“Hey, Katelyn! A few of us are going to the club to unwind before the big dog and pony show tomorrow. Want to come with?”

Katelyn Trent looked up from the report she’d been reading to find Craig Murray standing in the doorway of her office. Tall and lean with neatly-trimmed blond hair that was never out of place, he had gray eyes set behind wire-rimmed glasses, which he pushed up on his thin nose as he shifted nervously from foot to foot while he waited for her answer.

She gave him a smile. “Thanks, but I think I’m going to hang around here for awhile and do some more testing.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie – she had been toying with the idea of doing a few more dry runs before tomorrow’s big demonstration for the financial backers. Nevertheless, she had to admit that she had refused the invitation more because of who it was coming from than anything else.

Craig was nice enough in a guy-next-door kind of way, but he wasn’t what any girl would call a hottie. In fact, he was pretty much of a nerd. She wasn’t so shallow that she believed looks were everything, but she at least had to be attracted to a guy to go out with him. To make matters worse, Craig never talked about anything other than science. Granted, she was a scientist herself, but there just seemed to be something wrong with a man talking about quantum physics on a date. She didn’t mind being nice to him, but she could never be more than an acquaintance with a mild-mannered guy like Craig Murray.

Standing in the doorway, Craig flushed red with embarrassment, and for a moment, Katelyn felt so guilty that she almost reconsidered. It wouldn’t be a big deal, really. After all, it wasn’t like it was a date or anything, not when the entire lab would be going out as a group. Before she could say anything, however, Craig muttered something that sounded like “later,” before he hastily disappeared out the door.

With a sigh, Katelyn returned her attention to the papers in front of her.

“That was his way of asking you for a date, you know.”

Katelyn lifted her head at the sound of Jessica Bentley’s voice. A tall girl with a boyish figure and long blond hair that she always wore back in a pony tail when she was working, Jessica was her best friend as well as her co-worker, so Katelyn recognized the other girl’s teasing tone for what it was.

“I know,” she said dryly. “That’s why I didn’t say yes.”

Jessica leaned against the door jamb, a playful smile on her lips. “You never know. Beneath that button-down shirt and pocket protector, he could be a real stud.”

Katelyn couldn’t help but smile as she tried to imagine using Craig’s name and the word, “stud,” in the same sentence. “Somehow, I don’t think so.”

Her friend grinned. “You know, not every guy can be all leather-clad and sweaty like those manly men you hang out with in that society of creative anachronism you belong to.”

Katelyn put on a hurt look. “Are you trying to say there’s something wrong with the sweaty, leather-clad look? I happen to find those men very attractive.”

Both girls laughed at that. Katelyn had been a member of the local anachronistic society for years now, and she really enjoyed getting all dressed up in period clothing and playing the part of a woman warrior one time, and a damsel in distress the next. Jessica had gone with her a few times, but had never really gotten into it. Katelyn knew that Jessica thought she took part in the events because she liked the men. If she only knew, Katelyn thought. Her friend would probably be shocked to know that most of the men involved in the society were just as nerdy as Craig was when they weren’t in costume; they just wore the leather to cover up that fact.

“Hey, forget about Craig,” Jessica continued. “Why don’t you come out with us? I’ll even sit between you and Craig, if you want. Keep him out of your hair.”

Katelyn shook her head. “I really do want to do some more testing before tomorrow. If we don’t impress them with this demonstration, then they’re going to cut our funding. One more glitch like the ones we’ve been having lately and we’re in trouble. It shouldn’t take too long. Maybe I’ll come by after I’m done.”

Jessica hesitated a moment, but then nodded. “Okay, but be careful driving. There’s supposed to be a really big thunderstorm tonight.”

With a smile, Katelyn assured her friend that she would be, and a few minutes later, she was alone in the lab. The first thing she did was pull the test sample from the storage locker. It didn’t look like much, she had to admit. In fact, it was just a big grey rock. It’s value lie in the fact that its origins were firmly known. It had been pulled from a crumbling wall outside a small town in France on an archaeological dig several years earlier. Complete construction records had been discovered indicating exactly where the granite piece had been quarried, when it had been worked, and when the wall had been built, and that knowledge made the rock invaluable as an experiment test subject.

She took the rock inside the test bay. Like the rock, it really wasn’t much to look at; there was just a box the size of a table sitting on the floor in the middle of a glass-enclosed room. A bulls-eye was marked out on the top of the box, and Katelyn set the rock in the center of it. As she did so, a light turned on atop each of the four sensor posts positioned around the room. Other than the big computer console located outside the room, there were no other visible components to the system.

