EDGE and Tesseract are imprints of Hades Publications, Inc.

Chapter One

---

Virtual Evil A Novel by
Jana G. Oliver

Chapter 1

Thursday, 11 October, 1888
London

Time Rover Rule #1: Never call attention to yourself.

Jacynda Lassiter had just blown that one all to hell.

"My God, he's shot the Queen!" a woman cried out.

Jacynda pulled her attention away from the flailing assassin to the royal portrait above the marble mantelpiece. Queen Victoria's ample bosom had sprouted a hole about where the left nipple should have been.

"Oh, great," she muttered, shaking her head. In front of her, coattails fluttered like agitated gulls as men in full evening dress wrestled with the assailant. It took five of them to hold him in place as they bound his arms with a drapery cord hastily snatched from one of the windows.

A solicitous young fellow with a worried expression offered Cynda a hand. With difficulty, she rose from the floor, attempting to straighten her dress in the process.

"By heavens, miss," he exclaimed, "you could have been badly hurt!"

He was cute… for a Victorian. A bit too much macassar oil, but handsome nonetheless. Cynda flashed a polite smile. That always seemed to reassure these folks. "I'll be fine. I just want to sit down."

Sitting allowed her the opportunity to assess whether any bones were broken and determine what had just happened. Well, that last one was pretty simple—she'd heard a woman cry out, saw a pistol, and reacted instantly, leaping on the gun's owner. She'd always been that way—moving on split-second decisions that came back to bite her on the butt.

From within a deep pocket, her time interface continued to vibrate furiously, signaling that someone else from the twenty-first century was in the room. She gave it a surreptitious tap. It promptly started up again. A second tap silenced it. Delicately adjusting her bustle, she settled into a chair.
Lady Sephora Wescomb knelt next to her, her face alabaster. "My God, are you injured? Should I call for a doctor?"

Cynda gingerly maneuvered her left shoulder. It growled back. She chose to fib: to do otherwise would invite too much fuss. "I'll be fine."

Sephora’s quaking hand brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen free from Cynda’s bun. "I’ve never seen such a thing. He just… He could have killed the prince!"

Or anyone else, for that matter.

The silver-haired matron turned toward the activity near the center of the room. "Oh, good, they've secured him."

The failed assassin was hauled roughly to his feet by red-faced men, their vests and ties askew. As he turned to face her, Cynda gasped. She blinked in case her eyes were tricking her. The face didn't change. Every Time Rover knew this man, though he looked older and sported a scar on his chin.

Cynda's mind tumbled with conflicting emotions. This had to be a mistake.

"Fool!" he shouted at her. "Do you realize what you've done?"

It was his voice. She'd heard it dozens of times in the VidNet interviews.

"You fool!" he shouted again.

With a sharp jerk on his arm, Harter Defoe, greatest of all Time Rovers, was frog-marched out of the room, his glower deepening with each step.

Cynda closed her eyes, stifling a shudder. She'd never met the Father of Time, as they called him. The man she idolized above all others. A chill crept through her body. What had she just done?

"Miss?" a timid voice inquired.

She opened her eyes to find a maid offering her a dampened cloth.

"Thank you," Cynda murmured, pressing the linen to her forehead. Her head throbbed in response. Foreheads had a way of doing that after they'd been kicked by an assassin.

"On your way, girl," a sharp voice commanded.

The domestic scurried away in panic.

Cynda raised her eyes to the irate face of Hugo Effington. Her host's jaw was set, eyes narrowed, spoiling for a fight. Given his sizeable build, he wasn't a man to cross.

Why are you pissed at me?

"Excuse me, sir, I've sent for the police," the butler announced.

Read the author biography

---

EDGE and Tesseract Books are distributed in Canada and the United States by Fitzhenry and Whiteside   (more)
EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, Inc.
and Tesseract Books, Ltd.
P.O. Box 1714, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2P 2L7
Phone: (403) 254-0160 - Fax: (403) 254-0456
CONTACT US

This page is copyright © 1999-2009. All rights reserved.