Read Online Shadows Fall Away by Kit Forbes - Free Book Online

small loaves of bread from ratty sacks. The guy who bought some looked thin, emaciated, as if the poor loaf of bread was his whole meal till dinnertime. I figured he must be coming from a night shift somewhere or heading to an early shift on too little sleep. My dad looked that way sometimes. He moved the way these guys moved, in an odd trudging yet hurried way as if routine and the dislike of getting grief from a boss were the only things keeping them going.
    A few other guys came and went from a pub across the way, some finishing off sandwiches or what looked like small sausages. My stomach rumbled again and I wondered if they had laws about minors in bars around here. I was almost eighteen and that was legal in the modern London. I doubted anyone would card me.
    No one gave me a second glance when I walked in, so I settled myself near a window. My eyes darted around. It seemed sort of familiar and I recognized it as a place on the tour Agatha had dragged me on. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the tour guide then, just the barmaid. A fact about which Agatha had repeatedly bitched.
    This Princess Alice didn’t have any of the “quaint” atmosphere of its modern counterpart and it certainly didn’t have the hot barmaids. It was more like my mom had described it: a workingman’s pub, furnished with worn wooden tables and sturdy chairs. A few booths had upholstered benches and there were carved wood partitions and fairly clean brass rails to lend it an air of respectability.
    Whatever. It wasn’t a total dive, but I doubted it was on the A-list of places to visit, even in 1888 London.
    I jumped at the abrupt appearance of a pudgy gray-haired woman.
    “And you?” she demanded.
    I considered asking for a menu and for her to wipe down the table while I decided, then thought better of it.
    “Breakfast?” I hoped she’d give me a clue as to what they had.
    To my surprise, she merely nodded and walked off.
    I scratched the hint of stubble on my neck and hoped she came back with something decent. I doubted ordering Cocoa Pebbles and fresh fruit was going to be an option.
    There were a half-dozen other guys in the pub, even one who seemed near my age, all dressed casually like I was. They still hadn’t given me a second look and I realized that the single word I’d spoken probably hadn’t been enough to mark me as an American.
    A plan formed in the back of my mind and I concentrated on the conversations of the others nearest me. I tried to soak in the rhythm and inflection of the accents the way my mom had done with old recordings and movies she’d picked up when working on her books. She used it for help with dialogue. I wondered if I could pick up enough to get by speaking. The slang would take more time, but with a passable accent, I would attract less attention out on the streets.
    And being able to move unnoticed through Whitechapel was going to be important.
    Because I was going to catch Jack the Ripper.
    It had to be my ticket home.
    If I caught Jack there wouldn’t be the never-ending mystery and Agatha couldn’t have dragged me to that convention.
     
    ***
     
    Dawn was just creeping over the dingy brick facades of Commercial Street when I left the pub. The area came to life as more working men and women, housewives, businessmen, children, horse-drawn wagons, and trinket-sellers filled the streets and sidewalks either going to work or getting about their business.
    I’d discovered “breakfast” for a workingman meant a pot of tea, a weird fish called a kipper, and two slices of dry bread and butter. If I didn’t get back to my own time soon, the air and the food would kill me for sure.
    Trying not to concentrate on the absence of a real breakfast, I’d spent the time in the pub alternating between mentally rehearsing a story for Ian and trying to pick up a reasonable facsimile of one of the local accents. I had to treat this the way my dad and uncle would view an undercover assignment because, in