Katelyn left the room, closing the glass door behind her, and then stopped to look back, scanning the floor to make sure that no visible dirt particles had been left behind. They had learned the hard way that even a small piece of metallic-laden dirt could throw the computers off.

A research lab like this was probably a strange place to find a geologist like her. But since the MAG System, as everyone called it, dealt with iron ore and magnetic fields, they had brought her in. The Magnetic Algorithm Grid System, the real name for the multi-million dollar piece of equipment, had originally been built for the purpose of finding iron deposits buried underground by detecting the enormous magnetic field put off by the iron ore. But during the initial field testing, Katelyn had discovered another use for the system. The MAG was sensitive enough to measure not only the magnetic fields of large ore deposits, but also the tiniest fields put off by minute iron deposits in almost any rock. What was more, it could measure the slight disturbance of a rock’s magnetic field that occurred once it had been worked with metal tools.

Most of the scientists in the lab had considered it a waste time and money, but Katelyn had quickly pointed out that the system could be used to accurately date any rock that had been worked with metal tools. She had convinced the financial backers that archaeologists, anthropologists, and museums would pay big money to have a machine that could accurately date almost any rock that had been worked by human hands. The MAG would be accurate almost to the minute that a metal tool had struck a rock, answering many of the questions that lingered around modern finds. She expected that the patent rights alone would earn millions of dollars.

The only thing was, she had to get it to work reliably. There had been a few glitches, mostly dealing with stabilizing the power supply to the MAG, but she felt sure that she had gotten everything ironed out.

With the touch of a button, she began to run the countdown that would power up the MAG. As she did so, she glanced over at the glass door to make sure it was closed. The system put out a heavy magnetic field when it fired that was strong enough to hurt someone if they were inside the room.

Suddenly, a clap of thunder boomed outside, and she winced as she felt the building shake. Apparently, Jessica had been right, she thought. There was going to be a heck of a storm out there tonight. She hoped her coworkers had made it to the club before it started.

Checking the power supply readout, she saw that it was showing steady in the green zone. The biggest problems they had had with the MAG had come from power surges. Not only had it thrown off the reading, but a few times, the magnetic field had grown so erratic that some of the glass windows of the enclosure had been broken. Everything looked fine now, however.

She looked at the countdown clock next. It read eight seconds and counting, and for a moment, she wondered how old the rock was. The official date was on a card that she’d left in the storage locker, and she would compare it with the one the MAG calculated as soon as the test was done. It didn’t look that old, though. Five or six hundred years at the most, she thought.

Suddenly, another enormous clap of thunder shook the building again, and Katelyn jumped as the lights surged and flickered. From the corner of her eye, she caught a red pulsing light, and she turned her head just in time to see the power readout going crazy. She reached out toward the keyboard to press the abort button, but it was too late. The countdown clock had reached zero, and the MAG began to fire.

Katelyn tried to dive under the computer console, but she wasn’t fast enough. The MAG fired with a thumping sound and she heard the sound of glass shattering as she felt herself pushed back by an invisible hand on her chest and slammed against the row of computers behind her. She had only a split-second to worry about what the financial backers would say before everything went black.



Katelyn came to slowly. Her eyes fluttered open and she stared up at the odd shapes above her for a few minutes before realizing that they were trees. She frowned. How in the world had she gotten outside? And why was she all wet?

Ignoring the pain that lanced through her head, she pushed herself into a sitting position and looked around. Her frown deepened as she studied her surroundings. A squat ugly-looking stone structure stood before her, and from the pile of rocks around it, it looked like it had been falling down for awhile. Even more strange, though, were the tall pine trees that edged the clearing. There weren’t just a few of them; it looked like she was in some kind of forest. And judging from her sodden clothes and soggy soil, it had been raining for hours. She also realized with surprise that it was getting light out. Which meant that it was morning. In the dim light, she looked around for the lab, but all she could see were trees. Where was she?

Confused, she got to her feet and slowly surveyed the area, her mind going back to the evening’s events. She had been working in the lab and there had been a power surge. She remembered the sound of breaking glass, and being thrown back into something hard, and then...

Then she had awakened here. Wherever here was. Maybe she had hit her head and walked off into the woods behind the lab. She tried to feel along her scalp to see if she had a head injury, but other than the generalized headache, she couldn’t find anything.

Maybe the magnetic pulse had scrambled her brainwaves, she thought. Regardless, she had better get to a hospital and get herself checked out. She’d also better call the lab as soon as possible. They’d certainly be looking for her.

She pushed her long red hair back and grimaced. Not only had it come loose from its clip, but the rain had brought out its natural wave as well. She probably looked like a drowned rat with a perm. Great, she thought.

