Page 23 of Across Space and Time

Hugh found himself smiling. “All right. Do you need any help?”

“Certainly not!” Jack said. “Do not mind me, I shall have a meal made up momentarily. Well, perhaps several momentarilies.”

Hugh sent up a silent prayer that Jack would not burn down the building as he headed into the washroom to prepare for the day. He scrubbed himself down with cold water and combed his curls so they were not sticking out at strange angles. He only rarely had to shave. He had never been able to grow a mustache the way that many of his fellow officers did, and he was sure that his boyish face was one of the reasons he was not often taken seriously as a police officer.

He dressed in his uniform pants and under shirt but waited to put on his long-sleeved blue uniform coat. He came back out into the main room to find Jack laying two plates of something on the kitchen table. One plate held a piece of toast that was nearly charcoal, the other a piece that was only barely browned. A pile of scrambled eggs lay on top of each piece of toast, along with some sliced apples. Jack gestured to the lighter of the two pieces of toast. “My first attempt was a little dark. This one should be better.”

“We can share it,” Hugh offered, but Jack waved his hand again.

“No, no. I shall not starve, I promise.”

Hugh sat down at the table, and Jack poured him a cup of tea, adding a dash of milk the way Hugh had last night. Hugh smiled a bit. It was such a small detail, but the fact that Jack had noticed and remembered was rather sweet. “Do you eat food?”

Jack nodded. “I do, though I need far less to sustain me than humans do. Your digestive systems are remarkably inefficient.”

“You don’t have to constantly eat with all of the energy you expend jumping around?” Hugh asked, picking up a fork and knife to start eating the eggs and slightly warmed over bread.

“Surprisingly, no,” Jack replied, taking a sip of the tea that was once again almost boiling hot without even a flinch.

“Can all of… you… um… the other… will-o-the-whisps jump great heights like you?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Jack said thoughtfully. “We don’t know what our final form will be until we are summoned to our soulmate.”

“You weren’t by any chance running around London fifty years or so ago, were you?” Hugh asked curiously.

“Not that I know of!” Jack said, giving the question a great deal more thought than Hugh figured it warranted. “Was there another Spring-Heeled Jack running around then?”

“Yes,” Hugh replied.

“Fascinating. I suppose it’s possible that there was another of my kind who found their soulmate then. Or, perhaps the universe just has a sense of humor.” Jack flicked his hand with the iron claws on the tips of them, and they made a metallic scraping noise that made Hugh’s teeth hurt.

“So, you don’t know where the others of your kind end up?” Hugh asked, taking a sip of the tea. That had at least turned out quite well. He wondered if Jack had watched him make it last night and learned from that.

“No,” Jack said, taking a large bite of blackened toast and egg. His sharp teeth crunched through the crispy toast loudly.

“Did you have friends or family?” Hugh asked curiously.

“No,” Jack said again, seeming to swallow the mouthful almost whole, and Hugh took a reflexive swallow of his own. “We are rather unique beings, as far as I am aware. However we come to be, our purpose is to help our soulmate. We gain much knowledge when we enter through the portal into our soulmate’s realm.”

“The… portal?” Hugh asked in confusion.

Jack nodded. “It’s quite fascinating, I shall show you sometime if you’d like.”

“I’d like that,” Hugh said.

“I suppose you are working again today,” Jack said, glancing over his uniform pants.

“Yes,” Hugh replied. “I will talk to Dr. Ledbetter and see if there is any information about the identity of the victim and the creature we encountered last night. Hopefully that will give me an idea of what to do next.”

“Excellent,” Jack said with a wave of his hand. “Where shall I meet you?”

Hugh frowned at that. “Jack, you can’t go with me.”

Jack blinked. “Why not?”

“I don’t want people seeing you.”

Jack let out a huff. “I am quite good at evading detection.”

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