine,” Estrella mumbles into Cassandra’s hair. She kisses Cassandra’s temple and then pulls back. “Sunshine when I’d lived without it for so long — did you know you were the first person who knew who I was, knew what I was, and still acted like I was human?”

Cassandra twists her foot into the paving stones. “I knew you,” she says.

“I know you, Cassandra Cillian,” Estrella says. “You would have acted like that if you’d only just met me. You would have tried to help me.” She wraps her arm around Cassandra and puts her head on Cassandra’s shoulder. “You brought me home.”

Cassandra lets herself feel the warmth of Estrella’s body beside her, the warmth of the night. The air smells like growing things, and fertilizer, and fresh water, bubbling up from the spring in the pond. The two of them together, in this place. Cassandra smiles in the darkness. They’ve got a future here together.