With a sigh, she picked a direction and started walking, careful to avoid the deeper puddles of rainwater. Overhead, she could just see the sun peeking through the canopy of trees. She couldn’t believe that she had been unconscious all night. That realization, combined with the fact that she didn’t know where she was, was more than a little disconcerting.

Her steps took her to a dirt road and she paused at the edge of it. Hoping that it would take her to civilization, she once again picked a direction and headed that way. Though the road wasn’t wide enough for a car, she saw wagon-wheel tracks along with what she could have sworn were hoof prints. Odd, she thought as she continued walking. She’d never seen a horse and wagon in the area before.

Walking further, she came to the edge of the forest, and as she drew nearer, she heard the sound of voices in the distance. Katelyn quickened her steps, hurrying along the dirt road until she was practically running. Then, just as abruptly, she came to a halt at the edge of the forest.

She had expected to find a paved road with cars, maybe a hiker or two, or kids on bicycles since she had heard voices, but she saw none of those things. Instead, what she saw was a small village that looked like it had come straight out of one of the events put on by the anachronistic society that she belonged to. Only more realistic.

There were houses with thatched roofs and trundling carts being pulled by horses; in the distance, she heard the sound of metal being worked in the blacksmith’s shop. And all around were men and women dressed in period clothing, from breeches and tunics to bodices and peasant skirts. She never knew that there was a renaissance festival around here.

Feeling out of place and self-conscious dressed in her jeans and lab coat, Katelyn slowly made her way toward the village. At first, no one paid her any attention, but then gradually, one by one, each person in the village began to notice her, and stare.

Taking a deep breath, she walked up to a pair of women who had stopped chatting with each other to look at her. One of the women carried a basket filled with fresh bread, as if she’d just come from the market.

Katelyn offered them a smile. “Do you know where there’s a phone I could use?”

The two women exchanged glances, giving each other confused looks before turning their attention back to her.

“Qu'une aristocrate anglaise fait-il ici toute seule?” the woman with the basket of bread said after a moment.

Katelyn stared at the woman for a moment, stunned to hear her speaking French. She had never heard anybody speak anything other than English at these things before. “Uhm, I don’t speak French,” she explained.

Again, the women looked at each other; again, one of them said something to her in French.

Katelyn lifted a brow. These two really knew how to stay in character, she thought. “Look, I know you’re supposed to play your part and all, but I really need to use the phone. It’s very important.”

At that, she expected the women to drop back into English and tell her where she could find a phone. But they only said something to each other in French and gave her another odd look before walking off.

Katelyn watched them go in disbelief. She was all for staying in character, but this was ridiculous. Starting to get angry, she whirled around, intending to find someone else to ask, and almost bumped into a pretty dark-haired girl.

“You are from the keep, are you not?” the girl asked in heavily-accented English.

Katelyn was so relieved the girl had dropped her persona and spoken in a language that she could understand that she completely ignored the part about the keep. “I really need to use the phone,” she said quickly. “Do you know where I can find one?”

The girl’s brown eyes filled with confusion. “I don’t know this word...phone. What is a phone?”

Katelyn clenched her jaw. This play-acting would be cute if she hadn’t just been knocked unconscious, wandered off into some forest, and spent the night sleeping on the wet ground. She was hungry, her head hurt, and she wasn’t in the mood for games.

“Look, I’m not...”

Her words trailed off as men rode into the clearing, their horses thundering hoofs drowning out anything she might have said, and she turned to see half a dozen riders reining in their mounts a few feet from where she and the other girl stood. The men wore red surcoats and had swords strapped to their hips, and as one of the men dismounted and came toward them, Katelyn saw the girl nervously take a step back. Taller than both of them, he was big and heavily muscled.

“Ah, the fair Monique,” the man said, giving the girl a leering smile. “I was hoping to find you out and about.” He reached out to run a gloved hand down her cheek and she shrank back. His mouth tightened and Katelyn thought he might grab the girl, but his grey eyes flicked to her instead, and he looked her over. “And your friend, too. Who would be quite pretty were she not wearing men’s clothes.”

Katelyn would have laughed at the distasteful expression on the man’s bearded face if the whole thing weren’t so annoying. Instead, she lifted her chin, all set to deliver a snappy retort when another man hurried up to them.

“Get away from my sister, you English dog!” he snarled, coming to put himself between the man in the red surcoat and the girl called Monique. Though he was tall and thin as a reed, he stood up to the other man as if he were a linebacker.

