Page 605 of Flirting with Darkness

That other version of himself would likely know what to do.

Right now, more than anything, Ghost fought with all his mind and being not to lose his composure. He fought for calm. For clarity.

For rationality.

Really, Ghost fought for a total disconnection from the violent emotions that wanted to rise as it slowly sank in where he was, what had happened to him, the fact that he was likely trapped here, in this other timeline. These people all knew him. Perhaps the other Ghost really would help him. One thing was for certain… no one back in hisowntimeline would have any idea what happened to him.

From their perspective, he had vanished.

To his own friends back in his version of London, he had likely been killed by Count Aslanov on Christmas Day in the year 1870.

But the fact a version of Ghost lived here had to take precedence.

Apparently, that version of Ghost was roughly the same age.

He appeared the same age, at least.

Which meant, whatever future this was for him, it must be relatively recent, at least from Ghost’s own point of view.

Unless he was in a mirror world to his own, and this other Ghost was not him at all.

Perhaps he had exchanged places with him?

Perhaps the other Ghost was back with his dark magician father?

Or perhaps something in the time anomaly did something to alter normal aging.

The possibilities felt endless.

The implications felt boundless and disturbing.

The watch that sat in his waistcoat pocket seemed to heat his abdomen where it rested in the dimple of silk. He felt it tangibly whenever his mind wandered to how he’d gotten here. It seemed almost to throb inside the thin pocket against his skin.

Time anomaly.

This was… the future.

Obviously.

But was it his future? Or some alternate world?

He gazed at the lights blinking on a strange, metallic-looking device that hung over the bed. The screen had lines and numbers, along with glowing English print. Waving lines glided and jerked and beeped across the front. It must all have some meaning, but Ghost had no idea what any of that meaning was.

He glanced at the pristine counters, then at a flat piece of metal and glass that protruded from a white-painted wall. Moving pictures jerked and flashed across the front of it, like a portion of the outside world had been captured for view behind the glass.

It wasn’t a window.

It was… something else.

He forced himself not to comment on it, as they all treated it as normal.

Neither of the two women he was with even seemed to notice the man speaking at them from that glass pane hanging from the wall.

The darker-skinned one, the one with the calm brown eyes and the scientist’s demeanor, had returned to Ghost his broadsword. Ghost disappeared it back into the scabbard he still somehow wore, glancing in a nearby mirror to make sure the handle wasn’t overly obvious to anyone who might be looking.

When he glanced back at the other two, the one they’d called his wife, “Nat,” which was possibly a nickname of some kind, stared at him curiously.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she murmured.

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