The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2) (29 page)

As I was trying to decide whether to wear a strappy dress, which would expose my mosquito-bitten arms and require nicer shoes, or a more casual combination of jeans and shirt, Sabina popped into my room.

“Good,” I said. “Let me run something by you. Dessert or not? I think I should bring dessert—Nate probably doesn’t serve dessert to his guests. Or if he does, it’s probably fruit salad or something.” Maybe we could meet halfway, I thought. That is to say, I could learn to like healthy dishes as long as I didn’t have to cook them myself. And perhaps he’d be open to occasionally introducing—what had he called it?—subpar food into his body. Though when you put it that way, it didn’t sound appetizing at all.

Sabina hadn’t come over to talk about food. Getting right to the point, she said, “Reveal secret, Julia.”

I moved the two outfits, which I had been studying in my robe, off the bed, transferring them to a chair. “Here, have a seat. The prudent thing would be to give yourself more time to get used to things before—well, before becoming a celebrity and fielding offers to go on TV news shows and write an
autobiography
—that’s a book about your life—and have a movie made about you. All that stuff.”

“Yes, that sound no fun. Except for movie.”

We had shown her a few classics like
Some Like It Hot
, which she enjoyed very much, and also the romantic comedy
Around the World in Eight Days
starring heart-throb and St. Sunniva alum Ewan Coffey, on whom Abigail had a bit of a crush.

Sabina asked about
Tee-Vee
news shows.

I decided the jeans and a shirt were the way to go since my feet were way too sore for heels. “I suppose it’s time we let you watch more television. I’ll talk to Abigail about it. Just—well, ignore most of what you see, especially the commercials.” At Sabina’s raised eyebrows, I added, “They’re like what your father had on the wall above his shop to let people know how good his garum was, only the information is acted out and, uh, exaggerated.” I sat down next to her on the bed. “Look, Abigail and I just want you to be more comfortable in our culture before we reveal your background to the world.”

“Wait to get my teeth white, yes? All right. We wait. But not long. I want to get reveal over with.”

39

An uneventful week had passed and things were just starting to get back to normal when my cell phone beeped in the middle of the night. I didn’t hear it at first, but the second beep woke me out of the nightmare that was making me toss and turn. I had been dreaming of Dagmar running toward the tornado and her Norsemen and never reaching them. I shook off the dream and reached for my cell phone.

The text was from Jacob.

Celer trending on Twitter

Graduate students keep odd hours. I texted him back that it was the middle of the night—3:00 a.m. to be exact—and what did he mean Celer was trending?

Tons of tweets about how you rescued a dog from Pompeii & he’s living at your house

He followed that with
Except they’re spelling it Keller.

I sat up in bed, turned on the light, and texted back
Are they saying anything about Sabina?

No, just Celer

Quinn. It was his way of keeping the upper hand, reminding me that he still knew our secret, making sure he didn’t get retroactively charged with anything. I couldn’t decide if I was furious at Quinn for revealing the truth about the dog or grateful that he hadn’t said anything about Sabina.

In the morning, very early even by my standards, I called Nate. I reached him on his way out the door. He had been busy the past week—I had never realized how much work needed to be done when a death occurred in circumstances as unusual as this one. I hadn’t seen him since our shrimp dinner, when we had talked long into the night and finally fallen asleep, exhausted for more than one reason.

His Jeep screeched into my driveway not fifteen minutes later. He dropped off Wanda the spaniel and drove off with Celer. After a quick consultation with Abigail, we had come up with a temporary solution. Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, as everyone who had access to the Internet knew, traced their lineage to only six dogs (with delightful names, I found out, researching the matter over breakfast: Ann’s Son, Aristide of Ttiweh, Carlo of Ttiweh, Duce of Braemore, Kobba of Kuranda, and—perhaps my favorite—Wizbang Timothy). Wanda could not, therefore, with rock-solid genetic certainty, have been brought back from 79 AD. I resolved to tell anyone who asked that the rumor was a prank pulled by students who had too much free time on their hands. I’d even offer, if necessary, to send one of Wanda’s chestnut hairs to anyone who wanted to do a DNA analysis.