Monique grabbed her brother’s arm. “Henri, no!” she begged, her voice trembling with what sounded like genuine fear. “He is not worth it. You will only end up getting yourself thrown in prison.”

The big man’s eyes narrowed. “You should listen to your sister, Henri,” he advised, his voice heavy with warning.

Katelyn watched the exchange in amazement, forgetting all about the telephone for the moment. Though she and the other members of her anachronistic society liked to pride themselves on their acting ability, these people were so believable that she felt like she really had gone back in time. Not only were their accents perfect, but their lines were so incredible that she could feel their emotions.

“Besides,” the big man smirked. “It is not like it would be the first time she has entertained me.”

At the snide comment, Henri’s face darkened with rage, and he would have launched himself at the other man had Monique not held him back.

“Henri, no!” she pleaded, sounding so desperate that Katelyn thought she actually believed the man playing the part of her brother was going to attack the other actor. Considering that they were performing the entire thing for an audience of one, she was impressed.

But her brother ignored her. Yelling something in French, he struggled to jerk free of her hold. Abruptly, the man in the red surcoat drew his sword. Katelyn wasn’t really surprised; after all, swordplay was a big part of the whole anachronistic thing. However, she was taken aback to see that the weapon hadn’t been blunted. But before she could even begin to wonder at that, the Englishman suddenly stepped forward and plunged his sword into Henri’s stomach.

Katelyn froze, her eyes going wide. She tried to tell herself that the sword was some sort of prop, like in the movies, but the blood on the blade looked too real, as did the agony on Henri’s face as he clutched his hands to the wound and dropped to his knees. And if that weren’t enough to convince her that what she had just witnessed was real, Monique’s anguished scream would have.

The rest of the people in the village seemed just as stunned as she was, Katelyn noticed. Why didn’t one of them run and call the police? she wondered. That was sure as hell what she would be doing if she knew where to find a phone. Instead, all she could do was watch Monique sob as the girl knelt beside her fellow actor.

Katelyn’s gaze went to the man who had killed Henri. He had just sheathed his sword and now stood regarding Monique with an odd expression on his face that made Katelyn tense. Before she knew what she was doing, Katelyn grabbed Monique’s arm and pulled the protesting girl to her feet.

“Come on!” she said. “We have to get out of here.”

Her gaze fixed on Henri, Monique shook her head wildly and muttered something in French, but Katelyn ignored her protests. Taking the other girl’s hand, she took off at a run, practically dragging the tearful Monique after her. Not knowing where to hide, she fled into the crowd of villagers all trying to get as far away from the psycho guy with the sword as she was. Finally, she ducked behind one of the thatch-roofed cottages, pulling Monique down beside her.

“That guy can’t possibly think he’s going to get away with killing your friend,” Katelyn said, a little breathless from the mad dash across the village. “Not in broad daylight and in front of witnesses.”

Monique wiped tears from her cheek. “Of course he will get away with it,” she said bitterly. “This is France, and the English pigs have occupied Jargeau for ten years. There is no one to stop them.”

Katelyn frowned. “France...?” she began, but her voice trailed off as she felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. It couldn’t be, she thought.

She remembered the rock structure she had awakened beside in the forest, thinking that they had looked like the same types of rock she had been using in the lab the night before. Then there was the village, too realistic to be some set at a renaissance festival, and the two women who so obviously only spoke French. Then there was Monique, and her brother Henri, who had been cut down in the street by a man wearing the red surcoat of the English during their occupation of France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Katelyn recognized the time period of the clothing from her anachronistic society functions. The weapons seemed to fit the period, too.

It was too unbelievable to be true, she thought, and yet...

She turned to Monique. “What is today’s date?” she asked, afraid of what the girl would answer, but needing to know.

The dark-haired girl’s brow furrowed. “The date?” she said. “It’s mid-week, I think. Spring, almost summer.”

Katelyn shook her head. “No, no,” she said impatiently. “The year. What year is it?”

Monique’s brow furrowed and she regarded Katelyn in silence for a moment before answering. “It is the year of our Lord, 1429.”

Katelyn swallowed hard. This was crazy, she told herself. She was dreaming; she had to be. There was no way that the MAG could have sent her back in time. It wasn’t scientifically possible. In a few minutes, she would wake up on the floor in the lab to find that this entire thing had simply been a dream prompted by the conversation she had had with Jessica earlier about the society for creative anachronism and a severe bump on her head.

Beside her, the French girl was still regarding her with a frown. “I must go; they will be looking for me,” she said quietly. “If I run, they will only hunt me down, and I must stay and bury Henri.”

