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The laughter had drained from her face. "I'm sorry. He found out you were a police officer?"
"No..."
To gain time while he figured out how much to say, Charlie refilled their wine cups. Sibyl—he had trouble thinking of her as Sibyl, rather than Aelia, even though the name fit her better—drained hers even more quickly than he gulped his.
"No," Charlie muttered after he'd finished the cupful. "And that's the weird thing. Carreras still thought I was a middle-man for a New York buyer. That's my specialty, posing as a buyer down from the City. We were ready to deal, when I stumbled across something he didn't want anyone to know about. Not even a two-million-dollar military arms deal was worth blowing the lid on this particular little secret."
She whistled softly.
He just scowled. "Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to learn much about it. Whatever the Carreras family has going—and it centers around this time-travel thing—it's important enough to plug any leak at all, fast and neat. And what better place to dump the bodies?" He lifted his hands with a clank of iron and a rattle of chain to indicate the dank hold. "Who'd ever find you?"
She regarded him with a steady gaze. Her lips had pursed slightly. "He slipped up, though, didn't he?"
Charlie whistled in turn. "You're fast. Yeah, he slipped up. For all the good it's likely to do me. Or you. I was supposed to die in that lousy execution his people arranged in the arena. Evidently Carreras' boys didn't stick around long enough to make sure of me."
"Tony Bartlett must be--" Her eyes widened. "My God."
"What?" Charlie grasped her arm and felt her tremble under his fingers.
"Caelerus," she whispered, meeting his gaze unsteadily. "Tony Bartlett is Caelerus! I didn't realize, I'm still muzzy-headed..."
Charlie shook the wrinkles out of that one and didn't like what he ended up with, not by a long shot, although he should have seen it coming. Sibyl wasn't the only one suffering from muzzy-headed thinking. That's what came of four years of protein deprivation.
"All right," Charlie finally said, "if Tony has access to whatever it is that opens those doorways in time, he's clearly part of the 'family.' Question is, in what capacity? He must be pretty high in the organization for Carreras to give him access to the time portals."
Sibyl shivered. "God, what a sight... ."
Charlie's skin crawled just watching her remember it. He wondered fleetingly if he should be grateful he'd been out cold when Carreras took him through. It would have been far worse to be fully aware of what was happening, but still powerless to stop it.
Her eyes had taken on a faraway look, the kind of expression he'd always associated with brainless bimbos mooning over stupid romance novels. Charlie got the impression, however, that her mind—far from turning itself off—was actually working at top speed.
Illogically he felt an optimism that should have been completely out of place. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that either of their situations was going to improve in the foreseeable future. The thought of both of them in Bericus' hands broke him out into a cold sweat.
She visibly collected herself and looked up at him. Either she didn't notice the strained expression on his face or chose to ignore it. "I'd give a lot to know who made the time-travel breakthrough, not to mention how the mafia got their hands on it, and how Bartlett's co
"As near as I can figure, about four years."
She nodded. "Okay, that's what I was guessing. Good. Who was on the Imperial throne when you arrived?"
"I'm not likely to forget him. Old guy by the name of Vespasian. I was sorry when I heard he'd died... ."
He trailed off. Her face had gone positively chalky.
"And Titus is emperor now? How... ?" Her voice actually cracked. She stopped, licked her lips, and tried again. "How long has Titus been on the throne? As close as you can figure!"
The intensity in her voice, the white pallor of her skin alarmed Charlie.
"Uh..." He thought hard, tried to reconstruct the days. Time had nearly ceased to have meaning for Charlie. "A month, or close to it. I remember the coronation celebrations. They lasted a whole week. Then the week after that Xanthus' favorite gladiator died in the arena and he— Never mind." He looked away from the quick sympathy in her eyes. "Then the week after that, we got in a pair of dancing girls and sold them to Tellus Martonius. Caelerus brought you in maybe six days after that and you were at Xanthus' for a couple of days before we set sail."
She hugged herself tightly. "If the city still exists— That's got to be it. God, what day is this? Titus was only emperor for a month or so before— Wait!" She held up an impatient hand when he started to ask a question. "I've got it. The festival was just—" She leaned forward and grasped Charlie's arm, hard enough to raise welts with her fingernails. "Charlie, has Rome celebrated the Festival of Vulcan yet?"
Charlie shook his head. "It's today. Xanthus was angry at having to miss it."
She shut her eyes. Charlie received the impression she was trying to shut out a vision too terrifying to face. He felt a chill creep over him.
"Murdering son-of-a..." She drew a quivery breath and opened her eyes. They mirrored a panic that left Charlie feeling positively icy. "Charlie, Tony Bartlett doesn't plan for me to stay alive in this time any longer than Carreras pla
The chill that had overtaken him crawled its way up his spine to his scalp. "Why?"
The look she gave him reminded him of the looks his teachers had given him all through school. Without warning, he was angry clear through. Then she shook her head and chewed at her lip again. Instant irritation disappeared. She was under tremendous pressure, too, and nowhere near as trained for it as he was. Besides, Sibyl was clearly accustomed to dealing with people who spent their lives reading books, not dragging illiterate slime up out of the sewers.
"I'm not much of an expert on Roman history," he said quietly. "You know the old song, 'Don't know much about history...' That's me. I guess I'm thanking Anybody who'll listen that someone who does know came along. So why do we need to snatch Lucania and get out of town?"
She reached over and squeezed his hand. It felt like an apology. Her eyes were dark, though, and she had trouble meeting his gaze. Her voice was pitched almost too low to hear.
"Tomorrow night, just about midnight... Herculaneum is going to be buried under a lot of very hot mud, ash, and pumice. Between, oh, sixty to a hundred feet of it."
Charlie hissed wordlessly.
"You see," she went on, her voice dull, "most people don't remember that Mt. Vesuvius buried two major cities, and a couple of smaller towns, when it erupted and destroyed Pompeii."
Even Charlie had heard of Pompeii. He'd seen the movie.
"Holy shit," Charlie whispered into the silence that followed.
She nodded bleakly. "A lot of people escaped Pompeii before the main eruption—and the fiery avalanches full of poisonous gas and glowing pumice—hit the city. Only the ones who ignored the earthquakes or stayed to wait out the ashfall were trapped. The wealthy resort town of Stabiae—it was famous for its mineral springs, and let me tell you, that place was loaded with money, same as Herculaneum—was eventually buried, too. So was the little town of Oplontis. The eruption lasted three days."