A few minutes later, the carriage slowed down, seemed to turn a corner and then stopped. The doors were opened from the outside and Tina found she was now inside the courtyard of what looked like a luxurious mini-mansion, not unlike the palace she and Devon had stayed at if a little smaller an only a single story. It was quite as ostentatious as the palace Devon and she’d been staying at, but still, quite nice and the breeze here carried the scent of flowers and sea salt a well. Tina wondered if it might even be in the same part of Constantinople.

“This way,” Cassia motioned her to climb down from the carriage and follow. Tina sighed and followed. At least she was safe here, and there was a good chance she’d be able to get word back to Devon somehow. She did, after all, have to get back to her place and time. Wanted to. Needed to. But Constantinople seemed a very complicated place and she was beginning to wonder what she’d come across around the next marble-clad corner.

She was lead into the building, down ornately decorated corridors, through a few finely decked out rooms and hallways and finally ended up in a patio where a middle-aged woman, maybe in her fifties reclined as she looked out over the city and the sea beyond. Huh. They were up on a hill.

The surrounding garden filled the crisp sea air with a light perfume and the quite was only broken by the sounds of birds and the distant hubbub of the city below.

The woman turned to her and locked a pair of scrutinizing green eyes on her. She was blonde, platinum blonde maybe, or perhaps her blonde hair was just greying out with fine lines around her eyes and mouth.

“Come and sit,” the woman offered. “Cassia, could you get us a decanter of Sangria.”

“Sangria?” Tina asked as she approached the proffered lounge chair. She hadn’t expected something that familiarly 21st century to be on anyone’s menu.

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“You like it, don’t you?” the woman asked. “Please, take off your coat and stay a while.”

Tina shrugged off the coat, sighed and even shivered a bit as she felt the breeze through her sweaty clothing and then finally sat down.

“I suppose so,” she replied.

“Well, you don’t want to drink the water here, now do you, Tina?” the woman smiled.

There seemed to be quite a bit of familiarity in the woman’s expression, and her voice did sound like one she had heard before.

“Do we know each other?” she asked.

“Not much,” the woman said. “And mostly by reputation at that.”

Cassia arrived with a pitcher of Sangria with a pair of silver goblets on a tray. She set about pouring the reddish-purple fruity concoction into two of them.

“Who exactly are you?” Tina wanted to know.

“My name is Greta,” the woman said. “But, more precisely, I am the one who helped get you extracted from that riotous mob and the clutches of a particularly grasping and dishonest dwarf. There is much about your employer you do not know Tina.”

“Yes, I’ve been finding that out lately,” she replied.

How much, though, did this woman know about Devon and her? Was she like Devon in some way? Did she know they’d time/space travelled? Was Greta another time traveler? That idea perked her right up.

“You know Devon?” Tina asked. She took a sip from the proffered goblet. The Sangria was chilled, sweet… and strong. Actually, it was amazing. She swallowed it all down and held the goblet out for a refill.

“We’ve met,” Greta told her. “You could say we are rivals of a sort. And I have been looking forward to meeting you in person, in particular. As you are kind of special.”

“So we have…” Tina started, and then realized why the woman seemed familiar.

Her voice. Oh yes, this woman was definitely another time traveler. That intonation was unmistakable.

“You called the office,” she said. “In Toronto. You stepped through to here as well.”

Greta nodded.

“Smart too,” the woman said smiling. “And you pay attention to detail. That’s good.”

“Are you after Lola, the hammer, as well?” Tina wondered. “For yourself?”