The door at the top of the stairwell had been left partially open. Still hidden in the night beyond the doorframe, Perun peered cautiously into the interior of the house.  Standing opposite the doorway and directly in his line of sight was a grandfather clock with a gently swinging pendulum in the shape of a mermaid riding a dolphin. He could hear the antique mechanism ticking from where he stood. 

It was a few minutes past 3:30. 

"No later?" he whispered to himself, half in amazement, and began to calculate. 

If it had been somewhat after 12:30 when he'd gone into the river, then everything had taken place -- if it had actually taken place -- within the span of three hours.  

And that meant, there were about two and a half hours left until Prague would awake, bleary-eyed, to a new working day. Bakeries opening and trams clanging and shaking their way through the city. Old women would tie scarves onto their heads and go out into the dawn to feed chickens.  Children would leave their houses, book satchels on their backs, shoelaces flopping, and Golem Patrols would retire to their depots for maintenance and to unspool the recorded events of the night.      

But all that was largely irrelevant. 

What mattered was that there were only five hours left until his men started exchanging glances and worrying. Six until they showed up at his rooms with pistols drawn, fully expecting to find his corpse lying in a pool of blood. Seven or eight until they found the abandoned Speedster. Nine or ten before doors were kicked in, informants thrown against walls and punched until they gave up whatever scraps of information they possessed. Eleven or twelve before those of his men with the itchiest trigger fingers started spraying bullets.

A bloodbath was the last thing he wanted on his hands once he'd escaped from this nightmare. Veleček's requested meeting, whatever its purpose, couldn't be allowed to drag out for days. He didn't have days.   

He'd hear what the old man had to say, tell him he'd think about it, then ask to be taken back across the river. Or at least to a bridge. Maybe just to a bridge. Walking the rest of the way might bring him back to reality and help him shake the experiences of the past three hours.

Perun gently opened the door a crack more, and slipped inside, finding himself in a corridor.

The long, faded runner carpet that ran down its length covered dark and creaking floorboards.  Lamps in elaborate wall sconces provided a warm, domestic light, but it was only when he moved past the first one that Perun saw the candles, and mirrors to reflect the flames, inside. 

Candles. 

Perun snorted. 

He'd been wrong. Veleček was so behind the times, he didn't even have gas lighting.  

One end of the corridor ended in a staircase, and the other in three doors, one of which was half-open. From behind that door, voices were emerging. Perun guessed one of them was the chauffeur's. 

He followed the sound, his socks squelching inside his boots with each step he took. Outside in the rain he hadn't noticed how drenched he was, but now, indoors, he felt the heaviness of his water-logged clothing weighing down on him. Apparently, the headwind on the motorcycle hadn't dried much of what he was wearing.  If he could hear his own footsteps, so could Veleček's goons. 

Perun waited, attuning his senses to the new environment. He expected that burning, electrical sensation of approaching danger to strike him like it had done when that thing  with the children had appeared, but none came. He could detect nothing amiss in the air, but the silence -- except for the ticking of the clock -- and the total absence of people, made him suspicious.  

The corridor smelt of age, beeswax and something else. Something familiar, but nothing he could put his finger on. Flowers? A faint perfume? Perun continued slowly on towards the voices, pausing before every closed door, waiting for it to be jerked opened and him to be beaten to the ground in a rush of muscle and brass knuckles. 

Nothing happened. 

Perun fingered the grip of the blade hidden in his sleeve and moved on. 

The chauffeur appeared from out of the one open door and motioned him to hurry with an impatient gesture. To someone in the room, he said, "He's coming. Still thinks you've planned an ambush, though, by the looks of him, er hum. Didn't want his free dinner, either. Who knows, maybe we'd poisoned it."  

Perun took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and marched as confidently as he could the rest of the way. It wouldn't do to look intimidated before this tête-à-tête had even begun. The only thing that ruined the image of swaggering confidence he was attempting to put forward was the embarrassing squelching sounds coming from his boots. Dimitri seemed not to notice. He was too preoccupied with answering whoever, or whatever, was in the room. 

A wave of apprehension washed over Perun but his nerves seemed not to respond as they usually would have, and it ebbed quickly. He was watchful, on alert, but he wasn't edgy nor did he feel any particular emotion of dread, fear or even curiosity as he approached the door.

He felt. . .calm. No, that wasn't the right word. Unfazed? Tranquil? 

He realised he had no desire to see who was waiting for him, nor hear what they wanted, even though he knew he had to get in and get out again as quickly as he could. At the same time, he had no great desire to turn and leave, or to return to his own rooms or, indeed, to go anywhere. Why had he been so concerned with what would happen if he didn't return as quickly as possible to his side of the city? 

Perun knew he could have sat down anywhere and remained in that spot for years, unmoving, or he could retreat back down the corridor and the staircase, back out into the night and wander aimlessly until the rising sun found him. It didn't matter. 

Anything could happen and it didn't matter. Why didn't it matter?

The closer he moved to the open door the more. . .blank. . .he became. Faded. Frayed and unravelling at the edges. 

When the chauffeur stepped aside to let him enter the room, Perun wasn't entirely sure he still existed. 

The room was just as last century as the corridor, only more so. Herds of round pillows with tassels obscured velvet divans. Enormous, heavily-carved furniture took up the walls where oversized paintings in massive golden-frames left a quantum of space. A lively fire burned in a  shallow, marble-cased fireplace, vases with blown-glass flowers stood prettily on the mantle next to an ornate clock. 

