And as she slipped away from the present moment, sensations that vibrated to the same rhythm of her heartsong began to strum to life, brushing against her skin as they pulled her deeper and deeper into the past.
She heard the tinkling of glass and an echo of laughter, so rich that Anne could very nearly taste champagne touch the tip of her tongue.
The bittersweet flavor faded as her vocal cords began to vibrate, as if she were singing, though no note escaped her lips.
And then the overwhelming scent of roses and twilighttouched soil filled her nose, chased by the nervous anticipation that comes whenever you fear no one will ask you for a dance.
The memories came so quickly that Anne was starting to feel like she was peering through a spinning kaleidoscope as she gazed back into the past. The vibrant texture of a taffeta ball gown caught in the corner of her inner gaze before her attention shifted to the polished gleam of a cello and then a crisp white collar that covered a man’s neck.
Distantly, Anne thought she heard something rumbling beneath all these sensations. It sounded almost like a muffled voice calling through a closed door, and the deep timbre of it warmed the tips of Anne’s fingers. But she was too swept away by the feeling of each scent, taste, and touch to concentrate long enough and make any sense of it, turning a lock in her mind so that she wouldn’t be tempted to pull her attention away from the past.
And then she saw it: a brief flash of a gold signet ring as she watched a woman’s hand shoot within sight, only to be lost among a whirl of marble when she was pulled into a memory of someone looking down at the floor as they flew from one partner to the next.
She had to drift further back. It was the only way. . . .
“Anne.”
The word was saturated with warning and cut through her growing need to stretch the boundaries of her magic, but it wasn’t strong enough to draw her focus away from the feel of a hand pressing against her lower back as she was pulled closer into a waltz.
She thought of the flash of gold again, and in the next instant, she was clasping a woman’s hand in her own, their fingers brushing for the barest instant as they flew down a line of dancers, just long enough for Anne to see the ring once more.
When she glanced up, Anne was shocked to find that the woman standing across from her was leaning forward, so close that she could smell the white roses tucked in the ribbon covering her hair. And when Anne managed to focus on her face, she realized with a start that the laughing eyes staring back at her didn’t match. One was a rather ordinary brown, while the other looked as if it had been carved from a sapphire.
The woman’s lips parted, and Anne leaned forward, eager to hear what she was about to share, but she felt someone grab her gently by the arm then, urging her to move forward in the dance.
She tried to shake the hand away, but the pressure suddenly shifted to her shoulders, turning rough and insistent, as if someone was shaking her as hard as they could.
“Anne!”
Anne’s eyes flew open then, and she was startled to find Vincent’s face drawn deep with worry instead of the strange eyes that had peered at her through the past only a second ago.
“Why did you stop me?” Anne asked as she gasped for breath.
She tried to snap her spine straighter, but for some reason, her body felt as if it didn’t know how to steady itself, and she ended up tipping over.
Vincent instantly shot forward, pulling Anne against his chest to keep her from hitting the unforgiving marble floor.
“To save you!” he cried in exasperation. “I’ve never seen so many ghosts in one place before, and you just let them keep coming.”
“I saw the ring!” Anne said excitedly. “A woman was wearing it. She had the most unusual eyes, one brown and the other blue.”
She felt Vincent’s hold tighten then as he tried to keep her in the present moment.
“I have to go back. Let me go back!” Anne insisted.
“No,” Vincent said firmly.
“But I can learn more,” Anne said, pushing herself away from Vincent now that she felt her feet were her own again. “It was right there.”
“You might see the ring again, but whether you’ll be able to return is another question entirely,” Vincent hissed. “You wouldn’t let me anchor you.”
“I didn’t think it was necessary,” Anne said. “I can control my own power.”
“Not from what I saw,” Vincent scoffed. “You may be able to traipse into the future without any worry whatsoever, but the past is different. It’s laced with deep emotions that ripple outward into our own time. You can’t predict where the memories will pull you, and sometimes, they’re so alluring that you forget why you’d want to return to the present at all. There’s a reason people want to linger in the past instead of looking toward the future.”
Now that some of the haziness was starting to thin, Anne noticed the way Vincent’s hands were shaking and realized that he must have truly believed he was about to lose her, that he had sensed her drifting further and further away and been terrified there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Guilt poured through Anne’s veins, so hot that it drew all speech from her tongue.