Still stunned, Katelyn watched the girl hurriedly get to her feet and disappear into the crowd of villagers milling about before she realized that she had probably let the one person who could probably speak English in the town get away.

Katelyn stood up, about to go after Monique when she heard English being spoken somewhere nearby.

“I want her found and brought to me,” a man’s voice said. “It should not be that difficult; she is dressed like a man, after all.”

Katelyn felt her blood go cold at the words. They were looking for her, not Monique, she realized. And dressed like she was, it wouldn’t be difficult to pick her out in the crowd.

Scanning the area, she was desperately looking for somewhere to hide when she spotted someone’s freshly washed clothes draped over a line behind a nearby house. There were a pair of breeches and several shirts, and she sighed with relief when she noticed a dress hanging beside them. Nervously wetting her lips, she judged the distance between her and the clothesline. Deciding that it couldn’t be more than a dozen or so feet, she looked around to make sure the English weren’t in sight, and then ran over to where the clothes hung. Quickly grabbing the dress off the line, she darted behind a thatch-roofed cottage, clutching the garment to her chest while her heart hammered in her ears.

Praying that the dress would fit, she hastily took off her lab coat and shimmied out of her T-shirt and jeans. Naked except for her bra and panties, she slipped the dress over her head and quickly tied the laces on the bodice. Though the dress fit well enough, the neckline was cut low and showed more of her breasts than she would have liked, but nothing could be done for that.

Running her fingers through her long hair, she took a deep breath and stepped out into the crowd of people. She didn’t really have a plan, other than avoiding the Englishmen who had so savagely murdered Monique’s brother.

But avoiding them wasn’t so easy. Rounding the corner of a cottage, she walked right into a pair of Englishmen. They didn’t seem to recognize her, but she quickly side-stepped them anyway, and was just hurrying down the dirt street when she heard them shouting for her to “Halt!”

Her heart in her throat, Katelyn took off at a run. Pushing her way through the crowd, she hurried out into the main street, only to realize her mistake too late. Some of the Englishmen were still on horseback, and upon seeing her, they immediately turned their mounts in her direction.

With a muffled cry, she turned to go back in the direction she had come, but the sound of thudding hoofs caught up with her before she had run more than a few steps. She threw a quick glance over her shoulder to see one of the men swinging his sword in the air. They were going to kill her, she thought in disbelief. She tried to dart behind one of the cottages, but it was too late. The horse was already beside her, and before she knew what was happening, something hit her in the back of the head. The blow propelled her forward, knocking her off her feet, and she was out before she hit the ground.

For the second time that day, Katelyn awoke with a pounding headache and absolutely no idea where she was.

She was lying on the floor this time, not outside, she realized. Was it too much to hope that the nightmare she’d just experienced had been a dream, and she would open her eyes to find that she was back in the lab? Knowing there was only one way to find out, she pushed herself into a sitting position.

The room was small, dusty and smelly. Looking up, she could see that the underside of the thatched roof was black with mold. That must be where the smell was coming from, she decided. Light streamed through several openings up high on the walls, illuminating the bundles and crates that filled most of the floor space. It must be a store room, she surmised. So much for the entire thing being a dream, she thought wryly.

Reaching up, she carefully felt the back of her head to see if there was any blood, and winced as her fingers came into contact with the tender area. Thankfully, there was no blood, though she wouldn’t be surprised if she had a concussion. She hoped not, though, because if she did have one she certainly wasn’t going to get any medical attention from these barbarians.

Katelyn was just wondering what they were going to do with her when she heard the sound of a key grating in the lock. Trying to quell her rising panic, she quickly got to her feet as the door swung open. Whatever happened, she told herself, she had to remember where she was and what century she was in, and she had to act accordingly. Her very life depended on it.

But then two men walked into the room, and she forgot about everything she knew about the fifteenth century.

Of course, that probably had something to do with the fact that one of the men looked like he’d just stepped out of an historical romance novel. Tall, broad shouldered, and dressed in a fine red surcoat, breeches, and supple-looking high boots, he put the men in the society for creative anachronism to shame. Not only did this man have a strong build, but with his chiseled features, dark hair and penetrating brown eyes, he was also incredibly handsome. That trace of beard on his jaw line didn’t hurt either, she thought appreciatively.

He looked her up and down in silence, his gaze bold as he took in her long wavy hair, creamy skin and stolen blue dress. Katelyn wondered who he was and what he planned on doing with her, but knew better than to speak before she was spoken to.

He folded his arms across his broad chest and met her gaze levelly. “Convince me that you are not a spy,” he finally said, his voice soft. “And I would suggest you choose your words carefully.”

* * * * *

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