In front of the fireplace stood a man in an elegant tuxedo. The firelight shone off his smooth, dark hair combed neatly to one side and highlighted the round jawline and straight nose. The man lifted a cigarette to his lips and took a slow drag, gracefully plucking a flake of tobacco off his tongue on the exhale with thin, delicate fingers. 

He didn't look old. Far from it.  

From behind, Perun heard a sound and turned his head. The door was shutting. Dimitri had left, leaving him alone with Veleček. 

And that didn't bother Perun at all.  

"I apologise for the inconvenience," Veleček said, his voice soft and ingratiating, "but it truly was the fastest and most painless way of getting you here. My other options would have been...messier." 

Perun said nothing. He couldn't think of anything to say. Although, shouldn't he be angry? Defensive? Demand to know what all this was about? He wasn't sure.

He could hear the tick-tocking of the grandfather clock even in here. 

How odd.  

Veleček eyed him for a moment, taking another drag of his cigarette. "Brandy?"

Perun had no desire for a drink, but nodded anyway. 

After what seemed like a longer while, Veleček came towards him, more gliding than walking, and handed Perun a brandy snifter in which two generous fingers of the amber liquid had been poured. 

He took it, but didn't drink. The empty state he found himself in didn't leave much room for anything but the most basic movements and actions, even if his mind was fully functioning. All he seemed to be able to do was stare at the figure in front of him. 

Up close, Veleček looked much older than he did from further away, his shoulders not as straight and his ears slightly too large, like the ears of grandfathers. That wasn't his only deceptive feature. The wrinkles and lines that surrounded his eyes and mouth didn't visually match with the smoothness of his forehead and strength of his chin. His skin seemed thicker along the top and sides of his face, but much thinner in the middle. The longer Perun stared, the more he had the impression of seeing two different people in the same body. 

Or, the same person, but in two different versions. 

He shook his head slightly. How could that be? Where was he? Why could he feel the weight of glass in his hand, and yet not be sure it was actually there? He might be hallucinating. Or -- the thought he'd had when he'd come out of the river came swimming back up to the surface of his mind -- time was moving at a much different rate.  

Another, competing thought rose... was Veleček up to something? 

Veleček moved away, seating himself on a two-seat couch near the fire. "Why don't you come here and dry off? You're soaked," he said. 

"Where are we?"

"Upstairs at my club. The Forest."

"What. . .day is it?"

Veleček cocked his head to the side and contemplated Perun more intensely. "The same space of time it was when you last woke up," he answered. "Only now a different date."

Perun nodded, contenting himself with that answer. He hadn't really thought he'd been gone for years anyway. 

The door behind him opened and Dimitri was suddenly at his elbow. "Here," the chauffeur said, thrusting a thick, white towel towards him. 

Perun looked at the towel, and then down at the hand holding the brandy snifter. 

"Well?" Dimitri say, jigging the towel a bit. "Take it. You're dripping everywhere."

"He can't. All of our dear Perun's hands are full," Veleček said, a faint tone of amusement floating along with the words. "You'll have to get the knife away from him first." 

"Knife? Oh, dog's bones!" Dimitri moved a few paces forward and lobbed the towel onto one of the chairs, then turned and left the room, closing the door loudly behind him. A faint ripple of curiosity disturbed the quiet surface of Perun's mind. 

"How did you know about my knife?"

"I can see it from here. Your sleeve is ripped. Why don't you put it down somewhere and come and dry off?" 

Why not? Perun pulled the blade from his cuff and set it down on a side table as he went towards the fire. It wasn't like it mattered greatly. Hadn't he been told he couldn't die? Maybe that was true. Or maybe it wasn't. Who cared. 

Veleček stood up. 

"We need to talk," he said after he'd taken the snifter from Perun's hand, exchanging it for the towel. "Seriously talk. I understand and accept that you still resent me for what happened, but it was for your own good. You would have been dragged down otherwise and I couldn't have borne that. If you listened to your heart, you'd know that's true."

Perun slowly dried what he could of his hair, face and clothing. Then he sat down on a couch by the fire and began unlacing his boots. The flames gave off a radiance that was comforting, but for some reason he couldn't feel the heat very much. Still, if it would dry his clothing, being close to it might be of some benefit.  

It was odd that since coming out of the river he hadn't been cold. Not once. Not really.  

The ticking of the clock seemed closer now. 

Veleček watched from a few paces away as Perun slid off one boot and then the other, taking off his socks and, after a moment's deliberation, hanging them on the fire screen that stood to one side of the hearth -- and stopping mid-movement. 

The baby. 

It lay wrapped in a pile of blankets on the hearth tiles, only its tiny, pale face peeking out. That's why he hadn't seen it right away, hardly any of it was showing. Veleček seemed to sense what he was gazing at and why. 

"She'll wake up once she warms up."

"It wasn't breathing. Your gravedigger said it didn't need to."

"That's correct. Perun,"  Veleček sat back down on the sofa, "listen to me. There's a war brewing. A bigger and far more threatening one than the last. There are --"

Perun snorted. 

Panic makers. They were always going on about how the National Axis weren't going to stop with just Austria, Bohemia and Moravia as they slurped their martinis. About how a war to end all wars was coming, was almost upon them. It just made him laugh. The Axis couldn't even dampen crime in one city, how were they going to conquer and rule all of Europe? Ridiculous. 

"Rumours," Perun mumbled, still gazing at the motionless toddler. "Nothing but talk. Hotheads with too much time on their hands."

"Not rumours. Facts, unfortunately," said Veleček, his eyes also dropping to the child. "And both of us are going to be heavily involved. If we aren't already."