Nate had driven Celer to his grandmother’s house. I pictured the mellow, gray-coated mutt curling up by her fireplace as she cooked him delicious dog meals. I had a suspicion they would get along very well. Sabina was still asleep, but I was sure she’d understand the need for the dog switch. Like I said, it was just a temporary measure anyway, until things died down.

It didn’t work out that way.

After a somewhat harried day trying to keep up with Wanda, I was having a calming cup of tea, having confirmed that
Keller
was no longer trending on Twitter. Sabina, who had been somewhat quiet all day, was next door catching up on homework—I could hear the TV and was a bit surprised she had it on so loud. Abigail was picking up some pizza for them on her way back from campus.

As for my side of the house—Nate was coming over and I had picked up a bottle of wine for us and some of Ingrid’s Swedish meatballs, which were sitting in the oven to stay warm. I was mulling over whether to light some candles for the dinner table, when my phone rang.

I thought it might be Nate calling to say he was running late.

It was Professor Mooney.

“Julia, we have a problem.”

I put down the tea. What was it now—another blackmailer like Quinn, a wannabe murderer like Dean Braga’s predecessor, what?

“Sabina—she’s gone.”

“What? Where?”

“Back in time.”

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is the second book in my time-travel series and I want to repeat something I said in the first:
Like Julia Olsen, I am not a historian
. Julia’s journey into the nineteenth and fourteenth century was one for me as well. Put more plainly, I’m uncomfortably aware that despite my best efforts, historical oversights are sure to have snuck in. I can only hope they will be looked on kindly by the reader.

The central question, whether the Kensington Runestone is a phantom or a real data point on History’s timeline, is one whose answer will have to wait for more weighty evidence on one side or the other. I followed the writer’s prerogative in choosing the more interesting story, and took the liberty of adding a small eyewitness to the discovery event.

Books like this one owe a debt to other books: Alice Beck Kehoe’s
The Kensington Runestone: Approaching a Research Question Holistically
explores the rune
stone evidence from all sides; the Olof Ohman letter and affidavit can be found in Theodore
C. Blege
n’s
The Kensington Rune Stone: New Light on an Old Riddle
and other sources; Annette Kolodny’s
In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery
is a good in-depth read about the Norse sagas; the Good Earth Woman’s story related by Ruth-Ann Tuttle is given in Ruth Landes’s 1968 book
The Mystic Lake Sioux: Sociology of the Mdewakantonwan Santee
; and Jared Diamond’s
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
includes a section on the Greenlanders and the mystery of their disappearance. Newton Horace Winchell was the state geologist at the time; I relied on his 1910 report to the Minnesota Historical Society as the starting point for Dagmar Holm’s translation of the stone’s text. Newton Horace Winchell was the state geologist at the time; I relied on his 1910 report to the Minnesota Historical Society as the starting point for Dagmar Holm’s translation of the stone’s text. The poster she shows Julia is based on the reading of the stone’s text from John D. Bengtson’s article,
The Kensington Rune Stone: A Study Guide
, available at
http://jdbengt.net
.

As always, grateful thanks go out to my editor, Alex Carr, my agent, Jill Marsal, and the book’s trusty team at 47North. John Baron, Jill Marsal, and Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. all read a pre-publication version of the manuscript and provided much appreciated feedback. Angela Polidoro is the most dedicated developmental editor an author could hope to have and the book benefited greatly from her input, as well as that of copyeditor Richard Camp. MPS Ltd. did the lovely runestone illustrations and The Book Designers are overdue thanks for the covers of both the first book and this second one.

The power of the electronic age is that an author can ping people with questions that arise during the creation of a manuscript, and my thanks go out to everyone who responded to requests I sent out regarding pronunciation, copyright, and other issues.

A shoutout also goes to all 47North authors, about as lively and supportive bunch as you could hope to meet.

Finally, as always, my deepest thanks go to my family—the Maslakovic and Baron clans, and, most of all, to my son, Dennis, and my husband, John.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neve Maslakovic is the author of the Incident series, as well as a stand-alone novel,
Regarding Ducks and Universes
. Before turning her hand to writing fiction, Neve earned her PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford University’s
STAR (Space, Telecommunications,
and Radioscience) Laboratory. Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Neve currently lives with her husband and son near Minneapolis/St. Paul, where she admits to enjoying the winters. Find out more on
www.nevemaslakovic.com
or follow Neve on Twitter,
@NeveMaslakovic
.